National Archives Considering Changing the Declaration of Independence to Reflect Pro-Government Values

July 3, 2014 By Greg Campbell


We’ve all heard calls for changing the Constitution, but changing the Declaration of Independence?

According to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., there exists in our hallowed founding document a typo of sorts that she feels should be changed to better reflect the value of government.

This Fourth of July, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, though many scholars have noted that in all likelihood, the actual signing of the declaration took place little by little with members signing the declaration at their earliest opportunities over the course of weeks.

Still, America will be celebrating the document that separated us from Great Britain amidst high taxation and unbearable tyranny by a monarch who remained at ease ruling unilaterally and authoritatively with little use for a legislative body.

According to The New York Times:

The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., concerns a period that appears right after the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the transcript, but almost certainly not, she maintains, on the badly faded parchment original.

That errant spot of ink, she believes, makes a difference, contributing to what she calls a “routine but serious misunderstanding” of the document.

The period creates the impression that the list of self-evident truths ends with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she says. But as intended by Thomas Jefferson, she argues, what comes next is just as important: the essential role of governments — “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — in securing those rights.

“The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights,” Ms. Allen said. “You lose that connection when the period gets added.”…

“Are the parts about the importance of government part of one cumulative argument, or — as Americans have tended to read the document — subordinate to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’?” said Jack Rakove, a historian at Stanford and a member of the National Archives’ Founding Fathers Advisory Committee. “You could make the argument without the punctuation, but clarifying it would help.”…

And now the archives, after a meeting last month with Ms. Allen, says it is weighing changes to its online presentation of the Declaration of Independence.

“We want to take advantage of this possible new discovery,” William A. Mayer, the archives’ executive for research services, said in an email.
Allen’s assertion is preposterous. While legitimate questions can be raised about aged documents and true intentions, the left has continued to try and skew one meaning into another in matters of American freedom.

The left too-often claims that a debate exists where there is none. The “debate” over whether the Second Amendment protects a collective or an individual right to firearm ownership is laughable. The “debate” over states’ rights is equally absurd. The “debate” on whether the First or Fourth Amendments protect information transmitted electronically is ludicrous.

Similarly, this “debate” over whether or not a blob of ink transforms Thomas Jefferson into a devout statist is flat-out insane.

Even if Allen believed this was a possibility, the surest way to clear up the confusion over the intentions of the Founding Fathers would be to read the words of Jefferson, of John Adams, of Ben Franklin and discover the voluminous rants and raves and cautions against a powerful government. The words of these men fill tomes as they praised the value of the individual over the government.

Why on Earth would a document dedicated to denouncing government simultaneously praise government as the protector of the individual?

Those who favor the role of government over the role of the individual will, in all likelihood, never give up their crusade to reimagine history to support their arguments. What conservatives can do is always be willing to shine a light on that which is ridiculous.

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/07/03/natio...rnment-values/