LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Thank you for this communication [# 36]. It brought tears to my eyes and energized me to learn more about the heritage I have as a citizen of the United States of America.

With high regard,

Alana Yorba

Dear Max,

Congratulations on a superb edition of the Great Ideas Online. The concept behind these essays -- that they deal with one specific area of concern, and then not in an overly broad way -- is the reason for their success. You can read any one of them and come away knowing something that you did not know before.

I liked the comparison to the United Nations, and read between the lines that it is a less effective organization, precisely because of the premise on which it is founded: that it is a loosely organized confederation of states each of which is sovereign. (I read somewhere that Dr. Adler is a proponent of the formation of a single global political entity.)

As to when the United State of America became a single entity as we know it today, Shelby Foote, the Civil War historian, said that it occurred after the Civil War. He said that prior to the Civil War, people said the United States "are", and afterwards used the singular form of the verb, "is".

Hillel Lofaso

Dear Max,

Dr. Patricia Weiss, President of the Paideia Group recently told me of an education seminar conducted by Dr. Adler in 1983. In attendance were 50 representatives from school board members, principals and teachers from across the country. When Dr. Adler asked of this group, how many had read the Declaration of Independence, only a few arms were raised.

This kind of incident shows how bleak the future of our country is, if there is not a revival of interest of the ideals of the constitution, through liberal education.

John Boleyn

While I can hardly disagree with Mr. Adler's authoritative history of the phased emergence of the three fundamental texts of our republic, I think he underestimates the significance and the seriousness of Lincoln's reference in the Gettysburg Address to the Declaration as the founding moment, indeed the founding document, of the republic. It is true that the Constitution of 1787 and its gradual adoption over a period of several years as the fundamental law of the land is a kind of beginning of the United States as an organized state, but the Constitution itself recognizes in its Preamble that it is not creating that state, but forming a "more perfect union", thereby implying that in some sense the union already exists. Further the union perfected by the constitution, and previously existing under the auspices of the Articles of Confederation, was itself an outgrowth of an already existing union -- a union of the thirteen former colonies that had declared their independence, that had fought and won a war, and that had formed the union articulated in the Articles of Confederation. The thirteen former colonies did not fight thirteen separate wars against Great Britain for the independence of each of them; they fought one war financed by the continental congress under a unified military command. They were certainly a people, and today we might more accurately call them a nation, the nation of the American people, a nation on its way to creating the formal governmental apparatus that didn't achieve its definitive form until the late 1880's with the writing and the adoption of the Constitution. And the single most important moment in that whole process, the defining moment that made the Constitution of 1787 possible, and that articulated its fundamental political principles, was the promulgation of the Declaration in 1776.

For Lincoln, and for us ever since, the nation we belong to was born at that moment. In a sense Lincoln's understanding is that the Declaration established the nation, and the Constitution, 11 years later was the enabling act that formalized the establishment. For Lincoln, then, the Constitution is only intelligible as the enabling act of an already existing, but not yet legally articulated, united nation. This understanding, which was, I believe, the basis of his struggle to preserve the Union before and during the Civil War, stands in sharp contrast to the understanding of the major southern supporters of the Confederacy who insisted that the Constitution, not the Declaration, was the initiating moment of the republic. And this argument about the moment at which the republic was founded is not a mere quibble, it has enormous political consequences. For example, the principles expressed in the Declaration are clearly incompatible with slavery, while the Constitution, though never mentioning slavery explicitly, nevertheless implicitly acknowledges its existence, and quietly points towards its eventual disappearance. It was Lincoln's understanding of the principles of the Declaration and its standing as the founding document of the Republic that was the basis of his political (not personal) rejection of slavery and his refusal to permit the Union to be dismantled. And it was the southerners insistence that the Constitution, with its implicit acceptance of the existence of slavery, was the founding document that was the basis of their argument that the South had a constitutional right to the permanent existence of slavery.

Thus, while Mr. Adler's historical account of the founding is factually accurate and basically sound, it does, I believe, seriously underestimate the formal significance of the Declaration as our founding document. It is not merely a fine statement of principles, it is an assertion that those principles are the basis of the first act of an emerging republic, the act of declaring independence. Thus the Declaration has significant legal as well as rhetorical and philosophical standing in the very structure of the American Republic.

Herman L. Sinaiko

EDITOR'S NOTE

Mr. Sinaiko, with all due respect, I can assure you, and the record is clear on this, that Dr. Adler has in no way underestimated the profound significance of The Declaration of Independence or Lincoln's contributions. Your saying otherwise must be based solely on reading out of context, the brief essay that we published in the last journal.

That essay, is but the first chapter from his book "We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution" (see table of contents below). He has also written other books and many essays on the subject, too numerous to list here.

PART ONE
Important Prefatory Considerations

1. The Two Bicentennials
2. A More Perfect Union
3. Every Citizen, Both Young and Old
4. Should Know and Understand
5. The Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution

PART TWO
The Underlying Ideas in the Declaration

6. Introduction: Understanding the Declaration as a Whole
7. Human Equality
8. Inalienable Rights
9. The Pursuit of Happiness
10. Securing Human Rights: Civil Rights
11. The Consent of the Governed
12. The Dissent of the Governed

PART THREE
The Preamble's Ideals

13. We, the People: Citizen-Constituents
14. To Establish Justice
15. To Ensure Domestic Tranquility
16. To Provide for the Common Defense
17. To Promote the General Welfare
18. To Secure the Blessings of Liberty
19. The Defects of the Eighteenth-Century Constitution

PART FOUR
The Emergent Ideal of Democracy

20. From Liberty to Equality
21. From Political to Economic Rights
22. What Remains to Be Done?

PART FIVE
Three Documents That Comprise the American Testament

I. The Declaration of Independence
II. The Constitution of the United States of America
III. The Gettysburg Address

APPENDICES
Annotated Excerpts from Historical Documents

A. The Constitutional Convention of 1787
B. The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers
C. Commentaries on the Constitution from 1796 to 1923
D. Judicial Interpretations of the Constitution

VIDEOS: WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS

Mortimer Adler discusses America's Testament with the distinguished persons listed below in these previously broadcast television programs.

#1 THE TWO BICENTENNIALS
Walter Dellenger - Professor of Law, Duke University
John Hope Franklin - James B. Duke Professor of History, Duke University

#2 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Ellen Futter - President, Barnard College
Charles Percy - Former U. S. Senator, Illinois

#3 PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION
Gerhard Casper - Professor of Law, University of Chicago
Theodore Hesburgh - Past President, University of Notre Dame

#4 AMENDMENTS - BILL OF RIGHTS
Henry Grunwald - Former Editor-in-Chief, TIME Inc.
James Hoge - Publisher and President, New York Daily News

#5 CHANGING AND GROWING
Jon Newman - Judge, United States Court of Appeals
Douglass Cater - President, Washington College

(Five one-hour cassettes) $40.00 each or $150 for the set.

TEACHING THE CONSTITUTION
"We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution".

Bill Moyers and Mortimer Adler with students of St. John's College.

Students at St. John's College in Annapolis, MD, challenge Adler, the noted philosopher, author, and educator, on his views about fundamental ideas in the Constitution and their relevance today. Adler discusses Americans' lack of familiarity with the Constitution, the checks and balances provided by the Supreme Court, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and the welfare state, foreign policy, and legislating morality.

(60 minutes) $35.00 - This program sells elsewhere for $89.95

FIRING LINE
William F. Buckley, Jr. interviews Mortimer Adler on his book, "We Hold These Truths".

"MORTIMER ADLER ON THE CONSTITUTION" PARTS 1 & 2 (1987)
(120 Minutes - $45.00)

AUDIOBOOK: WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS
by Mortimer J. Adler
read by Jeff Riggenbach

Mortimer Adler has devoted a lifetime to studying the great ideas and explaining even the most difficult concepts to the average citizen, earning Time magazine's praise as "a philosopher for everyman." In "We Hold These Truths", Dr. Adler illuminates the ideas and ideals that have made the United States of America a truly unique nation in the annals of history.

The ideas Adler examines include those at the core of the Declaration of Independence -- human equality, inalienable human rights, civil rights, the pursuit of happiness, and both the consent and dissent of the governed. These are the ideas that form the basis for the ideals found in the Preamble to the Constitution that bind us together as a nation -- justice, domestic tranquillity, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty.

Seven 90-minute cassettes $49.00

As always, we welcome your comments.

We reserve the right to edit all submissions for relevancy and concision and to publish them at our discretion.

The Great Ideas Online is published free of charge to its members by the Center.

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