We Need No Declaration of Independence

Neocons can’t seem to understand the real purpose of the Declaration of Independence.

It was quite simply a secession document.

Not to them. Those who worship at the feet of “conservative” Harry Jaffa seem to think the Declaration was all about the first sentence of the second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…”

Sounds a lot like the progressives. It should, because they base their entire world view on that sentence.

These “conservatives” also seem to think that the Declaration somehow worked against secession in 1861.

Irishman Cameron Hilditch at National Review in fact argues that Southerners considered the Constitution to be the birthday of the United States, not the Declaration.

The evidence doesn’t support his narrative.

Of course, he reasons that this was because the Declaration’s “proposition nation” advanced by St. Abraham was the core of the document. In other words, it wasn’t the Declaration per se that caused the South problems, just Lincoln.

That’s true. Lincoln didn’t understand the Declaration and made it up as he went.

You see, Southerners did talk about the Declaration. They just didn’t think they needed another one. Their forefathers had already provided that for them when the “free and independent States” declared their independence in 1776.

The rest was understood. A State, and the people thereof, can leave a Union any time they want. That is the American principle of self-determination and self-government, something Hilditch cannot understand.

But you see, when Cameron Hilditch is your “conservative” intellectual and Abraham Lincoln is the godfather of American conservatism, what do we have to conserve?

Leftist stupidity. We won’t get anywhere like that.

I discuss Hilditch and his flawed logic in Episode 476 of The Brion McClanahan Show.