The Declaration of Independence, part 1

a journey into American history, post #1

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AUTHOR’S NOTE AND SPECIAL REQUEST: this is not paywalled, but future posts in my journey of learning US history will be. If you’d like to subscribe and read them all, as well as gain the ability to comment, I’ve put annual subscriptions 10% off at this link. As always, if you can’t afford a paid subscription, email and I’ll give you a free year. hollymathnerd at gmail dot com.

I told a friend about this project, who said, “This will either grow your Substack or kill it, and I really have no idea which, though I suspect it may be the latter.” He may be right (gulp). We’ll see. But I’m enjoying this more than I’ve enjoyed anything in a long time, so I’m hooked.

If anyone has any idea where I can locate a dictionary from the era, and thus have a better idea of what certain words would have meant to the Founders when they were writing, please comment or email.

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As I wrote about recently, I’m beginning a project to learn the history of the United States. My motivations, to whatever extent I understand them, are manifold: improving my own character, as my recent foray into reading memoirs by North Korean defectors has shown me how little I understand and appreciate my freedom; finding a way to improve my chances at happiness by thinking about the past in broader terms than my own dark backstory; and remedying a serious gap in my education.

Many of you filled the comment section and my email box with suggestions, for which I am very grateful. The allowance I gave myself to spend on books for this was gone in 45 minutes, ha ha!

I’ve not made a linear plan, as I expect that some books will lead to other books will lead to documentaries will lead to other books will lead to podcasts will lead to other books.

But I did decide on a starting point: the Declaration of Independence.

I read it twice yesterday, meditated on it for awhile, read it again this morning, meditated some more, and just finished reading it a fourth time. I looked up almost every word, including words that I thought I knew the definitions of, and learned quite a lot.

I have so many thoughts on this short document that I’m going to put them into two parts. This is part 1.

Multiple themes have occurred to me, but there is one overwhelming aspect of this beautiful little document that has staggered me: the founders had a profound understanding of human nature. Even more mind-bogglingly, their understanding of human nature was so lacking in self-consciousness—so completely non-performative—that I can only assume they regarded what they knew about humans as common sense.

What do I mean?

The opening sentence has many assumptions baked in, and yet even after a university education that taught me to deconstruct everything into meaninglessness, I cannot fault any of them.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

This section starts off with an assumption that what they are doing is normal, necessary, and to be expected. When. Not if, when.

I am also struck by “the separate and equal station” in this sentence. They were declaring independence from a monarchy that was nearly a millennium old when they sat down to write this document. They just assumed, without feeling the need to make any case or provide any argument, that they were entitled to a separate and equal station.

I love that. It seems so….sane, and healthy. I am a product of an America where, despite greater freedom, astonishing convenience, so much food that we’re killing ourselves by overeating, and the easiest lives in the history of the human race, more of us than ever before take antidepressant medication because we are out of our minds with sorrow. We feel that we are deeply damaged, flawed and without value.

Not the Founders. The founders sat around a table and saw themselves as entitled to a separate and equal station to a thousand-year-old monarchy, and simply declared themselves independent of same. An act of will, for which they were prepared to sacrifice.

“…the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them”

This is another interesting phrase.

As a kid, I was taught that each and every one of the founders was a Bible-believing Christian who believed the same theology we were being taught. We were extremely fortunate—we would never need to ask a single question! We had been “handed the truth on a silver platter.”

As an adult, I’ve read arguments that many were Deists and some were agnostics, while others were what we would call, in 2023, both fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist Christians. I think that whether the Founders believed in a literal heaven, literal hell, or literal being who hears and answers prayer is mostly beside the point, at least for my purposes in reading this. The phrase “Laws of Nature” is enough of a clue to their mindset. They saw their equality to the monarchy of England, and entitlement to self-determination, as part of the laws of nature. They did not question these things. They saw them as underlying axioms. Whether they believed that a supernatural being set out those axioms or not doesn’t change that they believed in them without question.

“…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

They are here telling us what they’re about to tell us: why the King no longer deserves their loyalty and why they will act on the self-determination to which they are entitled, thank you very much.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident”

Self-evident. What does self-evident mean to you?

I can’t begin to guess what it meant to the Founders, but to me, it means that something is so patently obvious that attempts to question it can only arrive from either rank stupidity or lack of good faith. (Questions like “what if 2 + 2 = 5 sometimes” and statements like “biological sex doesn’t actually exist” come to mind.)

I don’t waste time building a case for things that are self-evident. Neither did they. And that makes what they follow up the assertion of self-evidence with very, very interesting.

“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.”

“All men” being created equal is very interesting, in light of the facts of slavery and who could vote, and I’m looking forward to digging into more reading to learn more about why they could be slave holders and still believe that they believed this about themselves. I’m trying to avoid the error of presentism and keeping an open mind on this particular question. I will definitely be writing more about this. I’ve found a book that attempts to vindicate them on this metric and will seek out a book that condemns them in equal measure.

Being endowed by the Creator with unalienable Rights is another phrase that rang in my mind for awhile. The dictionary told me that “endowed” meant what I thought it did, but “unalienable” (modern spelling: inalienable) actually has a crucially important aspect, one of which I was wholly unaware.

An inalienable right is not just one that cannot be taken away, it is one that cannot be given away.

The Founders asserted that we have rights—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that are so fully and wholly ours by nature and birthright that not only did the King have no right to take them from us, they are ours on such a fundamental level that we cannot give them away.

My recent experience on Substack Notes, watching Americans beg to be controlled and to have others controlled, has been sobering and scary. This reading of the Declaration puts that in new light. Americans no longer believe in rights to liberty that cannot be taken or given away; we often argue that we must be protected from other people’s freedom, happy to surrender our own.

Finally in this sentence, “the pursuit of Happiness.”

I started this project in large part to increase my own shot at eventually becoming happy. It may help me with that. It may not. But I do think that this sort of thing—identifying an aspect of why I was unhappy, making my own plan for what to do about it, and acting on that plan—is part of the inalienable right to pursue happiness that the founders have in mind, and that is deeply satisfying as I head out.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”

This sentence was another one that staggered me.

To “secure these rights”. Not to provide a safety net, to make life easier, to build infrastructure, to educate the children and guarantee healthcare. Not any of the things we tend, in 2023, to assume are part and parcel of government’s job. Just to secure our rights.

Likewise, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” in combination with the idea of inalienable rights—rights that we cannot give away—makes me think that the Founders would surely be horrified by the state of American freedom today. This seems to set up a scenario where all of our rights are ours, period, and all the freedoms thereof—and that if the government asserts some other power, it had damn well better have our consent.

I know many people—and I have found myself among them at times—who assume that if the law is silent on a topic, the default is that it’s better not to do it. Most recently, this came up in a conversation about whether Vermont is a one-party consent state to record phone calls. I believe the Founders’ take on this would be: if the law is silent, go right the fuck ahead. You are a free American.

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

As they were writing a declaration of their independence from the monarchy of England, the meaning of most of this seems pretty clear to me, but the concept of “safety” jumped out at me.

Safety and freedom are in constant tension. It is, and can only ever be, so. The freedom to choose is the freedom to screw up, to choose badly and suffer consequences. The freedom to speak is the freedom to anger and offend others. Other people’s freedom to speak is setting the condition for offense, hurt feelings, and the like.

I also appreciate that the discussion of the need for a new government—when it becomes destructive of the ends of securing our inalienable rights—is the foundation on which the call for a new government is made. That’s the root; whatever powers may need to be delegated to government grow from that place.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

The first part of this section seems self-explanatory to me, but the end—my God, the end. “Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

That is some serious insight into human nature, presented here without a hint of self-consciousness, as simple common sense.

People are more likely to suffer than to effect radical change, once they’ve become accustomed to the suffering.

Humans are creatures of inertia, habit, and entrenched patterns.

It takes courage, fortitude, resilience, determination, strength, confidence, and above all, I think, real power of will—real mettle—to change, even when the change is one from suffering under evil to setting oneself free.

Maybe especially then.

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About My Substack: I’m a junior data scientist (two years experience and presently job-hunting if you’re hiring). My great love is mathematics, but I also enjoy writing. My posts are mostly cultural takes from a broadly anti-Woke perspective—yes, I’m one of those annoying classical liberals who would’ve been considered on the left until ten seconds ago. Lately I’ve regained a childhood love of reading and started publishing book reviews. My most widely useful essay may be this one, about how to resist the demon of self-termination.

Paid subscribers get access to occasional creative writing posts and, starting with part 2 of the Declaration of Independence, will have sole access to a journey I am making to educate myself about United States history.

I used to be poor, so this Substack has a standing policy: if you want a paid subscription but cannot afford one, email me at hollymathnerd at gmail dot com and I’ll give you a freebie.

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