America's Most Defining Document

Was it the Constitution, or the Declaration?

I normally post a “from the archives” on Friday, but this week I’m doing that Wednesday, because I have something else planned for Friday. This is my review of Matthew Spalding’s The Making of the American Mind at Civitas Outlook. It’s very appropriate material for the week, but possibly also a good follow-up to yesterday’s essay, because I issue at least a few cautions about embracing the Declaration as America’s “Founding Myth,” as Spalding (a Hillsdale political theorist) clearly wants to do.

Spalding clearly reads the Declaration as a high-minded document, rich in philosophical content and brimming with noble purpose. It is also, in his mind, the defining work of the American political tradition. He opens the book with a speech from Abraham Lincoln praising the “sacred principles” of the Declaration. The final chapter follows the later lives and contributions of the “Iron Men” of the Continental Congress, another hat-tip to Lincoln, who used that phrase to describe the Revolutionary generation. Spalding believes that America is “a good country, even a great country, perhaps the greatest,” mainly because “it is dedicated to, and constantly aspires to uphold, permanent principles about human liberty that are true.” It’s not dismissive, but merely descriptive, to say that this book embraces the Declaration as a founding myth, the Lupa Capitolina of the American people. Spalding wants to tell Americans who they are.

In the review, I consider “who Americans are” in Spalding’s view, and express some approval while also worrying a little.

Founding myths are a primary wellspring of political ideology, with all its attendant evils, and by now these problems should be familiar to historically literate people. The most obvious arises when a society has changed to the point where a thick founding vision can no longer be robustly realized. That can lead to civic unrest or just despair among those who remain deeply attached to that view. The Constitution, by providing a dynamic mechanism for deliberation and negotiation, offers more resources for moving forward when society is riven by deep disagreement. That’s one good reason for enshrining the Constitution, not the Declaration, as America’s most defining political document.

Another relevant problem arises when an idealized founding myth deters people from wrestling productively with perennial questions that cannot truly be resolved in a single beautiful synthesis, which, however moving, was still bounded in many ways by the concerns of a particular group of people in a particular moment. Spalding’s narrative is highly vulnerable to this kind of critique. Do “Nature” and “Nature’s God” really join hands so readily as he implies, or does that formulation put a deceptive gloss on hard questions that require more attention? Meanwhile, if “prudence” approved American independence, what lessons should we draw from this about national sovereignty more generally, and when or why a particular people should have it? Reflecting on that point, one notices something else. This book says remarkably little about freedom. Is that not among the things that Americans love?

Among conservative political wonks, “Constitution or Declaration” is one of those “Holy. Roman. Empire” topics that can often keep people going for awhile. Of course we don’t really have to choose. But there are reasons the question is worth pondering, and in the end I’m just going to say this.

I do, in fact, love freedom.