Recovering the founders’ meaning: the Declaration in an age of confusion
Historian Timothy K. Minella explains why understanding the Declaration requires context, clarity, and renewed civic education
Timothy K. Minella is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy, where he leads policy and educational initiatives advancing first principles. He previously taught at the University of Kentucky, Emory University, and Villanova University, and holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina. He recently spoke with American Habits Editor Ray Nothstine.
What lessons from the Declaration are most urgently needed today as we debate issues like centralized government, individual rights, and federalism?
Timothy Minella: One of the most striking things about the Declaration is that it sets out principles meant to guide what government can and should do, particularly as it pertains to rights. Near the end, the Declaration says that the United States, in separating from Britain, now has the right to “do all other acts and things which independent states may, of right, do.” What’s notable here is that qualification: of right.
The government does not have unlimited authority. According to this founding document, there are inherent limits to what government may legitimately do. That becomes even more relevant when we talk about federalism, because this qualification applies not only to the federal government but also to the states. At any level, if government deprives people of liberty or their rights, that action is inherently wrong. It is not a legitimate exercise of governmental power.
In the area of federalism, you see an echo of this principle in the Constitution, which explicitly lays out the federal government’s enumerated powers and recognizes the sovereignty of the states. Now, this doesn’t mean states can do whatever they want; rather, it affirms that the people of the states have the right to govern themselves. That idea is another key aspect of the Declaration.
More than ever today, the Declaration is worth reading and reflecting on as the true foundational document of our nation—one that the Constitution builds upon. I don’t think you can fully understand the Constitution without reference to the Declaration.
How do we ensure the Declaration’s principles remain grounded rather than drifting into abstract, limitless interpretations—something Coolidge warned about in 1926 in his 150th anniversary address? Is that still possible today?
Minella: I think this is a great question. To me, it comes back to placing the Declaration in the context of the thinkers and events that the drafters had in mind when it was passed by the Continental Congress. You’re right that if someone simply picks up the Declaration and reads, for example, that people have an inalienable right to pursue happiness, there’s an obvious danger of interpreting “happiness” in a way the founders would not have recognized.
What I think is required is—if I can put it in terms of how you might teach a book—that you prepare students with some background in figures like Locke, the Scottish common-sense philosophers, and the broader English constitutional tradition, including the Glorious Revolution and the English Civil War. That context helps illuminate what the founders meant by the terms they used.
It becomes even clearer when you get to the second part of the Declaration, the enumeration of grievances against Britain and the king. Understanding why those grievances, in the founders’ minds, justified separation requires knowing that many of the encroachments on the colonies echoed earlier encroachments on liberty during the English Civil War.
So I think history and context are essential to understanding the Declaration and to preventing the kind of limitless interpretations you’re worried about.
This is a similar question but gives you a chance to elaborate. How much danger is there in treating the Declaration as a source of abstract or “limitless” rights rather than as a document rooted in a concrete moral and philosophical framework? That was Russell Kirk’s skepticism with the document so to speak, it could mean different things to different people when not tethered to enduring principles.
Minella: Let’s take the example of the pursuit of happiness that I mentioned earlier. This is one of the triumvirate of rights the Declaration calls inalienable—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A key thing to understand here is that when you dig into the history and try to discern what the founders meant by “the pursuit of happiness,” you find an idea that’s much broader than our modern sense of the word. People have written whole books on this, but the summary is that they’re using the term very differently than we do today.
I don’t think you can fully understand the Constitution without reference to the Declaration.
We tend to think of happiness as feeling good, being content, or feeling satisfied. Their definition, coming out of the classical tradition, is about an individual’s ability to use the full range of his or her powers, to think, act, and fulfill one’s responsibilities. Some have summed it up by saying that when the founders speak of happiness, they mean something closer to “human flourishing.” It’s a balanced conception of rights and responsibilities, rather than an overdeveloped focus on one narrow area of life.
This is just one example of how the pursuit of happiness could easily be misinterpreted as meaning, “I can do whatever I want,” or taken in a very libertine direction—as if the good life were about nothing more than wine, women, and song. But when you examine the historical context, the founders are using the term in a much richer and more demanding sense than simply feeling good or being content.
So to Kirk’s point, it really does behoove us to understand the history behind these ideas. Even though digging into that history may seem somewhat pedantic, it expands our appreciation of what the founders were doing in the Declaration.
Again, this question is similar but important for our discussion. Looking at today’s cultural and political landscape, do you think there is a widespread misunderstanding about the Declaration of Independence?
Minella: One clear example, without belaboring the point, is something I saw often when I taught college courses: the idea that when the Declaration says “all men are created equal,” it means only white Christian males. But the history and context simply don’t support that interpretation. When the founders wrote “all men,” they were using the term to refer to all human beings, men and women alike. And strikingly, they could have qualified it, they could have said “white men” or “Christian men” or men of a certain income bracket. They did none of that.
This is understandably hard for people to grapple with because of the obvious contradiction of slavery in the colonial period and into the early Republic. How could they say all men are created equal while permitting racial slavery? The short answer is that they did mean it. They absolutely meant that all men are created equal. They simply did not do as much as we would have wanted them to do to eradicate the institution of slavery. Many were hypocrites, and many failed to live up to the principles they articulated. But that doesn’t change the fact that they meant what they wrote: that every person is equal in rights.
This is key for people to understand. The Declaration is a magnificent source for the argument that we ought to treat people equally—that no one is inherently superior or inferior to anyone else. Abolitionists and later civil rights leaders recognized this. For them, the Declaration was a crucial source, an arrow in their quiver, in the fight against racism, slavery, and racial discrimination.
I asked your colleague Matt Beienburg this, so I’ll ask you too. We hear a lot of negative news about America as we approach 250 years. What do you think we are collectively getting right as a nation?
Minella: Wonderful question. One thing that comes to mind is that, in the aftermath of the COVID years, when so many students were forcibly taken out of in-person schooling, parents began taking a much closer look at what schools were teaching their children. In both public and private schools, parents got a real education about what their children were spending time on in the classroom. Part of that involves what students are learning to prepare them to become fully fledged citizens of our constitutional republic.
A lot of that education is, frankly, insufficient. It’s not effective and often doesn’t give students the full picture they need to become informed citizens. But one thing we’re getting right is that parents have learned they need to be involved, especially when it comes to understanding the history and social studies curriculum in their children’s schools.
Parents are starting to ask important questions: Do students ever read, discuss, and get the proper background for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? If not, why not? And if schools simply hand students the Declaration and Constitution for one day and consider their duty fulfilled, well, that’s not sufficient either.
Institutions like the Goldwater Institute are stepping in to help address this gap. One of the most exciting things we’re doing is developing curricula and programs that strengthen education for citizenship. And what’s encouraging right now is that, with the country’s 250th birthday approaching, people are even more interested in learning about these foundational ideas. It’s a great opportunity to renew and strengthen civic education in both public and private schools.
