The Declaration of Independence: An Unprecedented Statement of Freedom
Every Fourth of July, we celebrate with firecrackers, hot dogs, and beer, honoring the Declaration of Independence. But what makes this document remarkable, worthy of such festivity? Before delving into its text, consider this: its very existence is extraordinary. No nation or sovereign regime, prior to the United States, began quite like this.
The greatest cities and empires of history—think Rome, born from Romulus’s fratricidal murder of Remus—shrouded their origins in mythical stories, reluctant to trumpet the truth. Most people don’t even know how these political powers started.
Yet America stands apart. In 1776, the American Founders boldly announced—through their Declaration of Independence—the principles driving their revolution—their break from the British Empire—and the kind of regime they wanted to create—in a way no one had before.
A Bold Stand Amid Despair
What’s striking isn’t just the announcement—it’s the timing. The Declaration wasn’t penned after victory in the Revolutionary War, but in the summer of 1776, when the Continental Army was reeling.
The war had raged since April 1775, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and George Washington’s forces faced one terrible defeat after another. For over a year, Washington’s ragtag band of teenage boys retreated from the British—the world’s mightiest military—often fleeing at the sight of redcoats.
Washington himself despaired over his troops, questioning how he could fight with such an untrained, undisciplined, unprofessional force. Victory seemed impossible.
Yet, amid this gloom, the Americans produced the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming to the world the justice of their cause—not just for independence, but for freedom and self-government. It’s a moral argument: freedom is right, good, a foundational natural right for all human beings. The American message was clear: They couldn’t guarantee victory, but they believed they were on their side of justice, win or lose.
The Premise of Truth
There’s a premise to the Declaration of Independence that was uncontroversial in 1776, but has become highly divisive and disputed today: there is real, objective truth, including objective moral and political truth.
If truth exists and the human mind can grasp it, some opinions aren’t just different or diverse—they’re wrong. The founders saw truth not only in physics and mathematics but in morality and politics. Today, that’s contested.
Multiculturalism, relativism, and philosophic nihilism—rooted in (post)modern philosophy—argue the world lacks rational order—that nature is not rational, and reason is not natural—and that our murky minds can’t know truth, leaving us with mere perceptions and prejudices, none truer than another.
It’s now fashionable to pose rhetorical questions such as: Who is to say what’s right and wrong? Who’s to say freedom is better than tyranny?
Students are free to hold these postmodern views, of course, and insist without investigating that objective truth is a mere illusion—but they’ll never understand the Declaration’s argument without opening their minds to the possibility that objective moral truth might actually exist.
A Challenge to Open Minds
Here’s a challenge for students: Who thinks it’s good to be open-minded—eager to consider books they’ve never read, arguments they’ve never heard, ideas they’ve never contemplated? For those who think it IS good to be open-minded. will you stretch that openness to consider absolute, objective truth might exist?
If so, we can unlock the Declaration’s principles and the source of American freedom. Let’s explore what those Americans said in July 1776.
The Declaration’s Opening: A Moral Foundation
The Declaration begins with a dense, powerful sentence: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Breaking Political Bands
What’s happening? The founders say history sometimes demands one people sever political ties—in this case, from the British Empire. They call themselves “one people,” not 13 separate entities, dissolving only political bonds, not all ties.
They want friendship with Britain, not political rule by a distant king and parliament where they lack a voice. They claim a “separate and equal station” among nations, a right rooted in “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
Laws of Nature and Nature’s God
What are these laws? The Declaration unfolds as a moral syllogism—premise, evidence, conclusion—arguing independence is just. It starts with nature. Look outside: trees, birds, mountains, oceans—that’s nature, distinct from man-made roads or cars.
Nature isn’t just what we don’t create; it’s the vast whole of which we’re part. Humans have a nature, too, within this larger order. We have a nature. We are in nature. We are surrounded by nature. We are part of nature.
But is nature a chaos or cosmos? If chaotic—up one moment, down the next, unpredictable—we couldn’t understand it. Yet, we do. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west; dogs birth puppies, humans babies—always. Nature or orderly, regular, lawful, intelligible, revealing enduring truths. That’s “the laws of nature.”
Then, “nature’s God.” Not Jesus or any named deity knowable only through revelation. The Declaration’s “nature’s God” is knowable through unassisted reason. Study nature’s order, and you ask: What’s the source? How did the world begin?
Aristotle, in his Physics, reasoned his way to a “prime mover”—motion needs a cause, tracing back to an uncaused first mover. The Declaration’s “nature’s God” is non-sectarian, grasped by understanding nature: (1) there’s a world beyond us, a natural whole of which we are part, (2) the natural whole of which we are part is orderly, knowable, rational (3) we didn’t create it—something (or someone) above and beyond us, did.
Christians, Jews, even honest atheists might nod at this. It’s the foundation for claiming independence as a natural right.
Appealing to Mankind
The opening paragraph ends with “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” requiring they state their case. The audience? All humanity. Not just an 18th-century relic, as some academics dismiss it, the Declaration assumes its truths—tied to unchanging nature—speak to everyone, everywhere.
In 1989, Chinese students in Tiananmen Square read it, protesting communism. Beijing’s tanks rolled in, expelling journalists; we don’t know how many died. Why the crackdown? Communism dreads ideas like equality and government by consent—subjects aren’t meant to think that way.
If we could ask Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s main author, if he’d expect Chinese students to grasp the ideas enshrined in the Declaration 200 years later, he’d likely respond “Of course.” Nature’s laws don’t shift—anyone can study human nature and see that freedom is morally right because each human mind has the natural capacity for self-government.
Self-Evident Truths: Equality Unpacked
The second paragraph hits hard: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
What’s Self-Evident?
In most dictionaries today, “self-evident” is defined as “obvious.” But that is not how the American Founders understood the term. There is an older, deeper, philosophic meaning of “self-evident” from which the Founders drew.
The founders, drawing on classical Greek thought, meant by “self-evident” a true proposition whose evidence is contained within itself. Take the Pythagorean theorem: a² + b² = c². It’s true for all right triangles—square the sides, sum them, equals the hypotenuse squared. Yet, could we measure every right triangle? No—there’s an infinity of right triangles. Yet, we teach it confidently. Why? The terms—right triangle, sides, hypotenuse, square, sum—contain the evidence. The Pythagorean theorem is not obvious; it takes study to understand. That’s self-evident: truth embedded in the concepts and terms, not instant to grasp by mere sense perception.
All Men Created Equal
The Declaration’s self-evident truth isn’t math—it’s moral: “all men are created equal.” How? We’re unequal in height, weight, strength, smarts, beauty—countless ways.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863) nods back to 1776: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth… a new nation… dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He saw it as freedom’s bedrock, fading in his day as it does now.
So, what’s equal? Simple, almost overlooked: every human is equally human. No one’s more or less human than another. Fish are equally fish, dogs equally dogs—big deal? For humans, it’s important because each of us has the nature of a rational, thinking, choosing, self-governing being.
Human Nature and Rights
Humans blend animal appetites—hunger, desire—with a rational, free mind, unique on Earth. We choose, judge history, debate right and wrong. Picture 3 a.m., eyeing chocolate cake in the fridge: your gut craves it, your mind says, “No, you’re dieting.”
That inner clash—appetite versus reason—proves it. Every human has this: a body with instincts, a mind to rule it. Your mind governs your body; my mind shouldn’t govern your body. This is the most basic definition of slavery: The mind of one person controlling the body of another, usually through threats of violence and force, defying nature’s design.
We’re equal in this complex mix—reason and desire—and it carries moral weight. It means slavery is wrong by nature; self-government and freedom are naturally right.
The Declaration ties this to rights: endowed by our Creator, unalienable, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Natural rights, inherent in each of us, predate government. Life? You’re built to live—my interfering’s wrong. Liberty and happiness flow from this, a coherent whole we’ll unpack next. Natural rights are the standards by which we judge governments: protect them, we’re good; violate them, we revolt.