Precepts and Operation The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It
Larry P. Arnn, Thomas Nelson, 224 pages Brian Beyer
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isregard for the Constitution was fashionable for much of the 20th and 21st centuries--think the New Deal, Great Society, the post-9/11 Surveillance State, etc.—but contempt towards one of America’s founding documents is no longer being left unanswered. Thanks to the Tea Party, Americans are once again scrutinizing the actions of government and the constitutionality of those actions. Dr. Larry P. Arnn, president of über-conservative Hillsdale College, set out to remind Americans that it’s not only the Constitution that deserves a closer look, arguing that the Declaration of Independence is inextricably tied with the Constitution and equally deserves the liberty activist’s attention. This “divine and natural connection between the Declaration and the Constitution” is essential if one wishes to maintain the America that was fought for over 200 years ago. If these two documents and the glue that binds them are forgotten, Arnn warns that the America of yesteryear will be lost and forgotten in his newest book The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It. Arnn contends that the history of the United States is one influenced by the meaning of America’s birthday, the occasion on which the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence: On the one hand, it is a specific day, marked in memory of specific things done by specific people in a specific place. On the other hand, it is a day for the ages and for everywhere. The lessons learnt from this document are both timeless and time specific, universal and relevant only to one country and people. It is the job of the Constitution, Arnn argues, “to institute and to guard this combination.” American history has generally been defined by the ebb and flow of those who have “endeavored to embrace” this combination, and those who have “endeavored to escape it.” Arnn rightly attacks those who have “endeavored to escape,” but notably exempts those on the right from his criticism. Most of his ire is directed towards Obamacare, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the “administrative state,” Cass Sunstein, and Nancy Pelosi. This criticism is undoubtedly deserved as “an evolutionary standard of rights” was never envisioned by the Founders. Nevertheless, Arnn devotes all of his attention to the overuse and abuse of positive rights while not once mentioning the egregious infringement of negative rights during the post 9/11 era. The American surveillance state, an alphabet soup of notoriously secret government and private agencies, has powers that “are both sweeping and
sealed off from accountability to the people.” Americans are quite literally watched day and night by cameras, wiretaps, algorithms, and all other sorts of oppressive technology. Arnn says of the administrative state, “The whole system is arbitrary, complex and shrouded in mystery.” While it would have been impossible for him to chronicle every abuse of the administrative state, his omission of the surveillance state is noteworthy and regrettable, lending a partisan air to an otherwise apt critique of government abuses. For all of his gripes about government gone wild, Arnn concedes that government is not alien but necessary. The Declaration was concerned with peoples, “who have a standing in nature…it is natural for people to form peoples.” So while it is natural for people to want to rid themselves of a bad government, it is equally natural to want to establish a just government. The Declaration lays the general rules for that arrangement. Those rules, states the Declaration, are to be found in the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” the natural laws of life, liberty, and property (or the “pursuit of happiness” as it is termed in the Declaration). The crux of natural law is that all men are created equal and endowed with the same rights. Arnn clarifies “equality” in an exceptionally clear and vivid manner. Clearly, an NFL offensive lineman does not seem equal to most men his age, just as an undergraduate studying Elizabethan poetry would seem to excel beyond her college aged peers. Despite these seemingly gaping inequalities, Arnn argues that it is rationality that brings all humans together. This entitles men to “govern the nonrational parts.” But what of the rational parts—other men? It is only with written consent that the “virtuous” of society can lead. And it is the principle of equality that provides for such a system, since, as Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” A medium was found. Slavery and racism, however, left an ugly mark on American history. Black people and other minorities had no rights and could not choose their own leaders. White men were able to rule over what they saw as “nonrational parts.” Hence an important question: Were certain Founders, who held slaves while preaching about the wonders of individualism, hypocrites? Arnn makes a flimsy case that they were not. Even though Jefferson had slaves of his own, he actively fought against slavery in his writings and career in government. His work for the cause of liberty outweighed his own personal misgivings. But, even by Arnn’s own definition of “hypocrite”
38 March 2012