The Declaration of Independence

Welcome back to the New Thinkery. My name is David Baren with me and as always my good friend Alex, how are you Alex? I'm doing well though a little bit of said about the we caused a bit of a minor sort of above on Twitter today, right? Oh I know you're father's happy father's day.

Thanks to you Greg. Greg, you last your last non-father father's day. That's right. No, no, we're operating the assumption that we are constantly bringing up Greg's kids that on Easter Island when he visited with the natives.

So who knows? Right. Yeah, I don't think father's day is meant for half human, half or in your game. But you were eluding to the controversy.

That's why I said happy father's day. What was it? What was the worry about your first father's day? But yes, we all did.

I mean, we, let's be honest, we hear at the New Thinkery. We don't do a lot of work in preparation. It's a lot of Wikipedia cursing a lot of like quotable or whatever, like website looking for close to his father's day. I'm like, who's a philosopher?

Like Rousseau? Now, Rousseau quotes about father and we find some quote we tweeted out and then we find out that Rousseau gave up a bunch of his children to an orphanage. Five? I thought they're different accounts.

They're different accounts. I mean, three, I would have been like, okay, you know, I get it. Yeah. But five, I mean, I mean, it's got a draw the line somewhere.

No, I mean, what's what's funny, Alex, we're about we're joking now, but this is I think I did this for the first time last Father's Day. I tweeted a happy Father's Day, but two Father's days ago, Alex. Oh, wow. So it's been a just this is one of our traditions.

This is a new Thinkery, his old tradition. And invariably, people, people get upset. Like, do you know, he gave his kids away? Do you know that he was a less than stellar father?

No, we had no idea. We don't study political philosophy and we're not gossips about this pretty philosophy. We call it a surprise. Like, no, shit.

And see how a bunch of these professors were like, just not honorable. And it's great point out when we were texting earlier, he said, what got Greg is the fact that even if you knew nothing about the show and just our Twitter handle, the new Thinkery, you immediately could say there's something off here, you would think that, you know, there's a lot of terms. What do they made of heard of air stuff? And he's maybe you were a professor of politics, maybe the best joke.

I mean, this joke when we were reading the meal with Charles Blair with Greg, when we were at the University of Maryland. And I brought this up to him as a joke after class. He said, no, Mr. Paul, he gave them his gifts to the state.

I do remember that. He could respond. But more seriously, I think he remarked that Rousseau's life at that time, if you read the confessions, it bears it out. And certainly the red up early chapters in the reveries, he was constantly on the run.

And people were attacking him as books were being born. He wasn't that kids, kids slow you down. You drop them off. You drop them off.

You get rid of them. And let me say something. I have a personal theory. And I think David, you'll agree with me on this, possibly also Greg, that he didn't actually give them up.

But he was trying to save face for his one time at the time friend, but later enemy David Hume, who ate these children, these tiny children of this miniscule Swissman, like popcorn chicken. This is all our field. We should say. We'll do a human episode later.

We've all seen his portrait, his size. He ate small children in particular, because the flesh was easier. But what's another show? So what's today's we were speaking of orphaned children.

What are we discussing today, Greg? That orphaned people that orphaned people. Oh, I thought you're making a joke about Jefferson's illegitimate bastard child from selling anyway. That's not what you're doing.

Headway, Hemings. You mean? Hemings. What did I say?

I mean, they are lame. Yeah. Okay. Oh, America got it.

What's a different holiday. It's not Father's Aid. All we're celebrating people are like, what they saw the advertisement they saw what it was about. And they're like, here we are 10 minutes in and we're just now getting to it.

Happy Fourth of July. We're doing an episode on that foundational American document, Declaration of Independence. What else do you want to know? Why this document is holiday Greg?

Can you give us a question? It seems far-field. It really does. Folks may not know that the Declaration of Independence was published on July 4th, 1776.

And so that's why we're doing it for their July 4th week episode. It's kind of a coincidence. Yeah. It's kind of like single to my always falling on fifth of May.

Just stuff. I don't know. Why do they have people do that? I don't know.

There's just some questions. I'll start off and you guys, I know that Alex read a little on a stop loan preparation for today. I have read some stop loan declaration, but I haven't read recently. So I'll start with some all sorts of basic kind of things.

Obviously, it's the Russian Penance for America's founding document. It's for the first document that articulates who we are, what we are. There are others that come before and after, but this seems to be the cornerstone of the United States of America. Lincoln looks to it at the beginning of the Gettysburg Address four-squared seven years ago, so he's pointing to the Declaration of Independence as holding some authoritative hold over what it means to be an American, even though it's really not any official legal document for us.

The Constitution is, it's pre-constitution by a decade plus. What is it? What kind of a document? Is it lots of declaration?

It's short. It is perhaps the product of a lot of historical and philosophical investigations, but it itself is not a political philosophical text, I would say. It's a text that's trying to declare its independence. I think a mistake that people often make is they think that it's a letter written to Great Britain.

It's not. It's a letter written to the world. Jefferson says as much later in a letter that he writes to Henry Lee. This is in 1825.

The Declaration of Independence really is an articulation of the justification for the colonies declaring independence from Great Britain becoming independent states. That's the first thing the audience is not necessarily Great Britain. The primary audience, at least not only is the world, they're justifying to the world the reasons for their independence. Yeah, the candid world, it says at one point.

I think a clear indication of your point, Greg, about it not being in philosophical text is that early on, it makes clear that when you were engaged in this kind of reasoning about whether you ought to rebel against the power that's moving over you, it makes it clear at the declaration that this is a judgment of prudence. Right? Prudence, indeed, will dictate that government's law established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly, etc. But with a long train of abuse, etc.

So it seems clear that that's a realm of practical wisdom, that is false. And not to say that. Yeah, not political. It obviously invokes principle, but it's not concerned with the examination of those principles so much with the application and pursuing.

And there are principles that those principles are asserted rather than investigated. Right? I mean, like, and so that's another practical side, right? But we can look to other texts that will say where the principles come from.

So here's just a small point to a bunch of times, but this is a letter that Jefferson wrote to Henry Lee in 1825. He said when forced to resort to arms for redress against the British, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. The purpose was to justify to the world what we were doing.

And it's really doing a few things. It's stating those principles. So the first paragraph is sort of an introduction. It's general.

It's abstract. It's not about any particular country students. When I teach that, they always want to say that it's about America and it's about Great Britain and it's about the king. But the first paragraph is third person.

It's all abstract, right? Sometimes things happen in the world and when things happen, these are things that countries should do. Right? That's it.

It's a very general statement about when revolutions happen. Although maybe even that's an important point, the word revolution doesn't occur here. Neither does rebellion. So on the one hand, it's just declaring the causes of independence.

And what does it do when it does that? It says, well, here are the principles that we hold to be true. And here are the ways that those principles have been violated. And where those principles come from here, he doesn't tell us necessarily.

We should talk about the offers, by the way, of our eluded to the fact that it's Thomas Jefferson. But what he's saying is that the principles are basically an expression of what he calls the American mind. He says this also in his letter to Henry Lee. He says, by the way, he's writing a letter in response to the allegation that he basically just cribbed or plagiarized even Thomas Jefferson.

He says, look, neither aiming at original principle sentiment nor yet copied from a particular and previous writing, it, namely the Declaration of Independence, was intended to be an expression of the American mind. And to give to that expression, the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion, all of its authority, the declarations authority, rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversations and letters and printed essays or in elementary books of public right, as in Aristotle, Cicero, Loxity, et cetera. So Jefferson is saying, I kind of took what we all thought and gave a kind of clear coherent expression. And that was the statement of principles that then excused or justified why we were a belling.

Let me back up and just, I've been asserting that Jefferson was the author of this document, which is true, but it's not entirely true, right? He was a member of a committee, a five that was tasked with writing the Declaration of Independence. That committee also included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. And that committee was itself a committee of the Second Continental Congress.

And so, you know, on the one hand, who wrote this? Well, I mean, Congress wrote it. But really, this committee of five wrote it. But really, Thomas Jefferson wrote it.

So we know that Franklin and others actually had a few places where changes were suggested. We have Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of the Declaration somewhere, which I'm happy to talk about in just a moment. But it was written by Congress wrote it. There's these five guys, and it was Jefferson, kind of like compared to the Communist Manifesto, the Communist Manifesto, written by the Communist Party, the really Marx and Engels, but really Marx.

And the Chinese Christ, man, on the 4th of July, you're comparing the Declaration to the Communist Manifesto. What the hell is wrong with it? It's all coming out. It's all out of the country.

Well, there's similar in other regards, too, right? Like, if you want to understand Marx's theory and philosophy, you don't turn to the Communist Manifesto. This is the practical application of his principles. It's the Declaration and the Communist Manifesto are both exhortations in a way to action.

So how would you relate the declaration to that other famous document in American history? The Constitution? Yeah. So is it like the sulted to the flesh and bone of?

Yeah, I think that's right. Here's how I would put it. People have this question, I have this question, I have it too, but I don't get it. There's going to be some overlap.

Yeah. So I mean, people at the Federalist Madison says, this Constitution is the only Constitution that's compatible with the principles of the Declaration of the pundits. Some of my colleagues and I argue with this, because the Declaration itself seems to imply that it's perfectly compatible with the declaration for the people to institute a tear of a different kind of, no, no, not a tyranny, but they are allowed to institute a former government that they believe is conducive to the to affect the ends of safety and happiness. So what if I look at parliament, for example, as opposed to a presidential style system, right?

I sit here. What could be a dictatorship? It could be monarchical. I mean, the problem I'm hesitating because it seems like the things you're bad seem to be learning into those worms.

Yeah, I sound like Joe. I don't think that we can really, no, no, I think it's the I think it is compatible with declaration of independence that one could have something like a constitutional market and principle. Now, I believe that you could say, well, is that the form that's most conducive to the safety and happiness of people? Probably not, but it doesn't seem on its face disqualifying.

Now, as I mentioned, I'm only going Madison to disagree with the Federalist General with Federalist. I thought I had 30, 39, 37. Anyway, we're trying to build. I mean, I think, I think as far as the statements of principle are concerned in their sort of general application to what sort of the rights of revolution that I guarantee you in the second paragraph, as far as that's concerned, I think it leaves open up possibly.

And this is sort of what your St. Greg is at the state of the Constitution were to be misinterpreted or distorted or amended beyond its original purposes and then come to be against the safety and happiness of the people. And that's the way it is. It might make sense in that context to establish a non-republican form of government because given the circumstances, that's the most conducive means to what I meant.

We don't need to go all the way to monarchy, but we might want to go towards a legislative aristocracy, let's say, because there's a lot of emphasis on legislation is really important, right? But you might want to further restrict the will of the people if the people are misguided, if what seems conducive to them, to their safety and happiness is incorrect. And that's, because if you look at it, and this is one point that I saw before, I think it's quite good, if you look at what it goes on to say, it is the prerogative of the legislature to decide certain things that might be conducive to the common good, but against the immediate sort of pleasures or whims of the people, specifically, let's say, with respect to war, right? And in that situation, you have the rights of the people going against the rights of the people to a representative, let's say, legislature going against their common good, and specifically what might have to do with their safety and their survival in that situation.

It might be, in the course of human hands, best, with respect to these ends, to secure the ends of government, to secure some kind of legislative fiat or some kind of non-popular form of government, we could say. Non-popular, which is fine, but I do think the decorations seem to me to demand some form of republic. Now, why I mentioned constitutional monarchy, because maybe one could sort of shoehorn a monarchy into a constitutional public. Here's what I have, this is Federalist 39th act, for those who meet a refresher, the Federalist is obviously Madison Hamilton J, trying to persuade specifically people in New York, but more broadly Americans, to sign a constitution and to argue that the Constitution is compatible with the public government and therefore compatible with the declaration of the president.

Here's what Madison says, the first question that knocks itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government that's being proposed here, be strictly Republican. Madison says, it is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America with the fundamental principles of revolution, which I take to mean the declarations of all. Or with that honorable determination, which animates every voter of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government. So Republican and self-government, at least wearing the Madison, does seem to be necessary coming out of the depression of the past.

David, you're trying. Yeah, so to push back, when I've taught this undergrad, it's interesting with this kind of the fame of this document is seeped into our bones, right? So it's, you've repeated that we're the only country really with this kind of born in philosophy, right? And it has this kind of a document that exerts such a gravitational pull, such that one can be a newly minted American from another country in their 40s and still feel themselves to be American because they feel the justice of the declaration.

That's a very, very interesting and powerful. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing.

One can become an American in a way that is, I will say, that is practically impossible in most other countries that have ever existed. Yeah. You can become fully American regardless of your ethnicity, religion, gender, gender, community, age, occupation, all that, right? And there's no, whereas you can't really become Japanese.

The French. Yeah. I mean, you can't become Nigerian. You try it with all that pain to the different workout.

My question, my question, well, well, you're afraid I don't get duped by that Nigerian friends, but okay, different kinds of things. But so, so when I was teaching, like I said, most students are kind of passively in their reception, right? They accepted or they don't think about it, but they've heard a million times, right? But one student said, it would just ask, so Professor Barr, what is that self-evident truth?

And he followed by saying, what if I reject the evidentiary nature of the truth that Jefferson is holding out? What then happens to the document? If you say, look, I don't, I don't address that. So I already mentioned the first paragraph is sort of these general principles, right?

By the way, I think the tension between the first paragraph and the second that we can talk about, I hope, I think the first paragraph talks about rights of peoples and the second paragraph talks about rights of individual human beings and there seems to me to be attention there, we can exploit. But in the second paragraph, you're saying Jefferson begins by saying, we hold these truths to be self-evident, and this is famous infamous language, and then he goes to relist them, depending on how you count. The first is that all men are created that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. I count that to be number two.

Then next, I don't count to be one independently, but sort of two, that among these rights are likely to be the truth of happiness. Third, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men driving just from the central government. And fourth, whenever government comes to structure of these ends, it's right to the people that are to alter or abolish. So equality, freedom, make government overthrow government.

That's my crib there. And then two, right? Here's the example of some of the rights. So what if you deny that all men are created?

Well, that's a great question. And I mentioned at the top that the things are sort of asserted here. There's no argument. And so if you want to understand it, you've got to sort of build up and figure out what's going on.

We hold these truths to be self-evident as sort of a declaration. Well, I hold it wrong. And I think that one of the biggest confusions or stumbling blocks for people is that they think that self-evident simply means obvious. And that's not what self-evident means.

Self-evident means the evidence for the truth that the proposition comes from the thing itself. So Jefferson here, this is very compact cribbed, right? What's he saying? If you look at humans and you study them, you will see on the basis of what it means to be human that there is a kind of equality that all human beings partake in.

And what is that equality? What does it consist of? I mean, he'll say, elsewhere in some of his private letters that he does not mean that men are equal in their talents, for example. But he does think there's a kind of moral equality.

That's his words, which is kind of moral equality. We're all capable of governing ourselves. No one, everyone is, everyone does a pretty good job of pursuing their own self-interest. That can be relied upon.

That's something that he thinks. Now, how we're going to reach the tailian pushback aren't there some humans that are so diminished in their natural capacities that actually they're not capable of ruling themselves? I think that's a legitimate thing to push back. But let me just press the stuff out and it's a bit more stepped.

I think that what this is very geometrical language, this is coming from now. And what I think that he's saying, like in geometrical proofs, self-evident truths are truths that you can deduce from the basis of the thing that's in front of you. So a triangle has three sides. How do you know that?

Well, because that's what it means to be a triangle, triangles, three sides. You don't even need further evidence. That's what the thing is. Cherson's saying something like that about humans.

It's like, if you look at humans, this is what it means. Now, I'll give you an example. You'll get this one teaching Ashford center. So you all learn the fact of the theorem, it's not what I suppose.

So you now know that a squared plus b squared equals c squared. So if I give you a or b, you can figure out c if I you see and I figure out b. No, where's the evidence for that come from? It comes from the center thing itself.

Here's the problem with reading self-evidentism obvious. It's not obvious to anyone that a squared plus b squared equals c squared. In fact, it took a great intellectual effort to figure that out. Once you figured it out, now it's obvious.

And no one could persuade you of the contrary. No one could persuade you that a squared plus b squared equals c cubed. And so what Jefferson is saying, we can dispute it, I think, is that if you actually figure out human nature, you will see that humans are equal. And once you've seen that truth, no one will be able to persuade you otherwise, just like no one will be able to persuade you otherwise about a triangle.

Here I'm going to go to another letter of Jefferson's just to kind of because I realize we don't like this is for postures. When I teach students, I always press this. I'm like, look at LeBron James and me. For God's sake, there's no how in heck are we equal?

Like the dude is a monster and he's got yeah, he's got huge, huge, huge paychecks. And he makes, you know, he's very, very talented. So what in the world can you be talking about? Well, here's, here's, I think what he has in mind.

This is a letter that he wrote to Roger Waitman in 1826 after he was invited to the 50th anniversary of the signing of the declaration in Washington, DC. He denied that invitation because he was old and sick. Actually, he dies a week and half later. He says, may it be to the world again here.

He's talking about the declaration dependence. What I believe it will be to some part sooner to other parts later would finally to all the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition have persuaded them to bind themselves and to assume the blessings and security of self government. That form which we have substituted restores the free rights to the to the unbound exercise of freedom, reason and freedom of pain. All eyes are open to openings to the rights of man.

The general spread of the light of science is already open to every view of the palpable truth, the palpable truth, not the self evident truth, that the massive mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted in spur ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. This is the self evident truth. There's not there's not a favored few by God who are governors by nature and ruled by nature. That's I think and by the way, I think this is persuasive to me.

And part of the persuasion here on steady education of Cyrus and one of the things that I think Zenithin brings out is that Cyrus grows goes to great lengths to trick people into thinking that he is of a different species than them. He is like a God and they are like animals. Think about what King John has to like, he persuades people he doesn't poop like for throughout most of human history. Somehow people that do themselves into believing that some humans were simply superior to everyone else by virtue of some sort of divine blessing.

That I think, I think what you're saying, that you take that robe off that monarch and he poops just like you. We're all equal in some sort of... For yourself, speak yourself. I love it, actually.

I don't poop. I deserve to rule you. You know, it's kind of when acknowledged though, the self-evidence of this truth that all men are created equal. And then also say, yeah, it is also self-evident that some men are better equipped for ruling, better educated for ruling than others.

And then... By the way, Jefferson says. Yeah, but they say a lot of things, but there's also just arguments in the page, right? Like on the Declaration, which is this heavy emphasis on rights, which is in part meant to push back against the crown, right?

So where's... What's the crown in the position of doing? It has to say, either we're not created equal in some relevant respect, and therefore you must be slaves to us, right? Even though you're capable of some degree of self-governance, which is a practical fact, it's just false, right?

And so they're really in that position, or acknowledging that they have a right to some kind of self-representation in the legislature, which if you look at the list of grievances that he goes into, I mean, like the first seven or so, however the first many have to do with legislation, right? Different ways in which self-legislation is undermined in the course of this, right? So as a statement of principle, though, one could say that even though this is self-evident, right? It is incomplete, right?

That this is sort of like to use the Pythagorean theorem, example, right? Yeah, A squared must be squared equal C squared, right? But to get to that, you have to bring in this element, this part, right? You have to bring in these definitions, work through that, and then you need something far more complicated and less distilled than this, in which case you might focus less on the rights of everybody and more on the prerequisites.

For the right to rule, right? Which would be a right of a few, and you might focus less on life-liberty and the pursuit of happiness, this kind of broad sort of guarantee, and more on, again, the key requirements for somebody that ought to rule. And so this is, I want to say that even though this might be self-evident, it is obvious that all human beings at qua, human beings share something in common, and therefore, is certain equality. It is a self-evident truth that is never less than incomplete truth.

That could be something similar to that. Yeah, two points there. One is I would say, I mean, look, Jefferson actually does say that he does believe that there's a natural error story. He says this in a letter to John Adams, that there are, there's a natural aristocracy, he says.

There are people who are better at ruling, but he says, just because they're better at ruling doesn't mean they should rule without our consent. I mean, like, I go to the doctor, we don't like to use these words, but my doctor rules me, on some matters, but I consent to that rule, right? Like, I submit to his expertise. I mean, Jefferson says somewhere else that just because Newton was the smartest guy in life is not a title to rule.

Like, we all, no one wants to be with other consent. My second point here, we said, I think when he's talking about all humans being created equal, he seems to link this to the rights. So we all seem to be equal. In so far as we're endowed with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

So all humans have this right. You're right, it's incomplete, but we're not, we're not simply strong, we're not simply talented, but we all equally do have a right to life, freedom, and to pursue our lives as we see fit. That, I think, and I do think you see, I kind of, I've talked about this in maybe other episodes, I think, but like, I don't like being ruled, and I don't think anybody does. And I don't think even animals, I've noticed, get extremely, they don't like being, nobody likes being ruled.

Come on, don't be at us like that. Like what? That's not right. That's not right.

You try to put them in a case, they don't like it. Can I say something to bolster? I'll start putting a leash on them. I don't like that.

They don't like me. They don't like me. They don't have any address and you put it lipstick on them. You know, they don't like that either.

After your question, I understand where you went. Yeah. That's so much a question. It's just a point to bolster.

I think, yeah, as a practical matter, I think one can be very clear that in the course of human events, it is not always the case that the people are worthy of these rights. Right. That's what I think. Yeah, but see, don't point.

Yeah, exactly. But I would, go so far as to say, right, that the very fact that somebody has penned this document and it has received broad general consensus from representatives of the people. And then people then fight on behalf of it does show that the human equality at this moment trumps these more hierarchical concerns, precisely because the representatives are acting in such a way as this sort of intellectual elite that are these founders, this crazy kind of weird theoretical moment. But I think the question arises, you go four and 250 years nearly today, right?

And you ask, are we still a people capable of self governance? Right? Are we still, are we still people who, or is there, is there need, and this is where you would get to some like touching territory, right? But is there a need for a rebellion against a constitution that is emphasized the individual pursuit of happiness and individual rights to the degree that people have become disciplined, right?

Pleasure seeking, relativistic, don't take virtues seriously, don't take the prerequisites to real seriously enough, would there be a need, this would be like a monarchist or a constitutional monarchist to be, or as we were putting it, would there be a need of a new Caesar or something like that? That would be the strong sort of counter argument. And with that person, I have to say, look, I hold this truth to be self-evident that all human beings are created equal. But you guys are really screwed to pooch, Greg, literally.

But you guys are really screwed to pooch, and we need to, right? So that would be the sort of, you know, renegade Caesarist position, right? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about this consent, Greg?

So we can all accept that nobody likes to be ruled in some domineering or very obvious fashion. So, but we're, let's say, born into the system of government, the first generation, consented, or at least it's a group of men that structure it, seem to have consented. But the time goes on, bureaucracies are invented, we're ruled by a number of people like D.C. and they can do things that touch our lives, sure in serious ways.

So, how would you defend this consent part of the declaration? Can you explain some of the kind of problems or I'm not sure we have thought about this? I'll try and solve it. I mean, like, I think we might be happy with that.

But look, we'd be retaining, government should be based on the consent of the government, and we always retain this right or to alter or abolish the government if we believe that it has been constructed by the ends that we can send to the foreman for. So it always, we have this right. It's always there according to this document. Now, experience has shown us that human beings are more disposed to suffer while the evils are suffable than to write themselves by abolishing the forearms to which they are accustomed.

Most people won't actually have a revolution so long as the evils they are suffering aren't too bad. Well, what about this every now and again, you hear bands of people that live in the woods who find the government of the United States and disbog them on the left and right? Yeah. Strangely strange about fellows.

illegitimate. And they actually will turn to the declaration and defend what they're doing there as a mini uprising. Sure. And they can go to court and they can't say, well, look, look here, what the declaration says.

We're going to be... I think they do, actually. I mean, how's it going? Right.

Right. So why not? I mean, what's not an answer or a sentence because they lack the power. But the real answer I would have would be can they...

I think the declaration lays out situations where it is okay to revolt. It doesn't use that word. But when it's okay to alter or abolish the government. And the only time that it is okay is when your rights are being violated.

And so what these people in the woods would have to show clearly is that their rights are in some very clear way being systematically violated, which is why you get this part of the declaration people don't read, right? Here's this long list. Like, here's the truth. Like we have rights, fam.

And if the government violates those rights, we can alter or abolish it. And here's all the proof that they've been running rough shot over our rights. Now, a lot of Confederates, for example, back during the Civil War, tried to make the argument that their revolution was justified on the basis of the declaration of independence. I mean, now many didn't, but some did.

And that was a pretty shallow appeal because it would be difficult for us. It's difficult for me to understand how someone could say, ah, see, the declaration says my rights are being violated. Therefore, I can revolt. Okay, what right in particular?

My right to hold slaves. All men are created equal and they have a right to life, liberty to do what happens. So what right in particular, if you're a person we deny, you're right to own a human being that seems to be incompatible with the idea that all men are created. Well, I think that's exactly where you would say that the constitutional provisions for representation, right, run against the Declaration's principles of fundamental human rights, right?

So the exact same institutions, the Constitution runs against that question. I just want to know the right representation. They represent your quote, quote, interest and they vote in accordance and they say, no, we put more slaves at that point. You have to say, look, we've got a contradiction here.

What representatives want and what they're allowed to vote for, contradicts with our fundamental law of the land. Exactly. And that's where you have, you're looking at somebody like Lincoln coming to power who recognizes the severity of the contradiction, recognizes that the more fundamental principles of the Declaration and then, which therefore, but I think that's interesting because it would be, I think, a pretty clear example of a way in which the Constitution is not altogether compatible with the Declaration, right? Because it is in principle possible for a free people who has legislative authority to contravene the rights of another part of the population through the represented form of government without acknowledging, right?

And so there was this right, this infamous moment where somebody on the Congress floor, right, just says, look, the Declaration's principle is a lie. Not all human beings are created equal. Yes, yeah. And so you get this, you get personal.

Oh, man is born. These are born, right? He's got his whole like kind of conflict. Yeah.

And so in that situation, I think, I think it's right to say that a Republican form of government, I mean, who says that? But I mean, Lincoln's effectively saying, right, the Republican form of government is based on the principle of equality as declares in the Declaration, right? And not the other way around, like, right, it's not that you represent an event, you can do whatever you want with the power. There's concrete natural limits imposed by right, the law of nature and nature is not.

To David's question about what's the relationship between the Declaration of the Constitution, Lincoln, of course, very famously said, the Constitution is the silver, the frame of silver around the apple of gold, right? And so the Constitution is framing, but also protecting in a way, the heart of the matter, the gold, the gold apple is the declaration. He thought that was much more fundamental than the Constitution, right? That the Constitution was an attempt to articulate and to protect the things that are mentioned here in the Declaration of Independence, which I think is really right.

We should talk about the original version, which is available in Jefferson's autobiography, right? Unpreaged, I think there's a lifetime. But let me just say something. He published this because he says, as the sentiments of men are known, not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the Declaration of the Declaration, which they reported.

So he gave this to us as a way for self-nought, right? Like, look, this is what it was, and I made it so that it would be suitable to this committee and to the larger body. And it was largely, but there are some interesting places where things are changed, and he gives his assessment of the reasons, right? He gives two specifically, right?

One is that he says, the Pusalanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many for this reason. Those passages were conveyed censures of the people of England were struck out, unless they should give them a sense of the clause to re-pervading the enslaving of the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complacence to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the invitation of slaves, and he won the country's still wish, he too, he mentions those in the north, also benefited considerably from the important and export. And so he treats, leading us the full form of this as a kind of important exercise in the future self-knowledge of the nation. And when I go through the edited version that he gives us, I see him strengthening language, maybe sometimes language is just clearer, sometimes weakening it, but obviously the big difference is that as the list of grievances grows, I think it's a crescendo of ever strengthening and ever more vivid language.

The last of the list of grievances in a regional version was a condemnation of slavery, right? Which he calls there, yeah. You want me to be the whole thing? No, but yeah, before you do, let me set this up, because this is, I mean, I don't know, people who listen to the show probably aren't coming to us for our diagnosis of American politics necessarily, but like, what's the most famous quote in this entire document?

All men are created equal. Now, when I was a young man, and I assumed when you guys were young men, here's what I learned. Jefferson, of course, this is crazy. He's only talking about white guys.

He's only talking about white guys from England, by the way, property only white guys from England. And I always kind of half-wordily thought, well, it doesn't seem right. And the plain text of the documents is all men, it doesn't say. And as I've reflected on it a little more, even, I sort of thought, well, hold on here, as we mentioned a moment ago, the audience is mankind.

He reiterates this later in this letter to Henry Lee, as I mentioned. And how persuasive would it be to the world be like, hey, yo, we white dudes are equal, but the rest of the art from England. Like, how are you going to get the French on board with notion? Well, Englishmen are equal.

So the plain text says all men are created equal. And I always kind of was sympathetic to that view that that means what it says. But what really sealed the deal for me was the very first time I can remember, it was my first year of grad school, the very first time I read the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence. And I read this one paragraph.

This settles it unequivocally in my mind that Jefferson means not just, so all men means men of all races. I'll go a step further after you read it and show that I think it also means to include women, because the word men used to be gender inclusive. It used to be synonymous with human being. So I think when Jefferson says all men are created equal, he means all adult human beings are equal.

Now, if we read it, I'll try and get my evidence for why I'm going to be the case. Yeah, I think that's true. It is a universal claim of human rights and it comes up in the comment on slavery. All race and women.

Yeah. But in the first line, it does say when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds, which are connected to them with another. So on the one hand, there's this universal claim about all human beings and about human events. On the other hand, there is this juxtaposition of one people with another, which comes up in the slavery session where he just reads this, he says, he's quote, he's waged.

He is King George for folks. He has no, he's a majority of the 30s. He has waged cool war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people. All right, so he's drawing another people there who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or doing curmissible death in their transportation.

So here you have this clear distinction to one people and another, but the one people English, right, they ought to know, right, that this is not a right that you violate, right, they've not offended him. They've not by through some acts found themselves deserving of slavery. And then this comes up a little bit at the end, again, he says, he is now exciting those very people need enslaved Africans to rise in arms against us and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he also true to them. So he saddled us with this thing.

He's now getting us to fight one another, meaning we can't resolve this in our fashion. And he's also stopped several efforts to get rid of slavery in the policy. And so continuing, he says, thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes, which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. So against one people versus another.

So I don't, I think what you see here is this condemnation of slavery while tabling the question of how to resolve it, right? You have one people and that's a practical question. Yeah, it's a practical question. And this is a practical document, but it's dealing with a particular crisis, which is, look, we're getting into a fight with our slaves like he's pushing us again, not because he cares about the rights he violated the rights and now he's violating ours.

He's using this against us. Can't point out a kind of interesting irony in this passage. Sure. I was going to read this one more.

There's the skipping all sentences and one good. So are you going to look at the prostituting the negative? So that's what I mentioned about how he got rid of, but I was going to mention this piratical warfare against African slaves. This program of infidel powers, infidel is capitalized, is the warfare of the Christian king, Christian's capitalized of Great Britain, determined to keep open on a market where men capital all capitalized should be bought and sold.

I'll stop right there from all point out, who was sold in slave markets? Was it just males? Yeah. We know it was women too.

So here's an instance where I think most clearly shows you that Jefferson uses this term men a to appeal to plow to African's, not just Englishmen. But it beats a woman. It's a generic term. Capitalized too.

Right. Yeah. In capitalism. But then he also prostituted his negative.

Yeah. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit a restrained and extro-commerce. Now Jefferson has just told us pay attention to what we removed. That's what's been rejected also tells you it's not just what they prove, which is the Declaration, which is wonderful.

But look at how they watered it down. And I think it's really ironic that a passage that condemned George III for prostituting his name, which needs abusing his veto power effectively over the legislature, that that very passage was detailed in effect by George and South Carolina. Right. So you get a deep irony here.

So this is where I would say that the people who condemn the founding, they should understand that the founders were fully aware of the compromises. Right. And the defense, of course. And that Jefferson sought to tell us, not to hide from us, but to tell us 250 years later, I tried these people.

Like, what was I going to do? I was going to either we were going to have a civil war at the beginning of a country that, look, not everybody was on board with, right? Or we compromised, we prostituted our negative to create to attain a greater positive. Right.

And so I almost feel like he must have put this passage in as specifically that, that even that phrasing there. So as, to make it crystal clear, the hypocrisy, right? He must have known the slavery was not going to get through, put this language in, they say, dude, we can't put this in. It's like, okay, people will know what you rejected, because I put it in there and you got rid of it.

Right. Yeah, for all of his, the monster stuff in his private life, it was thanks to Jefferson's thanks to the declaration that the slavery was one day to be unswared off. No doubt. No doubt.

Why did we get rid of all the other people? That's why. Right. And he says as much, right?

I mean, he wrote, I couldn't find a letter quickly, but after the Missouri compromise was passed, he's like, well, there goes all my hard work. I was setting you guys up to get his slavery. And this is what you did. There's also another letter, I don't have time to find it, but I mentioned this can be a five that helped write the declaration.

Four of them went on to join abolitionist organizations. Yeah, yeah. And Jefferson himself, this is not very widely known all helped co-sponsor a bill to outlaw slavery in Virginia when he was very young in his career. He was the junior guy that did it and it was like, I think a colonel, somebody with a fancy title who had, who had proposed the legislation and he saw this guy get torn to shreds.

I'll try to find a letter, but and Jefferson said, I learned my lesson, like you can't, like you can't do this now. And he says in another letter that in politics, what his pure theory must give way and what is practical. And I think it's just the art, like politics of the art of prudence is the art of what's possible. And I think that Jefferson could have snapped his fingers and gotten rid of slavery, he would have.

But he was aware, I mean, it doesn't, he also used the language of tiger by the tail at one point. Like he wants to be rid of it, but we can't or tiger by the years anyway. But like it's just terrible, it's this very terrible, terrible thing that has been forced upon us, that he's not going to know what to do. It doesn't say I fear for my people when I know that God is just or that we can, that's Jefferson, right?

I fear for my country when I reflect with the child is just like, I mean, we can hammer him for his hypocrisy, we can hammer him for not rid of his slaves, but by the way, he was illegal at various most of his life. And that's all fair and good. But I do think he is largely all mid- or equal. That's what really helps us get rid of slavery.

I mean, there's just no doubt in my mind. I mean, I think it's to not see it to be purposefully obtuse. No, no, of course. And I think that there's a lot of racial grievance in the United States.

But I will always maintain that, of all the countries in the world, even with all of its flaws, the United States is still the one place where we talk most openly about our previous sins and have the most frank conversations about race. No other country comes close. And have tried internally to reconcile them without having had some external comment and direct. Like we fought a civil war, I mean, hundreds of thousands of Americans died.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's also important to recognize that Jefferson lived for like another 50 years, right? And a lot of the reprehensible things that he did came from those later years.

Like he had an early, more idealistic stage and seems like he fell away from that. And so I think it's also important that when he criticized Jefferson to draw a line between the young Jefferson and the older Jefferson, who seemed to lapse in his, there's a fantastic, well, contemporary school people notice this at the time, right? Where, okay, here I'm finding this article. This is Virginia abolitionist, the Mung Cure Conway, who said, never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do, right?

He was a grand, he had a great ability to state the principles and to even fight for the principles. But then it seems like maybe later in life, he kind of fell away from his purpose, specifically after he retired. He had a very expensive lifestyle. And it's conceivable that a man at a young revolutionary fervor held believes that later on in life, he just kind of abandoned for practical purposes in his life.

And that's like a just form of criticism of maybe the older Jefferson, but there are these concrete things he did, especially as a young man, a deserved recognition and honor, even despite his complicated legacy. That of course, was going to jump into different. I don't know that he ever became okay with these things. I think that he might have become tired.

I mean, I mentioned that his response to the Mr. Carmeliz was like, well, you guys did it. This is, I mean, I've been setting you up to your slavery. And he says to another abolitionist, again, I should have paired this, someone's exquiting it to get more involved.

He's like, hey, man, I wrote the declaration. I feel like that was the biggest thing. And it's the next generation that's going to have to carry forward. We should also not forget, wasn't Jefferson.

So in the Constitution, there's the section that outlaws the importation of slaves. Well, it's actually a prohibition that we're not allowed to outlaw slavery until section such a date. And I thought it was Jefferson, who actually was the president that signed that. The first day that it was legally possible to outlaw the importation of slaves.

So he did do some things for us. No, no, no. It's needed to be, again, I know it's needed to be handed, like Washington, for example, right? Garbage and ball slaves.

No, not his slaves. No, not till after his wife's death. Yeah, after his wife's death. He made efforts in that direction in a way that Jefferson did not.

Right. I think the current my friend, this is not the whitewash what he's done a little bit like. We seem to want to demand a kind of purity from our heroes. They can't have had any flaws whatsoever.

And I'm watching this television show Barry right now. Have you guys watched the show? It's so good. Actually, it's actually finished.

I've watched it all the way through. This is the last season. Yeah. I'm going to give you spoilers.

We'll give you a small. Please don't. It's also the last season of America. Okay.

We're coming to an end. Sorry. All right. Please let all hate and I'll have to Alex for you.

So Barry is this if you guys don't watch the show, you probably get decent. But Barry is sociopath, he's a psychopath. He's a serial killer. He's a murderer.

He is an assassin for hire. The show, the premise of the show is basically he's trying to become a decent guy without ever having paid for his sins, so to speak. So he wants the redemption without having to actually ever admit that he's anything wrong. So I'll just leave a lot of details out so I don't give anything away to David or any other listeners.

But in one of the episodes, he's trying to justify himself to himself. I'm not that bad a guy. I'm not that bad a guy. And he's watching this YouTube video about how awesome Lincoln is.

And he's getting really into Lincoln. And he's like, Lincoln's the best, Lincoln's the best, Lincoln's the best, Lincoln's the best. And then he's sort of upset with himself. He's falling short.

But then he finds someone else on YouTube who's like, Lincoln actually supported sending the African slaves back to Africa. And he's like, ah, so Lincoln was a bad guy too. And so just like me, I'm also as good as Lincoln because I've killed people for money. And it's like, OK, maybe it's OK to say that Lincoln actually is way more impressive than us, even though he did have some flaws, even though he did consider sending African slaves back to Africa.

Look, if Frederick Douglass can call the man of statesman and say he is worthy of admiration, Frederick Douglass was by no means under the impression that Lincoln was perfect. I think these days we want to look back on previous statesman and demand perfection from them. And that's unrealistic. And no one will meet that standard ever.

And it's always the shifting purity test too with the times. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

You're shifting. And it's because this is the problem with any progressive notion of history is that you you look upon your ancestors. If you look upon them fondly at all, it's as these quanes and sort of underdeveloped. But you're grateful for them, but these pitiful Neanderthals compared to what you are.

I mean, it's pretty ridiculous rather than, and this is why I think you can have a progressive notion of history and we kind of feel this is like you could say like, I don't want to get too far a field, but there's a difference between looking at yourself as the peak of history and like taking a much more. Aberetic kind of philosophical view of the progress of history saying, look, all I know is that this current time, this is the one I was given, but you did it. Usually. And this is where I see us going, what I think is best.

This is my appreciation of the principles and the problem with the principles given the circumstances. And this is the judgmental before it. When you look at history, like that happens like three times, every time people appreciate it. In that way, and like the founding is one of the few times, American values, well, the few times where people are like, look, in the course of human events, this kind of seems to me to be the point of what human beings are doing.

Here's where we had, here's where we think we'd like to go. This is why we did what we did. Like, when does that ever happen? When to use the language here?

When you have a clear declaration before a candid world, it's an enlightenment comfort that you have. And whereas the mass murderers and violent criminals of history are lost to time, because the most brutal events occur outside of any literate times, you can look upon these people and just condemn them, I've heard you of their own willingness to declare their purposes and to be open about their sins in their private documents and recording their lives. So I don't know, it's all just silly. You did mention that this is sort of unique in human history, that this has happened, and it's true.

But since then, and the declaration that Jefferson hoped it would be, has sort of been a model that people have copied. I mean, most obvious one of the most immediate one thereafter, which is the French Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen, which scrapes so much to the whole of the Declaration. And now over half of the nations in the United Nations have something like a declaration of independence. So I mean, it's now become in some ways, and perhaps therefore, we're down and not as clear as it was in the original, but it has become a kind of model for people.

I mean, even the UN Declaration of Human Rights meant the idea that people have rights. I mean, this is where Lincoln was right, but look, this is an experiment. That's right. If it doesn't succeed here, it doesn't succeed anywhere.

I think what you're working up to is your own Declaration of Independence, right? Aren't you declaring independence? No, not for the pockets. But from the arbitrary rules of morality, that for being to your love that hath no name, right?

Your love of beast, of fowl, of fauna and flora alike, right? Your ability to coprolains. I love you and all those things. And then not to coprol.

To coprol it. Does that mean that you have to do something with the equality section in his declaration? Some things are going to be equal. This is actually a serious point out of this, this worst that you guys have beaten to death.

And that's that I do think it's democratic principle that people want to take this equality and take it to even non-human creatures. Like it is sort of interesting, not just men are equal, but you know, there's, I'm sure there's a huge overlap between democratic societies and vegetarianism, for example. Because this is way too far to hold the cares. I think better to beat a horse to death than to do with YouTube to that God's creature, right?

Yeah, you got me there. God bless America. I have no America. I have no America where my right to freedom of speech, right?

Uh-huh. Can be a good one. Do you have to do horribly? I don't mean Greg McRaehr.

No, but I mean, this is a great example, right? The freedom of speech, like a freedom of speech means like, yeah, I get to like show my junk in public nowadays. It's like, why can't I, why can't I, you know, the White House? Yeah, exactly take my tits out of the White House.

That's my freedom of speech. It's like, Jesus, like, it's supposed to have a, you know, a concrete end in mind. Right. It is.

Yeah. Yeah. Or should we rush the end? Okay.

Did we, uh, did we ring everything out of the separation that we were hoping to bring out? I think we can always ring out more. All right. Fun more.

Do you guys not read every year? A bunch of life worth? Yeah, no, no, that's good. Yeah.

You too? No, I just, it was complimenting. Oh, okay. I read it multiple times a year for that.

Oh, it's a tradition. I think Bill Crystal told me he does that. And also I think he does it with his family. Oh, wow.

If I remember correctly. I think he says something. Yeah. I mean, the laws of man who where there's all this stuff, all this stuff about how the, uh, untouchables have to eat drink water out of the imprints of hoes in the, in the mite and eat their foods from shards of clay discarded.

Right. There's a law side by, by, by, you know, uh, Americans used to have to memorize this in grade school. So I was talking to my dad years ago and he just, just repited the entire thing. Oh, I don't know.

I think it was just, I think you had to do like a paragraph. Yeah. I can, I can just like the laws of man do regarding the chumdala and what they have to do. What is this?