Barack Obama has been getting hit a lot recently by Hillary Clinton and now John McCain for being a man of lofty rhetoric, but offering little by way of concrete policy positions as to what the “CHANGE” he so often speaks about would look like under an Obama Presidency. He countered charges of being a utopian soothsayer, by saying words do matter. In a speech given to Democratic Party leaders this month, he said, “‘I have a dream’—just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’—just words?...Just speeches?” Setting aside the flap caused when the public learned this rift was taken almost word-for-word from a speech Massachusetts’ Governor Deval Patrick made two years ago, Obama does have a good point. No one would deny the power that these words have had and continue to have in defining us as a nation.
Perhaps no words in American history have had more import politically than, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” They come, of course, from the Declaration of Independence and that document more than any other has been the plumb line against which we’ve evaluated ourselves as a nation. The Founders used that document to justify the formation of an entirely new nation on the face of the Earth. Appealing to the “laws of nature and Nature’s God” which create “unalienable rights,” they argued that both the King and Parliament had become tyrants, evidenced by their thieving and murderous actions toward the colonies and therefore could justly be replaced. Abraham Lincoln, most famously in the Gettysburg Address (and in his renown debates with Stephen Douglas) came back to the Declaration time-and-time again to demonstrate the nation was not living up to its ideals by allowing slavery, as did abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrision. Franklin Roosevelt appealed to the Declaration and its ideals to spotlight the evilness of the tyrannical regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, and America’s need to stand and fight against them. During the civil rights movement in the ‘60’s, Martin Luther King, Jr., who Obama cites above, appealed to the Declaration of Independence’s truths saying, “I have a dream” and it’s “a dream deeply rooted in the American dream…that this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all mean are created equal.’” The ideals and beliefs found in the Declaration of Independence have defined the United States as a nation throughout its history. Around its words and principles we have rallied during some of our most trying times as a nation.
Despite placing such import to these words, Obama’s does not or chooses not to see their application one of the most fundamental issues of our time: the right to life. His views are among the most radical in the Senate. The Illinoisan has a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, the most prominent advocacy group for promoting and maintaining the legality of abortions. Obama supports allowing late term or partial-birth abortion (69% of Americans oppose this practice according to 2003 ABC News poll); in fact, his views are even to the left of NARAL in this regard. While a state senator, he twice voted against the Illinois version of the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act. That bill passed the United States Senate, 98-0 and nearly unanimously in the House, and was signed into law by President Bush in 2002. It requires physicians to give the same medical care to babies that survive abortions as those babies who are prematurely born receive. In Illinois, Obama was the only senator who chose to speak against that state’s baby protection bill from the senate floor (others probably demurred due to the sensitive nature of the subject no doubt) and said he opposed it because it defined these babies as “persons,” and therefore the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause (“no person shall be denied equal protection of the law”) would apply. He believed legally that would run contrary to Roe v. Wade. However, when an amendment to the Illinois bill was offered in 2003, which specifically addressed his stated objection (and satisfied NARAL regarding the federal version of the bill the previous year), Obama used his position as chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee to keep the bill from ever coming to a vote. When questioned about this controversial stand while running for the United States Senate in 2004, he said he would have voted for the federal bill if he’d been in Congress in 2002. Maybe so, but how can one judge a politician’s views on a matter without looking how he has previously voted on it. (see Amanda Carpenter’s Obama More Pro-Choice Than NARAL, 12/27/06 and Terrence Jeffrey’s Obama is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever, 1/9/08, both at Human Events.com™, Obama's Record May Be Gold Mine for Critics, 1/17/07, Associated Press on cbsnews.com).
Obama’s views concerning abortion are not in keeping with that phrase he argued wasn’t just made up of meaningless words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” President Ronald Reagan saw that not only late term abortions, but also the practice generally was not consistent with these words. He issued the Personhood Proclamation in 1988 pointing out that one of rights that “the Declaration of Independence affirms so eloquently, is the right to life” and all are equally endowed with it. He noted the “tragic and unspeakable results” since the decision of Roe v. Wade fifteen years before had been the loss of 22 million unborn infants (over 40 million now), thus cheapening the nation’s respect for human life. He closed his proclamation declaring the personhood “of every American, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.” Of course while Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land, Reagan’s words are aspirational, having no legal effect. Clearly under an Obama Presidency the respect for human life will find no such champion in the White House.
Obama is right, the Declaration of Independence isn’t made up of just words, but the very core of what it’s meant to be an American. It the CHANGE that he touts involves leading the nation down a road toward the further devaluation of human life, that’s a change we can all do without.
Randall DeSoto is the author of the new book, We Hold These Truths, about how leaders have appealed to ideals from the Declaration of Independence throughout the history of the United States.
