Some Democrat candidates for president are arguing our founding was racist. These same folks are embracing a new socialism to address the ills they see in society. Fringe racists, on the other hand (there is no such thing as a mainstream racist) show up now and then to hold a rally to spew their own toxic vitriol.
What unites both groups is their lack of appreciation for, and adherence to, the principles stated plainly in our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. It is remarkable to see in today’s political discourse the level of ignorance about the fundamental principles that launched our country.
Our Declaration of Independence was not written in a vacuum. In 1776, the founders distilled centuries of Western thought and experience to create a new form of government. They discerned notions of self-government, as well as the existence of God-given, transcendent, and eternal rights that no government may infringe. These principles are the birthright of every American. They are touchstones that have been reemphasized throughout our history, and the time is ripe for them to be asserted again.
Ronald Reagan described the first of these founding principles, the sovereignty of the people, in a landmark 1964 speech two years before he first ran for elected office. He called it “th[e] idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue … [w]hether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
Like Reagan, Abraham Lincoln greatly appreciated the historic significance of our founding. In 1858, Lincoln extolled the other of the nation’s basic founding principles, namely the equality of all people grounded in transcendent, God-given rights: “[I[f you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence … if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back … to the truths that are in the Declaration,” Lincoln said.
Likewise, President John F. Kennedy, cognizant of the threats of atheistic, globalist communism, proclaimed in his inaugural address that “the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”
These tenets — sovereignty in the people and God-given, inalienable rights — form the context from which the greatest nation on earth developed. And while the principles of our Declaration were not at first universally promulgated in the Constitution, the virtue within the country, relying on those very same principles, forced a correction. A decades-long, faith-based abolitionist movement, a Civil War that killed hundreds of thousands, the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and ultimately Federal civil rights legislation, all took the greatness of America and its founding principles to a more complete level.
Not only do the progressives campaigning for president fail to recognize the true nature of the commitment to equality in our founding, but they also fail to appreciate the essence of limited government and self-government. In the quest for their party’s nomination, they are promising trillions in new spending (and borrowing) and an unprecedented expansion of government control that makes even Barack Obama look Reaganesque.
In another, far-off corner, it is simply impossible to square our Declaration with support for white supremacy or racism, and any American holding racist views who thinks otherwise is living in the wrong country. The Declaration explicitly asserts that our equality comes from the same Creator who endowed everyone with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those were not just ideals for 1776 — they were and are transcendent for all people and for all time, and they cannot be squared with racist ideals in any era.
To what extent does our disunity today stem from the fact that a significant part of the country seems to have forgotten, or outright abandoned, our Declaration heritage? When we reject the ideas of God-given rights, equality, and self-government, we are on the path to division. Unity, on the other hand, can be restarted when we return to the Declaration, as Lincoln put it.
In 1979, John Paul II went to Poland shortly after being elected pope. Part of his mission was to help the Polish people rediscover their true identity, which the communists had spent more than thirty years trying to obliterate. Papal biographer George Weigel described John Paul II’s message to his fellow Poles as being “You are not who they [the government] say you are, let me remind you of who you really are.”
America, read the Declaration. That is who you really are.
Keith Rothfus represented Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district from 2013 to 2019. He is on Twitter @KeithRothfus.
