This week we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, the document ratified by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, after Congress had officially declared independence from Great Britain on July 2. Its rationale, as the text states, was that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
After its introductory paragraph, the logical structure of the Declaration is the form of argument called modus ponens: If a, then b; a; therefore b. In the case of the Declaration, it reads: If certain conditions prevail, then independence is justified (major premise); those conditions do in fact prevail (minor premise); therefore, independence is justified (conclusion).
The paragraph famously beginning with “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .” establishes the document’s major premise that a change in government is justified if certain conditions prevail. This rests on the notion of natural rights and the consequent idea that legitimate government is founded upon the consent of the governed.
The next, and by far largest, section of the Declaration begins at the end of that second paragraph with the words, “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” These are the indictments against the king.
The conclusion drawn by the Declaration (“We, therefore”), then, is that the colonies had no choice but to declare independence. We see that in the language of the first paragraph: words like “necessary,” “requires,” “causes,” and “impel” suggest necessity rather than voluntary choice.
The first ticking time bomb, however, is a question that has affected American politics throughout our history: what became independent of Great Britain—one nation or thirteen nations?
Consider the following linguistic conventions. We commonly use third-person, singular verb tenses when talking about the United States—e.g., “the United States is a great power,” or “the United States has a large economy.”
If you have ever learned German or a Romance language like Spanish, French, or Italian, you will recall that those use the third-person, plural verb tense. Translated literally, they say, “the United States are a great power” or “the United States have a large economy.”
E pluribus unum—out of many, one. Yet throughout our history the unumhas been vulnerable to being swallowed up by the pluribus, and the Declaration provides grist for this mill.
On the one hand, the text speaks of “one people.” But on the other hand it holds that “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States,” and that “as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”
Those signing the Articles of Confederation, our first constitutional framework, refer to themselves as “we, the undersigned Delegates of the States” and in Article II maintain that “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
This sounds more like NATO than a nation.
This issue, therefore, arises at least implicitly whenever someone refers to the “sovereign” states. We saw how that turned out in 1861 and during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s.
The second ticking time bomb here is that the Declaration contained no explicit mention of slavery, even though slavery is clearly inconsistent with the idea of natural rights. It punted.
Finally, a third ticking time bomb is that the Declaration famously refers to “unalienable” rights, particularly those of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To say that certain rights are inalienable, as we now phrase the term, means that they cannot be taken away.
Yet how can that be true? Consider liberty: when a court sentences someone to prison, that person’s liberty is clearly taken away. So how do we explain that?
The answer is that the government may take away someone’s liberty, but not someone’s right to liberty. This is not a distinction without a difference. It means that government may not deprive someone of liberty arbitrarily but must give this person, and the public, a good reason.
As we see in contemporary arguments and court cases about, e.g., a right to abortion or free speech, this is the issue at stake whenever we wrestle with the question as to when, if ever, the government may infringe upon a fundamental right or even a liberty interest.
So, as we celebrate the 248th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we do well to understand that it is not just a historical document. It structures our ongoing political and constitutional reality. Happy birthday!
terrific~
History tells us clearly that Thomas Jefferson, himself a slave holder, attempted to insert a clause into the Declaration of Independence opposing slavery but Congress would not agree.