A Free People, A Moral People, A Sovereign People under God

In a very public way, the Trump administration has invited the American people to begin preparing for a grand celebration of America’s 250th anniversary in 2026. With this much of a run-up, we can expect the capital to be the site of any number of patriotic celebrations, with music, pageantry, and fireworks aplenty. I expect that President Trump will give a fine speech, perhaps similar to his 2020 Mt. Rushmore speech. That is all as it should be.

However, we must also acknowledge that the celebration occurs at a time in our country’s history when the citizenry is deeply divided. Indeed, a certain percentage of the population hates the country in which they live. At the very least, they condemn it for a litany of sins that would make America extremely difficult to respect, much less to love. Implicit in their critiques is a set of principles and desiderata whose implementation would require the country’s top-to-bottom revolutionary transformation. Amid this “house divided,” any celebration of America today cannot be simply self-congratulatory; it also needs to be reflective, and, to some extent, apologetic (in the classical sense of the term).

Of course, America has been divided before, as my use of the Lincolnian phrase indicated. These earlier divisions provide something of a repertoire of possibilities for the outcome of our own civil discord. To begin with the worst: there could be attempted secession, averted or acquiesced to, or civil war. While farfetched, the character of our divisions logically tends in those directions. One must pray and work that it never comes to these country-rending eventualities. After the Revolution, Federalists and anti-Federalists were divided over the newly independent country’s proper constitutional order. They fought the battle in newspapers, pamphlets, and state houses, not on the battlefield. The Federalists rightly won, although the anti-Federalists made many plausible criticisms of the proposed federal republican arrangements, including that of a potential run-away judiciary. Repairing to that earlier debate — or, better yet, reading the decisions of the great Federalist jurist John Marshall, who exposited and codified the original constitutional interpretation — would put that division to a good contemporary use. Our constitutional order certainly needs repair, and our understanding of constitutionalism and our commitment to it to be deepened and strengthened.

Before that determinative debate, we had half a million loyalists who left the country when the majority chose the path of independence from Great Britain. The reasons for that separation, and the principles of political right and of right government for which the rest of the colonists fought, were formally declared in a document that became a beacon of light and hope to countless human beings: the Declaration of Independence. Here we have a paradox: what some Americans have called a document infected with racial hypocrisy and narrow “individualistic liberalism” has inspired millions of non-Americans. At the very least, foreigners’ positive reactions should encourage a sympathetic reading. In fact, regardless of non-Americans’ judgment, the Declaration will always have pride of place in America’s self-definition. Those Americans who denigrate it put themselves in a most awkward position of repudiating their forebears and patrimony. What then is left of “America” and “American”? A juridical framework and an empty canvas? That is hardly a country or a regime.

Prompted by these conflicting views, and anticipating the impending celebration, I aim to briefly reconsider the founding document whose chief author, Thomas Jefferson, styled “an expression of the American mind.” In brief compass, I will limn the self-portrait of America and Americans that the Declaration presents. Having written a book on the subject, I alert the reader to the portrait’s incomplete character. As compensation for the incompleteness, I have chosen features that speak to our circumstances. I will cast them in a series of binaries that the American experiment united at its inception and which might serve as beacons as we go forward: universal and particular; rights and morality; individual rights and popular safety and happiness; and “manly firmness” and “firm reliance on divine Providence.” Together, they form a portrait of the American people limned by my title.

Universal and Particular

That there is a universal cast to the American mind expressing itself in the Declaration is easily demonstrated. It “hold[s]” that “all men” — all human beings — possess “unalienable” or natural rights. These rights are inherent in and essential components of human nature. The Declaration’s awareness and indeed “respect” for human beings reaches to all mankind, as “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation” from Great Britain. One should add, however, that the two universals have an unequal relationship: we are to judge the opinions of mankind, at least in part, by how they view universal natural rights. Nor is this just a theoretical criterion of discrimination; it bears upon the Declaration’s view of immigration (discussed below). Holding to the truth of universal unalienable rights would rightly be a sine qua non of joining the political community based on them and dedicated to them. Who in his right mind would want to be fellow citizens with those who disagree with the political union’s fundamental principles?

To that first natural-rights political community, we now turn. And first of all, to what Aristotle said defined the human political animal: logos, that is, language, the medium through which fellow citizens discuss, debate, and decide matters of common concern. The Declaration expresses the aforementioned universal tenets and concern in a particular language — British English —which expresses the sentiments and convictions of a particular people, the “one people” spoken of in the preamble. Here the universal and particular unite, in “one people,” a particular people, who share a common culture and history.

Despite their differences, this people is indeed a real community, as they hold certain fundamental things in common. These are impossible to enumerate in detail but can be summed up with three categories: cultural, political, and historical. Language we have already mentioned, the language of the King James Bible and Shakespeare, of John Locke as well, whose very sentences Jefferson reprises in the Declaration. These point to the colonists’ common culture, a common “social imaginary.” The “good people of these colonies” are also heirs of a remarkable political legacy. Again, in shorthand, it is the legacy of the Magna Carta, common law, and constitutionalism. The Declaration itself mentions the violation of “our constitution” in the list of grievances against king and Parliament and alludes to the norms and practices of the common law in descrying the suspension of “Trial by Jury.”

Finally, the crucible of a shared history forged commonalities, including a history of resistance to the King’s depredations of colonial liberty. Jefferson expressly invokes this resistance in the list of twenty-seven “usurpations” and “injuries” with which he charges the King (and Parliament) in the document’s third part: “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.” In turn, the document’s signatories, “the Representatives of the united States of America,” invoke these estimable precedents and follow in their footsteps. There is a tradition of representative liberty to which they owe and to which they belong.

Natural Rights and Morality

The mention of “manly firmness” on the part of the early opponents of encroaching tyranny leads to another pair joined in the document: natural rights and a moral order — and the divine Superintendent — who measures and judges the exercise of those rights. Often presented as proposing a thoroughgoing liberalism (or libertarianism) of rights as the sole political norm, the Declaration is far from advancing such a narrow or impoverished view of morality, political, or other. It regularly invokes moral categories and criteria, applying them to the contending agents that the text invokes. The monarch, for example, is “cruel” and “perfidious,” while his opponents invoke “prudence” and courageously pledge their “lives, property, and sacred honor” as testimony to “the rectitude of their intentions” before the Supreme Judge. Moral norms and the Deity judge human conduct, even conduct cast in terms of the defense of natural rights.

Similarly, we are to measure not only war, but all human conduct, by the fundamental distinction between civilization and savagery or barbarism. As the Declaration invokes it, this distinction above all means making apposite distinctions among persons, by sex, age, and condition. “Civilization” means keeping one’s head and making relevant distinctions even in the heat of battle and establishing in peacetime a social order that recognizes and respects these inherent distinctions. One could connect this view of civilization with what philosophers have argued is reason’s fundamental activity: “making distinctions” (Robert Sokolowski) or classifying in terms of “genus and species,” with recognized hierarchy among them (Aristotle).

Finally, to this insistence on making proper distinctions as a hallmark of civilization, one must add a further quality Jefferson mentions in the text: “mercy.” Whether of biblical origin or reinforced by it, mercy should season the relations between combatants, between victors and defeated, and between the great and the small, the weak, and the vulnerable. In stark contrast, “cruelty,” mercy’s antithesis, has marked the character of the British Monarch and the deeds of “the Armies of Foreign Mercenaries” he has sent to do his nefarious work.

Thus, a free society — one dedicated to the exercise of natural rights —is not antithetical to moral norms and immune from moral judgment. Quite the contrary. The document’s focus is, understandably, on moral qualities and norms insofar as they bear upon the immediate issue — the errant monarch’s train of abuses and detectable tyranny, as well as the early days of war — but these virtues also have a home in civil society and private life. A free people, a people dedicated to the exercise of their natural rights, is also, and perforce, a moral people. One must also note that they are a religious people, as evidenced by the document’s four invocations of the Deity. Sixty years later, Alexis de Tocqueville makes the same point.

Immigration Application

This has many consequences, including some that bear upon the topic of immigration, an issue that figures in the Declaration itself, as it is yet another item in the litany of the British sovereign’s misdeeds. To set the stage: the colonial Americans wanted more newcomers to join their various communities, but King George had “endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; [and] refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” In the colonists’ judgment, these were significant sins of commission and omission on their erstwhile sovereign’s part and part of their bill of indictment against him. As an independent and sovereign people, they would continue to want new members from abroad, but on their own terms. Prospective newcomers would have to follow the “Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners” that the sovereign people established to serve its own determination of its needs and to ascertain candidates’ suitability. Among the latter — indeed high on the list — would be the ability to operate within the established culture with some degree of competence and adherence to the political union’s principles. As both Aristotle and common sense would put the matter: fledgling America was not merely a defense league or commercial enterprise, but a polity with principles, a creed, and a broadly shared way of life. The notion of regime (politeia) encompassed all these elements. Constituted as they are by history and choice, a sovereign people can rightly opt to discriminate among potential joiners in the common project and indeed would be well advised to do so. The Declaration spells out that common project.

Rights, Safety, and Happiness

The primary object of free government — the government envisaged and limned in the Declaration — is, no doubt, individuals’ protection and security and the free exercise of their rights. But in a passage not always noted or sufficiently appreciated, the Declaration charges free government, the government of and for a free people, with two other large concerns: the people’s safety and happiness. These are distinct objects of government’s solicitude, and concern the people as a whole, not simply as a serial collection of individuals. To be sure, protecting rights is the government’s first stated purpose and aim. Government cannot, or should not, pursue the other two without keeping rights in mind. But three aims, not one, and not without their tensions, are the Declaration’s full view of free government’s defining work. The political life of a Declaration people will thus be a constant debate and ongoing determination of the specific natures of the three ends of their political existence. What constitutes popular safety? Popular happiness? What is the whole canon of natural rights (e.g., freedom of conscience and freedom of religion)? Likewise, they will have to determine in changing circumstances the proper relationship among them. Does this provision for popular safety, for example, unreasonably or unjustly infringe upon individual rights?

“Manly Firmness” and “Firm Reliance on Divine Providence”

As the last example indicates, such a government is both a necessity and a risk. It is necessary if a free people is to survive and thrive, and it is a risk to the sovereignty of that same people. After fairly recent direct assaults on our freedoms, ranging from the violation of the fundamental principles of medicine to the squelching of fundamental natural and constitutional rights, we are today especially aware of the danger. The Declaration, too, is acutely aware of this sort of danger from government: after all, it declares independence from an erstwhile-free government turned despotic. Not only that, it provides lessons and examples to help a sovereign people retain and exercise their sovereignty. This is yet another important reason to repair to the founding document.

In brief: the Declaration shows how to detect and track encroaching despotism; it shows how to conduct oneself in the face of this ultimate challenge to a free people and to democratic self-government; it reminds the people of its right to resist advancing despotism and to cast off the proffered yoke of tyranny; it instructs them in the “principles” and “forms” of well-constituted government, meaning government that respects and serves freedom, both individual and collective; and it indicates what to look for in actual or potential “guardians” of their liberty, as well as in those who would actively undermine and usurp what is theirs by right. All this is of current interest and application, as we consider today’s manifold ongoing threats to freedom.

The Declaration also provides examples and instructions concerning the human qualities that freedom’s exercise and defense require. These, too, can be placed in various categories. Earlier, we met those who opposed with “manly firmness” the direct denial of popular liberty in the form of representation. Likewise, we met their heirs, who exercised both “prudence” and courage in discerning and resisting despotism, and who pledged their all, including their “honor” before God, in the cause of independence and self-government. All in all, we could call these “the manly virtues.”

But they know of other virtues or qualities as well: mercy, as we have seen. The term “firmness” points in yet another direction. For these same manly representatives pledge their all “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” Ultimately, their cause is God’s cause. He endowed his rational creatures with unalienable rights and followed their coming to grasp this fact during “the course of human events.” Now, in the midst of the storm and stress of conflict, they are acting upon it. This will require their all, but, because they act not only for themselves, but for the Creator, they can confidently rely on his protection and blessing. July 4, 1776, saw one of the greatest acts of faith in humanity’s history.

In a similar vein, Abraham Lincoln spoke of “the ancient faith of our fathers.” With him in mind, we can ask, how do we stand with respect to that faith? What does “America” and “American” mean to us today? Is it the opportunity and responsibility of a free people to govern themselves, individually and collectively, within a moral order of virtue and mercy and under the divine regard? My proposal is that the Declaration can judge us, at least as much as we might be inclined to judge it, when we answer these questions next July 4th.

‍