Politics & Power Quote by Paul Gillmor

Calling the Declaration of Independence "sacred" is a politician's tell: it wraps a contested civic document in the aura of religion, converting history into something closer to scripture. Paul Gillmor, a mainstream Republican congressman in the late 20th and early 21st century, is doing more than praising an old text. He's staking out a rhetorical safe zone where disagreement can be painted as desecration.

The specific intent is protective and disciplinary. By elevating the Declaration beyond ordinary politics, Gillmor signals that certain national stories are not up for revision, reinterpretation, or even too much nuance. "Sacred" doesn’t just mean important; it implies rules about who gets to speak, how, and with what tone. It’s a preemptive strike against critics who might foreground the Declaration’s contradictions: a manifesto for equality authored in a slaveholding society, a freedom document that didn’t include women, Indigenous people, or the enslaved.

The subtext is cultural triage. In moments when Americans argue about patriotism, school curricula, war, protest, or the legitimacy of government, politicians reach for founding texts as unifying props. Gillmor’s phrasing casts the Declaration as a shared altar - and, quietly, casts skeptics as outsiders.

Context matters because reverence is a strategy when consensus is fraying. Declaring something "sacred" is how a democracy tries to stop sounding like a debate and start sounding like a creed.