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The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty
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- [00:00]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Foreign. It says that whenever government becomes abusive of these things, it is our right, nay, our duty, to overthrow it. And you can imagine, Scott, if I tweeted that out on X right now, the FBI would understandably be looking at me.
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Scott Bertram
This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast network. That was Dr. Brad Birzer, professor of History and Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies here at Hillsdale College. His new book, the Declaration of A Radical Experiment in Liberty. As we approach Independence Day, we spend this entire episode talking in depth with Brad Birzer about his new book. Brad, thanks so much for joining us.
- [00:57]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Thanks so much, Scott. I always love talking to you. You're one of my favorite colleagues and you're a great friend and we always have a good conversation. So this will be great.
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Scott Bertram
I hope it's true. Once again, today as we talk about the Declaration of Independence, the new book, which is available now in the introduction of the book, Brad, you say all of American history has taken place to make real the assertions of the Declaration. So how have we done?
- [01:23]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Well, in some ways, we've done really well. And yes, Scott, that's a kind of radical claim on my part. And it's one of the, I think maybe two or three extreme comments I make. I believe in it, but it does sound extreme at first. And I do believe, you know, this is, I take this from Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King loved Thomas Jefferson and he loved the Declaration of Independence. And one of the things that he noted was that the Declaration of Independence was a promissory note. Right. So not everything changed, changes on July 5th of 1776. But once you've made that claim, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. There's no going back. You have to make that real. And I would say this, and not to get too political about this, but if we're looking at this at the perspective of 250 years into American history, I would say that when it comes to black white relations in America, we, we've done extremely well. That is, and it's not that there's not racism out there. I'm not discounting that. But if you think about the trajectory of going from African Americans being enslaved to the Civil War, arming African Americans during the Civil War, and then having the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, there's a kind of, there's a happy story there. It's not perfect, but it's a happy story. But if we think about the way we've treated American Indians, there's no happy story, right. All we have do is drive on a reservation and it's almost 90% poverty. Right. We may drive into a black neighborhood, say in East St. Louis, and see 30% poverty, but that's a lot different than 90% poverty. And so I think that we've really done a good job of making the Declaration real for African Americans as well as whites, of course. But when it comes to Indians, American Indians, Native Americans, I think we've still got a long way to go.
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Scott Bertram
The book, the Declaration of Independence by Brad Birzer is split up into sections before 1774 and then 1774, 1775 and so on. But a lot of it is the buildup, the lead up to the writing of the declaration. So before 1774, the first chapter, basic things here. Who were these people in the colonies? You spent some time on this in the book.
- [03:48]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah, and I had a great time doing that. And I have to say, Scott, when I structured the book, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do. I wasn't sure if I wanted to start with the Declaration and then talk about its reputation or if I wanted to lead up to the Declaration. And I ended up. I looked around and for example, one of the great books out there is Dr. Arn's book, and it deals with the Constitution and the Declaration. I thought, well, that subject's been dealt with. So I decided to go back and look at the origins. And they really start In February of 1761, when James Otis gives his great speech in front of an Admiralty court defending common law. And that's where John Adams, Sam Adams are sitting in the courtroom. They hear James Otis. He gives about a three hour oration. He actually interrupts the proceedings. It's kind of wild. We don't know if he was sober or not. He may very well have been drinking that morning. Unfortunately, one of Otis's problems, but an interesting, fascinating oration he gives. And John Adams says, right there is the birth of the American Revolution. And then it comes to manhood at age 15 in 1776.
- [04:59]
Scott Bertram
Right.
- [04:59]
Dr. Brad Birzer
15 years later. So one of the things that I was very interested in is exactly this question you asked. Who were these people? And we can say this about them. They are almost to a person, if we exclude slavery for a moment, if we look at the white population, they are almost 100% Anglo, Saxon or Celtic. So they're all from the British Isles or Ireland, and they are all almost to a person Protestant. And they are deeply, deeply Protestant. You know, this is not some kind of whim for them. These are people who came to the colonies because of the English Civil War and the Protestant Reformation. And as Edmund Burke said, they are the most Protestant of Protestants. And I think if we ignore that, we're missing a huge part of the American story. Not deists, right? There were deists, Franklin, Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, those were great deists, but they're a minority. You know, that that was not predominant in the American colonies. These people are hardcore either Calvinist or evangelical Christians. So that's also important.
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Scott Bertram
Dr. Brad Birzer, his new book, the Declaration of a Radical Experiment in Liberty. Brad, what else should we know? Who were these people, these colonists?
- [06:22]
Dr. Brad Birzer
So they're white, Anglo Saxon, Celts, they're Protestant, They're. They're also very, very, and this is something we've almost entirely forgotten, they are classically educated. And so even a kid who would go to school, maybe only 8, 9 and 10, that at his age, and then he would go into farm work after that. Right. Once he's a 10 year old, he can do farm labor.
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Scott Bertram
But even if I started earlier than that.
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Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah, maybe. Right, Scott? Right, right. And depending on the farm, you might. But even a kid who went to school, say grade school for just three years, all they would have learned in school was Greek and Latin. That's all they would have learned. You know, the idea of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, that was something you did at home, not something you wasted public time on. So again, that's something that I think, you know, it's so far removed from us, Scott, that we don't even get that anymore. You know, that just seems crazy to us that they were that classical.
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Scott Bertram
Yeah.
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Dr. Brad Birzer
So that's what I try to do in the book. I basically try to show this is their ethic, ethnicity, this is their culture, this is their religion, and this is their educational kind of cultural milieu. Milieu. I can never say that. Sorry, I'm a Kansan.
- [07:35]
Scott Bertram
If we know a bit about who they are now, where, where would they get this idea about independence? Where does it come from?
- [07:43]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Right. Well, again, there's a classical origin to that, because when we go back to the classical period, there are always Greek colonies and Roman colonies that are thinking about independence. But I don't think that's the, the main. Just mention that because we were just talking about the classical period. I don't think that's the main cause at all. Remember when the Americans come over, starting as early as Jamestown in the early 1600s, they are almost 100% independent. Britain neither regulates them, it doesn't tax them, it doesn't govern them. It lets these people 100% govern themselves. And so the whole colonial tradition, starting in 1607, going all the way up until 1761, is a tradition of complete, what was called salutary neglect. That is, the government just let us alone. And so everything that we see develop, culture, schools, church, politics, business, everything is 100% independent from Britain. And so when Britain, at the end of the French and Indian war, starts taxing and regulating us and playing around with our law courts, and it's utterly shocking to the Americans. This has never happened before, and they're not used to it. They're angry about it, angry enough to take up arms over this. And so they're furious. And they recognize that this is not normal. And so from the perspective of the colonies, they're not the ones being radical. Britain is being radical in imposing all these new laws upon them. They just think they're being good Englishmen, and ultimately that will become good Americans. But originally, they just think that they're being really good Englishmen.
- [09:32]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Brad Berser, his new book is the Declaration of a Radical Experiment in Liberty. We have the Sugar act of 1764. You say the most important crisis leading the tea Party of 1773, the Stamp act then, which united the colonies in its hatred of Britain. And you say in this chapter, 1774, this is a revolt against government control of the economy, but it's also a revolt against these courts outside the common law tradition. And that's perhaps we don't think about that quite as much. So what was happening with the courts that made us so angry?
- [10:09]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah, that's a great question, Scott, and let me answer that in a couple of different ways. So, number one, we are a common law people, and that is older than Christianity. When we think about common law, it's deeply rooted in the Germanic Anglo Saxon experience. And I always want to be careful because I know when I talk about Anglo Saxonism, people sometimes say, oh, he means white people. That's not what I mean. I mean the Anglo Saxon culture. That is the culture. And yes, they were white, but that's just coincidental, right? It's this Anglo Saxon culture that develops. And when the early Christians meet the Anglo Saxon tribes, they find people who already have the idea of a trial by jury, the idea of being innocent, innocent until proven guilty, the idea that the government doesn't have the right to your body, habeas corpus, the idea that the government cannot charge excessive fines for bail or implement cruel and unusual punishment, those things are pagan. Now, when the Christians discover it, they love it. You can imagine if you're a Christian missionary and you find out that there are 12 jurors, well, Jesus had 12 apostles. I mean, it's just perfect, right? And you can baptize that very easily. But it is older than Christianity and we don't know how old. It could go back several thousand years. And so one of the things that we have to note about America is that we are always a common law people. Always. And you and I might. And if we had Dr. Arnon here, we would start talking about our natural rights and our natural law. But the English, in addition to talking about natural rights and natural law, always talked about common law. That is, this is rooted in our experience and nobody imposed it. This is something. Common law comes from the, the actual experience of a people. And I'll give you a modern example. And I love this, Scott, and you were here at the time this was happening. Remember the road between Hillsdale and Jonesville? And for our listeners, Jonesville is the next town north of us, just about five miles from here. And that road, big curve on it, had no speed limit for a while. And so of course, between Hillsdale and Jonesville, you get people doing 15 and you get people doing 70. And what the police did, and I think this is brilliant, it's total common law. They just put up a radar gun, not punishing anyone, it was just to track everybody. And what they found was that the average speed between here And Jonesville was 35 miles an hour. They implement that as the speed limit. That is common law. It's the experience of the people. The police didn't say, oh, you people have to drive 35. They looked and said, oh, the people are driving 35. That's the law. And that's where I think in America we've confused so many things. And in Britain as well, where we think our law comes from the government. No, in common law, law comes from our experience. It comes from the people. And if we don't believe in it, it's not a legitimate law because it's a custom, it's a norm, a moray. And so that's something that the Americans took very, very seriously.
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Scott Bertram
So what happens, Brad, during this time, what are the Britons doing that is so upsetting to these colonists?
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Dr. Brad Birzer
The British start ignoring common law. And what they start imposing upon the Americans is what's called admir law. That is, they take Naval law, which is totally legitimate on the seas. A captain should have all the rule necessary to govern his ship, but it doesn't work on land with a free people. And so they start implementing and playing around with our law courts. Well, the Americans are furious about this. So this is the second thing I wanted to say about this, Scott, going back to a few moments ago, where I said I would approach this from a couple of different angles. I'm as libertarian as they come, but I think the libertarians get this wrong. They almost always talk about the revolution as a tax revolt. There's no doubt that's a part of it, but it is first and foremost a revolt against messing around with our law courts. That that is what really drives the revolution and that it's just everywhere in the American founding. And if you look at the Declaration of Independence, you know, we start off with that great philosophical statement in paragraphs one and two, but then we have 28 grievances against the King. Every one of those is a common law violation. We can't ignore that. That's huge for these guys. Absolutely huge. And most Americans at the time, when they read the Declaration, they skipped over the philosophical part and went straight to the grievances, because they already believed the philosophical part. It was the grievances that they had to say, okay, is Jefferson correct about this? Is this what the king violated? Y. Yes, it is. Therefore, we take up arms and fight. So, again, I'm not dismissing taxes. We are definitely in a tax revolt in the American Revolution. But it's first and foremost a clinging to that tradition of common law. And, Scott, if you don't mind, I'll say one more thing about this. This is one of the other kind of crazy, extreme statements I make in the book, and that is we as Americans are as deeply radical as we are deeply conservative. And I mean that with common law. Think about what we do in the revolution. We give 100% religious toleration to everybody. That had never happened before. That's as radical as it gets. But look at our law system. 100% common law, thousands of years old, older than any other legal system we know about, and that's our law system. If that's not not completely conservative, I don't know what is.
- [16:05]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Brad Birzer with us. His book is the Declaration of Independence, A Radical Experiment in Liberty. Tea Party, the Coercive Acts, the Quebec act of 1774. Eventually, we rolled toward the First Continental Congress. What were the different factions that made up this First Continental Congress?
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Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah, so it was really divided. And, you know, think about this, Scott. The Continental Congress has no legal standing at all. It would be as if you and I went out and got five other guys. Maybe we got Shad and we got John Miller and a couple of guys, and we basically said, we have the right to assemble and petition. Right? That's common law. We do have the right to do that. But then for us to say, for example, we're now the governing body of Hillsdale, that would be absurd. But that's exactly what the Founding Fathers did. They got a group of men together, they met in a congress. Congress, the old Latin word for coming together. They Congress. They come together, they meet, they petition, and they basically determine that they are a legal body in America. Again, this is something we Americans do better than any other people in the world. We take these extralegal institutions and we make them legal. They become our governing bodies. And that's totally foreign to most people in the world. That just seems bizarre that it wouldn't come from a king or an emperor, but it's just a bunch of guys getting together saying, no, we're the government. And that comes out of the Reformation, but it also comes out of England and the common law tradition. And so when we get to the first Continental Congress, you have three factions. You've got the radicals like John Adams and Sam Adams, who are very early on. In fact, John Adams, as early as 1765, is calling for independence from England. But then you've got guys like John Dickinson, great guy, love John Dickinson, but he's a moderate. He thinks, yeah, independence might be there, but we're probably 30, 40 years away from it. And then you get a number of guys, also good, well meaning guys who are very pro Britain, and they're there at the Continental Congress to make sure the radicals don't take charge. And so the real struggle in the Continental Congress is between a minority of radicals who will become the majority within two years. But in 1774, there's still a minority against the moderates allied with the conservatives. And so they're the ones who predominate.
- [18:40]
Scott Bertram
That's Dr. Brad Birzer. His brand new book, the Declaration of a Radical Experiment in Liberty. We'll continue talking with him in just a moment. If you'd like even more about the Declaration and more about our country's founding as we approach America 250, let me direct you to the brand new Larry Arn show. We're all familiar with the Declaration's lines about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But what about Those grievances, that section that led King George III to send a lawyer in response. Talk about that on the Larry Arn Show. Dr. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College, talks with Dr. Matthew Spaulding, Vice President of Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale in D.C. uncover just what the Founders meant by their pledge at the end of the Declaration as well. It's an in depth conversation between Dr. Larry Arne and Dr. Matthew Spaulding and you won't want to miss it. The new Larry Arn show at podcast hillsdale.edu. you can also find it where you get your audio and the video version is up on YouTube. Dr. Bradley Birzer continues with us now. His book is called the Declaration of A Radical Experiment in Liberty. So, Brad, we have multiple factions, the radicals, those who wanted a split, wanted independence. Did they accomplish things in this First Continental Congress in particular, the radicals are
- [20:14]
Dr. Brad Birzer
able to get through what are called the Suffolk Resolves, which come from Suffolk County, Boston.
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Scott Bertram
Right.
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Dr. Brad Birzer
Massachusetts. They're able to get those through. And those resolves are radical. And actually, crazily enough, you know, our first official act of Congress, and, you know, I hope our listeners recognize that this First Continental Congress becomes the Second Continental Congress, which becomes the House of Representatives. Right. So we've already got the House of Representatives created in September of 1774, but its first legal act is to condemn the Catholic Church with the Suffolk Resolves, and in particular to condemn the Quebec act, which was the imposition of Catholic rule in Canada. And the Americans are utterly freaked out about this. And again, this is where we can't escape our Protestantism at all. We are a deeply Protestant people. And the idea that the Canadians should be free to practice their Catholicism and implement it as law was terrifying to Protestant Americans. And that more than anything else, drove the radicals and then leads to independence. We get over that. We're not founded in anti Catholicism, but it's deeply rooted in 1774.
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Scott Bertram
We tend to think of the people, the radicals, who are pushing us toward independence. There's a story in your book about Samuel Seabury, who I didn't know about or had forgotten about. He's writing pamphlets opposing the First Continental Congress, saying that these actions undermine everything that they claim to want. Do people take Seabury and his argument seriously around this time?
- [21:56]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So it really is Scott. So again, I start the argument in 1761, but it slowly, only very slowly, gains reputation and gains impetus. So even you think about as late as the fall of 1775, even Thomas Jefferson still believes there can be reconciliation. Even as late as fall of 1775, Jefferson, of all people, still thinks there can be reconciliation. So you can imagine someone like John Adams just looks like an obnoxious bulldog in the fall of 1774. And Washington does, too. Washington shows up at the Continental Congress wearing his French and Indian uniform and not lost on anybody that he's willing to take up arms. Right? That's like he's blatantly willing to take up arms at that point. But no, these guys are a total minority. So when someone like Seabury writes, look, this is crazy, probably the majority of Americans say, yeah, they're right. We're not ready for this. This is a great idea, but it's utopian. It's not going to happen.
- [23:09]
Scott Bertram
And Again, even in 1775, as you write in the Declaration of Independence, you're your new book, war united the Americans, but habits divided them. Adams, John Adams feared that Southerners would not appreciate liberty. What was he concerned about?
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Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah, so that whole, whole issue of slavery, that great weight and drag on American liberty and independence. Adams, of course, is adamantly anti slavery. Coming out of Massachusetts, he's horrified by this. And one thing we need to remember about Adams, I love Adams. I think he's generally right on everything. And he's one of those guys we can go back and not be embarrassed about. But remember, he is an obnoxious bulldog, great orator, but he just shoves his views in the face of everybody. And so that turns a lot of people off. This guy's obnoxious. He would be the equivalent of, say, Rand Paul or Thomas Massie today. Doesn't hold back, just lets loose. And people are not happy about that. Even if they agree with them, they're not happy about that. And so you've got Adam saying things like this, but he's very worried that the Southerners themselves, because of the institution of slavery, are not ready to be independent. That is that they have become many tyrants. Every white person who owns a slave is by definition a despot and a tyrant. And so what do they understand about liberty? They don't. And so that's where Adams is really concerned. And yet he doesn't want to break it apart. He doesn't want to break the colonies apart. He wants them to be united. But again, think about this, Scott. We start, you know, the opening shots are 4-19-1775. We are still not ready to declare independence. That's amazing. We go through over a year of warfare with the British. And this is. I think this is so confusing to modern Americans, but we have to recognize in the English common law tradition, you actually had the right, if not the duty, to take up arms against your government. It didn't mean secession. It meant the last act of defending your community against the king. That's what you did. You took up arms. It didn't mean you were not loyal to the king. That's something that I think we have such a hard time understanding because we think, look, if you're shooting at the king's men, you're no longer loyal. That's not how they saw it. They saw this as the last grasp of liberty and dignity for a community before the king overwhelmed him. So, again, that, you know, again, proof. When we look at the American independence movement, the fact that we could have 15, 16 months of warfare without declaring independence, that's wild. Just crazy.
- [25:58]
Scott Bertram
Brad Birzer with us. The Declaration of Independence is his new book. A Radical experiment in Liberty. 1776 rolls around, and the move to independence now comes swiftly. In 1776, the importance of Common Sense, the pamphlet by Thomas Paine. And you argue or you say that these localities, smaller governmental bodies, are acting, hoping to prod Congress into taking action. What are they doing?
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Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah, so let me give credit where credit is due. I take that whole argument from Pauline Mayer, one of the great scholars of the founding. She passed away probably 10, 20 years ago now. But I'm taking that from her book, American Scripture, and she's the first to discover this and the first to write about it. And what she recognizes is that prior to Congress acting in early July of 1776, that there were 75 independent movements going on in America. And these are from the sublime to the ridiculous. So you actually have New Hampshire as early as January, January 5th of 1776, writing its own constitution, not as a colony, but as a state. And that that's kind of the opening moment of 1776. But then you have grand juries that are meeting in places like North Carolina. And so you get a grand jury. And what do they vote? We're independent from Britain. Or you get Presbyterian churches that say, we're no longer under British rule. Or you get the New York Fire Department, of all things, right from the sublime to the ridiculous, that declare them independent. So all across colonial America, you have these independence movements. And that's one of the reasons that Congress has to act as quickly as it can, because you can imagine this would be anarchy if you have 75, or imagine 200, why not? You know, why not two months later? I mean, if we have 75 between January and July, why not just multiply that over and over again as 1776 goes on? So Congress is very late in coming to the game, and they're trying to unify. And they do, they succeed, but they're trying to unify the disparate voices in America. And that's why there's such a rush. And yet Congress doesn't rush. That's just not Congress. But it has to. And so starting about June 7, they recognize we've got to get this taken care of very, very quickly.
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Scott Bertram
The final chapter is 1776, structure of the Declaration. And Jefferson's draft is largely left intact. There are some things removed. What does Congress take out? What Jefferson had proposed.
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Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah. So Congress both adds and takes away. The most important thing Congress takes away. And you know, this is so frustrating, and I don't want to historicize all of this too much, Scott, but if they had actually gone along with Jefferson, we would have taken, changed radically the whole course of the world. The one thing Jefferson put in there was a huge paragraph about why the king is to blame for the slave trade in America. And it's a beautiful paragraph. Here's Jefferson, who says, who is this king to take men, and it's capital M, E, N, all three letters, from a foreign country, from a foreign continent, impose slavery upon them and import them into the Americas. And of course, South Carolina and Georgia are never going to go along with this. And they say, look, you guys, keep this paragraph in. We're out there. It will be 11 colonies, not 13. Congress makes a tough decision. They decide to be unified rather than to get rid of slavery. But can you imagine, Scott, I mean, just think about the possibility of how different the world would have been if they had gotten rid of slavery right then and there. And it would have been truly revolutionary. It would have been brilliant. It would have saved, save so many lives and so much frustration. But they don't do it. But here's the critical thing about that. When Jefferson says all men are created equal, the very fact that in his original document he had said Africans are men. We know 100% absolutely, utterly that all men meant black men. It was not all white men. That was not coded language from the time time he meant all men. And so that if nothing else, we have that textual evidence to show that even when Congress says all men, they had to have meant all men, not all white men. But the other thing is, and this is the good thing that Congress does Jefferson's document originally was much more secular. And what Congress does is it adds that ending. We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor under God, we pledge that right. Under divine providence, we pledge that. And so what Congress does to Jefferson's document is it makes it a covenant. It now becomes an agreement between God and man that we will do this. And Jefferson's original document was a political statement. It was not a covenant. And so it changes the whole tone by adding that final sentence and going
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Scott Bertram
back, I guess, a bit to our discussion about right rights from earlier on, there's now a discussion in this chapter about the different types of rights that are outlined inside the Declaration of Independence.
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Dr. Brad Birzer
Right. So there are a number. So there are three different forms of rights that come about in the Declaration of Independence. One is rooted in our natural law. So paragraph one, right. Nature and nature's God, laws of nature. And we recognize that there is a whole understanding of justice. And remember, Scott, our whole word right comes from knowing one's right place in justice. So you and I, as men, we have a right place in justice. We're lower than the angels. We're higher than the animals. That's our right place. We are both physical and spiritual. Right? The angels are just spiritual. The animals are just physical. We're both. That gives us something unique, distinctive about who we are. That's our right place in the order of justice. So the natural law says there are these things. You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not cover your neighbor's goods. We see those in the Ten Commandments, but those are natural laws. They're divine laws, too, but they're natural laws. They're rooted in nature. And we find it all across cultures. The Norse have those ideas. The Ethiopians have those ideas. The Chinese have those ideas. It's not unique to white people by any means. It's human. Human. But then, number two, we have natural rights. And we don't know exactly what all those natural rights are. As Jefferson puts it very wisely, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, he takes that from Locke. John Locke. John Locke in his Second Treatise, had said that our natural rights, things that come from nature just by being human, I have these rights. He had said that they are life, liberty and property. But Jefferson tweaks that, and I like his tweak. So, yes, it's good to own stuff, and it's especially good to own ourselves. That's what property really meant in the ancient. In. In the revolutionary world. It meant that I take moral responsibility for my decisions. I own myself. I own my soul. It's God's. It's on loan. But I, I, you know, every decision I make is up to me, me. And so that's what they meant by property. Nothing like, oh, I own billions of dollars worth of stuff. That's great. That's fine. They're not knocking that. But that's not what they mean. They mean ownership of self. And so. But what the pursuit of happiness is, that comes from Aristotle, and it comes specifically from book 10 of the Ethics. And Aristotle in book 10 says, we have are only happy when we do God's will. And it's one of the few times Aristotle invokes God because it's not a religious document, but he does there. And he says, and think about this, Scott. Think about what you were good at. And I know you will. We're good friends. I know you're a great husband, you're a great father. But one of the ways I know you is you are a truly excellent colleague. And Aristotle says that that's what defines your happiness. You are a great colleague. You run a radio station like nobody can. You are brilliant at that. And so your happiness comes from not being satisfied. It comes from being excellent. And that's what Jefferson means. So he doesn't mean happiness like getting a tub of Ben and Jerry's and binge watching Netflix. Those things are fun. That's not happiness. Happiness is doing what God made you to do. And, Scott, clearly you are made to be a father. You were made to be a husband. You're made to be a dj, you were made to run a radio station and to be my colleague. Those are excellent things. And I love that. I love that understanding. So when Jefferson says that we're not called to be mediocre, we are called to be outstanding in every way. And so that's our natural right. And it's a duty as well. We don't often think about that. Yes, I have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I have a duty to live those things out. And here's where it gets really, really, really radical. And no other government had ever done this. Scott, it says that whenever government becomes abusive of these things, it is our right, nay, our duty to overthrow it. Right there. And you can imagine, Scott, if I tweeted that out on X right now, the FBI would understandably be looking at me if I said, wait a minute, people. We have a duty to overthrow our government. But that's right in the Declaration. It's as American as it gets. Can you imagine any other government in the history of the world implementing a kill clause in its own founding document? But we do. That's incredible. But that's our natural right, our natural duty. Okay, final thing about this. We also have common law rights, right? We've already talked about this. But those 28 grievances, those are all things that the king is violating. So natural law, natural rights, common law. All right there.
- [36:56]
Scott Bertram
Brad Birser, the Declaration of Independence is the book a radical experiment in liberal. Final question. As you say, toward the end, it takes time for Americans to celebrate the Declaration consistently. So when do we begin to look back with this reverence, as clearly we have here today and your book indicates? When do we begin to have that reverence for this document?
- [37:21]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Yeah, I mean, we've had it for a long time. It really didn't. It became noted in the first 50 years afterwards. But the great moment, and this is something every American historian and most Americans know. There's this crazy little trivial thing, but it's not trivial. But we often. We've said it so many times. It's become. It's become trivial. And that is on July 4th of 1826, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die. Well, we know that that's a little factoid about history, right? But we forget that for the Americans of 1826, this was absolute evidence that God was smiling upon us. And so that's when the Declaration really takes off. It takes off on its 50th anniversary. And, you know, you find it when Wisconsin becomes a government in 1848, if I remember that correctly, maybe 1846. But when they become a government independent, they start with the Declaration. Then you have Lincoln saying, look, there can be no country without the Declaration. And I think one of the most important moments in history, you know, what do we do with all of these black Americans? Well, if we whites simply say, you guys are free now, well, that's a total insult to black America. So what's Lincoln come up with? If we really want to demonstrate natural rights for blacks, we arm them, we give them weapons and send them into battle so that they for themselves can earn their natural rights. It's one of the coolest, greatest moments in American history. And I would never diminish Martin Luther King. I love Martin Luther King. I love the Civil rights movement. But the first great moment in black history for black Freedom is the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Arming Black soldiers and black soldiers in the Civil War had a higher kill rate and a higher death rate than white soldiers did. In other words, they absolutely did their duty. They proved American citizenship. And that's incredible. And I would argue we would never have had any of that without the Declaration. So we've still got a long way to go. But we have done great things, Scott, and America should be very proud of this. We should not be embarrassed. We should look at the Declaration and speak, say, yeah, we did something amazing.
- [39:55]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Brad Berser, Russell Amos Kirk, Chair in American Studies, professor of History at Hillsdale College and author of the new book the Declaration of A Radical experiment in Liberty. Dr. Berser, thanks so much for joining us.
- [40:09]
Dr. Brad Birzer
Thank you, Scott.
- [40:09]
Scott Bertram
It's always a blast that will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Dr. Brad Birzer from Hillsdale College, where he serves as professor of history and Russell amoskirk Chair in American Studies. His new book, the Declaration of a Radical Experiment in Liberty. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.