I don’t generally post on Saturdays (I have a life, folks! Well, actually I don’t, but I like to schedule my time as if I did), but I want to say something about the Declaration of Independence today.

Have you noticed the opening paragraphs? How strange they are?

The framers start out saying (in brief), “Because we plan to separate from Great Britain, we feel an obligation to explain to the world why we’re taking this drastic action.”

Then they make this statement in Paragraph 2, which must have seemed very odd to many European readers:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, 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. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it….

The very first reason cited for the existence of government is securing the rights of the people.

Not maintaining order and restraining social chaos.

Not the promotion and protection of trade.

Not the enforcement of godliness.

Certainly not the provision of social services to all citizens.

Securing the rights of the people.

Essentially (the authors were saying), government exists to do as little as possible, except when basic rights are threatened.

Where did this idea come from?

Much has been written about the sources of American political ideas. I haven’t read most of this material.

But I have a few ideas of my own.

Yesterday, as he does most years at this time, talk show host Dennis Prager replayed his interview with English historian Paul Johnson, concerning his biography of George Washington.

Johnson makes the point that the American founders did not see themselves (as the French revolutionaries did) as liberals, tearing down the rotten old order in order to construct a glorious new experiment in the world.

They saw themselves as conservatives, defending their ancient rights as English subjects.

These ancient rights go back to the Magna Carta, and beyond that to Anglo-Saxon and Viking law (the northern part of England was called the “Danelaw” because it was governed by Danish law. As historian Magnus Magnusson likes to point out, our very word “law” is one we borrowed from the Danes). The Anglo-Saxons and the Danes both got their legal ideas from an ancient tradition of regional assemblies and popular vote (of free men), in which personal freedom was a principle worth fighting and dying for.

The Icelandic republic, founded by Vikings from Norway, incorporates the world’s oldest continuous democratic legislature, the Althing.

My fighting buddy Ragnar likes to make reference to this obscure book (the link is to his own review on Amazon). It argues that the Magna Carta had its roots in Viking legal principles.

Ragnar also likes to cite the fact (I don’t know his source) that Jefferson had a book about Viking law in his library.

I’m not sure of the significance of that. I’m sure Jefferson had a lot of books about Greek and Roman law in his library as well. The Founding Fathers loved to draw precedents from the Greeks (in their democracy) and the Romans (in their republic). Greece and Rome were very fashionable at the time.

But the tradition in which they operated—the soil from which they sprang, so to speak—was Anglo-Saxon and Viking at its roots.

See? You’re all Vikings and you never even knew it.

Happy Independence Day, Vikings!