Politics and Culture

Unless one can point to legitimate authority or reason from principles, when one argues for or against a particular ethical or moral position, one is merely asserting. The founding fathers of the United States wanted to make more than an assertion when they expressed their desire to free themselves from England and gave as a source of our rights, God, One who fulfills both criteria: One can reason that if the world is created by a superior and perfect intellect then there's an order and that that order is higher than a man's own opinion which means that men can't decide to disregard it and still be "good," for doing so would make the inferior judge over the superior.

One can further reason that through empirical evidence such as revelation and observation of nature that men can know what this order is and aspire to make personal and society-wide moral decisions that harmonize with this order. According to the FF, then, God has granted people certain rights from which mere men don't have the authority to alienate other men. Besides life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, people have the right to choose their government (I know that not all theists or even Christians think so- "Divine Right of Kings" which theorizes that kings get their power from God, still a superior source).

Like the D of I, the Communist Manifesto attempts to give empirical historical evidence (distorted through a Marxist prism) for its position, but unlike the D of I, it doesn't make the case that Communism is more in accordance with the intentions of a higher power: Workers should be Communists because Communism will materially benefit them, not because it's the right thing to do. If Capitalism offers you a better deal, I suppose you should go with that (and, as we've seen throughout Communism's history, the only people helped by Communism are party officials and American graduate students wanting to get an "A.").

Many bourgeois have been Communists, however, and the CM does therefore have an appeal beyond the number of leisure hours a worker may enjoy. The CM implies that capitalism is wrong in some way, unnatural and transitory, while Communism or the idea that people should be materially equal, is superior to Capitalism- indeed, that Communism will inevitably triumph over Capitalism. This implication, since it isn't grounded in anything higher than man's opinion, is nothing more than an assertion (Communists will insist that this theory is scientific, "natural," and therefore above men in some way, but that's absurd). One can just say, "I don't think so" and be done with it.

Another contrast between the two documents is the idea of equality. The D of I says that God made everybody equal in the sense that people deserve the same rights because they are people (have a soul). Empirically, obviously, not all men are equally talented, moral, or valuable to an employer or the economy in general. In Communism, Bill Gates, his engineers and management, and his workers in Singapore, contribute to Microsoft equally.

Both documents try to give examples of injustice, although, we see from above that the CM is just an emotional response to unequal conditions while the D of I is based on a natural law.

Natural Law part of Declaration of Independence below:

Follow up:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. — 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 these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. 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.