What They Aren’t Telling You About The Declaration of Independence

Hey everyone Nick here happy Independence Day to everyone we are actually going to show you a pre-recorded episode that we did last Independence Day and the reason why we’re doing this is we’ve got a lot of people from the crew traveling but we wanted to make sure that you still had a

Good substantive episode on Independence Day for those of you that homeschool this might actually be a good tool to talk about some things like the real reasons why we actually sought Independence so many people with an education right now only teach kids taxation without representation well

There was a whole lot more that went into it so we talk about that on today’s episode along with the underlying principle that was so critical to all of this and that was the idea that all people are created equal and endowed to certain unalienable rights that among

These are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the fact that they believe this was given to us by our creator not a king not a magistrate not a potentate your creator was absolutely essential and fundamental and even though it wasn’t perfectly recognized at the time that those words were written

It has become so an increased ever more so since that time and so we hope you’ll get a lot out of this episode please feel free to comment along as you watch and also let us know what you think on Circle once again have a great Independence Day and we’ll see you next

Time we actually wanted to go through the Declaration of Independence what a crazy idea and the reason why we’re going to do this and and for those of you out there we’ve actually had some people contact saying that they use our podcasts they use some of our why

Minutes and things like that for their homeschooling here’s why we’re going through the Declaration of Independence because I’m willing to bet right now that if I went and I talked to just about anybody man on the street interview and I said why did the 13 colonies declare independence from Great Britain I’m

Worried about the answer would be if there was an answer taxation without representation and that is true in the sense that that was one of many reasons but you’ll be surprised to find out that the reason why that’s the only reason you know about is actually influenced by

A decision that was made with respect to a certain theory on human history on revolutions on what motivates people to do things and it’s influenced the way your children have been taught to think about independence about the Fourth of July so today we’re going to go through

And for some of you this might be the first time you’ve really heard a point by Point breakdown of the Declaration of Independence why it’s important that’s what we’re going to do today in order to equip you with the argument you need to explain to a growing number of people

That are actually refusing to celebrate independence day you’re going to be able to sit here and you’re going to be able to explain the philosophical reasons on why it’s important and why it’s something that we should be able to defend team first associate had a wonderful Independence Day thank you for

Joining us on this episode I’m looking for you are making the argument section because I have a few questions for Nick that I’m looking forward to asking if you find today’s episode valuable leave us a comment on YouTube and a review on Apple podcast and Spotify

All right well as always I’m your host Nick Freitas member of the Virginia House of delegates but other than that I’m a good person also I think today especially I want to also point out that I represent James Madison’s District in the Virginia House of delegates the oldest legislative body in the Western

Hemisphere over 400 years old so again my district started off with James Madison and now has me well sorry guys and with us is always my beautiful lovely wife Queen of the bees Tina hello everybody resident historian political prognosticator and this is an episode Christian will be able to provide some

Unique insight into Christian Hines not that he doesn’t provide unique Insight in every episode but sure Christian is I mean it’s painful for me to admit that anybody who might know more about American history than me but Christian Christian fits in that category and then of course our producer

Of producers Nicholas Hamilton the good Hamilton the one that doesn’t like Central Banking thank you Nick all right so let’s get right into it we’re gonna we’re gonna not read this all all at once don’t worry um but we’re gonna go through this kind of point point so let’s start off in

Congress July 4th 1776 the unanimous Declaration of the 13 United States of America now I want to emphasize something here if you read the Declaration of Independence it says the unanimous Declaration of the 13 United that’s all like the the United part in the United States that’s not uppercase right that’s

Not capitalized lower case it’s lowercase and the reason why is because they were the emphasis was on the United States the individual states the individual they went from calling themselves colonies British colonies to calling them States in this document and that was actually that’s that’s a a legal definition

And they were adamant about two things one they they no longer consider themselves to be colonies of Great Britain they consider themselves to be independent states and they consider to be independent of each other on some level but were United in common cause with respect to this issue could you

Give us a little context uh as to what was happening before the Declaration of Independence was written so we’re gonna we’re gonna what’s interesting is the Declaration of Independence actually tells you what was going on before it was written and and that’s that’s important because so many people again

All they know is taxation without representation but another thing that’s important to understand is when this debate was going on and I have to tell if you want to look at like a popular modern rendition of this the HBO I can’t believe I’m saying this but the HBO series John Adams oh that’s

Excellent episodes one and two okay in that are phenomenal and again obviously Hollywood takes a lot of license with some stuff but if you’re looking at kind of the nature of some of the debates and where various states were like for instance uh South Carolina and New York

State were were very hesitant with respect to the whole declaring of Independence South Carolina a lot of their trade you know culturally and whatnot very dependent upon England uh New York had you know British ships uh you know again trade was a big component but also there was a larger military

Presence uh going on and it was centered around you know New York Massachusetts Etc um so there were certain states that were very hesitant about this okay so but that’s that that first line and that’s there’s and there’s important information packed into the very first line of the Declaration of Independence

Now let’s go into the part that most people are a little bit more there’s two sections here that people are a little bit more familiar with when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bans which have connected them

With another and to assume among the powers of the earth these separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and Nature’s God entitled them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation

Two things in here that I think are very important one is is that they are they are going to the laws of nature and Nature’s God so they’re essentially right there at the very beginning they’re saying that there is a certain moral order to society that is a uh um

You know a result of there being a God and and God’s created order right so it’s this idea that there is there is a law there is an order which is above political Society right that that’s the first component I find it interesting here that not only

Did they reference the laws of nature but also Nature’s God yes they could have just referenced laws of nature and have been sufficient but they thought it was necessary to also reference Nature’s god well because it wasn’t sufficient yeah yeah and and honestly that’s not exists in a vacuum they don’t work on

Their own in order to have a moral law you have to have a moral law Giver nature is not a moral law Giver right and so they are appealing to this this idea that no God has created order they’re not necessarily specifying a particular denomination because you had the different denominations

Um within the the Continental Congress but they they do recognize the importance of that element um the other part in here that’s really important is this a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation so they’re they’re essentially letting you know

That this isn’t and they’re going to get into this more this isn’t just something this isn’t a simple disagreement like they reckon they understand and recognize the importance of the connection culturally and historically that they’ve had with Great Britain in fact all the way up into this point they largely consider themselves British

Citizens fighting for what they thought were the inherent rights of British citizens but now something’s changing and they recognize that they have an obligation to explain why it’s changing now we go into the part that most people when you ask about Declaration of Independence remember we hold these

Truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness now I’m not going to go too far into this because I think we all kind of

Understand it but this the reason why everyone knows this part is because philosophically it’s it’s revolutionary in one sense because he’s saying we hold these truths to be self-evident well you could easily argue that for most of human history nobody thought that was self-evident nobody even thought that was true

Much less self-evident but the idea that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their created with certain inalienable rights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness the original draft Christian correct me wrong I think it was life liberty and property um I don’t know if that was the original

Draft but I definitely know that’s the language that John Locke used okay so um for those of you who’ve never heard of John Locke look him up because he was kind of the intellectual grandfather of arguably the entire Revolution itself he lived about a hundred years before the

American Revolution in um in Great Britain and Locke ended up writing a lot of his political theories um down he he said a lot of them down to paper around the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which is when uh James II he was the Monarch at the time

He wanted to be an absolute monarch in the same vein as the French Kings across the English Channel he was overthrown and a largely peaceful Revolution that um that brought William of Orange over from the Netherlands and at that point they established the whole principle that Parliament was even though the

Monarchy was still in place it was the idea that Parliament was superior to the monarchy in many respects because Parliament carried the the will of the people and it was Parliament also that was Sovereign alongside the Monarch and a lot of the founding fathers took a lot of John

Locke’s um writings because Locke was basically writing a justification for the Glorious Revolution around the time that it was happening and he was giving the you know because historically it was like Unthinkable that you would overthrow the king like that you just don’t do that and and so so Locke was

Giving this this explanation and one of the reasons that he gave for justification for overthrowing James was the idea that it was necessary in order to secure life liberty and property yeah so but life liberty the pursuit of happiness again I think some of the discussion about Pursuit of Happiness

Was the idea that it was a little bit more all-encompassing and that that would obviously include property rights as well because a key component of being able to you know do what you want to do with your life raise your family and whatnot includes that component but

Again there’s also the reference to the idea that all people are created equal and men are created equal and a lot of people looking they’re like oh well what a what a ridiculous statement from somebody because Thomas Jefferson actually wrote the the Declaration of Independence he’s part of

A committee but he was the primary author um and he was a slave owner and what’s interesting is that when you look back few in the future in the Civil Rights Movement whether it’s Frederick Douglass in uh the 1860s 70s 80s and 90s whether it’s Martin Luther King they

Reference back to all men are created equal as this was a contradiction and what’s interesting is Jefferson also struggled with this because Jefferson um Jefferson understood on some level that slavery was immoral he didn’t know how to he didn’t know how to essentially eradicate the practice and that sounds

Weird to us today but there was huge legal political household yeah legal political and economic implications to that um but he he basically wrote the poison pill for slavery in the future because it is a contradiction so this idea that you’re created equal that these are

Truths right this is this is not a political he’s not saying this is a political opinion he’s saying these truths are self-evident that all men are created equal and that they’re entitled to certain unalienable rights which means that governments have an obligation to protect these the government do not Grant these things

They have an obligation to protect them and that’s critical this is the again the reason why this statement is so you know popularly understood and referenced within the Declaration of Independence is because it was considered philosophically revolutionary uh at the time would you say that many Americans think that their rights are derived

Because government gives it to them well here’s another interesting part right well hold on though there was one thing that I wanted to ask because I’ve had I’ve had women you know when I say you know all all people are created equal she goes well

That’s not what it says it says all men are created equal and that was the patriarchy and what is interesting to me is because is that all throughout history the word man has been used to say mankind it human kind it’s just for some reason the language has evolved and

You see this in other other languages and I don’t want to get off on a tangent so I’m going to make this really quick when you look at Spanish is a good example so Spanish is a gendered language whenever you’re using a word or phrase there’s a gender attached to it

And in Spanish when you’re referring to a group of people of both sexes you use the masculine um uh you know uh pronouns for that it in English we don’t have gender languages and there’s a whole long story for why that we won’t get into in this episode but long story short

Historically because of the you have to like get into like the history of the English language to understand it but if you get into the history of the English language you would understand that historically as you said the word man or men or mankind referred to people of

Both sexes it was only later on that man came to refer to what we today would refer to men and but what is that anyway so well yeah what does it mean I mean but like we are to the point where they’re throwing that out anymore yeah

My point is is that like obviously you know it wasn’t until the 20th century that we enshrined in the Constitution things like the right to vote for women but I would argue that the origins of the women’s suffrage movement in first wave feminism actually find themselves in the

Declaration of Independence yeah this is something that the left misses so often I think we’re probably going to get into this in this episode that the left points to history they point to the fact that at the founding of this country in order for you to exert a significant

Degree of political influence on our institutions you had to be white you had to be a property owner you had to be male and they say therefore the United States was founded on bigotry and racism and sexism and slavery and all of this stuff when what they don’t realize was

First off 99 of the world at the time you didn’t have any voting rights whatsoever there was no representative government we’ve said this in a previous episode where the vast majority of the world absolute monarchies and if you weren’t nobility if you weren’t royalty you were a pleb and that was it and

There was no upward mobility and the beauty of our country was is that the founding fathers did not create a system of government and they did not create founding documents that were perfect but you know what they did they gave us founding documents and they gave us a system of government where these

Problems could be solved they did not solve every single one of the problems that the Inception of this country obviously yeah but they the beauty was is that they gave us a political system where these problems could eventually be solved many of them were and this go and this

Goes to the next part of the Declaration of Independence right so we’ve just gone out of talking about these truths are self-evident created unalienable rights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness then it goes in that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers

From the consent of the governed that 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 and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most

Likely to affect their safety and happiness so again you have to look Christian did a good job of bringing up this whole idea of like looking at things within the context of the time in which it was happening right it was revolutionary that anybody would say that all men were created equal right

That was revolutionary it was also revolutionary to suggest at a time when a lot of people were still operating off of the idea of the divine right of kings right it was the idea that um or or like with the Chinese called the Mandate of Heaven it was the idea that

When you had leadership when you had political leadership in power that there was some sort of of uh you know ultimate Divine Authority that they were exercising right I’m not talking about kind of the Christian concept of you know being respectful of of the authorities put in place I’m talking

About kind of a perversion which said that if whoever was in charge was in charge because they either they either were Divinity or they had some sort of you know special Divine influence that nobody else had or could have so when they’re saying that to secure their so first of all they’re saying

That governments again governments do not Grant the rights it’s to secure these rights right so they’re assuming that the rights already exist as a part of God’s created order and then governments are instituted for the purpose of securing those rights and if they’re not doing it if they’re not

Securing those rights or if they’re directly infringing on their inhibiting in them then people have a right to be able to alter or abolish that government and then set up a new form of government that will secure those rights again this is revolutionary yeah all right let’s go to another one

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light or transient causes and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while Evils are sufferable than to write themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed all he’s

Saying there right now is that you know a lot of Bloodshed a lot of um you know economic turbulence a lot of hardship can be had by changing your system of government or by breaking away from established systems that you’ve been a part of for you know hundreds of years

For like light causes so this is not some so a lot of this we see this right now with the Supreme Court oh my gosh the Supreme Court overturned rovied way which means the states are now that we should abolish the Supreme Court I’m moving I’m okay what what they’re saying

Here is stuff like that’s absurd that this idea that you’re going to completely eradicate the system of government you have or fundamentally alter it um you know that’s something that should be taken very very seriously what was that line you might be able to to answer this what was that line that

Um that Thomas sull uses a lot about fence posts in the ground oh yeah so Thomas Soul essentially says that when when you when you find a fence and you don’t know why it’s there there’s essentially two things that you can do you you could rip it up and say well

This fence is impeding me or or I don’t understand why it’s there so this should go or you can ask the question why was the fence put there in the first place yeah and what Thomas soul is essentially saying in that moment is it could be that the fence needs to go

But if you don’t understand why the fence was put up or the context in which it was put up you can make some pretty disastrous Decisions by simply saying well this is an impediment um to where I think I want to go and well so again if you lift the fence up

And you realize that the fence was put in there 300 years ago for a purpose that it no longer serves fine you could find out that the fence was put up for a bad and a moral reason fine get rid of it or you could find out that there’s a

Really angry bull on the other side of that fence and you just went in and got gored right so the reason I bring that up is because I think that that really gets to the heart of what made the Declaration of Independence so remarkable because even though it was a

Monumental revolutionary act they did not do it lightly and I think that’s in huge contrast with what happened in France just a few years later because it is true the founding fathers did rip up a fence post but as they list out explicitly in this document they give

Very very clear reasons why and they build up to this moment and say this is a big deal we recognize it’s a big deal we recognize we’re ripping the fence post on the ground but we didn’t just stumble across faucet and decide it’s in our way you know we wanted a different

Marginal tax rate you know so so we’re gonna you know stage a revolution overthrow the British and set up an independent state that’s a big deal yeah and and they gave rational reasonable explanations why because they understood that they had an obligation to do so which is in such contrast with what

Happened in France literally less than a generation later like 10 15 years later because in France they did Rip the fence post up and they didn’t really give a whole lot of explanations why and you know what some of the fence posts they ripped up were good yeah some of them

Were great some of them not so great yeah the idea that you know you could just execute people because they stand in your way politically through a reign of terror not really good idea the idea that you should abolish an absolute monarchy that’s holding the people down

And gives you know no political voice to 98 of the people on under the three-tiered um you know feudal structure that Fran said that was a good thing but but I I think that the reason that I brought that up is because Thomas soul is getting to something that I think our

Founders understood and that so many other people just a few years later across the Atlantic Ocean did not get in what so many people today don’t get and that thing is is that we’re not saying don’t rip fence posts up what we’re saying is is that the heart of conservatism

Is an understanding that you know what institutions don’t just pop into existence they take decades hundreds of years centuries sometimes thousands of years to construct and it is so much more than just your single lifetime there’s so many people on the left that somehow think that when they come into existence everything that

Happened before them doesn’t matter yeah and that anything that stands in the way of their policy end and we’ve talked about this in previous episodes right where you know the left gets upset about the Supreme Court because they didn’t give them their policy goal and so therefore the Supreme Court has to go

They do this with so many things so many institutions so many historical things where anything that stands in their way it has to go yeah and they don’t understand the value of the institution or the process it’s only the end State and they don’t get the instant they want

Well it must be a problem with the process or the institution or it could be a problem with your desired end State that’s also but let’s let’s go into this because this is there’s a lot of stuff in here right so we just we just talked about

You know the the Declaration says you don’t just break away from your government and try to start a new one for transient purposes then they say this but when a long train of abuses and use their patients pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under

Absolute despotism it is their right it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government and

What he’s he’s referring to there is that Congress got mad about taxes and then all of a sudden the Declaration of Independence that’s not what happened they had the there was there was several things that took place they had the first Continental Congress um they they sent what was called the

Olive Branch Petition and the whole idea of that was hey you know King George we’re letting you know that these things we find these things problematic we would like a redress of these Grievances and essentially King George came back and said pound sand like like what his response to the

Olive Branch Petition was so horrendous that a lot of the holdouts with respect to the Continental Congress that were were very uncertain about raising a continental army or you know coming to the aid of um the the militia in Massachusetts um a lot of the ones that were were

Completely against the concept of Independence changed their mind when they saw King George’s response to the Olive Branch Petition that they had insisted upon before they took any other mechanisms so and again people don’t learn about this again they didn’t all just get together and declare independence they really

Fought to try to you know reconcile with um the British Monarchy the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and use for patients all having a direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny absolute tyranny over these states to prove this let facts be

Submitted to a candid world so this is where they get into here’s all of the reasons why we’re doing this and what you’re going to notice is taxation without representation is one of many so here’s the first one he has refused his assent to law as the most wholesome

Necessary for the public good and what that this is part of like four other ones that are very similar here what it is is basically the the king of England had a Stranglehold on establishing laws within the colony so if they needed to establish laws in order to provide for

Good order they had to actually wait for the king to approve that and so they couldn’t do it next he has forbidden his Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his Ascent should be obtained and when so suspended he is

Utterly neglected to attain attend to them so again you know not only can they um not only can they get the king to approve those laws even the governors that the King has put in place that are trying to govern this Colony can’t get anything done without the king first

Approving it and the king is going out of his way to not approve these laws and so it is it is interrupting the good order of society of the economy of trade everything else within the colony that’s a very long process back then oh my gosh yeah because you were talking like we

Don’t have the internet yeah they didn’t it’s not like the governor was picking up the phone right we’re talking about months in order to enact correspondence so it’s very easy to see how if it takes a while to decide what you want then you

Got to send it by mail over to the king you know over over the ocean on a ship King’s got to sit there and and look at it then they can get something back you’re talking six seven eight nine months and we have people in England listening to this podcast

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation the legislature a right and estimable to them and formidable to tyrants only so this is another thing where it was kind of this idea that um

Hey I’ll pass these laws uh for the accommodation of large districts but only if you don’t have right to local representation right so it’s the whole idea the only way that I will give you what it is that you want is that if you give up these other rights

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures this is an interesting one let me give you let me give people kind of a popular example of how something like

This is done um if you’re if you’re in the majority within the legislature and let’s say that you know there’s going to be a bunch of people showing up to protest a particular bill and you docket the you docket the bill to be heard on a particular day in a particular committee room

And then five hours before you actually meet you pick a completely different committee room on the other side of the building where nobody knows where where it’s going to be at oh there’s school boards and Board of Supervisors doing that right now and then you run it right away and they get

That’s an example of what they’re doing right here it’s like oh you want you want to have a representative body go ahead and meet and redress grievances okay no problem I want you to meet here no no no no I want you to meet over here

No no no I want you to move it I’m not saying you can’t meet as a representative body we’re just we’re just setting up a place for this connect that’s what they’re saying he’s like they’re coming up with basically procedural mechanisms to thwart the representative bodies that

They have to be able to address these grievances let me see okay he has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness in his invasions on the rights of the people so every time you had a legislature within the colonies that would actually stand

Up and say hey look this is wrong we think this is a problem we don’t think you should be doing this or pushing back against uh the king’s appointed Governor or Customs agents or whatever it was the king would then respond by like okay great you don’t get representation

Anymore you don’t get local representation they would disband those bodies so you can see by all the ones we’ve just mentioned Texas hasn’t come up once yet right what’s come up is you have all of these different colonies addressing various issues again of a security nature of a

Health nature of an economic nature of a Law and Order nature and every time they’re trying to establish things in order to make their society work the king’s the one standing in the way so they come up with their local legislative bodies well the king doesn’t like what they’re doing so he abolishes

Them or the king doesn’t like what he’s doing so the only way that he allows him to meet is by jumping through all these whole Loops or Hoops that make it impossible them for them to do their job so everything so far has been about more localized representation and being able

To govern Society in accordance with the needs wants and demands of the people all right let’s do the next one he has refused for a long time after such dissolution so after he’s abolished the local representatives to cause others to be elected whereby the legislative powers incapable of

Annihilation have returned to the people large for their their exercise the state remaining in the meantime exposed all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within so again this is the whole idea of you’ve gotten used to a particular process for establishing what your laws look like well now if someone

Comes in and says that’s abolish you can’t do it anymore okay well then how are we supposed to adjudicate this uh we’ll tell you later okay well in the midst of not telling us or or arbitrarily withholding this you now make us vulnerable to attacks from without and two attacks from within

So once again this is this is a this is a um a complaint about the ability of of localities to be able to dictate the rules for the locality he is endeavored to prevent the population of these states for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners refusing to

Pass others to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of land again this is just about him interfering in the local governance of their particular colony and what actually makes sense for them based off of Economics based off of settling things of that nature he has obstructed the

Administration of justice by refusing the assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers so this goes into the whole idea of not only is he preventing lead popular legislatures he’s actually preventing courts and so now imagine trying to run things without being able to adjudicate differences within illegal action well

Again if if we can’t go to court to adjudicate a civil problem between the two of us what ends up happening you’re a lot more conducive to people actually settling things through what they used to call like you know Frontier law or the idea of and this goes back to

One of the previous complaints right if you’re not going to allow us to actually govern ourselves in a civil manner then we’re relying on someone else to provide it you’re not even providing that and that’s what causes not only problems from without it causes problems from within as well

He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries so again this is a process problem so what he’s the the first the last complaint was you’re refusing to his Ascent to laws for establishing judiciary powers

So what does he do he comes in he goes okay you can have judges but those judges are completely dependent upon the will of the king for their tenure and for their payment this is why we set up an independent Judiciary in the U.S and right away there this is why when

People like AOC say it’s not just enough to abolish the filibuster and pack the court we need to abolish the court she is literally advocating for one of the things that drove our founding fathers to separate from the United Kingdom wow because as Nick just said like

This is actually probably one of the more like so so as you said at the beginning of this podcast like you know you’re taught about no taxation without representation the meddling with the court structure was one of the other things that they don’t really teach you

A whole lot in school that drove us to declare independence because when you don’t have an independent Judiciary let alone a Judiciary that’s wholly dependent on the monarchy for its pay for its appointment of its offices for any sort of judicial precedent you’re going to end up with a disaster because the courts

Can do so many things that the Jew that the legislative branch simply can’t do the courts are ultimately one of the things that that uphold the rule of law it’s the legislature that passes the laws but it’s the courts that help uphold it and I it what I’m saying is is that like

It’s incredible that somebody like AOC would be advocating for one of like literally a policy position that somebody like George III would be in approval she’s an authoritarian I think that’s that’s what some of this comes down to is that when if you if you read

What the founders had to say and a lot of this like why do we have why do we have a um co-equal branches of government between the executive the Judiciary and the legislature and the whole reason before that was because when you combine the Judiciary and the executive and legislature and one person

You have tyranny when you combine two of those things and one thing you’re essentially leaning toward tyranny and this idea that you’re going to make um the the judges the the entire Judicial System dependent upon what the executive wants because that’s what the King was think of the king as like the

Executive branch you you’re giving tyrannical style powers to the king and you had to watch people like AOC praise FDR for threatening to cap uh uh pack the court back in the 30s and then encouraging the same thing here it’s like you are pushing for one branch which is supposed

To be co-equal to essentially subvert that and again that leads toward greater tyranny but that was that was one of the major complaints here and again what go go ask and go ask any kid in school right now hey did you know do you think

This is one of the things that was in the Declaration of Independence and be like I’ve never heard of it all right let’s look at another one here he’s erected multiple of new offices uh and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their

Substance so a lot of what this has to do is so he’s not providing for local assemblies he’s not even providing for you know a judicial system that is fair and impartial and separate from the executive but that he’s creating all these new government offices that are purely dedicated to tax collection

Property assessment um you know customs duties things like that and and again that’s the part where it’s you know he’s not doing all the things that we’re supposed to within government but he has created all these think of this as the EPA and the IRS yes that’s perfect we can’t get judges

We can’t get local Representatives we got plenty of tax agents so we got plenty of EPA officials right that’s one of my favorite lines in the Declaration because this is basically the found like they’re using older language here you know eat out their substance and you know multitude of Nua but like what

They’re getting at here is basically they’re saying that King George III is a big government Busy Body yeah um who loves bureaucracy yeah so here’s these next two kind of go together he has kept Among Us in times of Peace standing armies without the consent of our legislators and he is affected to

Render the military independent of and superior to the Civil power now you need to understand this in the context of things like the Quartering Act so essentially it’s not like the colonies were at War right it’s not like England was at war with somebody and yet they were still being taxed to maintain

These large-standing armies now British Parliament was arguing these were necessary for Frontier security and things of that nature um and as things started to get more um um as descent started to rise in places like Massachusetts more troops came in they had things like the coronary neck

So when we think of a standing arm in the United States today we think of okay I got the 82nd Airborne Division on at Fort Bragg North Carolina just went down um a lot of times what happens is when new troops came in they would go into neighborhoods and

Homes and you were required by law to quarter troops within your house and according to just meant you provide a place to live you also had to feed them right that there’s a reason why we actually have an amendment in the Constitution that says that you can’t quarter troops in in

Private houses like this the other part is this the military independent of and superior to the Civil power so this went back to the whole idea you saw this with respect to um what is the Boston Massacre so a lot of people don’t recognize that the person that defended the British

Troops at the bot at the trial for the Boston Massacre was John Adams and he won that case he made a good case that the British troops were actually responding to somebody that had incited violence and and didn’t violate power didn’t engage in Murder but there was an argument on whether or

Not at that time all of those troops should be sent back to England to be tried as opposed to being tried in the colonies and that was considered a very big deal it was a very major departure and it goes into this whole idea of he’s bringing in troops and he’s essentially

Declaring a form of Martial law to where now Civil Authorities are not in charge it’s military authorities let’s look at the next one he is combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws giving his assent to their acts of pretended

Legislation again this had this this was the whole concept of not allowing for local control and local governance for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us we talked about that before with things like the Quartering Act for protecting them by mock trial from punishment for any murders which

They should commit on the inhabitants of these states again that was the idea of you know when when uh military comes in and they engage in oppressive or illegal acts they’re no longer tried within the civil court system they’re essentially protected by um England for cutting off our trade with all parts

Of the world this was interesting too because this comes into this this whole kind of like mercantilist economic theory which is a whole other conversation uh but the East India Trading Company was kind of what you’d call like a public-private partnership where it was technically a private company but it had certain Privileges

And monopolies granted to it by the British government so like the the East India trading company for a while uh had one of the largest navies in the world and actually had its own standing army now it was still under the jurisdiction of the crown but it operated like a

Private company well when they’re talking about cutting off our trade with all parts of the world Parliament was passing laws that essentially said that the U.S or that the uh colonies the U.S could only buy certain products from the East India Trading Company or from those companies that were approved by the

British government so it was a form of protectionism and so this is where you get the Boston Tea Party right if I can only buy tea from the East India training company well now they have a monopoly which affects prices it affects choice so that’s where you get things

Like can can can we elaborate on this for a second because I referred an argument um from actually some family members of mine and some friends uh I remember in the summer of 2020 um there was an argument that was going around that I it just frustrated me so

Much from people saying well the riots and the burning you know of public and private property this is just like the Boston Tea Party folks okay to break this down for you the tea that was being destroyed in the Boston Tea Party was government owned tea that was monopolized and it was the

It was the the central government it was the crown that was telling the colonists you must legally purchase this you have no other option and so the response was you were forcing us to pay taxes for a product that we have no choice and no option no third-party options we are

Going to protest by destroying the same thing that we’re having to pay for this is not the same thing and by the way any any private property and to give you an idea of just how careful this was yeah the the the people that perpetuated the Boston Tea Party replaced the locks on

The boxes in the crates on the ships that they had to smash in order to get to the T because the locks were privately held and so yeah that that is I’m so glad you brought that up this is literally night and day between mean what happened in 2020 which was mobs of

People roaming around cities setting fires to private property and then moralizing and acting like that they were were you know The Reincarnation of the Boston team that is not the same Sam Adams would have robbed a target the people at the Boston Tea Party didn’t

Then go into the city of Boston and then light everybody’s homes on fire they destroyed government specific government property it wasn’t it so so like anyway that’s just that’s something that just gets to me so much it’s always so fascinating to me to learn how organized they were at this time without cell

Phones oh yeah in the internet maybe it was because of it I mean the fact that they were all on the same page with replacing the locks yeah so all right so we just got that last one cutting off our trade with all parts of the world

Ready for this next one yeah it comes number 17 after 17 number 17 for imposing taxes on us without our consent the only thing a school child knows about the Declaration of Independence is the 17th Grievous and we’ve got more we’re not done hold on I would argue

Though that a lot of people especially this day and age would say to free religion to flee religious oppression like that they really but that that was the religion yeah that was the Mayflower 100 years earlier yeah we’re not even talking about that here but for imposing

Tax on us without our consent again this whole idea this goes back you have to understand things like the Magna Carta you have to understand about how people that consider themselves British citizens even though they were living in a colony how how they considered themselves and in England had gone

Through this multi-hundred year you know hundreds of years of history since the Magna Carta of limiting the Crown’s power and limiting the government’s power of being able to raise taxes culminating in a revolution of their own yeah over a hundred what 150-ish years it was in the 1640s when

There was the English Civil War Wars that led to the governors around yeah that led to the overthrow of Charles the first and eventually his execution and that’s a whole nother topic but long story short um what people forget and again this didn’t happen in a vacuum the founding

Fathers understood not just their history as colonies they understood British history because they were part of the British Empire and so these people knew the history of the English Civil Wars and they understood what happened and and one of the things that led to the English Civil Wars

Into the overthrow of Charles the first was the fact that the the monarchy kept trying to raise taxes without the consent of Parliament and eventually Parliament was like no you don’t get to do this and and and so one of the consequences even though eventually the monarchy ended up being restored so

Cromwell took over for a while and they overthrew the monarchy but then the monarchy came back under Charles II about a generation later well one of the the precedents that was set in the English Civil Wars was the idea that Parliament gets to be the one to set

Taxes and the reason for that is because Parliament is elected by the people now there were some problems with that too that weren’t settled until the 1800s but the point is is that it took away this power from the monarchy alone to set taxes and it set it in the hands of

Parliament well what happens when you don’t have representation in Parliament that that it is so much more deep than just simply no taxation without representation there’s a whole lot more history behind that that the founding fathers got to that I think is largely forgotten today yeah absolutely next one

For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury again to understand British history to understand British common law this this idea of trial by jury was essential because without it once again you’re running into this problem of tyrannical government rule where they can stack the

Books against you the whole idea of trial by jury of your peers is the idea that someone has to go through a process of convincing you know in again in the U.S 12 people and this think about this is fascinating it’s not a majority of 12

People you got to convince all 12 people that somebody is guilty of something before you can start depriving them of life liberty or happen or life liberty or property now again there’s there’s different ways you can go to trial and things like that but in a case where a

Jury is the prescribed method the King was removing that and that was a huge deal to the colonists for transporting us Beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses again this was one of those areas where not only am I depriving you of trial by jury in Your Country Now

Depending on what the crime is I’m going to remove you from where you’re at I’m going to completely remove him from State and I’m going to send you up I’m gonna send you back to England to try you in a court where I know I can convict you well and on trumped up

Charges basically yeah and this is also the part that you got to keep in mind in the United States we also have a process where a defendant can be moved to a different jurisdiction the difference is we move the defendant to a different jurisdiction when we

Don’t think the defendant can get a fair trial within that jurisdiction they were removing defendants to places where they knew they couldn’t get a fair trial that was the point that was the point right and again on a for pretended offenses for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring Province

Establishing there in an arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and a fit instrument for inducing the same absolute rule into these colonies so again you look at what what they were doing in other places surrounding the 13 colonies and how they were again then

Going to try to replicate that within the 13 colonies for taking away our Charters abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments this goes into some of the original you know those top those first four that were being mentioned and how he was constantly

Coming in and just okay you you have a charter you’ve established and keep in mind Virginia had its first legislative body the House of Burgesses in 1619 we’re talking 1776 now so we’re not talking about legislative bodies or Charters that had been established five minutes ago we’re talking about people that had lived

Under certain Norms certain rules certain Concepts and ideas for sometimes hundreds of years or I should say 150 150 years all right beforehand so again when we talk about them you know taking away Charters or abolishing most valuable laws or ultimately fundamentally the forms of government we’re talking about him coming in and

Getting rid of things that have been in place for you know 50 100 150 years within these colonies so these were major departures that were being made on fairly arbitrary terms for suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases

Whatsoever again very similar to some of the the earlier ones but the idea that they would just abolish the legislature and then they would step in and say we’re going to make the laws for you so so think of this on some level it’s not a perfect representation but think of

This on some level as the federal government doing what it sometimes often does completely ignoring the ninth and tenth amendments completely ignoring article one section 8 of The Constitution in any substantive way and saying okay Congress is now going to make laws for California or Oklahoma or Wyoming that have never been

Made by Congress before those have always been made by the California legislature the Wyoming legislature or the Virginia legislature but now we’re just we’re going to take that away and Congress will now decide what your laws are how do you think we’d respond all right he has abdicated government here by

Declaring us out of his protection and waging Wars against us this is when we start to get into this is pretty obvious yeah the violent response where more troops are coming in he has planted our seas ravaged our courts burnt our towns and destroyed the lives of our people

Now again now we’re getting into things like um you know what was going on in Massachusetts at the time he is at this time uh transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death desolation and tyranny already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely parallel in

Most barbarous ages and totally unworthy the head of a Civilized Nation this is where you get into things like um the um so they had they they were actually hiring foreign mercenaries to come to the United States and engage in certain activities that let’s just say that British Redcoats might not have been

Willing to to do um he has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country to begin the executioners of their friends and Brethren or to fall themselves by their hands this is like so like the the British Navy had a thing where they

Would find U.S or they would find um Colonial Merchant ships they would take the ships and then they would literally kidnap people and force them to join the British Navy and now participate in you know killing America by the way they did that all the way until the war of 1812.

They did they did press gagging was common like all the way after the revolution he’s excited domestic insurrections Among Us and is an endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our Frontiers the merciless Indian Savages this is the part that obviously you know it’s not the Wolf Part yeah we can actually

Explain what they’re getting at yeah whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages Sexes and conditions what they were talking about here was they were actually the the British were um collaborating with Frontier uh Indian tribes and encouraging them to attack American colonists they were setting up

Alliances with them and whatnot and again there’s there’s this idea that the the founding fathers considered all Indians you know Savages that’s that’s not actually true that’s not what they were getting at that’s not actually true but they were saying that there there were there were certain groups and there

Were certain rules of War within certain tribes where they didn’t distinguish at all between age sex and condition so you can you can easily point to at times where Europeans did the exact same thing okay but by this time of warfare it’s not to say that it didn’t happen

But if you did Kill women and children right you you could be criminally prosecuted within um British law that okay that wasn’t happening within certain tribes and when what they’re saying is is that okay we’re in a position where you’ve taken away our legislature you’re increasingly taking

Away our ability to defend ourselves but then you’re also inciting violence against you know our our groups um and okay now here we go all right now and that now so those were all the those were all the different complaints that they launched right those are all the

Reasons in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury a prince whose character is thus marked by Every Act which may Define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people so again this

Is them acknowledging that we did things like the Olive Branch Petition we did things where we’re trying to reconcile and every time we do it we’re basically treated like we’re just subjects not citizens and the end result is you’re a tyrant and you’re not fit to rule Free

People nor have we been wanting an attention to our British brethren we have warned from time to time to of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarnable jurisdiction over us we’ve reminded them of the circumstances of our immigration and settlement here we have appealed to their native Justice

And magnanimity and have conjured them by the ties of our common kid to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence they too have been deaf to the voice of justice and uh consanguine yeah I’m going to butcher that uh tongue twisters we must therefore acquiesce in the necessity

Which denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankane enemies in War and Peace friends so they’re essentially saying that not only if we appeal to the king we’ve appealed to Parliament we’ve appealed to other British citizens we have implored on all

Of them to please just return to us the rights as British citizens they’ve refused to do so as such we are now separating from them in war were enemies and peace we’re friends so it’s again it’s this desire that we don’t want war but at this point we do want separation

We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled appealing to the Supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions due in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are

And of right ought to be free and independent states that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is an ought to be totally dissolved and that is free in independent states they have full power

To Levy War conclude peace contract alliances establish Commerce and to do all other acts and things which independent states May of right do and for the support of this declaration with a firm Alliance of the protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other Our lives our fortunes and

Our sacred honor the Hancock’s giant signature immediately below that I love the ending of The Declaration oh but every time I hear someone read the ending I just yo I want the like music to start playing like that’s in the fireworks should go interesting all of the artwork that shows all these people

Signing all of this together in one room that’s not how it happened right because there was some I mean there were people coming and going it took I so um fun fact John Adams thought that it would be July 2nd would be the day that we would

Be celebrating second or third it was the second because Congress voted for Independence on the second yeah but it took them two days to actually get the document drafted and everything and have everybody start signing it so that’s why we now celebrated on the fourth but like

If you go back to his writings he’s talking about how like July 2nd will go down in history as like the greatest American holiday of all time yeah and he’s like predicting everything that we do today he just got the date wrong yeah but um no the ending of The Declaration

Of Independence is phenomenal it’s it’s perfectly well written because it it and it it’s often overlooked because it’s getting to like we have crossed the Rubicon there has been multiple attempts to to rectify all of this to avoid war because they had already been fighting going on the the

Revolution had started a few years before and I mean there have been debates within Parliament over how to deal with this and unfortunately maybe for the grand Arc of History maybe it was actually a good thing but but unfortunately at the time there were people in Parliament that were actually

Siding with us yeah um it was largely the Wake faction in Parliament that was actually sympathetic yeah there it was the Wake faction in Parliament that was actually on our side but they were decisively outnumbered time and time again and and Parliament was at the time controlled by the faction that basically

Viewed these people as Rebels and Traders and they needed to be put down and so that’s why there’s um there’s a theory it’s not super popular but there’s a theory that the American Revolution is really in English Civil War localized in the colonies yeah I’ve

Heard that and it it and and the reason for that is because our arguments our grievances were were really that we were not being treated the way that we should have been as English citizens right and and that’s why we keep drawing from things like John Locke Second Treatise

On government which was used to retroactively justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688. for so long we weren’t going out there as Nick said at the beginning of this podcast the beginning of all this was not Independence the beginning of all of this was trying to reclaim some of the

Liberties that we should have had as British subjects and once it was impossible to reclaim that that’s when we resorted to Independence well I think people to put this in perspective too from like a historical timeline the Battle of Bunker Hill was more than a year before the Declaration of Independence oh really

Yeah see I think most people have the impression that we declared independence and that’s when these hostilities no no when you talk about like Lexington and Concord when you talk about the Battle of Bunker Hill when you talk about the the formation of the Continental Army and and George Washington being chosen

All of that was before the Declaration of Independence right we were because you you had these problems going on and it reached such a fever pitch in Massachusetts that more troops were coming in and they were starting to do things that the rest of the colonies

Said okay we can’t ignore this and so they decided that they were going to lend the assistance of their militias to the Massachusetts state militia and then it was now we’re going to form a continental army we’re going to put George Washington at the head of it and

Even at that point when Adam started talking about independence again there was there was a lot of State there was a lot of colonies at that time that were not comfortable with that they they really thought that this is yeah we we get it we’re now having like pitched

Battles with the British but this is because we want to reclaim our rights not because we want to separate but more and more it became the issue where Independence is the only thing that can possibly happen but it’s not like the Declaration of Independence showed up on the king’s doorstep it’s

Like oh well we’re going to war no yeah no no no we had already been arguably we had already been in a shooting match okay you’re saying that up until the point of the Declaration of Independence being signed the purposes of those battles were not separation no but re

Regaining the rights that they had once had and then they came to the conclusion that well we’re not making any progress and we have to now at this point separate well it was the so you had you had certain colonies that were very were far more open to the idea of

Independence than others were like I said South Carolina not they were opposed to It New York was opposed to it Pennsylvania or interesting the Pennsylvania delegation um was really fascinating because Benjamin Franklin was far more open to Independence because how he had been treated as an ambassador to England on

Behalf of the colonies um but other members of the Pennsylvania delegation were are some of the most outspoken critics of it by the same token when the Declaration of Independence was signed I mean they led the Pennsylvania militia you know fighting against the British yeah so it

Again it’s just a fascinating it it’s it really is a fascinating time period that I I think we’re we’re doing a huge disservice to now right by by this kind of minimalistic way that we analyze it where it’s not just minimalistic it’s it was a year ago that you did a podcast

About the left’s what the left was saying on the fourth of July because last year they there were prominent people on the left in elected office or in public life that were saying things that was just downright despicable about the founding of this country and I I feel

Like that that Ordinary People even apolitical people just want somebody who’s gonna stand up and defend the origins of this country and I’m sorry the United States is not was not founded on slavery bigotry racism any of that stuff the United States inherited those things that had been universally existing throughout the

Entire world for all of history but again what I said at the beginning of the show like our Founders weren’t perfect people they didn’t create a perfect system but they did create and they didn’t solve all of our problems but they did create a system where those

Problems could be solved and I feel like the left just totally misses that today well I think it’s gotten to the point where uh you know I used to I used to Chuck a lot of it up to ignorance and I still think that explains part of it but

Now I think it’s a little bit more deliberate I think we have we have some prominent people on the left that at their at a fundamental level despise the United States because of the sort of moral precepts that were articulated within the Declaration of Independence because of how that

Philosophy informed the Constitution and the limitations on on government power because ultimately it is rooted in the idea that individual rights and Liberties are inherent and governments have a responsibility to protect them governments are not there to micromanage and organize Society in the way that political leaders think it should look

And they see that as a direct a a direct prohibition on their goals objectives and the the power that they need in order to achieve them and they have now turned this on its head and turned that into the thing that’s immoral right anything standing in the

Way of them achieving what they think are their their good objectives and that that is why we are seeing more and more people who not only again I would love to say they just misunderstand I think they’re trying to deliberately misrepresent what the sentiment was behind the Declaration of Independence what the

Context was with respect to the whole scope of human history leading up to that point and now they’re looking back having lived under the benefit the wealth the security and the protection of those same founding principles having been the beneficiary of something that they did not have to actually accomplish on their own

And critiquing it because it’s not perfect and then offering up their solution which oh by the way has been tried before has failed miserably has led to oppression and tyranny and the degradation of individual liberty not to mention poverty and in some cases genocide I think it’s because a lot of times I

Think they identify more with the French Revolution than the American Revolution yes and I think that um oftentimes they mix up the two because their ideology is more in line with the French Revolution um and then if you look at it I mean obviously you guys did a y minutes on

Why the French Revolution failed um it was it was wildly different the motive was wildly different not to say that that that uh see I feel like that a lot of the motivation was similar well and I I understand there was also some Stark differences but I feel like that I mean

Because I think there are similar grievances I think there were similar justifiable grievances but they bought into a different solution and the their solution ended up bringing about Napoleon absolutely atrocities and installing more absolute monarchs and and so uh it it it really deviated there

But I think that is part of it is that I feel like the left does not have a problem with an absolute monarch as long as it’s as long as it’s there’s it’s doing it right so let’s move right into our making the argument section we’ve got a few more

Minutes here I I kind of want to take this in two pieces one being you know how should the Declaration of Independence Define what it is we believe today and then two I’m gonna propose some arguments that people on the left would make okay to delegitimize what the Declaration of Independence

Should mean today so I’m interested first in Nick when you look at the Declaration of Independence how should we use what is in that document to help Define what it is we believe in Why We Believe it or let me ask you this way what impact has the Declaration of

Independence had on your political philosophy well I think the first thing that we need to do whenever we’re studying a particular moment in history is you have to understand the the context and of what was going on so the cultural context the economic context the you know everything that informed

The way people thought about things at that moment sure because that’s the only way you’re going to get a proper understanding of why they said what they said and why they did what they did and again it’s fascinating to me because Let me Give an example and I know this is a

Little bit off topic but it’s relevant the more we learn about how life develops in the will the more we realize the more evidence we have to suggest that oh no I mean we’re talking about like heartbeats at eight weeks and we’re talking about you know you know the amount of development

That’s taking place at such an early stage we never understood before let’s go 100 years into the future and now people are looking at that and all of a sudden you know viability is instantly because you know at any stage we can actually you know you know

Protect human life yeah and 100 years from now people are looking back at someone that let’s just say is not pro-abortion but it’s you know I’m I’m confused about the issue maybe these and they’re looking you Barbarian how could you ever justify using a saline solution

To burn a baby to death in the womb I’m pretty sure they’ll left us nowadays be like whoa whoa whoa wait a second you know when I when I felt that way back in 1975 we didn’t know what you know now yeah wait we were living in a different

Context now again does it make it right right but it is still important to understand the context before you start analyzing someone’s motivations or why they thought the way they did and the more you learn about the context of that time the more revolutionary you understand how how important those fundamental

Principles were and here’s what it comes down to it was the idea that one the rights were inherent or natural sure the rights were not a grant purely a political Society they were not simply a grant of government it was not certain it was not purely a question of whether

Or not you could impose your will on somebody else you as a human being man woman you as a human being had inherent rights and that among those unalienable rights were life liberty in the pursuit of happiness that revolutionary the other thing that was revolutionary about the that was the

Idea that the only legitimate reason for government to exist is to help secure those rights with pre-exist that was revolutionary you look at most governments up to that point it was not about securing the rights of the citizenry right right so those two concepts right there um and then that

Would be used to inform the Constitution which was which not just organized and designed the federal government but put incredibly strict limitations on federal power at the same time enshrining uh certain rights within the Bill of Rights and then you have the ninth and Tenth Amendment which was kind

Of like our check to make sure that right they didn’t go over um just because we enumerated these these ones in the first eight um that is what I think people should get out of the Declaration of Independence viewed through its time and its context just absolutely revolutionary and the principles that

They were going for there I I think in many cases are just universally true um it it doesn’t stop being true because you know this was back in 1776 that people are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights right so I think the the lasting nature of it the

The philosophical nature of it is what’s been the most impactful on me well was there anyone before you know the time that the Declaration of Independence was written who uh was there anyone who had acknowledged the idea of natural rights yeah yeah so so again we’re not pretending that the founders you know

Made all this up on their own right never I mean you you could I mean I I would argue that yes scripture does yeah right the Bible does um but if you’re looking for other political uh thinkers people like you know John Locke um with his two treatises on government

Um Adam Smith a lot of people within the Scottish Enlightenment uh were instrumental in that um you know you can go all the way back to to the the Greek city-states and whatnot and again it’s it’s not as if they were claiming that it’s not as if they were articulated with the same

Degree of conviction or I think comprehensive argumentation that you know lock did or the founders did uh but there was still this idea that power should not just be arbitrarily imposed right um that there should be some degree of of citizen and participation and that that citizen participation

Granted a degree of legitimacy to the government you see this too with the whole idea of when the Roman monarchy uh felt when tarkwin fell in early Roman history and it was replaced with the Republic again not a perfect articulation of universal human rights but definitely a progression in what we

Would call a positive direction well I I think what is uh it’s been a long while since I read through the Declaration of Independence and you know going over this again with you today it’s without a doubt clear that the people you know in the 13 states at this time were living under

Absolute tyranny I think that it was more that they were worried that that was what was going to happen okay they were moving in that direction that’s why they were fighting a war at the time and notice how there’s there’s something like four or five or six points in there that are directly

Related to that war they’re talking about how he’s plundered their coastlines and burned their Villages and he’s transporting armies over there I I think there was a real concern that if the fighting went South and if the revolution failed that they would end up being subjected to basically like an occupying foreign

Power they wouldn’t even be treated as colonies as part of the British Empire they would be treated as occupied territory well and again when you look at when you look at why we have the separation of powers that we do we have we have two major types of separation of

Powers in the United States one is the separation we all kind of recognize which is between the legislature the executive branch and the Judiciary the other is between federal and state so there there’s this this constant um organization and attempt within the United States within the United States to divide up power

Because they recognize that the concentration of all of those authorities in in one person or one entity is what tyranny is created up and so when you look at all these things what are they complaining about well you’ve taken away any legislative local legislative power we have you’ve taken

Away uh the Judiciary and you’ve pretty much put it within the boundaries of the executive branch um we’re not even I mean our executive is the king and so now they’re living in a world where the executive branch is exercising legislative power and judicial power sure that’s what we generally attribute with absolute

Despotism or absolute monarchy and again as as people that consider themselves to be British citizens yeah they were living in a colony right um but they still consider themselves to be British citizens and affordance so then yeah they’re definitely seeing this so it’s not in the sense that King

George could have walked onto the street in New York City and shot anyone he wanted like you know you you see with you know other despotic yeah or tyrannical regimes but it was absolutely something where certain core um processes and organizations which were essential to defending civil liberties were being completely eroded

And it was getting worse it wasn’t getting better well if things are continually getting worse then you have to assume okay we’re getting to a point where we’re going to be treated differently than anybody else currently over in the UK and we don’t want that so let’s say I’m in a

Conversation with someone and I want to reference something from the Declaration of Independence but I know that the individual I’m speaking with does not give much relevance to this document what is something that I can say to them in 15 30 seconds which might help them understand how relevant this document is

To the conversation taking place today so one of the things I find is really interesting is is every once in a while I will say something or I will reference something but I won’t tell them where it’s from I’ll just represent the philosophical principle okay and then what you’ll end

Up finding out is they’ll be like oh yeah no I totally agree with that so if you the moment you say that people are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness they know what you’re referencing right but if you said you

Know what I just think I I think that the bottom line is is that you as an individ you as a human being have inherent worth and that you have certain you are owed certain civil liberties and and the idea that you know somebody can just come in and strip you of those

It is wrong it’s morally reprehensible I I don’t think you know some politician didn’t give you your Humanity some politician didn’t give you those right don’t do those are yours and they’re supposed to protect them if I say that they’re like oh yeah yeah you know what

That’s like uh all people are created equal and entitled to certainly inalienable rights and among these are life liberty in the pursuit of happiness that’s really interesting so rather than attempt to um legitimize the Declaration of Independence in that person’s mind in that moment you are taking the philosophy from the Declaration of

Penance that that person is very unlikely to disagree with which could then help well so conservatives have gotten this wrong for a long time I’ll be real honest on this sure conservatives will say things like the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence or George Washington okay and somebody else will say who

Cares right do you know why the Declaration of Independence has relevance it’s not simply because it charted off one of the most significant historical events in human history it’s because philosophically it’s correct do you know why the Constitution has relevance it’s because philosophically and organizationally it has worked

But the problem is is that if you raise people and you’ve you’ve taught them about a thing instead of the reasons behind the thing the context around the thing the philosophy which informed the thing and then somebody else comes in and tells them the thing is bad and points

To something out of context well then now you have to teach that the relevance is based off of the correspondence to truth the substance the substance of it and then you explain okay this document is relevant and this document is is beautiful or effective because it corresponds with these truths that you

Already believed and somebody else has tried to convince you of something that’s wrong or incorrect about it but the first thing I do when somebody has a negative opinion of a person a place or a thing that I don’t think they should have a negative opinion of is not to go

Back and defend the person place or thing it’s defend whatever concept or philosophy that I know that deep down they agree with and then work that into why that thing is still relevant sounds a lot to me it kind of sounds like sales you don’t try and go and sell the product

You sell the the solution that that product provides well and again sometimes when you say sales people think manipulation yeah it’s not manipulation it’s the idea that all of us have certain experiences with with things and when we have an experience that is relevant to us or or has like touched us

Or moved us deeply is sometimes Mars the way we look at something it can either cause us to look at it with rose-colored glasses or it can cause us to think that something is just just bad or horrible or evil when really it’s not and so part

Of the problem with the way that we have these discussions that if I’m talking to somebody that we just went through four years of college being told that the Declaration of Independence is a charter of of you know bigotry and tax evasion right well am I am I going to sit there

And immediately try to defend the Declaration of Independence or am I going to start asking them deeper questions about okay well why do you you know what do you consider bigoted or you know do you think it’s okay for someone to do X Y or Z I’m going to frame I’m

Going to frame the discussion in a way that they can receive it based off of what I know they value and once we’ve established those things then then they can be reintroduced to a concept or an or a document through a different lens through a different lens

And just say you know this is something else to consider and I’m not trying to impose my viewpoint I’m now offering a different perspective on something and if there’s someone that is even relatively you know open to to evidence and conversation at different perspectives that’s something they

Should be able to accept and then consider yeah all right last question let’s say I’m in a conversation with someone and they think the Constitution Declaration of Independence is not worth our time because the writers and the founders of our nation were slave owners oh okay well this well okay so the most

Obvious response to them is we know some of them were not certainly not all of them were um but I it depends on how long you have to talk with somebody so the short version of this is to to correct some of the things where it’s like well no they weren’t all

Slave owners in fact some of them were very very dedicated abolitionists so can I listen to them still can I listen to what John Adams had to say about it um Abigail Adams was a huge advocate not only for emancipation she was an advocate for women’s rights in the 1700s

You know John Adams so is what they had to say is that relevant now um they’re gonna say no still well well and that’s and that really comes down to the question it’s like if you’re talking to someone that’s if you’re talking to someone that’s wholly unreasonable then

At some level there’s other reasonable people out there that are willing to actually have a discussion spend your time there the other thing but that’s the first thing I would say if I had much time it’s like okay you’re saying that it was it was all created by this

Sort of people first of all you are stereotyping an entire generation of people sure based off of one thing and it happens to be incorrect or accurate do you really mean to stereotype an entire generation of people which had very different beliefs and very different experiences and very different

Backgrounds do you want do you really want to do that do you want to engage in that kind of stereotyping which is actually bigotry yeah do you think that’s appropriate okay now they’re on the horns of a dilemma right because they just told you the reason they don’t

Like this is because it’s bigoted and it’s mean and it’s this but now they’re engaging in similar Behavior so you got to get them back to a realm where they recognize okay we’re gonna have an honest discussion about this not an appropriate one the second thing that you have to do is

Great and I’m not asking you to follow George Washington I’m asking you if this system of government you think makes sense and if you’re saying well no it can’t make sense because this person did something really bad my question is okay what are you offering and what what are you what’s your

Um what’s your alternative now if they say collectivism oh you want to talk about what Karl Marx did yeah you want to talk about how Karl Marx lived his life you want to talk about how Ingles lived his life you want to talk about what Mao Zedong did you want to talk

About what Stalin did if you’re looking for perfect people to organize your government I got I got bad news for you the human race is a horrible place to search it out yeah it’s one of the things I tell people all the time if you’re looking for a savior

Go to church do not look for do not look for a political leader yeah but so those are the two those are the two branches that I usually take that in is that is that one of them is the idea where again you’re doing what we call in Logic the

Putting them on the horns of the Dilemma they have said that well I think these documents are bigoted why do you think they’re bigoted because the people that did it were bigoted okay well bigotry is is an unreasonable hatred for a particular group of people usually based

Off of a a certain degree of ignorance of those people you’ve just classified an entire generation of people many of whom fall nowhere near the description you’ve just provided and you’ve said that because they happen to be at the same time or their names were on the same document

They’re all the same and they believed all the same things that is getting really close to bigotry so do do you want to stick with that or do you want to have a more open and honest conversation especially within the context of the times not in order to

Justify certain actions but to at least recognize that people felt about this differently because of their experiences just like you feel about it differently because of your experiences that’s that’s the first category the second category has to do with the idea that if if the only document you’re going to

Follow if the only solution to certain things ones you’re going to follow come from perfect people you will find nothing and and it is so important I cannot stress this enough whenever somebody is tearing apart the Declaration of Independence the Constitution Etc and they’re saying well

No we should do it how should we do it differently who influenced you to do it that way and are we going to apply the same reasoning with respect to their values their decisions the things that they’ve done as we are to everybody else or do you get special dispensation for

Your person if you happen to like their idea yeah because I I got I got news for you there were some really bad people in history that brushed their teeth I’m not going to stop brushing mine because they were bad so it again this is this is a logical

Fallacy where you’re essentially saying that because you know because this person was a bad person and they had something to do with something that might be good or because this person made a very bad decision one category of their life and therefore anything else they touched is is Tainted by that if

That’s really the reasoning you want to use it’s logically fallacious and you’re going to run into some real problems not just with the other political people that you follow throughout history you’re probably going to run into some problems with yourself so let’s make an important distinction within those two things and then the

Other thing too is you then the third category is you just kind of look at comparative history okay you’re saying this is all bad you’re saying this is all horrible it goes back to the whole Thomas Soul ripping up fence posts it’s been going on for a while now and as I

Look at the course of human history this has achieved some pretty Monumental results not just economically not just from a security perspective of people being able to live in relative peace and security but also for the advancement of civil liberties in a way that has never been seen before in human history

Can I ask a question from the right real quick because I think that both sides do tend to both when I say both sides I’m talking about Democrats and Republicans um do oftentimes not consider the entire document and they they sometimes make light of things or assert things uh

Which kind of waters down what it really was and one of the things that I hear has to do with national divorce and has to do with how bad are things going to get before there’s you know people rise up and they overthrow this government or

What and so they’ll they’ll kind of give this attitude like things are just as bad as they were back then and you know when are we gonna rise up or blah blah what do you have to say to that I I think that I think for a lot of people that’s hyperbole

Um I think for some people they’re actually they’re actually looking for an honest answer to that question that’s what I’m asking when does it get so bad that you you’re actually saying you know what um and you saw when Trump got elected in 2016 there were people carrying around

Signs in California that said California is a nation not a state that that’s essentially a call for secession now now here’s here’s what I would say I think there’s an individual response to this and I also think there’s what we might call a more like a community or or corporate

Based response to it and that’s based off of you know the state level or or whatnot what was going on in the late 1700s in the colonies um was in in many cases significantly worse than anything that we’re addressing now right like the 82nd Airborne Division is not stationing

Troops in your personal home and forcing you to cook for them um they’re they’re not coming in and violently you know confiscating uh your Firearms like they did it like they were tempted to do with Lexington and Concord um they’re they’re not dissolving our state legislatures and allowing the president to

Essentially decide who our judges could be right so there’s a lot of very right significant differences now by the same token you’re paying a whole lot more in taxes than any of our Founders ever dreamed we would be of the 16th Amendment has really problematic um implications which is the federal

Income tax for the separation of powers between the states and the federal government um we are seeing more places where they are attempting to severely curtail um things like second amendment rights which I believe is a basic civil liberty and you see a larger sector of the

Population that is trying to run more things from Washington DC than they are their own state legislatures so I I don’t I don’t again I take that part of the Declaration of Independence seriously where it says you shouldn’t separate for transient reasons especially ones that can essentially be

Resolved within the system that you currently have because that’s what they did again they weren’t trying to separate from England when the Battle of Bunker Hill began they were just looking for a restoration of their rights as as British citizens so it is important to look at this

Within the proper context it is important to recognize that when people are just randomly engaging in hyperbolic comments on Twitter that that’s probably not what we should be gauging our entire response on regardless of what side of the political spectrum is engaging in it um

We we do need to have a more serious and robust conversation about the way that we want to be governed in this country and remember that the reason why the vast majority of political decisions that were supposed to impact your life were supposed to be made at the state or

Local level not the federal government but you know again the answer to the question is is actually fairly simple and it goes down to cost benefit analysis what is the cost and what are the benefits and if you’re telling me that you think the benefits of separating from the

United States right now outweigh the cost I’m going to tell you I don’t agree with that um but I think it would be highly ignorant of world history to assume that we’ve surpassed that kind of consideration the bottom line is is the the various things that we care about and that we

Love and that we want to fight for with respect to the preservation of individual liberty and the idea that we are a strong Community but we’re still ultimately a community of individuals we have to be that’s where civil liberties start civil liberties cannot begin with a collective it can’t it has to begin

With an individual and at some level there you reach a critical mass where people feel like they’ve been infringed on enough and they’re simply not going to accept it anymore and it usually starts with passive civil disobedience and we’ve seen that happen before in the United States and in many cases it’s

Been a wonderful thing I thank God Rosa Parks refused to move she was breaking the law she was engaging in criminal activity thank God that she did it you know what she wasn’t hurting anybody when she did it she wasn’t looting a Target she wasn’t burning down a small business

She was going right to the source of where the oppression and the Injustice was and that was a a government-imposed law and she was standing up to it and she was doing it in a way that had a huge impact and I hope that that’s where we’re still at as a

Country where we can make those kinds of statements that we can affect the sort of change that we want not simply because we’ve reelected someone new but because we’ve actually achieved something within the public Consciousness that recognizes that causes them to recognize that this is worth fighting for and worth preserving

All right I think we’re gonna live it there we’ve had kind of it’s been kind of a long episode um but I think an important one especially for Independence Day uh look if you enjoyed this please leave us a comment also if this is the sort of

Content that you think is useful I’d really like to hear from for those of you who are out here that are that are doing homeschooling and whatnot and maybe this is something that uh you know you like this discussion um for that please let us know and let

Us know how we can improve on that we’ve actually been kicking around ideas on how to do some more content maybe separate from the podcast that would actually be able to help some of those parents out there that are either homeschooling or they’re just trying to augment their child’s education whether

They’re public school or private school with additional content they think would be useful if you think this episode represents something that might be able to fit into that please let us know once again thank you for joining us I hope you had a great Independence Day

And hopefully there will be many more to celebrate in the future I’m Nick Freitas and we’ll see you next episode

Video Tags: Nick Freitas,Nick Freetas,Nick Fraytus,Making the argument

Video Duration: 01:28:00