There's a Lot More Declaring We Should Talk About

So once upon a time in the late 2000s, I played a game called Lord of the Rings Online. It was a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG or just MMO), so at some point it behooves you to make some friends. As in real life, things are just better with some good friends. Because I didn’t know anyone playing it (World of Warcraft was still the big thing), I went for a highly effective tactic (or scam? certain points of view and all) and created the cutest female hobbit possible and chose a class that specialized in healing. This instantly elevates you in the queue for groups, so any time there was something trifficult, I could just hang around a little bit and someone would inevitably decide the cute hobbit healer would be great to have around. I also typed in complete sentences, but that’s a whole ‘other story.

Well, I wasn’t the most hardcore or serious player in the world, but a handful of my acquired friends were, so one night they asked me if I would come on a raid. Raids are the most complicated, most difficult, and most rewarding thing you can do in most MMOs. Because of the difficulty part, there is a lot of “git gud” happening in addition to learning to function as a team. My first time in, I was super embarrassed to find that, uh, wasn’t healing right. I’d never looked that closely at the 3-4 fundamental healing skills, so much to my surprise, I saw another healer just spamming one skill because it had no cooldown, a fact that had completely passed me by. This was a bit of a revelation, opened up a whole new world, and suddenly I was a regular weekly raider with a whole lot bigger friends group in the game. Excitement! Probably spent 5-6 years with those folks and had tons of amazing moments of hopping around training mobs, grabbing aggro with giant heals, all while hopping around a giant pool of acid. Screw you Saruman.

It was amazing.

I feel like most folks in the US know the bit in the Declaration about self-evident truths, light plagiarism from John Locke (life, liberty, property for him), and all men are created equal. But there is a lot more lurking behind that stuff that I find equally rewarding, and honestly never even looked at until I started teaching US History.

Of course there’s the whole intro that states the reason for the Declaration: “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Hey everyone! We just want you to know that we have some pretty legit reasons to tell the British to shove off.

It’s nice, I think. Very respectful.

The second paragraph is a pretty nice "Enlightenment Politics for Dummies” summary. After the happiness stuff, Jefferson sums up the social contract: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Easy peasy: government takes care of us, especially since there’s a lot of stuff we can’t protect on our own (have you tried guaranteeing your freedom against cruel and unusual punishment lately? It’s not really working out for me), and we give them the authority to do what needs to happen. “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” This is a social contract after all, so we need clauses and remedies and stuff! Call it a Morality Clause for governments or something, but there is clearly a line where the mandate of heaven, wait, wrong culture, divine right, wait no, not it… At some stage the people get to withdraw our consent, right?

But not for nothing! “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…” Fo sho. Makes sense. Everyone makes mistakes, right? If it’s been going well for a bit and the government just did an oopsie (which, to be clear, may or may not included intentionally tanking the economy), well, we should talk, right? Is there something we should change to protect against future oopsies? Is it a particular person’s fault, and do we have a method to either restrict or just remove that person to prevent future oopsies? Or did it cross a line, a very, very clear, consensual line, and it’s time to shop for a new system of government because this one ain’t working?

The next bit is my absolute favorite, and it was very nearly the name of this newsletter, so I’m going to give it the quote block it deserves:

Whew. I’m ignoring the artist (because what a piece of shit), but this should be hung on every classroom in the country, right beneath the soon-to-be-mandatory Ten Commandments.

For the teachers, sometimes, but especially for students who are probably suffering more evils than they need to be. Don’t @ me.

And look, I get it. Tons of people loathe change. I’m not quite willing to say anything as broad as “it’s human nature” because, well, see my last post about genetics v. environment, but that fear is really common. Lots of folks really do just want to get on with life and not think about stuff too deeply. That absolutely includes stuff that we know is bad for us.

The Declaration closes this intro stuff with the most obvious transition. One oopsie? Okay. Buuuuuuut “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” Yep, it’s not a one time thing with this dude. So buckle up, here comes our list of complaints.

I’m not going to rehash the whole list, or even slyly suggest a few grievances that may or may not be applicable. What I found to be pretty eye opening was the first time I asked students to classify the grievances. We kept it simple, since most revolutions have political, economic, or social dimensions, let’s just count. A little quantitative analysis and see what we find. One frame I like to use is that ol’ slogan “No Taxation Without Representation,” since there is a strand in modern American politics that can never get past the second word.

By my count, there’s something like twenty-four grievances that are pretty political in nature - laws, legislatures, judges, even making war or inciting insurrection in the colonies. There’s one line that contains two economic grievances, and it is right around the middle of the list: “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent…” Now look, I don’t know how you make lists, but I don’t bury the most important thing over halfway through the list, unless I’m going to put it last, which is where we have “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” 

It really is a laundry list of practices that would make any decent society want to ditch the government or person responsible for all of it. I think it’s important to put all of these grievances together and break them down - does the fact that there’s only one line having to do with the economy necessarily mean that it’s not the most important? Is it just way simpler to describe than the litany of political issues? Someday maybe I’ll dig through papers to hear a full explanation for how Jefferson organized the list, but I’m willing to believe my own eyes. Whatever economic issues there might be, with a properly functioning political system, we can figure them out. Merely fixing the taxes and maybe lifting the mercantilism bullshit (this is probably a future newsletter) would still leave a king doing dick-ish king things. And there’d be no way to know that the king wouldn’t just re-impose the taxes and shut down trade again whenever he wanted, because, monarchy and all that.

We’re almost done here, promise.

I love that after that list of complaints, we try to make it clear that we’ve tried to tell you: “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Not sure about the humble terms part - Ben Franklin was dragged in front of parliament real early on in the process and he wasn’t completely upfront about colonial compliance or disobedience during his testimony. There was a whole Olive Branch Petition, for sure, but I’ve heard mixed things on the logistics (again, something for later). This is followed up by some light throwing-our-British-brethren-under-the-bus action (“They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”) before the big big finish which I think a lot of us are familiar with -

So that is the actual declaration, right there. All the rest of it was just preface and showing off the reading list and upchucking every possible complaint they could find. I also absolutely love the insane capitalization in the document. Adams and Franklin had the final edit, I think, so that’s definitely Harvard education for you. My final thoughts? Jefferson definitely learned how to spam the King George sucks button, and look where it wound up? Propaganda and writing like this played a huge role in the revolution — people were not exactly sold on this whole new government thing, before, during, or after the Revolution. It took a lot more folks writing pamphlets and arguing down at the pub to ensure enough support to make it happen. It wasn’t universal though, which is important. We might have to take a look sometime at what happened to the folks who weren’t exactly sold on the whole idea at some point. It’s a fascinating and horrifying part of the Revolution. In the meantime, feel free to grievance shop, feel free to ask which of them may or may not apply to other situations in US history. It’s a fun process, and definitely one that I’m going to leave to you, the readers.

I’ve got two or three more ideas on stuff to talk about with the Revolution that doesn’t come up much before we get to our guy Washington. That could wind up being four to six, but I feel like I should save some stuff for later, especially outtakes or ideas that maybe don’t quite work in Bad Analogy Theater format: a book review or maybe even a whole post of book recs and a focus on one book to give me an excuse to talk about historiography. These will probably be bonus newsletters or posted off the weekend schedule, which I’ll try to keep relatively chronological for now.

On a personal note - thanks to everyone who has read along so far and had good things to say! Please feel free to share a link to other people you think might be interested. I’m not trying to turn this into a side hustle or anything (too soon!), but please don’t think I’m trying to hide it from anyone. I’ve really appreciated the feedback I’ve gotten so far. Make sure and comment if there’s anything you’d specifically like to see, if you have any questions, or want any recommendations on places to go that aren’t wikipedia. See you next week!