Review: The Founder’s Key

Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, reveals the integral unity of the Declaration and the Constitution, and warns us of the threat they are under from the modern Progressive movement.

The ringing words of the Declaration of Independence have a way of continuing to ring across the ages. The arrangements of the Constitution have a way of organizing our actions so as to produce certain results, and it has done this more reliably than any governing instrument in the history of man. Connect these arrangements to the beauty of the Declaration, and one has something both inspiring and commanding. The Declaration acquires a practical form and operation that do not seem to come from it alone. The Constitution soars to the elevation of the natural law, and its arrangements are reinforced with that strength.

FDR was the first president to sever the two documents. He embraced the Declaration but demoted the Constitution, claiming that the rights in it should be up for reinterpretation as society changed.

You see the same efforts to divide one mighty document from the other in the Progressive movement today. The result: both documents have been weakened, their influence diminished, their meaning obscured. “The Founders’ Key” is a rousing call to rediscover the imporant connection and thereby restore our faith.