Regarding Steve Murch’s September 9 op-ed, “The words of our Founding Fathers,” and leaving aside the substance and grammar of the piece, there is the nearly incandescent error at the front. To wit, what Mr. Murch asserts is the preamble to the Declaration of Independence is, in fact, the second paragraph of the document. The preamble, the opening of the Declaration of Independence, reads: “In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, 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.”

A simple Google search would have prevented Mr. Murch’s embarrassing (well, one hopes he’s embarrassed) error. One wonders whether his column would have been different, and how, if he had been contemplating the actual preamble. Perhaps Mr. Murch, after he hires a fact checker, can write a column about “one people [ ] dissolv[ing] the political bands which have connected them with another.” Or the failings of the public schools to teach actual American history.

Clyde Shuman

Ossineke