Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: How are you, Nia?
N. Rodgers: I'm declaring that I feel pretty good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I can swear to feel like I've just come from overseas and I'm at customs and I need to go ahead and declare a whole bunch of stuff.
N. Rodgers: Since you're coming into the country for customs. Can you read through that? It's like, are you bringing in a live alligator? Are you like, no. Who would say yes? Even if you were, who would say yes? Yes, I want to spend extra time with the customs people, so I'm going to say yes to these things. I would say no to anything and just hope I got through. You know what I mean?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I misread the form, my bad. I'm not telling people to break the law. Actually, I just did. I just told people to break the law and you should not do that. If you have a live alligator, you should go ahead and declare it. You have more than $50,000 in currency. You should go ahead and declare it. All the things that they say you should declare. But like part of me wants to say, why are you trying to bring that into country in the first, like don't bring plants here, that's a bad thing, and it makes the plants here sick because plants that come from other places have funguses on. Like don't do it. Just don't do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way listeners, this is not an episode.
N. Rodgers: On customs, this is not an episode on US customs. This is an episode on the declaration.
J. Aughenbaugh: Declaration of Independence.
N. Rodgers: Entirely a different sort.
J. Aughenbaugh: The focus here is on the word declaration. In particular, this is part of our series of foundational US documents. In particular, where you are talking about the Declaration of Independence.
N. Rodgers: Last week we talked about Thomas Paine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thomas Paine. Common Sense.
N. Rodgers: Common Sense. Which came out in January of 1776. Fast forward now to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Mid June 1776, when a five person committee that included like our big three.
N. Rodgers: Adams, Jefferson and Madison.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, Adams, Jefferson and Ben Franklin.
N. Rodgers: Franklin.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. What do you know?
N. Rodgers: Who else?
J. Aughenbaugh: Who were the other two? I only have three. I have Jefferson, Adams, and Ben Franklin. We should probably go ahead and look that up.
N. Rodgers: Tell me what they wrote about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Basically listeners, by the time we get to mid June 1776, for about a year, starting in 1775, American colonists and British soldiers were fighting. The Americans were fighting for certain rights. They were tired of King George and his crazy ways. The Revolutionary War was in full swing. It was King George.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, but the Revolutionary War was in full swing.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Revolutionary War actually started a year before the Declaration of Independence. Hostilities had already begun in 1775.
N. Rodgers: Really?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I didn't know.
J. Aughenbaugh: Did you not?
N. Rodgers: Not my history. My unclearness is there is showing. I'm so embarrassed. Let me quick mention the other two people of this five person committee are Roger Sherman of Connecticut.
J. Aughenbaugh: Connecticut, yes.
N. Rodgers: Robert R. Livingston of New York.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hey, yeah. Very prominent colonial figures. The Continental Congress.
N. Rodgers: Because there had to be a Continental Congress, which wouldn't have come until after a revolution. Sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: You think I would have a better grasp of all that. I'm going to say that because I wasn't there, it all runs together for me. The librarians who listen to this podcast can go really near. You realize that we had been at war for a year before we wrote the Declaration of Independence. But what I think is interesting is, so there's a committee. There's these five guys who are tasked to write this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: I've always thought of it as Jefferson's document, but that's really not accurate.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is not accurate.
N. Rodgers: While Jefferson wrote a large part of the document, the others did a lot of editing and adding and taking away. He just sat down. He wrote it one night in complete brilliance.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, that was not the case.
N. Rodgers: But that's how it's presented when it's taught in school, when it's taught in school it's taught as Thomas Jefferson sat down and wrote the Declaration of Independence, and sent it to King George, along with a, I don't know, a sculpture of a middle finger or whatever it was. There you go, when, in fact, first of all, so it's very eloquent. But complaints.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, even before we get to the substance of it, I think it would be good for listeners to understand, and this goes to your point Nia that you have this common myth that the Continental Congress said, hey, TJ. Sorry, Thomas Jefferson.
N. Rodgers: What are you doing tomorrow night? No, great. Write a Declaration of Independence.
J. Aughenbaugh: We'll give you a deadline, but you only got a night or two to go ahead and crank this out. No, actually, the Declaration of Independence was the culmination of about a year and a half of hostility and groundbreaking action taken by various colonies. If you go ahead and lay this out, in April 1775, you begin to see various battles between militias in the American colonies and the British soldiers. After these initial battles broke out, some of the colonists began discussing, we should be independent from the British crown. Probably the leading person for that, and he was considered a radical at that time, was John Adams. But over the course of the year, as you move into late 1775, King George, and we discussed this in our previous podcast episode about Thomas Paine's common sense, King George couldn't help himself, because King George in October, sent a message to Parliament where he just railed. He just ranted about the rebellious colonies. He said that the royal army that was stationed in the colonies needed to be larger. Now, it took a little while for King George's speech to make it across the pond.
N. Rodgers: Which is why in January, Thomas Paine saying, no, you didn't. I refused to believe that those words actually came out of your good mouth, sir.
J. Aughenbaugh: Right. But the narrative then continues with what North Carolina did. In March of 1776, North Carolina became the first colony to vote in favor of independence. Shortly thereafter, within a couple of months, seven other colonies did so.
N. Rodgers: At the end of the 13, they were like, that's it.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's it.
N. Rodgers: We're done. We're declaring independence. Had that's been done before? Was America the first country to just say that's it. We're done. We're declaring independence.
J. Aughenbaugh: In terms of middle age colonial empires, I believe the United States was the first. Now if you go back before the Middle Ages, quite obviously, whether you're talking about the Roman Empire or the Greek Empire, the Egyptian Empire, eventually some of the colonized people left.
N. Rodgers: I wonder if they had declared it or if they just left.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or they just fought the war.
N. Rodgers: They just fought enough war and they made it painful enough that whoever the leader was said, this is not not worth it, fine go off and do your own thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Eventually in June.
N. Rodgers: Somebody says, we ought to write a letter.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, he introduced a motion that called for the colonies to declare independence and it was Richard Henry Lee. Richard Henry Lee from Virginia, made a motion with the Continental Congress that was meeting in Philadelphia. The Continental Congress postponed a vote on Lee's motion.
N. Rodgers: Because it got a little heated, didn't it? There were some people who were like, this is going to blow over.
J. Aughenbaugh: Blow over.
N. Rodgers: We don't need to declare independence, we just need to show him that we need representation in Parliament. He'll see the light and it will all be fine. We don't need to not be part of the British Empire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. And you had some loyalists who were like, hey guys, we need to go ahead and negotiate with the British Crown. We can't stand alone.
N. Rodgers: Some people didn't think of themselves as separate from British, they thought of themselves as themselves as British. So why would I separate from the British Crown? I'm British.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. Because again, all 13 colonies existed because of charters, contracts with the British Crown. Their existence was predicated on the British government saying we're going to give you the resources and we're going to go ahead and give you the authority to go ahead and settle that new world.
N. Rodgers: It went fine for a couple of hundred years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They had no reason to see this coming except they did because the colonists had been grabby for a while. Grabbiness had set in not just for a year. Grabbiness had set in for probably a good 20, 25 years by that point where they were starting to chafe under the, how come every time you need money, you should start war with France or you've done something where you've borrowed money as the crown and you need money, we have to pay for it? How is it that that's working, but we don't have anybody in Parliament.
J. Aughenbaugh: To represent our interests.
N. Rodgers: They had legitimate. It had been growing. It wasn't just one day people woke up in 1775 and said, let's go and head out to Lexington in Concord and start fighting, that is not how that worked.
J. Aughenbaugh: Before the Continental Congress adjourned, they tasked the subcommittee and Nia, you captured all five members. You had Jefferson from Virginia, Adams from Massachusetts, Sherman from Connecticut, Ben Franklin from Pennsylvania, and Robert Livingston from New York to draft a formal statement. Now, the committee deferred to or picked Jefferson to write the draft. You might be wondering why. Well, in 1774, Jefferson wrote, and this is the name of the publication, a summary review of the Rights of British America.
N. Rodgers: He had done some formal writing that they liked before and he was really good at outlining things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes he was.
N. Rodgers: He said, there's going to be five sections. There's going to be an introduction, there's going to be a preamble, there's going to be a body which is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Divided into two sections.
N. Rodgers: The main issue, and then a conclusion.
J. Aughenbaugh: Conclusion. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Everybody knows the preamble.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The introduction effectively stated that seeking independence from Britain had become necessary for the colonies. Then you get to the preamble.
N. Rodgers: We hold these choose to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
J. Aughenbaugh: That among these rights.
N. Rodgers: That among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That phrase, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, is revolutionary.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's nowhere else in the world until this time have you got power from the people. There's always power from the divine right of kings or the divine right of God or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: This certainly reflects as we discussed in the previous episode, Enlightenment Thinking. This idea that the power of a government comes from, flows from the people. But then there's the body, what I referred to as a list of complaints.
N. Rodgers: Of well worded complaints.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, there were 27 grievances. Now, we're not going to go through all 27, but some of these are noteworthy. Nia, do you have a favorite grievance that is listed?
N. Rodgers: Actually, I like they are deprived of the right of jury.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because I think for me, jury trial, everything else, all other liberty derives from that. If one person gets to decide, and it's not a group of your peers, it's some dude who doesn't know you, and he doesn't know the situation, he doesn't know your culture, he doesn't know anything, and he's just deciding a thing, I don't know, that seems deeply unfair, especially if he is hired by the crown.
J. Aughenbaugh: There you go.
N. Rodgers: To be the crown's judge and the crown's representative is true in some cases.
J. Aughenbaugh: A number of the grievances, listeners, touch upon what Nia just described. It wasn't just the fact that in a number of the colonies, trials no longer had juries or never had juries. It's the fact that the trials would be decided by judges who were picked by the crown and paid for by the crown.
N. Rodgers: Do we think they're ever going to go against the crown?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, yeah, because if you're a judge and you want to keep your job, are you actually going to rule against the person who's paying you to do that job?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. I would think unlikely. That one and the one about housing soldiers on your property.
J. Aughenbaugh: The quartering of soldiers. This arose in 1774 when parliament passed the Quartering Act, and this was in response to the Boston Tea Party. This act allowed army officers to appropriate private property to quarter their soldiers without the consent of the property owners.
N. Rodgers: That would make me very crappy. I own the house and you get to take a bedroom in it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, let's face it. How likely are you to engage in opposition, or dissent, or protest when right down the hall are the soldiers of the army of the government you're protesting?
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, the Quartering Act of 1774 is what led to what is now known as the Third Amendment of the US Constitution, the prohibition on the quartering of soldiers.
N. Rodgers: Well, and if you're wondering why they were quartering soldiers in the American colonies before there was a formal war in the American colonies is because they were trying to keep the French out of the American colonies because they had just finished a war with France. They were trying to keep the French from sliding in through Canada what would then not have been Canada but what was to become Canada.
J. Aughenbaugh: The quartering of soldiers had multiple purposes.
N. Rodgers: None of them were in favor of the colonists. I bet yours is taxes.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is my favorite of the grievances.
N. Rodgers: You are crabby about taxes now, let alone tax paid to a foreign government.
J. Aughenbaugh: The quote is, for imposing taxes on us without our consent. Basically, you had revenue taxes that were imposed, but then you also had taxes like the Stamp Act, you had duties placed on the purchase and use of paper, painters' colors, glass tea, and a whole bunch of other goods. Basically, anything that the colonists needed to exist or produced was being taxed.
N. Rodgers: Think about how much paper you use in your life.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Even if you're trying to avoid using paper.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Currency is printed on paper.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Paper is just a function of life, and if somebody is taxing paper.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, especially back then, you had no telephones, you had no Internet. The way you communicated.
N. Rodgers: You want to communicate with somebody.
J. Aughenbaugh: You wrote a letter. You produced a pamphlet.
N. Rodgers: That's going to cost you.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's going to cost you. One of the examples I found, Nia, when I was doing research was some of the colonists had to pay a tax on the paper that they used to submit complaints to the British Crown.
N. Rodgers: See, it's just insult to injury, it's just salt in the wound.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, a whole bunch of the grievances dealt with the state of Massachusetts, because the British Crown used Massachusetts as the example where they wanted to send a message to the colonies, they just treated Massachusetts terribly. There were easily like five or six of these grievances that dealt with how the British Crown treated the Massachusetts colony. The fact that in 1774, Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act which nullified the Massachusetts charter of 1691. The British Crown basically went ahead and said to the Massachusetts Colony.
N. Rodgers: You know that founding document that you have, you didn't tear that up now because it doesn't matter. What?
J. Aughenbaugh: In 1774, Massachusetts lost the right to elect their own judges, and that was the first colony that lost the right but they had to still pay for the salaries out of taxes on goods and services produced in the Massachusetts colony. You had to pay for a judge who was no longer picked by you, and who would frequently rule against you. A whole bunch of these grievances dealt with Massachusetts because the Crown used Massachusetts as the, I'm going to make an example out of you guys. Right, okay?
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: They draft the document. Now, here's another example of where listeners, Nia and I are going to dispel a myth. The myth is basically Jefferson wrote the document and the Continental Congress just adopted it. That's not quite what happened. Basically what happened was the Continental Congress reconvened on July 1st. Twelve of the 13 colonies adopted Lee's Resolution for Independence.
N. Rodgers: Which means he worked them the night before. They went from 8-12. He went around to where people were saying and he was like, listen, we can't go with just eight. We either all have to go or not.
J. Aughenbaugh: None of them.
N. Rodgers: Because it's not going to work if some of us go.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then.
N. Rodgers: I don't know that for sure. [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: But I had imagined that's what actually what happened. But then the committee starts to review Jefferson's declaration.
N. Rodgers: They edited.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes and in particular.
N. Rodgers: Which I had never known until I saw in your notes and he had been edited. Just it is part of the Thomas Jefferson myth.
J. Aughenbaugh: Myth, yes.
N. Rodgers: That he wrote this document like he just wrote the whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thing, yes.
N. Rodgers: That it was not edited at first by Adams and Franklin.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Well, and that commentary did not come from Livingston.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sherman.
N. Rodgers: Sherman but even the whole Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Had an option.
N. Rodgers: What we see is the declaration now is not.
J. Aughenbaugh: What his draft said.
N. Rodgers: What his draft was.
J. Aughenbaugh: In particular, Adams and Franklin made some significant edits, and then it was presented to the delegates at the constitutional or the continental Congress. Now, they basically left the preamble alone, but basically 1/5 of the text got deleted and or revised.
N. Rodgers: What we see now is 20% less than what he had written.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's a lot.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is a lot.
N. Rodgers: If somebody came to you and said I'm going to need you to edit down the constitution by 20%, you would say, where in the heck do I start.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, I still remember when my dissertation committee, would recommend that I really remove a paragraph or a couple of pages and how difficult that was for me. We're talking about a paragraph or a couple of pages out of a document that ended up being 190-plus pages. But I was just like, no, these are essential words. This cannot be removed.
N. Rodgers: You'll change the full meaning of my dissertation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Give me a break.
N. Rodgers: But they're like 20% of this has got to go.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, the funny thing is we celebrate the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, but most historians need.
N. Rodgers: Which is pretty much the day they wrapped up the.
J. Aughenbaugh: Continental Congress.
N. Rodgers: The Continental Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the document was not signed until August 2nd.
N. Rodgers: Because didn't they have to go back and check with people?
J. Aughenbaugh: They had to go ahead and get.
N. Rodgers: Do you all think this is a fair way for me [inaudible] saying this to the king.
J. Aughenbaugh: Theoretically, a number of the states could have said, no, are you freaking crazy?
N. Rodgers: This is nuts, what are you doing, go back and change that, it didn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's one thing to have individual skirmishes. Guerrilla battles.
N. Rodgers: It's another thing entirely.
J. Aughenbaugh: To go ahead and declare.
N. Rodgers: Independence.
J. Aughenbaugh: To your benefactor. We're out of here.
N. Rodgers: With all due respect, kiss off. That's a really hard.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're number 1.
N. Rodgers: Can I say though that we hold these truths to be self evident.
J. Aughenbaugh: Evident.
N. Rodgers: It's one of the nicest way to say, that you could possibly imagine. We hold these truths to be self evident, meaning, everybody knows this. I don't know why I'm having to put it in writing before you you edit, but I'm going to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I don't know, the preamble is an almost slap in the face to the king.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: That's probably why it's one of the better parts as far as interesting to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a direct confrontation or front.
N. Rodgers: As opposed to the rest which just, it's a litany of complaints.
J. Aughenbaugh: Complaints.
N. Rodgers: We don't like it when you do this. But that we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. Now, one could argue that Jefferson did not believe all men were created equal because he owned slaves, because he was willing to make The Three-fifth Compromise with the Southern states. He was willing to be a party to.
J. Aughenbaugh: To the original.
N. Rodgers: Slavery.
J. Aughenbaugh: The original scent of the US Constitution. The Three-fifth Compromise.
N. Rodgers: I'm not saying it's perfect, but I am saying that it is basically, I shall take off this glove and just slap you across the face with it.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you combine the Declaration of Independence with the preamble of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, you're basically talking about the three main founding documents of the United States government. Because these are all three are aspirational. As we have readily acknowledged on this podcast, the United States as a nation frequently fails to achieve those goals, but they're aspirational and they proved to be aspirational not only in the United States but around the world.
N. Rodgers: Because didn't France immediately say, hey, that's a good idea. Not France, but the peasants.
J. Aughenbaugh: Those who.
N. Rodgers: The spirit of the king.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who propagated the French Revolution. Of course, one of the green ironies is that the Declaration of Independence had very little attention in the years immediately after the American Revolution. Early celebrations of Independence Day, in the United States, largely ignored the Declaration.
N. Rodgers: I can see that because beyond the preamble, you're just complaining a lot.
J. Aughenbaugh: But where you really begin to see a change, is when minority groups in the United States began to agitate for change. As part of the rhetoric, they drew upon explicitly the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. That part that says all men are created equal, gets referenced by all manner and number and civil rights groups.
N. Rodgers: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
J. Aughenbaugh: Happiness.
N. Rodgers: We should be allowed liberty.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you think about it, the abolitionist movement to get rid of slavery referenced the Declaration of Independence, the women's suffrage movement which began in the 1800s. Yes, we don't get the 19th Amendment until the early part of the 20th century. But the women's suffrage movement began in various parts of the United States in the 1800s. 1830s, 1840s, 1850s. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Listeners, if you get a chance read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, I Have a Dream speech. He makes all references to the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. It is the rhetorical foundation of that speech, and it's a powerful speech, just like the preamble.
N. Rodgers: If you don't want to read it, you can listen to it to it, the recordings of him it's very powerful, it's very moving.
J. Aughenbaugh: But in near and more closely to our time, so many of the speeches of those who pushed for same sex marriage in the United States referenced the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.
N. Rodgers: The pursuit of happiness.
J. Aughenbaugh: Happiness, that's right. The pursuit of happiness.
N. Rodgers: What does that mean?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The equality of all people. I said that our declaration, it's been an inspiration for a lot of other countries. A lot of other countries as they declared their independence they couldn't snag the Massachusetts parts but they could snag the preamble.
J. Aughenbaugh: The preamble.
N. Rodgers: They could snag the general way that it's written, the outline.
J. Aughenbaugh: The introduction. The outline in the introduction.
N. Rodgers: That Jefferson used.
J. Aughenbaugh: In my research, here are some of the other nations who have drawn upon the Declaration of Independence, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay. If you just take a look at the Western Hemisphere alone.
N. Rodgers: It's been enormously instrumental.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even in the United States, Texas declaring independence from Mexico, California declaring independence from Spain.
N. Rodgers: If you're talking about Europe, Hungary, you're talking about Czechoslovakia even New Zealand, even the little Island of the Herbst.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They declared independence in 1835. They were like, hey, this declaration thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is potent stuff. Now, Nia, I don't know how you want to conclude this episode, but one of the things I do want to include, and a lot of my students have heard me say this, Historians have remarked that Thomas Jefferson, a great writer though he may have been, he borrowed a lot of ideas from a lot of different people and I like to joke with my students he plagiarized a whole bunch.
N. Rodgers: I'm not sure. Well, plagiarized, in the sense that he probably should have put a parentheses mark after some of the things that he wrote. But in fairness to Jefferson, enlightenment thinking did a lot of deriving from people who come before.
J. Aughenbaugh: They built upon, yes.
N. Rodgers: Now, in modern students that are listening to this now cite your sources. Yes, Jefferson should have cited his sources in his day, they didn't really do that but yes, I agree with you that he probably should have written (John Locke) at the end of the Declaration of Independence and probably at the end of Constitution, we should have parentheses, Francis Bacon parentheses.
J. Aughenbaugh: Historians in particular have pointed out the influence of George Mason, who wrote the preamble of the Virginia Constitution. He wrote that earlier in 1776. To me, what's really ironic is George Mason made it very clear that the preamble to the then Virginia Constitution was taken from the English Declaration of Rights in 1689.
N. Rodgers: That will just come back to bite you. You wrote this great document, we believe you, so we're going to take this idea and use it for our own.
J. Aughenbaugh: What a great rhetorical technique. Let me damn you with your own words.
N. Rodgers: Jefferson also, didn't he take some stuff written by himself?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, he did.
N. Rodgers: That you should also cite if you're going to use your own work as well.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, but Jefferson, before he died, in a number of letters and a number of papers, did acknowledge the influence of English political theorist John Locke, who Jefferson called, one of the "Three greatest men that ever lived." That would be Locke, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon. That was the big three as far as Jefferson was concerned.
N. Rodgers: Jefferson was concerned. Jefferson's one of the great, as far as we're concerned.
J. Aughenbaugh: The influence of [inaudible].
N. Rodgers: The great thinkers on the next seventh generation of great thinkers and how those things work down the line. We will link to the Library of Congress copy of the archival copy Declaration of Independence. Will that actually link to a Declaration of Independence? Because you can't go touch it.
J. Aughenbaugh: You cannot go touch it.
N. Rodgers: You should keep your grubby paws off of it because paper deteriorates.
J. Aughenbaugh: No matter what, Hollywood says in any movie.
N. Rodgers: There's nothing written on the back. Oh my gosh. National Treasure. I had totally forgotten that isn't the map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I love Nicolas Cage but please don't hand that to Nicolas Cage so he can hold it over a fire and see a map or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. Stop.
N. Rodgers: Were the founders had an enormous treasure like that somewhere? But they don't.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: What the United States has and I'm going to just get all sentimental here at the end of our recording because yo I'm a Gov doc Siberian, I love me some Gov docs. What we have are great documents that have stood the test of time and while they probably need to be updated a little more on the Constitution, I'm looking at you with a little bit of side-eye because you probably need some updating. That was pretty broad and future thinking.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was groundbreaking.
N. Rodgers: For people who had relatively little experience in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: When you think about the size of their world compared to the size of our world in terms of globalization and all those other things, they just didn't have those experiences and yet they had the foresight to write.
J. Aughenbaugh: What a vision.
N. Rodgers: Visionary, doc, thank you. Visionary, that's an excellent word, and we recognize that they are not perfect. I recognize that the founders were not perfect people.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: But the Declaration of Independence is pretty cool. Whatever Sam says in the west wing, if it be your pleasure king, bite me or something like that, he basically sums up the Declaration of Independence like that and that and I think, with all due respect, sir, get off my continent.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, listeners, it's aspirational, and there's something to be said about this. We made reference to this in our previous podcast episode when we discussed Thomas Paine's common sense to be able to go ahead and provide a vision and to motivate and create passion for people to go ahead and do something that had been largely not done, we've already discussed that in this episode, to go ahead and say to a king, we want our freedom. That's aspirational.
N. Rodgers: We deserve our freedom.
J. Aughenbaugh: We deserve it.
N. Rodgers: That this is the natural rights of man that people deserve to be free of monarchical rule.
J. Aughenbaugh: From government tyranny, and it does that mean you sometimes fail, you don't achieve the aspiration? Yes. But much like that frequently gets discussed in the West Wing, one of our favorite TV shows, decisions are made by those who show up.
N. Rodgers: If you don't reach high, you don't reach for anything.
J. Aughenbaugh: For anything. That's right.
N. Rodgers: The Declaration, we like it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But I hope that what you take away listeners if anything, is that TJ did not just just sit down and write this in one night.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: It was a group effort and they did a great job. Could it have been more clear and better in some parts? Sure. But overall, it stands the test of time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Give it a read, guys, because it's frequently referenced in political speeches.
N. Rodgers: It's short, it's not going to take you that long to read it.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: It's way shorter than Thomas Paine's common sense, and we already asked you to read that. For homework in the future episode, don't be surprised if we quiz you.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're giving out homework now on the podcast. My students who might listen to this episode are like, are you serious Aughie, you're now giving out homework on your podcast. Please stop him now, Nia.
N. Rodgers: This is good homework. Thanks, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Nia.
You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.