Celebrating* 250 Years of American Mythology?

Celebrating* 250 Years of American Mythology?

Kenneth Craycraft

As the Fourth of July approaches, we Americans are collectively claiming to be celebrating 250 years of American independence. This is a myth. More accurately, we are commemorating the 250th anniversary of a declaration of, and adherence to, a set of moral and political ideas—some number of “self-evident” “truths.” These, too, are myths. The United States of America will not be 250 years old in 2026. And probably no truth is self-evident, especially the “self-evident” truths asserted in the Declaration of Independence.

While the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, the collection of colonies now known as the United States of America did not become an independent sovereign state until nearly 8 years later, on January 14, 1784. This is the date that the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, was ratified. It is true, of course, that we are celebrating the 250^th anniversary of our assertion of independence, which set the events in motion that led to actual independence. But the political entity known as the United States of America will not celebrate its status as an independent state for another 8 years or so. But this is rather a benign myth.

The second myth—that the United States is founded upon allegedly self-evident truths—is not so benign. The very notion of “self-evident” truths is philosophically problematic, regardless of what truth-claim is alleged. That’s a discussion of epistemology (what we know and how we can know it) outside the scope of this column. But even if there are such things as self-evident truths, the principal assertion of truth in the Declaration of Independence is neither self-evident nor true.

This is not to suggest that Catholic Christians cannot live under such myths. Nor am I asserting that nothing “true” can be found in some of the ends and means of American political life. The political regime in which no good can be found is the rare exception rather than the rule. And certainly, the political foundations and superstructures of the United States of America have aspects that we can affirm. That said, however, for Catholics the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence should be less an occasion of celebration, and more of an opportunity to reflect upon the tension of Catholic faith and American public life.

The Declaration of Independence asserts that its signatories, representing their constituents of the 13 colonies, “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.” Now, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are certainly legitimate goods and, when properly defined, legitimately to be sought. But the theory (not “truth”) that we have “inalienable Rights” to the pursuit of such goods—or to anything else—is a myth. Moreover, it is a myth that, at the very best, is in tension with a Catholic understanding of the human person. At worst, it both contradicts Catholic moral theology and erodes Catholic witness.

It is certainly true that magisterial and other official ecclesial documents are filled with the language of “human rights.” While some of this usage begs for clarification and delimitation, the theory of rights in Church documents is always a corollary of human dignity. As Pope Leo XIV puts in in Magnifica Humanitas 55, such human rights “are grounded in the common dignity of every man and every woman.” This understanding of human rights is not the theory asserted in the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is precisely opposite that theory. The theory of inalienable rights in the Declaration is rooted in a rejection of the “common dignity of every man and every woman.” Rather, the theory of possessive individual rights is founded on the assertion that the “state of nature” is one of “war of every man against every man.” As used in ecclesial documents, “rights” are the natural immunities, protections, and privileges that flow logically from the Christian understanding of the dignity of the human person. As used in the Declaration, “rights” are based on a rejection of that dignity.

This is not to say that Catholics cannot live in a state founded upon such myths. Christian faith and practice are not dependent upon the relative truthfulness of the political theory of the state in which they are practiced. But to live in such a regime is one thing. To celebrate and propagate its myths is something else altogether.

The best argument that there are no such self-evident truths as individual possessive rights is that no one “discovered” them until about the 17^th century. Neither Plato nor Socrates, the two most important pagan philosophers for Christian theology, discovered the “self-evident” truth of individual rights. Nor did arguably the two most important political theologians in Christian history, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Such a notion of individual rights would contradict everything these thinkers had to say about the human person and social life.

The theory of individual rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence was not discovered. It was invented by British philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the middle of the 17^th century. And it was conceived to displace the historic Catholic Christian understanding of the social nature of the human person. For Hobbes, the state of nature is a “war of every man against every man,” in which every person has a right to possess anything he has the power to take, without regard to any kind of social concern. While his contemporary John Locke tried to soften the implications of this theory, he did not abandon it.

Until Hobbes and Locke in the middle 1600s no one had even asserted that there are such rights, because no one had asserted, as Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state of war of every man against every man. Both Hobbes and Locke posited possessive individual rights as a replacement of the Christian understanding of the nature of the human person and society, not its complement. In a 1798 letter, Thomas Jefferson, the chief draftsman of the Declaration, called John Locke (with Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon) one of “the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception.” He called Locke’s Second Treatise of Government “perfect as far as it goes,” finding its practical application in the Federalist Papers.

The state of nature as a war of every man against every man is theory to which Thomas Jefferson subscribed. And, thus, it is the theory that Jefferson asserted in the Declaration of Independence. And Jefferson expressly anticipated that the effect of this theory would be the eradication of Christian faith in the United States. “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the US. who will not die an Unitarian,” Jefferson wrote in an 1822 letter. And he credits the very theory canalized in the Declaration of Independence as the means to achieve that end.

The provenance of individual possessive rights does not necessarily mean that an assertion of individual rights is false, of course. But it does mean that it is not “self-evident.” Moreover, if a theory of individual rights is true, Christian moral theology is false. Which is another way of saying, if Christian moral theology is true, any assertion of inalienable rights is false. They both might be false. But they cannot both be true, any more than it can be true that Bill is a married bachelor.

Catholic Christians can live peaceably in a regime that is founded upon a false philosophy of possessive individual rights. *But it is not at all clear that we can celebrate it.

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