Tag: Declaration of Independence

The Right to be Left Alone

Privacy is the most violated of personal rights, writes Andrew P. Napolitano, as government agents evade the natural right to privacy and pretend the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to them.

When Presidents Kill

History is littered with examples of tyrants using the powers of the state to kill for no moral purpose, writes Andrew P. Napolitano.

Thomas Jefferson: America’s Founding Sociopath

Special Report: For many Americans, Thomas Jefferson is the beloved author of the Declaration of Independence so they broach no criticism of him. But the real Jefferson may have been America’s founding sociopath, a man of racist self-interest and endless hypocrisies, writes…

The Restoration of Plundered Rights

There is cognitive dissonance in the way Americans view their Declaration of Independence of 1776, with pride over its assertion of fundamental human rights but in denial about the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson and other Founders who owned and abused their…

Rethinking Thomas Jefferson

Exclusive: Americans are proud that their Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of universal rights. But the hard truth is that, in 1776, the words were mere propaganda cloaking the fact that a third of the signers were slaveholders,…

Bearing Witness to Justice

Jesus’s social teachings and America’s founding ideals had common threads, particularly rejection of tyrannical rulers and promotion of the general welfare. But the Israelite society of Jesus’s day, like America today, had lost connection to its ethical roots, writes Rev.…

Ryan’s Distortion of America’s Founding

Rep. Paul Ryan wraps his Ayn Randian philosophy of unrestrained selfishness in phrasing selectively lifted from the Founders, but the Republican vice presidential nominee misses the role of democracy and self-government in establishing human rights, says historian Jada Thacker.

How Not to Celebrate Liberty

American history can be described as an endless tension between the nation’s ideals and its practices, with hypocrisy often winning out over principle — and those contradictions are most obvious when the nation celebrates its liberties while betraying them, both today and in the…