What is America for? — Transcript

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1. 0:00We pledge to each other our lives, our
2. 0:04fortune, and our sacred honor.
3. 0:19Hello, my name is Larry Arn. I'm the
4. 0:21president of Hillsdale [music]
5. 0:22College, uh, which is honored to be
6. 0:25working with the White House to produce
7. 0:26these videos in honor of the 250th
8. 0:29anniversary of the Declaration of
9. 0:31Independence, [music] the greatest
10. 0:32political document in human history. Our
11. 0:35college was founded in honor of that
12. 0:37document. We encourage you to love it
13. 0:40and to celebrate it. And to celebrate
14. 0:43it, you should learn about it. We're
15. 0:45going to talk about two things. The
16. 0:47meaning and the structure of the
17. 0:48Declaration of Independence. First
18. 0:51question is what does it mean? Things
19. 0:53have causes. There's a classical account
20. 0:55of the causes of things that include
21. 0:58four. The efficient cause means whoever
22. 1:00made it. The material cause means
23. 1:02whatever it's made out of. The uh formal
24. 1:05cause means what does it look like and
25. 1:07how does it operate and the final cause
26. 1:10is what is it for? What love produces
27. 1:13it. Declaration of independence contains
28. 1:16a lot of information about the formal
29. 1:17cause of America in the middle. But its
30. 1:20chief function is to provide the final
31. 1:22cause of the country. What is the
32. 1:25country for? And it begins very
33. 1:28beautifully by explaining that. It says
34. 1:31that any time in history, any people in
35. 1:34history have a right under the laws of
36. 1:36nature and of nature's god to form a
37. 1:39nation according to purposes that they
38. 1:43adopt. What are these laws of nature and
39. 1:46nature's god? What does that mean? The
40. 1:48Christian view is that God made nature.
41. 1:51The classical view is that each being
42. 1:54has a good and the good and the being
43. 1:56are the same thing.
44. 1:58Nature is full of things that are good
45. 2:02and it's wrong to violate the good of
46. 2:04anything.
47. 2:06What do these laws say about people?
48. 2:08They say that they're all created equal.
49. 2:11Think what a remarkable thing it is for
50. 2:13a people to adopt a standard like that.
51. 2:17as their purpose, as their governing
52. 2:21purpose. And we did that in opposition
53. 2:24to a king who claimed that he was born
54. 2:27to be our ruler because he was better
55. 2:30born than we are. He was denying the
56. 2:33proposition that all men are created
57. 2:35equal.
58. 2:37If you recognize this principle of
59. 2:39equality and you recognize it properly,
60. 2:42it will give rise to the most amazing
61. 2:44diversity and difference among [music]
62. 2:46people because it sets up a right of all
63. 2:50of us to pursue our lives best we can
64. 2:54without impediment [music]
65. 2:55by kings and emperors. We said in the
66. 2:59laws of nature and nature's god, no one
67. 3:03is born to rule anybody else.
68. 3:07That's beautiful and it sets up an
69. 3:09agitation in the country which goes on
70. 3:11to this day to always try to recognize
71. 3:14those principles
72. 3:16and that's the final cause of the United
73. 3:19States of America.
74. 3:21Now word about the structure of the
75. 3:23document.
76. 3:25Uh it begins with this universal claim
77. 3:27that we're all created equal and that
78. 3:29nobody may rule us except by our
79. 3:31consent.
80. 3:33And in the middle bit they claim the
81. 3:35king has done a bunch of bad stuff that
82. 3:37justifies the revolution. He took houses
83. 3:41away from people and put troops in them.
84. 3:44That means they were dislodged. They
85. 3:46were driven out into the street. He
86. 3:48arrested people. He put them on ships.
87. 3:51And the ships were not very comfortable.
88. 3:53They were in the hold of the ship.
89. 3:56Sometimes they sat around for weeks in
90. 3:58the harbor. And they were taken all the
91. 4:00way to England. Most of them had never
92. 4:01been there before. and they were put on
93. 4:03trial in front of people who they never
94. 4:05met before. Not a jury of your peers.
95. 4:09This is the 25th paragraph. He has
96. 4:12plundered our seas, ravaged our coast,
97. 4:16burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives
98. 4:18of our people. He did kill people. And
99. 4:20then he'd talk about the mercenaries
100. 4:22there. Large armies of foreign
101. 4:24mercenaries. Those were the Hessins.
102. 4:27to complete the works of death,
103. 4:29desolation, and tyranny already begun
104. 4:32with circumstances of cruelty and perity
105. 4:35scarcely parallel in the most barbarous
106. 4:37ages and totally unworthy of the head of
107. 4:41a civilized nation. But then that leads
108. 4:44us to the second thing about this
109. 4:47structure point and that was some of
110. 4:51them are direct violations of the best
111. 4:55method. The founders argued the only
112. 4:57sure method to keep the government from
113. 5:00doing things like that to you to its
114. 5:02citizens to anybody right and those
115. 5:05methods are they provide the organizing
116. 5:07[music] principle of the constitution
117. 5:09United States they are representation
118. 5:12you know the continental congress that
119. 5:14passed the declaration of independence
120. 5:16took great pains
121. 5:18to be a representative body that is to
122. 5:21say they're not acting according to
123. 5:22their own wills somebody else those who
124. 5:25will be governed under this new
125. 5:26government that they're creating have
126. 5:29appointed us to [music] do this. We are
127. 5:30acting for them. We have government by
128. 5:33consent and they say that the king is
129. 5:37interfering with the legislatures that
130. 5:40they had had before. He dissolved
131. 5:42several of them and he prevented others
132. 5:44of them from meeting and those are all
133. 5:46in these charges here. Right? He has
134. 5:48obstructed government by consent. Then
135. 5:51he's messed around with the judicial
136. 5:53branch and that means that the
137. 5:56legislature has to pass a law and then
138. 6:01the executive enforces only the laws
139. 6:03that have been passed and then when the
140. 6:06law is applied upon an any citizen,
141. 6:11he has to be taken in front of a judge
142. 6:13who's not dismissible by the legislature
143. 6:16or the uh executive.
144. 6:20And then the judge has to decide. That's
145. 6:23called the independent judiciary. It's a
146. 6:25terribly important thing.
147. 6:28So the middle bit of the declaration,
148. 6:30these 28 paragraphs is the
149. 6:34second part of the structure of the
150. 6:36declaration of independence. And the
151. 6:37third part is a formal legislative act
152. 6:42that makes the nation. It's passed by
153. 6:45the Continental Congress. I should
154. 6:47mention that God appears four times in
155. 6:50the dark race of independence. He
156. 6:52appears in the first sentence as the
157. 6:54maker of the laws of nature [music] and
158. 6:56nature's God, the legislator. He appears
159. 6:59in the beginning of the second paragraph
160. 7:03as the endower of our rights [music] as
161. 7:06creator,
162. 7:08the founder of everything. The last
163. 7:10paragraph is personal. They refer to
164. 7:13themselves for the first time.
165. 7:16We therefore the representatives of the
166. 7:18United States, the representatives of
167. 7:19the United States, we in general
168. 7:22Congress assembled
169. 7:24and then they appeal to somebody to
170. 7:27judge whether they're right. And that
171. 7:29person is not the King of England, it's
172. 7:31the Supreme Judge of the world, the
173. 7:35judicial branch,
174. 7:37for the rectitude of our intentions. In
175. 7:39other words, we swear
176. 7:43we're doing what seems right and we ask
177. 7:46God to judge
178. 7:48in the name of the good people of these
179. 7:51colonies. You can read it as a claim
180. 7:54that the people of the colonies are
181. 7:55good. You can read it as a claim that
182. 7:58we're acting [music] for the good ones.
183. 8:00Or you can read it as the claim,
184. 8:03we have to remember to be good because
185. 8:07we are assuming this authority now.
186. 8:10Free and independent [music] states that
187. 8:12they are absolved from all allegiance to
188. 8:15the British crown and that all political
189. 8:17connection between [music] them and the
190. 8:19state of Great Britain is and ought to
191. 8:21be totally dissolved and that as free
192. 8:24and independent states they have full
193. 8:26power to levy war.
194. 8:30Now we get to the hard thing. Conclude
195. 8:32peace, contract alliances, establish
196. 8:34commerce, and do all other acts and
197. 8:37things which [music] independent states
198. 8:39may of right do. And then the beautiful
199. 8:42last sentence and this is where the
200. 8:44executive branch comes in because see
201. 8:47now it's war.
202. 8:49and for the support of this declaration
203. 8:52with a firm reliance on the protection
204. 8:55of divine providence. That's God as the
205. 8:59executive branch. We [music] mutually
206. 9:02pledge to each other our lives, our
207. 9:06fortunes, [music]
208. 9:07and our sacred honor.
209. 9:09Only in the hands of God would all the
210. 9:12powers of government be combined. Those
211. 9:15men in that room, the same room where
212. 9:19the Constitution would [music] later be
213. 9:21written by some of the same people, we
214. 9:24mutually pledge to each other
215. 9:28everything we've got.
216. 9:31We Americans today owe those people. We
217. 9:35should learn about them.
218. 9:37Thank you.
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