A clip of Ben Affleck on Bill Maher’s show, wherein Affleck loses his cool, is making the conservative website rounds today. I normally don’t watch Maher (I normally don’t watch television news or talking heads in general), so this only came to my attention when I saw it posted on a Facebook page I follow. One of the commenters pointed out something interesting. Around 1:04, Affleck spits out a paraphrase of the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which reads:
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…
Note how he stumbles when he gets to the “creator” part, substituting “forefathers” for “creator.”
Consider the difference between the original text and Affleck’s recollection.
The Declaration of Independence makes an overt assertion that “certain … Rights” are “unalienable,” or “inalienable,” to use modern spelling. The term, which I suspect many understand incompletely, indicates the inability to have something taken away or to give it away. The assertion of the Declaration is that we as individuals have, inherently, certain rights, that these rights aren’t granted by nor can they be taken away by other men. Moreso, we can’t even give them away, although we can voluntarily suspend them, and others can use force to try and prevent us from exercising them. But, even in the latter case, the Declaration states that they remain part of us, essential and unseverable components of our beings.
They’ve been “endowed” by a “Creator,” and “Creator” is sufficiently non-specific to cover everyone’s religious beliefs or lack thereof (for the non-religious, the “Creator” can be the universe, evolution, or whatever term covers the natural order). In other words, they’re not a construct of society, nor are they bestowed by the people in charge. This is the premise of classical liberalism, of which libertarianism is a descendant – the idea that our rights are inherent, and that government is a social construct intended to protect and defend those rights.
In changing one word, Affleck alters the entire meaning of the phrase. Lets set aside the incompatibility of “endowed by our forefathers” with “inalienable” for the moment, and speculate on why he felt he had to change “Creator” to “forefathers.” If Affleck were an atheist or agnostic, I could see, in the heat of the moment, him not wishing to make a statement that, to some, implies the existence of a God. But, Affleck doesn’t seem to be an atheist:
I have my own spirituality, which is of Western Christian spirituality, that is very effective for me.
This comes across a bit mush-mouthed, but it’s not my place to judge his beliefs, and his words don’t imply atheism or agnosticism sufficiently overt to make him wish not to say “creator.” There is, however, an inference to be taken from “endowed by our forefathers.” The substitution suggests that Affleck doesn’t believe in inherent rights, but rather believes that rights are a construct of the state, to be given and taken away as the state deems best.
That is a deep and fundamental disconnect from the fundamental values upon which this nation was founded and from the very nature of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which are the supreme law of the land. It’s also a philosophical viewpoint shared by many statists and liberals, and a source of irreconcilable discord between those who prioritize the state and those who prioritize the individual (though I dare you to try and get a liberal to admit he does the former rather than the latter). It’s why liberals find conservatives inscrutable, and vice versa. The world view required to recast inalienable rights as something endowed into us by other men is and should be alien to any believer in liberty.
As the irreconcilability within Mr. Affleck’s rephrasing, it’s resolved by concluding that he doesn’t really understand what “inalienable” means. That’s a shame, because it’s a very important word in American society. It is the root of and the purpose for our government, and it’s the basis of what we, as a society, should value most.
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