Snopes Fact-Checks The Declaration, Gettysburg Address

 

If Snopes Fact-Checked the Declaration of Independence:

 

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and 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 requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

(Mostly false. First off, who determines when it becomes “necessary” to dissolve political bands? Also, it is unclear that a “decent respect” requires one people to declare the causes for a separation to another people. Lastly, there is no proof whatsoever that “God”—or any deity—exists, let alone that that God or said deity entitles us to separate and equal stations.)

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 of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

(False. No one has ever before believed that all men are created equal, let alone that this is “self-evident.” Just look around, the opposite is true! And there is no mention of women here, either, so any talk about equality here is just so much hooey. And, again, if there is no “Creator,” and no one has ever come close to proving that there is, then we humans cannot derive rights from [the nonexistent] Him or Her or They.)

 

If Politifact Fact-Checked the Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

(Pants on fire! It wasn’t just fathers that brought forth a new nation. And my father wasn’t one of them, I know that for a fact. And, “conceived in liberty?” Really? Ask women, slaves, native Americans, and members of the early LGBTQIIA+ community what they think about that.)

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

(Pants on fire! A “great” civil war? A “great” battlefield? A war in which hundreds of thousands perished and a battlefield on which thousands were killed or injured is labeled great? What’s more, how do we know that it is “altogether fitting and proper” that a portion of that blood-soaked field should be dedicated as a “final resting place” for those who lost their lives on it? Maybe some of the corpses should have been taken away and given proper burials closer to their homes. And maybe some of the men didn’t deserve to have anything dedicated to them. Did purportedly “honest” Abe ever think of that?)