The Declaration and 'The Civitas Collection 250'

Much of the scholarship on the Declaration of Independence is written by scholars, for scholars. While this scholarship is valuable, it does not contribute as much to an informed citizenry as it should. Amid growing concern that our educational institutions are failing to teach civics effectively to future generations, there has been an outgrowth of civic schools and centers at universities across the country, including the Civitas Institute, which publishes Civitas Outlook and is affiliated with it. Many of the faculty at these centers have now produced a new volume on the Declaration, The Civitas Collection 250. Unlike much of the scholarship on the Declaration, this volume aims to deepen citizens’ understanding of the Declaration and the country it has so deeply influenced.  

The Collection contains a few dozen short, accessible essays on a variety of topics related to the Declaration of Independence, offered primarily by faculty employed at the various civic centers that have appeared across the country in recent years. (Depending on one’s definition of a “civic center,” fourteen to sixteen of the book’s twenty-five contributors are employed at such centers.)  Just as Thomas Jefferson famously called the Declaration “an expression of the American mind,” the Civitas Collection is an expression of the civic center mind.  

This is – for the most part – a strength of the collection. The book is written to be accessible to a broad audience, including undergraduate students and the interested public. Its reach may be broader than that of work commissioned by other organizations to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial. The book lacks some of the perspectives that have played an important role in keeping the Declaration front and center in American political life. Scholars from the Claremont Institute, for instance, are conspicuous by their absence here (though, to be fair, Joseph Bessette and John Yoo are contributors who are loosely affiliated with the Institute).  

That said, the great strength of the book is the accessibility and relevance of the essays to today’s debates over the meaning of the Declaration. These essays should be assigned reading for undergraduate students in American Political Thought and U.S. Constitution courses. They address some of the most foundational yet pressing questions swirling around our most famous document. Moreover, they offer different perspectives on these questions.  

Creed or Culture?  

The fight over whether America is a “creedal” nation has been ongoing for some years, but has certainly intensified in recent years. J.D. Vance, at a Claremont Institute dinner last year, asserted that “America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.”  

A few months later, Gordon Wood fired back in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, calling America “at heart a creedal nation,” with “no American ethnicity to back up the state.” Vivek Ramaswamy also called America a “creed,” proclaiming that “No matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you are every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant, as long as you subscribe to the creed of the American founding and the culture that was born of it.” These volleys have revived the question of what defines America: is it ultimately an idea, or a nation with a specific culture and history?  

Many of the essays in The Civitas Collection 250 offer different responses and emphases to this question. On the one hand, Justin Dyer opens the volume asserting that “America…is unique in its founding declaration to a political creed.”  Richard Reinsch is more circumspect: “While America is undoubtedly a home, it is also defined by the significance of [the Declaration] and what it teaches us about our rights and responsibilities as citizens.”  

Appearing later, Wilfred McClay argues persuasively that this is a false dichotomy. McClay acknowledges that the emphasis on America’s “creedal” character has important defects. He also notes that intellectuals, cosmopolitan by inclination, have the greater propensity to reduce America to its creedal side. But ultimately, America cannot simply be reduced to a specific culture and ethnicity, like other nations. In his words, “aspirational universalism is a key part of American national self-consciousness…but it has its limits, and its fallacies, and its pitfalls, of which we should be equally aware.” These essays nicely introduce the tension between these two conceptions of the American nation, while refusing to accept uncritically the notion that they are necessarily in tension.  

A New Political Science?  

Another critical question about the Declaration concerns its philosophical influences. Is the Declaration, and by extension the American Founding, committed to an Enlightenment liberalism that was destined to go off the rails? Several essays in the Civitas Collection push back against this increasingly popular notion.  

C. Bradley Thompson’s essay on the moral logic and overarching principles of the Declaration comes the closest to embracing a purely Lockean interpretation of the document. Other essays emphasize a broader set of philosophic influences, ranging from “Montesquieu and the common law” (Paul Carrese) to the “medieval Christian emphasis on natural rights.” (Thomas Howes) Carrese is especially forceful, writing that “Montesquieu and the common law…shape the Declaration as much as Locke does; indeed, these provide the harmonizing nexus that terms Lockean liberalism.” Carrese even goes so far as to say that “a traditional, nobler view of citizenship…is featured in Montesquieu’s philosophy yet is simply absent in Locke’s Second Treatise.”  

This interpretation of Locke seems overstated – at least if one considers Locke’s entire corpus. However, the various chapters on the Declaration’s philosophic influences raise interesting and differing arguments and can inform readers about the richness of the traditions from which the Founders drew.    

What Kind of Government?  

The volume’s later chapters explore more practical and applied questions. One prominent theme is whether the Declaration of Independence prescribes a specific form of government. As readers may recall, the Declaration says that when exercising their right to “alter or to abolish” their form of government, and “institute new government,” they may set “its foundation on such principles and organiz[e] its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Does that mean people can set up a monarchy if it would ensure their safety and happiness? Or must all governments be based on “the consent of the governed,” and therefore democratic, broadly defined?  

The essays in the Civitas Collection are in disagreement. Taking Harry Jaffa’s side in a dispute with Martin Diamond, Flagg Taylor suggests that the Declaration requires a popular form of government. Joseph Bessette highlights the tension between two of the Declaration’s commands: that government protects natural, unalienable rights, and that it relies on consent. As he argues, “in the real world, these principles can, and sometimes do, conflict: a majority of the people may consent to using government to deny rights to a minority.” In Bessette’s view, the Declaration hints at a solution in these cases: prioritize natural rights over consent. Some “language in the Declaration,” he argues, “clearly shows that such consent need not take the form of ongoing democratic control of government.”  

Though Taylor’s essay is not written in response to Bessette’s, he clearly suggests that this view is mistaken. The Founders, as James Madison argued in Federalist 39, believed that only a republican form of government was “reconcilable…with the fundamental principles of the Revolution.” Here again, the essays are not monolithic but create a thoughtful dialogue that helps readers consider various tensions implicit in the Declaration’s argument about political authority.

What Kind of Polity?

Finally, the later essays in the book address the kind of polity that the Declaration produces. There are superb essays sketching the institutions and policies of a free society. Cara Rogers Stevens’ essay on “Jefferson’s Anti-Slavery Declaration” is characteristically superb and enlightening. Samuel Gregg’s discussion of the anti-mercantilist aspects of the Declaration and the role that trade policy questions played in the Declaration and the Revolution offers a unique view of the economic ideas implicit in the document.  

But ultimately, as both Daniel Gullotta and James Patterson emphasize, the Declaration is not merely about economics or politics. In Gullotta’s words, the American Revolution was “never just about taxes and trade” but “a struggle to discern God’s purposes amid upheaval.” There was a natural theology at the heart of the Declaration, Patterson argues, that both grounds it and distinguishes it from “Christian nationalism.” Revisiting that theology is key to understanding the Declaration’s core propositions.

A single review cannot discuss all the essays in the Civitas Collection, nor give most of them the attention they deserve. Taken as a whole, the essays offer an accessible series of commentaries on the Declaration itself, as well as its relevance to contemporary debates and controversies. They are a valuable resource for students and citizens seeking to understand what is unique about July 4th, the document it celebrates, and the nation it has shaped for 250 years.

Joseph Postell is Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College.