Fundamentalist Rhetoric and the Declaration of Independence
Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the fundamentalist language found in Deuteronomy appear to be serving two distinct purposes. The former functions, more or less, as a handbook—a “how to” manual for the “means of discovering the methods of persuasion;” the latter has a more partisan purpose—i.e. rhetoric as a means of accomplishing a certain political or ideological agenda. We have before us two examples: the excerpt from Allen Bloom’s “The Closing of The American Mind” and the Declaration of Independence. Bloom’s piece, while displaying the rationalistic approach similar to Aristotle, and founding its arguments upon concepts within the Declaration of Independence, nevertheless seems to mask a fundamentalist purpose. This calls into question the Declaration itself: is it a fundamentalist document? Although the Declaration uses, in some passages, religious language and imagery, I hold that such use is ornamental and decorative—typical of 18th- Century prose—and does not fit the profile of fundamentalist rhetoric. This is because its tenets are founded upon Enlightenment-era doctrines—doctrines that were formulated largely as reactions to religious fundamentalism.
Examining the Declaration of Independence
The Declaration is, primarily, a practical document, listing the grievances of the American people against King George III. But lest these grievances be labeled “Treason” by “the opinions of mankind,” the first one-third of the document is devoted to then-contemporary political theory. Only after the exposition of this theory do we get down to the brass tacks of listing the sins of King George. But it’s the “theory” that makes the Declaration non-fundamentalist. For example, fundamentalist rhetoric always centers upon some authoritative text, religious or otherwise, which is not subject to change. Deuteronomy 13:1 declares, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it or take from it.” Thus, fundamentalism looks askance on such things as commentary and interpretation (ignoring, apparently, the fact that any text must be “interpreted” to be comprehensible). The authority cited by the Declaration, in contrast, is “Nature”—that is, “the Laws of Nature and…Nature’s God…” Far from being an appeal to religious orthodoxy, it is instead an appeal to Reason—an Enlightenment-era concept. “Nature’s God” is not the Judeo-Christian Deity—neither the “jealous” God of the Old Testament nor the “heavenly Father” of the New Testament—but rather the God of Spinoza and Isaac Newton. This is the Deist God: a disinterested Deity taking no thought for the affairs of men. The important thing is, such a God cannot be considered the Author of any human text. Religious texts may indeed be inspired by God, but they are of human origin. They are also subject to commentary and interpretation; they may be accepted or rejected at will.
The same is true of governments. The Declaration goes on: “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, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Such notions would have seemed strange to medieval Europeans, who believed, in essence, that all human beings were wretched sinners entitled only to salvation through the cross—creatures, in other words, utterly without rights. The rhetoric of self-evident truth, equality, and unalienable rights may have originated from ideas underpinning Protestantism, but “Life, Liberty, and…pursuit of Happiness” came straight from philosopher John Locke (originally, the “natural rights of man” being listed as Life, Liberty, and Property, which Jefferson preserved in his original draft of the Declaration. Congress edited the phrase, and Jefferson never forgave them).
The legitimate function of government, according to this view, is to protect those natural rights: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…” This shares somewhat in the rhetoric of fundamentalism to the extent that “God’s Authority” must be internalized—which is to say, true zealotry tends to be all encompassing and is as much a matter of personal commitment as an agenda imposed from without. In Orwell’s 1984, for example, it was not enough for the Thought Police to break Winston Smith’s resolve; their victory was complete only when he admitted that he loved Big Brother. Thus, fundamentalism may be viewed as a kind of totalitarianism. In the Declaration of Independence people must consent to be governed, and retain the right to cast off governments when they become oppressive. So even though “Authority” is internalized, it cannot be imposed from without—and in that sense the document is non-fundamentalist.
Fundamentalist rhetoric also insists upon defining “apostasy” and designating a “sacred enemy.” In the aforementioned 1984 the enemy was one Emmanuel Goldstein whose apostasy was in writing the book—which was nothing more than a matter-of-fact assessment of the (fictional) world’s political situation. “Orthodoxy,” in contrast, was whatever propaganda the state chose to broadcast in its news releases. Religious fundamentalism defines apostasy and creates enemies in slightly more amorphous terms: Islam considers non-Muslims or even secularized Muslims “infidels,” against whom almost any act of violence is justified; Christian fundamentalists decry the existence of “secular humanists,” and are equally condemning of more liberal-minded Christians. When looking at the Declaration of Independence, one might be tempted to see the charges laid against King George III in a similar light (in fact, historical hindsight suggests that George III may not have been quite as culpable as the Declaration maintains. Passages blaming the King for the African slave trade were deleted by Congress, for example). Yet there is the phrase, “We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.” The colonists are pushing for political separation and are prepared to wage war, but in the event of peace are willing enough to consider the British “Friends.” Fundamentalism, by its very nature, is not willing to reconcile with any “sacred enemy”—if it were, it would no longer be fundamentalism.
Finally, the urge for “atonement” or “deliverance” (in the spiritual sense) and the need for a moral exemplar—as in a Divine Right King—is not met by the language of the Declaration. Although the “enlightened” political theory of the first two paragraphs has moral, spiritual, and (possibly) theological implications, the Declaration as a whole is secular in nature. As is the U.S. Constitution, written eleven years later. These are facts which nowadays tend to be ignored or distorted by the Religious Right, who claim, among other things, that America was originally settled by Christians “in the name of Jesus Christ,” that the Founding Fathers were all devout men of faith, and that Founding Documents—such as the Declaration of Independence—are divinely inspired. Therefore, a religious crusade to “take back America” from the clutches of secular humanism is understandable and justified. The instrument of choice for this effort seems to be the Republican Party; so fundamentalism is rapidly encroaching upon our political system, as it is in many other parts of the world.
The Founding Documents themselves, upon close inspection, are aggressively secular: the Declaration of Independence simply details the reasons for political separation from Britain, and the Constitution makes no mention of God whatsoever. The First Amendment even goes so far as to prohibit governmental establishment or promotion of religion—hardly what one would call a “sacred” document. Furthermore, it resists the impulse to set up an American king, preferring to invest executive power in a president. The modern day tendency to hold the U.S president as some sort of moral exemplar notwithstanding, these facts support the non-fundamentalist nature of these documents.
Allen Bloom and Cultural Relativism
Bloom’s title, “The Closing of the American Mind,” seems rather ironic since his piece decries “moral virtue-openness”—i.e. cultural relativism. Our purpose here is to apply the Aristotelian model to his rhetoric, and of the three types (political, forensic, epideictic), I’d have to say that it is largely epideictic. For Bloom goes to great lengths in vilifying (rather than praising) cultural relativism. His purpose is to sway the reader to agree with what he says (about the deplorable state of American education), and perhaps accept his assertion of “absolute truth.” The notion that there is an objective, knowable truth in the absolute sense would tend to undercut any argument in favor of moral (and thus cultural) relativism. For example, a mathematical statement—such as 2 + 2 = 4—exists outside the context of human opinion or cultural bias. Science exists, supposedly, on the basis of such independent principles. There cannot be a “Democratic” as opposed to “Republican” science any more than there can be “American” as opposed to “European” mathematics. Mathematical formulae hold true whether one is man or woman, Christian or Jew, atheist or agnostic. So the case for objective, absolute truth is a strong one, and Bloom, who is no fool, provides cogent arguments throughout the piece. It is heavy on ethos (his scholarly credentials) and logos (the apparent strength of his logic). Nevertheless, as I intend to show, everything he says is based on a hidden assumption—an assumption that supports the charge of fundamentalism.
According to Bloom, “The danger [students] have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating…The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecution, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather, it is not to think you are right at all.” An example of relativism would be the “rehabilitation” of our attitude towards indigenous Americans. From the time of the continent’s settling by Europeans to the final removal of the Indian population to reservations, Native Americans were regarded as an obstacle and a menace—standing in the way of our “Manifest Destiny.” Against any pangs of conscience was the observation that these were non-white and non-Christian savages, obviously entitled to no provision. But once they were safely tucked away, their once-mighty nations destroyed, guilt began to creep into the American psyche. The relativistic view is that European civilization is not inherently better than any other, and the removal of Native Americans was genocide. Only the belief in cultural superiority—as Bloom seems to advocate—can remove the guilt. The problem is that such thinking too easily translates into mass-murder, as in Nazi Germany. Bloom suggests that all one has to do is “correct the mistakes and really be right,” but apply that to the example of the Third Reich! The allies did not fight World War II in order to “correct Hitler’s mistakes” but to destroy his regime entirely. Historical experience undercuts the claims of absolutism as a viable option, and that is because the human cost of being “right” is far too high. Perhaps it’s better to be “wrong” than to have blood on your hands.
Bloom observes, rightly, that the underlying purpose of education (especially public education) is to serve the needs of the social order: “It wants to produce a certain kind of human being…In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious. Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle. Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of freedom. Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime.” Democracy, from the time of Plato and Aristotle, has been criticized for the necessity of appeals to the “ignorant masses”—which is, I suspect, one reason why Plato distrusted the “art” of rhetoric. Demagogues played to people’s basest instincts (fear, prejudice, avarice, xenophobia) and won political power that way. Even the Founders of the American republic were wary of this prospect. The Federalists—headed by such figures as Washington and Hamilton—believed in a “governing class” and strong central government; their opponents, the Anti-Federalists (headed by Jefferson) believed in popular sovereignty and “diffuse” government. The solution to demagoguery? Universal and publicly-funded education. An educated voting public is less likely to be swayed by specious promises and fear-mongering.
Of especial importance is familiarity with our Founding Documents: “Above all [the educated man] was to know the rights doctrine; the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ A powerful attachment to the letter and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man’s reason, was the goal of the education of democratic man.” The only problem with this statement is that America’s Founding Documents can be interpreted in different ways, depending on one’s point of view. Realistic assessment of the plight of African slaves, Indians, women, and other minorities at the time these documents were drafted makes them seem hypocritical. Or perhaps they were Ideals to strive for—promises as yet unfulfilled. Belated recognition (and open discussion) of these contradictions gave rise, evidently, to the “changed understanding of what it means to be an American” that Bloom denounces. Cultural relativism indicates a deviation from what one might call “true Americanism” to something less desirable: “The old view was that, by recognizing and accepting man’s natural rights, men found a fundamental basis of unity and sameness. Class, race, religion, national origin or culture all disappear or become dim when bathed in the light of natural rights, which give men common interests and make them truly brothers. The immigrant had to put behind him the claims of the Old World in favor of a new and easily acquired education. This did not necessarily mean abandoning old daily habits or religions, but it did mean subordinating them to new principles.”
Ultimately, what this really means is the subordination of cultural minorities to the rule of the majority—a practice that, incidentally, the original European colonizers did not¬ embrace; otherwise, we would all be American Indian. But whether one prefers cultural relativism or “true Americanism” is a matter of opinion; and shouldn’t we be free to form our own opinions? Isn’t that also a “natural right”? The prima facie case that Bloom presents is difficult to refute because it is based on nearly flawless logic (which is why the logos aspect of the piece tends to dominate), yet it conceals a hidden assumption. It is not that there is an objective, absolute truth that transcends man-made culture, and, presumably, a moral truth that also transcends it. The assumption is that a particular class of people—in this case the established majority—has the inherent right to decide for everyone else “what it means to be an American.” This is the same type of fundamentalist thinking that allows clerics to define “heresy” and advocate the hunting down of apostates. To deny the right of self-determination is, in the end, to deny all rights.
Conclusion
The two rhetorical examples we have considered appear to be written at cross purposes—one supporting what can be considered a fundamentalist agenda, the other failing to support it. The irony is that the one (Declaration of Independence) is cited by the other (“The Closing of the American Mind”) to bolster its claims. But all rhetoric—whether written or spoken—is subject to interpretation, and thus vulnerable to deconstruction. Former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter writes, “The problem derives from the very nature of words. They are symbols of meaning. But unlike mathematical symbols, the phrasing of a document, especially a complicated enactment, seldom attains more than approximate precision” It is, therefore, foolish—and sometimes dangerous—to insist that any written document or bit of oratory be narrowly defined. And who gets to do the defining? “Self-evident truth” may be revealed in the realm of mathematics and physics, but seldom in the use of language.
Reference:
Frankfurter, Felix. “Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes.” Rpt. in Courts, Judges, & Politics: an Introduction to the Judicial Process 5th ed. Walter F. Murphy, Herman Pritchett, Lee Epstein eds. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Examining the Declaration of Independence
The Declaration is, primarily, a practical document, listing the grievances of the American people against King George III. But lest these grievances be labeled “Treason” by “the opinions of mankind,” the first one-third of the document is devoted to then-contemporary political theory. Only after the exposition of this theory do we get down to the brass tacks of listing the sins of King George. But it’s the “theory” that makes the Declaration non-fundamentalist. For example, fundamentalist rhetoric always centers upon some authoritative text, religious or otherwise, which is not subject to change. Deuteronomy 13:1 declares, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it or take from it.” Thus, fundamentalism looks askance on such things as commentary and interpretation (ignoring, apparently, the fact that any text must be “interpreted” to be comprehensible). The authority cited by the Declaration, in contrast, is “Nature”—that is, “the Laws of Nature and…Nature’s God…” Far from being an appeal to religious orthodoxy, it is instead an appeal to Reason—an Enlightenment-era concept. “Nature’s God” is not the Judeo-Christian Deity—neither the “jealous” God of the Old Testament nor the “heavenly Father” of the New Testament—but rather the God of Spinoza and Isaac Newton. This is the Deist God: a disinterested Deity taking no thought for the affairs of men. The important thing is, such a God cannot be considered the Author of any human text. Religious texts may indeed be inspired by God, but they are of human origin. They are also subject to commentary and interpretation; they may be accepted or rejected at will.
The same is true of governments. The Declaration goes on: “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, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Such notions would have seemed strange to medieval Europeans, who believed, in essence, that all human beings were wretched sinners entitled only to salvation through the cross—creatures, in other words, utterly without rights. The rhetoric of self-evident truth, equality, and unalienable rights may have originated from ideas underpinning Protestantism, but “Life, Liberty, and…pursuit of Happiness” came straight from philosopher John Locke (originally, the “natural rights of man” being listed as Life, Liberty, and Property, which Jefferson preserved in his original draft of the Declaration. Congress edited the phrase, and Jefferson never forgave them).
The legitimate function of government, according to this view, is to protect those natural rights: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…” This shares somewhat in the rhetoric of fundamentalism to the extent that “God’s Authority” must be internalized—which is to say, true zealotry tends to be all encompassing and is as much a matter of personal commitment as an agenda imposed from without. In Orwell’s 1984, for example, it was not enough for the Thought Police to break Winston Smith’s resolve; their victory was complete only when he admitted that he loved Big Brother. Thus, fundamentalism may be viewed as a kind of totalitarianism. In the Declaration of Independence people must consent to be governed, and retain the right to cast off governments when they become oppressive. So even though “Authority” is internalized, it cannot be imposed from without—and in that sense the document is non-fundamentalist.
Fundamentalist rhetoric also insists upon defining “apostasy” and designating a “sacred enemy.” In the aforementioned 1984 the enemy was one Emmanuel Goldstein whose apostasy was in writing the book—which was nothing more than a matter-of-fact assessment of the (fictional) world’s political situation. “Orthodoxy,” in contrast, was whatever propaganda the state chose to broadcast in its news releases. Religious fundamentalism defines apostasy and creates enemies in slightly more amorphous terms: Islam considers non-Muslims or even secularized Muslims “infidels,” against whom almost any act of violence is justified; Christian fundamentalists decry the existence of “secular humanists,” and are equally condemning of more liberal-minded Christians. When looking at the Declaration of Independence, one might be tempted to see the charges laid against King George III in a similar light (in fact, historical hindsight suggests that George III may not have been quite as culpable as the Declaration maintains. Passages blaming the King for the African slave trade were deleted by Congress, for example). Yet there is the phrase, “We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.” The colonists are pushing for political separation and are prepared to wage war, but in the event of peace are willing enough to consider the British “Friends.” Fundamentalism, by its very nature, is not willing to reconcile with any “sacred enemy”—if it were, it would no longer be fundamentalism.
Finally, the urge for “atonement” or “deliverance” (in the spiritual sense) and the need for a moral exemplar—as in a Divine Right King—is not met by the language of the Declaration. Although the “enlightened” political theory of the first two paragraphs has moral, spiritual, and (possibly) theological implications, the Declaration as a whole is secular in nature. As is the U.S. Constitution, written eleven years later. These are facts which nowadays tend to be ignored or distorted by the Religious Right, who claim, among other things, that America was originally settled by Christians “in the name of Jesus Christ,” that the Founding Fathers were all devout men of faith, and that Founding Documents—such as the Declaration of Independence—are divinely inspired. Therefore, a religious crusade to “take back America” from the clutches of secular humanism is understandable and justified. The instrument of choice for this effort seems to be the Republican Party; so fundamentalism is rapidly encroaching upon our political system, as it is in many other parts of the world.
The Founding Documents themselves, upon close inspection, are aggressively secular: the Declaration of Independence simply details the reasons for political separation from Britain, and the Constitution makes no mention of God whatsoever. The First Amendment even goes so far as to prohibit governmental establishment or promotion of religion—hardly what one would call a “sacred” document. Furthermore, it resists the impulse to set up an American king, preferring to invest executive power in a president. The modern day tendency to hold the U.S president as some sort of moral exemplar notwithstanding, these facts support the non-fundamentalist nature of these documents.
Allen Bloom and Cultural Relativism
Bloom’s title, “The Closing of the American Mind,” seems rather ironic since his piece decries “moral virtue-openness”—i.e. cultural relativism. Our purpose here is to apply the Aristotelian model to his rhetoric, and of the three types (political, forensic, epideictic), I’d have to say that it is largely epideictic. For Bloom goes to great lengths in vilifying (rather than praising) cultural relativism. His purpose is to sway the reader to agree with what he says (about the deplorable state of American education), and perhaps accept his assertion of “absolute truth.” The notion that there is an objective, knowable truth in the absolute sense would tend to undercut any argument in favor of moral (and thus cultural) relativism. For example, a mathematical statement—such as 2 + 2 = 4—exists outside the context of human opinion or cultural bias. Science exists, supposedly, on the basis of such independent principles. There cannot be a “Democratic” as opposed to “Republican” science any more than there can be “American” as opposed to “European” mathematics. Mathematical formulae hold true whether one is man or woman, Christian or Jew, atheist or agnostic. So the case for objective, absolute truth is a strong one, and Bloom, who is no fool, provides cogent arguments throughout the piece. It is heavy on ethos (his scholarly credentials) and logos (the apparent strength of his logic). Nevertheless, as I intend to show, everything he says is based on a hidden assumption—an assumption that supports the charge of fundamentalism.
According to Bloom, “The danger [students] have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating…The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecution, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather, it is not to think you are right at all.” An example of relativism would be the “rehabilitation” of our attitude towards indigenous Americans. From the time of the continent’s settling by Europeans to the final removal of the Indian population to reservations, Native Americans were regarded as an obstacle and a menace—standing in the way of our “Manifest Destiny.” Against any pangs of conscience was the observation that these were non-white and non-Christian savages, obviously entitled to no provision. But once they were safely tucked away, their once-mighty nations destroyed, guilt began to creep into the American psyche. The relativistic view is that European civilization is not inherently better than any other, and the removal of Native Americans was genocide. Only the belief in cultural superiority—as Bloom seems to advocate—can remove the guilt. The problem is that such thinking too easily translates into mass-murder, as in Nazi Germany. Bloom suggests that all one has to do is “correct the mistakes and really be right,” but apply that to the example of the Third Reich! The allies did not fight World War II in order to “correct Hitler’s mistakes” but to destroy his regime entirely. Historical experience undercuts the claims of absolutism as a viable option, and that is because the human cost of being “right” is far too high. Perhaps it’s better to be “wrong” than to have blood on your hands.
Bloom observes, rightly, that the underlying purpose of education (especially public education) is to serve the needs of the social order: “It wants to produce a certain kind of human being…In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious. Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle. Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of freedom. Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime.” Democracy, from the time of Plato and Aristotle, has been criticized for the necessity of appeals to the “ignorant masses”—which is, I suspect, one reason why Plato distrusted the “art” of rhetoric. Demagogues played to people’s basest instincts (fear, prejudice, avarice, xenophobia) and won political power that way. Even the Founders of the American republic were wary of this prospect. The Federalists—headed by such figures as Washington and Hamilton—believed in a “governing class” and strong central government; their opponents, the Anti-Federalists (headed by Jefferson) believed in popular sovereignty and “diffuse” government. The solution to demagoguery? Universal and publicly-funded education. An educated voting public is less likely to be swayed by specious promises and fear-mongering.
Of especial importance is familiarity with our Founding Documents: “Above all [the educated man] was to know the rights doctrine; the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ A powerful attachment to the letter and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man’s reason, was the goal of the education of democratic man.” The only problem with this statement is that America’s Founding Documents can be interpreted in different ways, depending on one’s point of view. Realistic assessment of the plight of African slaves, Indians, women, and other minorities at the time these documents were drafted makes them seem hypocritical. Or perhaps they were Ideals to strive for—promises as yet unfulfilled. Belated recognition (and open discussion) of these contradictions gave rise, evidently, to the “changed understanding of what it means to be an American” that Bloom denounces. Cultural relativism indicates a deviation from what one might call “true Americanism” to something less desirable: “The old view was that, by recognizing and accepting man’s natural rights, men found a fundamental basis of unity and sameness. Class, race, religion, national origin or culture all disappear or become dim when bathed in the light of natural rights, which give men common interests and make them truly brothers. The immigrant had to put behind him the claims of the Old World in favor of a new and easily acquired education. This did not necessarily mean abandoning old daily habits or religions, but it did mean subordinating them to new principles.”
Ultimately, what this really means is the subordination of cultural minorities to the rule of the majority—a practice that, incidentally, the original European colonizers did not¬ embrace; otherwise, we would all be American Indian. But whether one prefers cultural relativism or “true Americanism” is a matter of opinion; and shouldn’t we be free to form our own opinions? Isn’t that also a “natural right”? The prima facie case that Bloom presents is difficult to refute because it is based on nearly flawless logic (which is why the logos aspect of the piece tends to dominate), yet it conceals a hidden assumption. It is not that there is an objective, absolute truth that transcends man-made culture, and, presumably, a moral truth that also transcends it. The assumption is that a particular class of people—in this case the established majority—has the inherent right to decide for everyone else “what it means to be an American.” This is the same type of fundamentalist thinking that allows clerics to define “heresy” and advocate the hunting down of apostates. To deny the right of self-determination is, in the end, to deny all rights.
Conclusion
The two rhetorical examples we have considered appear to be written at cross purposes—one supporting what can be considered a fundamentalist agenda, the other failing to support it. The irony is that the one (Declaration of Independence) is cited by the other (“The Closing of the American Mind”) to bolster its claims. But all rhetoric—whether written or spoken—is subject to interpretation, and thus vulnerable to deconstruction. Former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter writes, “The problem derives from the very nature of words. They are symbols of meaning. But unlike mathematical symbols, the phrasing of a document, especially a complicated enactment, seldom attains more than approximate precision” It is, therefore, foolish—and sometimes dangerous—to insist that any written document or bit of oratory be narrowly defined. And who gets to do the defining? “Self-evident truth” may be revealed in the realm of mathematics and physics, but seldom in the use of language.
Reference:
Frankfurter, Felix. “Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes.” Rpt. in Courts, Judges, & Politics: an Introduction to the Judicial Process 5th ed. Walter F. Murphy, Herman Pritchett, Lee Epstein eds. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
posted by Carl Miffleton | 6:17 AM
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