Calvin Coolidge on the Real Heart of American Government

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1926,  In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge exhorted Americans to remember and rekindle the moral source of their last 150 years of freedom and prosperity. As the 250th birthday of America approaches, Vince Benedetto and Tracy Messer present an Independence Day speech for the ages.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories on our Fourth
of July special. Also long we've been celebrating and telling
the story of America. And now Vince Benedetto of Bold
Gold Media Group and also an Air Force Academy graduate,
tells the story of Calvin Coolidge's speech given on our
nation's one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. It's a beauty, and

(00:32):
here to help tell the story is Coolidge interpreter and
impressionist Tracing Messer. Let's get into the story.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Today in America, there are many who seem to be
ready to cast aside the foundations and founding document of
the nation, or certainly diminish its importance. This desire often
seems to be rooted in the claim that the men
behind the creation of the nation had personal flaws so

(01:02):
great that the product of their work must be condemned
as unredeemable. Therefore, progress can only be made if and
when we unmore from our founding ideals. As we close
in on the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of America
in twenty twenty six, it's worth revisiting President Calvin Coolidge's

(01:22):
defense of the Declaration of Independence and the men who
wrote it. On America's one hundred and fiftieth birthday, Coolidge,
who was our thirtieth president, speaking in Philadelphia on the
fifth of July nineteen twenty six, stated, we.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Live in an age of science. A d of abound
and accumulation of material says. These did not create a declaration.
A declaration created them.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
The spirit comes first unless we cling to that, all
our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn
to a barren scepter in our grasp.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Coolidge understood our founders, being mortal men, were by nature imperfect. However,
the declarations stated principles were the closest thing to a
perfect statement on human freedom that was and could ever
be written. Coolidge believed, as with all grand plans and promises,

(02:36):
the mission statement comes first. How could we live up
to great principles without defining first what they indeed are.
Until the idea is developed and the plan made, there
can be no action. July fourth, seventeen seventy six is
the day our founding fathers pledged their lives in writing

(02:58):
to the Mission Statement of America. They wrote it down
for all to see. Our founders, with no prior precedent
in history, boldly proclaimed a new nation, formed on self
evident truths that until that time no nation had ever
dared declare.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Coolidge continued, it was not because it was proposed to
establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to
establish a nation on new principles. That July fourth, seventeen
seventy six has come to be regarded as one of

(03:36):
the greatest days in history.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Coolidge, a lover and student of history, also understood that
while the Enlightenment era and its supporting philosophies influenced our
founding fathers, there were things uniquely revolutionary in our beginnings,
things not found in any other charters of freedom that
had come before.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
We could search these chatters in Vain for an assertion
of the doctrine of equality. The principle had not before
appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It
was profoundly revolutionary. These great truths were in the aa

(04:22):
that our people breathe. Whatever else may be said of it,
the declaration of Independence was profoundly American.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
It's important to keep in mind that at the time
of Coolidge's remarks that it had only been sixty one
years since the Civil war had ended. Many of those
who remembered President Lincoln's defense of the Declaration were alive
when Coolidge delivered his prescient defense of it. Much as
Lincoln had warned about the dire consequences of abandoning the

(04:54):
principles of the declaration, Coolidge too, sounds the alarm.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty,
popular sovereignty, rights of man. Bless the faith of the
American people these religious convictions. Is to endure principles of

(05:24):
our declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the
result if we neglect and abandon the cause. We are
too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals,
but ideals make governments.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Of course, governments.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Can help to sustain ideals, but their source is in
the people. The people hath to bay out their own responsibilities.
There is no method by which that burden can be
shifted to the government. Which is not the enactment, but

(06:13):
the observance of laws that creates the character of a nation.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
With these words, Coolidge echoed the sentiments of Benjamin Franklin,
who had warned only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need
for masters. As Coolidge continued, he also expresses his concerns
about the tendencies of people to assume that their current

(06:41):
time is the wisest time. His reasoning the Declaration was
a statement of fundamental truths.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
About the declaration, there is a finality that is exceedingly RESTful.
It is often asserted that the world has made a
great deal of pros since seventeen seventy six, that we
have had new thoughts, no experiences, which have given us

(07:10):
a great advance over the people of that day, and
that we may therefore very well describe their conclusions for
something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to
this great chatter. If all men are created equal, that

(07:34):
is final.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
If they are.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the government, that
is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond
these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or

(08:03):
their soundness, the only direction which he can proceed historically
is not forward but backward towards the time when there
was no equality. No rights of the individual, no rule
of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that

(08:27):
direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their
ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those
of the revolutionary fathers.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
With these words, Coolidge makes clear, if America is to endure,
the importance of July fourth must endure. Independence Day is
not foremost about the men who declared our independence, but
about the ideas and principles they had the courage to declare.
July fourth, seventeen seventy six is the moment when imperfect

(09:10):
men had the courage to declare perfect ideals. Such an
astounding occurrence had not happened before or since seventy four
years to the day before President Coolidge's remarks. Frederick Douglas
on July fifth, eighteen fifty two, proclaimed, I have said

(09:30):
that the declaration of independence is the ringbolt to the
chain of your nation's destiny. So indeed I regard it.
The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand
by those principles, be true to them on all occasions,
in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

(09:53):
As with our founders, Douglas and Lincoln. President Coolidge well
understood that the United States could only make progress by
keeping faith with our declaration. The mission statement comes first.
It remains the responsibility of all Americans who wish to
see our nation united and making continued progress on our

(10:14):
two hundred and fiftieth birthday, to remain true to our
ringbolt and remember that great truths are final, not flexible.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Monta Montgomery, and a special thanks to
Tracy Messer for performing the Coolidge speech. And also a
special thanks to Vince Benedetto for penning this piece for Newsweek.
I did it with them. We co wrote it. The
story of Calvin Coolidge's Fourth of July speech here on
our American Stories