During a rousing moment in the final New Hampshire debate, Mike Huckabee misquoted the Declaration of Independence. This in itself may be excused, except that the nature of his misquote betrays his misunderstanding of the Declaration. It may also reveal a more insidious intention to purposefully misread the Declaration and promote destructive ignorance. It may be a good electoral tactic, but it is truly unfortunate. Huckabee declared that,
- “the primary purpose of a government, is to recognize that those rights did not come from government, they came from God. They are to be protected, and then defined, as the right to a life, the right to liberty, our freedom to live our lives like we wanna live them without government telling us how to do it.”
He is simply wrong—substantively and conceptually. Whether misinformed, ignorant, or deceptive, we cannot afford a president who either misunderstands the founding principles of our government and civil society or is trying to undermine those principles.
No one (other than some law & order conservatives or pro-torture hardliners) believes that rights come from government. He sets up this straw man in order to make is argument that rights came from God. This is simply a distortion (at best) of the intentions and ideas of the Framers. The Declaration actually says that,
- “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.”
The framers believed that the liberty of acting according to our own will is grounded in the possession of reason. John Locke said it is reason that makes us free and equal. Reason allows us to recognize the humanistic principle “that all being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”
Because all have access to the Law of Reason, we the people are able to institute government in order to protect and preserve those rights we naturally possess. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The “Creator” is not important to this principle. We have Rights because we are human and we extend Rights to others because we can recognize our shared humanity. Government is charged with the administrative task of guaranteeing our Rights. In no way is it the “primary purpose of a government . . . to recognize that those rights . . . came from God” as Huckabee imagines.
Furthermore, Huckabee’s idea of “God” has little in common with the deistic “Creator” of the Declaration. The founders where actually quite careful to exclude “God” from our charter documents and they certainly did not believe in a theistic God like Huckabee’s. But this is probably the real coded message of misinformation that Huckabee intends. If Huckabee wants to turn these United States into a theocracy, he should say so. There are those among his supporters who would like to create a Christian Nation. If this is Huckabee intent he should say as much. To distort Locke, Jefferson, Madison, et al is a betrayal of ideas and people who established the government that Huckabee wants to lead. The Constitution offers significant protection against politicians that would undermine its principles or who try to tear down the wall separating church and state, but we must be vigilant in listening to the coded words our would-be presidents speak.
Labels: declaration of independence, huckabee, jefferson, liberty, locke, president, rights
