In the New Jersey Legislature a bill that should have slid through

Like a resolution recognizing a rural volunteer fire department, instead ran

into a buzzsaw of opposition.

The bill would require school children to recite a familiar paragraph

from the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created

equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

right, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Critics charge that "men" meant males, excluding women. That is, of

course, untrue. In the English language the masculine form is also the

generic -- and that was even more true in the 18th Century before the

feminist movement made all language suspect.

Critics also claim blacks were excluded. There is no basis for that

since the passage does not mention race and the term "all men" would seem

to be inclusive enough. It's true slavery continued after the

Revolution, but the Declaration of Independence was a statement of principles,

not enforceable law. The Constitution was intended to apply the principles

in law and it can be argued that it failed to do so regarding slavery.

Even so, anyone who believes blacks were treated unfairly in America

should be eager to instruct children in the principles in the Declaration

of Independence to preclude America's ever again tolerating slavery.

These criticisms are so clearly without merit we have to look

Elsewhere for the real reason liberals object to children learning the Declaration

of Independence. That reason is the ideas it advances, ideas which are as

unacceptable to today's liberals as they were to the absolute monarchs of

the 18th Century. A review of the liberals' agenda reveals why they

can never allow the children to learn, to understand and believe in the

principles in the Declaration of Independence.

When you plan to deprive people of property without compensation;

take over the raising of their children; disparage their religious faith;

dictate where they may live; monitor their travel, communications, and

financial activities leaving them no shred of privacy; tax them under an

arbitrary and irrational code; seize their property without even charging

them with a crime; confiscate their guns; force them out of their

automobiles and onto mass transit; you surely don't want them absorbing

any guff about "unalienable rights" or "consent of the governed."

And you certainly don't want to encourage any thoughts about altering

or abolishing a government that becomes destructive of their rights.

There is no better evidence that the children need to learn this

document and these principles than how vehemently liberal lawmakers are

opposed to their learning it.

Larry P. Arnn, president of the Claremont Institute reminds us of

Abraham Lincoln's comments about the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln said, had introduced into the Declaration of

Independence,"an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and

so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a

rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing

tyranny and oppression."

Such harbingers, Arnn warns, are present in the open attacks on the

writers of the Declaration and the Declaration itself."