Contrary to popular belief, the Declaration of Independence has absolutely no legal weight in American law. Our law is founded, first and foremost, on the U.S. Constitution. This is clearly articulated in the Constitution, in Article VI, in what is known as “the supremacy clause.”

So where does the Declaration of Independence stand? The Declaration of Independence was drafted in 1776. It is a document that lists the grievances of the colonists in America who were tired of British rule that imposed upon them the taxes of the British crown but provided them with no representation in British Parliament or say in how their lives were governed.

Thomas Jefferson, having studied John Locke, an English philosopher and social contract theorist, used Locke’s own words in crafting the Declaration of Independence. The primary rationale and reasoning that Jefferson drew upon was Locke’s justification for a people to sever their bonds with their government, dissolve the political order, and restructure it anew.

And thus, from Jefferson, we have this:

And it was at this point that the rebellion in the American colonies was officially undertaken.

The Revolutionary War lasted until 1781 with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Following this, the official end of the war was not achieved until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. There was then the failed attempt to establish a government under the Articles of Confederation. In 1787, delegates from 12 of the 13 states (R.I. did not send a delegate) met to draft what ultimately became the U.S. Constitution. After much debate, the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified by the states in 1789.

The Declaration of Independence is the landmark document that marks America’s severance of British rule. It’s clear, strong language reflects the conviction and resolve that each of the signers had in ensuring their own Life, Liberty, and Property. But the Declaration of Independence is not the law of the land in the United States and does nothing to establish religious (Christian) roots as the foundation of our government.

The Declaration’s guarantees of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” are not secured by the Declaration itself. And while the words “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” do not appear verbatim in the U.S. Constitution, they are clearly embodied in all of our constitutional guarantees. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution has as its purpose:

• to form a more perfect Union

• establish Justice

• ensure domestic Tranquility

• provide for the common defence

• promote the general Welfare

• secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

“Life” is secured through the establishment of justice and providing for our common defense, and “Liberty” is called out explicitly. The “Pursuit of Happiness” is a bit more complicated, for how does one guarantee a right to pursue happiness?

Generally understood, the pursuit of happiness is best represented in our ability to enjoy the fruits of our labor and our liberty. We are free to make our own decisions about how to pursue our existence, and to make for ourselves our own home, profession, and domestic life. Our existence, our home, our profession, our domestic life, and our right to such, are the embodiment of our “Estates.” It is through this line of reasoning that the right of “Pursuit of Happiness” becomes a right to our “Estates,” or as Locke concludes, that “which I call by the general Name, Property.” (Locke, Chap. IX, § 123, l.17)

“Property” is thereby secured through the establishment of justice, providing for domestic tranquility, common defense, and the general welfare. It is this approach that gives us the language of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing to all citizens the rights of “life, liberty, and property.”

These same guarantees are again reiterated in the language of the 14th Amendment.

Yet the Declaration’s language of “Nature’s God” and the “Creator”—tenuously religious terms of 18th Century Deists, skeptical of religion and the Judeo-Christian God—are nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution. Instead we find prohibitions. Article VI mandates that “no religious test” shall be required to hold public office, and the First Amendment prohibits government from taking any official action with respect to religion, or prohibiting the free exercise, thereof. From these prohibitions, Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state is clearly visible, and the Judeo-Christian God (or any god, for that matter) are forever shut out of our Constitution.

Thus, we have an inherently godless Constitution, irrevocably committed to a purely secular form of government. And the idea of a Christian Nation becomes little more than the wishful thinking of religious-minded power-mongers and mealy-mouthed ministers seeking to expand the scope of their influence beyond their congregation—a concept that is utterly and completely at odds with the core principles at the heart of our guarantees of life, liberty, and property.

Dershowitz, A. (2003). America declares independence. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Kramnick, I., Moore, R.L. (2005). The Godless Constitution: A moral defense of the secular state. New York: W.W. Morton & Co.

Locke, J. (2005). Two treatises of government. Laslett, P., ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Seriously. Wow.

Pat Buchanan has been pimping his new book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, and making some interesting arguments. From CNN’s The Situation Room:

First, one point on which Buchanan is correct is that the decision to institutionalize the genocide of European Jews was not formally made until the Wannsee Conference. However, to assert that events would not have unfolded as they did, had Churchill not declared war on Germany is absurd. Systematic extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany was nor more avoidable than was the tortures inflicted on Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, or on supposed “witches” during the Salem witch trials.

German anti-Semitism finds much of its genesis in Martin Luther, particularly through his book, Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (The Jews and Their Lies) and the evolution of German Lutheranism up through the mid-1800s. German composer Richard Wagner, a notable anti-Semite, found much support amongst his fellow Germans, not in spite of, but because of his anti-Semitism. By the turn of the century, anti-Semitism was fairly well-rooted in Germany and merely awaited the emergence of someone who could exploit that sentiment into all of its ugly potential. It is at this point that Adolph Hitler emerges onto the stage.

For Buchanan to state that genocide of the Jews was not contemplated until it was necessitated as a response to Britain’s declaration of war against Germany is willful ignorance. Hitler, in a speech to the German Reichstag in Sep. 1935, following the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, states that the Jewish question will only be ultimately addressed via a “final solution.”^[1] And lest there be any ambiguity about what was meant by the “final solution,” Hitler stated to the Chief Physician of the Reich that “the euthanasia problem would be taken up and solved” under the cloak of war.^[2] Another source states that Hitler spoke of euthanizing European Jews as early as 1931.^[3] Germans, particularly the German Reich, fully understood as early as 1935 that the “final solution” was the operative euphemism when discussing the extermination of the European Jews.

The enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 only served to encourage and further German anti-Semitism. Leading up to 1939, it was commonplace for German authorities, the SchutzStaffel (SS), and the Wermacht to summarily execute Jews for the slightest of infractions. In 1933, a Jewish cemetery in Saarbrücken was vandalized with graffiti that declared the death of the Jews would end locals’ misery.^[4]

Regardless, Neville Chamberlain did not sign on to the Sudetenland peace treaty (”The Munich Agreement“) with Germany until October of 1938, less than a year before Hitler invaded Poland. As a result, Buchanan’s claim that Hitler wasn’t interested in the genocide of European Jews until after 1941 falls apart entirely. The Holocaust had nothing to do with Britain entering the was against Germany (that didn’t happen until after Germany invaded Poland in 1939), and had nothing to do with Churchill’s predecessor, Chamberlain. Hitler intended, well in advance of the Wannsee Conference (as early as 1931), to do what he could to exterminate the whole of European Jewry.

And if there is any remaining doubt about how idiotic Buchanan is, one need only look to the decline of the Reich through late 1944 and early 1945. Buchanan makes the claim that Hitler did not contemplate genocide of the Jews until after he knew defeat was inevitable following the U.S. declaring war on Germany, and the stalled offensive into the Soviet Union. He supports this claim by arguing that the Wannsee Conference took place in Jan. 1942. Indeed, it did take place in Jan. 1942, but it had originally been planned for early Dec. 1941, and was postponed following Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Soviet counteroffensive, both in early Dec. 1941.

Did Hitler know in Jan. of 1942—or in the summer of 1941—that defeat was inevitable? It’s doubtful, at best. Up until Apr. 1945, Hitler still felt that the Germans would rise up and defeat the invaders of Germany. Memoirs from those in Hitler’s bunker during the last days portray clearly that Hitler did not want to know the meaning of defeat and would not accept it under any terms.

And from reading through Buchanan’s argumentation, I can conclude that he is no less delusional.

[Personal footnote: If Pat Buchanan has "studied Hitler" as much as he claims to have studied him, this book never should have been published. Which makes me curious as to what Buchanan's been studying.]

[1] N.H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, I. London, 1942, pp. 731-732.

[2] Goldhagen, D.J. (1996). Hitler’s willing executioners. P. 162. New York: Vintage Books.

[3] Ibid. n93, p. 534.

[4] Ibid. p. 124.

Zacharias directly and obliquely relates Nietzsche’s thinking to Hitler and Mussolini. And he does this not just once, but repeatedly, without offering the reader a single clarification of what really went on.

Rather than provide a lengthy dissertation on the evolution of Nietzsche’s thought, both prior to and after his death, I’ll try to sum things up with a few salient points:

1. Nietzsche was intellectually and morally opposed to anti-Semitism, and his opposition could not have been more clearly stated. It was the primary basis for his break with Richard Wagner and the source of much conflict with his sister, Elisabeth, who married an anti-Semite and attempted to establish an anti-Semitic colony in South America.

2. Nietzsche was opposed to nihilism because it was, primarily, a “no saying” philosophy that served to negate any positivistic aspect of existence.

3. Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth, took control and ownership of Nietzsche’s manuscripts and notes following his breakdown in 1889. From that point on, until her death, she controlled utterly the presentation of Nietzsche’s thought in the world.

4. Modern scholars and contemporaries of Nietzsche are all generally in agreement that his sister was utterly incapable of understanding his philosophy in any substantive fashion, and equally incapable of coalescing his notes and manuscripts into anything intelligible or remotely representative of her brother’s thoughts.

5. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s presentation of her brother’s philosophy resulted in a demonstrably false and corrupted philosophy that is consistently at odds with what was actually written and espoused by her brother.

6. Hitler’s adoption of Nietzsche’s philosophy as the philosophy of German National Socialism (the Nazis) was made in response to the pleadings of Elisabeth.

The idealism of the Hitlerian Übermensch and the philosophy of power is a corruption of Nietzsche’s thought that persists to this day. Readers with the slightest inclination to intellectual curiosity will readily find evidence throughout the whole of Nietzsche’s works—both published and unpublished—that runs counter to the corruptions that have served as fodder for dissembling screeds such as we encounter from Zacharias. Yet Zacharias wholly misunderstands and misrepresents the idea of Nietzsche’s Übermensch (the “Overman” or “Superman”), his philosophy of power, and Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power). This much is evident from reading passages where Zacharias attempts to address what he perceives to be shortcomings of Nietzschean philosophy. The issues themselves are far too complex, multi-layered, and interwoven with subtleties of thought to address here. It should be sufficient to say, however, that Zacharias has never undertaken a serious study of Nietzsche’s thought, preferring instead to construct straw men from the Golems of Nietzsche’s sister and attack long-refuted philosophical positions.