Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

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Part 6, Chapters 27-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 6: “Matters of Principle”

Part 6, Chapter 27 Summary: “Self-Evidence”

Unlike other belief statements, such as Catholic prayers, the Founding Fathers declared their beliefs to be “self-evident.” They rely not on God but on “their own powers of perception and reasoning” (160). One kind of self-evidence is what we perceive—we can know things about nature from immediate observation. Another comes from reflection and logic. We can string together a set of premises to draw particular conclusions. Allen’s example is that “Bill Gates is a human being. Human beings are mortal. Bill Gates is mortal” (161-62). The Declaration operates similarly when it tells us that human beings have certain inalienable rights and that they use governments to secure those rights. It follows from here that when governments fail, the people can and should establish new ones. This works best when we insert a “missing premise”—that “all people have a right to whatever is necessary to secure what they have a right to” (166). Namely, the right to government contains within it the right to revolution because revolution allows people to secure appropriate government for themselves.

Part 6, Chapter 28 Summary: “Magic Tricks”

Allen continues her exploration of mathematics and logic and their contribution to our understanding of the Declaration. Equations can show us that elements that look distinct are in fact the same—three times four is not identical to two times six, but they express the same fundamental truth. Allen rewrites the Declaration to show that “all people have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness […] all people have the right to a properly constituted government” (168-69). Government is the “instrument human beings use to protect the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (169). Though the logic is easily grasped, the political implications were profound since Jefferson’s claims suggest that neither government nor human flourishing depend on a ruler. This was a shocking idea in an age when Europe’s great powers were all monarchies.

Part 6, Chapter 29 Summary: “The Creator”

Before unpacking the role of a creator in the Declaration, Allen reiterates that the colonists claimed equality with other nations not by any conventional measure of strength but via shared existence as states. Humanity is equal on a similar basis—all humans have the “status […] of being endowed with the same set of inalienable rights” (172). Endowment comes from the concept of a dowry, money given to a woman upon marriage that was hers by right and could not be used by another. Human beings, then, have been “gifted” the ability to pursue their right to happiness “by means of politics” (173). Humans are a part of the natural world and can claim virtue through this relationship—we know nature is good so people must also be. Circling back to the dowry analogy, Allen unpacks precisely how our rights are protected, as law and law enforcement protected women’s property: Equal access to government enables humans to protect their rights without relying on an outside authority. The human instinct for politics is “natural,” but humans are able to use government to defend themselves and enjoy their lives without conflict. Humanity’s gift from nature is more complex and harmonious than animal social hierarchies.

Part 6, Chapter 30 Summary: “Creation”

If Jefferson sees humans as created beings, what does that mean about the text’s relationship to God as originator of the world? Though this might remind readers of current controversies over evolution, it is important to remember that Darwin published decades after Jefferson. Instead, the dominant views of creation in the 18th century were Aristotle’s insistence that the world had always existed versus biblical creationism. Jefferson himself was a deist, a believer in some source of nature that was not biblical. He did believe world religions had value; he made his own version of Jesus of Nazareth’s teachings that deleted most references to God or “supernatural” activity. The Declaration, then, only establishes that nature has a “divine source,” but it offers no interpretation of what that source is. Answering the question of the world’s origins is not necessary to understand it.

Part 6, Chapter 31 Summary: “Beautiful Optimism”

Allen returns to the idea of the Declaration as a work that “combines ideas with process” (183). She quotes the section where the colonists assert their right to set up new governments on the basis of what is “most likely to effect their safety and happiness” (184). The Declaration’s equality, then, means that each individual has the capacity for self-determination, especially about personal happiness. Returning to her earlier analysis of John Locke, Allen reminds the reader of his metaphor of passengers on a ship trying to determine their direction. All humans, she asserts, can look at the present and ask themselves what current trends suggest about the future unless they take action to interrupt them. This happens in everyday life all the time, as when two people go on a date and one never calls the other back. The wronged party can decide that they should move on because they are unlikely to see a good outcome. This is where the Declaration’s “optimism” lies. All people, to some degree, can evaluate events and decide what to change to bring about personal happiness: “[A]s judges of our own happiness, we are equals” (186-88). This amounts to a defense of democracy as a superior system since only in a democracy do citizens commit to sharing their points of view with one another, for both individual and collective good. The democratic writing of the Declaration is a prime example of this dialogue, and it is part of how we use our “equal opportunity to use the instrument of government” (188).

Part 6, Chapters 27-31 Analysis

In this section, it becomes clear just how closely Allen intends us to read the Declaration. She evaluates not only its words but its logical structure, and yet here again, her own metaphors stress the democracy of the slow reading endeavor and the Declaration itself. In comparing the document to both mathematics and formal logic, Allen offers another demonstration that it is accessible to everyone, not just historians intimately familiar with Jefferson’s reading habits. Similarly, Allen’s elaboration on the Declaration’s own dowry metaphor suggests the document’s relationship to everyday life and common social practices. Like Jefferson, Allen therefore errs on the side of idealism in the conflict between Optimism and Pessimism About Humanity; she presents politics not as a frustrating process limited to elites but as something fundamental to human happiness and a vital practice in daily life. Political practice, writ large, is a “gift”—a capacity to analyze the present and the future and to create institutions to safeguard both.

At the same time, she remains committed to the document’s radical implications: Jefferson and his coauthors assert that humanity and reason make them fit architects of a new government that dispenses entirely with monarchy. Allen performs similar work when she discusses Jefferson’s vision of God and nature. We can accept that humans are part of nature, and thus practice politics, without needing to justify this idea with reference to a divine order.

This is possible in part because Allen’s vision of democracy is intimately tied to speech and language—foundational elements of human identity. The Declaration carries out its objectives—the changes in its memo—as a result of the talk and conversation that preceded its writing. This further establishes a positive, perhaps even exalted, view of what government is: citizens in conversation about the present and the past, and how they can and will use shared institutions to achieve their happiness.

This optimism in government may strike some readers as another reaction to the political climate of the 2010s. The Tea Party movement invoked the revolutionary era to justify its small government philosophies and equated federal programs with restrictions on freedom. Allen’s corrective to the Declaration’s logic suggests these arguments are rooted in improper readings of foundational documents. While her project is not explicitly partisan, it has obvious implications for reframing contemporary political debates about whether government is a positive or negative force.