Self-Evident Truths
Our Declaration of Independence presents beautiful moral truths. Let us today become worthy of those truths. Let us become worthy of our Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate today.
Several years ago, The New York Times launched a new progressive initiative called The 1619 Project. It has been wildly popular and has garnered significant acclaim, turning obscure journalists and writers into DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) celebrities. Materials from The 1619 Project are now being transformed into curricula and distributed to schools across the country, likely including the schools your children attend.
The first sentence of the first essay published by The 1619 Project asserts: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.” Happily for Americans and the rest of humanity, The 1619 Project is wrong regarding the most important subject it addresses.
For now, let us set aside the misleading reference to the United States as “our democracy.” We will discuss what a democracy is, how it differs from other regime forms, and why our American constitutional republic is more than a mere democracy, on another occasion.
On this Independence Day, 2024, let us address the crucial question of why it matters that our “founding ideals” were true when they were written, and remain true today.
Later in the opening essay, penned by Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of the project's chief authors, she clarifies that the “founding ideals” she claims were “false when they were written” are the self-evident truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.[1]
The Declaration is the very reason we celebrate Independence Day. The Declaration was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. That’s why our parades and fireworks happen on July 4th.
If Ms. Hannah-Jones is correct—if The 1619 Project is correct—if those self-evident truths were actually lies or falsehoods, then maybe it’s a mistake to continue celebrating Independence Day and the Declaration of Independence?
Were Those Self-Evident Truths Actually True?
Ms. Hannah-Jones begins her essay by asserting that America’s “founding ideals were false.” Several paragraphs later, she revises her statement: “The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie.”
Her main focus is on what she considers the lie.
Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country.
At the level of philosophical truth, it doesn’t matter what “white men” or any other men or anyone else at that time—or any other time—did or did not believe to be true.
When Pythagoras proclaimed that for all right triangles, the length of one leg squared added to the square of the other leg equals the square of the hypotenuse (a² + b² = c²), he was right. Even though the vast majority of people at that time either did not know the Pythagorean theorem or did not believe it, the theorem was nonetheless a self-evident truth.
The Pythagorean theorem is a true proposition, the evidence for which is contained in the terms of the proposition. Or, to borrow a definition from Thomas Aquinas, the predicate is contained in the subject: He who says a2 + b2 says c2.
The truth of the Pythagorean theorem is not obvious to all. Not everyone understands. Not everyone agrees. Some might disagree. Yet, it is self-evident for those who understand what a right triangle is, what legs are, what the hypotenuse is, how these abstract concepts relate to each other geometrically, what it means to square a number, what it means to add numbers, what equality means, etc.
The evidence is there, within the terms of the proposition itself. It is self-evident. Still, the evidence must be studied, evaluated, and understood, before a thinking mind understands the entire self-evident truth.
Similarly, when Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” he was right.
Even though many people in the world at that time either did not know the self-evident truth proclaimed by Jefferson, or did not believe it—including King George III, and African kidnappers and slave-sellers, and European slave traders—the truth proclaimed by Jefferson was nonetheless self-evident.
Human beings are unequal in many ways—some are taller, some shorter; some faster, some slower; some physically powerful, some weak; some stunningly beautiful, others not so much; some have minds capable of genius, some clearly do not; some are right-handed, others left.
The critical question is whether there is any way that is morally and politically important in which all human beings are equal. The answer is yes: Every human being is equally human. No person is more or less human than any other person.
The moral and political implications of this simple truth rooted in human nature are revolutionary: To be human is to have a free mind capable of thinking, reasoning, and judgment. To be human is to have the capacity to govern oneself and make choices for oneself.
If every human being is equally human, then every human being has a rightful claim to govern himself. If every human being is equally human, then no human being has any rightful claim to lord over and control other human beings without their consent.
Thus, in the words of the Declaration, all human beings are equal in the decisive moral and political respect that all human beings are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” among which are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
That is true. That was true before 1776. That was true after 1776. That was true in 1776, regardless of how many people knew it, understood it, or believed it. It is a self-evident truth, and the truthfulness of a self-evident truth in no way depends on a vote or a popularity poll.
Abraham Lincoln called this self-evident truth “the father of all moral principle.” Lincoln was right, and we can understand why simply by thinking through the logic of morals. Yes, there is a logic to morals, just as there is a logic to mathematics and geometry.
Father Of All Principle
Why is assault or rape morally wrong? Because the victim possesses the same unalienable, natural rights to her own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as every other human being. The rapist is morally wrong because he has violated the equal rights of the person he rapes.
To be clear, the rape victim who suffered the moral wrong must have rights for someone else to violate those rights. Every moral wrong presupposes the existence of unalienable, natural rights.
Why is murder morally wrong? Because the victim possesses the same unalienable, natural rights to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as every other human being. The murderer is morally wrong because he violated the equal rights of the person whose life he stole.
Again, a person must have a right to his own life for someone else to violate that right.
Why is slavery wrong? Because an enslaved person possesses the same unalienable, natural rights to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as every other human being. The slave driver is morally wrong because he is violating the equal natural rights of the person he enslaves.
If slaves had no natural rights—which is what Nikole Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project insist—then slavery would not be wrong. Read that again: If slaves had no natural rights, then slavery would not be wrong.
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The 1619 Project.
Think about it: If a human being has no rights at all—no inherent natural rights to his own life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness—then why would it be morally wrong to claim ownership of that person and use them however you please, just as you might purchase, own, and use a tool or instrument?
Tools and instruments have no inherent natural rights. That is why it is not wrong for humans to own and use them.
The universal moral wrongness of slavery and universal individual natural rights are two sides of the same coin. You cannot defend one without defending the other. To condemn slavery as a universal moral wrong is to acknowledge the existence of universal natural rights. To acknowledge the existence of universal natural rights is to condemn slavery as a universal moral wrong.
The proposition that “Enslaving human beings is morally wrong” is a self-evident moral truth. He who says slavery is wrong always and everywhere says that all human beings possess equal individual natural rights. The predicate is contained in the subject.
Slavery is morally wrong because “all men are created equal” in the sense that all human beings “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Widespread dedication to this self-evident moral truth, in the United States, launched the greatest anti-slavery movement in human history.
That effort to abolish legalized, government-enforced slavery culminated in the American Civil War and the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which aligned the Constitution with the moral self-evident truths announced in the Declaration of Independence.
The Legacy of the Declaration and Abraham Lincoln
This is certainly how the great Republican, Abraham Lincoln, viewed the matter. When he was invited to offer a few remarks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in late 1863, Lincoln opened with a memorable dating: “Four score and seven years ago.”
Eighty-seven years subtracted from 1863 results in 1776.
And what happened in 1776, according to Lincoln? “Our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Where does one find the most prominent articulation of “the proposition that all men are created equal” in 1776? The Declaration of Independence.
By holding these truths to be self-evident and acting on them, Americans abolished slavery legally, constitutionally, and practically, within a mere two generations after winning a revolutionary war against the British Empire and founding a new self-governing constitutional republic, the likes of which had never been witnessed before, anywhere.
The American Founding, based on the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, was the greatest anti-slavery movement anywhere, anytime. Nothing else comes close. No other nation of citizens ever focused on the injustice of slavery, then gave so much and fought so hard to liberate others from the chains of bondage.
Some people waited centuries before recognizing that slavery is a moral problem and attempting to solve it. Others waited millennia. The Americans recognized the injustice of slavery before the ink had dried on the Declaration of Independence, and within little more than four score and seven, they brought slavery to an end at costs in blood, tears, and sweat, that most of us today cannot imagine.
Self-Evident Lies?
Lincoln was right: All that sacrifice for the cause of justice and liberation from slavery happened because Americans were “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Yet, Nikole Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project insist that this proposition was untrue. They insist that America’s “founding ideals were false when they were written.”
If the “ideals” in the Declaration were false in 1776 and the years following—if all men are not created equal—if enslaved black Americans had no natural rights to their lives and liberty—then why was slavery wrong?
Why did free Americans fight and sacrifice so much to liberate those who were enslaved?
Nikole Hannah-Jones and the rest of The 1619 Project undermine their own position, likely without realizing it. Still, they’re not the only ones to claim that the principles enshrined in the Declaration were false, untrue, or outright lies.
A generation after the American Founding, in the early 19th century, some influential Americans—John C. Calhoun foremost among them—started to defend slavery as a “positive good” to be celebrated, supported, and spread. This was a new argument, never before heard in American history. Certainly no one among the Founders argued that enslaving black men, women, and children was morally right, or morally defensible.
Calhoun, however—the foremost apologist for slavery before the Civil War—thought so.
What Jefferson called a self-evident truth—the idea of universal natural human equality and equal individual natural rights—Calhoun called “the most false and dangerous of all political errors.”
Calhoun, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and The 1619 Project agree: The statements in the Declaration of Independence were untrue. That document did not enshrine moral truths; it enshrined lies.
Here’s the rub: Calhoun mocked and ridiculed Jefferson and the other Founders for believing that every human being—including those with black skin—has a natural right to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
Calhoun laughed because, in his opinion, the settled science of his day—biological racism—had proven that some races have great capacities for liberty, while others do not. Some races, by evolutionary development, should be free, and other races should remain enslaved unless they evolved beyond slavery.
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850)
In an 1848 speech, Calhoun clarified his critique of the Founding: “The dangerous error I have attempted to expose” is the mistaken idea popular among the American Founders “that all men are born free and equal, as if those high qualities belonged to man without effort to acquire them, and to all equally alike, regardless of their intellectual and moral condition.”
“The attempt to carry into practice this, the most dangerous of all political errors,” Calhoun continued, “and to bestow on all, without regard to their fitness either to acquire or maintain liberty, that unbounded and individual liberty supposed to belong to man in the hypothetical and misnamed state of nature, has done more to retard the cause of liberty and civilization, and is doing more at present, than all other causes combined.”
What has slowed the cause of liberty and civilization more than anything else, according to John C. Calhoun? Dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal. The very thing Republican Lincoln celebrated at Gettysburg, Democrat Calhoun lamented as a terrible mistake based on a lie.
Calhoun ominously warned:
We now begin to experience the danger of admitting so great an error to have a place in the Declaration of Independence. For a long time it lay dormant; but in the process of time, it began to germinate and produce its poisonous fruits. It had strong hold on the mind of Mr. Jefferson, the author of that document, which caused him to take an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race… and to hold, in consequence, that [blacks], though utterly unqualified to possess liberty, were as fully entitled to both liberty and equality as [whites], and that to deprive them of it was unjust and immoral.
Defenders of slavery, like Calhoun, understood that the Declaration of Independence was a pro-freedom document that would continue fueling abolitionism and offered no principled support for slavery.
If only the writers at The 1619 Project could figure out today what Calhoun figured out nearly two centuries ago!
Calhoun thought the Declaration was false because it said equality and he thought black people were not the equals of white people. Hannah-Jones and the writers at The 1619 Project think the Declaration was false because it said equality and they think… what? They seemingly think that black slaves in 1776 had no unalienable natural rights. It follows, then, that it was not morally wrong to enslave rightless black people.
Oh, what utter moral confusion!
We who have not been brainwashed by progressive propaganda disguised as education know better. We know that slavery is wrong because the principles of the Declaration of Independence are true and right. We know that it was wonderful that Americans who had witnessed slavery, or even owned slaves, came to understand the self-evident truths of natural human equality and individual natural rights, and then took great steps to end slavery in the United States.
On this Independence Day, my fellow clear-thinking citizens, let us celebrate not merely that important document—Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence—but also the important natural, self-evident moral truths enshrined within it.
Let us thank imperfect Jefferson and the other imperfect Founders for providing a foundation of justice for our United States and describing its principles in poetic terms that still inspire those who love freedom today here and around the world.
Let us recognize that anyone who denies the truths in the Declaration denies the philosophical foundations for justice, liberty, and a society of free people freely pursuing happiness.
Let us return to those truths, study them, teach others about them, and demand that our policies and laws align with them.
Let us be worthy of our Declaration of Independence.
Happy Independence Day!
[1] Ms. Hannah-Jones is something of a poster-child for progressive race-based affirmative action and DEI policies. After helping to launch The 1619 Project, she is now a professor at Howard University. Even though she never earned a Ph.D., she was granted tenure upon being hired, before she taught one class. Her position at Howard University is titled the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University.
She is woefully lacking most academic credentials, accomplishments, and standards typically required for tenure. Her scholarship had been proven to be filled with errors, important omissions, and bordering on fraud, on multiple occasions.
Her work has been thoroughly discredited by lesser-known and some well-known academics, including leading historians who published a letter in The New York Times opposing one of her central claims published by The 1619 Project—that the Americans started their revolution for the purpose of protecting the institution of slavery.
What, then, does Ms. Hannah-Jones bring to a (post)modern, progressive institution of higher education? She has dark-colored skin and she promotes the politics of progressivism.