By Charles Faulkner, Alexandria

To the editor:

In response to Dino Drudi’s letter to the editor on July 17 (“What did the Founders really mean in the Declaration of Independence?”), I take no small offense at his subtle attacks on the Declaration of Independence and his revisionist views of American history.

Most importantly, I’m alarmed at his comparing the use of atomic weapons against Imperial Japan at the end of World War II with the hostilities on the American frontier. The Declaration, authored for the most part by Virginia’s own Thomas Jefferson, was groundbreaking at the time and represented certain compromises acceptable to those brave men who signed it.

It may not meet the standards of Drudi in 2014, but it is a consolidated position of those delegates who stood against the tyranny of King George III and for the liberty of Americans. It is not perfect, nor were the men who signed it, but it continues to serve as a good start and an example through which to develop a more perfect union.

Drudi seems focused on what the Declaration did not do instead of what it did. I argue that we should be less critical of the foundations of our Republic and take some time to reexamine Drudi’s flawed ideas on the tenets of Colonial history, republicanism and classical liberalism. Maybe he can start with something as simple as the musical “1776.”