Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas gave an important speech at the University of Texas in Austin. Every American should give it a listen on CSPAN or read it here: CivitasOutlook.com.
Full disclosure: I have been a Clarence Thomas fan for decades - especially since reading his 2007 memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He combines his soft-spoken humility with a steely spine. Raised on a Georgia farm, he articulates sublime truths in the clod-buster language of his grandfather.
Thomas used this down-to-earth prose to draw his hearers into the world of his childhood. He recounted the experience of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with keen awareness that his world denied to him the very God-given constitutional rights of which it spoke. This he said, not in bitter anger, but in unrepressed hope.
He taught his audience of law students that America’s founding principle is not an erudite product of academia. Nor is it accessible only through a special knowledge of political theory.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote: “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,” he spoke of truths immediately known to every man. Such principles are “impervious to bigotry or discrimination,” said Thomas.
“Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that reeked of bigotry,” he recalled, “it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had very little or no formal education, that ‘in God’s eyes and under our Constitution we are equal’ . . . That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter.”
“Others, with power and animus, could treat us as unequal but they lacked the divine power to make us so.” This soaring point undergirded the rest of the justice’s speech. That all men are created equal is true not like the conclusion of a syllogism but like the blueness of the sky. It is experienced on a gut level long before it is put on parchment.
With the table thus set, Thomas took on the progressive movement. The declaration of an equality created by a Creator and not given by governments stands in sharp contrast to Progressivism’s denial of “universal, inalienable natural rights,” he warned.
Progressivism was the “first mainstream American political movement. . . to openly oppose the principles of the Declaration.” Under its influence, President Woodrow Wilson called the American people “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn,” and “foolish,” - lamenting that we “do too much by vote” and too little by expert rule. Sound familiar?
Thomas’ citation of Wilson drew howls of disapproval from Progressive critics. Tabloids like the Huffington Post unleashed a condescending chorus against Thomas’ intellect and historical judgment. Their seething hatred only punctuates his point that “progressives had a great deal of contempt for us, the American people.”
But, unable to acknowledge any “immutable truth (that is) good at all times and places,” they missed Thomas’ most important point: No matter how obvious, no matter how viscerally known, no matter how fundamental to America’s founding it is, the proposition that “all men are created equal” cannot stand without personal acts of courage.
Thomas’ sees the greatest aspect of the Declaration not in its opening statement of the obvious truth, but in the courage of its final line: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”
“Without that sentence,” Thomas judged, “the rest of the Declaration is mere words on parchment paper.” This sentence challenges us not only to talk of God-given equality, but to risk all in its defense. “It is that devotion that we are missing today and that we must find in our hearts if this nation is to endure.”
Thomas reserved his harshest language for the hordes of high-minded people that he encountered during his 47 years in Washington, D.C., who keenly understood the importance of the Declaration’s principles, but folded when the chips were down.
“They can mouth the words of the Declaration and parrot its principles. They can write essays and talk at conferences about the Declaration with the best of them. All too often, however, this was but lip service, camouflaged by grand theories in the tall grass of big words and eloquent phrases.” “They become controlled by criticism, so fearful of negative attention that they find ways to avoid doing the right thing.”
Cowardice, not intellectual misunderstanding, is our greatest enemy. Courage to stand and act when you are most unpopular is the only way that America’s founding is truly honored.
Memorial Day reminds us that, while the soul of America is the creed that “all men are created equal,” only by laying your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor on the line can you give that soul a body.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com
