Speaking at a conservative gathering several months ago, Vice President Vance took issue with the perspective that our nation’s uniqueness is in its identity, founded in the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence and not in some ancient allegiance to specific territory. Others, including Republican senators and media figures, have followed his lead.
What Vance rejects is the concept contained in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Though we have throughout history failed to achieve what the principle embraces, it has been the goal of so many to achieve racial, gender, and sexual justice, while also embraced – to a certain extent – by our nation’s leaders.
Instead, Vance and his allies insist that America is a special place and that “real” Americans are such by virtue of being here, on this land. They argue that those who have been here the longest have the greatest claim to be American.
In doing so, they absolve those who rebelled against the federal government from 1861 to 1865, committing the worst form of treason during one of America’s darkest times. Why? Because their families were a part of the nation. They were on the land.
Thus, those Civil War traitors are more “American” than those who come to our shores now, seeking what the Declaration’s principles establish as what our nation is.
Lastly, Vance claims that if being an American is solely based on belief in those principles, then the nation’s borders must be kept open for “billions” of immigrants flooding into our nation.
Aside from Vance’s patently ridiculous claim—the Constitution grants Congress the power to pass laws to enforce its borders, something Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to do when Presidents Obama and Biden proposed comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 and 2023, respectively—there is a further danger inherent in the vice president’s ignorant rejection of the Declaration’s epic declaration.
First, it ignores how revolutionary that statement was back in 1776. To claim that property, wealth and name didn’t matter in terms of political society—at a time when they defined status in European society, and by extension, in England’s colonies here—challenged the entire political economy of the western world at the time. Such a statement was downright radical.
Yes, society only declared men to be equal, knowingly omitting half of the known population. And yes, the Declaration was written—in part—by a slave owner, which meant that anyone who was not white was also excluded.
But the Declaration’s opening paragraphs—indeed the entire document—presented a dire threat to the powers that existed. Here was a small group of insurgents declaring themselves to be free of the English king and asserting that the king was just a man, equal to all others. These words of revolution, this act of defiance, should never be dismissed as irrelevant to what we are as a nation.
Less than 100 years later, our nation’s greatest president—Abraham Lincoln—harkened back to those words in his legendary Gettysburg Address. He positioned the struggle for Black freedom within the context of the revolution—and especially the Declaration of Independence—when he redefined the Civil War as a struggle intended to bring about a “new birth of freedom” encompassed by the end of slavery.
Lincoln speaks directly about the Declaration’s core principle in the opening words of his address: that what the founders created was “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
This is what we are as a nation. This is what defines us as a people.
Though we so often fail in living up to the ideal, it is in the struggle to attain this highest goal—one nation equal in law and social reality—that we are all called to, according to Lincoln.
Now more than ever, there is no greater imperative than for Americans to recall the principles upon which we were founded as a nation. Like those who fought at Gettysburg in defense of the “new nation,” we are called upon to fight unto the last full measure of our beings to succeed.
That means rejecting the disturbing and counter-revolutionary words of J.D. Vance and re-committing ourselves to those of Abraham Lincoln. We must defend our nation’s principles against those who may possess great power but have neither the vision of an inclusive, democratic society nor the ultimate power of the people.
I stand with Lincoln.
Dr. Fred Kowal is President of the 35,000 member United University Professions, which represents faculty on 29 New York State Campuses. UUP is an affiliate of NYSUT, The American Federation of Teachers, The National Education Association and the AFL-CIO.
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