Echoing in Reverse

I may have mistaken it, but I think I heard a television history presenter recently tell us that “some Americans think they can see in the Declaration of Arbroath an echo of the Declaration of Independence”.

We can’t, of course, see echoes (though we can see their pattern on an oscillograph). But the chief error in this use of the echo metaphor is pretty obvious. The Declaration of Arbroath was Robert Bruce’s attempt in 1320 to persuade the then Pope to back the Scottish struggle for independence from England: the American Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.

I expect I misheard, but I hope SCREAM* will check this out.

* See 8th and 14th January below

Echoing in Reverse