From America to the World: How the Declaration Shaped Freedom Movements

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, my name is Ryan and I'm an AP US government
teacher from Michigan.
My students want to know howdid other countries and
movements worldwide use theDeclaration as a model?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Ten minutes.
Is that what we're looking for?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah about ten minutes now.
If you go over and the contentis good, I'm not going to stop
you, because we've definitelyhad some of the podcasts go 20
minutes, but the content is good.
I'm not going to stop you,because we've definitely had
some of the podcasts go 20minutes, but the content's good.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, yeah, I mean I usually end up speaking too long
, but you promised them 10minutes in your little
introduction.
I listened to a couple of them.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
But again, if the content is good, I don't want to
.
I think the next one's comingup, or yeah, a little bit longer
.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
So okay, so you're going to go ahead and play that
question.
I'm going to start.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I won't play it because I haven't extracted it
yet from my data system, but Iwill pretend that I have.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Okay, will you read it to me so I know where we're,
what they're?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
going to say Absolutely yes.
Okay, welcome back.
Thank you, ryan, for thatquestion.
Ryan asked how did othercountries and movements
worldwide use the Declaration asa model, and I am excited today
we have a new guest on ourpodcast.
To answer that, I'd like tointroduce Dr James Stoner, who

(01:21):
is professor of politicalscience and the director of the
Eric Vogelin Institute atLouisiana State University, or
LSU.
Dr Stoner, thank you so muchfor being with us and can you
kind of help Brian and hisstudents out with that question.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, I'll do my best .
Thanks for having me, liz.
The Declaration of IndependenceI guess you've been talking
about that in other sections.
The Declaration of Independencedoes several things right.
First of all, it actuallydeclares independence.
These colonies, united colonies, will be independent from Great
Britain and ask to, or assertthat they intend to assert,

(01:58):
their, to assume their separateand equal station among the
nations of the world, and thefirst and the last paragraph of
the Declaration speak directlyto this matter.
It's formally how it functionsas a legal document.
But then in its famous secondparagraph, which today often
gets most of the attention, theauthors of the Declaration lay

(02:21):
out the principles that explainwhy they took that action.
They're not claiming aboutAmerica that somehow it's always
been independent or thatthere's a kind of geographic
necessity or something of thesort.
They can't claim to be anancient nation among the peoples
of the earth or anything ofthat sort among the peoples of

(02:43):
the earth or anything of thatsort.
Rather, they lay out thistheory of natural rights and of
government built on the consentof the people to protect those
rights, and to present all ofthat as a choice, a political
choice that can be made by anypeople on earth and that would
give them the right to assertthemselves as an equal nation.

(03:05):
So they need the principlesbecause their independence
depends upon it in a way thatthe independence of the French
or of the English from eachother or from either of them,
from Russia or the like, wouldnot.
The third thing in theDeclaration is a list of
grievances that justify theapplication of those principles

(03:30):
to lead to the action ofasserting independence.
So the other nations that haveused the Declaration as a model
have done so for differentreasons, depending on these
different parts of theDeclaration.
So, for example, one of thefirst supposed or probable

(03:52):
models is the Declaration of theRights of man and Citizen
propounded by the FrenchNational Assembly, or what
became the National Assemblyduring the French Revolution.
And they don't imitate theDeclaration directly, although
the very first article soundsaltogether similar to what's in

(04:16):
the Declaration.
The first article reads men areborn and remain free and equal
in rights, and that resonateswith the Declaration of
Independence.
Resonates with the Declarationof Independence, although they
go on to speak of socialdistinctions may be based only
on considerations of the commongood, and that obviously
involves a rejection ofaristocracy or at least a denial

(04:41):
that aristocracy is God givenor established and the like, but
that speaks to theirdifferences in France.
They then list a number ofrights that actually sound a lot
more like what ends up in ourBill of Rights, and another
source of this FrenchDeclaration is the Declaration
of Rights or the Bill of Rightsfrom the Virginia Constitution,

(05:01):
which have been translated intoFrench and widely circulated.
So that's an important thing tonote.
Or one example the use of theDeclaration or something like
the Declaration, or a documentthat seems in a way like the
Declaration, but there's nodeclaring independence among the
French right.
They've declared that thenation, rather than the king, is

(05:26):
sovereign in France, issovereign in France, and then
they assert these principles, asthe Americans did, to explain
how government emanates from thepeople.
Well, they say the nationrather than the people maybe an
important difference rather thanto be a matter of divine right
or something simply inherited orthe like.
So there is maybe the first use, and in some ways, everybody

(05:51):
knew that the AmericanRevolution was a kind of model
for the French Revolution, eventhough their circumstances were
really different and, of course,the outcomes of their
revolutions were reallydifferent.
A second example occurred justa few years later in Haiti, on

(06:11):
the island of Haiti, and therethe generals who had fought off
the French, that is to say therevolutionary French and at this
point, napoleon's army, whichis seeking to suppress their
attempt to rule themselves,these generals declare
independence of France.

(06:31):
There's no quotation, I noticed, or no clear quotation from the
Declaration of Independence,the American Declaration, but
they have lots of grievances andthey're all against the French
and it's an extensivedenunciation of what the French
have done over the years, fromthe period of enslavement no
credit given to the French forabolishing slavery, rather the

(06:52):
accusation that they're seekingto reimpose it, and the like.
But in a way, it's a reallydifferent group that's making
this announcement.
It's a similar announcement inthe sense that it's an appeal to
the countries of the world torecognize their independence,
which eventually was done.
In fact, the Haitians like tonote that theirs was the second

(07:14):
declaration of independence inthe New World and they became
the second independent state inthe New World, independent state
on the model of the state'sstate system in Europe at the
time.
Another example takes placeabout seven years later, in 1811
, in Venezuela, the one theyconsidered their rightful king,

(07:52):
and so they think that theyought to be independent now of
Spain, which has been taken over, as it were, by the French and
by Napoleon, and so they listtheir grievances against
Napoleon.
There's no listing of rightshere, or of natural rights,
maybe a reference somewhere inpassing, but mostly it's the
grievances against Napoleon andwhat he's done and these actions

(08:13):
that have taken place in Spain,and then the actions of the
Spanish agents who had been sentto enforce their will in
Venezuela, in the new world.
But they do quote from theDeclaration of Independence.
Towards the end they have aparagraph that says we,

(08:33):
therefore the representatives of, and they list their different
provinces and then they evenassert let me see if I can find
this and read it to you theyeven assert that they're acting
independently out of, or thatthey're pledging to one another
their lives, their fortunes andthe sacred tie of our national

(08:54):
honor.
So it's almost like theDeclaration of Independence, but
once again the mention of anation, which I don't think is a
term that appears in theAmerican Declaration.
This term nation Speak of apeople but not of a nation.
A people but not of a nation.

(09:15):
The next two or the last twoexamples I want to give of these
sorts of declarations are fromthe 20th century and they take
place shortly after World War II.
The first is from a surprisingplace, vietnam, and it's issued
in a speech given by Ho Chi Minh, who later is recognized as the
communist leader of NorthVietnam, against whom the

(09:37):
Americans actually fight a warin the 1950s and especially
1960s and into the early 1970s,and Ho Chi Minh begins his
what's called often theDeclaration of Independence of
the Democratic Republic ofVietnam.
He begins by saying all men arecreated equal.
They are endowed by theircreator with certain inalienable

(09:59):
rights.
Among them are life, libertyand the pursuit of happiness.
This immortal statement wasmade in the Declaration of
Independence of the UnitedStates of America in 1776, and
so forth.
He then mentions the FrenchDeclaration as well.
Again, much of his objection isagainst the French, because
they're declaring independencefrom the French, although he

(10:21):
modifies and says well, actuallythe French had surrendered to
the Japanese, the Japanese hadruled Vietnam during World War
II.
He also makes reference to theunfolding of the United Nations,
which is just about to beestablished A convention is
being held at that very momentin San Francisco and declaring

(10:44):
in the UN Charter that thenations of the world, against
the United Nations, have theright to govern themselves and
to be sovereign, have their ownsovereign powers and their own
self-government orself-determination.
And he appeals to this, not torights exactly.
And that of course becomesevident in the course of the war

(11:06):
with Americans and his hisalliances with the communists in
Russia and China and eventuallyin the communist domination of
Vietnam after Americanwithdrawal.
But the last example I want togive is the Declaration of
Independence of Israel a yearlater, in 1948.
Here again they cite the UNCharter and a resolution that

(11:30):
declared that the Jewish peopleof the Middle East and Palestine
have a right to their ownnation and their own government.
But they declare this forthemselves on the day that the
British mandate to rule thatarea, to rule Palestine, a
mandate that had been givenoriginally by the League of
Nations, if I'm not mistaken,after World War I.

(11:52):
This mandate's about to expireand, without waiting for further
action of the United Nations,the Israelis declare their own
independence.
They've got somewhat differentsources, as they mentioned that
they are a people who havecreated cultural values of
national and universalsignificance and gave to the

(12:13):
world the eternal book of books,and their appeal at the end is
to their trust in the Almighty.
So not just sacred honor, buttheir claim again to be
continuous as the people of Godfrom the Old Testament.
Continuous as the people of Godfrom the Old Testament.
But nevertheless it is verymuch a declaration of

(12:34):
independence, an assertion ofequality among the peoples of
the world, among the peoples whohave the right to govern
themselves and are subject as awhole to the law of nations.
So so far you see thesedifferent elements of our
declaration being used by otherpeoples for somewhat different

(12:54):
purposes, although the chiefpurpose being to declare an
equality among the nations ofthe earth, an equal sovereignty
among the nations of the earth.
But there's also been theattempt of other movements I
think the question mentionedmovements of other movements to
appeal to the principles of theDeclaration and to assert those.

(13:15):
Well, for I suppose reformwithin a country Most famous of
those is right in the UnitedStates, the 1848 Declaration of
Sentiments that was issued bythe Seneca Falls Convention.
Maybe you're familiar with this.
Maybe there'll be anothersession about it in this podcast
series.
That begins when, in the courseof human events, it becomes

(13:38):
necessary for one portion of thefamily of man to assume among
the people of the earth aposition different from that
which they have hithertooccupied, but one to which the
laws of nature and of nature'sGod entitle them.
A decent respect to theopinions of mankind requires,
etc.
And again, a few other changesright.
We hold these truths to beself-evident, that all men and

(13:59):
women are created equal, and soforth.
And then the list of grievancesare grievances not against the
British, but of women againstmen, or so as Elizabeth Cady
Stanton would have written.
So the Declaration, in that way, has been a fertile source of

(14:20):
well, I won't just sayrevolutionary movements, because
some of them were maybe not sorevolutionary.
Actually, our own movement wasit revolutionary or was it
conservative?
That itself about our so-calledrevolution or war of
independence is not always clear, because the colonists claimed,
in one way, simply to beasserting their ancient rights
that they say the British haveimposed upon.

(14:40):
And I think in some waysVenezuela is doing the same.
It's different for Haiti, it'sdifferent for Israel, although
they're asserting really ancientrights and different in these
different circumstances.
But it's clear that theAmericans set a kind of model of
a people being able to organizethemselves politically and then

(15:04):
to govern themselves and berespected by the others, others
in the world as having thesovereign right to govern
themselves.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From America to the World: How the Declaration Shaped Freedom Movements