On May 8th, 1945, France rejected fascism; America needs to do the same today.

by Dr. Albert J. LaChance

(written on May 8, 2017)

It has occurred to me that it might be wise to look at the source for language regarding “self-evidence”. So I’m going to reflect upon the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence where it appears. Below, please find that paragraph and, following it, some commentary on it.


We hold these truths to be self-evident…

As I noted earlier, I take the term self-evident to mean obvious. If we endorse the language of the Constitution, then what they meant was “not open to argument, true and underived, something we can all see and agree upon.” They all signed it…it was “the unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.”

That all men are created equal…

Male, female, black, white, red, yellow, brown or any admixture thereof. The original “all white landowning men” evolved into ever greater categories of inclusivity. The document is alive! It evolves! It matures! So, when like schoolchildren, we raise our hands declaring that we don’t believe in evolution, we deny the very Life within this profound document. This is political Scripture. We have devolved presently from political poetry to political pornography. Lincoln, Kennedy (all three), and Obama…these are the political poets.

…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

As noted earlier, the first person singular of the verb to write in the Greek is scripto. So to be endowed by our Creator with unalienable Rights means that those Rights are truth endowed upon us as us by the Sacred as we understand the Sacred. Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and all the derivative faiths, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and every native person on all continents, all of us are “We the people.” We are Americans; our equality and our rights are Sacred. We are the divine experiment in global humanity. We succeed in the long run only…only…if we are able to create a sacred template for global humanity. It is only through a hominized, thinking planet that we make America great again. When we throw open our true destiny, a successful experiment in global humanity, we become successful as a people. It’s not about bigger bombs, but bigger and more generous hearts. It’s about fewer bombs and fewer bombastic “leaders”.

…that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

The word Life capitalized indicates that we are not only speaking of Americans here! What about all that supports Life in its human mode? What about Soil, Air, Water, Flora, Fauna? What about the Garden Earth? Our garden and the garden for all living things? The garden comprised of all living things? In the first paragraph of this Declaration, the following language appears: “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind…” Yes, I take these words out of their context, but only to say they are here, they exist. Why are all the words indicating Sacred Endowment capitalized?

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men

Securing these rights, then, is the only true purpose of Government. Governments exist to secure the Sacred right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Governance is seen here as the manifest protection of the Creator toward the Creation. Protection must reach all the way up to global humanity as well as down to unicelluar organisms. These latter organisms create the foundations and ongoing support of Life. What do these humble organisms need? They need the Garden Earth with clean soil, air, water, and habitat. All flora and fauna in the garden depend on them in an ultimate sense. The birds, reptiles, mammals, primates, and humans are needed to secure Life, Liberty (the freedom to live), and to pursue Happiness. Then comes the true greatness of good government.

…just powers from the consent of the governed

The consent of the governed: DEMOCRACY. Local democracy, state democracy, national democracy, democracy among all nations of each continent, democracy among the USE, the United States of Earth, with its capital in the very heart of American Democracy, the United Nations. Democracy is self-governance of the sacred community of humankind. Finding ourselves in a hominzed planet, democracy then is also the sacred governance of Earth. Nor does the sentence end here, but continues following a very long dash.


We don’t need new government unless it is to understand that the Constitution and this Declaration is designed to offer revolution via the vote. Shame on those who do not vote! Shame on high schools (high indeed!) who don’t teach civics and a specific semester on the US Constitution. We’ve had a Constitutional scholar with his utterly brilliant wife and dignified but spontaneous daughters. A bloviating manatee once compared Chelsea Clinton to a dog when she was in her adolescence. Must we listen to yet another one? No! If ANY form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to initiate a new government. We need only to vote! Democracy is sacred! It is we voters who choose poorly or not at all. When we assent/agree to the rule of liars, we become people of the lie. Like claiming that “yes, I joined the Nazi party…but…I didn’t kill any Jews,” to vote for a swine is to become a swine! We can vote for better people, and if we don’t, we can thank ourselves and only ourselves for the failure to do so.


There are more sentences pointing at Great Britain but enough is said above to elucidate what I mean by self-evident truth. We need to see in our own difficulties the new culprit…we are that culprit! JFK summed up our individual and collective ego-driven dysfunction: “Ask not what your country can do for you” (egotism), but rather “ask what you can do for your country” (community). It is the calling of our great nation and its document to lay out the protocols for the community of nations upon the Earth.


We The People…

By Dr. Albert J. LaChance


-Opening paragraph of the US Constitution

“We the People of the United States…”

Not I, King this, or Emperor that, but us, you and me. All evolution proceeds by mutation.  This is true both for material evolution, evidenced by an expanding universe with its elementary particles, gathering under the manifest force of gravity to evolve into galaxies, as well as moral or spiritual evolution, evidenced in the various tenets of all religions. From galaxies to second generation stars, with all their planets and moons…and…in the case of our planet, the emergence of life. Unicellular, multicellular, and all that precedes the reptiles, the mammals, the primates, and the global phenomenon of humankind.

Embedded in the North American continent, eventually there emerged an enlightened idea: the United States as a nation and its Constitution. We the people, organized around this document, are likewise embedded in the living systems of North America.  North America and her native peoples — flora and fauna, water, soil, and air — preceded this enlightened idea by billions of years.

But emerge it did from all the failed as well as the successful approaches to governance, as though by mutation and bifurcation. Mutation from the kings, queens, emperors, pharaohs, and all other attempts to claim divine right to rule. We bifurcated from England and mutated into a new and fertile idea called “We The People.” As Confucius pointed out, we the people must be self-governed if our families are to be self-governed; if our neighborhoods are to be self-governed; our cities and towns, our nation as a whole, and ultimately all nations of this continent, of all continents of the planet, and even of expanding space itself. To do so, he goes on to say this “will cause humanity to become one with Earth and Heaven.” This is the Confucian trinity: humans, Earth, and the heavens.

“…in Order to form a more perfect Union”

Union with whom, with what? At first, to form a more perfect union among the original thirteen states. Nonetheless, union with ourselves, our families, neighbors, the life community and life systems of the planet at first needs to abide in the level of understanding stated elsewhere, in saying “We find these truths to be self evident.” Self-evident means obvious! Isn’t it obvious, isn’t it self-evident by now to most of us that we need clean air, water, soil, and the other species in order to achieve a more perfect union among ourselves? It was obvious to Chief Seattle, to Black Elk, to the tribal peoples of Africa, to the Maori of Australia and New Zealand, and to the divine poets who said, “consider the lilies of the field.”

But a more perfect union for what purpose?

To “establish justice”

Justice is founded on, is indeed the manifestation of, Truth. Is Truth self-evident? You all heard the statement, “well, I am of two minds about this.” Two minds? Yes, we have two minds. The first is the egomind, a product of the brain which is itself a product of the body. The second is the soulmind, the mind which is not extinguished at the time of the body’s death. “Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.Our soulmind must displace the egomind if we are ever to achieve a more perfect union. How does the soulmind succeed the egomind? In documents like this sacred Constitution, a form of scripture whether oral or written…whether western, eastern, or indigenous. The soulmind is the source of wisdom and union. The egomind is the source of greed, of exploitation, and of cruelty…the egomind is the source of lies and the source of people of the lie.

To “insure domestic Tranquility”

Tranquility arises out of the natural order: tranquil landscapes, tranquil ponds and lakes, rivers and oceans; tranquil forests complete with their species; tranquil homes, tranquil neighborhoods, cities and towns, nations, continents; the planet and her moon with its “sea of tranquility.” So it seems that tranquility might be thought of as a manifestation of the Tao in all things.

To “provide for the common defence”

What it does not say is to provide for the common offense. I don’t need to hurt your children in order to protect my own. I write this blog with my son-in-law precisely to protect my daughters and his children. I’ve never called myself a pacifist for exactly this reason. There is no right to self-offense. Self-defense is enshrined in law. So, the Constitution provides for the common defense. The assumption was that the Commander-in-Chief would be a person of wisdom…another “self-evident truth.”

To “promote the general Welfare”

Presently both Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are among the guardian angels of the “general welfare.” The general welfare can be forgotten and skewed by lies when a malignant economy erodes the tenets of capitalism to protect those suffering from malignant greed. This fundamental principle of the Constitution, to “promote the general welfare,” has been made to serve people of the lie who promote only their own insatiable and ravenous hunger for more (God is made to serve Caesar). Capitalistic competition is good until the few warp the law to serve the hunger of that greed. They turn on the poor and strip them of the dignity of even food, shelter, and clothing. The wealthy become people of the lie. I think it was Gandhi who said, “If you have more than what you need, you have stolen it from the poor.” Giving them back a little bit, accompanied by applause and even TV hysteria, serves the giver. If you are rich on their loss, you owe them all you have…except for what you need.


My daughters, Rebecca and Kateri, and my grandchildren, Adelaide, Elias, Jonah, and Thomas, are my posterity. I’m asking you to join me in preserving the blessings of liberty for them, along with the blessings of soil, water, and air, and the blessings of food, shelter, and clothing. We are Americans and thus are called to do so by our Constitution and the monosacred wisdom of our community of cultures, religions, and nations.

The last sentence of this section of our Constitution needs to become a question: “Do we ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America?”

The answer? Let’s just start over.

Let’s Begin (By Starting Over)

By Dr. Albert J. LaChance

On April 25, 2017, my son-in-law Ian phoned me and said the following:

“I’m going crazy thinking about this country of ours. I try ignoring what’s going on, and that doesn’t work. I try reading and not reading about it, and that doesn’t work. I try watching news and not watching news, and that doesn’t work. I have finally come to realize that I need to DO something about it.”

So I made a suggestion to him: why don’t we just start over?

Start what over?

Let’s go to the United States Constitution and start over…not as Constitutional lawyers, not as professors, but as citizens.  President Barack Obama called CITIZEN the most important position in a republic.

Just before my great teacher Thomas Berry died, he said this to me:

“You’ve been with us since the beginning and your work best reflects my own deepest intention for my work.  You’ve written books in several fields and I want you to write one more; I want you to write a book on politics.”

I suggested to him the title of a small section in my first book Cultural Addiction, for which he wrote the introduction.  That title was The Politics of Decency.  He lit up and said, “Yes, that’s it!”  This blog on this day begins that process.

The above Ian was born in Massachusetts, as was I.  He’s married to the youngest of my two daughters, both born in New Hampshire.  We all live in New Hampshire presently along with my British wife Carol.  Ian and I are dedicating this present effort to my granddaughter Adelaide and grandson Elias, both of whom are his children, and to my other daughter’s boys Jonah and Thomas.  We are a New England outfit!  It all started here, and we need to start it here again.  So, Ian and I have decided to “Just Start Over.”

Welcome to Revolution 2.0.

Our goal is to start over by reading the Constitution as citizens and by commenting on it. We hope to share those comments with as many of you who choose to read them. Each week or so we will produce a small section of the Constitution along with a commentary. Let’s start over, re-imagining this country in the context of our sacred Constitution and in the sacred model of creation, envisioned by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry’s model of:

  1. Cosmos
  2. Earth
  3. Biosphere
  4. Culture

Let’s imagine a politics of decency for our children, our grandchildren, and for all future generations to come.