ARTICLES
May 2002 ARTICLES
Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
No Crypto-Catholic Agenda
Declaration Foundation Engages in Political Evangelization
By Christopher Zehnder
How do we end abortion in America? How do we strengthen families? How do we dig ourselves out from the miry social ills we find ourselves in? The answer, says Richard Ferrier of Santa Paula, lies in an oft-cited, but little-heeded document -- the Declaration of Independence. Ferrier, a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, has joined former Republican presidential contender Alan Keyes and others in the Declaration Foundation, an organization the goal of which is to remind Americans of the political principles of the Declaration -- principles which, Ferrier contends, are the very soul of the American experiment.
"It's Keyes' notion, and also Lincoln's notion, that the Declaration contains fundamental, immutable political truths -- chiefly, equality, and, consequently, dignity, and responsibility as a gift from God, and things following from those." I spoke to Ferrier by phone in mid-March. The political principles of the Declaration, he continued, "exist like sediment in the souls of most Americans, who are more or less clueless about how to put them into action." So the Declaration Foundation's grand vision, said Ferrier, would be "to instill those principles where they aren't, and develop them where they are, so that most Americans are really living and practicing Declaration politics in their daily lives. If we did that, we'd have an end to abortion overnight; we would have enormously stronger families, and so on."
These are grand goals for the foundation that was born only six years ago, after the 1996 presidential elections. Alan Keyes, then wrapping up his bid for the Republican presidential presidential nomination, spearheaded the effort to get a non-profit, educational foundation underway. "Alan," said Ferrier, "gave a sort of inaugural speech on the purposes of the foundation at the San Diego Republican convention." The foundation's first president, Dave Racer, ran it until 1998, when Keyes again contemplated a run for the presidency in 2000, which would give him less time to promote the foundation. This left the foundation in a torpid state. When Keyes and his chief assistant, Mary Lewis, decided they wanted a more concrete product, they asked Ferrier to write a civics textbook for the foundation. With the assistance of Andrew Seeley, also a tutor a Thomas Aquinas College, Ferrier wrote an eleventh grade civics textbook, America's Declaration Principles in Thought and Action, which he finished in the summer of 99.
Ferrier said the book was a way to vivify the foundation. "We wanted to inform the donor base and supporters that the foundation was alive and kicking and it had what we thought was a very good product almost finished. And we wanted to exhort them to do the kind of work that they had done in their communities, even to such simple things as really seriously celebrating the Fourth of July, for instance, by writing good letters to the editor -- not just using the Fourth as a day to have a picnic or go out on the lake. So that meant there was work to be done -- newsletter work, answering correspondence, and so on." So it was, said Ferrier, that the foundation went from "a kind of hibernation stage" into directed action. Still Ferrier, who became the foundation's president in 1999 admitted that the course he would follow was not, at first, clear. "I'm an academic," he said. "It's not exactly that I had a grand scheme of what to do right away." But Ferrier did soon arrive at a scheme, and a grand one it proved to be.
But before addressing Ferrier on the larger mission of the Declaration Foundation, I had to broach a doubt I had about appealing to the Declaration. How, I asked, is the Declaration a sufficient guide? Are not the concepts of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" vague and subject to a variety of interpretations? By what standard or "magisterium" do we interpret those words at the heart of the Declaration?
Ferrier said he thinks that the "magisterium" is "the light of reason in every man's heart." But what if different people, by different courses of reasoning, come to contrary conclusions, say, on the abortion issue? Then, said Ferrier, "they force you into the work of education." For example, in his text, he said, "we go directly to the notion of freedom, and ask who's free, and raise the kind of argument that Plato raises -- that the man who acts according to his whim does not accomplish the very things that he wishes, and is a slave, in an interior way.
"Then, there's the appeal to authority," Ferrier continued. "Alexis de Toqueville, for example, cites the Puritan founders of New England, who distinguished license and liberty in a way that St. Thomas Aquinas would just love. So, if you want to know what the founders' society understood, historically, by 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' you look, for instance, to the words of their preachers. Do you want to know what your heritage is? Look at the words [of the Declaration] in the way they would have been used in the 18th century. Do you want to know why they spoke that way? Because reason and revelation point to it. So [in the civics textbook], we cite a little bit of scripture and some of the philosophical tradition. We have a chapter called 'Preachers and Philosophers,' that basically gives students a bit of Aristotle, a bit of Cicero, a bit of Locke, a tiny bit of Belarmine and Suarez, a bunch of the colonial preachers, and St. Paul. We take an irenical and inclusive look at things at which Aristotle, Cicero and Locke agree with each other, whatever deep differences they have. They all three think that men are to be ruled by reason; that human reason can, in some way, find the course which is productive of happiness and which is not wanton."
Ferrier's eleventh grade text is but the first step in the task of educating people about Declaration principles. Over the past year the foundation has sold about a thousand copies of the book, in a plastic spiral-binder form, to some schools and to home schooling families. The foundation is also preparing a teacher's manual for the civics book, and wants to put together a third book of readings from original sources. Though the civics text, Ferrier said, is "strong" on original sources, "we didn't put them in the book. Even the Gettysburg Address, which is short -- we still didn't put it in; we just assumed that they would find it. We got to thinking -- no, you want to put in Federalist 10, the Gettysburg Address, maybe Lincoln's whole Peoria Speech, Stephens' cornerstone speech, some excerpts from Toqueville -- so we're going to add up to a good 100 or more pages of that kind of original material. We've made all the selections." Ferrier hopes to find a publisher who will issue all three books in pleasing-to-the-eye editions.
Besides the eleventh grade textbook, which, Ferrier says, "concentrates on the concept of human equality, especially in relation to race," the foundation is planning two more books. The second in the series, called City On A Hill, will, said Ferrier talk about "the duties of a free and decent republic in a world of nations, some of which are pretty dismally unjust. It will raise questions of national security and it will try to trace it back to principles," such as a people's right of self defense, the just war doctrine, international cooperation, and so forth. The third book will deal with questions of property rights and the pursuit of happiness. Each of the books, said Ferrier, will be two-part; each will start with principle and then move on to application. "They will say, here are our principles and then will address the questions: 'How does that play out in the world?' 'Has anyone ever done such a thing?' 'Did we do it?' 'Did we do it perfectly?' 'What kind of statesmen and citizens do you need for these principles to be real in action?' When they're done, you've got a complete history curriculum, subordinated to political philosophy and civics. That might be hard to sell, but I think some teachers would love it, because suddenly your inquiry into history is governed by the just and the unjust. It shows that you care."
The textbooks (which Ferrier hopes can be re-written in fifth and eighth grade editions) are but the first step in what he described as a "project of public reeducation." Though the Declaration Foundation is looking to private and home schools as the natural places on which to focus their activity, it has also set its sights on the public school system. The first step, said Ferrier, is to get state legislatures to pass laws requiring the study of fundamental American civic documents in public schools. "We want to get legislation passed in six months in several states, and in two years in all the states," said Ferrier. Texas has already passed such legislation, and similar legislation is pending in Ohio, Florida, Kansas and Connecticut. Oddly enough, California, said Ferrier, "has the best civics standards in the country." The problem, though, in California is that nobody knows about the standards. "You don't have to do anything more with the law here," said Ferrier, "except get it obeyed."
Once such legislation is passed in the states, the foundation hopes to participate in a comprehensive civics review project. "Once the state says, 'teach the Declaration, teach the Constitution,'" said Ferrier, "the next question is -- using what books? Most civics books are bad. They are, at best, intellectually flaccid and sloppy and uninteresting, or they take an historicist or Marxist or some other inappropriate view of such things. The next stage is intelligent review of texts, with a dissemination-of-information plan to the legislators and state boards of education and local activists, so they'll have a good diagnosis of which books are good, and which aren't. The review will say, for instance, that this book simply does not acknowledge the influence of colonial Presbyterian theology and its doctrine of human dignity on the Revolution, and it's a big mistake to ignore that; or that this one misrepresents the Catholic Church on the divine right of kings doctrine; or, conversely, that this one is good. Then, you give that information to parents." Of course, Ferrier hopes that the foundation's books are among those deemed good and usable by review boards.
Accompanying the task of introducing good books into school curricula is the reeducation of teachers so they can teach the books. "That's another of these 20-year projects," said Ferrier. "But it isn't hopeless. There are foundations and government money for serious teacher training in history and in civics." The Declaration Foundation "wants to join with other groups and even with the government and design intelligent and maybe technology-friendly, serious, principle-oriented teacher training programs and conduct them all over the country."
The schools and curricula are, however, only one part of the Foundation's "biggest vision," which Ferrier says is "way beyond my reach; it's ridiculous -- I have a pea shooter and I'm aiming at the Kremlin." Besides the schools, "you're aiming at everybody, finally: preachers, priests, youth group leaders, some people in civic associations, like Rotaries, and so forth -- the people who in some way mediate the understanding of the political life to the public at large and who have patriotic sentiments. A lot of those people go to Keyes' speeches, and they are thrilled, and they want to go back and grow the plants that they have taken away in little square baskets from that speech. But they don't know how to water them, and a few weeks go by, and that's the end of that. We want to stay in touch with those people; we want to do collaborative work with them -- give them advice, help them craft their message, try to keep them intellectually on target while they carry out the activity on the ground."
Many groups, said Ferrier, concentrate on particular issues -- racial harmony, anti-homosexual agitation, the life question or property rights. The foundation wants to help these groups "to develop in their communities and pass on to their children a more coherent view of politics in which things are drawn back to the principles of dignity and equality and duty to God. We want to teach them how to make those arguments. When they can't make the arguments they rant and rave in letters to the editor or in conversations with their friends, and they never persuade anybody else. You persuade other people, generally, not by hammering the point of disagreement, but by going a step or two deeper to a common principle, and then working your way back up to the point of disagreement." The foundation, said Ferrier, wants to teach people "the deeper principles in virtue of which their sentiments are justified, along with the rhetorical tools to make coalitions and persuade other people and be a little more politically evangelical and effective."
Since he is a Catholic, I asked Ferrier how he saw the Declaration Foundation in relation to the Catholic Church. For if, as Pope Leo xiii said (in the context of the labor question), "we affirm that if the Church is disregarded, human striving will be in vain," is not the Declaration Foundation working in vain by appealing to natural principles alone?
Ferrier said that as a Catholic he has found heading the Declaration Foundation "a remarkably comfortable position." Pope John Paul II, he thinks, "has all but embraced Declaration principles as not only acceptable, but as close to the best statement of political principles that the human race has achieved." That doesn't mean, though, that the Holy Father thinks only natural principles are sufficient for human society. "I think he thinks that you have a more perfect security, peace, good will and the like, to the extent that you more and more perfectly appropriate the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including the graces that bear on common social life." As far as this touches the United States, Ferrier thinks "it's simply true to say -- two cheers for the American Revolution! It's chief defect is incompleteness."
The goals of the Declaration Foundation, Ferrier thinks, coalesce nicely with the Church's message to the modern world. "The troublesome questions of our day are those on which the Church has been the best," said Ferrier. "The whole decay of family life and abortion seem to have arisen, among other things, from the de-sacramentalized and contraceptive mentality about marriage. These affected the Protestant churches before they affected those disobedient Catholics who think such nonsense. The Church has been heroic, firm and just a rock on these issues, which are the hot fronts of the political battles in the United States. Consequently, when you defend our civilization in the areas where it is under attack, you find it extraordinarily comfortable to be a Roman Catholic in the United States."
As president of the Declaration Foundation, Ferrier has no crypto-Catholic agenda. "It's a matter of prudence," he said. "If it's the case that an excellent craftsman bears witness and evangelizes, it's really crucial that he remains focused on his craft to really evangelize. So I'm sustaining, with no reservations and hidden thoughts, the power and truth of the Declaration principle tradition in American history and civics. The Holy Ghost may use that for the evangelization of North America. I could see how that could happen, because it's a return to principles of moral dignity and responsibility which are in, or at, the open door of Holy Mother Church.
"St. Paul says, whatever's good, whatever's decent, whatever's lovely, think on these things. It seems to me that whatever respects the image of God in men, in their common life, that opens for them the dream of justice, the sense of duty -- and, correspondingly, the sense of sin and responsibility when we mess these things up -- that every effort to make men live decently and justly in the political order is a way to Jerusalem. In an era where the sense of sin is weak, and where politics is regarded cynically, it is a particularly large door back to Jerusalem."
For more information on the Declaration Foundation, and its sister grassroots political group, visit http://declaration.org and www.declarationalliance.org/donate.php.