Do You Have an American Mind?

In a letter to Henry Lee in 1825, Thomas Jefferson forever informed us that the intention of the Declaration of Independence was not to express “new principles” or “say things which had never been said before,” but rather was written to plainly represent the general thought of the time and “to be an expression of the American mind.” 

The principles succinctly expressed in the Declaration of Independence are the ideas and principles and philosophy of Americanism.  They are the immovable foundation of America. Believing in these principles and upholding and defending them is what it means to be an American and to have an American mind.

All of us are created by God and therefore by nature equally free and independent individuals.  No one is created to be subservient to someone else and no one is born to rule and reign and dominate others.

Every person is endowed by God in our creation with certain inherent, innate, unalienable rights. These rights are neither created by nor granted by other men and cannot be divested or deprived by others though we join in a social agreement and civil society.  Of course our unalienable rights can be trampled and abused by tyrants but they cannot take from us what God has given.

Our God-given inherent and unalienable rights are namely the right to the enjoyment and protection of life, liberty and freedom, and the autonomy to pursue whatever course of life we desire and to acquire, possess and manage property in all its forms.

The principles expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence are self-evident truths.  They are not supposition or evolving or transient.

The purpose and role of government is to secure, protect, and uphold our inherent and unalienable rights, not the limiting or trampling or curtailing of these rights. Government does not exist to manage our lives or redistribute wealth.

And Government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Politicians work for us; they are not above or beyond us the people.

The Constitution of the United States was inspired by and crafted to protect the principles elucidated in the Declaration. The Constitution devised a form of government, with its checks and balances and firewalls, to stifle ambitious tyrants and despots, and protect we the people in our freedoms and unalienable rights.

Of course Leftists and Marxists attack Thomas Jefferson because he is one of America's great founders and leading expounders of American Liberty and freedom and individualism. The Left knows that if they can successfully defame Jefferson then the principles he advocated would be tainted and thus vulnerable for rejection. So we can expect the Left to relentlessly do all in their power to destroy Jefferson and his reputation, and misrepresent his life and his intentions.

Interestingly, attacks on Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence are not a new effort. Abraham Lincoln confronted it in his day. And his answer to those who sought to dismiss the Declaration and Jefferson must also be our answer, “we must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.”

“The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.”

“All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” (April 6, 1859: Letter to H.L. Pierce)

And to all those who have apostatized from the principles of the Declaration, Abraham Lincoln also offers this invitation:

“My countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines [that] conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated in our charter of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the revolution...Come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence…The Declaration…was formed by the representatives of American liberty from thirteen States. (it) was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures…. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.”

“Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began – so that truth, justice, mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.” (From a Speech at Lewistown, Illinois; August 17, 1858)

The principles of Thomas Jefferson and the other founders and framers as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, are in fact independent and broader than all of them.  Important as they were to the foundation of America, they were merely God inspired instruments in proclaiming and establishing eternal truth.                                                  

So the question we must answer individually is do we have “an American mind?” Do we believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Do we believe that all were created by God to be equally free and independent? Do we believe in the truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence? If a majority of us say yes, then America will survive; but if not, our nation is doomed.  This is the hinge upon which the door of freedom swings open or shut.