“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--”
I sure wish that I could write like Thomas Jefferson did. In the opening sentence of the second paragraph of America's Declaration of Independence, quoted above, he defined the essence of what it is to be a human being, employing an economy of words that I can only envy and marvel at. Why can't I write pithy things like that? (“pithy”, meaning “precisely meaningful; forceful and brief”)
While Jefferson wrote clearly and eloquently, I'm constantly amazed at how often and how easily most people misinterpret his meaning. It's a dangerous thing to misunderstand one's own nature and the nature of one's rights. It will surely lead to the loss of the freedoms that those rights represent. A lot of damage to those freedoms has already been done due to such misunderstandings.
It's not hard to correctly discern the exact meaning of Mr. Jefferson's words. It only requires that one be paying attention to how one thinks. Here's the correct way to understand this most important of sentences, taken phrase by phrase:
“We hold these truths ...”: Jefferson doesn't pussyfoot around here. Right from the start, he's “forceful and brief”. He declares, in no uncertain terms that the words which are to follow are absolutely true. He offers no possibility for disagreement or debate here. And while it may seem arrogant of him, he even goes so far as to state that these truths apply to everyone with his use of the word “We”. It is never arrogant to assert that the truth is true, and he wasn't afraid to make such an assertion in a prominent public document.
“... to be self-evident, ...”: This phrase provides the complete justification for his previous assertion of truth. A self-evident truth is an axiom, something that we know to be true without requiring any proof, something which is necessary and fundamental to the existence of all knowledge. To deny a self-evident truth is to knowingly deny not just that truth, but all of its derived truths as well, inevitably leading to a self-contradiction. Such denial is the highest form of intellectual dishonesty. So we may proceed with the rest of this discussion with complete confidence in the certainty of Jefferson's position.
“... that all men are created equal, ...”: And this is the first of these self-evident truths. It is an undeniable, self-evident truth that all men are created equal.
Let's digress just a bit for the sake of clarity here. Jefferson wasn't being a sexist by his use of the word “men”. All men and women are created equal, of course. It's just that in the good old days of the Founding Fathers, before political correctness started oppressing our writing styles by insisting on the awkward and annoying use of phrases like “he/she”, “his or her” and such, it was universally understood that the generic use of the word “men” did not imply the exclusion of the fair sex.
But there's a far more important point that has to be made about this phrase. The use of the word “equal” in this context doesn't mean what a lot of people take it to mean. It doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to exactly what everyone else has in equal measure. It doesn't mean that stuff should be taken from the “haves” and given to the “have nots”, so that each person thereby becomes “equal” to every other person. Robin Hood isn't to be allowed among us. The word “equal” is being used here in the sense of “equivalence”, not in the sense of “sameness”. The context here is each citizen's relationship to government, not each citizen's relationship to other citizens. It's not about social programs. It's about each person being equal in the eyes of the government and of the law. It's meant to preclude granting preferential treatment to certain citizens by members of the government for any reason. The American Revolution was fought in order to abolish just such preferences, along with government sanctioned privileged classes, such as royalty, aristocracy, and nobility. If social and economic classes and “inequalities” happen to emerge from the everyday conduct of society's business, it's no concern of the government, nor does government have any authority to interfere with such outcomes. Governments may not create or destroy such naturally occurring spontaneous class differences, nor even pass laws intended to reduce those differences. None of these natural differences violates the equality of all men, as the term is used here.
“... that they are endowed by their creator ...”: Despite the use of the word “creator” in this phrase, nothing is stated or implied about any supernatural being that is involved in the affairs of men or the state. Separation of church and state is not being violated here. The mere fact that humans exist on this planet implies that they were somehow created, but Jefferson says nothing about how or why they were created. It's a statement that's entirely neutral on the subject of religion.
Well why then, did he bother to include the word “creator” in the paragraph at all, if it's completely neutral? Does it have any point at all? Oh yes indeed, it has a point to it, a crucial point, as will be explained next.
“... with certain unalienable rights, ...”: The previous phrase explained to us that the source of our rights is our creator, whatever that creator may be. What it means, and this meaning is what's crucial, is that we have whatever rights we have just by virtue of our existence. We were all created as beings that must be free to think and act as we see fit. Our rights don't have to be earned; they are a birthright. While everything else we may have must be earned, rights do not.
Why is this such a crucial point? It's crucial because our very survival as individuals and as a species depends upon it. Our nature, i.e., the way we were created, is such that we must survive by our wits, our intelligence. We're too physically inadequate to survive otherwise. We are neither the largest, the strongest, nor the fastest of creatures. We are however, the most intelligent of creatures, and quite fit for survival, provided we are free to make our own judgments and choices concerning the manner in which we wish to survive. Thus, what occupation, religion, mate, friendships, etc. we are to have must be freely chosen by each one of us without being harassed about those choices by the state, or by other people.
While our high degree of intelligence ensures that we are quite fit for survival, we all still make mistakes, lots of them. We're very fallible creatures. Most of the time we survive our mistakes, but a mistake can on occasion be fatal. Such is the risk inherent in our existence.
Should an individual leave his survival up to the judgment of other, equally fallible, individuals? Sadly, the vast majority of people do just that. They assume that another person, or group of people somehow have come upon some magical source of superior wisdom that enables them to have a means of making higher quality choices for them that carry less risk than their own judgments carry. It's erroneously assumed by many that if a majority agrees upon a course of action, that the risk of pursuing that course is then somehow lessened, or that it is less risky than any alternatives. People who engage in such magical thinking are only all too happy to surrender their rights, their freedom, their autonomy to some person, group or majority that they believe somehow knows better then they themselves do, the best way for them to live their precious lives. Self-reliance is a rare commodity these days, it seems.
Well ok, so we have these rights. Now what if someone wants to take them away from us, or what if we wish to freely choose to give them up or to turn them over to another person. Well, Jefferson's careful choice of the word “unalienable” tells us that this is impossible. You see, since our rights were given to us by our creator, not the government, or another person, there's no way to get rid of them. These rights are unalienable, we were created with them, just as we were created with arms, legs, brains, etc. None of those things can be alienated, or separated from us. When people speak of situations where they've “lost” their rights, or that someone has taken their rights from them, what they actually mean is that someone has forcibly interfered with their freedom to exercise their rights, i.e., has impeded their free will. No person, and no government, can take away another's rights. One's rights are as much an inseparable part of him as are his thoughts and feelings.
Implied in this phrase and the previous one is the fact that we don't obtain our rights from the state. No government can endow a person with his rights, nor can it nullify them. Jefferson makes clear that our unalienable rights were given to us by our creator as part of our creation. While the state cannot nullify, or take away anyone's rights, it can and does impede the freedom of certain people to exercise their rights by means of incarceration or even execution, in the case of those who have interfered with the exercise of the rights of others, i.e., criminals. The state may properly act in such a manner when a criminal has violated another person's rights. This is the only circumstance in which a government may violate another's rights. If it does so in any other circumstances, then the member(s) of the government participating in such actions are themselves criminals.
“... that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ...”: Here Jefferson is not specifying all of the rights that each person has, he's merely listing a few of the most fundamental ones. Certainly the right to life is paramount. If we don't have that one, then we have no need of any of the others. And liberty is the precondition for all of our other rights. Without liberty, no one can exercise any of the others. And since the only rational purpose of any human life is happiness, then we must have the right to freely pursue that happiness.
Notice that Jefferson does not state that anyone has a right to happiness itself, only that everyone has the right to pursue his own happiness, however he chooses to define happiness for himself. Happiness is guaranteed to no one, but since it is a potentially attainable state for everyone, each of us must have the right to pursue it unimpeded by the actions of another person or of the state, or it almost certainly will become unattainable for all of us.
Since Jefferson only listed three of the most fundamental rights, what then are the others? Surely he recognized that there must be others, or why would he have used the words, “among these rights”? What are these other rights? Who decides what rights we have, the majority, the state? Absolutely not. Rather than quibble incessantly about what rights we do and don't have, we can simply state that we each have the right to think, say and do anything we choose. But since we know that “all men are created equal”, then we know that the only limit upon each of our rights is the equal rights of others. Given a little bit of thought, one can easily see that it's pure perfection.
Since each of us has rights to all things, limited only by the equal rights of others, and since individual persons are the only beings that have rights at all (because they are the only beings which have need of them), it's clear that Mr. Jefferson intended that governments should have no rights at all, and that a government's only proper function is to protect the rights of each of its citizens.
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I just wrote over 2,000 words explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in less than 40. although I explained his pithy prose, I did not elaborate upon them. His writing stands on its own when properly understood.
What saddens me is that I had to explain his words at all. It shouldn't have been necessary, given that he expressed nothing but self-evident truths, but the people of the United States have long ago forgotten the self-reliant act of thinking for themselves, and have left the meaning of his magnificent words to be twisted beyond recognition for them by politicians and philosophers. I hope it's not too late to turn things around, and for each of us to rediscover the true meaning of our Declaration of Independence.
© 2004 by Bernard Schneider. All rights reserved.
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