Something Else is Missing

In this post, Steve Hayward has an interesting aside on Ron Paul and the Declaration of Independence (I left it out of this earlier post, of which the main focus was centered on the proper ground to marshal a philosophical attack on Obamacare).  Here is Hayward with more:

I don’t recall hearing Paul articulate the founders’ theory of individual natural rights which is the philosophical cornerstone of the founders’ constitutionalism.  For that matter, I don’t recall hearing Paul mention the Declaration of Independence; I suspect he dislikes the Declaration for reasons similar to Paleocons.

Steve really opens up Pandora's Box with this observation, but I will leave it to just a few thoughts:  Paul is part of a libertarian/Paleocon alliance that believes--with Stephen Douglas and John C. Calhoun--that the American Revolution was not at all a revolution (see Thomas Woods' Politically Incorrect Guide to American History):  it was a claim by the Founders asserting their rights as Englishmen.  Instead of asserting the natural right of revolution, a right stemming from their standing as human beings, the Founders instead believed they were seceding from the Great Britain and that the United States was really just a league of states, each state retaining its own complete sovereignty.  Here is Ron Paul explaining why secession is an "American tradition":

This also forms the basis of why Paul and others in this alliance, like Thomas DiLorenzo and Lew Rockwell, do not like Abraham Lincoln very much.  Here is Ron Paul in 2007 when he argued on Meet the Press that Lincoln started an unnecessary war and above all, overturned Founding principles:

In order to defend the natural right and natural rights principles of the American Founding, we have to be clear on what those principles are.  The battle for what those principles are and what their implications are wages on.