I was thinking last night, always a bad idea, but we boomers were the last generation to grow mostly up without computers, beyond the stodgy IBM mainframes and glowing green screen terminals in the school library. As these guys took the tech and ran with it, I was deep into IT by then and realized something was going to break at some point, in a big way. I just didn’t know where. I thought the internet (or usenet, or Arpanet or whatever) would not last and so I downloaded and saved everything of interest.
Short sightedness is my strong suit, except for the intuition part that is there without offering explanation. I have “aha” moments a lot, but they are never the good kind. There probably was a dystopian future image in my mind, but it was actually stuff like believing “The Terminator” got it right, and with the ground being salted and the hoods being pulled over our winks. With the terrifying rise of AI, Skynet has basically arrived.
(I am also reminded about what the invention and proliferation of the automobile did to the world at large, and I don’t mean just putting buggy whip manufacturers out of business.)
I'd have to see Kaine's actual quote, but given that it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the words in question about self-evident truths, and Jefferson was either a deist or an atheist, the notion that only theocrats would disagree with it seems ludicrous.
Everyone from Tim Kaine to everyone here misunderstands what Jefferson was saying. One can find a clue to what Jefferson means when he says they are self-evident, as he goes on to observe in the Declaration that "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."
One might see this as a contradiction of sorts. But Jefferson wasn't making a universalist claim. He was making an observational one—grounded in experience, in history, in what actually happens when human beings confront injustice.
The "self-evidence" Jefferson speaks of isn't metaphysical necessity or divine revelation. It's the clarity that emerges when you finally stop suffering what has become insufferable. It's what becomes visible when the gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be grows so wide that continuing to endure it would require a kind of willful blindness.
Self-evidence, for Jefferson, is experiential. It's what you see when you look clearly at the human condition without the distortions of habit, custom, or the exhausted rationalizations we tell ourselves to make injustice bearable.
This is why the "we" matters so much. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" means: to us, looking clearly at our situation, these truths have become undeniable. Not because God wrote them in nature. Not because reason alone compels them. Not because law creates them. But because when we look honestly at human experience—at what happens when power operates without consent, when rights exist only at the pleasure of monarchs, when people are treated as subjects rather than citizens—these truths become clear.
They're self-evident to those who have stopped looking away.
Jefferson understood that most people, most of the time, will look away. Will suffer. Will accommodate. Will find reasons why the forms they're accustomed to, however unjust, are preferable to the terrifying work of reconstruction.
But when a community—a "we"—finally looks directly at the reality of their condition, certain truths become undeniable. Not universal truths that everyone everywhere must recognize. But truths that cannot be unseen by those who have chosen to see clearly.
The Declaration isn't philosophy in the abstract. It's a community describing what has become self-evident to them, through their experience, in their historical moment, when they finally stopped suffering what had become insufferable.
When Jefferson says “Self evident” he is actually misquoting Locke. A self evident proposition requires no evidence like “All bachelors are unmarried men.” Jefferson uses it to mean really obvious.
The Declaration’s intended audience was the King and Parliament. Locke’s work comes in context with the Glorious Revolution which replaced James II Stuart with Mary II and her husband, William of Orange. Jefferson, then, is arguing for American independence from historic precedent. Precedent without which George III would not have the Throne. A fact everyone in Parliament would have to concede.
He’s arguing Lockean to Lockean, from principles in which they should be in mutual agreement. Eighty eight years ago you threw out a rotten king on similar principles.
If Jefferson meant 'self-evident' the way Locke did—as propositions requiring no evidence, like 'all bachelors are unmarried men'—then why does he immediately follow by observing that 'all experience hath shewn' the opposite? Why point out that mankind consistently fails to act on these supposedly obvious truths?
You can't have it both ways. Either these truths are self-evident in the logical sense—obvious to all rational observers—or all experience shows that humans don't recognize them and instead suffer tyranny. Jefferson explicitly says the latter.
I am familiar with this interpretation. But I think it fails to recognize something radical in Jefferson's thoughts.
You're right that the Declaration was addressed to Parliament. But it's not primarily an argument designed to convince them. It's a declaration of independence—a statement that *we* hold these truths, regardless of whether *you* do. The document isn't a legal brief hoping for agreement; it's a divorce decree explaining why continued union is impossible.
His actual comments are more reasonable than my one sentence question would imply, but they're effectively "even natural rights come from law and government, not the Creator." His primary objection seems to be assigning the source of the rights as God and not nature, but that distinction seems to be moot when he asserts that they flow from law.
I think I see where he's coming from and think I agree with the point that he is trying to make, but disagree with the idea that our rights come from government and not from some inalienable aspect of us.
This is the first link to a video of the comments that I could find.
I can’t speak for Sen. Kane but the idea that rights come from government is tainted by loaded notions of what government is and what is is supposed to do. We have been conditioned by conservatives to believe in government as this necessary evil that has to be restrained to protect liberty.
What I think Kane was getting at, and I would propose, is that in a democracy the government should be the construction and instrument of the People. It is the ACTIVE COMMITMENT to preserving the principles of our Republic and to the Rule of Law that is the only guarantor of our Rights. Otherwise, God help us.
Considering that the American people have repeatedly sanctioned their government reducing other countries' citizenry to the level of peasanthood through overthrowing democratically elected leaders (Carlos Prio Socarrás, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende all come to mind), that this would be turned on Americans themselves is not too surprising to me and elicits little sympathy. Americans are having done to them what they have permitted their government to do to other populations.
EDIT: As I've seen it put, there's a certain dark humour in seeing the CIA overthrown in a right-wing coup.
I was thinking last night, always a bad idea, but we boomers were the last generation to grow mostly up without computers, beyond the stodgy IBM mainframes and glowing green screen terminals in the school library. As these guys took the tech and ran with it, I was deep into IT by then and realized something was going to break at some point, in a big way. I just didn’t know where. I thought the internet (or usenet, or Arpanet or whatever) would not last and so I downloaded and saved everything of interest.
Short sightedness is my strong suit, except for the intuition part that is there without offering explanation. I have “aha” moments a lot, but they are never the good kind. There probably was a dystopian future image in my mind, but it was actually stuff like believing “The Terminator” got it right, and with the ground being salted and the hoods being pulled over our winks. With the terrifying rise of AI, Skynet has basically arrived.
(I am also reminded about what the invention and proliferation of the automobile did to the world at large, and I don’t mean just putting buggy whip manufacturers out of business.)
What are your views on Tim Kaine's assertion that our rights are not self-evident but flow from law and that only theocrats would disagree?
I'd have to see Kaine's actual quote, but given that it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the words in question about self-evident truths, and Jefferson was either a deist or an atheist, the notion that only theocrats would disagree with it seems ludicrous.
Everyone from Tim Kaine to everyone here misunderstands what Jefferson was saying. One can find a clue to what Jefferson means when he says they are self-evident, as he goes on to observe in the Declaration that "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."
One might see this as a contradiction of sorts. But Jefferson wasn't making a universalist claim. He was making an observational one—grounded in experience, in history, in what actually happens when human beings confront injustice.
The "self-evidence" Jefferson speaks of isn't metaphysical necessity or divine revelation. It's the clarity that emerges when you finally stop suffering what has become insufferable. It's what becomes visible when the gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be grows so wide that continuing to endure it would require a kind of willful blindness.
Self-evidence, for Jefferson, is experiential. It's what you see when you look clearly at the human condition without the distortions of habit, custom, or the exhausted rationalizations we tell ourselves to make injustice bearable.
This is why the "we" matters so much. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" means: to us, looking clearly at our situation, these truths have become undeniable. Not because God wrote them in nature. Not because reason alone compels them. Not because law creates them. But because when we look honestly at human experience—at what happens when power operates without consent, when rights exist only at the pleasure of monarchs, when people are treated as subjects rather than citizens—these truths become clear.
They're self-evident to those who have stopped looking away.
Jefferson understood that most people, most of the time, will look away. Will suffer. Will accommodate. Will find reasons why the forms they're accustomed to, however unjust, are preferable to the terrifying work of reconstruction.
But when a community—a "we"—finally looks directly at the reality of their condition, certain truths become undeniable. Not universal truths that everyone everywhere must recognize. But truths that cannot be unseen by those who have chosen to see clearly.
The Declaration isn't philosophy in the abstract. It's a community describing what has become self-evident to them, through their experience, in their historical moment, when they finally stopped suffering what had become insufferable.
When Jefferson says “Self evident” he is actually misquoting Locke. A self evident proposition requires no evidence like “All bachelors are unmarried men.” Jefferson uses it to mean really obvious.
The Declaration’s intended audience was the King and Parliament. Locke’s work comes in context with the Glorious Revolution which replaced James II Stuart with Mary II and her husband, William of Orange. Jefferson, then, is arguing for American independence from historic precedent. Precedent without which George III would not have the Throne. A fact everyone in Parliament would have to concede.
He’s arguing Lockean to Lockean, from principles in which they should be in mutual agreement. Eighty eight years ago you threw out a rotten king on similar principles.
If Jefferson meant 'self-evident' the way Locke did—as propositions requiring no evidence, like 'all bachelors are unmarried men'—then why does he immediately follow by observing that 'all experience hath shewn' the opposite? Why point out that mankind consistently fails to act on these supposedly obvious truths?
You can't have it both ways. Either these truths are self-evident in the logical sense—obvious to all rational observers—or all experience shows that humans don't recognize them and instead suffer tyranny. Jefferson explicitly says the latter.
I am familiar with this interpretation. But I think it fails to recognize something radical in Jefferson's thoughts.
You're right that the Declaration was addressed to Parliament. But it's not primarily an argument designed to convince them. It's a declaration of independence—a statement that *we* hold these truths, regardless of whether *you* do. The document isn't a legal brief hoping for agreement; it's a divorce decree explaining why continued union is impossible.
Thank you
His actual comments are more reasonable than my one sentence question would imply, but they're effectively "even natural rights come from law and government, not the Creator." His primary objection seems to be assigning the source of the rights as God and not nature, but that distinction seems to be moot when he asserts that they flow from law.
I think I see where he's coming from and think I agree with the point that he is trying to make, but disagree with the idea that our rights come from government and not from some inalienable aspect of us.
This is the first link to a video of the comments that I could find.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9q0ch8
I can’t speak for Sen. Kane but the idea that rights come from government is tainted by loaded notions of what government is and what is is supposed to do. We have been conditioned by conservatives to believe in government as this necessary evil that has to be restrained to protect liberty.
What I think Kane was getting at, and I would propose, is that in a democracy the government should be the construction and instrument of the People. It is the ACTIVE COMMITMENT to preserving the principles of our Republic and to the Rule of Law that is the only guarantor of our Rights. Otherwise, God help us.
Considering that the American people have repeatedly sanctioned their government reducing other countries' citizenry to the level of peasanthood through overthrowing democratically elected leaders (Carlos Prio Socarrás, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende all come to mind), that this would be turned on Americans themselves is not too surprising to me and elicits little sympathy. Americans are having done to them what they have permitted their government to do to other populations.
EDIT: As I've seen it put, there's a certain dark humour in seeing the CIA overthrown in a right-wing coup.