The Mistake Conservatives Make about the Declaration
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By Hillsdale College Online Courses March 25, 2015
Many Conservatives are uncomfortable with the language of equality that they find within the Declaration of Independence. This is primarily because modern liberalism has borrowed that language, and applied to a slew of new policies that are opposed in themselves to the intention of the Founding Fathers.
The following video is a clip from Q&A 3 of Hillsdale’s online course, “The Presidency and the Constitution,” featuring Dr. Thomas West, Professor of Politics, and John J. Miller, Director of the Dow Journalism Program.
Transcript:
John Miller: What are the mistakes that conservatives most commonly make when they think about the Declaration and the founding?
Thomas West: I think it's fair to say most conservatives admire the founding. Where some conservatives break with the founding is that they don't like the language of liberty and equality that one finds prominently in the Declaration of Independence and also in many, many other founding documents.
That makes some conservatives uncomfortable, for a very understandable reason, mainly that that language has now been appropriated by the left and is used by the left all the time to justify their favorite policies, which typically are policies that conflict with things that the founding fathers would have approved of and instituted on their own.
You end up, as a result of the misappropriation I would call it of the language of the founding, with some conservatives criticizing the political theory of the founding, thinking that's somehow going to advance the cause of conservatism. This, in fact, mistakes the distinction between the way the founders understood those key terms and the way liberals have completely transformed them in today's politics.