Woodrow Wilson was even more explicit: he tore the Declaration of Independence to shreds. Wilson explained in 1911, “If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.”37 Wilson was even more explicit in a 1907 speech: the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence, he said, “do not afford a general theory of government to formulate policies upon. No doubt we are meant to have liberty; but each generation must form its own conception of what liberty is.”
