Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   7/01/2014

The eternal lessons of the Declaration of Independence

My reverence for our most basic of founding documents, The Declaration of Independence, is most acute for the simple and absolute proclamation in the second paragraph that begins “We hold these Truths to be self-evident …” What follows is thereby placed beyond debate and dispute, subject to no one’s interpretation or approval, let alone contingent upon the permission of mortals, by way of the laws of men.

This is what those who reject, even deride, the notion of a Supreme Being, cannot escape: If “unalienable Rights … Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” are not granted by “Nature and Nature’s God,” then they are in some way granted by other humans, other humans who can, if only by sheer force of numbers, deprive someone of those same rights. It bears great significance that the “Pursuit of Happiness” was originally “Property,” which was thought too restrictive a concept for Divine endowment.  It could easily be limited to what one can lay hands upon in commerce, or owned, measured and held against other claimants.

The “Pursuit of Happiness” is a most open-ended, impossible-to-limit concept meant to encompass anything that emanates from one’s own productive creativity—be it music, machinery, theories, poetry, designs, animals, production, clothing, meals, wages, interest income and on and on. You have, as far as the Founders were concerned, no obligation to part with any of it under the color of authority or power. Hence, we have the beauty and blessing of private charity and magnanimity towards those less fortunate; hence, the inherent dishonesty and unfairness of theft at the behest of government for the seemingly laudable purpose of “redistributing” to those deemed to qualify for “benefits.”

As Walter E. Williams is wont to explain, if someone walked in your door and helped themselves to your food, stuff or cash, you’d throw them out and call the police. And yet, we are obligated under threat of fines, imprisonment or other violence to pay from our abundance into a common store, called government, that has no restrictions on how much of your earnings can be “shared” with, not necessarily the less fortunate, but those who qualify under the loose standards of those in charge.

You may remember Nobel economist Milton Friedman’s explanation of the sliding scale of oversight, thrift and concern in spending money: 1) You spend your own money on you, exercising great care for the quality and value of your purchase; 2) You spend your money for someone else and have similar care but not quite so much due to someone else benefiting and living with your choice; 3) Someone else spends money on you and you really have little say about the cost, quality and appropriateness (they use #2); 4) And finally, when someone else spends your money on yet another unrelated person or party, they exercise the lowest levels of care, concern and attention to value for the price. Government benefit programs, at best, rise no higher then #4; i.e. complete lack of economic thrift or value.

In “The Last Founder Standing” (7/03/2013), FirstThings.com blogger James Ceaser wrote of the relation of Thomas Jefferson to July 4^th. Jefferson included, among a short list on his gravestone, “Author of the Declaration of American Independence.” While a five-person committee was charged by Congress to write the Declaration, “Jefferson was given the task of preparing the initial draft,” to which changes and modifications were made in committee and by Congress.

“The Fourth today commonly celebrates the Founding, understood as the Declaration Of Independence (and the Revolutionary War) and the Constitution. Most Americans today … treat the Founding—and thus the Declaration and Constitution—as whole. In this Americans follow Abraham Lincoln, who likened the Declaration to ‘an apple of gold’ and the Constitution to the ‘frame of silver’ around it. The view that the Founding is a whole was denied by the Abolitionists, by the Confederates, and by many Progressives, each of whom, for different reasons, saw the two documents as being at odds with each other.”

It may surprise you to find out that, to Jefferson, the Constitution was the more malleable, changeable and even replaceable document, suggesting in correspondence that each generation write its own Constitution. “One document, however, does not lose its luster with the passing of time. Nor can it ever be improved by amendment; its truth is eternal. By the testimony of one man, then, there would appear to be only one Founder left standing: the author of the Declaration of Independence. Praise to Jefferson, then, though perhaps less than he, in his subtle audacity, demanded.”

It is more-than-useful to recall Calvin Coolidge’s speech on the sesquicentennial of the Declaration in 1926, explaining why the Declaration remains authoritative in American political life:

“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter.” (Continued next week)