The Declaration of Independence — a truly radical document

This is now my third column (first, July 24, second, Aug. 7) on our incomparable Declaration of Independence, declared on July 4, 1776. Why three columns on the declaration? 

First, and foremost, the declaration was, and is, a statement of foundation or first principles upon which our entire system of government is based. And, in the case of the United States, our declaration was laying the foundation of an entirely new kind of nation, one never seen prior to July 4, 1776.

As Michael Warren, a circuit court judge in the state of Michigan put it, The declaration “is the fundamental charter of our nation and of our freedom.” 

As Judge Warren put it:

“We are a unique nation.  I consider us to be a miracle in the course of human history. And that is in part because we established a government based on  founding first principles, as opposed to nationalities or common religion or ethnic groups.”  (Michael Warren,  The Revolutionary Words that Forged America.  The Definitive Guide to the Declaration of Independence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2026).

The first of a new kind of nation. A nation based on self-evident truths which included the proclaimed, self-evident truth that all men are created of equal value and worth, limited government, individual liberty, and government gaining its authority from the consent of the   governed.

This last right is often not given the attention it deserves. Indeed, it has often been questioned in the decades and centuries since its proclamation. What right is that? It is the right to dissolve a government that has — by its abuses and obdurate opposition to peaceful redress of grievances — forfeited the right to rule and the governed withdraw their “consent” which gives government its legitimacy. 

The declaration states it quite plainly:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”

The declaration acknowledges that this should not be undertaken lightly:

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Before listing the king’s and his government’s manifold abuses and usurpations, they conclude “such is now the necessity which constrains them to all or their former Systems of Government.”

After listing the king’s numerous abuses,  they conclude, “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

And then, in conclusion, they state with boldness:

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intention, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown.”

They then declared their new states as independent states “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.”

When our forefathers declared their independence from Great Britain they were not declaring their independence from their Creator. They also did not take up private arms against the civil magistrate of Romans 13.  Instead, they declared allegiance to a new civil magistrate, having argued that the previous one (the crown) had forfeited the right to govern. They then pledged allegiance to the new civil magistrate.

And we, their physical and spiritual descendants, have been living with the blessings of their courage and their wisdom ever since. May it ever be so!