Transcription
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You're gonna have a free government; you're gonna have to have a form of the government because a free government requires a lot of people to participate in the government. The government has to participate in the government, and to do that, you have to have a form. You have to have some established way by which people participate. It has to stay the same over time, or else they'll be changing it all the time, and then soon enough, just a few will run it.
Well, our Constitution is the most successful thing like that in human history, and decent things like that have been known since the ancient world. None has lasted so long as ours. The Constitution is authoritative, or it's supposed to be. So why would the Declaration of Independence matter? My own belief is that you would never give a full account of the United States of America without a rich understanding of those two things and the relationship between them. One of them being the formal cause of the United States of America and one of them being the final cause.
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Are you showing off?
Morning. Okay, so what's the country? A country has borders; that's the latest days in it. Yeah, and okay, so that's the edge of a country. What's inside there? It's a group of citizens that have engaged in a contract together to be ruled by the same government. So it takes a contract according to modern political thought.
But there's an interesting sentence in the Declaration of Independence that we will read so we can find it. It says, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles." So we can change the government; it's a right. But then what follows from that? Kind of a duty to establish a new set of rules in law.
So the Declaration doesn't contemplate life without government, does it? Right? And what's the first objection against the king? He hasn't given those laws; he's refused his assent to laws most wholesome and necessary. So that's like something classical, isn't it? Because in the classical world, mankind—men, human beings—are the social and political animals.
And then they don't talk of having a right to make a contract to establish a government, and this does. And yet, on the other hand, this other thing in here that we need made to live under law, and it's worth marking that because it means we're talking about something important here at Hillsdale College.
You all know, right? You all have different majors; everybody studies everything fundamental. This is something fundamental. You're going to live under laws because of the kind of thing you are, and if you live under bad laws, you're going to be miserable.
And it's very common for people to live under bad laws, and that's one of the points of this document, the Declaration of Independence. We need good laws, and if we don't get them, we have a right to rebel. And that means kill the people who deny them to us, which is what they proceeded to do after this document.
And the people were very strong who were ruling America. This "he who has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary" is a really important guy. He's the King of England, the strongest power on earth, and we have a right and a duty to kick him out of here, and we're going to do it.
So that's what the document is about. What does it say? The Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential documents in all of human history. It gives a picture of the whole order of nature, and it proceeds from that whole order down finally to what the class is called the utmost particular, the definite thing to be done right now.
How's it begin? It begins in very general terms, and then it can be applied. It's not specific to America; it can be applied to human events, which means really anytime one people, the ending people universally. Right? Isn't that interesting?
So who are these guys, and where are these guys when they do this? They're all guys. One of them was John Adams, who was a really brilliant and great man, but as brilliant or great as his wife, who gave him happily in writing detailed advice about everything he did, and he mostly took it. Really great man.
So where are they, apart from the ones that are oppressing them? Separated by an ocean. Yeah, I mean, they're writing this document, right? They're in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia is on the sea, and Britain is a great sea power. Risky place to be. There were people looking for them; a writ had been issued for their arrest.
And if they had been found by the army—not a police force—they were not gonna be dragged up in front of local courts independent from the king. They were gonna be taken back to England, ripped from their families, months away, right, to be tried in front of strangers, which is what was going on, which is one of the complaints in the middle.
And what's interesting about this is they begin universally, but how does it end? Let's look at the last sentence. "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred honor."
What else do they have to pledge except those things? That's a pledge of everything, right? We pledge all of that. And who did they pledge it to? Each other. Yeah, you know the war literature, right? People do uncommonly brave things on battlefields, and many, many people do it.
And most of those people didn't think they could before they did. One of the themes that emerges from the battlefield literature is they do it for each other. They don't want to get shot; they can't stand the image of their friend getting shot. Can't bear it; they love.
Right? These guys are in this room—it's actually the room where the Constitution was written later. They're in this room, and they're promising each other. See, that's a big pledge, and a pledge of everything. And in the name of who do they make this pledge? Divine providence.
Yeah, who's that? Their creator. Yeah, as was mentioned in the beginning of the Declaration. Okay, so God, right? They swear to God and to each other that we have returned of these in Hillsdale College.
I won't say that they're not sometimes a little naughty, and they all take pledges. Oaths to join the fraternity, and the oaths are all the same. They're all 19th-century Christian organizations, these fraternities. And we're big oath-takers around here, as you know.
We're just like these guys, right? The deck boys. Finn, Finn. It's so, so all you got to do is remind you of their oath. You know what you promised to do in your oath to your fraternity, and it's always there.
All of us are to God and each other, many of them to the college. Dude, that means I really got it right. They got to straighten up now, and that's a big deal with war pending, right?
And this is particular, right? The people in the room—there are about four times as many as is around this table—swear to each other. I swear to Emily, and Emily swears to me. And that means later, if we don't do it, we know the name and can picture the face of the person who's going to disapprove, who's been betrayed, right?
And that's as particular as it can possibly get. But it begins universally. You said that universally; that wasn't once garrison. Good job.
Yeah, it begins universally. It begins without reference to any place or any people, but to every place and every people. And it ends with the utmost particularity.
You know, if you think every choice you make, you've always got some sense of right when you make a choice. This document moves from this ultimate sense of right that we all carry down to the particular circumstances in which they are going to act right now.
And the whole document is a connected chain from the general to the particular, and it's exactly the process every one of us goes through every time we make a hard choice. Isn't that interesting?
Yeah, and what are they doing except making a really hard choice? What's in the middle that connects the very beginning, the universal part, with this final conclusion that they make? It's the list of particulars.
And so what kinds of things are those? Imposing taxes on us without consent, quartering troops in our homes, dissolving representative houses repeatedly. Think of those; all three of those are the same thing. All three of those are failing to represent.
They put their troops up in our houses, which means they're taking our houses. When were we going to live? Right? And they disband the legislature.
And we're gonna talk about these more when we get to the Constitution, but I mention them here now because there's actually an outline of the Constitution of the United States in the middle of the Declaration of Independence. It's an amazing thing, and the chief elements of the Constitution are listed here in the negative sense that the king violated them.