What are the Founding Principles?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Though these lines pervade our political discourse, modern liberalism has redefined these terms, and most Americans, conservative and liberal alike, no longer understand their original context.

The following video is a clip from Lecture 2, The Theory of the Declaration and the Constitution, from Hillsdale’s Online Course: “Constitution 101.”

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Transcript:

What then are the founding principles?  That question might seem to have an easy answer because the famous phrases of the Declaration of Independence are so familiar: created equal, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, consent of the governed. But, in fact, few Americans today understand these principles in the founders' sense. One reason for that misunderstanding is that the terms of the Declaration, especially the ideas of liberty and equality, have been repudiated and redefined by today's liberalism. Today the equality of liberty, excuse me, the equality, today the idea of equality means that every person should have the same resources as all others, at least with regard to enjoying, and here I quote again the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”  Minority groups are presumed to be denied their rightful equality if they are not hired in proportion to a percentage of the population.  In this view jobs are viewed not as a pre-exchange of work for pay, but as benefits to be distributed by the coercive power of government to groups designated by government as disadvantaged.  Liberty today has come to mean that if you have a formal legal right to do something, for example a right to travel or to rent an apartment, and if you cannot afford it then you really do not have the right. Government therefore must set up public transportation and subsidized housing.  This liberal view of rights is very different from the founders'' conception for whom the right to liberty was a right to be free from the coercive interference of other people.