Revising (Or Correcting!) The Declaration Of Independence

The past is not dead. It is not even past, as earnest historians (presumably progressive) attempt to revise the Declaration of Independence. From the Times:

Every Fourth of July, some Americans sit down to read the Declaration of Independence, reacquainting themselves with the nation’s founding charter exactly as it was signed by the Second Continental Congress in 1776.

Or almost exactly? A scholar is now saying that the official transcript of the document produced by theNational Archives and Records Administrationcontains a significant error — smack in the middle of the sentence beginning “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” no less.

The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., concerns a period that appears right after the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the transcript, but almost certainly not, she maintains, on the badly faded parchment original.

That errant spot of ink, she believes, makes a difference, contributing to what she calls a “routine but serious misunderstanding” of the document.

The period creates the impression that the list of self-evident truths ends with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she says. But as intended by Thomas Jefferson, she argues, what comes next is just as important: the essential role of governments — “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — in securing those rights.

“The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights,” Ms. Allen said. “You lose that connection when the period gets added.”

The story reviews her very impressive detective work and concludes with her perspective:

“We are having a national conversation about the value of government, and it does get connected to our founding documents,” she said. “We should get right what’s in them.”

Oh, brother. Progressives are about to ener their Blue Period and righties are about a week away from being labelled 'period deniers'.

I should add something about 'who controls the present controls the past and who controls the past controls the future'. But the future is now!

ERRATA: The text in question is in italics:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

IN OTHER NEWS: A timely surprise for libs was found in a recently discovered version of Lincoln's handwritten Gettysburg Address:

...testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure without national single payer health care.

Who knew?

Comments

[Rick B]

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

Hmmm...

[jimmyk on iPad]

I don't see how a period or lack thereof changes the meaning. The clauses following "that" refer to "truths," and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are a subset of "rights."

[Extraneus]

A long dash without a preceding period would surely mean the Founders intended for us to bow down before the government.

[Extraneus]

[gulp]

[Barry Dauphin]

The period creates the impression that the list of self-evident truths ends with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she says

What about the phrase "among these" does she not understand?

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Usually I kid our dear host for his commenting about the NYT. But this article is important, in that it summarizes the great divide between the mental illness of 21st century American Libs/Progs and the objective historical realism of modern conservatives, especially constitutional conservatives. The Libs' mental illness forces them to twist and pervert ancient western cultural and legal canons to morph them into their worldview. This article is a further stark example. The 'period' matters not as to the explicit meaning of the Declaration. Nonetheless this cretin argues that it virtually stands the Declaration upside down, and the NYT dutifully pumps the propaganda. To them, Orwell's 1984 is a how to guide, not a cautionary tale.

[Extraneus]

Lois Lerner And Fellow IRS Official Announced Targeting At 2010 Conference Before Both Of Their Emails Went Missing

Ex-Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner spoke at a 2010 government conference where Lerner’s underling Nikole Flax announced the new IRS program scrutinizing groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Both Lerner and Flax experienced “computer crashes” that led to the permanent deletion of their emails, according to the IRS, which said it cannot hand over their emails to congressional investigators on two House committees.

What is this statement based on? Who said the "crashes" related to emails?

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

@8:51-- it doesn 't change the explicit meaning one way or the other, because that meaning is the "That whenever..." clause

[Extraneus]

Poll: Majority of Americans Say Owning A Gun Is An “Act of Patriotism”…

[Extraneus]

Btw, that last link wouldn't exist if it weren't for the fake period.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

The NYT propaganda angle is made clear from the Princeton cretin's book title "equality." The Declaration and Constitution make explicit that the natural law and the American right to equality, is equality in the eyes of God and under man made law. There is equality in 'pursuit' of happiness not the result. The Lib/Progs have worked desperately for 125 years to pervert that explicit meaning as well.

[Extraneus]

'Ideal Aryan baby' on cover of Nazi magazine revealed to be Jewish

[Extraneus]

Tradition schmadition.

Dutch court: "Black Pete" holiday figure is offensive, Amsterdam must rethink its celebration

AMSTERDAM – An Amsterdam court says the figure known as "Black Pete" — the sidekick to the Dutch equivalent of Santa Claus — is a negative stereotype of black people and the city must rethink its involvement in holiday celebrations involving the figure.

Debate over Zwarte Piet has intensified in the Netherlands in recent years as opponents say the black clown with thick red lips and a frizzy Afro hairstyle is a racist caricature. Most Dutch people argue he is a harmless fantasy figure and say no insult is intended.

Thursday's ruling ordered the City of Amsterdam to re-examine its decision to grant a permit for an annual winter festival attended by thousands of children. In Dutch tradition, St. Nicholas arrives by steamboat with scores of Black Petes handing out presents.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

'Aryan baby' I had a college history professor who said he had a similar experience in mid-1930s German elementary school. During the Nazi biology race lecture, the teacher used him as an Aryan exemplar as opposed to mongrel jews and gypsies. Did not end well for him though... wound up in a concentration camp as a laborer (he usually had rolled up sleeves from the old chalkboard days, and his camp tattoo# was plainly visible).. Fed enough to survive, so he had to watch everyone around him who was older and weaker die. 35 years later he seemed remarkably sane.

[windansea]

Why would they capitalize the T in That unless it was a new sentence? I don't see "that" capitalized in other parts where it is in the middle of a sentence.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwaski]

I blame PMS.
Give it a week and the extra period she found will be gone.

[Extraneus]

What about where it says:

the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive

Surely they didn't mean to start a new sentence after a comma.

Unless...

Oh no.

What if it's a fake comma???

[Ignatz Ratzkiwaski]

NK from the last thread;

Equities trade where they are relative to interest rates imposed by the Fed and ECB, the BoJ and the ChiComs.

Can't remember if this was pointed out earlier but two previous stories contribute a good bit of irony to this discussion.
Last week the central banks were warning of asset bubbles forming even as they feed them with free money for everyone and the week before there was a story about the billions in equities central banks were buying up around the world.
I nominate the Mad Hatter as head of the Bank of International Settlements.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Insty rightly points out that Obummer doesn't hire many bruthas to do the day to day Prog work. Look at all these white people, I ain't seen this many whiteys since the Downton Abbey series. https://twitter.com/petesouza/status/484116105867186176

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Ignatz/Ziggy-- FYI, our money managing friend in ChiTown says equity values are far more complex than this. But hey, I'm a simpleton.

[Fred Beloit]

"...deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..."

But we don't consent to open borders, the ACA, and an out-of-control government:

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/poll-obama-worst-president-since-wwii-108507.html

So there are no just powers in the Administration.

[Threadkiller]

English Comma Law strikes again, Ext.

[Recycled joke]

[MarkO]

The Purfuit of Happineff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCEE9pOkvQU

Number 07 at about 2:15

Stan Freberg.

[clarice]

Looking more like Animal Farm every day.

[Jack is Back! (In the USA)]

Like everything in Prog propaganda you must not read anything in context but take it as an individual segregated meaning that trumps all the other words and sentinments.

But then, that is not the most important structure of the DoI to me. The first paragraph is why they wrote the damn thing to begin with:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

[jimmyk]

equity values are far more complex than this.

Of course, but does he deny the ZIRP has a positive impact? P/E ratio is at about 20, compared to historic average of 15. Spreads between high-yield risky bonds and Treasuries have fallen near to where they were in 2006.

[clarice]

Would the NYT be so destructive to the national intelligence if it wasn't published until the afternoon, after people drank their coffee and had donned their thinking caps?

I think it's the morning read when people are half awake that makes it so dangerous.

[sbw]

Before I read TM's post I wrote an editorial for Saturday that said, in part:

Head: Whose independence is it?

Reflecting on Independence Day, it is worth asking whose independence it was — or rather, whose independence it is.

The representatives of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence acted to protect individuals from the actions of an oppressive, overbearing, bureaucratic government that believed it knew best for its citizens.

The first words of the Constitution, authored 15 years later, reaffirmed to whom independence belonged: “We the People of the United States, in Order to . . . secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
. . .[ending with] . . .

Independence belongs not to the country, but to the individuals who form communities within. The Constitution reaffirmed our responsibility: “We the People of the United States, in Order to . . . secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

[Ignatz Ratzkiwaski]

--Ignatz/Ziggy-- FYI, our money managing friend in ChiTown says equity values are far more complex than this.--

Everything is more complex than the fundamental cause(s) but without it everything else wouldn't matter.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

I'll leave the BIG brain financial stuff to jimmyk and MelR to sort out.

BTW-- from my little brain perspective of interest rates and asset values, things look a heck of a lot like 2006 right now.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwaski]

George the Third could have taken Barack the First's correspondence course.

[jimmyk]

it doesn 't change the explicit meaning one way or the other

So we seem to have an academic exaggerating (if not entirely fabricating) the historical significance of her finding. And, since the subtext is "The Tea Party is un-American," the NYT falls for it. Raise your hands if you are shocked.

[sbw]

Renewing good vibes on the quest to find Norman.

[Old Lurker]

The Feds (EEOC) sue a company for discrimination for refusing to hire people who cannot speak English?

Seriously?

[clarice]

Jimmyk, I'd raise my hand but it's chained to the chair. SBW, good editorial. Seriously, OL.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

BarackI and GeorgeIII have many strong similarities. The Declaration/Revolution was primarily the result of over taxation to pay off Britain's national debt (seven years war) and overregulation to protect Britain's western hemisphere cronies in the British East India Company. Sound familiar? The productive class in the colonies (almost everyone) naturally rebelled at the tyrannical usurpattion of their hard work to pay off the tyrant's debts and his cronies. We have a real problem; in today's America the productive class is a minority, or at best an even split. Real problem.

[Jack is Back! (In the USA)]

Louis Zamperini has passed at 97. "Unbroken" by Laruen Hillebrand is the best book I have read in 10 years. What a man!

New post on Assisi is up on Frederick's blog.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

The NYT doesn't 'fall for it', they are part of the same anti-freedom propaganda machine as the phony baloney 'academic'.

[matt]

Of Course! John Marshall, Story, Hughes, Holmes and all of the others just got it wrong.

Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and Madison all agreed that a paramilitary Department of Homeland Security and militarized police forces were the true epitomes of a well armed militia and that the EPA has every right to govern all that you do when they find pothole that fills up halfway after the last snowfall on your 10,000 acre ranch.

Through their interpretation of grammar they would usurp the Constitution itself. When do we break out the tar and feathers?

[derwill]

The woman is an idiot. If you take out the period and run the words together you end up with a flat out ungrammatical sentence. Period. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the DIP, attended the College of William and Mary at the age of 16 and finished in only two years--and this was back in the day when you actually acquired knowledge in our American Universities. He was a highly educated man, one well versed in both Latin and Greek. He would never have written such a flagrantly ungrammatical sentence like the one you would get if you took out the period.

[Thomas Collins]

Ms. Allen, despite her perch at Princeton, apparently lacks even a pedestrian understanding of how Enlightenment thinking played out in the American Revolution. It was widely understood that the rights of Nature's God needed a framework of government to secure such rights on earth. That framework to be established by government is an essential but limited one, and the rights secured don't include things such as free abortifacients for Sandy Fluke, or free wellness screening for Pajama Boy. With or without a period, it is certainly the case that the Founders, products of Enlightenment thinking, understood that on earth, the rights emanating from Nature's God needed to be secured by a framework of governmental order limited to securing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unlike the post-modern credentialed moronocracy, the Founders understood that man is in a state of original sin. Even those Founders who rejected revelation understood that the Book of Genesis was an incisive commentary on human nature. They would have clearly understood, as Ms. Institute for Advanced Blah Blah apparently does not, that the necessity of securing basic rights by an entity, often called government, possessing eminent domain, police, taxing, foreign relations and war powers, and strictly limited in its powers over appropriately local matters, does not justify the present day administrative state.

[Jane]

From yesterday:

By the way, the D.C. Circuit might nuke ObamaCare tomorrow

(Sorry if it was already posted)

[rse]

Having spent a great deal of time studying TJ to the point of using his initials as a shorthand over the decades, this interpretation of what his intent was does not fit what he actually and consistently thought.

It does fit though with the governments come first drive that also influences so much of Cass Sunstein's work.

I have also been working this week on what the sociologists call the creation of an alternative master frame with which to perceive experiences in desired directions. Needless to say I believe it is what is guiding the actual CC and university and other professional schools like law and business reforms.

This NYT article plays right into my note in the margin that the mainstream media would know precisely what they new desired conceptual categories were through frienships with academia and policy makers. Perfect explanation for Journolist and these type of articles and what gets covered or not on evening news and how.

[Thomas Collins]

There is a comprehensive argument for the administrative state. It is set forth in Alexandre Kojeve's Outline of a Phenomenology of Right and in his lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. I recommend it to any who would like to study a ghastly but nonetheless comprehensive argument for the administrative state. And Kojeve has the intellectual honesty not to try to distort the meaning of Enlightenment documents to support his position.

[MarkO]

TC, I'd rather have lunch.

[Jack is Back! (In the USA)]

Thank God its only the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution because we would have to endure the Constitutional Law Professor's exhortations on what a period, comma and capitalization mean.

BTW, I believe using capital letters in the middle of sentances was quite common back in the day. Need to check that out to be sure.

[Thomas Collins]

But only if it's at Jerry Remy's and the pre-lunch entertainment is watching me work out on a treadmill in a three piecer, right, MarkO? :-))

[MarkO]

6 miles in a vest. Amazing. Like Federer, he doesn't sweat.

Jerry Remy's is excellent.

Next trip, nine ball.

[Exasperatef]

Somehow familiar. Reminiscent of Algore's nonsensical doublespeak of 25 years ago. They never give up, do they?

[MarkO]

The important question is how does something this inane make it into the NYT?

[glasater]

I believe using capital letters in the middle of sentances was quite common back in the day. Need to check that out to be sure.

JIB, didn't that come from Germans capitalizing nouns or something along those lines back in the day?

[Dave (in MA)]

OT,
In which I drop into a moonbat site and pull a Narciso.

[Dublindave 2016]

S

[Dublindave 2016]

i

[Dublindave 2016]

x

[Dublindave 2016]

.

[Dublindave 2016]

o

[Dublindave 2016]

n

[Dublindave 2016]

e

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

derwil and ThomC make way too much sense for my Lib colleagues in NYC to ever understand.

[Dublindave 2016]

%

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

DD--if well paying jobs are so plentiful, why are you still in your mom's basement?... wait.... I forgot you're a lazy useless prat, good job market or bad.

[NOAA]

Numbers for ya.

[Dave (in MA)]

6

2

.

8

%

[Dave (in MA)]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-03/june-full-time-jobs-plunge-over-half-million-part-time-jobs-surge-800k-most-1993

[derwill]

--JIB, didn't that come from Germans capitalizing nouns or something along those lines back in the day?--

They did often capitalize proper nouns in the middle of sentences. But only nouns. An educated man wouldn't have capitalized "that" in this context in the middle of such a sentence.

[The English burnt Washington and Joanne of Arc.]

Heh, NK, I'm amused by the point of view that the rebel North Americans simply didn't want to pay their national security bills.

[Threadkiller]

Since this is the grammer thread:

“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of the parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.”

Does punctuation need to be inserted or removed from the preceding SCOTUS holding to make Obama Eligible?

/OCD

[windansea]

BTW, I believe using capital letters in the middle of sentances was quite common back in the day. Need to check that out to be sure.

Yes, they used capitals more liberally than we do today, and there are several examples of this in the DOI. But I only see the word "that" capitalized at the start of sentences, when the word is used in the middle of sentences it does not have a capital T.

[Thomas Collins]

Well, I'll say this for Dublindave 1793 (since DD is more of the French Revolution sort, I thought an appropriate year for DD would be the year Marie Antoinette was offed): DD is not less thoughtful than Danielle Allen, and DD is more entertaining.

[Dublindave 2016]

Isn't it interesting that the President who pulled us out of the great recession with historic job creation is deemed worse than the President who actually got us into it in the first place.

This new poll that says Barrack Obama is the worst President since WW2 has Europeans buzzing. Apparently Americans prefer the President who ruined the US economy over the one who saved it.

We are the laughing stock of the entire world.

[Threadkiller]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/showdown-border-marietta-texas-234415735.html

A quick video that shows how well catch and release works.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

ThomC- personally I assume that DD takes himself far less seriously than that nitwit Danielle Allen takes herself. A low standard to be sure, but it is something.

[BB Key]

This subject is being discussed on the Duane Rhem show on NPR .

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

"We are the laughing stock of the entire world."

These words DD uses, they don't mean what he thinks they mean.

[Dublindave 2016]

"DD--if well paying jobs are so plentiful, why are you still in your mom's basement?... wait.... I forgot you're a lazy useless prat, good job market or bad"

After my mom was diagnosed with a serious illness I decided to put my career on hold and move in with her. Rheumatoid Arthritus is a scourge affecting 2 per cent of the population.

[He's alien. Period.]

Courage, TK.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Well the blarney is really flowing now.

[derwill]

Obama will never be able to equal Bush's 5.3 AVERAGE monthly unemployment rate--and Bush had to deal with the devastating attack to our economy by 9-11. By bragging about Obama's pathetic 6.1 percent for a single month, duda is conceding that Bush's economic record was far superior to the big Zero's. Which explains why Obama is considered the worst president since WWII.

[Dublindave 2016]

So Americans have said that they intend to reward Republicans for destroying the United States economy and obstructing all measures to repair it by putting them back in power this fall.

That's kind of like deputizing a man guilty of attempted murder while imprisoning the doctor who saved the victims life.

Ahh, America.

[Thomas Collins]

http://eagnews.org/school-board-president-rips-michelle-o-over-lunch-program-she-was-elected-by-no-one/

It must be that period that gives Michelle Robinson the right to meddle in school lunch policy.

[Beasts of England]

...deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Not sure a lot of folks realize how insanely radical and supremely important that little clause is. The whole enchilada, in my opinion.

God bless America!
God bless our Founders!

[JohnH]

I think Gus is very comfortable with capital letters tossed in willy nilly.

[Dublindave 2016]

I have a sneaky suspicion that a lot of Republicans at this site who have serious financial holdings don't want Republicans back in power. That'd be like giving your pyromaniac brother the keys to your log cabin in Maine and telling him to go wild.

I truly believe that some of you have checked out your portfolios under the Obama administration and thought to yourselves, "f*** me, this President is good".

That internal conflict is probably widespread among Republicans who have watched their leaders crater the US economy,refuse to save it and then obstruct it's repair as a matter of policy.

I think we're going to peel off a large number of Republicans in 2016 who've simply had enough of right-wing idiocy.

[Beasts of England]

Sorry to hear about your Mom, DublinDave - my sincere best wishes for you both.

[sbw]

FIFY: Ms. Allen, despite because of her perch at Princeton . . .

[henry]

Whatever the rise in the portfolios, it does not make up for the increase in taxation of the proceeds from said portfolios. Only a nincompoop who lives in his mother's basement would conclude otherwise.

[Rick B]

NK,

Surely sympathy should be extended to the poor woman whose arthritis is being aggravated by infestation of an untreatable parasite.

[Jane]

Hey TC, watch out, I'm going to post that pix as soon as I can figure out how!

Today would be a perfect day for lunch.

[Neo]

J.P. Morgan Chase(JPM): CEO Jamie Dimon was diagnosed with throat cancer.

[Thomas Collins]

I'm ready for the ridicule, Jane. I am trying to figure out how to post it myself. But at the moment I can't navigate the posting tubes!

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Henry-- speaking for myself, the ZIRP pump of portfolios is illusory, it will evaporate in the blink of an eye. it doesn't create wealth, it paints an image of wealth. Anyone right now leveraging off of their 'portfolio wealth' is heading for bankruptcy court. I don't think I'm alone in this POV, because the investor class isn't, well investing based on this wealth effect. Actions speak louder than words, few believe this fed created bubble is for real. The problem isn't that a nitwit like DD doesn't understand this, the problem is that the Fed idiots don't understand it. That little dwarf Yellen is clueless.

[Marlene]

Please leave my log cabin in Maine out of this conversation.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

From our ChiTown friend-- this surprised even me. 49 of 50 months-- MORE people stopped looking for work than found a job.
ObummerCare was a more of a jobs destroyer than I ever dreaded it would be... look at poor DD trapped in that basement:

https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/484717573423247360/photo/1

[Danube on iPad]

I don't think the meaning is affected one way or the other by the presence or absence of the comma.

[henry]

NK, I don't know that Yellin is clueless. I suspect she is frozen by the fear of crashing the planet on the chosen one's watch. As DuDa points out, the imaginary wealth is the only thing in positive territory for the JEF and entire lib/prog universe. That it makes things immeasurably worse for whoever has the stones to fix it is no concern to her -- fear of a lack of party invites overrides all.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

I agree with DoT.

[henry]

carp.

[Exasperatef]

I think we're going to peel off a large number of Republicans in 2016 who've simply had enough of right-wing idiocy.

Posted by: Dublindave 2016 | July 03, 2014 at 11:36 AM

HA, HA, HA, Ha, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!!!

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Frozen by fear of the next crash occuring during Emperor Barack I's reign is of course worse than clueless.