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Lesson 1: The Declaration of Independence- Principles of the American Revolution | Constitution 101
- Background: Principles of the American Revolution
- Background: The Declaration of Independence
- Primary Source: The Declaration of Independence
- Gordon Wood on How the American Idea Unites Us
- Understand: The Declaration of Independence
- Apply: The Declaration of Independence
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Principles of the American Revolution | Constitution 101
Take a look at three key principles of the #AmericanRevolution: natural rights, popular sovereignty, and rule of #law.
Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, examines the text of the Declaration of #Independence and the historical context that influenced the thinkers of the Revolution.
#Constitution101
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Video transcript
Jeffrey Rosen: [MUSIC] Today
we're going to talk about the preamble to the
Declaration of Independence. It contains the entire
American idea in one inspiring sentence and we're going to talk about
three principles of the core of that sentence. First, natural rights, second popular sovereignty,
and third, the rule of law. Let's read the preamble
together and I know, you know it well. Here we go. 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 rights are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Well, what's an
unalienable right? To understand that
we've got to go back to natural rights theory, which inspire the founders. Thomas Jefferson said that
in writing the declaration, he wasn't producing
anything original, but was channeling classical and enlightenment moral and political philosophers like Aristotle, Cicero, John Locke,
and Algernon Sidney. The basic idea of natural rights theory is that we're all born in a state of nature with certain
fundamental rights that come from God or nature,
not from government. We possess them by virtue
of being human beings. In other words, there are
inherent in who we are. When we form governments, we surrender certain
rights in order to get greater security and safety
of the rights we've retained. Take the example of
punishing crime. In a state of nature. Everyone engages
in self-defense, and we don't have
a lot of security. When you give
government the power to punish crimes through
due process of law, then everyone is more safe
and secure as a result but there are certain
unalienable rights that we can't surrender to
government even if we want to. What are they? Well, the
quintessential example is what the founders called
the rights of conscience. Those include the
right to think as we will and to speak as we think, as Thomas Jefferson and
Louis Brandeis said, without having our
thoughts controlled by government or by anyone else, why are the rights of
conscience unalienable? James Madison explain
why in his memorial and remonstrance against
religious assessments in 1785, here's what he said. This right is in its nature
an unalienable right, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the
dictates of other men. In other words, I
can't surrender to you the power to control or command
my thoughts and beliefs. Because my thoughts and
beliefs are the product of my own reason when
I contemplate and evaluate evidence received
by my own mind so even if I wanted to give you
or the government or a friend the power to
control my thoughts. I can't do that because freedom of thought
is inherent in who I am as a reasoning human
being and we all have not only a right but also a
duty to think for ourselves. What happens when the
government threatens my retain natural rights
rather than protecting them? That leads to our
second big idea, popular sovereignty and now
I've got to go back and read the next clause of that
beautiful sentence from the declaration so we can understand how it's
based on the idea that all governments are founded on the consent
of the people. Here's what the
declaration says, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed. That whenever any
form of government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter and abolish it and to
institute new government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety
and happiness. The basic idea is that
since everyone has equal liberty to enter into the social contract
in the first place, we all come together
and by consent, authorize the
government to exercise temporary control over some
of our natural rights. But as soon as the
government breaks the bargain, we can withdraw. We can change the government and find another
government that's more likely to affect our
safety and happiness. That's what popular
sovereignty is. The idea that all government is based on the consent
to the people and the people can't be governed by laws to which they haven't
given their consent. Now, the idea of popular
sovereignty is also found in the Constitution by the very first words of the preamble, we, the people of
the United States, in order to form a
more perfect union. In other words, we're forming
a social contract and we're exercising
our equal liberty to consent to government, but only on the condition
that it keeps its end of the bargain and increases our security and safety
rather than threatening it. All this is a
wonderful combination of natural rights theory
and popular sovereignty, which go hand in hand. There's a third idea, which is expressed in
that sterling sentence, and that's the rule of law. The rule of law means
freedom from arbitrary rule. It includes factors
like predictability, transparency, accountability, and equal
and impartial enforcement. The government has to
operate according to prospective rules that we've
all agreed to in advance, rather than changing the
rules to punish individuals according to the whim of a
president or king, or tyrant. In America, the
president can't throw you in jail because
he doesn't like you. No one is above the law. Blackstone's commentaries,
which the framers read, notes that the Roman Emperor
Caligula use to post laws so high on a wall in the city that citizens
couldn't read them. That's the opposite
of the rule of law. People can't conform
their behavior to laws they can't read
or don't know in advance and rulers can't be bound by laws that
they don't promise to follow in advance and publicize in a transparent
and accountable way. There's an idea
related to the rule of law, and that's
constitutionalism. Constitutionalism means
limited government. That is a government
whose powers are defined and limited in advance. The government's given
certain powers and clear limitations and it has
to observe those limits. The related ideas of
constitutionalism and the rule of law are contained in that inspiring sentence of the Declaration of Independence, which says that people establish government
to secure our rights, but always retain the
ultimate power to alter and abolish it when
it threatens our rights. In America, the
bedrock idea is that all authority is derived from the consent of
the people. [MUSIC]