Democracy Summer! Week 2
Danielle Allen on the Declaration of Independence
Hi all,
A lot going on - I loved Gavin Newsom’s speech today pushing back on authoritarianism and Executive overreach. This is not an endorsement of potential candidacy- but I think Newsom hits a lot of important points -
This moment fits right in with week 2 of Professor Danielle Allen’s course on Civic Engagement, all about the Declaration of Independence.
We the People: Civic Engagement in a Constitutional Democracy.
This week took me about 2.5-3 hours or so to complete, taking notes and reading supplemental material.
We started with a review of pre-Declaration history - the violations of the British Crown against the colonies.
From 1765 to the Revolution – first Indians and then Colonists felt exploited by the British. (7 Year War, Sugar Act, Stamp Act.) The colonies were injured by threats to land and wealth. They began circulating a “vocabulary of rights, to describe both the protections they believed they needed in order to flourish and the failure of the British crown to provide those protections.”
The British Parliament responded to the Boston Massacre and other incidents with little or no reconciliation, but emphasizing their Authority. Then…
Boston Tea Party 1773
Coercive Acts (“The Intolerable Acts” as they were dubbed by those who would seek independence)
Continental Congress, Battles of Lexington and Concord 1775
Olive Branch Petition 1775 – some tried to appease and gain standing and new understanding, but George III declared the colonies to be in open rebellion.
“When the colonists reached the point of deciding to revolt from Britain, they believed they needed to spell out their reasons. In fact, when the Continental Congress passed a resolution, it would appoint a committee to provide a preamble that laying out their justification. They considered it important to spell out the values motivating their decisions as a matter of routine practice. Their civic identity included a commitment to providing reasons for their actions…While Thomas Jefferson was the scribe, the intellectual case of the Declaration was crafted significantly by Adams and Franklin…In several places the Committee of the Whole softened the draft’s language and made it less radical.” (The original draft made the case that enslavement was a tyranny.)
“In making their case, the members of Congress used a vocabulary of rights. Safety and happiness, they argued, depend on governments that secure rights. They provided examples of the rights to be secured: life, liberty, and happiness. They also had specific complaints. Britain was violating their rights to trial by jury, to freedom from arbitrary military interference, and to participate in representative government, for instance. But in addition to this rights-based argument, the colonists were also narrating a story of self. They were sharing with the world what mattered to them and why, what was wrong with their world, and how they proposed to bring a change. They were changemakers. As we read the Declaration of Independence, we have a chance to understand both the philosophy of rights and the components of civic agency.”
You might like these articles:
Allen, Danielle. “The Declaration’s dual traditions: Broad equality, and equality for whites,” Washington Post, 2 July 2015.
“As the men of 1776 approached their fateful break from Britain, they argued over the proper orienting ideal for government: property or happiness? On the side of happiness were John Dickinson, the only slave owner in the Continental Congress to free his slaves after the summer of 1776, and John Adams, who never owned slaves, who considered slavery wrong and whose wife, Abigail, hired free black laborers in the spring of 1776. On the side of property were the Virginians, among them Thomas Jefferson.”
Allen, Danielle. “How the Declaration of Independence Offers a Roadmap to a Better Union.” FORUM, The Magazine of Florida Humanities, Spring 2020, p. 22.
“The mistakes made by the founding generation resided in their assessment of what power exclusively held could deliver for those outside the circle of power-sharing. It is our responsibility to correct their mistake and achieve genuine power-sharing throughout our institutions — civic and political – so as to set our sights once again on a more perfect union.”
Obviously, the Declaration of Independence left out Blacks and other non-Whites, women, and American Indians, though Allen makes it clear that “all men are created equal” referred to “humans” and not a gender. Abigail Adams had quite a conversation with John Adams about this, arguing for womens’ fundamental rights and equality.
“Contrary to white colonial beliefs that Indians were ungovernable and uncivilized “savages,” several Native groups had long adhered to laws that aimed to maintain peace and inter-tribal cooperation. For example, the five nations that formed the Haudenosaunee or the Iroquois League—the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca—operated under a form of representative government outlined in a constitution known as the Great Law of Peace….
The tribes mutually agreed to peaceful relations amongst themselves, and although each tribe had the right to decide their own affairs, the five tribes would make decisions about war and peace with outside groups together.”
The signatories of the DOI weren't willing to do the emotional and concrete labor of including Blacks, women, and American Indians in their government. An inclusive process would have produced a more just reality - but an inclusive process would been extraordinarily divisive as well. Seems familiar. And to my understanding, Jefferson and others later admitted that it was greed that kept them from taking on the immorality of enslavement.
Allen ended on the key point of the syllogism in the second sentence of the DOI, which unfortunately was accidentally split with a period in the widely distributed newspaper printing.
All men are created equal
We need governments to secure those rights
When government fails to secure those rights …. it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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 - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --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.
The signatories laid out their syllogism and proceeded to list the tyrannies of the Crown. They also said their war was not with the British people, who could be in peacetime friends. It was just this tyrannical monarchy that exploited them and violated their basic rights.
Hmm… methinks President Shrimp … well he don’t get it. He’s not exactly a scholar on these points - but they’re not fine points. They are the foundations of everything that has formed us as a nation and a people.
It’s crazy to be here in this moment, seeing such brazen abuse of power, outright cruelty, utter nonsense in public pronouncement, and endless self-justification and “doubling and tripling down.”
We gotta think about posterity though. History has not judged tyrants well. I don’t think our system of government is fundamentally and inherently tyrannical, but we have allowed forces that devalue people to proliferate. Certainly greed, and the “hobby horse of popularity” as Hamilton put it have led to an unequal state of affairs. We’ve got to put some checks on this puppy at some point. We must underscore separation of Church and State. We’ve got to develop collective and institutional wisdom on leadership pathways, and absolute rejection of autocracy. We have to recognize that unchecked bias does great harm. We have to emphasize human dignity. Donald Trump does not have the right to determine our worth, or divide us for his profit and entertainment.
Enough’s enough.
Hope to see you at a No Kings! rally this Saturday, and hope you have time to put in a call to your Senators to kill the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which would decimate mental health, science, and Medicaid, and also prevent regulation on AI and court’s holding POTUS and others in contempt. You can also call to express yourself on the current militaristic escalation. These should all be no-brainers for anyone sworn to uphold the Constitution - but apparently it’s not.
You can’t spell UNITED without U.
Warmly,
Ravi
ICYMI, here are my past two posts:
