Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Speaker 1: Up next, doctor Larry Arne, who's the president of Hillsdale
Speaker 1: College and author of The Founder's Key. He was giving
Speaker 1: a talk with the Hoover Institution at Hillsdale and he
Speaker 1: was read a statement of his and asked to respond,
Speaker 1: and that statement was, you can read the Declaration and
Speaker 1: Constitution in a few minutes. They're simple, beautiful, can be
Speaker 1: understood and retained. Here's what doctor Arne had to say
Speaker 1: about that statement.
Speaker 2: Well, they're very There have never been anything like them
Speaker 2: in history. There still is nothing like them. But remember
Speaker 2: the King of England, who was a nice man by
Speaker 2: the way, and a humble man for a king was
Speaker 2: referred to by the title majesty, And it took the founders,
Speaker 2: a lot of them for a long time thought the
Speaker 2: only way you can have stability is if some family
Speaker 2: is appointed to rule. And so the king was a
Speaker 2: very humble man. But when his son wanted to marry
Speaker 2: somebody a noble but of lower station than the king's family,
Speaker 2: he said, princes may not marry subjects, ever, no matter
Speaker 2: what your heart says. So the one is that's the world, right,
Speaker 2: that's what's known. And that's the first incredible thing about
Speaker 2: the decoratives independence. They're three. The second incredible thing about
Speaker 2: the dectritent's independence is in the last sentence, the decorative
Speaker 2: of Independence was written by people for whom the military
Speaker 2: was looking. General Gage had an order, and the order said,
Speaker 2: find these people, even if it means complete war. Detained them.
Speaker 2: In other words, they were guilty of treason. And now
Speaker 2: they're going to put their name on a document and
Speaker 2: send it to the king. And they write in the
Speaker 2: last sentence in the mood that somebody who was about
Speaker 2: to do that would write in support of this declaration.
Speaker 2: We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes,
Speaker 2: and our sacred honor. That's how people talk on a battlefield.
Speaker 2: They die for each other. We mutually pledge to each other.
Speaker 2: That's the second extraordinary thing. And then the third becomes
Speaker 2: more amazing because of the first two. The opening of
Speaker 2: the decorations independence has nothing to do with them. In fact,
Speaker 2: it demotes them. It's not our unique situation. It's not
Speaker 2: us a special people here to do a grand deed.
Speaker 2: It begins universally and abstractly, when in the course of
Speaker 2: human events, means any old time, it becomes necessary for
Speaker 2: one people, means any old people, to dissolve the political
Speaker 2: bands that have connected them with another, and to assume
Speaker 2: among the powers of the earth a separate and equal
Speaker 2: station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's
Speaker 2: God entitle them. It's an act of obedience to a
Speaker 2: law that persists beyond the English law and beyond any
Speaker 2: law that they might make. So for them to be
Speaker 2: the particular people whose lives are at risk, and for
Speaker 2: them to be turning over an entire way of organizing
Speaker 2: society that had dominated for two thousand years, and then
Speaker 2: for them to begin that way, it's very grand, but
Speaker 2: also you can't miss it. It's partly humble. These are
Speaker 2: the ways that people must comport themselves. We are going
Speaker 2: to do that, and if you will do that, British,
Speaker 2: we will get on and if not, we will not,
Speaker 2: and we will be in the right because of that.
Speaker 2: So that's what's remarkable about it and why it's very beautiful,
Speaker 2: the declaration, and it connects to the Constitution. You have
Speaker 2: to first know that modern scholarship claims and you know
Speaker 2: Gordon Wood and Joseph Ellis and famous people excellent scholars
Speaker 2: claim that there were two foundings, one for the Declorates
Speaker 2: of Independence and one for the Constitution, and they mean
Speaker 2: different things. Is the claim. That's a very powerful thing,
Speaker 2: because if it's true that they changed their mind right
Speaker 2: in the middle of the revolution, their example to us
Speaker 2: might be we can change our mind whenever we want to.
Speaker 2: But the Constitution doesn't read that way. The Constitution has
Speaker 2: three grand things in it, and they're very lovely, and
Speaker 2: they are all commanded in the Declaration of Independence. The
Speaker 2: first is that government be limited in the Declaration, and
Speaker 2: it's limited in obvious ways, right, it's a doctrine of
Speaker 2: enuminerated powers. In the Constitution, there's a list of things
Speaker 2: that the Congress can do, and the Constitution and the
Speaker 2: other things that it's not listed it may not do.
Speaker 2: And you'd think that some change from the declaration. But
Speaker 2: in the declaration, the middle part of the Declaration of
Speaker 2: Independence is the charges against the King, And if you
Speaker 2: want to understand American constitutionalism, it's base read those because
Speaker 2: the things that the king has done justify the revolution
Speaker 2: and they amount to violations of constitutionalism. So he has
Speaker 2: sent swarms of officials among us to eat out our
Speaker 2: substance and harass our people. He has brought troops from
Speaker 2: a foreign jurisdiction. So, in other words, it's a breach
Speaker 2: of limited government. But once you have limited government, you
Speaker 2: have a vast, big society that's independent, and you can
Speaker 2: locate sovereignty in it. Now, James Madison takes pride in
Speaker 2: the sixty third Federalist that this is the first form
Speaker 2: of government in which the sovereign does not operate any
Speaker 2: part of the government. And this is the second principle.
Speaker 2: It is a representative form of government. It is limited,
Speaker 2: and because it's limited, it's possible for it to be representative.
Speaker 2: And what that means is in the government thing will
Speaker 2: operate except that it gets its authority from outside. But
Speaker 2: since everybody's human, who's going to get governed, then you
Speaker 2: don't want the people outside to be of unlimited power either,
Speaker 2: And so they can only act through the government. They
Speaker 2: can't act directly. They can talk and talk and talk
Speaker 2: and argue and argue in arg just like we are
Speaker 2: right now, but we have to wait for elections to
Speaker 2: do anything that makes us more deliberative. The charges against
Speaker 2: the King and the Declaration of Independence are full of
Speaker 2: a list of where the king, the executive branch has
Speaker 2: messed with the legislatures and the judges and disrupted representative institutions.
Speaker 1: And what terrific storytelling and what terrific teaching in the end,
Speaker 1: and so often the best teaching can indeed be storytelling
Speaker 1: the story of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 1: how the two are connected. No one tells that story
Speaker 1: better than doctor Larry arn Here. On Our American Stories
Speaker 1: Leha bib Here, host of Our American Stories. Every day
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