As the Fourth of July approaches, we Americans are collectively claiming to be celebrating 250 years of American independence.
This is a myth.
More accurately, we are commemorating the 250th anniversary of a declaration of, and adherence to, a set of moral and political ideas—some number of “self-evident” “truths.” These, too, are myths. The United States of America will not be 250 years old in 2026. And probably no truth is self-evident, especially the “self-evident” truths asserted in the Declaration of Independence.
While the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, the collection of colonies now known as the United States of America did not become an independent sovereign state until nearly eight years later, on January 14, 1784. This is the date that the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, was ratified. It is true, of course, that we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of our assertion of independence, which set the events in motion that led to actual independence. But the political entity known as the United States of America will not celebrate its status as an independent state for another eight years, or so. But this is rather a benign myth.
The second myth—that the United States is founded upon allegedly self-evident truths—is not so benign. The very notion of “self-evident” truths is philosophically problematic, regardless of what truth-claim is alleged. That’s a discussion of epistemology (what we know and how we can know it) outside the scope of this column. But even if there are such things as self-evident truths, the principal assertion of truth in the Declaration of Independence is neither self-evident nor true.
This is not to suggest that Catholic Christians cannot live under such myths. Nor am I asserting that nothing “true” can be found in some of the ends and means of American political life. The political regime in which no good can be found is the rare exception rather than the rule. And certainly, the political foundations and superstructures of the United States of America have aspects that we can affirm. That said, however, for Catholics, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence should be less an occasion of celebration and more of an opportunity to reflect upon the tension of Catholic faith and American public life.
The Declaration of Independence asserts that its signatories, representing their constituents of the 13 colonies, “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.” Now, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are certainly legitimate goods and, when properly defined, legitimately to be sought. But the theory (not “truth”) that we have “inalienable Rights” to the pursuit of such goods—or to anything else—is a myth. Moreover, it is a myth that, at the very best, is in tension with a Catholic understanding of the human person. At worst, it both contradicts Catholic moral theology and erodes Catholic witness.
It is certainly true that magisterial and other official ecclesial documents are filled with the language of “human rights.” While some of this usage begs for clarification and delimitation, the theory of rights in Church documents is always a corollary of human dignity. As Pope Leo XIV puts it in Magnifica Humanitas 55, such human rights “are grounded in the common dignity of every man and every woman.” This understanding of human rights is not the theory asserted in the Declaration of Independence.
In fact, it is precisely opposite that theory. The theory of inalienable rights in the Declaration is rooted in a rejection of the “common dignity of every man and every woman.” Rather, the theory of possessive individual rights is founded on the assertion that the “state of nature” is one of “war of every man against every man.” As used in ecclesial documents, “rights” are the natural immunities, protections, and privileges that flow logically from the Christian understanding of the dignity of the human person. As used in the Declaration, “rights” are based on a rejection of that dignity.
This is not to say that Catholics cannot live in a state founded upon such myths. Christian faith and practice are not dependent upon the relative truthfulness of the political theory of the state in which they are practiced. But to live in such a regime is one thing. To celebrate and propagate its myths is something else altogether.
The best argument that there are no such self-evident truths as individual possessive rights is that no one “discovered” them until about the 17th century. Neither Plato nor Socrates, the two most important pagan philosophers for Christian theology, discovered the “self-evident” truth of individual rights. Nor did arguably the two most important political theologians in Christian history, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Such a notion of individual rights would contradict everything these thinkers had to say about the human person and social life.
The theory of individual rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence was not discovered. It was invented by British philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the middle of the 17th century. And it was conceived to displace the historic Catholic Christian understanding of the social nature of the human person. For Hobbes, the state of nature is a “war of every man against every man,” in which every person has a right to possess anything he has the power to take, without regard to any kind of social concern. While his contemporary John Locke tried to soften the implications of this theory, he did not abandon it.
Until Hobbes and Locke in the middle of the 1600s, no one had even asserted that there are such rights, because no one had asserted, as Hobbes did, that the state of nature is a state of war of every man against every man. Both Hobbes and Locke posited possessive individual rights as a replacement of the Christian understanding of the nature of the human person and society, not its complement. In a 1798 letter, Thomas Jefferson, the chief draftsman of the Declaration, called John Locke (with Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon) one of “the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception.” He called Locke’s Second Treatise of Government “perfect as far as it goes,” finding its practical application in the Federalist Papers.
The state of nature as a war of every man against every man is theory to which Thomas Jefferson subscribed. And, thus, it is the theory that Jefferson asserted in the Declaration of Independence. And Jefferson expressly anticipated that the effect of this theory would be the eradication of Christian faith in the United States. “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the US. who will not die an Unitarian,” Jefferson wrote in an 1822 letter. And he credits the very theory canalized in the Declaration of Independence as the means to achieve that end.
The provenance of individual possessive rights does not necessarily mean that an assertion of individual rights is false, of course. But it does mean that it is not “self-evident.” Moreover, if a theory of individual rights is true, Christian moral theology is false. Which is another way of saying, if Christian moral theology is true, any assertion of inalienable rights is false. They both might be false. But they cannot both be true, any more than it can be true that Bill is a married bachelor.
Catholic Christians can live peaceably in a regime that is founded upon a false philosophy of possessive individual rights.
*But it is not at all clear that we can celebrate it.
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For reasons good, bad and indifferent, the 4th is our national birthday. Unlike a person’s birthday, a nation’s is not so well defined.
Chill and have some fun with the rest of us. We can get heavy some other time.
July 4th I’m planning on sitting on my front porch & watching my neighbors’ fireworks. Some of them go all out.
🙂
Be careful!
Thank you, knowall. I occasionally find a couple leftovers from the bottle rockets the next morning but I’ve never had one of the big fireworks land in my yard. Thankfully.
My former boss had his grandkids over on the 4th a few years back and they were playing with sparklers. Apparently, there was enough of a spark left that it later ignited the somewhat dry grass by their deck, and then traveled to the deck. The deck flames got the drapes hot enough through their sliding door, and you can imagine the rest. The couple were asleep and the neighbor saved them by screaming and banging on their door and windows on the other side of their beautiful house! (Total loss)
Goodness!
Fireworks are something to be very cautious with for sure. Thank you for sharing that.
When Jefferson was one of the American Commissioners sent by the young United States to negotiate a peace witht the Muslim corsairs that were attacking American ships and enslaving American sailors, he learned much about the Qur’an that he did not know before.
EVENTUALLY, AS PRESIDENT, JEFFERSON WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT TO SEND US MILITARY FORCES (1801 the Marines!) TO FIGHT THE FOLLOWERS OF THE RELIGION OF PEACE. “From the Halls of Moctezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” This was the first Barbary War vs the Muslims in N. Africa. See this:
“In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations, Jefferson and John Adams—then ambassadors to France and England respectively—met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, they laid out the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity in a letter to Congress:
We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. (Letter of American Commissioners to John Jay, 28 March 1786).
One need not conjecture what the American ambassadors—who years earlier had asserted that all men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”—thought of their Muslim counterpart’s answer. Suffice to say, because the ransom demanded was over fifteen times greater than what Congress had approved, little came of the meeting.”
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/06/10/2018/barbary-islamic-terrorism-americas-first-military-victory
…What? Self-evident truths are questionable? You just erased Scholasticism en toto! The law of non-contradiction is definitely self-evident, as are the other laws of thought, and many other things beside.
And Hobbes is hardly the only progenitor of rights-language! The Salamanca School pioneered the idea of rights from a natural law perspective, if anything Hobbes stole the idea from them.
Garth,
Exactly. It’s scary to think this guy is a professor. Natural rights language regarding individual rights goes back to at least the 1400’s in the Catholic Tradition, while first principles are more or less self-evident truths. Craycraft is a regular contributor at our sunday visitor, which has turned into a left-wing outlet in recent years, and might help explain this piece, which smacks heavily of ideological motivation. Other readers have picked on this, in noting the various fallacies Craycraft engages in, for instance.
CWR is sometimes accused of being a far-right, Trump-loving outlet. Now it’s turning left-wing? Hmmm.
While I do not completely agree with Dr. Craycraft’s arguments, they are hardly unusual among notable Catholic scholars including David Schindler, Jr., Glenn Olsen, Patrick Deneen and others.
I always figure if you’re taking flack from both extremes you must be doing something right.
Thank you for all you do, Mr.Olson.
🙂
I worked for a lady in a restaurant in high school and she once remarked, “if they’re not talking about you, you must not be doing much.” I guess there is some truth to that, but it’s not always positive.
That’s true also, knowall.
🙂
It is simply to say there are objective signs of some kind of external influence here, as a good number of commentors have also noted these signs- a strain to advance a line of thought even though there are contradictions and other logical errors, arguable factual/historical errors, his redefinition of terms like rights to fit his narrative, denial/redefinition of self-evident truths, and even if they are not self-evident, that does not negate their truth, which Craycraft seems to necessarily link so as to dismiss them. (See commenters Lane, TVS, Chris in Maryland, Bob Wilkins, P. Beauleiu, for instance.) You well know it’s fallacious to invoke an argument by authority in such matters, appealing to other persons advancing similar thoughts. One commentor also opines that Patrick Deneen, for instance, “dislikes and opposes the American Republic.” Indeed, one might say Craycraft’s piece shows open signs of such- that essentially the entire foundation of our country is a myth; and for someone to publically question celebrating our country’s founding/250th anniversary, and because of debate about philosophical elements therein…I hardly think I would be alone in calling that going to extremes, for one. (This is not to deny some of the problems with the founding fathers’ ideas, of course.) Someone should also tell this to the U.S. Bishops, who have been using these supposed myths in the consecration prayer of the U.S. to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Clarity of expression and the judicious use of paragaphs are sometimes underestimated.
“Craycraft is a regular contributor at our sunday visitor, which has turned into a left-wing outlet in recent years”
OSV, not CWR is being accused of a leftward lurch. I do not read it, I cannot opine on the merits of the accusation.
As for Craycraft, he made this grand statement, “but the theory (not “truth”) that we have “inalienable Rights” to the pursuit of such goods—or to anything else—is a myth”, but offers no compelling counterargument (or than some vaguely indignant ipso facto that they are “myths”).
He completely skips over the meaning of the word “inalienable”. Merriam Webster defines it as: “incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred”. In short, if we understand our rights are the temporal manifestation of our dignity of having been made in the image and likeness of God and they inhere to us, they aren’t goods or appendages to be seized, sold or surrendered, there is no opposition to a Catholic understanding of rights.
That the people who first recognized them didn’t (explicitly) identify the source doesn’t invalidate the premise. Fermat’s last theorem was true before it was subject to Wiles’s general proof. We recognize things first postulated by the Greeks and Romans as valid, and they weren’t even monotheistic.
Leave it to a lawyer to attempt to commodify the intangible, even when that thing isn’t severable. My rights aren’t to be packaged into a collateralized obligation.
A failure to recognize or more precisely the obstinate refusal to acknowledge the inherency (of sex) is at the root of the transgender assault on humanity.
Indeed, the seminal disfiguring of the human soul occurred due to a surrender of human dignity, through what was the greatest fraud in the inducement.
No Catholic (conscious of the gross injustice of 60+ million dead in abortuaries) should find an inalienable right to life objectionable. The RIGHT to be born should be SELF-EVIDENT. We always proceed from axioms.
His view, that there is no inalienable right to life is the basis for every single episode of iatrogenic infanticide and every state sponsored mass murder and innumerable other indignities visited on people. I’m sure Oliver Wendell Holmes wasn’t thinking of Carrie Buck’s rights (as inalienable or at all) when he affirmed the evil of her involuntary salpingectomy at the hands of the Commonwealth of Virginia 99.5 years ago.
We can only be glad God denied that moral “imbecile” Holmes issue. One wonders how much the still inexplicably esteemed jurist was envious of Ms. Buck’s fecundity. It’s odd how he avoids the modern iconoclastic fits.
As for the author’s ideological bent, I suspect he could be classified as a “statist”, suspicious of any claim of individual or mediating institutional independence from surely benevolent state control.
After Obergefell, a supporter of the decision, Andrew Koppelman (himself a vainglorious blowhard) critiqued Anthony Kennedy’s decision as follows: “All of Kennedy’s worst traits — the ponderous self-importance, the leaps of logic, the worship of state power — were on display.” Remove the name Kennedy and insert the name Craycraft, and you have a concise critique of this essay.
Craycraft should start lifting wights. Iron teaches imbues humility and discipline. I certainly wouldn’t want him as an attorney, given how he doesn’t value rights.
A very well researched, documented, up-to-date book on the Founders and their ideas and their intellectual and religious background is Eric Metaxas, Revolution. Now at no. 1 and amazon and more…It is also hard to ut down, so thrilling it is. See
https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Birth-Greatest-Nation-History/dp/1631440888
Full of inaccuracy and deception.
John Locke invented natural rights. And he was not Catholic, but rather a Puritan.
I’m not a fan of revolutions and I think both we and Britain made mistakes in 1776. We might have been a good influence on each other had we stuck together. But we can’t go back and fix history.
There’s a new podcast episode out about our national anthem and its author Francis Scott Key on Tom Hollands YouTube channel , The Rest is History.
To say the Brits were a stubborn lot is being kind. For instance, India later would not be independent had they not stood up to the kingdom. Gandhi was a great leader, with his non violent methods. If Benjamin Franklin couldn’t negotiate with them over tea, who could?
I think Washington might have been able to. He & George III had things in common. Amd King George admired Washington.
They were too stuffy and regimented to fight the colonists, who were nimble and scrappy. You don’t fight in the wilderness the same way you fight on the plain
My ancestors fought mostly on the Loyalist side, knowall and they were pretty scrappy. They got into sone serious drama after the British evacuated them and 2 barely escaped hanging. One 5th great grandmother was a real force of nature.
North American Loyalists were familiar with the wilderness. It was where they grew up. It really was our first civil war.
Minus the French, it might have turned out differently. I think we lost an opportunity that coud have benefited both us and Britain. But we can’t go back and fix history.
Jefferson wrote his own New Testament (The Jefferson Bible), taking out every miracle of Jesus Christ. So much for a brilliant mind afflicted with a dark soul; having every Christian convert to Unitarianism is the logical outgrowth of such perverse thinking.
You tap into matters complex…
Jefereson wrote his secularist bible in 1820, but drafted the Declaration of Independence earlier in 1776. And, yet, it can be asked how influenced he was in both documents by earlier reading the non-Christian Qur’an while he was still a law student, in 1765.
Now the plot thickens! The more rationalistic term “self-evident” (truths) was not Jefferson’s, but rather an edit supplied by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s edit replaced Jefferson’s original “sacred and undeniable” (Paul Johnson, “A History of the American People” [New York: Harper Perennial, 1999], 155).
After the past 250 years, what if the meaning of Jefferson’s original wording had been retained?
Peter, when Jefferson was one of the American Commissioners sent by the young United States to negotiate a peace witht the Muslim corsairs that were attacking American ships and enslaving American sailors, he learned much about the Qur’an that he did not know before.
EVENTUALLY, AS PRESIDENT JEFFERSON WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT TO SEND US MILITARY FORCES (1801) TO FIGHT THE FOLLOWERS OF THE RELIGION OF PEACE. “From the Halls of Moctezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” This was first Barbary War. See this:
“In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations, Jefferson and John Adams—then ambassadors to France and England respectively—met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, they laid out the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity in a letter to Congress:
We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. (Letter of American Commissioners to John Jay, 28 March 1786).
One need not conjecture what the American ambassadors—who years earlier had asserted that all men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”—thought of their Muslim counterpart’s answer. Suffice to say, because the ransom demanded was over fifteen times greater than what Congress had approved, little came of the meeting.”
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/06/10/2018/barbary-islamic-terrorism-americas-first-military-victory
Interesting!
I was listening to the local Christian radio station while driving & one of the speakers mentioned a theory that perhaps Jefferson cut out those passages from scripture because he valued them so much. Maybe he wanted to create a separate booklet of them?
That seems a stretch to me but who knows? I do know they sold those edited “Jefferson Bibles” at Monticello’s gift shop.
Speaking of “mythologies” I do feel sorry for Jefferson. He lost his wife & now Monticello has a whole side industry based upon an unprovable notion Jefferson fathered multiple children with a slave. I visited earlier this year and had a word with one of the guides.
That’s not how it works since Jefferson left no son with male descendants to compare DNA to. Just sharing a Y DNA haplogroup does not confirm paternity. It only shows that Jefferson along with his brother Randolph & every other paternal male relative on his father’s side( or any Virginian male with that Y haplogroup) shared the same Y DNA as one of his slave’s descendants. Per someone I spoke with at UVA, that particular Y DNA haplogroup was less uncommon in Virginia than it is today.
Jefferson was a lonely widower who’d promised his late wife he’d never remarry & he certainly could have had a relationship with her alleged half-sister. But
as of today, there’s no scientific way to prove that.
Interesting that the Jefferson descendants reluctantly accepted the descendants of the slave woman as family after years of denial. Since Jefferson apparently did not consider himself a Christian and thought of himself a free thinker, perhaps it was easier to rationalize a relationship with a slave. After all such arrangements were very common in the South at that time.
Yes, that kind of arrangement wasn’t uncommon at all but again there’s no scientific way currently to prove it.
Monticello is owned by a private foundation and they may want to run a counter narrative to bring in more visitors. People haven’t been making places like Monticello travel destinations as they did in the past.
Thank you mrscracker for reminding us of the lack of scientific certainty on the matter Of TJ and his paternity of a child with a slave. The matter has become another of the weapons used by many academics and others to denigrate the founders of this country (so bad, racist, unfair, abusive, exploitative, etc. a country that millions want to come here by hook or by crook…). Monticello is privately owned now by a foundation that pushes this. The TJ Heritage Society counters this likely myth with factual research:
Purposes of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (TJHS) is a not for profit entity created in 2000 by a group of concerned businessmen, historians, genealogists, and scientists to undertake an independent and objective review of all the facts and circumstances surrounding the paternity of Sally Hemings’ children. The TJHS was formed by a cross section of citizens as a response to efforts by many historical revisionists to inaccurately portray Thomas Jefferson as a liar, fraud, hypocrite, and child molesting slave rapist. Several projects have been initiated to produce a more balanced examination of this issue. As enumerated in its Charter, the purposes of the TJHS are:
To further the honor and integrity of Thomas Jefferson, and to promote his vision and ideas and their application in our times and in the future.
To foster truth in all matters that touch upon the legacy of Thomas Jefferson.
To promote the principles of freedom, patriotism and truth which are the hallmarks of Thomas Jefferson’s life.
To perform research in matters pertaining to the private and public life of Thomas Jefferson.
To stand always in opposition to those who would seek to undermine the integrity of Thomas Jefferson.
https://www.tjheritage.org/
You are welcome, Oscar. I don’t like to see a narrative being promoted that can’t be confirmed. And to do that at Mr. Jefferson’s detriment in his own home is unseemly & disrespectful.
The narrative *could* be true but can’t be proven & an historical foundation shouldn’t be circulating things that aren’t based on facts or science.
In other circumstances had Sally Hemmings had not been a slave she could have married someone like Jefferson in another state. Or while in Europe.
The narrative isn’t being promoted at all.
From the Monticello website;
https://www.monticello.org/slavery/jefferson-and-sally-hemings/a-brief-account
A man can be theologically ignorant or obstinate (in this case obstinacy is more likely, Jefferson living eighteen centuries after Christ was in no position to dispute contemporaneous accounts, so the only explanation for that excision was his personal incredulity) and politically educated or astute.
Our problem today is theologically educated (or credentialed, as some Bishops seem to want to interpret the Deposit of Faith through rather peculiar lenses) who are politically and economically ignorant and obstinate.
“A man’s got to know his limitations”
“A good man knows his limitations”
-Harry Callahan.
Craycraft’s argument depends on collapsing Hobbes, Locke, Jefferson, the Declaration, and modern individualism into a single intellectual project. But he never actually demonstrates that they are the same thing.
The biggest problem is his treatment of “self-evident truths.” He dismisses them as myth, yet spends the rest of the article making strong claims about human nature, dignity, society, and morality. If there are no self-evident truths, then his own claims are no less contested than Jefferson’s.
His reading of Hobbes is also strained. Hobbes defends an all-powerful sovereign as the solution to the war of all against all. The American Founding instead constructed a system of divided powers, checks, and constitutional limits. Calling that Hobbesian simply does not track the political reality.
Most striking is his claim that inalienable rights are incompatible with Christianity. If that is true, then much of the Church’s modern language on human rights and human dignity rests on contradiction. Craycraft avoids this tension by redefining “rights” so that the Declaration’s usage is excluded by definition.
The result is a false choice between Craycraft’s anthropology and Hobbesian individualism. But many Christians—including the Founders themselves—understood natural rights as grounded in the dignity bestowed by the Creator.
In trying to expose the myth of 1776, Craycraft ends up closer to Hobbes than Jefferson. Once self-evident truths are dismissed and natural rights denied, what actually limits state power except the will of those who hold
Craycraft’s argument depends on collapsing Hobbes, Locke, Jefferson, the Declaration, and modern individualism into a single intellectual project. But he never actually demonstrates that they are the same thing.
I agree that the history is more complex but fundamentally Craycraft’s view is correct, the founders drew principally on 17th and early 18th century English political thought. It is helpfully described as “Whig” or “Commonwealth” political thought by some. There are other figures aside from just Hobbes and Locke, like Francis Bacon, Algernon Sidney, John Milton, the German Samuel Pufendorf and others like Trenchard and Gordon. Yet, these figures still share a lot of the assumptions of Hobbes and even more so Locke’s key ideas. They tend to ground natural law in the right of self-preservation. These figures did draw on Aristotelian and Scholastic categories but often ascribed new if somewhat subtle new glosses on the older tradition. They are all also openly hostile to the Catholic Church to the Papacy and to Scholasticism. To the extent Scholasticism survives in these figures it is a debased one filtered through the lenses of Nominalism and Radical Protestantism.
We read of Jefferson “collapsing Hobbes, Locke, Jefferson, the Declaration, and modern individualism into a single intellectual project.” Well, shucks, we might as well contaminate the brew with a richer ingredient:
Sylvester J. McNamara proposes that the philosophy and wording of Declaration of Independence derives as much from the writings of the Jesuit Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621) as from the more credited and late seventeenth-century British John Locke (American Democracy and Catholic Doctrine [Brooklyn: International Catholic Truth Society, n.d., c. 1920], a parallel-column comparison on pp. 106-122).
McNamara points to the exact wording of Jefferson’s five principles in the preamble of the Declaration: sovereignty, equality, divine and Natural Law, the right to select magistrates, and the right to change the form of government. McNamara draws from Filmer’s “Patriarcha” (including a compendium of Bellarmine’s philosophy), Jefferson’s personal copy of which remains in the Library of Congress.
(Matthew Bunson is another who offers the same analysis in the National Catholic Register, June 26, 2016.)
Beautifully written Lane. Thank you for that.
Thank you Kenneth, a much needed essay. A wake up call for the dangers of the Christian Nationalists. It’s a great paradox that the ultra patriotic right is celebrating perhaps one of the Worlds greatest victories of the left- the Declaration of Independence. The ultimate victory lgained was freedom from God and the church. It was very much a document of the Masons. It was putting man in the driver’s seat and God running shot gun.The importance of the English Magna Carta pales in the shadow of The Declaration of Independence!
Don’t get me wrong. I love this country and the many good years that I have spent here; but I also am very thankful for the years spent in Great Britain which were the best years of my long life. While I live here in the United States and have a US passport, I am only a pilgrim who is merely passing through on my way to my real home-The Kingdom of God.
It seems ironic conservatives today support what was a revolution & civil war of secession from a Christian monarchy. Conservatives of that era remained loyal to the Crown. Revolutionaries were seen by them as we might see the antifa rioters. Or the January 6th crowd in costumes. That’s what the “Boston massacre” & Tea Party “Indians” bring to mind. Statues were torn down, too.
George Washington is one of my heroes & I believe he was a sincerely decent & tolerant Christian man but to be fair he broke his sworn oath as a British officer. Both he & Robert E. Lee faced difficult situations & made similar decisions. We’ve had 2 civil wars & hopefully will avoid a third but it’s been a struggle to hold together from the very beginning.
“The ultimate victory gained was freedom from God and the church.”
The separation of England from the Church happened with the Act of Supremacy in 1534.The counterfeit replacement was installed with mass murder and grand theft, coercion and harassment.
England separated from the Church in 1534 when the Act of Supremacy was passed. It then operated, as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Crown, a counterfeit “church” that it is still operates today, but with new features (female clergy and episcopacy, embrace of homosexuality and contraception) he couldn’t imagine.
You can’t logically say a separation from England was a separation from the Church.
To
A separation from a Christian monarchy.
In the words of Supreme Court Justice Kagan, then opining on the Senate confirmation of Presidential appointees: Henryism is “a vapid and hollow charade” of Christianity. “Smells and bells”.
I used to have a boss who would describe his Episcopalianism as “Catholic lite” (so not Catholic at all) and as I get deeper into history, the more I see it as not Christian at all AB INITIO. Anglicans have included Thomas More as Martyr, ignoring why he is a martyr. That takes some serious ignorance or tolerance of cognitive dissonance. Adherence cannot survive serious scrutiny of Tudor-his morals, motivations and methods and his dual reigns of error and terror.
It’s just a cult that was founded by a supreme temporal power willing to use force to obtain followers, as opposed to a charismatic charlatan. An objective evaluation of any group, whether civil or religious is a judgment about the group claims, not the character or dignity of individual adherents.
Henry’s vine separated from the roots was fueled on mass murder (not only of Catholics, but Lutherans) and the eradication of Monasteries, the theft of their property and the wanton destruction of their priceless historical artifacts.
No reasonable Catholic can lament the results of the founding based on the idea that it was freed from authentic Christianity.
It’s one thing to be civil, polite and tolerant of others’ claims, such as when Mormons/LDS “sincerely believe” they are Christian, it’s quite another to accept them as valid based upon a reasonable construction of the objective facts and circumstances. Just because somebody adheres to “family values” and is amiable doesn’t make them Christian.
Our separated brethren share our Christian faith, even while separated. We can hope & pray for reconciliation one day.
“Our separated brethren share our Christian faith, even while separated. We can hope & pray for reconciliation one day.”
No. They do not “share our faith”, your declaration to the contrary not withstanding.
Any claim on being Christian, even a tenuous one has to be be subject to an objective analysis of the presence of essential elements and the exclusion of foreign ones.
There was no precedent to allow a civil king to be the head of a newly created “church”, contraception at Lambeth, no historical warrant for a female clergy or episcopacy or recognition of what Anthony Esolen calls “pseudonogamy”.
Alone, each excursion from orthodoxy is damnable, combined they are abominable. It seems all of your posts rely on ” feel good” visceral emotion that disallows objective classification or distinction. Perhaps you should practice reasoning rather than emoting prior to posting about things rather than drawing from the Rodney King school of philosophy. At least he was trying to stop mayhem. You want us to tolerate it.
How do you reconcile with a group that not only insists on a woman playing dress-up as a “Bishop” but demands that we follow suit? The chasm widens with every theological novelty. We’ve had reconciliation with the creation of the Ordinariate. Now it’s up to individuals to cross the Tiber.
There will be no institutional merger. Entropy seems to apply to ecclesiology as well.
I share nothing with Sarah Mullaly or the Anglicans that gave us “priest holes”, the division and oppression of Ireland or even the blatant anti-Catholicism of the state controlled BBC’s “Monty Python” in more recent times.
I know pyrite when I see it. But once again thanks for reminding us of the wisdom of 1 Timothy 2:12.
Our separated brethren share our Christian faith but they may not hold the entire teachings of Christ in the same way the Church founded by Christ does. Some retain more teachings, some less.
Our former pastor explained it’s like a pie. The Catholic Church has the entire pie, no slices missing. Christian denominations can vary in the number of slices they retain.
Some of our separated brothers and sisters do more with their portion of the pie than we may. In Christian charity, fellowship, and evangelization especially.
This is, with respect, a very strange argument.
The author quotes Jefferson as saying that Locke’s Second Treatise is perfect as far as it goes, but then attributes to Jefferson adherence to Hobbes’ definition of the state of nature, not Locke’s. That’s intellectual cheating.
Locke rather defines the state of nature as a “state of equality,” a “state of perfect freedom to order their actions,and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.”
Locke’s definition is in reasonable accord with the Catholic understanding of the dignity of man, who is given life by God that he may freely seek happiness with God. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As to the date of independence, the author seems to be confusing the assertion of true independence, based on Locke’s formula, with the securing of that independence from the former tyrant.
He might do well to go back and study up a bit. And then enjoy the celebration.
This essay seems to me that it communicates an alien ideology, alien to theCatholic ground of truth, and alien to American ideas in the Declaration of Independence.
I will be coming back to it, to try to discover what ideologies are animating it.
This comes off as a hatred of America. Even some of the comments are a clear Liberal hatred for our country. One of them comments on Christian Nationalism, as compared to what anti-Christan Nationalism?
Prior to our founding, it could be open season on any Catholic anywhere. The world is chocked full of Catholic martyrs. Here in America our faith has flourished and we’ve been able to support the growth of our faith in other countries.
As far as self evident, not much in this world is self evident, till some points it out. It took Einstein to point out the theory of relativity and yet after having done so, it was proclaimed as self evident.
We are not a perfect country, but let’s pause for a second and point out a more perfect one. To do so would only prove personal conjecture. As Catholics we seek to become more holy. As Americans we seek a more perfect union.
For those who might agree with the author’s main argument, please consider the following:
https://thefederalist.com/2025/11/21/how-the-declaration-of-independence-gave-america-life-liberty-and-happiness/
A founding paradox of slavery and liberty. Many of our founders had BLACK SLAVES. Today, it is still very dangerous to be driving while BLACK!
The mythology that drives much of the Catholic Church cannot be explained away.
HISTORY OF TOOLS: Thomas Jefferson, famously declared that “all men are created equal” and endowed with unalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet, the same men who championed these lofty principles were, in many cases, slaveholders themselves, perpetuating the cruel and dehumanizing institution of slavery.
https://www.historytools.org/resources/list-of-founding-fathers-who-owned-slaves-unmasking-the-irony
Unfortunately, history doesn’t turn on a dime. But in the Federalist Papers (n. 54) we read from James Madison that counting southern slaves as only 3/5ths of a person was meant as a rebuke to the slave culture:
“Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted which regards them [slaves] as inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants; which regard the ‘slave’ as divested of two thirds of the ‘man.'”
Virtually every Norh American colonial community had ties with slavery either directly or indirectly. *Not* owning slaves,not owning shares in slave ships, not producing provisions and clothing for slaves, etc was the exception for our ancestors, not the rule. Everyone,excepting the slaves , benefited financially in some way.
Not only were slaves brought here against their will but so were thousands of British convicts.
Much like your comments above, It’s what you want to believe and you are immune fact or objective analysis that challenges your narrative.
In the state with the highest percentage of slave ownership, Mississippi 49% of households owned slaves according to research published at Weber University. Other states were lower with Delaware being 3%. Not even the majority owned slaves.
As for owning shares in slave ships being prevalent, that defies logic. Ownership in stocks of any kind was the exception.
By the time railroad capital requirements forced the low slow development of capital markets, the slave trade was over. Even after the growth of Wall Street, stock ownership was the exception, due to technological limits and transaction costs. People who owned ships of any kind were specialists who accepted the risks of wooden sailing ships on oceanic voyages.
As for “our ancestors”, yours may have been slave owners, but mine tended their crops, orchards and flocks near the Tatra mountains in Europe. The same people that owned slaves would have treated my ancestors with contempt for their ethnicity and religion.
You might need to expiate family sins in this regard by making false claims of prevalence, but I don’t and neither does a great many others-such as the Irish who escaped the potato famine or Protestant subjugation. My ancestors played no role in American slavery. None. And since some freed slaves owned slaves (with some ownership being a legal device to keep families together), the picture gets even murkier.
Just once, I wish you’d research and reason rather than just emoting and posting.
Mr Pitchfork, I apologize if my comments were confusing. I was talking about colonial ancestors in North America during the era this article and Mr Morgan’s comments were concerned about.
Of course after the Revolution slave owning and slave related industries continued on in the US even after slavery had been abolished in Britain’s remaining colonies.
Interesting!
This reply was meant for another pending reply, but I do find your comments interesting.
I do not see how your paragraph 2 relates in any way with your paragraphs 1 and 3.
Perhaps you felt the connection you intend is to disparage our country and while your at it disparage Christianity and the apostolic faith?
Jesus is God-Incarnate, and the United States of America, with all of its flaws and injustices of these 250 years, remains what Abraham Lincoln said it was, in his address to Congress: “the last best hope of earth.”
May God bless America, and as President Lincoln warned us: “Pray not that God is on our side, but that we remain on God’s side.”
Today, it is still very dangerous to be driving while BLACK!
Illiterate foreigners in eighteen wheelers affect everybody.
Mr. Pitch. We are a vut off topic, but this message is important. You are right, illiterate and untrained immigrants are a danger to the safety of our roads. Statics…
Lack of Familiarity: Foreign drivers may not be accustomed to local road rules and driving conditions.
Language Barriers: Communication difficulties can lead to misunderstandings of road signs and instructions.
Inexperience with Large Vehicles: Some foreign drivers may have limited experience operating big rigs, increasing the risk of accidents.
Cultural Differences: Variations in driving culture can affect decision-making and risk assessment on the road.
Regulatory Differences: Different licensing and training standards in other countries may not adequately prepare drivers for U.S. roads.
Fatigue and Stress: Long-distance travel can lead to fatigue, especially for drivers unfamiliar with the routes.
What is the government doing to mitigate the issue? Very little when the Federal Courts are in charge…
The court said the federal government didn’t follow proper procedure in drafting the rule and failed to “articulate a satisfactory explanation for how the rule would promote safety.” The court said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s own data shows that immigrants who hold these licenses account for roughly 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses but only about 0.2% of all fatal crashes, the court said. That stupid judge must be fired. One death is too much. Will his mind-boggling decision cause another death?
When my son was almost taken out by a drunk driver it was her *5th* DUI. We allow US citizens here to get back behind the wheel after multiple DUI arrests & convictions. I wish we’d take this more seriously & talk to the insurance companies & lawmakers that enable that.
The flip side here is if you’re caught & try to escape arrest by jumping off the highway into the water, there are gators waiting to assist law enforcement. A poor DUI suspect found that out the hard way recently.Thankfully he survived.
Be sure and grill your local judges on this when they are up for reelection. One of a nearby Fed judge just got arrested for being what they call “super drunk” so maybe that’s not a good idea either. Maybe prohbition
“Super drunk”?
🙂
We’d have to change the entire culture here first. We have drive thru bars.
.17 blood alcohol content or higher
Being obtuse will not save you from ridicule for the absurd statement that “it’s DANGEROUS to be driving while black.”
Its dangerous no matter what your color! Little caution out there.
Truck drivers: perhaps our prejudices
a result of Tik Tok videos!
I’m guessing quite a lot of things these days are a result of TikTok & other social media videos. But that’s been an issue since the American Revolution whether it’s pamphlets, tabloids, radio, etc. Different mediums, same uses.
Plus ca change…
I think very few CWR commenters use resort to the favorite outlet of teenage girls to evaluate public policy. This is a serious highway safety issue that has been known about for quite some time.
The Social Science Research has the following paper:
“The Impacts of Granting Undocumented Immigrants Driver’s Licenses on Fatal Crashes and Driving Behaviors”
52 Pages Posted: 2 Mar 2024
Ruinan Zhao
University of California, Riverside (UCR)
Date Written: February 29, 2024
From the abstract:
“My findings show that granting undocumented immigrants driver’s licenses increases overall fatal crashes by nearly 5%, equivalent to 0.46 more fatal crashes in a county per year. The effect is stronger in states with a higher population of undocumented immigrants. By investigating the mechanism through which the policy impact is likely to occur, I show that nearly 60% of the increase is attributed to risk driving, implying that undocumented immigrants may be more likely to engage in risky driving behavior once they obtain driver’s licenses. Several robustness checks and placebo tests support my main findings.”
Years ago, I visited England and on my way to Madame Tussaud’s I stopped at Hyde Park where the soap-box speakers take their stand. There were two speakers there that day. One speaker insisted that the United States was still part of England, and the other speaker denounced the situation of England which he said had become the 51st state of the USA.
I read some years ago that the USA is the only country in the world that has the same form of government that it had when it was established and that it is the only country that has kept the same government for the past 250 years. This is because while our Constitution has been amended, it has never been replaced. There is something uniquely worthwhile about our Constitution. May all government employees maintain their oath to “support and defend the Constitution.”
It’s not the same now. Our founders pledged their lives and fortunes to the formation. JFK figured out this had changed and included his famous line in his inauguration? Speech. What can you do for your country
We’re headed towards a Rome style ending.
I join with Lane’s assessment above, regarding the 9th paragraph, in which the essayist, Mr. Craycraft, presents what I conclude to be (at best) a gross misunderstanding of the various motivations of the numerous individuals framing, debating and drafting and signing the Declaration of Independence.
I find this to be a gross misunderstanding (and/or mischaracterization) because Mr. Craycraft asserts that the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States of America flows from only one source – the brutal assumptions of Hobbes. And this gigantic assertion is made as a denunciation. Yet, as readers of Hobbes’ Leviathan will. appreciate, an identification of the US Founding with Hobbes’ ideology doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, because Hobbes asserted his belief that the state was the new godhead, and was to be revered as such, while the US founders concluded the very opposite thing: that government was but a necessary evil, and it must be limited and constrained, and every political faction must be constrained, in order to establish a democratic Republic, designed to defend the God-given rights of each man. I conclude that the US Founders viewed the British Parliament and King as the new Leviathan, and abhorred it because they rejected Hobbes’ estimation of Man, and his worship of the State, to the point of not merely Declaring against it, but waging war against it.
In short, I find that Mr. Craycraft seems to not only misunderstand, but it seems he dislikes and opposes the American Republic, much like Patrick Deneen.
For a wholesome and wide-ranging analysis of the US Founding, I heartily recommend that readers purchase a copy of the beautiful book by Robert Reilly, America on Trial – A Defense of the Founding (Ignatius Press, 2020), which was reviewed here in the pages of CWR.
And I will conclude by observing that it appears that Mr. Craycraft makes the same mistake that Deneen makes about the US Founders: Mr. Craycraft, like Hobbes, mistakenly believes that the founders were Hobbesians, when in truth they were Augustinians (Reilly, p. 300).
So perhaps…the mythology lies with Mssrs. Deneen and Craycraft.
Craycraft’s essays consistently exhibit the same elements. assumptions, suppositions and superstitions.
Many aren’t in a celebratory mood this Fourth of July. Different reasons for each I’m sure but performative patriotism has always seemed at odds with Christian faith and too close to idolatry.
Freedom
Excellent analysis and one of the most deeply Catholic discussions of the founding I’ve ever read – certainly much more intelligent than the nonsense recently spouted by a certain Protestant-sympathising bishop from Minnesota. Perhaps I’d have to buy Dr Craycraft’s book, but it does seem odd not to have mentioned the toxic influence that Freemasonry had on Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, et al. -something I would contend poisoned the American project from the moment of its inception. It staggers the intellect to hear modern Catholic clerics wax poetic about literal Masonic terrorists.
Thomas Jeffereson wasn’t a Freemason. Of the 56 signers of the Declaration, only 8 or 9 men were Masons. Franklin and John Hancock were the only famous ones. Of the 39 signers of the US Constitution, only 13 are securely identified as Freemasons. Washington and Franklin were the most prominent. James Madison, the principal contributor to the document, wasn’t a Mason. The role of Freemasonry in the Revolution and Early Republic has been exaggerated.
Given the levels of taxation that King George III forced on us, as compared to what we pay today, perhaps King George was not such a bad guy?
(I tried posting this before but it timed out, so it might appear twice.)
I think it was less the taxation than the lack of freedom in commerce. For example, the colonists had to send wool to England and then buy woolen cloth from England. That is why “homespun” cloth was so popular. It was similar with metal. Also, the Crown could take your wood for their ships.
The Crown was a clear tyrant.
Just watch some Daniel Boone reruns….
Colonists paid less taxes than British did back home. It seems fair to pay one’s share of taxes when the French & Indian war was fought in part for the colonists’ protection.
The issue was more about representation & that’s something a compromise should have been found for.
King George was a liberal Christian monarch & good family man. And he was a fan of George Washington. It’s a shame they couldn’t have worked things out.
I believe the author of the article made some stunningly erroneous assertions, but, there is no doubt the declaration more mirrored revolutionary thought of the time and that age’s own new-age thought than it contained basics of Christianity.
I will admit the freedoms espoused were unparalled, and equally short lived as contradictory, with abuses and paradox self-evident from the very start, and that such guarantees and real world practices must inevitably lead to its unraveling as we see today.
However, although it brought great harm in many ways, it also brought great advancement, wealth and power unknown in any prior age.
I was blessed to have a childhood in one of the interludes of relative peace and prosperity, while of extremely humble means but better than many in the country and uncounted numbers worldwide, and am thankful for that gift.
But, I have no ultimate allegiance to any particular political system in comparison to my allegiance to my religion, nor do I have any ultimate allegiance to the human side of any religious institutional bureaucracy when its own organization acts counter to my religion, and I say that as a combat veteran and Catholic.
Pope Leo XIII: Encyclical “Longinqua Oceani” 1895: The pontiff, a distinguished Thomist, esteemed the Declaration and the foundational principles of the United States:
Nor, perchance did the fact which We now recall take place without some design of divine Providence. Precisely at the epoch when the American colonies, having, with Catholic aid, achieved liberty and independence, coalesced into a constitutional Republic the ecclesiastical hierarchy was happily established amongst you; and at the very time when the popular suffrage placed the great Washington at the helm of the Republic, the first bishop was set by apostolic authority over the American Church. The well-known friendship and familiar intercourse which subsisted between these two men seems to be an evidence that the United States ought to be conjoined in concord and amity with the Catholic Church. And not without cause; for without morality the State cannot endure-a truth which that illustrious citizen of yours, whom We have just mentioned, with a keenness of insight worthy of his genius and statesmanship perceived and proclaimed. But the best and strongest support of morality is religion.”
We have had 250 years to debate truth vs. Myth.
We have had 250 years to say whatever we please. Whenever we please. That is freedom. Tear it down if you will.
I prefer to celebrate. Something I would not be free do do in far too many places across the globe. Let’s spend time celebrating instead of trying to prove who is ‘right’. Enjoy the pleasure if open debate, just like our founding fathers.
Hmmm, yeah, too much theological and academic gymnastics here for me. Leave it to the Catholic Academy to spread unnecessary gloom. Our July 4th Independence Day celebration is not that complicated. So, I will partake as I always have, with a smile on my face, gratitude in my heart and a cold beer in my hand. TBTG.
“And probably no truth is self-evident”
Sancta Mater Ecclesia tenet et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali humanae rationis lumine e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse.
Craycraft’s view of America’s founding (as a myth based on falsehood) is pessimistic and depressing. What a weird gift Craycraft brings to our 250th birthday bash. SMASH!
Matthew Schmitz’s brief essay “Our Strange Catholic Moment” (First Things, May 13, 2026) is a more enlightened, optimistic notion.
Schmitz quotes Tocqueville: by “reducing all the human race to the same standard,” the Catholic faith “confounds all the distinctions of society.” Tocqueville thus predicted that Americans would “tend more and more to a single division into two parts—some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to the bosom of the Church of Rome.”
Schmitz continues: “…if Catholic terms are increasingly central to public debates, then that may be a sign that God still has plans for the United States.”
Schmitz goes on, however, to end with this cautionary note: “Those tempted to a worldly triumphalism, however, should recall that while certain things are looking up, the trend lines continue to point down.” [The number of persons practicing the RC faith is down, while prudential Catholic viewpoints are increasingly more public and prominent within the US.]
Craycraft, based upon my subjective impression of this and other essays is a garden variety gadfly with statist inclinations. I’m a garden variety gadfly with minarchist inclinations.
He seems to have a visceral distrust of any limitation of state prerogative or the retention of any autonomy by the individual or any non-governmental mediating institution.
Properly understood rights are the temporal manifestation of a respect of the individual person as a sui generis creation of God, formed in his image and likeness. They inhere to the person because of that nature, they are not appendages, possessions or “goods” to be pursued. That’s why the adjective inalienable is used. Your humanity is part of you, not severable. Rights can be denied, but not seized, sold or surrendered. We don’t possess them, they inhere to us.
He takes issue with the adjective “self evident” calling it a myth, but no where does he make any compelling argument to that effect. His entire premise is an ipso facto based on an argument from personal incredulity and visceral indignity. We always proceed from axioms. “that they are endowed by their Creator” as used in the DOI may not have an Episcopal imprimatur or been penned by a Catholic agreeable to the author, but is not offensive to Catholics.
When Eve succumbed to the greatest fraud in the inducement, she denied the inalienability of her nature as a child of God and attempted a sale (alienation) of it to acquire another unattainable nature-divinity. Transgenderism is the rejection of one’s inalienable sex.
I fail to understand how any Catholic could take issue with, for example, the right to life. There’s sixty million plus abortions, multiple state sponsored mass murders and numerous other crimes due to a failure to respect a right to live. It should be self evident that it is foundational and denial is the “culture of death”.
This statement:
“The best argument that there are no such self-evident truths as individual possessive rights is that no one “discovered” them until about the 17th century.”
Is ridiculous. There are plenty of things that went “undiscovered” or unrecognized but existed prior to their “discovery”. Uranium was discovered in 1789, and a greater appreciation of its potentials and perils came decades later. That rights are an intangible consequence of something else made their recognition more difficult than finding the physical matter that is the “secret sauce” of pitchblende.
What’s really weird is a lawyer that rejects rights.
I know, right?! Good post. See mine of this morning, at the bottom. Perhaps two versions since the old server block appeared to block my first one, so I edited and reposted.
My maternal great grandfather hailed from the Carpathian range. He settled in Hazleton, working in the coal mines, moving later in life to mid Pa. with my parents ending in Pittsburgh. My mom has many stories to tell of discrimination by the Brits and Protestants in her little town.
You and I could be distant cousins.
Natural Law is inherent. Meaning that we know it as self evident. Prescient knowledge placed by God realized in the act of knowing. Natural law principles are the rule for reasoning. Reason the measure of the rule.
Garth above has it right on natural law, as does Beaulieu on Saint Robert Bellarmine as a source, which largely dispels the basis for Craycraft’s argument. Since the founding fathers who drew the constitution were basically following right reasoning.
Natural Law is inherent. Meaning that we know it as self evident. Prescient knowledge placed by God realized in the act of knowing. Natural law principles are the rule for reasoning. Reason the measure of the rule.
Garth above has it right on natural law, as does Beaulieu on Saint Robert Bellarmine as a source, which largely dispels the basis for Craycraft’s argument. Since the founding fathers who drew the constitution were basically following right reasoning.
Benjamin Franklin who is cited as having coined ‘self evident’ truth very likely gained that notion from Aristotle. Benjamin Franklin extensively studied the philosophies of the ancient Greeks, including Aristotle, particularly in the areas of virtue ethics and civic happiness.
“Its not at all clear we can celebrate it”???? REALLY?? Western culture, and specifically American culture, grew out of the American search for religious freedom , and in that era that was Christianity based. No one would have bet the Americans coming out on top in a contest against the heavily armed and militarily successful British Army. Farmers versus soldiers?? Improbable in the extreme, unless you believe in miracles and the intervention of God. But the truth is, after a seven year slog, this annoying group of “rabble” as the British termed us, won their battle, and their beliefs were so compelling to the rest of humanity that they spread across the world. It was a philosophy which said that the common man had as much value as any aristocrat, because their value was given them by God. End of story. To this end they were willing to sacrifice their lives, if not for their own betterment, then for their children’s. Remember that America as a “country” did not yet exist, certainly not at the beginning of the War, becoming a reality only after much blood, death and sacrifice had melded us into one.
I see nothing at all to prevent a celebration of a belief which added to a planet-wide understanding of human dignity and fairness. Are we perfect? No. Did the practical application of our beliefs come in fits and starts? Yes. So what? I grow tired of those who attack the core of who we are , what we stand for and what we accomplished against all odds because we failed to be perfect. Its much like condemning EVERYTHING the founders did because they were slave owners. Perfection is an idiotic standard and not attainable for most humans. And demanding it is to be willfully blind to the immense positive heritage of the American Revolution. The American Revolution was no myth. It was as real as the men and women who bled, sacrificed and died for it. It brought about an astonishing change in the world that led to the elevation and freeing of those who were at the bottom of many societies.
We are the nation who saved others from dictatorships, established the economic power of capitalism which elevated billions, cured diseases and landed men on the moon. For the vast majority of our history this was done with an awareness we had God watching over us.
The supposed positivity which is claimed to arise from Communism and socialism, THAT is a HUGE myth.
What they say about Americans is that they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees. That they will fight to the death for that. That the improbable we can accomplish right away and the impossible, just takes us a little bit longer. There has never been a nation with as much determination and positivity as the United States, and our rising tide lifts all boats.
Doubtless some of you saw the extreme effort made to rescue the downed American pilot recently from the clutches of Iran, a pilot whose first words were not “help me” but “God is good”. Real Americans know EXACTLY who we are. America. Check the box that says “celebrate” for me. Because America is no myth.
Craycraft does not cogently, logically or completely present his reasoning and evidence. He also wrote a book on the myth of religious liberty in the US Constitution, and he has many critics.
I’m beginning to think I understand what Craycraft TRIES to say. I may even agree! But he seems even to offer some factually questionable statements; e.g., did Craycraft really mean Hobbes rather than Hume? Hume was supposedly friends with Franklin, and Franklin apparently recommended Jefferson change “sacred & undeniable” to “self-evident”.
We modern educated American Catholics won’t easily see that we are so dense as to subscribe to ‘myth’ in our great country’s founding documents. Craycraft’s timing, a short number of days prior to our big birthday party, seems like salt rubbed in the wound, as if we are dolts and he the Pied Piper.
What difference does it make anyway? Is Craycraft’s faith so weak that he does not believe God can straighten our scribbled and compromising lines?
Craycraft also wrote a book on the myth of our country’s religious liberty as enshrined in the US Constitution. He has many critics for both his views and cogency of writing. His reasoning and evidence do not logically adhere. Nor are his truths self-evident.
I’m beginning to think I understand what Craycraft TRIES to say. I may even agree! But I also question whether some of his statements may not be factual; e.g., did he really mean Hume rather than Hobbes? Hume was supposedly friends with Franklin, and Franklin apparently recommended to Jefferson that he change his original “sacred & undeniable” to “self-evident”.
We modern educated American Catholics won’t easily see that we are so dense as to miss the ‘myths’ in our great country’s founding documents. Also add Craycraft’s timing, a short number of days before our big birthday party, and it seems he rubs some salt of sour grapes into wounds he’s inflicted upon us. As if we were children and he the Pied Piper leading us to a place of uncertain grace.
What difference does it make?? Is Craycraft’s faith so weak that he does not believe God can straighten our scribbled and compromised lines?
Gee, after this much commentary, I couldn’t consume all, one would assume there is some degree of satisfaction regarding our 250th anniversary. With all due deference, I see few common threads that stay on topic.
The American Constitutional experiment has grown to represent, minus our current political nightmare, that “Shining city upon a hill”.
Having not absorbed every comment, I see no mention of the enormous sacrifice that our fallen heroes have made to allow us this shining city. We might reflect in prayer and personal sacrifice to make our contribution. Remember that “our flag is still standing there”.
My reflected view as a non-American.
Even since that time there are competing “interests” in US politics. The politics occurring at the outset or from earliest times bears a tendency to be considered “foundational” but sometimes in a way that is coterminous to a particular faction, namely the lodge and its “accepted” secreted circles. That latter aspect is not natural etc., and the idea that continuity and authority roots to them is false.
One very simple reason it is false, they make the same claim in every other nation where they are to be found. It is NOT uniquely or characteristically “American”, actually.
A side that “competes” with varied measures of ferocity.
“Competing interests” needs to be studied carefully since the self-interest style of “competing” requires to be redressed; and colonial self-interest is one of the reasons for the revolt in the colonies and new ideals, in the first place.
What Craycraft could have done is distinguish between myth and ideal from a reasoned and dispassionate standpoint and from juristic footings; allowing the reader to catch sight and catch hold of the true nature of Natural Law on the one hand and, on the other, of the fact that the Declaration was not the final statement or final settlement.
I have a little book I am working on that I will publish, God willing, that contains a concise reflection in those terms. I hope it helps others in their own studies and reckonings. I have found as a general rule it matters what sources you find.
—————————————————————–
WIKIPEDIA on the Declaration
‘ Historians have often sought to identify the sources that most influenced the words and political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. By Jefferson’s own admission, the Declaration contained no original ideas, but was instead a statement of sentiments widely shared by supporters of the American Revolution. As he explained in 1825:
Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence
—————————————————————–
Prof. THOMAS B. MCAFFEE, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
‘ If this were not enough, the founding generation also displayed a willingness to sacrifice the Lockean ideal of human equality to establish the union they saw as vital to the development of the nation. They compromised on the issue of slavery. This could be seen as an exception to a general rule by which the founding generation attempted to remain true to its commitment to a general theory of natural rights. But we would be wise to perceive this rejection of the very idea of equal rights, the idea that underlay the Equal Protection Clause adopted during the following century, as having effects that went beyond the issue of human slavery and that implicated the entirety of thought about what was fundamental in government. It is also possible to see the issue of human equality as haunting our constitutional order, in significant part because the law and Constitution stood behind human slavery; Jefferson may have done us a great favor, even if the ideals he stated were significantly ignored, in giving voice to a model of government and man’s role in the scheme of things that couldn’t be reconciled with slavery over the long haul. But even if we say a silent thank you to Jefferson for drafting the language that became the Declaration of Independence, we would do him a disservice in thinking that he stated the ideals that animated our constitutional system through most of the Nineteenth Century or that what he said in the Declaration constituted binding fundamental law. ‘
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1197&context=nlj
Please. Stop the academic denigration of our founding. Have A broader historical perspective. Look at the world at the time of our founding:
At the time of the founding, slavery was universally practiced outside the West. As observed by French Africanist professor Bernard Lugan in his Esclavage, l’histoire à l’endroit (2020), slavery has always been practiced, but only white Europeans were the first to abolish slavery permanently; and not because of some enlightened monarch, but because of the West’s philosophical and religious uniqueness, which led to popular changes of thought on the matter and then to legislation on the matter, though it continued to be practiced by black Africans, Islam, China and most of the rest of the world. Widen your perspective and see how late it was abolished in many countries in the world. It continues to be practiced surreptitiously in many. Look it up. In this world:
THE UNITED STATES WAS AMONG THE PIONEERING NATIONS IN ITS REJECTION OF SLAVERY: IN THE YOUNG UNITED STATES, BY 1860, 20 OF THE 35 STATES HAD OUTLAWED SLAVERY. THIS WAS REMARKABLE IN A WORLD THAT STILL WIDELY PRACTICED SLAVERY. WHAT A GREAT COUNTRY DID THE FOUNDERS FOUND! NO WONDER MILLIONS CONTINUE TO WANT TO GET HERE BY HOOK OR BY CROOK!
YOU DON’T SEE THESE MILLIONS TRYING TO GET TO, SAY, CHINA, OR INDIA, OR SAUDI ARABIA, OR TURKEY, OR…
Slavery had already been abolished by France in the late eighteenth century. England abolished it in 1833. ITS ROYAL NAVY WEST AFRICA SQUADRON FREED THOUSANDS OF BLACK SLAVES FROM ITS SLAVE TRAFFICKERS AT THE COST OF BRITISH SAILORS LIVES. WITH EUROPE’S COLONIZATION OF AFRICA, THE COLONIZERS OFFICIALLY ABOLISHED SLAVERY, AS THEY DID OTHER PRACTICES LIKE FEMALE CIRCUMCISION, CHILD MARRIAGE ETC. See professor Lugan’s book above as well as Professor Bruce Gilley “The Case for Colonialism” at
https://web.pdx.edu/~gilleyb/2_The%20case%20for%20colonialism_at2Oct2017.pdf
Yes, following abolition in its own colonies, Britain mader a great effort to combat slavery in Africa & that cost British lives.
Napoleon actually restored slavery in 1802 & it wasn’t formally ended in French territories until 1848.
The US Founders were little different from their peers as far as slavery goes. They aren’t honored because of any social ills they may have taken for granted but because of what made them unique in other ways.
Most of us are products of our own era & we see the culture through that perspective. Those who see beyond that are fewer in number.
Now we’re free to buy what they will sell us but slaves to the payments!
My brief wasn’t meant as a denigration of the founding, it gives an orientation in understanding the vagaries attending on or surrounding the situation. If you go on to read the WIKIPEDIA article you will see that the slavery question was a thorny issue they didn’t see how to resolve, or couldn’t resolve, immediately; Jefferson wanted to use language to buttress the Declaration but others removed the language, etc.
Further my stress on ideals points to redeeming quality not to denigration.
Moreover the slavery conundrum highlights the question of contrarian-divisive outlook such as I noted about the lodge. A member can have a good inclination but compromises his own moves too. One has to be realistic about these matters to speak soundly on them.
And naming the lodge for what it is, secret society, self-serving, sectarianist, is not a first of all denigration of anything but an affirmation of what they themselves profess. They are handicapped with a blind-spot where they won’t see themselves in action.
You do in fact see particular figures elevating some things as ideals supposedly established from the Declaration, such as the “ideal of permanent revolution”.
There were Masons on either side of the Revolutionary war. It was a popular & respectable thing among colonial men at the time & remained so after the Revolution- both in the USA & amongst the Loyalists who left for Canada & elsewhere.
I’m not recruiting for the Masons but at least in the US it’s mostly been a fraternal organization that provided fellowship, mutual help, aided crippled children, & assisted widows & children before our modern insurance.
Some men like to swear scary oaths & dress up in costumes. Some very good Catholics have mistakenly joined the Masons because they weren’t properly informed. I think we make too much of the Masons personally & some conspiracy myths are really over the top. I’ve heard a few.
Today our local Masons are advanced in age & are losing members to the attrition of time-pretty like much every other fraternal group.
‘ *But it is not at all clear that we can celebrate it ‘ – Craycraft
Or, for some, slavery was an issue they wouldn’t want to resolve, it was just fine for them a) as slavery and/or b) as a kept feature about deliberately keeping things tumbling “from never settled Declaration ever to be settled” and/or c) as a “lived example of necessary compromising”.
Understanding things in context includes recognizing the diverse aspects, their differing claims of normality and sense of general acceptance, such as might have existed in the time and can be seen in continuation, “going on in context”.
Focusing on a set of heads, Smith, Payne, Adams, Jefferson, etc., yields its own typical elements and emphases. Focusing on another set brings out another picture. The fact is that freemasonry intended to be dominant and in control; and this is not a feature in the Declaration, the Confederation or the Constitution.
The focus does seem to fall on a particular subset, all the time.
Masons tended to be from the more respectable circles in society. It was something men from more humble backgrounds connected to as they rose in income & status. It would make sense that our early American leaders would come from that same networking.
A number of my ancestors who lived in North America in that era were Masons.I know at least two came from families where there was illiteracy. Joining a lodge allowed them to connect with people of higher education & means for employment opportunities, etc. A step up into society & better things.
For many, membership in freemasonry follows similar experiences of ensnarement, one such as described above, mrscracker, June 15, 2026 at 7:44 am, another at mrscracker, June 17, 2026 at 7:12 am.
Many men do not take up the sad offering when it is put before them, a few fall for it. In those who do join up, it has myriad wasting effects on their faculties, including adherence syndrome, always justifying it secretly or minimizing it publicly. Lythe. Supple. Smooth. Not present.
When it comes to the lodge they are always smart cookies, until it makes them senile. You could even say Graham crackers, they make the issue very dense to non-members but share it thick with members; and a non-member would never know.
Biscuit jockeys, I just thought of it.
‘ Herman Melville has an early reference to the crackers in Book XXII, Chapter I, of his 1852 novel Pierre; or The Ambiguities:
“For all the long wards, corridors, and multitudinous chambers of the Apostles’ were scattered with the stems of apples, the stones of prunes, and the shells of peanuts. They went about huskily muttering the Kantian Categories through teeth and lips dry and dusty as any miller’s, with crumbs of Graham crackers.” ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_cracker#External_links
David McCullough’s “John Adams” explains how Adams and others compromised on the slavery issue. Without the southern colonies’ buy-in to the revolutionary effort, the colonies stood no chance against GB. Adams and others from the start opposed slavery from the country’s nascency, but they compromised in acceptance, seeing independence from GB as a more necessary objective, a first priority.
Thank you Meiron. Indeed. An excellent new book, definitive, comprehensive, fantastically documented and a great read (number 1 in sales at amazon…) by scholar Eric Metaxas, Revolution. see
#1 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER
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https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Birth-Greatest-Nation-History/dp/1631440888
Metaxas is a good writer. I know “Amazing Grace” and “Bonhoeffer.” The first tells of Wilberforce, who worked in the name of Christianity to abolish slavery and the slave trade in Britian. Bonhoeffer was a prominent Lutheran preacher in Germany, a Nazi dissident. He wrote against Naziism while imprisoned and was executed. Another Metaxas book, “If You Can Keep It,” earns 5 stars by 2400 reviewers on Amazon. Of course it is about the American Republic. And yes, his latest, released this month. Will you read it? He is a very good writer.
Suggesting that the Declaration institutes and elevates paradox compacts? Ignoring its own terms and tenor? Slavery had to go but the lodge will stay?
Slavery was provisional but the lodge is enshrined? The lodge is not a paradox compact but something else, that, “is understood”?
Slavery didn’t denigrate the Declaration? The Declaration embraces paradox compacts as always necessary and even is intended as promoting this as irreversible and absolutely vital?