It is commonplace for most contemporary commentators to think of the Declaration of Independence as embodying our \u201cnational creed.\u201d\u00a0 This in turn explains the equally commonplace description ofAmericaas a \u201ccreedal\u201d or \u201cpropositional nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea is this: the Declaration, with its affirmation of \u201crights<\/em>\u201d that are \u201cunalienable\u201d and \u201cself-evident,\u201d expresses a universal morality, a morality unencumbered by the contingencies and relativities of place and time, culture and history.\u00a0 America, the Declaration makes clear, is committed to the advancement, not of this <\/em>or that <\/em>person or group of persons, but of \u201cthe rights\u201d of all <\/em>mankind.<\/p>\n America was founded by white Christians from a specific place in Europeand at a particular juncture in their history.\u00a0 And American life, up until the present day, has been informed overwhelmingly by European or Western ideas and traditions.\u00a0 Still, it is emphatically \u201cun-American\u201d\u2014maybe even \u201canti-<\/em>American\u201d\u2014to think of our country in ethnic or racial terms.\u00a0 Put another way, it is immoral<\/em>\u2014\u201cracist,<\/em>\u201d \u201cbigoted<\/em>,\u201d etc.\u2014to recognize in America anything other than the first nation ever <\/em>to have been erected upon a \u201ctimeless principle<\/em>\u201d or \u201cideal<\/em>\u201d: the principle that all human beings everywhere and always possess (pre-political) rights.<\/p>\n Not everyone today endorses this vision of America\u2019s founding.\u00a0 But more people than not, including people with clashing political visions, endorse the morality of \u201cnatural\u201d or \u201chuman rights\u201d embodied by the Declaration.\u00a0 This is unfortunate, for only its ubiquity prevents its champions from recognizing the burdens with which their morality saddles them.<\/p>\n For one, if everybody has equal rights, and if Americais supposed to be committed to advancing these rights, then it is only upon practical <\/em>or strategic <\/em>grounds that objections can be raised against the American enterprises of welcoming massive Third World immigration, on the one hand, and launching equally massive military interventions abroad, on the other.\u00a0 As Ilana Mercer noted some time ago, “Inviting <\/em>an invasion by foreigners and instigating <\/em>one against them” are inseparable engagements (emphases original).\u00a0 She also observed, correctly, that the glue that holds them together is the notion of America as a \u201cproposition nation.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, interestingly, the \u201cproposition\u201d responsible for this madness is just that proposition to which Ilana and many other sensible folks (like Pat Buchanan, for instance) subscribe: it is the proposition that all human beings have \u201cunalienable\u201d natural rights.<\/p>\n The point is that if America is committed to natural or human rights, then, ideally, she should <\/em>be embracing as many immigrants and toppling as many oppressive foreign regimes as possible.\u00a0 The means <\/em>by which she fulfills this mission may be morally dubious; but the mission itself isn\u2019t just morally permissible\u2014it is obligatory.<\/p>\n The logic of the morality of human rights pushes us even further, though: because it is universal in character, because it makes no distinctions between persons, by its lights it is immoral <\/em>for both the United States government as well as the American citizen to show partiality toward American citizens over non-Americans\u2014regardless of where the latter are located.\u00a0 The universality of the doctrine of human rights entails impartiality.\u00a0 Thus, it is just as immoral for Americans\u2014again, whether political office holders or citizens\u2014to act partially toward Americans over non-Americans as it is immoral for Americans of one race to give preferential treatment to their fellow members over those Americans of other races.\u00a0<\/p>\n To put it simply, from this perspective, patriotism is as abhorrent as \u201cracism,\u201d for both are a standing violation of the universality and impartiality of the morality of human rights.<\/p>\n This brings us to a third problem.<\/p>\n If the \u201cracist\u201d is a reprehensible character because he prefers the members of his own race over those of other races, then there is no way to avoid the conclusion that anyone <\/em>who is partial toward his own in any context <\/em>must be equally reprehensible.\u00a0 This would include not only the patriot but, more disturbingly yet, those who are partial toward their families <\/em>over the families of others.<\/p>\n On the logic of the morality of human rights, \u201cfamilyism,\u201d then, joins \u201cracism\u201d and patriotism as evils.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those who think that this last is a stretch should consider that it has been quite some time since contemporary moral philosophers have branded human beings\u2019 preference for their own species <\/em>over others as \u201cspecieism\u201d and added it to the litany of such abominations as \u201cracism,\u201d \u201csexism,\u201d \u201cclassism,\u201d and the rest.<\/p>\n This <\/em>is where \u201cthe proposition\u201d upon which America was supposedly founded leads us.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick,\u00a0Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is commonplace for most contemporary commentators to think of the Declaration of Independence as embodying our \u201cnational creed.\u201d\u00a0 This in turn explains the equally commonplace description ofAmericaas a \u201ccreedal\u201d or \u201cpropositional nation.\u201d The idea is this: the Declaration, with its affirmation of \u201crights\u201d that are \u201cunalienable\u201d and \u201cself-evident,\u201d expresses a universal morality, a morality…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n