Alan Keyes and "Declarationism"

[qwnu]

All those Replublicans who have been waiting for your party's savior can finally rejoice; Alan Keyes has entered the race for the presidency!

But seriously folks, I checked out his website and thought this was interesting:

[ QUOTE ]

...to ensure true understanding of the intent of the Founders: he believes that interpreting the Constitution accurately requires the additional perspective of the Declaration of Independence — the "self-evident" truths of which the Constitution was intended to frame into law.

SINCE THE original intent of the Constitution was to ensure through law what the Declaration expressed in principle, Dr. Keyes argues, the Declaration should be held up as the ultimate interpretive framework for studying and implementing our revered Constitution.

LEAVE OUT the Declaration, as many do, and the Constitution becomes subject to the personal whims of revisionist judges, relativist intellectuals, cultural engineers, and others who reject the very premises of our nation's founding.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've never really heard of this doctrine of "declarationism" before, at least not in this formal construction. It seems pretty clearly an attempt to undermine the separation of church and state, since the Constitution omits any mention of God in government, while the Declaration refers to the "Creator" as the source of our inalienable rights.

I was always taught that while the Declaration and other document from the era can provide interesting and enlightening context, it is the Constitution, and the Constitution only, which provides the formal basis for our system of laws and governments.

Incidentally, while I do consider myself to be a "relativist intellectual", I don't agree that this means I reject "the very premises of our nation's founding." [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]