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From Lincoln's letter to Henry Pierce on April 16, 1859:
One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races." These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-gaurd--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Jefferson had help. He drew from George Mason, from Locke, even from Hume, and was corrected by Franklin (an interlocutor with Hume on logic and philosophy) who was almost certainly the one to cross out the words "sacred and undeniable" to replace them with "self-evident." Self-evident truths are Axioms. Adams likely assisted with the phrase "endowed by their Creator," placing Deity at the very beginning of the Axioms and crucial to the statement of Axioms.
It is customary today to refer to America as a creedal nation. Eminent historians, political philosophers, politicians, and commentators of every sort—particularly those who most champion and admire the American Founding—consistently proclaim America such. Perhaps most dedicated to that idea was Gordon S. Wood, who passed away this week at age 92, after being struck by an automobile. He was considered to be America's greatest living historian. That he died just short of America's 250th celebration of the Founding he studied so extensively is tragic indeed.
Other notable intellectuals, such as Stephen Hayes and Samuel Gregg, follow that creedal understanding of America. In that, they are in accord with Mormons (that is, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) who have essentially canonized the American Founding.
Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Kirtland, Ohio, December 16 and 17, 1833.
76. And again I say unto you, those who have been scattered by their enemies, it is my will that they should continue to importune for redress, and redemption, by the hands of those who are placed as rulers and are in authority over you-- 77 According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles; 78 That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgement. 79 Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another. 80 And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood.
This also concords with the response of David McCullough when asked by Peggy Noonan how such a collection of men of genius could exist at the same time in the same place: "Providence."
Noonan agreed.
Walter Isaacson goes beyond a creedal view in his small book, "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written," wherein he espouses Lincoln's view of this second paragraph of the Declaration as the Axioms of Freedom, and implies that America is an Axiomatic Nation, as Euclid's plane geometry is an axiomatic mathematical system. Jefferson's words, "That all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." that governments are formed to protect those rights, that governments obtain their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when governments fail in protecting those unalienable rights, it is the right, and duty, of the people to reorder government—these are the axioms of freedom, just as Euclid's Axioms are the axioms of plane geometry. Those are, to wit, that a straight line can be drawn between any two points. That a straight line can be continued indefinitely (a postulate that, in the words of David Berlinsky, made Euclid the king of infinite space). A circle can be drawn with any line segment. All right angles are equal. And the famous/infamous parallel line postulate: essentially, if the appropriate subtended angles of a straight line through two other straight lines sum to less than two right angles (180 degrees, that is), the lines will intersect.
Euclid's geometry was the veritable bible of the Scientific Revolution. From Descartes, to Galileo, to Newton and beyond, Euclid was a driving force. All mathematical and physical theories are now framed as axiomatic systems. His Geometry was a tour de force of mathematical logic. He showed how to prove each of the propositions (Theorems) from his axioms, including the Pythagorean theorem and Thales' theorem. Franklin studied Euclid carefully in the Eighteen Century, as did Lincoln in the 19th. His axioms had been debated, challenged, and modified for almost 2000 years, through the Islamic world, into Europe in the Renaissance, until in the 20th Century mathematicians definitively convinced themselves via symbolic logic that Euclid's geometry was logically perfect, and was so specifically because he had chosen the only axioms that made it so. Godel proved Euclid's system to be complete and consistent, as first-order logic. Beyond Euclid and ordinary arithmetic, he proved that all axiomatic systems of second-order logic are inherently incomplete and inconsistent. Beyond Euclid, logic is inherently flawed.
So it is, I would argue, along with Lincoln, with the Axioms of the Declaration. They are logically perfect, and no other axioms could possibly form the basis for human freedom as these axioms do. The Founders are to human freedom in governance, as Euclid is to plane geometry. The careful application of those Axioms to the structure of the Constitution was undertaken by Madison primarily, with Hamilton, Jay, and many others involved. Through this process, Madison became, arguably, the greatest applied political philosopher in the history of the world. Contrary to the musings of others who hold that the Declaration and Constitution have nothing to do with each other, I believe it is incontrovertible that the Axioms of the Declaration were carefully applied in the structuring of the Constitution, in a complex document that distilled the essence of human freedom in a way unparalleled in history. There were errors (as there were in Euclid), such as the circumstance of slavery, that were corrected by drawing on what the document got right.
Today, we are again enmeshed in a morass not unlike Lincoln's. The miners and sappers of freedom now are not the slave holders and defenders of Lincoln's day, but their heirs, the Progressives, under whose despotic ministrations we have suffered for well over a century. They mean to subjugate us, and so we must repulse them.
Clarence Thomas has raised a quiet but clarion call to that end in his speech in Austin, Texas. He again noted that we are a nation divided, a house divided against itself, that cannot stand. Progressivism, by its own lights, is antithetical to the Declaration and Constitution. We will either maintain the freedoms gifted to us by the Founders, or we will lose them entirely to Progressive tyranny. We will become either one thing or the other.
Discussion (7)
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I have "liked" this post, and I think it has the potential to be a worthy discussion for promotion to the Main Feed. Whether or not promotion happens will depend upon more than just "likes."
I am choosing to focus on the closing statement: "Clarence Thomas...noted that we are a nation divided, a house divided against itself, that cannot stand. Progressivism, by its own lights, is antithetical to the Declaration and Constitution. We will either maintain the freedoms gifted to us by the Founders, or we will lose them entirely to Progressive tyranny. We will become either one thing or the other."
I agree with Justice Thomas and @NanoceltTheContrarian. I will offer the cautionary note that Progressivism (like poison ivy) is a pernicious, aggressive, and adaptive weed, drawing its philosophical roots from multiple sources. When the Democratic party began adopting Progressivism in the years following 1877, it was following in the footsteps of the Republican Party, which had been blazing its trail for decades beforehand. The Republican Party was the party in favor of big, unitary, central government. It was 19th century Republicans who were the champions of top-down authority of Washington DC over the post-bellum states that had been stripped of any sovereignty other than what the Federal government deemed to allow them. It was not until the "War Socialism" of Woodrow Wilson and the proto-Fascism of FDR's New Deal that the Republican Party attempted to rediscover the original understanding of the Constitution.
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I would point out that almost all Republicans in the time of Wilson were also Progressives: Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and pretty much everyone else. There were few Constitutionalists or Conservatives. Teddy famously wanted to Amend the Constitution by simple majority vote of Congress. His Square Deal was big government writ large. Taft was the one who got the ball rolling on the 16th Amendment (a steeply progressive income tax, forbidden by the Original Constitution--Bret Kavanaugh disagrees but doesn't know what he is talking about--see his execrable Moore decision--). Even the vaunted 4 Horsemen Conservatives on the Supreme Court that opposed Roosevelt's NIRA and laughed it out of court were unanimous in voting for the Ur-project of the early 20th Century Progressives, namely Eugenics, with their obscene vote with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr's majority opinion in Buck v. Bell. Coolidge both promoted J Edgar to director of the FBI, an illegitimate agency, and signed the 1924 Immigration restriction act that was based on Eugenics (and was quite expressly anti-Semitic, blocking the immigration of Eastern European and Russian Jews, who had fled Russia and environs en masse following the 1881 assassination of the Czar, which set off a wave of pogroms) favoring northern Europeans and Brits. In my view, much of the Republican Party, remains Progressive (mostly in the Senate). It was, after all, a Republican COngress and President who passed the bill that allowed a retroactive tax on unrealized gains in the Mandatory Repatriation Tax, that Kavanaugh along with all the SC save Thomas and Gorsuch voted for (Thomas described the majority opinion as "consequentialist" meaning the outcome was simply based on what the Court wanted to do and not the actual law or history of , or correct definition of, direct and indirect taxes. Kavanaugh so muddied the waters that this will be extremely difficult to correct; I believe that decision was one of the factors motivating Thomas' speech). Any actual conservative would have great concern for the looming failure of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, not to mention the massive federal debt, but no one in Washington seems focused on these matters at all.
As a start to the remedy for Progressivism, I have proposed the 8616 Project to repeal the 16th Amendment and allow only a direct tax via States on a capitated basis as allowed in the original Constitution (eg, eliminate the federal income tax, eliminating thus the IRS--no one would have to submit a federal income tax return). That would give States a stake again in the national fiscal policy and place a desperately needed restraint on federal taxing and spending that at this point, have no limiting principle in federal law, given the Roberts opinion in the Obamacare tax/penalty and the Kavanaugh opinion in Moore, opening the door to a federal wealth tax.
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I love this post and the first two comments. I'm going to take some time here to express some of my thoughts that may explain why this is so. I agree that this post should be promoted to the main feed and I am hopeful regarding discussion because the subject is so very connected to the survival of the American republic we know and love.
I have become aware of and accepted two really significant things during these last couple of decades that bear on and influence all of which I will write. First is the amount of insight and understanding of specific events during my lifetime, both personal and general, that now shape how I view the subject of the essence and meaning of the temporal effects on the formation and survival of the American republic. And second is my realization that "Providence", as suggested by one of the citations in the original post, has been an important part of America's founding and my life.
I haven'f read Gordon Wood's works but I looked at some reviews and his product is valuable, particularly as it details John Adams's views. To reduce verbiage here I'm going to make a short list of how I have come to view individual contributions to our founding process. There were a lot of rumblings in the decade before the shots were fired to begin the American War for Independence and Thomas Jefferson's drafting of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams lived where the action started. Here are some short versions of my thoughts:
John Adams had a lot of input to the creation of the main body of the Constitution which addresses the structural elements of Congress, the Presidency, and the independent Judiciary. Adams had a lot of background on this topic as the Massachusetts Colonial Constitution was prominent.
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration and George Mason and others insisted the Bill of Rights be introduced and adopted as amendments to the Constitution after ratification and adoption. James Madison made this happen.
These two pieces put together connect America and Christianity by recognizing individual free agency as a God-given right for every human being.
I'll have more to say.
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This is the same fight that faces every Republic at many points in its life. Every success sows seeds that end in disaster, like one thru ten of swords in the tarot.
The mechanism is always the same, but it takes different forms. This time it's due to the luxury of feminism, that whelped a generation of child-men who didn't mature. When people don't mature, they do not remain children. Many of them become monsters.
Last century we started by culling and killing the best of the young men. Maybe we will be better positioned after the victory this time.
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Jefferson, Lincoln, and Thomas all consistently were aware of the same foe, and they all arrived at the same remedy. Jefferson codified it - the Axioms of Freedom are the living strategy of the fight to preserve the Republic. We should expect to have to fight again.
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