Thing 22: Self-Evident Truths that Aren't Always Evident

One of the oldest debates in intellectual circles in America is between the primacy of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Some scholars argue that the United States is primarily founded on the principals of the Declaration (equality, enlightenment, idealistic freedom) while others view the Consitution as the more relevant document with its less lofty ideals (separation of powers, limits on governance, practical freedoms). Each side has its defenders (e.g. Harry Jaffa for the Declaration, Harvey Mansfield for the Constitution), and while abstract, the debate between idealism and pragmatism that embodies the split is alive and well in our political discourse today, running through and between both political parties.

Web 2.0 tools can make useful contributions to this debate and I could see something like this being used in a U.S. History class. The first is www.wordle.net. Here I loaded the texts of both documents to generate a word cloud. The results are below. Constitution is on top.


As you can see both documents contain the word "States" a lot. One small but telling difference that reflects the debate. The Declaration is very prominent with the word "People" while the Constitution less so. The consitution meanwhile, demonstrates its groundedness with the word "May" being used so frequently.

To continue the debate I tried out the very cool Amap page. Below is my creation with my personal thoughts on the issue. If you'd like feel free to jump in with the "reply" feature. I would point out that Amap is a little limited in terms of text, so if this were being used for a complex argument like this it might make sense to go with lots of basic arguments, rather than one long one.