The Battle Over 1776

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is just five years away. That means progressives and neocons get to battle it out over who defends the proposition nation the best.

It also means the real meaning of the document will remain buried under Lincolnian stupidity.

To the Straussian/Jaffaite/neocon “conservative” establishment, the real meaning of the Declaration doesn’t matter. Just read Cameron Hilditch at National Review. No. The meaning they want you to know, understand, and regurgitate is Lincoln’s invention at Gettysburg in 1863.

Forget that the Declaration is a defounding and pro-secession document. At its very core it validates the actions by Southerners in 1860 and 1861–and by default any American secession movement, North, South, or West.

It outlines the American principles of self-government and self-determination.

Not to those knuckleheads. You see, they think that the Declaration is the “proposition that all men are created equal.” That’s it. That’s the line. You can’t conserve anything in American society if you base your “conservatism” on a line that has been so abused by the left it doesn’t even carry the same meaning.

And how do I say that? Consider Elizabeth Cady Stanton copied this part of the Declaration, almost word for word, in the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848. That document essentially called marriage slavery.

Yep, conservative. This is also the document that Joe Biden stutters when he supposedly cites the Declaration while making speeches.

He always says “all men and women are created equal.” That is exactly what Stanton wrote.

And neocons use her as an example of “conservative” thought.

“Equality” in the way the left conceptualizes the term (equity) was no where on the mind of the founding generation. They believed in the equality of freemen, Englishmen, based on the ancient constitutions of their ancestors, meaning generally equality under the law.

That isn’t what the left wants and the neocons have cracked open the door to their lunacy.

The battle over the meaning of 1776 in 2026 is going to be so narrowly focused that most Americans probably won’t care. They are already too cynical to notice. After all, 1776 is just another racist holiday, so why should they pay attention?

2026 will be vastly different from 1976, and judging by the current historical scholarship, I can only imagine how awful things will be in 2076.

I discuss this “history war” in Episode 477 of The Brion McClanahan Show.


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