My June 9, 2026, essay, “Celebrating* 250 Years of American Mythology?,” has drawn over a hundred comments. As often happens in the comments section of any online forum, the majority of these are people arguing with one another about things that have little or nothing to do with the essay. But enough comments did engage the piece—sometimes in apoplectic terms—that the editor, Carl Olson, asked me to write a response to some of the comments.
Two caveats: 1. I rarely read the comments section in CWR or any other magazine for which I write. They are almost never helpful, and life is short. 2. It is important to note that Mr. Olson disagrees with some aspects of my essay. But he also understands that my arguments are not foreign to robust Catholic theological debate.
I understand that my essay presents a pessimistic view of the American founding. Indeed, many of the comments are evidence of the crisis I identify in my recent book, Citizens Yet Strangers: Living Authentically Catholic in a Divided America. We Catholics often collapse the tenets of the Catholic Faith into the moral theory of modern liberalism. Many commentators do precisely that. The most vociferous comments on the June 9 piece embrace liberalism as the true view of the world, with Catholic doctrine either redefined in liberalism’s terms or simply subordinated to the tenets of liberalism. Thus, these commenters can only see the argument in terms of the left and right wings of American politics (all of which is a form of liberalism). While this is a strain that runs through the comments, in the interest of time and space, I’ll simply refer readers to Citizens Yet Strangers.
Suffice it to say here that many critics seem to confuse Catholic moral theology and American liberal political theory. I am not a liberal of any variety. I am a Catholic Christian. And I refuse to be constrained by the truncated moral and political in-house arguments of liberalism, even (especially?) when they are advanced by professed Catholics.
For purposes of this response, I have categorized the criticisms in the comments into four broad points: 1. My motivation in writing the piece; 2. The problem of “self-evident” truths; 3. The problem and provenance of “rights” language; and 4. The relationship of Hobbes, Locke, and Jefferson.
My “ideological motivation”
Some of the comments refer to my alleged “ideological motivation” in writing the original essay, claiming that there are “objective signs of some kind of external influence here.” Even though these signs are “objective,” the author of the comments does not identify them. (I am reminded of the line from the film, The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”) And because they are not self-evident, I do not know either the “signs” or the “external influence” toward which they point. Another comment identifies my “ideological bent” as “statist,” asserting that I have “statist inclinations.”
Still another commentator claims that my essay “communicates an alien ideology, alien to the Catholic ground of truth,” which he poses in apposition to “American ideas in the Declaration of Independence.” This is a shockingly damning comment and actually goes to the heart of the issue. Catholic moral theology only seems alien to one who has grounded his faith in American liberalism and reduced Catholic faith to this alien ideology.
The commentator says he or she will be “coming back to discover what ideologies are animating” my essay. He (or she) should instead ask what animates his (or her) reduction of Christian truth to American politics.
Unless an author expressly states his motivation, it is bad practice (or even bad faith) to reduce an author’s argument to ideological motivation. This problem is multiplied when one goes further to intimate malign “external influence,” as though the author is serving some kind of dark, sinister force, rather than expressing a thoughtful argument. This kind of conspiracy thinking is disturbingly prevalent among a certain kind of personality among U.S. Catholics (and non-Catholics). If one sees conspiracies everywhere, one cannot see a sincere argument anywhere. “Physician, heal thyself.”
In any event, my “motivation” in writing the June 9 column is the same as it was when I wrote my books, The American Myth of Religious Freedom (Spence 1999), and Citizens Yet Strangers (OSV 2024). It is to identify, from a Catholic perspective, problems that I see both in the philosophical foundations of American liberalism and the habit of Catholics to embrace those foundations uncritically—indeed to defend those foundations as some kind of divinely inspired self-evident truth. The fruit of that mentality is the inability to distinguish Catholic theology from liberal theory, a strain that runs through broad swaths of Catholic commentary, including comments to my June 9 essay. Indeed, many of the comments are empirical evidence of my “motivation” in analyzing the erosion of Catholic witness by liberal political theory, whether it is left liberalism or (as most of the commentators) right liberalism.
An example of this reductionist thinking is the comments that refer to me as a “statist.” This epithet demonstrates precisly the problem of taking liberal political theory as one’s foundational commitment and judging all things through that hermeneutic. It subscribes to the notion that there are two choices of truth: American individualism and some kind of authoritarian collectivism. This is not merely a failure of moral imagination. It is a rejection of the Catholic doctrine of solidarity, one of the non-negotiable principles of Catholic moral thought. Solidarity is not statism. But if one’s moral and political imagination is cabined in by dogmatic commitment to liberal political theory, that is difficult to see. It is true, of course, that I am not a liberal. But to assume that implies I am a “statist” (and there is no third option) is, to put it bluntly, a rejection of a central tenet of Catholic moral doctrine.
Ironically, the same commentator asserts that I am “suspicious of any claim of individual or mediating institutional dependence” from “state control.” This evinces not merely innocence of the doctrine of solidarity, but subsidiarity as well. To reduce my argument to a form of “statism” is to demonstrate evidence of unfamiliarity with these fundamental Catholic doctrines. I invite that person, and those who agree with the assertion, to read chapter 3 of Citizens Yet Strangers and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, for starters.
“Self-evident” Truths
My suspicion of self-evident truths raised the ire of many commentators. In the first instance, my reticence to refer to “self-evident” truth is not categorical. I couch it in terms of probability, or as a problematic epistemological notion. Some commentators dismissed this questioning of self-evident truth by conflating irreducible logical principles with assertions of moral theories. The problem is illustrated by one extremely confused commentator’s reference to “more or less self-evident truths.” That makes my head spin.
Also making my head spin is one commentator’s accusation that I am “ridiculous” for observing that “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.” (I cribbed this, by the way, almost directly from Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal book, After Virtue.) It’s ridiculous, the commentator asserts, because uranium wasn’t discovered until 1789. To compare the discovery of a physical element to the “discovery” that the nature of the human person fundamentally changed to its opposite sometime in the 16th century is absurd on its face. Worse, however, is that this is exactly the kind of argument made by a Jesuit priest who has made a career out of claiming that we have “discovered” that same-sex sexual relationships and activities are good, and that the Church should conform its teaching to this discovery. The Jesuit’s “discovery” is actually rather mild if one has already determined that human nature itself changed in the 17th century.
Rules of identity (A = A), non-contradiction (A is not non-A), exclusivity (either A or not-A), are irreducible. One cannot even address the truth or falsehood of them without using them or relying on them. If one wants to call these principles “self-evident,” I have no objection, even though I prefer the term “irreducible.”
But these irreducible principles of language (or informal logic) are a far cry from assertions of self-evident moral or political principles. Historical lack of the recognition of alleged “self-evident” moral principles is dispositive evidence that such principles are not self-evident. It is not conclusive evidence that such assertions or false, of course, which I explain in the June 9 piece. If nothing else, “self-evident” means that something is not open to the possibility of falsification or refutation. This is a handy tool for shutting down debate. If John denies Bill’s “self-evident truth,” John must be either deceived or dishonest. In the comments, I am expressly accused of the former and implicitly accused of the latter (again with the “external” “ideological” motivation).
In any event, the real issue is not whether the theory of individual possessive rights is self-evident. Rather, the issue is whether it is true. If rights are not true, they are, of course, not self-evidently true. But merely because they are not self-evidently true does not necessarily imply that they are false. Again, I say this in the June 9 piece, but it must have been missed by some.
One comment suggests that I do not “value rights.” This is a form of question begging. It assumes the existence of something in dispute for the sake of “refuting” the adversary party. It is true that I don’t “value rights.” But I do not value rights for the same reason I do not value witches, unicorns, leprechauns, married bachelors, or square circles. I do not value these things because they do not exist.
The Problem of Rights Talk
I recognize that the provenance of individual rights is a highly disputed academic argument. One commentator asserts that individual rights appear in the writing of the Salamanca School, a common refrain from those who fashion themselves by the oxymoronic mantle, “Catholic libertarians.” Rather than rehearse the arguments, I refer the reader to Fr. Ernest L. Fortin’s classic essays, “On the Presumed Medieval Origin of Individual Rights” and “The New Rights Theory and the Natural Law.” One can believe in natural law or natural rights. One cannot believe in both, any more than one can believe in square circles or married bachelors.
But what to make of the Church documents that invoke “human rights”? As a preliminary matter, I wish they would not. This is not because I think these assertions are engaged in falsehood, but because the use of any rights language causes confusion. When read by Americans, such language is always understood as Hobbesian/Lockean possessive individual rights. But, of course, this is not what any magisterial document means. Rather, when encyclicals and other magisterial documents use the language of rights, it is always a corollary of human dignity. (See above for the general problem of the commentators either ignoring or being innocent of Catholic Social Doctrine.)
The dividing line is this: One believes in the teleological destiny of the human person, or one does not. If one does not, possessive individual rights are the modern replacement for teleology. If we do not have a common destiny rooted in the solidarity of all humankind, then we all have disparate individual destinies (and claims) against everyone else. This is what Hobbes, Locke, and their heirs believed. The theory of possessive individual rights is posited to replace the teleological destiny of the human person, not to complement it.
Locke’s Agreement with Hobbes’ “Strange Doctrine”
John Locke and Thomas Hobbes disagreed sharply on the solution to their common conception of moral anthropology. They did not, however, disagree about that moral anthropology. For the purposes of my June 9 column, the important point is the moral anthropology, not the proposed solution. So, if one wants to say that it is wrong to conflate Hobbes and Locke, that’s fine, as long as we understand that the difference is in the practical implications of their shared theory of moral anthropology, not the theory itself.
Both believe that the natural state of the human person is individual and solitary, in which we are self-generators of moral law, with absolute claims against every other person. And, ironically, in terms of American commitments, both saw this as a problem to be solved rather than an accomplishment to be celebrated. For Hobbes, of course, the solution was to surrender one’s rights to the sovereign. For Locke, the solution is to trade the privileges of one’s rights with another for the sake of mutual peace. When I invoke Jefferson (who energetically and effusively praised Locke) as embracing both Hobbes and Locke, I am referring to the moral anthropology, not the proposed solution to it. If the moral anthropology is wrong, of course, neither “solution” can be satisfactory.
One can engage in good-faith discussions about such things as self-evident truth, natural rights, and the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. I am always happy to have those discussions. But dismissive, flippant accusations of bad faith, ideological motivation, ridiculousness, weirdness, and the like are neither conducive to such discussion nor capable of advancing an argument. On the contrary, they are replacements for discussion. Which is why I do not read the comments section, a salutary practice to which I now return.
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“I rarely read the comments section in CWR or any other magazine”
Interesting. A gratuitous declaration (of conceit). /s
Also making my head spin is one commentator’s accusation that I am “ridiculous” for observing that “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.”
First of all, I didn’t say you were ridiculous. I said your statement was ridiculous. Maybe if you were in better practice of reading comments, you might read them correctly.
Here’s is the quote:
“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.”
Do you practice law with this sort of inattention to language>
Would you prefer patently absurd? preposterous? I would use a more colorful description, maybe one implying blindness or one of those profane military acronyms, but I suppose that would tax the moderator’s tolerance.
It is indefensible to suggest something can’t exist because it evaded formal human notice and description until some arbitrary period of time. Borrowing from physicians, that NED (no evidence of disease) isn’t the same thing as evidence of no disease, absence of notice isn’t notice of absence.
The planet Neptune, invisible to the naked eye, was likely was seen and recorded by Galileo Galilei in 1613. He and other subsequent observers failed to appreciate it as a planet. The notion that it might exist came from orbital perturbations of Uranus in 1821 and it wasn’t officially observed until 1846. It certainly has existed prior to discovery.
That people might fail to describe and document a political abstraction until the 17th century is even less shocking than failing to notice planets or any other physical phenomena. People who are fending off privation and penury, plagues and pestilence are not likely to engage in discourses about such things, their long days generally ending with fear and exhaustion and little incentive to expend precious candlewax on something that was unlikely to change their fortune or secure the next harvest. Moreover, serfs and subject have one unarticulated self-evident truth-don’t annoy the lord or king.
And there’s the matter of needing the telescope of political discourse, the printing press, without which books and pamphlets cannot describe and propagate such ideas.
I stopped reading Mr. Craycraft after his dismal fact- and logic-free piece on immigration last fall. I suppose I’ll force myself to slog through this one later to find out if I’m allowed to see fireworks this year.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/11/18/what-the-bishops-got-right-on-immigration/
I wouldn’t have responded, but he subjected me to calumny through negligence.
Sorry, but this only tends to confirm the problematic nature of the initial piece. It’s seems quite odd, and certainly unusual at CWR, to have a follow up piece like this. To someone from the outside looking in, it smacks of someone running after another saying, “Oh, please wait, you misunderstood me, please give me a chance to explain. I can’t bear to have you think that.” And this is opposed to perhaps just admitting that this piece had problems and leave the observations of people to stand for themselves. The author himself unwittingly admits to problems when he now has to “clarify” some of the content.
There is arguably some misrepresentation of the comments too- many of them contained direct, cogent criticisms about what he wrote, but he generally tries to dismiss them by imputing various trends to them. Craycraft himself then goes on to engage in exactly that, e.g. if you bring up the fact that talk of rights is to be found in jurists and theologians in the 14th and 15th centuries, you must be a “catholic libertarian,” and can essentially be dismissed. Finally, one can sense the arrogance and living in an echo chamber of which academics are usually afflicted with; and no, that’s not an imputation of motives. One sees that, for example, in some further sweeping opinions of the kind he made in the first piece, which craycraft presents as unquestioned facts akin to those of natural science, e.g., that natural law and natural rights are mutually exclusive. Craycraft would then take issue that someone might label this as a debatable opinion. He has to downplay talk of rights in Church documents, and essentially wants to tell popes not to use such language either! He also says that the word rights, when read by Americans, is always- in italics too- understood as Lockean possessive individual rights. Always? How would he ever even know such a thing? He takes a basic no-no- saying “always” or “never”- to be fact. Mr. Olson, these kind of dynamics and statements should make you see why they have garnered criticism.
Para. 4 under Self-Evident Truths – “or” should be “are”.
(Let’s see if someone reads my comment).
Dear Mr. Craycraft:
I am grateful that you have returned to this topic, and have responded to a concern I raised.
I am the commenter you cite who expressed concern about what I called motivations that seemed “alien” to American founding principles and the Catholic ground of truth.
You noted in referring to my original comment that I promised to return to the topic with the reason for my concern about your declaration – that the founding of the United States was a myth that did not deserve to be celebrated.
I did indeed return to the discussion with a second and concrete reason for my initial perception that I found your viewpoint “alien.” I do not know, one way or the other, but perhaps you didn’t return to read my second comment, which gave my reason for finding your viewpoint an alien one. I will repeat it here below.
In my second comment, I referred to the analysis of the US founding written by Robert Reilly in his book, “America On Trial, A Defense of the Founding.” As I suppose you know, Reilly wrote his book to refute the viewpoint of Patrick Deneen, which I also said it appears that you share. Reilly stated that Deneen and his colleagues reject the US founding because, in Reilly’s view, Deneen et al (and it does seem you join Deneen) mistake the US founders to be Hobbesians (i.e., that the nature of man is brutal, and that means there is an eternal war of all against all, and that to subdue that war, there must be an all powerful state, and as Hobbes insisted in Leviathan, the state must be revered as the godhead). Reilly concludes that Deneen et al were wrong in their conclusions about the US founding, because Deneen et al were mistaken about the motivations of the Founders. Reilly says Deneen mistook the Founders as Hobbesian, and that he was wrong, they were instead Augustinian in outlook, and believed that the purpose of the Founders was instead to cultivate a virtuous citizenry to limit the power of the state, in the specific case the powerful stste of Great Britain, which they deemed to be tyrannical. I noted Reilly’s conclusion is stated on p. 300 of his book. And regarding my comment that your viewpoint seems alien to the Catholic ground of truth,
Summing up, I gave a concrete reason for my “not celebrating” your essay dismissing the US founding.
I add in closing that I want to clarify my original remark, that while I do find the ideas animating your viewpoint to be alien, I did not intend to smear or wound you as a person by insinuating you had sinister motivations. I believe your motives is writing intended what is good.
Where we diverge it seems is at the dividing line drawn by Robert Reilly. It seems you, like Deneen, reject the US founding because you are repulsed by what you assume are the Hobbesian motivations of the US Founders. I am certainly repulsed by the ideology of Hobbes, and would reject the US founding if I concluded it was motivated by Hobbesian beliefs. But as I strongly agree with Reilly, I likewise am repulsed by your rejection of the US founding and your disapproval and dismissal of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
While I do not worship the United States of America, and I can acknowledge its own sins and offenses, I want to “conserve” it, and I incline to the “conservative view” of Abraham Lincoln, who could hold these two conclusions together, that while God might see fit to punish us for our offenses, and “repay with the sword” every drop of blood “drawn by the lash,” yet it is worth defending and celebrating, as it remains, as a country, in spite of its sins, “the last best hope of earth.”
Your original essay was intended to be provocative, and you succeeded in getting attention to your opinion of the United States.
And in reply, I have given you the reason why I believe we diverge, and I am celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
We remain, I trust, friends in Christ, who governs all.
Mr. Craycraft:
A correction is needed to complete my reply above.
My 5th paragraph was written to end with my concern about an alienation from the Catholic ground of truth. It somehow was lost and appears truncated above.
In short – I share the view of Reilly, and the similar view expressed by Pope Benedict XVI in commending the Declaration of Independence, that the founders really did believe that men are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” and that it seems to me that your viewpoint is that they really didn’t believe that proposition, but were asserting rights that they themselves conjured up, and were simply “mythologizing” their own propositions by claiming they came from God (a God whom they were dimply instrumentalizing).
Please add that to my reply above.
“Which is why I do not read the comments section, a salutary practice to which I now return.” HA HA HA!!!
This author has been engaged in a long-term project of discrediting secular governments that do not have Catholicism as the official politically-established religion of the state. The questionable historial presentation of modern philosophy in his CWR articles this month are a means to his larger politial goal, subjugating V2’s Dignitatis Humanae to Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors.
Unlike Craycraft, I am one who humbly admits to the self-evident fallacy that reading the “comment section” is frequently educational.
Carl, stay the course.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
In order to affirm these self-evident Truths, it is necessary to answer Christ’s Question, “Who do you say that IAM, correctly.
Thus we can know through our Catholic Faith and reason, that the moral anthropology of this Nation, is Protestant at its core. Protestants believe the natural state of the human person is individual and solitary, as they deny The Unity of The Holy Ghost, and in denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, deny The Divinity Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity by protesting a revealed Divine Truth, and thus protesting God’s Universal Call To Holiness, God’s Call To Communion In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, the source of all “Just Powers”, which come from God, “The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity” (see Treaty of Paris that ended The Revolutionary War) and not from “the consent of the governed”.
Protestants do not deny any of the points you mention here.
By denying one element of Divine Revealed Truth, The Deposit of Faith that Christ Has Entrusted to His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, Protestants do, in fact, deny The Deposit of Faith and thus deny Divine Revealed Truth.
In justice to Craycraft – I agree with his complaint on commentbox invectives – I reviewed my comment and happily found I reasoned on the principle of the Natural Law Within man related to self evident knowledge, rather than hurl invectives. Although I don’t absolve myself from committing that fault elsewhere.
Hi Kenneth,
I got as far as this in your piece here: “Two caveats: 1. I rarely read the comments section in CWR or any other magazine for which I write. They are almost never helpful, and life is short….”.
I copied that, pasted it here, and laughed!
What an absurd notion from numerous considerations!!! But since you say you won’t bother reading this anyway I’ll only clue you in to the fact that CWR has MANY regular commenters and MORE OFTEN THAN NOT I learn as much or more from them as from the articles they comment on.
I hope Carl clues you in to that!
My previous comment, if addressing Protestants, who presumably have consented to belief in Christ and already baptized, is of course a red herring. What does relate is the controversial position that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.
That presumed ‘doctrine’ has been modified since, Vat II recognizing the many outside the true faith who live good lives free from serious sin. In fact the Church recognizes the good found in non Christians who follow their conscience. If the Gospel were effectively preached to them then the question would come to fore regarding salvation.
Salvation for those free of serious sin extends historically to 1201 in the letter of Pius III to the Archbishop of Arles that only those who commit mortal sin and do not repent are condemned. Our Church has held that they will be saved though withheld the Beatific Vision.
This is a misplaced comment, a result of the fog of commentary warfare, belonging to the essay The Promise and Peril of Religious Freedom for Catholics in America.
Fr. Peter M: So “EENS” or “There is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church” means being free from serious sin.
Another problem with Craycraft’s argument here and in the first piece is that he does what he accuses critics of: conflating/mixing political theory with moral theology. He consistently uses as his standard of comparison whether founding documents of a political order and their principles correspond with moral theology. He also thus uses moral theology as the nexus of the discussion of natural law and rights. He generally mixes philosophical and theological discussion together, which can be a recipe for disaster- he goes back and forth with comparison to political philosophy or catholic teaching at any given time.
Another dubious claim of his is that rights are opposed to a teleological approach, when they can actually flow from it- precisely because there is an end, one is due those things that help one to attain that end. It is more difficult to argue for rights without a reason/goal why the person can claim them. Finally, one wonders what craycraft thinks of the fact that most popes since 1948 have promoted the U.N.’s declaration of human rights? JPII even called it “a true milestone on the path of humanity’s moral progress.” Bishops’ conferences also promote possessive individual rights language. Are they wrong to do so? Have recent popes adopted a hobbesian/lockean conception of rights? Are they unwittingly acting against catholic teaching?
Sad to say this but I am not surprised that JPII called the pro-abortion/sodomite loving United Nations “a true milestone on the path of humanity’s moral progress.”
Just imagine the comments on here if Pope Pope Leo said such a thing.
“Religious liberty” and “tolerance” are two of the main fundamental principles of Freemasonry and also of the United States condemned by the Catholic Church many times over before VII so it’s amazing to me how many Catholics accept and promote already condemned Freemasonry principles that this country was founded on over authentic, traditional Catholic teachings.
It’s also very logical and simple to understand as are all Church teachings: “ERROR HAS NO RIGHTS.”
Fr. Peter M: if the soul is already saved by a “good conscience” then what would be the motivation for preaching to them and putting their salvation in jeopardy if they reject?
In summary on this series:
A. It seems Mr. Craycraft does a disservice to himself and his audience, owing to his predisposition to not read responses to his own provocative essays.
B. I think I can reasonably conclude that he didn’t bother reading my critique, which followed promptly after my initial response, and dealt constructively with evidence and authors (published here at CWR) contradicting his dismissal of the US founding.
C. A brittle disposition is not an indication of a strong argument.
For those readers who want to better understand the case in fsvir of the US founding, in opposition to the argument made by contemporary Catholic intellectuals rejecting the US founding (i.e., Patrick Deneen and Mr. Craycraft), I recommend you purchase this book for yourself and your family and friends: America On Trial, A Defense of the Founding, by Robert Reilly, which was featured at CWR a few years ago. The crux if the argument is about Hobbes versus Augustine, and asserting that the founders inclined to the latter, and not the former, which Reilly concludes is the weakness of the Deneen/Craycraft argument.
God Bless America, and as Abraham Lincoln said: “Pray not that God is on our side, but that we remain on His side.”
And – Happy 250th Anniversary of The Independence of the United States of America! 🇺🇸
Prof. McAffee did an examination of the relation between the Declaration and the Constitution. See my comment in Craycraft’s related previous article in the link, Elias Galy, June 13, 2026 at 3:10 pm, for McAffee.
As far as I know the Declaration was never legally/juristically enforceable. Point being, what is held to as Constitutional at any given time could be at odds with the Declaration for whatever period of time.
Arguably the Bill of Rights was passed to close some of the gap? But here no reference is made to the Declaration either.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/06/09/celebrating-250-years-of-american-mythology/#comment-552033
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/06/09/celebrating-250-years-of-american-mythology/
McAffee
DOES THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION INCORPORATE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE?
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1197&context=nlj
Here is an account of the situation in the US between the Declaration and 1789.
Who was the first US president? Some historians don’t agree
Fox News senior correspondent Eric Shawn quizzes anchor Jon Scott on crazy American history on ‘Fox Report.’
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/who-was-the-first-us-president-some-historians-don-t-agree/vi-AA26HCH4?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6a42466f28b34e29a7d78410d541b1d6&ei=83
Video at Fox News –
Who was the first US president? Some historians don’t agree
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6399579821112