The Error in the Declation of Independence

A few weeks ago I realized there is an error in the Declaration of Independence which, ultimately, accounts for the excessive militarism in the United States government today.

In particular, the Declaration states, "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" No problem here, however, the text continues, " That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men," This is the problem, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...",

The problem is this, the total justification given for the government, any government, is to defend liberty. Therefore, the United States justifies a strong military at all times - needed because it is used to "defend our liberties."

I believe it was 1960 when President Eisenhower warned against the "Military-Industrial Complex" which we are so caught up in today. However, there is a much earlier warning given in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe on July 31, 1988. "If no check can be found to keep the number of standing troops within safe bounds while they are tolerated as far as necessary, abandon them altogether, discipline well the militia [State Armies, National Guard, if you will], and guard the magazines with them. More than magazine guards will be useless if few, and dangerous if many." Even Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, recognized a danger in giving the military too much power.

What is the purpose of the government? This can be stated easily: the purpose of government, any government, is to make decisions for the whole of the people. This can be said of any government from the most oppressive dictatorship to the most liberal democracy. Therefore, the need for the constitution is evident, that is, the people need to make certain that the decisions the government makes on its behalf are, in fact, representative of the desires of the people.

This is one of the errors of the Libertarian party. They worry about personal liberty so much that they forget the purpose of government is to make decisions for the group. Therefore, they appose public schools, yet who am I to say that a group of people could not get together and decide they want to educate their children? It is easy to see that an educated population is, in fact, much better off than an illiterate one. (Note, this does not justify the schools in doing whatever they want, as they must be answerable to the people who created them.)

In fact, in Kansas one of the agreements made by the people is that the State would be in charge of insuring the education of the students. That is perfectly within the rights of the people, although the wisdom of such a decision can be argued.

To get back to the original topic for this page, the Declaration of Independence, born out of war, at a time when the liberty of the young United States was actually under siege. (Recall the revolutionary war started more than a year before the people decided to create the country. This country was born of war!) Therefore, the ideas foremost in the minds of the writers of the Declaration were defense of liberty. It is not by error that the Constitution, and even the Articles of Confederation (which preceded the Constitution) were not written until the war was over and people could think of other things, could consider their actions more thoroughly.

But by then the ideas of war and defense were so ingrained into people. Every war was for the "defense of Liberty" in theory, from the Barbary wars to the war with Iraq. There has always been a tendency of the President and Congress to justify any war they wanted to engage in as a war to defend Liberty, even when they are patently not.

The most terrible war in United States History, the Civil war, cannot really be justified as a defense of Liberty, but some people, particularly from the South, will point out that it was a war to subjugate Liberty. While the latter can be questioned (the Liberty of Black people was an issue) the former cannot be, as the Confederacy never was able to attack the North in Northern territory (excepting Gettysburg).

Iraq was justified as a war to defend Liberty. After all, Sadam Hussein was threatening the United States with Weapons of Mass Destruction, which he didn't have, and could not have delivered to the United States had he had them. The truth was greatly abused, but the idea that to fight the war to defend Liberty was not.