At a Democratic fundraiser on Monday night, President Obama once again misquoted the Declaration of Independence’s most famous sentence and once again omitted its reference to our “Creator.” According to the text of his remarks published on the official White House website, he said: “[W]hat makes this place [America] special is not something physical. It has to do with this idea that was started by 13 colonies that decided to throw off the yoke of an empire, and said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”
The first time that something happens and is met with publicity and criticism, it could well be an accident or part of the learning curve — like the first time one bows down to foreign royalty when other U.S. presidents haven’t; or the first time one issues a public apology abroad for past (real or imagined) American sins in a way that other presidents haven’t. But the second time, the assumption must be that it’s probably deliberate — and that makes it all the more appalling. Other presidents didn’t deliberately misquote the Declaration, and they didn’t leave out (or rewrite) the words about our rights being endowed by our Creator.
The first time President Obama misquoted the Declaration in this way, when addressing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute a month ago, I wrote:
“Only two plausible explanations spring to mind. One is that President Obama isn’t very familiar with the most famous passage in the document that founded this nation; that even when plainly reading from a teleprompter, he wasn’t able to quote it correctly. The other is that President Obama doesn’t subscribe to the Declaration’s rather central claim that our rights come from our ‘Creator’ (also referred to in the Declaration as ‘Nature’s God’ and ‘the Supreme Judge of the World’).”
He probably believes the separation of church and state is in the First Amendment of the Constitution as well.
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