On this 243rd anniversary of the beginning of the best thing that ever happened — “The Great Republic” was Winston Churchill’s tribute — many of today’s most interesting arguments about America’s nature and meaning are among conservatives. One concerns the relevance of the Declaration of Independence to the contested question of how to construe the Constitution.

The crucial question is: What did the Founders intend — what was their foundational purpose? Mark Pulliam, who might disagree that this is the crucial question, certainly thinks the Declaration is not pertinent to construing the Constitution.

Pulliam, a lawyer and contributing editor of the excellent Law & Liberty blog, notes portentously that the Declaration is not mentioned in the Constitution. This, however, is as obvious as it is obviously irrelevant. Neither is democracy “mentioned,” and the Declaration is hardly mentioned in The Federalist Papers. However, the Declaration expressed, as Jefferson insisted, the broadly shared “common sense of the subject.” Rather than belabor the Declaration’s (to them, unremarkable) assertions, the Constitution’s Framers set about creating institutional architecture that would achieve their intention: to establish governance that accords with the common sense of their time, which was that government is properly instituted to “secure” the preexisting natural rights referenced in the Declaration.

Also obvious and irrelevant is Pulliam’s observation that Jefferson, the Declaration’s primary author, was not at the Constitutional Convention (he was a U.S. diplomat in Paris). What is obvious — and, concerning the Constitution’s original meaning and continuing purpose, dispositive — is this: The Declaration’s role is the locus classicus concerning the Framers’ intention, which is surely the master key to properly construing what they wrought.

The late Judith Shklar (1928-1992), a Harvard political philosopher, correctly noted the “momentous novelty” of the Constitution’s first three words, “We the people.” They announced a “declaration of independence from the entire European past,” a root-and-branch rejection of all prior attempts to ground the legitimacy of government in anything other than the consent of the governed. The Constitution was, however, written by men of the Enlightenment who were not confident that the rationality they practiced and espoused could be counted on to constantly characterize the republic for which they wrote.