The Declaration of Universal American Democracy

The below Bush/neoconservative revision of the Declaration of Independence was originally posted at VFR last November 13, as part of a discussion, “On the neocons’ re-writing of Jefferson.” It seems particularly relevant in light of America’s delusions concerning the current turmoil in Pakistan, as was discussed yesterday by Andrew McCarthy.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to impose its vision of freedom and democracy on all other peoples, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the supreme station of self-righteous scold and moral engineer to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a grudging respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the imposition.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings are created with an equal desire in their hearts for freedom and democracy, and that they are therefore also endowed by their Creator with an equal entitlement to freedom and democracy; that, in order to secure this freedom and democracy, it is America’s God-ordained mission to spread freedom and democracy to all men and women everywhere, regardless of whether they are currently able and willing to institute a government among themselves with its powers derived from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any country falls short of our notion of freedom and democracy, it is the right of the American government endlessly to lecture, chastise, blackmail, and cajole the leaders of that country, pushing them to institute new government, with its foundation laid on such principles and its powers organized in such form, as to us shall seem most likely to effect their freedom and democracy.

But when a long-established pattern of resistance to our counsels, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reject permanently the spread of freedom and democracy, it is our right, it is our duty, to take over the direction of such country, and to impose on it new guards for its future freedom and democracy.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 28, 2007 01:33 PM | Send