Loving the Declaration of Independence Too Much to Read It

Sean Hannity’s summation of America’s founding philosophy is an outrageous corruption of the beliefs of our founding fathers.

In anticipation of July the 4th, earlier this week, Sean Hannity plugged the Heritage Foundation and encouraged his listeners to get their own Heritage pocket edition of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. His summation of America’s founding philosophy was a remarkably concise statement of the reasons for conservatism’s failure to develop a positive governing philosophy. It was also an outrageous corruption of the founding itself. Hannity explained:

We do believe as a country that all men are created equal, that we were endowed by our creator, that we do have certain unalienable rights, that these are God-given – life, liberty, pursuit of happiness – and that governments often get in the way.

Not exactly. Americans did argue in the Declaration that all men are created equal and that they possess certain God-given inalienable rights. But the Founders did not then conclude that government threatens these rights. Rather, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” Our forefathers justified revolution because the government instituted to secure their rights had failed in its duty and was actively undermining personal liberty. The Founders did not argue that government as such was an impediment to liberty. Quite the contrary, a society without government quickly devolved into a state of war where no rights were secure. There are no doubt sound reasons for limiting the size and reach of federal power. But this Fourth of July, conservatives might reflect on the relationship between their economics-driven, small-government philosophy, the revolutionaries who understood government as the guarantor of personal liberty, and the later drafters of our Constitution, who sought to augment the power of the national government. Conservatives routinely argue that the principles of the American founding animate their beliefs. Yet as Hannity’s mangling of the Declaration shows, on this critical point at least, conservatism and the founding are not one.