America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea

Summary

Breaking History: America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea

Released on July 3, 2025 by The Free Press

In the July 3, 2025 episode of Breaking History, The Free Press delves into the profound and often paradoxical foundations of American democracy through an in-depth exploration of the Declaration of Independence. Titled "America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea," the episode examines how the founding principles have shaped, and sometimes conflicted with, the nation's historical trajectory and ongoing sociopolitical developments.

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1. The Declaration of Independence: A Revolutionary Charter

The episode opens with Eli Lake setting the stage by highlighting the significance of the Declaration of Independence as more than just a historical document—it is regarded as a living charter that has continually influenced American identity and governance.

Key Quote:

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands... [Declaration of Independence, 05:04]”
— Robert Kagan

Discussion: Lake emphasizes that the Declaration was groundbreaking in asserting immutable truths about human nature, diverging from traditional national origin stories that typically centered around dynastic or divine right narratives. Unlike countries founded on bloodlines or specific territories, America was established on the radical idea that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed and is inherently tasked with protecting individual rights.

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2. Contradictions at the Foundation: Slavery and Equality

A significant portion of the episode scrutinizes the inherent contradictions within the founding ideals, particularly the coexistence of the assertion that "all men are created equal" with the reality of slavery and exclusion of women and indigenous peoples.

Key Quote:

“True that the man who penned the words about inalienable rights endowed by their creator owned slaves. It's hard to imagine a much more profound example of hypocrisy than that.” [06:00]
— Eli Lake

Discussion: Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Yuval Levin, Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, engage in a nuanced discussion about Thomas Jefferson's role. They explore how Jefferson's personal contradictions—owning slaves while advocating for liberty—highlight the complexities of applying lofty ideals to an imperfect society. The conversation underscores that while the Declaration laid out universal rights, its initial implementation was limited and exclusionary.

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3. The Declaration as a Catalyst for Social Movements

Despite its contradictions, the Declaration of Independence has served as a powerful tool for various social justice movements striving to expand its promises of equality and rights to all Americans.

Key Quote:

“Every immigrant group that has come to this country and been discriminated against... you cannot appeal to Christianity. Christianity did not deliver these rights. Christianity existed for 2000 years without delivering this kind of government.” [32:14]
— Yuval Levin

Discussion: Lake and his guests discuss how different groups—abolitionists, suffragettes, civil rights activists, and immigrants—have invoked the Declaration to hold the nation accountable to its founding ideals. Examples include Frederick Douglass's powerful July 4th address and the Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls Convention, which expanded the original text to include women. Robert Kagan further illustrates how these movements used the Declaration not merely as historical reference but as a living document to demand social and political change.

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4. Global Influence and the Virality of American Ideals

The episode broadens its scope to examine the global impact of the American Declaration of Independence, illustrating how its principles inspired revolutionary movements and declarations of independence worldwide.

Key Quote:

“The Declaration's assertion of universal liberty continues to be one of the most contagious ideas in political history.” [45:28]
— Robert Kagan

Discussion: From the French Revolution to the Haitian and Venezuelan declarations of independence, the foundational ideas of the American charter transcended national borders, serving as a beacon for freedom fighters. Yuval Levin points out instances such as Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam declaration and Israel’s creation, highlighting the universal appeal and adaptability of America's founding principles despite varying interpretations and outcomes.

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5. Enduring Legacy and Future Challenges

In the concluding segments, the hosts reflect on the enduring legacy of the Declaration and the ongoing challenges of upholding its principles in contemporary America.

Key Quote:

“A republic, if you can keep it.” [50:26]
— Ben Franklin (attributed)

Discussion: Eli Lake and his guests deliberate on the sustainability of the American republic, drawing optimism from historical resilience while acknowledging present and future threats. Yuval Levin emphasizes that the truths enshrined in the Declaration are timeless, serving as both a guide and a challenge to ensure the republic remains faithful to its foundational ideals. Calvin Coolidge's reflections reinforce the notion that adherence to these principles is crucial for the nation's continued success and moral standing.

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Conclusion: A Dual Legacy of Ideals and Realities

"America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea" presents a balanced yet critical examination of American foundational principles. By juxtaposing the lofty ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the historical and ongoing struggles to realize them fully, the episode underscores the dynamic and often tumultuous journey of American democracy. It celebrates the Declaration's role as a catalyst for progress while candidly addressing its shortcomings and the continuous effort required to bridge the gap between principle and practice.

Notable Takeaway:

“So long as we never lose sight of the Declaration of Independence, we have a fighting chance.” [49:15]
— Yuval Levin

This sentiment encapsulates the episode's central message: the enduring power of America's founding ideas lies in their continual re-examination and commitment to actualizing the promise of equality and liberty for all.

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For those seeking a deeper understanding of how historical ideals shape contemporary governance and societal progress, this episode of Breaking History offers a compelling and insightful narrative.

Transcript

[Eli Lake]

Hi everyone. We have a really exciting announcement I want to share with you. Ahead of July 4th through July 8th, we have a very special offer at the Free Press for our listeners and readers. You can get $17.76 off an annual FP subscription by going to the fp.com subscribe. Don't worry. We'll also add the link to the description of the show. Leading up to the 250th anniversary of the United States one year from this July 4th, we are bringing subscribers a year of events, live streams, debates, subscriber meetups, and so much more. Here is what you can look forward to. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in New York City on September 4th and tech pioneer Palmer Luckey in Washington, D.C. on October 8th. And to top it off, we're going to meet up in New York City on August 5th with our subscribers under 30. Go to the fp.comamer America to learn more and Free Press subscribers will get the first go at event tickets, exclusive access to our live streams, and the opportunity to connect with other Free Pressers. You will not want to miss it. To get in on the celebration, become a subscriber today with this limited time deal, go to thefp.com subscribeable the pod.

[Unknown Speaker]

You got is next year's motto. Lee Harvey Oz Irving Berlin what happened once happens again When Newsom is a mystery, it's a breaking mystery. It's just.

[Eli Lake]

Hey there, it's Eli. With a constant barrage of alarming headlines, wars, a warming planet and high stakes politics, it might feel like we're teetering on the edge, but the world contains a lot more good news than you hear on mainstream media. If you're looking for another show that questions the status quo, then I recommend what Could Go Right, the twice weekly news podcast hosted by Zachary Carabelle and Emma Varva Lucas, recently nominated for Best Politics or Opinion Podcast at the Ambi Awards, what Could Go Right provides a balanced view of what's going on across the globe, even during difficult times. Each Wednesday they sit down with leading minds like best selling author John Green and environmental reporter Emily Atkin to discuss today's biggest challenges with nuance and insight. And on Fridays they highlight the latest progress reports from around the world, from life changing medical advancements to groundbreaking efforts to combat climate change. If you need a place to start, check out their recent episode with economics expert Matt Stoler, who breaks down the 100 year war between monopoly power and democracy. It's an enlightening conversation that's perfect for breaking history fans. So fight the urge to doom Scroll. Tune in to what could go right Wherever you get your podcasts, we want.

[Unknown Speaker]

To make sure that we can fight against the authoritarianism that's happening as we speak. No kkk, no Fascist usa.

[Eli Lake]

Last month there was a spate of protests across America, united by a two word slogan, no Kings. This was the rallying cry of Democrats against the bold prerogatives assumed by President Donald Trump. It was also an echo of the Tea Party, the movement that emerged in the 2000 teens to hold President Barack Obama to account. Whether it's the Black Panthers or the daughters of the American Revolution, Americans of all creeds and passions tend to voice their protests of the government in the language of the Declaration of Independence. It's a remarkable document, and it's how we mark our nation's birth. And that in itself is peculiar. I mean, why not celebrate America's birthday on April 19, the date our patriots took up arms against their colonial masters in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775. Or maybe Independence Day should be celebrated on October 19, when George Washington led a French and American army to victory over the forces of General Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. That was when the colonies actually really won the Revolutionary War. Instead, we trace our independence back to an act of Congress. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress, representing 13 British colonies, officially quit the British Empire and issued a short declaration explaining why it began with these immortal.

[Robert Kagan]

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with the another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

[Eli Lake]

And then there is the enduring truth expressed in the first sentence of the second paragraph.

[Robert Kagan]

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Eli Lake]

There is no other example in history apart from the composition of the King.

[Yuval Levin]

James version of the Bible, in which.

[Unknown Speaker]

Great words and concepts have been fused into poetic proof by the banal processes of a committee.

[Eli Lake]

What is exceptional about this is that the founding of America is, at its essence, the assertion of immutable truths about human nature. Founding a nation on a principle up to that point had never been done. Most national origin stories usually are about a great man, sometimes with Divine providence or even powers who creates a new country in a specific land for a specific bloodline. The first Korean kingdom is believed to have been founded in 2333 BCE by Dangoon, the son of a demigod named Hwan and a bear who became a woman named Ungao. Russia's origin story traces back to the kingdom of Kievan Rus, which united Slavs in what is today Ukraine against various Scandinavian and Byzantine conquerors. France begins when close. Clovis I brings the Frankish tribes in the late 5th century under his yoke. You get the idea. Until America, one's nationality was determined by blood and soil. America is a country founded on an idea. And what an idea it was for the grand sweep of history. Most of the time, people were the subjects of their rulers. They lived according to the whims of those who governed them. What the founders said in the Declaration was that the government does not derive its power from the heavens or the sword. It is empowered by the consent of the people, and the people have a God given right to dissolve the government.

[Yuval Levin]

Well, it's a revolutionary idea to base a government on the principle of individual rights, taking precedence over the rights of the state.

[Eli Lake]

This is author Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Dangerous A History of America's Idealistic Foreign Policy.

[Yuval Levin]

The biggest difference between the founding of the United States and every other government in history is that even in ancient Greece and ancient Greek democracy like Athens, it was still the government that people owed their loyalty to. The government was democratically run, but there was no protection for the rights of the individual against the state. And the most obvious example of this is the execution of Socrates for preaching ideas which the state thought were undermining of them and may well have been in fact, but that certainly Socrates did not enjoy the rights under the Athenian government to say what he wanted to say.

[Eli Lake]

All of that said, the founders did not take the right to break ties with the British Empire lightly. The Declaration says that revolution is serious business and should not be done for trivial reasons.

[Robert Kagan]

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.

[Unknown Speaker]

I do think that it's too simple to see the Declaration as just saying people have certain rights. If governments fail to protect them, then people have another right, which is to overturn that government and start over.

[Eli Lake]

This is Yuval Levin, the Director of Social, Cultural and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's one way to read one paragraph of the Declaration. But seen in the larger context of the entire Declaration, this is really a statement about what government owes society. And part of what government owes society is the protection of rights. Part of it is also the protection of a way of life, of a kind of ordered freedom that proves to be very important when you look beyond that famous second paragraph. Most of the Declaration of Independence is a list of grievances that the Americans have against the King for how he's treated them. The Declaration itself says that the description of where rights come from is not enough. Having said that, we're all created equal. Governments exist to protect the rights that result from that. The Declaration makes a kind of turn. It says, yes, all that. But prudence will dictate that governments, long established, shouldn't be changed for light and transient causes. You shouldn't just overthrow government on a whim. There have to be serious reasons. And the reasons they give have much more to do with providing the foundation for an ordered social life than just with protecting individual rights. They start out by saying the King's not a good executive. He's not giving his approval to important laws. He's not letting the state legislatures meet. These are kind of strange arguments for a political revolution. But in a sense, they say a society needs a working government, and we're not just being denied our individual rights, we're being denied a working government. Here.

[Eli Lake]

To me, that's fascinating, and eval is correct. Go to the Declaration and you find that most of the complaints listed against King George III are about his interference with or prevention of the local and state legislatures and courts to function properly. Yes, there's all the stuff we remember from middle school, too, like taxation without consent and quartering an army in private homes during peacetime. And let's not forget my favorite quote. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. End quote. Now, that last one, which alone would seem to be enough to justify dissolving the bands which have connected the young Americans to the British empire, is the 24th of 27 complaints against the King in the Declaration. The bulk of its bill of particulars are about depriving Americans of rights and democratic institutions that the vast majority of the world at the time, England being a partial exception, did not know or have reason to believe their government owed to them. And in this respect, the Declaration of Independence was dynamite. It wasn't only a statement of a self evident truth about the nature of human beings and society. It was asserting that everyone is entitled to those rights. And this idea has resonated throughout the last two and a half centuries. It has served at home as a promissory note, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. And it has inspired revolutions and uprisings all over the world. It is what makes America exceptional. The Declaration of Independence. The idea of America in this sense is much larger than the charter of our nation. President Calvin COOLIDGE, on the 150th anniversary of our country's founding put it like this.

[Robert Kagan]

When we come to examine the action of the Continental Congress in adopting the Declaration of Independence in the light of what was set out in that great document and in the light of succeeding events, we cannot escape the conclusion that it had a much broader and deeper significance than a mere secession of territory and the establishment of a new nation. Events of that nature must have been taking place since the dawn of history. One empire after another has arisen, only to crumble away as its constituent parts separated from each other and set up independent governments of their own. Such actions long ago became commonplace. They have occurred too often to hold the attention of the world and command the administration and reverence of humanity. There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be in the Declaration of Independence, which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America, but was everywhere to ennoble humanity.

[Eli Lake]

I'm Eli Lake and you're listening to Breaking History. In this episode we examine the dangerous ideas in our founding charter. After the break, the intellectual and political roots of the most viral document in political history.

[Unknown Speaker]

We hold these truths to be self evident. We got the right to choose our own president. We hold these funds to stop the King meddling your tax are ticking bucket down settlement enough King George, we have no right oh, all right if you don't leave we gonna fight enough King George. It's over now take what it doesn't now the journey is going down. Most of mankind is used to to suffering go from the crime accuse and hustling. Maybe at this time we're not the underling. We have the right to live without a king. When it the cause of human event, there comes a time with draw our concern. Here's something the path we once connected the youngest king we once respected. Did it occur to you that he.

[Eli Lake]

Charmed you in any way? Yes, it did, but he was a charming man.

[Robert Kagan]

It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

[Eli Lake]

I often ask myself now did I know the true Jan at all?

[Robert Kagan]

Listen to Hot Agent of Chaos wherever.

[Eli Lake]

You get your podcasts. To understand the Declaration, we have to understand its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, our third president, a man who has recently gone through a brutal historical revision, focusing on the fact that the apparent author of our liberty owned slaves and sired children from his slave Sally Hemings. Statues of Jefferson were targets during the great awokening of 2020 and 2021.

[Robert Kagan]

The Thomas Jefferson statue at City hall.

[Unknown Speaker]

Will have a new home.

[Robert Kagan]

The city's Public Design Commission voted today to remove the statue from the City Council chambers and move it to the New York Historical Society, and it is.

[Eli Lake]

True that the man who penned the words about inalienable rights endowed by their creator owned slaves. It's hard to imagine a much more profound example of hypocrisy than that. In this sense, you could say that Jefferson was the 18th century version of a limousine liberal. Except the principles he placed at the center of the future republic did not exempt him from judgment, and he knew it. He wasn't justifying the system he inherited, but articulating the foundation for a better one. Jefferson contained multitudes, and he was an accomplished botanist, an amateur architect. He designed his home in Monticello. He invented the lazy Susan along with other gadgets. He was the best writer in the English language of his proto American generation. Tall, gangly and shy in his prime when he wasn't wearing powdered wigs, he stood out for his shock of bright red hair. Christopher Hitchens, in his great book on Jefferson, author of America, acknowledges the man's contradictions as follows. Modern and postmodern historians are fond of using terms such as inventing America or imagining America.

[Unknown Speaker]

It would be truer to say of.

[Eli Lake]

Thomas Jefferson that he designed America or that he authored it. This being the case, it would be lazy or obvious to say that he contained contradictions or paradoxes. This is true of everybody and everything. It would be infinitely more surprising to strike upon a historic figure or or indeed a nation that was not subject to this law. Jefferson did not embody contradiction. Jefferson was a contradiction, and this will be found at every step of the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Narrative that goes to make his life.

[Eli Lake]

We focus on Jefferson because he was the man tasked to write the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress. But it's important to note here that he was more of a curator. The Declaration is akin to a quilt or a collage. It's a reordering and restatement of prominent ideas that were circulating in this age of Enlightenment. The biggest tributary came from John Locke's Second Treatise on Government. Locke first came up with inalienable rights and enumerated them as life, liberty and property, more or less. Jefferson would later write that one of his fellow Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress, Richard Henry Lee, had said that the Declaration's entire preamble was copied from Locke's Second Treatise. Locke himself, though, was influenced by the Hebraic monotheism he found in the Old Testament. He literally begins the Second Treatise with a disquisition on why God did not grant Adam the right to rule over all of his future descendants. Think of the Book of Genesis, which states that man is created in God's image. That right there gets you a kind of radical equality of all men, even though it is couched in the supernatural. One sees the echo of that immortal phrase from Genesis in the Declarations phrase endowed by their Creator. So does this mean that Thomas Jefferson was a plagiarist? No more than endowed by their Creator makes people a cheap imitation of the divine. He himself did not believe he was creating a work of original philosophy in the declaration. In an 1823 letter to James Madison.

[Robert Kagan]

He wrote, I did not consider it part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether.

[Eli Lake]

There were other differences as well. George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which we know Jefferson had with him in Philadelphia when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, for example, contains this.

[Robert Kagan]

All men are born equal, free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights of which they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

[Eli Lake]

And Mason's draft Declaration of Rights was in turn influenced by the English Declaration of Rights, which was later ratified as the English Bill of Rights in 1689, the same year that Locke published his Two Treatises on Government. The events of 1688 and 1689, known as the Glorious Revolution, in some ways were a dress rehearsal for the American one. It was a confessional war between the Catholic king James II and the Protestant majority, led by a Dutch noble, William of Orange, to make a Long story short, King James was forced to abdicate his throne and flee to France. William and his wife Mary, both Protestants, then assumed the throne. And in this swift transition, Parliament drafted a set of basic rights limiting the power of future kings. For example, taxation required an act of Parliament, and excessive bail was banned. The one thing that the English Bill of Rights did not do, though, was to assert plainly that King James II had violated a trust with the English people. That was too controversial for the conservatives in Parliament, even though everyone largely agreed that the Catholic king was a disgrace. I bring this up to acknowledge the debt the colonists paid to their mother country. Jefferson, Adams and the other founders did not discover a new political insight. They were tinkering with the political philosophy of their era, but they were also putting these ideas into action. The English Bill of Rights ended the House of Stuart and secured a new contract between Parliament and King. Notable accomplishments, for sure. The Declaration of Independence, though, went much further. The rights it enumerates are inalienable and their truth is self evident. They are not based in English tradition, they are based in human nature. They are not negotiable, and these rights apply to everyone. That is the intellectual context of the Declaration. But there is also an important political context. What is often overlooked in the studies of the American Revolution is that even in 1775, when Massachusetts was in rebellion and Boston was under siege, the Continental Congress still held out hope to negotiate a new agreement with King George iii. There were many prior declarations and petitions from the colonies, both from the state legislatures and the Continental Congress itself, beseeching the King to end oppressive taxation, to pack up the army in peacetime, to allow their legislatures to meet. Even the 1775 declaration on taking up arms includes this.

[Robert Kagan]

We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain and establishing independent states.

[Eli Lake]

And here's a great irony of the American Revolution. King George had already decided to treat the Patriots of 1774 as traitors and rebels. He knew before the Founding Fathers themselves that their agenda would end in revolution. Here's how Pauline Mayer, in her brilliant book American Scripture, explains this.

[Unknown Speaker]

No one agreed more heartily than George iii, who never wavered in supporting the rights of Parliament. The King was stubborn, not especially imaginative, and temperamentally disinclined to think through the careful arguments colonists posed, which he quickly dismissed as the work of a few troublemakers. It was safer, he thought, to take a hard line than to make concessions to such nonsense. He also turned a deaf ear to petitions from the colonist sympathizers in England, particularly from the City of London, urging that he intervene on behalf of his American subjects. The First Continental Congress petition to the King meant no better fate. As the Declaration on taking up arms complained, it was huddled into Parliament amongst a bundle of American papers and there neglected. By the time he received that petition and months before the outbreak of war, the king had already made up his mind. The New England governments, he wrote Lord north on November 18, 1774, are in a state of rebellion, and blows must decide whether they are subject to this country or independent.

[Eli Lake]

Had the king not been so stubborn, there is a good chance that New York and Pennsylvania would have continued to push for what they called a middle way. But the king wouldn't budge, so even the Quaker pacifists of Philadelphia ended up endorsing revolution after the break. How the Declaration of Independence is the standard by which we measure our moral and political progress as a nation if you went on a road trip and.

[Unknown Speaker]

You didn't stop for a Big Mac.

[Eli Lake]

Or drop a crispy fry between the car seats or use your McDonald's bag as a placemat, then that wasn't a road trip.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was just a really long drive.

[Eli Lake]

At participating McDonald's. Allow me to anticipate an objection. Thus far in the podcast, as you may have noticed, I have only lightly touched on America's original sin, slavery. And yet the practice was not abolished until nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence. Women, landless whites, let alone the native tribes, were not afforded the inalienable rights equality promised by our national charter. In this respect, one could argue that the document is nothing more than marketing material. The American Revolution was really just a bunch of white elites who didn't want to pay their taxes. They just dressed up their economic grievances in flowery prose. This is the standard view these days from what might be called the post American Left. Here is how Howard Zinn expressed the idea of in his 1980 People's History of the United States.

[Unknown Speaker]

To say that the Declaration of Independence, even by its own language, was limited to life, liberty, and happiness for white males is not to denounce the makers and signers of the Declaration for holding the ideas expected of privileged males of the 18th century. Reformers and radicals looking discontentedly at history are often accused of expecting too much from a past political epoch. And sometimes they do. But the point of noting those outside the arc of human rights in the Declaration is not centuries late and pointlessly to lay impossible moral burdens on that time. It is to try to understand the way in which the Declaration functioned to mobilize certain groups of Americans ignoring others. Surely inspirational language to create a secure consensus is still used in our time to cover up serious conflicts of interest in that consensus and to cover up also the emission of large parts of the human race.

[Eli Lake]

Well, Zinn gets it wrong in a few important respects. Let's start with Jefferson. His original draft of the declaration included these.

[Robert Kagan]

He, king George, has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This practical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to. To prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce, and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die. He is now exciting those very people to rise in arms amongst us and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them, 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.

[Eli Lake]

Talk about contradictions. In this section, Jefferson is attacking the English king for imposing the slave trade on the colonies and preventing legislatures from ending what he calls an execrable commerce. And at the same time, he is attacking the king for inciting these slaves to rise up against their masters. But even here, we can see that Jefferson acknowledges that the slaves are human beings who have the same inalienable rights as their masters. The language did not make it into the declaration because the southern delegates did not see the things the same way their fellow southerner Jefferson did. All of that, said Jefferson. Washington and Madison, all slave owners at the end of their lives, acknowledged that eventually the young republic would have to abolish slavery. But the big flaw in Zinn's argument about the declaration is his failure to appreciate how this document was a standard by which Americans who were deprived of their rights could hold their country to account and obtain them. This was the playbook for the abolitionists of the 19th century and the civil rights movement of the 20th century. Nat Turner's failed slave rebellion of 1831 was initially scheduled to commence on July 4th. You think that's a coincidence? This is how the suffragettes argued for the right of women to vote. This is how immigrants demanded equal treatment under the law.

[Yuval Levin]

Every immigrant group that has come to this country and been discriminated against, the Irish Catholics, had to use the Declaration to insist on their rights for equal treatment. The Jews who came to the United States, the Italians who came to the.

[Eli Lake]

United States, again this is Robert Kagan.

[Yuval Levin]

Were treated as second class citizens by virtue of the fact that they were not white. Anglo Saxon Protestants used the Declaration to say, no, that is not acceptable. We enjoy the same rights as everybody else. You need to respect those rights. And they forced the system to do that. And so the power of the ideas are great. And this is why I ask, what could you possibly appealing to if not the Declaration? You cannot appeal to Christianity. Christianity did not deliver these rights. Christianity existed for 2000 years without delivering this kind of government. So when people want to say, where do their rights come from? They come from the Declaration. There's no other place to come from.

[Eli Lake]

So in this respect, the Declaration is a kind of engine of American progress. This is again because the rights enumerated are self evident truths. There is no appeal to celestial, ethnic or government authority. Just consider the Declaration of Sentiments that emerged from the Seneca Falls Convention, the first meeting of American women to organize for voting rights. It's the Declaration of Independence, except with one important edit.

[Unknown Speaker]

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

[Eli Lake]

Or listen to the righteous fury of Frederick Douglass in his July 4, 1852 address. Here he turns our national identity on itself. How can you claim to oppose tyranny and love liberty when the nation keeps 3 million people in bondage?

[Unknown Speaker]

Americans, your republican politics, not less than.

[Robert Kagan]

Your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent.

[Unknown Speaker]

You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation as embodied in the two great political parties is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of 3 million of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas on the crown headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on the democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina.

[Robert Kagan]

You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad. Honor them with banquets, greet them with.

[Unknown Speaker]

Ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water. But the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill.

[Robert Kagan]

You glory in your refinement and your.

[Unknown Speaker]

Universal education, yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation. A system begun in avarice, supported in pride and, and perpetuated in cruelty.

[Eli Lake]

In the 19th century, Douglass and the other abolitionists heightened the contradictions in a republic whose charter asserted the equality of all people and their rights to live in freedom to one that allowed the practice of chattel slavery. That contradiction identified by Jefferson himself could not hold. And it was for Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, to resolve it through the Civil War. Lincoln argued that his decision to emancipate the slaves was to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence. It's right there in the opening sentence of the Gettysburg Address. Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to to the proposition that all men are created equal. Again, this is Robert Kagan.

[Yuval Levin]

Lincoln, more than anyone, returned to the Declaration as the founding document prior to the Constitution. In fact, there's a wonderful phrase that people found in a fragment of Lincoln's writings where he referred to the Declaration in the Constitution in the following way. That the Declaration of Independence was the apple of gold and the Constitution was the frame of silver around the apple. And as he said, the frame was made for the apple. The apple wasn't made for the frame. By which he meant that it was the principle of declaration that were the founding, that where that was where the core of the nation was about, the Constitution was supposed to defend and further those rights. And it obviously was manifestly flawed from the beginning. And the Civil War was necessary to, as they would say, purify the Constitution and make it be what it was intended to be.

[Eli Lake]

The Civil War was of course necessary, but it was not sufficient. Blacks would remain second class citizens for another century. But notice again, the argument remains couched in the Declaration of Independence. Here is Martin Luther King Jr's famous I have a Dream speech, delivered in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all.

[Unknown Speaker]

Men, yes, black men as well as.

[Eli Lake]

White men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned, instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check. A check which has come back marked Insufficient funds. After the break. How America's National Charter Inspires the World. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless.

[Eli Lake]

2020 get 15151515 just 15 bucks a month. So give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront.

[Unknown Speaker]

Payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network's busy taxes and fees extra. See Mintmo.

[Eli Lake]

Well that didn't take long. Only 13 years after the Founding Fathers declared their independence from Great Britain in 1789, the French decided to take that idea even further and just abolished the Bourbon dynasty altogether. The new national anthem sounds like something an American patriot would sing with lines like the bloody flag of tyranny confronts us by being raised. Then there's the Declaration of the Rights of Man, another nod to the Declaration of Independence, but it went a bit further. For example, the first article asserts that all men are born and remain free and equal in rights, a restating of our Declaration's famous preamble. But then it says social distinctions may be based only on common utility. Well, that goes a bit further. No, our Charter enshrines the right to pursue happiness, but it allows for social and material inequality that results from that pursuit. The nature of the French Revolution, with its total upending of the social fabric of France at the time, and the violent zeal with which its eventual leaders, known as the Jacobins, conducted close class warfare in the ten year struggle against Louis xvi made for a much messier transition to democracy. And to be real, that democracy didn't really last. The anarchy of this Reign of Terror, as it was known, led Frenchmen at first to embrace a new tyrant, Napoleon. Now I should note that just as the Reign of Terror was getting going, America had its first elections and was in the process of ratifying the Constitution. The successful American transition is due in part to the fact that the colonies were no threat to the Royal House of Hanover. King George III had the rest of his empire going just great. But it was also because while the self evident truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence are profound, they are more modest demands than the French version. Now we could do an entire show on just the differences between the French and the American revolutions. But the point is that it's impossible really to have one without the other. The Declaration of Independence let the cat out of the bag again. This is Yvonne Levin.

[Unknown Speaker]

By the time of the French Revolution, which happens about a decade after the American, it's already clear that the Declaration of Independence is going to be a source of ideas for all kinds of movements around the world. Now, I think the French misread the character of the American Revolution. I think the Vietnamese probably did too, and a lot of other revolutionaries have. But the power of this transformational idea is undeniable and you see it in the self understandings of a lot of nations that didn't misunderstand it.

[Eli Lake]

After 1789, the declaration of Independence really began to go viral. There is the Haitian Revolution of 1804. Seven years later, Venezuela under Simon Bolivar declared independence from Spain. By 1817, the European powers had begun to notice. John Quincy Adams that year from his post, as the American minister in England observed in a letter to his father, John Adams.

[Robert Kagan]

The universal feeling of Europe in witnessing the gigantic growth of our population and power is that we shall, if united, become a very dangerous member of the society of nations.

[Eli Lake]

Again. This is Robert Kagan.

[Yuval Levin]

It was precisely because they feared that this virus of liberalism that this idea, I mean, after all the revolution was founded on the principle of the illegitimacy of monarchy. They hadn't set out to make that point, but they wound up making that point. And effectively they overthrew a monarch. Now, they didn't overthrow him, they didn't overthrow King George III in England, but they overthrew him for themselves. And so there was the precedent of overthrowing monarchy. And it was a precedent that immediately had impact.

[Eli Lake]

The power of the Declaration's ideas continued to spread. Our DNA is all over the independence movements of the 20th century. Ho Chi Minh opened Vietnam's own declaration in 1945 by quoting directly from Jefferson's famous second paragraph. It resurfaced in Israel, whose 1948 declaration of independence echoes the American one in both structure and spirit.

[Unknown Speaker]

The Arab Israel come.

[Eli Lake]

And it was invoked by the Black Panther Party, whose 1966 founding platform listed a long train of grievances against black Americans.

[Unknown Speaker]

We wrote this program, you know, piece by piece, another day come down to the War on Poverty office at night when everybody else was off work. And then I ran into this Declaration of Independence and I read it and reread it in the first two paragraphs and it said, when in the course.

[Eli Lake]

Of human events becomes necessary for any one people to dissolve the political bondage.

[Unknown Speaker]

Which have connection with another and to.

[Eli Lake]

Assume among the powers of the earth.

[Robert Kagan]

The separate and equal station in which.

[Unknown Speaker]

The laws of nature, nature's God, entitle.

[Eli Lake]

Them, a decent respect to the opinions.

[Unknown Speaker]

Of humankind dictates that they should declare.

[Eli Lake]

The causes which impel them to dissolve that political bondage. Across continents and centuries. The Declaration's assertion of universal liberty continues to be one of the most contagious ideas in political history. Even during the Cold War when so much anti colonial ferment was motivated by the Russian Revolution and the ideas of Marx and Engels noted in materialist theories of historical inevitability, the beacon of our national Charter lit the way for freedom fighters. Here is Nelson Mandela, whose African National Congress was aligned with the Soviet Union during apartheid, making this point before the US Congress in 1990.

[Unknown Speaker]

It would have been an act of.

[Eli Lake]

Treason against the people and against our.

[Unknown Speaker]

Conscience to allow fear and the drive.

[Eli Lake]

Towards self preservation to dominate our behavior, obliging us to absent ourselves from the struggle for democracy and human rights, not only in our country, but throughout the world.

[Unknown Speaker]

We could not have made an acquaintance.

[Eli Lake]

Through literature with human terms such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and not been moved to act as they were moved to act. My hope is that we will see the power of the Declaration today inspire a new generation of revolutionary patriots in Iran as their regime reels from the humiliation of the 12 day war. This American scripture is something all of us should revere because we are closer to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence today than we were in 1776. Its words inspired Lincoln, Douglas, King, the Suffragettes and countless other Americans to demand that we live up to its ideals. That's not a criticism of the Declaration. That is a tribute to its power. This is why I reject the fashionable theory today that America was founded in 1619, a century before any of the Founding Fathers were born and the date the first African settlement. Slaves kidnapped by Portugal were sent to the British colony of Virginia. In the end, The Spirit of 1776 defeated the Spirit of 1619 in the Civil War and later in the Civil Rights movement. Calvin Coolidge, in his speech on the 150th anniversary of our founding, explained that the core ideas in the Declaration, the equality of human beings, their endowment with inalienable rights, rights and the consent the governed must give to the government are permanent truths. They cannot be improved upon. And if we stray from these principles, we will find ourselves adrift in what he called a pagan materialism. For Coolidge, the Declaration is not just a work of philosophy. It is the embodiment of the American spirit.

[Unknown Speaker]

I am hopeful about the prospects for these ideas because I do think that they are final.

[Eli Lake]

Again, this is Yuval Levin.

[Unknown Speaker]

As Calvin Coolidge put it, they are final. That means not that they are the future or that they are the past. They're true. They've always been true. Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to live by them, and it certainly doesn't mean that other people are going to live by them. But here they are, staring us in the face. They're hard to deny. They're hard to ignore. They're impossible to refute. They're true. And to me that speaks to an extraordinary strength that they're always going to have over the life of our society. I'm not of the view that they're just going to conquer the world and that eventually every country becomes the United States and that the fate of every society is fundamentally a kind of Jeffersonian democracy. I don't think that's true. I don't think history is ending. I don't think our challenges go away. But it is nonetheless the case that the truths put forward in the Declaration are true. And we, more than any other nation, cannot pretend that we don't know that. Sometimes we live as if we don't by ignoring it. But we can't really pretend that we haven't been told that this is the truth about the human person and therefore about politics.

[Eli Lake]

When asked at the Constitutional Convention what kind of government this new United States would adopt, Ben Franklin famously responded, a republic, if you can keep it. That quote is usually dusted off as a kind of warning, but it is also a source of hope. If you can keep it already. The republic isn't somebody else's business, but everyone's. How you feel about that depends on how you feel about your fellow citizens and perhaps even your fellow human beings. Though there are always plenty of reasons to worry for the future in the end. I'm with Yuval Levin and Calvin Coolidge. I'm an optimist. Who would have thought that a government founded in revolution, whose charter asserts the right to shake off the chains of tyrants, would last 250 years? Will we last another two and a half centuries? I don't know the answer. But so long as we never lose sight of the Declaration of Independence, we have a fighting chance.

[Unknown Speaker]

We hold these truths to be self evident. We got the right to choose our own president. We hold these funds to stop the king meddling. Your tax opti can buck it down settlement enough King jaws and we have no right oh all right if you don't leave we gonna fight enough King George it's over now the journey is going down.

[Eli Lake]

Thanks for listening to Breaking History. If you liked this episode, if you learned something, if you disagreed with something, or if it simply sparked a new understanding of our present moment, please share it with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. And remember, if you want to support Breaking History, follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five star rating and a nice comment too. Also, if you love this episode, there's more great content@the FP.com Please become a subscriber today and until then, I'll see you next time.

[Unknown Speaker]

Liberty life pursuits of happiness these are the rides no one can take back from us Ride sweet and man may lack a president because he's truth to clear self evident we understand that we will not forget Leave us alone we want him done and there's nothing your we have no right if you don't leave we going to fight Enough enjoy. It's over now. Oh no your journey is going down.

[Eli Lake]

Sa Sam.