It is commonplace for most contemporary commentators to think of the Declaration of Independence as embodying our “national creed.”  This in turn explains the equally commonplace description ofAmericaas a “creedal” or “propositional nation.”

The idea is this: the Declaration, with its affirmation of “rights” that are “unalienable” and “self-evident,” expresses a universal morality, a morality unencumbered by the contingencies and relativities of place and time, culture and history.  America, the Declaration makes clear, is committed to the advancement, not of this or that person or group of persons, but of “the rights” of all mankind.

America was founded by white Christians from a specific place in Europeand at a particular juncture in their history.  And American life, up until the present day, has been informed overwhelmingly by European or Western ideas and traditions.  Still, it is emphatically “un-American”—maybe even “anti-American”—to think of our country in ethnic or racial terms.  Put another way, it is immoral—“racist,” “bigoted,” etc.—to recognize in America anything other than the first nation ever to have been erected upon a “timeless principle” or “ideal”: the principle that all human beings everywhere and always possess (pre-political) rights.

Not everyone today endorses this vision of America’s founding.  But more people than not, including people with clashing political visions, endorse the morality of “natural” or “human rights” embodied by the Declaration.  This is unfortunate, for only its ubiquity prevents its champions from recognizing the burdens with which their morality saddles them.

For one, if everybody has equal rights, and if Americais supposed to be committed to advancing these rights, then it is only upon practical or strategic grounds that objections can be raised against the American enterprises of welcoming massive Third World immigration, on the one hand, and launching equally massive military interventions abroad, on the other.  As Ilana Mercer noted some time ago, “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them” are inseparable engagements (emphases original).  She also observed, correctly, that the glue that holds them together is the notion of America as a “proposition nation.”

Yet, interestingly, the “proposition” responsible for this madness is just that proposition to which Ilana and many other sensible folks (like Pat Buchanan, for instance) subscribe: it is the proposition that all human beings have “unalienable” natural rights.

The point is that if America is committed to natural or human rights, then, ideally, she should be embracing as many immigrants and toppling as many oppressive foreign regimes as possible.  The means by which she fulfills this mission may be morally dubious; but the mission itself isn’t just morally permissible—it is obligatory.

The logic of the morality of human rights pushes us even further, though: because it is universal in character, because it makes no distinctions between persons, by its lights it is immoral for both the United States government as well as the American citizen to show partiality toward American citizens over non-Americans—regardless of where the latter are located.  The universality of the doctrine of human rights entails impartiality.  Thus, it is just as immoral for Americans—again, whether political office holders or citizens—to act partially toward Americans over non-Americans as it is immoral for Americans of one race to give preferential treatment to their fellow members over those Americans of other races. 

To put it simply, from this perspective, patriotism is as abhorrent as “racism,” for both are a standing violation of the universality and impartiality of the morality of human rights.

This brings us to a third problem.

If the “racist” is a reprehensible character because he prefers the members of his own race over those of other races, then there is no way to avoid the conclusion that anyone who is partial toward his own in any context must be equally reprehensible.  This would include not only the patriot but, more disturbingly yet, those who are partial toward their families over the families of others.

On the logic of the morality of human rights, “familyism,” then, joins “racism” and patriotism as evils. 

Those who think that this last is a stretch should consider that it has been quite some time since contemporary moral philosophers have branded human beings’ preference for their own species over others as “specieism” and added it to the litany of such abominations as “racism,” “sexism,” “classism,” and the rest.

This is where “the proposition” upon which America was supposedly founded leads us.

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.