In 1820, decades after declaring the self-evident truth that life and liberty are Creator-endowed, Thomas Jefferson wrote to an English historian, “Here we are not afraid to follow truth.”
Now two centuries on and counting, are we still unafraid to follow and defend our founding truths? Do we even remember the Creator who endowed us with our unalienable rights? Abraham Lincoln’s lament during the darkest days of the Civil War seems targeted to us also.
We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
But in our case, it is more than mere amnesia. In one of the most audacious attacks ever on our founding principles, some among us are actively seeking to erase our history and undermine our sacred rights—as noted by the report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights in 2020.
Comprised of such luminaries as Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard, Professor Paolo Carozza of Notre Dame, Dr. Peter Berkowitz of Stanford, and Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University, the Commission decried the political agenda in America and beyond that “devalues core rights, and denies rights in the name of rights.”
Mark Levin has called it a “counterrevolution to the American Revolution,” and warned that “it is devouring our society and culture, swirling around our everyday lives, and ubiquitous in our politics, schools, media, and entertainment.” We cannot afford to stand idly by, says Levin. “We must rise to the challenge, as did our Founding Fathers, when they confronted the most powerful force on earth, the British Empire, and defeated it.”
In short, the Founders’ Declaration must become our Declaration. “It is not a parchment to take out once a year,” urged historian Henry Steele Commager, but “is vital and immediate. It argues a case that is still valid and announces principles that are still true. It still calls upon us to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our honor to their vindication.”
According to Elder Matthew S. Holland, “With this country, there is entrusted to each generation a sacred charge: to cherish the hallowed inheritance of our liberties and steward those liberties for all generations to come.” And what if, heaven forbid, we should fail to fulfill that sacred charge? Said Ronald Reagan,
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
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