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Preface

WHY YOU WANT TO READ THIS BOOK

“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.”

We have heard and read this sentence all our lives. It is perfectly familiar. But if we pause long enough to ask ourselves why Jefferson wrote it in exactly this way, questions quickly arise.

Jefferson chose to use rather special and very precise terms. He did not simply claim that we have these rights; he claimed they are unalienable. Why “unalienable”? Unalienable, of course, means not alienable. Why was the distinction between alienable and unalienable rights so important to the Founders that it made its way into the Declaration? For that matter, where did it come from? You might almost get the impression that the Founders’ examination of our rights had focused on alienable versus unalienable rights—and you would be correct.

In addition, the Declaration does not simply claim that these are truths; it claims they are self-evident truths. Why “self-evident”? The Declaration’s special claim about its truths, it turns out, is the result of those same deliberations as a result of which, in the words of George Washington, “the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period.”

If a friendly visitor from another country sat you down and asked you with sincere interest why the Declaration highlights these very special terms and where they came from, could you answer clearly and accurately and with confidence? That friendly request for answers would I believe be challenging for most of us for the simple reason that we no longer conduct our politics in the language of the Founders. We simply no longer think politically in those terms. Except for ritual observances on special occasions, “unalienable rights” and “self-evident truths” have gone missing from American politics. Though familiar in one sense, they have the unfamiliarity of special items only brought out for special occasions. In day-to-day politics rights are often invoked—civil rights, gay rights, constitutional rights, even human rights, but very rarely or almost never unalienable rights. Political arguments are not advanced on the basis of self-evident truths; political debates feature the conflicting results of a torrent of policy studies and pronouncements by supposed experts instead.

Americans on all sides of the debate agree that something has gone wrong in American politics. Many Americans believe that we have lost our way because we no longer guide ourselves by the ideas of the Founders. But guiding ourselves by the Founders seems to be easier said than done. Could it be that part of our difficulty is that we no longer use, or even really understand, the language the Founders used or why they used that language? And if so, how did that come about?

This book is dedicated to the proposition that we need to understand the language of the Founders if we want to understand the ideas of the Founders.

It will also tell the story of the systematic effort to bury the ideas of the Founders.

Along the way we will consider “the Pursuit of Happiness” and “We the People” and other jewels of the American idea in the light of the Founders’ original understanding.

As is so often the case, Lincoln said it best. Lincoln said the Founders gave us government by, for, and of the people. In America, government is in our hands.

Consequently, in the American idea of government, everything ultimately depends upon America’s citizens. But citizens are made, not born. The gift of government by the people brings real responsibilities. Not the least of these is the citizen’s responsibility to understand the American idea.

And in addition to understanding it, citizens in general must be dedicated to that idea if the nation is to thrive, or even to function at all well. That is the reason government officials from the President on down swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, America’s charter of self-government.

And that is also the reason for the Founders’ emphasis on the importance of education. Each of us must get the education necessary to become an American citizen. Here is Lincoln again: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

The bad news is that we were not taught the Founders’ ideas or the language of the Founders when we were in the school room. If we had been, then you and I would always have been ready to answer questions from a foreign visitor about Jefferson’s immortal words in the Declaration with the greatest of ease.

That is why you want to read this book.

The good news is that understanding the language of the Founders and the ideas of the Founders is not difficult—and the rewards are great. Once you understand their thinking, all of the pieces will fit together. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will open themselves to your understanding.

The Founders intended it to be so. They meant for us to understand the American idea. That is one of the reasons the Declaration and the Constitution are so brief that a citizen can carry both of them printed together in a small, slim copy that slips easily into a shirt pocket. Armed with a good understanding of the American idea, the Declaration and the Constitution become our guidebooks for carrying out our responsibilities as American citizens.

This brief book is not intended for the scholar, but for the intelligent citizen who simply wants to understand the Founders.

In what follows, we will consider the Declaration’s immortal statement of the principles of the Founders as well as other statements by the Founders in order to learn how they fit together, to discover the pattern of ideas that connects them. We will also examine some well-known comments about what the Founders meant from more recent times.

So this brief book does not focus on the obscure, but instead, for the most part, on the very familiar. In that sense, it only skims the surface, but it aims to do so in a way that reveals the depths.

If reading this little book quickens your interest to learn more, there is a wealth of fascinating material—and this book can get you oriented to make sense of whatever you choose to read.

If on the other hand, you simply want the maximum of understanding in the minimum of pages, then this is the book for you.