Editor’s Note
The following speech was delivered by Thomas D. Klingenstein in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Taking inspiration from Justice Clarence Thomas’s reflections on America’s founding promise, Klingenstein considers what makes the nation worthy of its people’s devotion—and calls Americans to recover the confidence, courage, and moral clarity required to preserve their inheritance.
In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech in which he asked us to ponder what we are celebrating. Specifically, he asked: What exactly is the Declaration of Independence, and why is it important?
The Declaration is the common-sense claim that humans share an unchanging, universal nature from which there arises a standard of right and wrong. The first principle of this standard is that all men are created equal.
Why is the Declaration important? Because a country that makes the principles of the Declaration its guiding light is a country that is worthy of its people’s love.The Declaration understands that human nature and the corresponding standard of right and wrong come from, in the words of the Declaration, “Nature and Nature’s God.” In other words, they are the natural order of things.
But Justice Thomas sees that devotion to the natural order of things has weakened. As a result, the America he loves and has always loved is now in distress. She has lost her confidence, weighed down by her past sins — in particular, racism.
Justice Thomas, having grown up in the South during Jim Crow, knows everything about racism that needs to be known. He does not forget this evil, nor does he want us to — but he forgives it. He sees European countries that, because they insist on refusing forgiveness, are choking to death on their sins. He prays that America avoids their fate.
If this great man, with firsthand knowledge of the worst of America, forgives his country, then might we forgive her, too?
Many people don’t think America needs forgiveness. They love her regardless. At the other extreme are those who deny the possibility of forgiveness. They are fixed in their hatred of America. Justice Thomas’s words are unnecessary for the former and useless for the latter.
But might Justice Thomas’s words reach many of those in the middle? These citizens are unsure. They don’t hate their country, but nor can they quite embrace her. They are told that America is irredeemably racist. That is the narrative of today’s destructive left. They don’t believe it, yet they dare not rebut it.
They don’t think that America was born in racism, as the America-haters do. But they do think it was born in hypocrisy. They cannot reconcile the Declaration’s promise of equality with the founding era’s practice of slavery. They are uncomfortable saluting the flag and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. They think there is something vaguely immoral about loving one’s own country.
Is it any wonder they doubt their country? After all, most of what they are told in school, and most of what they read and watch, teaches them to doubt.
Compare this to the education of Justice Thomas. In grammar school, he and his classmates — dutifully scrubbed, proudly attired in blazers and ties — began each school day by saluting the American flag.
Of course, as a young boy, Thomas and his classmates did not appreciate the irony of saluting the flag of a country that treated Blacks as inferior to whites. But his grandfather, who raised him, and the Irish nuns who taught him, did. Even so, they insisted that the young Justice Thomas love a country — his own country — that did not love him.
What Justice Thomas’s grandfather and teachers were insisting that he love was the Declaration of Independence, America’s great moral power, which animates and directs her. The Declaration’s ideals are the work of the same God Justice Thomas and his neighbors prayed to in church. He says that the values of the Declaration and his church were a way of life.Only in America could this be so. Many countries believe in the principles of the Declaration, but it is only in America that they can be said to be a way of life. They are not abstract principles floating in the ether. Rather, they are, as Justice Thomas says, “deeply ingrained into American culture.”
All Americans should shudder to think how Justice Thomas would have turned out had he been raised in one of today’s inner cities. Likely, he would have been poor, his school substandard, and his father absent. Poverty and poor schools, however, would not necessarily have crushed him — but the absence of a father undoubtedly would have.
As Justice Thomas’s grandfather knew, without a father, a boy is deprived of both a proper moral education and the discipline that a man is uniquely equipped to provide. Thomas’s grandfather knew, as did everyone in his community, that men and women are not the same, and their roles are not interchangeable. This, too, is in the nature of things, and so it is in the Declaration.When Justice Thomas was a young adult, he was drawn to the radicalism of the 1960s. But this was a short-lived infatuation. It turned out the utopianism of the radicals was no match for the common sense of his grandfather.Justice Thomas came to believe, by reflection and choice, what his grandfather had drilled into him as a boy: that his country was worthy of his love; that accepting welfare was unmanly; that traditional marriage was the moral foundation of America’s regime; and that American middle-class values — such as hard work, fair play, and self-reliance — are the surest route to human flourishing. This is in the nature of things.
But at the end of the nineteenth century, about fifty years before Justice Thomas’s birth, there was introduced into America a snake in the grass: a new doctrine that leading American intellectuals had imported from Germany. This doctrine — progressivism, which is the intellectual foundation of modern-day liberalism — denies that there is a natural order of things. It denies that equality of natural rights is a self-evident truth, and so it denies the corresponding standard of right and wrong.
Today’s progressivism believes that a just society is one based on group outcome equality rather than on individual merit. But as Justice Thomas’s grandfather taught him, this is not justice. It is injustice, for it means taking from one group and giving to another. As his grandfather knew, you are owed nothing because of the color of your skin.
As Justice Thomas instructs us, the progressive understanding of justice — group outcome equality — and the American understanding — individual merit — are mutually exclusive, and so cannot coexist forever.The country is divided into three parts: lovers, haters, and doubters. The haters are passionately committed to their cause: the destruction of America. Our hope lies with the doubters.
Can we, the lovers, convince them that the founding was, as Justice Thomas knows, a marvel of prudence and farsightedness? Can we convince them that, however America has stumbled or fallen short, she is still the last best hope of earth? Can we convince them that if they teach their children to doubt their country, they will not have a country for very long? That love of one’s country, like the love of one’s children, is a lovely passion — and it is in the nature of things?
As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, I ask you to keep in mind that poor Black boy in the Jim Crow South saluting the American flag. His blazer and tie cost more than his grandfather can afford. As this young boy is unaccustomed to his attire, he stands stiffly, but his salute has been well practiced, and it is crisp and determined. Under his grandfather’s tutelage, he is developing the manly character of an American.The young boy is now a great man. He is the best of America. We should listen to him. He knows that it is America’s commitment to the natural order of things that has made America not just a great country, but also a good country — one worthy of its people’s love.And so he is asking us to once again live by the nature of things, to rededicate ourselves to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. He believes that it is only on that basis that America can long endure.
But love of country is not enough. We must defend the country we love, and we must do so with the energy and courage of Americans at their best.
Thank you very much.
