July 29, 2025 • 19 mins
The Declaration of Independence articulates uniquely American values, reflecting a society prepared to govern itself while respecting profound religious differences among citizens. Expert Matthew Brogdon explains how Jefferson's words captured "the American mind" while still resonating with today's diverse society.
• Thomas Jefferson described the Declaration as expressing "the American mind" rather than creating original principles
• The core principle of self-government reflects over 100 years of colonial experience before independence
• Congress deliberately added religious references beyond Jefferson's single mention of "nature's God"
• The Declaration presents a "double character" – confident about human equality while humble about government power
• Religious liberty emerged from deeply religious Americans who respected the diversity of faith
• Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation demonstrates America's inclusive approach
• The Declaration's principles provide common ground for Americans to debate without abandoning shared values
• As America approaches its 250th birthday, these founding ideals remain central to our national identity
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My name is Jonas, from Michigan, and I'm in fifth
grade.
My question is how does theDeclaration reflect American
identity and values?
So that was a really greatquestion and I'm really excited
today because we have a newguest expert to answer that,
matthew Brogdon.
Matthew, we wouldn't introduceyourself for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Absolutely, Liz.
I'm delighted to be here.
I'm Matthew Brogdon.
I am the Senior Director at theCenter for Constitutional
Studies, just up the road fromArizona State in Utah Valley
University and I've got to sayI'm a great admirer of the work
that the School of Civic andEconomic Thought and Leadership
at Arizona State does and theCenter for American Civics and
(00:45):
all the work that you're doing,Liz, and really excited about
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thank you, and I think that's my fun.
What I really like about thecivics world is it's not a
competition, it's very much likeyou're doing this.
That's really cool and sharingand working together.
So thank you.
I'm excited to have somebodyfrom Utah on our podcast.
I think this is actually thefirst time.
So we're looking at theseideals from the Declaration and
(01:11):
one of the things that I loveabout early American history is
there's usually a primary sourceto talk about.
A primary source andspecifically, we're looking at
Thomas Jefferson.
So near the end of his life, hedescribed the Declaration as
this expression of the Americanmind that gave voice to
harmonizing sentiments of theday, and that is in a letter to
(01:31):
Henry Lee that we will link inour show notes.
That was written on May 8th1825.
So what sentiments is Jeffersonreally referring to that?
So unite Americans, jeffersonreally referring to that.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So unite Americans.
Jefferson really makes the casethat the Declaration is
articulating something that'sbigger than the thoughts of just
one person.
It's an act of creativity.
He says it was not intended tohave any originality.
No-transcript principles thathe's pointing to is the idea
(02:33):
that a society of people arecapable of crafting their own
form of government.
There's the idea ofself-government, which I think
is deeply rooted in the Americanexperience and in the American
mind.
We have to remind ourselves thatby 1776, some of the colonies
(02:54):
had been in effectself-governing republics we can
call them republics,self-governing republics for as
much as 150 years, and so over acentury almost all of the
colonies had been around forabout 100 years or more.
Georgia is kind of the exception.
So these are politicalcommunities with a long lifespan
already I mean just in terms ofself-governing communities and
(03:16):
they have traditions ofself-government and I think that
had really when Americansencountered ideas and the kinds
of writers that Jeffersonactually points to he points to
Locke and Aristotle and Ciceroand Sidney and when he point
when Americans encountered thosewriters writing about
self-government, they sawthemselves in them and I think
(03:37):
that formed a kind of consensusview that the government is
created by the community overwhich it governs and therefore
we have to have some kind ofreference to the rights of the
people in that community and tothe kind of limits that that
community imposes on theirgovernment.
So that really at the reallycentral core in the Declaration,
(03:58):
I think is part of the Americanmind that he's discussing that
he's discussing and when we lookat this.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Dr Carice and Dr Beinberg have kind of talked
about the Declaration inprevious episodes but looking at
this, religion plays such acrucial part really in any
political culture because it'spart of who we are as people.
How did the Declaration'sreferences to God or a deity
really reflect Americanidentities and values, Dr Carice
?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This is important and it's connected to that letter
from Jefferson, because he talksabout giving voice to an
American mind.
And something that a lot ofpeople don't realize is that
Jefferson, as he drafted theDeclaration, he proposed a draft
only really had one referenceto the deity in it.
There was a mention of the lawsof nature and nature's God, of
(04:52):
the laws of nature and nature'sGod, and Congress, in revising
the Declaration over the courseof a few days before they
published it on July 4th,actually added additional
mentions.
And the Declaration mentionsthe deity, it mentions the
divine in a couple of contexts.
It speaks, of course, as thelaws of nature and nature's God,
presenting the deity, the ideaof a higher law that is
(05:13):
legislated or promulgated bysomeone that's not human.
It also speaks of a creator andof people being created equal,
and sometimes we're tempted toskip over that bit, but it is
somewhat important, but it issomewhat important.
It's important historicallybecause many people who argued
for, for example, the abolitionof slavery would tie a
(05:38):
connection, draw a line betweenthat idea of created equality
and some of the more famousstatements in the book of Acts
in the Bible that talked aboutall men being of one blood, god
having made all nations of menfrom one blood, and that was a
sort of core idea, a notion thathuman beings really
fundamentally had something incommon, that there was not a
(05:59):
meaningful sort of subset ofhuman beings that got to lord it
over everyone else.
And that idea of createdequality, it reinforced equality
to think that human beings wereall the common creatures of
some providence.
So that's a very important ideaat the founding, I think, and
it pervades people who have verydifferent religious views.
(06:21):
So we have a tremendousreligious pluralism at the
founding in many ways and thatgrows over American history.
But I do think there is thatsort of core idea.
There's also toward the end ofthe Declaration, a reference to
the Supreme Judge of the worldthat the writers of the
Declaration of Independence aresubmitting their reasons,
(06:42):
they're submitting theirarguments and their intentions,
they say, to examination by theSupreme Judge of the world, the
idea that they're going to beaccountable for the arguments
they make, the actions that theytake.
So those are sort of ideas thatpervade the Declaration and
Congress is very insistent aboutputting these in, even though
Jefferson thought they were lessessential.
He was somewhat skeptical ofthe need to make that argument
(07:06):
quite so forcefully, but it is apervasive element of the
political culture at the timeand, I think, continues to be.
I think it's also important torecognize that this presents us
with a sort of double characterof the Declaration of
Independence.
The Declaration points toessential basic truths, right,
(07:26):
self-evident truths about humanequality, about the possession
of natural rights, about thepurpose of government, and
argues that those truths arerooted in a sort of an eternal
fixed order.
At the same time, theDeclaration is very skeptical of
government's ability todiscover all those truths, to
(07:52):
enforce them.
So there's a way in which theDeclaration points to a really
ambitious view of human beings,that we're able to discern the
truth and we know these thingsabout who we are and our duties
to each other and our duties toGod and so forth.
And at the same time, we knowthat because the declaration
tells us that rights areinsecure, that governments are
(08:14):
instituted among men to securethese rights.
It tells us that human beingsare not necessarily great at
coming to agreement about allthose things.
We know them, and so you have ahigh view of human beings
coupled with a great deal ofhumility about what government
and human community can achieve,and I think that's a really
(08:37):
important combination.
It also marks sort of the waythat Americans tend to look at
religion.
We're a very vibrantlyreligious people.
Americans were at the founding.
We still are.
We're also a very differentreligious people.
We have a lot of internaldifferences and that has
produced a setting in which wetend to be very modest in our
(08:59):
expectations of governmentwhenever it comes to our
religious belief, while at thesame time privately or I
shouldn't even say privately,but in community with each other
in our voluntary associationswe take religion very seriously
and I think it's sort ofreflected in the text of the
Declaration of Independence.
The fact that the Declarationpoints to the divine being and
(09:19):
human beings' responsibilitiesto God and the reality that
human beings are created andhave a sort of providential
origin don't add up to the ideathat government is then going to
superintend religion for all ofus, and I think that's a kind
of dual character that markedAmerican political culture at
(09:42):
the time I think helped generatea robust religious liberty in
America.
I mean, you know it was notreligious liberty and the
disestablishment of religionwere not foisted on Americans by
some atheistic invading force.
It was something that deeplyreligious people did themselves,
in part because they tookreligion so seriously.
So I think that you know theDeclaration points there and I
(10:05):
think that's still a sort ofincumbent or essential part of
what makes Americans Americans.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I love that and I love that you talk about, like I
mean, the variety of religionstoo.
Right, like that is a biggerconversation.
And can I ask do you think thatthat's the reason that
different wording was utilizedin the declaration, instead of
just saying God, right, it'snature's God, it's the Supreme
judge, there's.
There are different ways ofsaying it.
(10:34):
Do you think that that waspurposeful?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, oh, I think so.
And you know, the foundinggeneration, even what we think
of as the founders, sort ofcapital F, these people who are
engaged mainly in thesedeliberative bodies and leading
our military through this periodof independence and then
founding.
They are very different peoplein terms of their religious
(10:57):
beliefs.
Some of them are deeply devout,some of them are deeply
theological and attached to veryspecific religious traditions,
right Like a John Jay or JamesWilson or John Dickinson, and
others are more, I guess,attached to what we might call
in the 20th century mereChristianity, you know, sort of
(11:19):
a bit of a what's the word?
Ecumenical kind of view oftheir own religious fate.
And so that variety isreflected.
Also there are important but insome cases beleaguered
religious minorities.
Quakers, baptists, catholics,jews are in significant numbers
(11:43):
in some of the colonies and inthe face of that I think the
founders showed a quite ablestatesmanship.
The principal people who werearticulating American views that
includes in the ContinentalCongress with the Declaration,
that includes Washington, bothas general and
commander-in-chief of the armyduring the revolution, later as
president have a way of talkingseriously about religion that
(12:07):
takes people's religious faithseriously, doesn't make it a
sort of public mockery or, youknow, just a tool, but at the
same time opens the Americanpolitical tradition to people
who come from differentbackgrounds and faiths.
You know, there's probably nobetter emblem of that than
Washington's letter to theHebrew congregation at Newport,
(12:28):
which he writes in the 1790s,you know, where he talks about
this vision of American politics, where he quotes the prophet
Micah and says his vision is wewould have a republic where
everyone could sit under his ownvine and fig tree and none
would make him afraid.
And he's writing that to asmall religious minority that
(12:48):
many Americans wereuncomfortable with.
And Washington is able toarticulate the American project,
the American constitutionalproject and the American idea in
a way that tries to welcomethose people in without losing
our character, our identity.
And I think that's a deeplyrooted American tradition that
represents a kind ofstatesmanship on the part of
(13:09):
Washington, on the part of thosewriting the Declaration of
Independence.
That is admirable and worthy ofemulation.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I and for the general public, if you've seen the play
Hamilton in the song One LastTime, that line is in there.
Everyone should sit under theirown light.
So now we know where it comesfrom.
We have kind of a piece of that.
I really appreciate that.
I think that as soon as yousaid it, the song started in my
head.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's right.
I remember, and I don't know ifit was accidental my
grandfather kept a garden mywhole life and they had a home
that they lived in for 70 yearsand he had a grapevine over a
trellis and next to it was a figtree and I didn't realize until
I was grown and he was passedAt some point.
I was reading this line fromWashington and then reflecting
on the verse, I thought I wonderif my grandfather planted this
(13:58):
because of that sort of biblicalmetaphor about what it meant to
live in peace alongside otherpeople and freedom and
prosperity, you know, sort ofboth helping each other and
leaving each other alone in veryimportant respects, and that's.
It is a kind of Americantradition and I think
Washington's just so good atarticulating that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That is.
That's really cool.
It's a cool thing to reflect on, because I mean how many people
listening right now are likeactually my grandparents did the
same, or maybe my parents did.
So we're coming up on America250, which is crazy because you
talked about Jefferson's letterand that was 50 years after the
(14:40):
Declaration and now we're 250years.
Are these ideas still centralto American identity and values?
You know, things have changedso much and now, especially with
technology too, it feels likethe changes just warp speed.
Do you think that those ideasare still central?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I think that they are .
It's easy to focus on thedifferences among us and it's
also easy to look back at thefounding and assume there's more
uniformity than there was.
There were royalists living inAmerica I mean, a lot of them
left after the revolution.
But you know, jefferson says atthe beginning of that letter
that practically all AmericanWhigs and he's referring to a
(15:21):
sort of political movement, theArab Party believe the same on
these subjects.
So he even gives it a littlebit of a partisan cast.
It's not like everybody justsubscribes to this stuff.
So if you say anythingimportant, someone disagrees,
and that's probably healthybecause that's part of a free
society.
So we do have differences aboutit.
But I think it's important thatwhen Americans argue over the
(15:44):
things that are really divisivein American politics and we
argue over the direction of ourcountry and the policies our
governments ought to adopt,quite often we are employing the
terms and principles of theDeclaration and then arguing
over how those ought to applyand then arguing over how those
ought to apply.
There's very little basicquestioning of the idea that
(16:05):
these principles human equality,self-government according to
consent, the idea thatgovernment is principally about
protecting some way of life thatpeople make for themselves in
community with other peoplethrough free associations.
Government's not about dictatinghow we all live and worship
(16:27):
from the top.
Those ideas of created equality, natural rights,
self-government are still thebasic principles we argue over.
We tend not to question whetherthose are the basic criteria of
good government.
We instead tend to argue overhow well are we achieving them,
how well is our governmentachieving them, and what exactly
(16:48):
do they mean?
That is, we're engaged in aninterpretive task.
What do those principles meanfor us in the present?
And I think that's a veryimportant indicator that the
principles are alive and well.
We just have to argue overwhether we're doing a good job
of achieving them or not, andthat's healthy too.
You need to leave room forrobust debate, and I think the
(17:10):
Declaration does a good job ofstating these principles at a
level of generality that allowsAmericans to disagree deeply
about important things and stillrecognize that we subscribe to
some kind of common criterionabout what a just government is.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
That is, I think, the perfect wrap up to this.
Dr Brogdon, thank you so muchfor your expertise and for being
on our podcast.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
It's been a delight.
Thank you so much for having meon, Liz.
My name is Jonas, from Michigan, and I'm in fifth
grade.
My question is how does theDeclaration reflect American
identity and values?
So that was a really greatquestion and I'm really excited
today because we have a newguest expert to answer that,
matthew Brogdon.
Matthew, we wouldn't introduceyourself for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Absolutely, Liz.
I'm delighted to be here.
I'm Matthew Brogdon.
I am the Senior Director at theCenter for Constitutional
Studies, just up the road fromArizona State in Utah Valley
University and I've got to sayI'm a great admirer of the work
that the School of Civic andEconomic Thought and Leadership
at Arizona State does and theCenter for American Civics and
(00:45):
all the work that you're doing,Liz, and really excited about
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thank you, and I think that's my fun.
What I really like about thecivics world is it's not a
competition, it's very much likeyou're doing this.
That's really cool and sharingand working together.
So thank you.
I'm excited to have somebodyfrom Utah on our podcast.
I think this is actually thefirst time.
So we're looking at theseideals from the Declaration and
(01:11):
one of the things that I loveabout early American history is
there's usually a primary sourceto talk about.
A primary source andspecifically, we're looking at
Thomas Jefferson.
So near the end of his life, hedescribed the Declaration as
this expression of the Americanmind that gave voice to
harmonizing sentiments of theday, and that is in a letter to
(01:31):
Henry Lee that we will link inour show notes.
That was written on May 8th1825.
So what sentiments is Jeffersonreally referring to that?
So unite Americans, jeffersonreally referring to that.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So unite Americans.
Jefferson really makes the casethat the Declaration is
articulating something that'sbigger than the thoughts of just
one person.
It's an act of creativity.
He says it was not intended tohave any originality.
No-transcript principles thathe's pointing to is the idea
(02:33):
that a society of people arecapable of crafting their own
form of government.
There's the idea ofself-government, which I think
is deeply rooted in the Americanexperience and in the American
mind.
We have to remind ourselves thatby 1776, some of the colonies
(02:54):
had been in effectself-governing republics we can
call them republics,self-governing republics for as
much as 150 years, and so over acentury almost all of the
colonies had been around forabout 100 years or more.
Georgia is kind of the exception.
So these are politicalcommunities with a long lifespan
already I mean just in terms ofself-governing communities and
(03:16):
they have traditions ofself-government and I think that
had really when Americansencountered ideas and the kinds
of writers that Jeffersonactually points to he points to
Locke and Aristotle and Ciceroand Sidney and when he point
when Americans encountered thosewriters writing about
self-government, they sawthemselves in them and I think
(03:37):
that formed a kind of consensusview that the government is
created by the community overwhich it governs and therefore
we have to have some kind ofreference to the rights of the
people in that community and tothe kind of limits that that
community imposes on theirgovernment.
So that really at the reallycentral core in the Declaration,
(03:58):
I think is part of the Americanmind that he's discussing that
he's discussing and when we lookat this.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Dr Carice and Dr Beinberg have kind of talked
about the Declaration inprevious episodes but looking at
this, religion plays such acrucial part really in any
political culture because it'spart of who we are as people.
How did the Declaration'sreferences to God or a deity
really reflect Americanidentities and values, Dr Carice
?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This is important and it's connected to that letter
from Jefferson, because he talksabout giving voice to an
American mind.
And something that a lot ofpeople don't realize is that
Jefferson, as he drafted theDeclaration, he proposed a draft
only really had one referenceto the deity in it.
There was a mention of the lawsof nature and nature's God, of
(04:52):
the laws of nature and nature'sGod, and Congress, in revising
the Declaration over the courseof a few days before they
published it on July 4th,actually added additional
mentions.
And the Declaration mentionsthe deity, it mentions the
divine in a couple of contexts.
It speaks, of course, as thelaws of nature and nature's God,
presenting the deity, the ideaof a higher law that is
(05:13):
legislated or promulgated bysomeone that's not human.
It also speaks of a creator andof people being created equal,
and sometimes we're tempted toskip over that bit, but it is
somewhat important, but it issomewhat important.
It's important historicallybecause many people who argued
for, for example, the abolitionof slavery would tie a
(05:38):
connection, draw a line betweenthat idea of created equality
and some of the more famousstatements in the book of Acts
in the Bible that talked aboutall men being of one blood, god
having made all nations of menfrom one blood, and that was a
sort of core idea, a notion thathuman beings really
fundamentally had something incommon, that there was not a
(05:59):
meaningful sort of subset ofhuman beings that got to lord it
over everyone else.
And that idea of createdequality, it reinforced equality
to think that human beings wereall the common creatures of
some providence.
So that's a very important ideaat the founding, I think, and
it pervades people who have verydifferent religious views.
(06:21):
So we have a tremendousreligious pluralism at the
founding in many ways and thatgrows over American history.
But I do think there is thatsort of core idea.
There's also toward the end ofthe Declaration, a reference to
the Supreme Judge of the worldthat the writers of the
Declaration of Independence aresubmitting their reasons,
(06:42):
they're submitting theirarguments and their intentions,
they say, to examination by theSupreme Judge of the world, the
idea that they're going to beaccountable for the arguments
they make, the actions that theytake.
So those are sort of ideas thatpervade the Declaration and
Congress is very insistent aboutputting these in, even though
Jefferson thought they were lessessential.
He was somewhat skeptical ofthe need to make that argument
(07:06):
quite so forcefully, but it is apervasive element of the
political culture at the timeand, I think, continues to be.
I think it's also important torecognize that this presents us
with a sort of double characterof the Declaration of
Independence.
The Declaration points toessential basic truths, right,
(07:26):
self-evident truths about humanequality, about the possession
of natural rights, about thepurpose of government, and
argues that those truths arerooted in a sort of an eternal
fixed order.
At the same time, theDeclaration is very skeptical of
government's ability todiscover all those truths, to
(07:52):
enforce them.
So there's a way in which theDeclaration points to a really
ambitious view of human beings,that we're able to discern the
truth and we know these thingsabout who we are and our duties
to each other and our duties toGod and so forth.
And at the same time, we knowthat because the declaration
tells us that rights areinsecure, that governments are
(08:14):
instituted among men to securethese rights.
It tells us that human beingsare not necessarily great at
coming to agreement about allthose things.
We know them, and so you have ahigh view of human beings
coupled with a great deal ofhumility about what government
and human community can achieve,and I think that's a really
(08:37):
important combination.
It also marks sort of the waythat Americans tend to look at
religion.
We're a very vibrantlyreligious people.
Americans were at the founding.
We still are.
We're also a very differentreligious people.
We have a lot of internaldifferences and that has
produced a setting in which wetend to be very modest in our
(08:59):
expectations of governmentwhenever it comes to our
religious belief, while at thesame time privately or I
shouldn't even say privately,but in community with each other
in our voluntary associationswe take religion very seriously
and I think it's sort ofreflected in the text of the
Declaration of Independence.
The fact that the Declarationpoints to the divine being and
(09:19):
human beings' responsibilitiesto God and the reality that
human beings are created andhave a sort of providential
origin don't add up to the ideathat government is then going to
superintend religion for all ofus, and I think that's a kind
of dual character that markedAmerican political culture at
(09:42):
the time I think helped generatea robust religious liberty in
America.
I mean, you know it was notreligious liberty and the
disestablishment of religionwere not foisted on Americans by
some atheistic invading force.
It was something that deeplyreligious people did themselves,
in part because they tookreligion so seriously.
So I think that you know theDeclaration points there and I
(10:05):
think that's still a sort ofincumbent or essential part of
what makes Americans Americans.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I love that and I love that you talk about, like I
mean, the variety of religionstoo.
Right, like that is a biggerconversation.
And can I ask do you think thatthat's the reason that
different wording was utilizedin the declaration, instead of
just saying God, right, it'snature's God, it's the Supreme
judge, there's.
There are different ways ofsaying it.
(10:34):
Do you think that that waspurposeful?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, oh, I think so.
And you know, the foundinggeneration, even what we think
of as the founders, sort ofcapital F, these people who are
engaged mainly in thesedeliberative bodies and leading
our military through this periodof independence and then
founding.
They are very different peoplein terms of their religious
(10:57):
beliefs.
Some of them are deeply devout,some of them are deeply
theological and attached to veryspecific religious traditions,
right Like a John Jay or JamesWilson or John Dickinson, and
others are more, I guess,attached to what we might call
in the 20th century mereChristianity, you know, sort of
(11:19):
a bit of a what's the word?
Ecumenical kind of view oftheir own religious fate.
And so that variety isreflected.
Also there are important but insome cases beleaguered
religious minorities.
Quakers, baptists, catholics,jews are in significant numbers
(11:43):
in some of the colonies and inthe face of that I think the
founders showed a quite ablestatesmanship.
The principal people who werearticulating American views that
includes in the ContinentalCongress with the Declaration,
that includes Washington, bothas general and
commander-in-chief of the armyduring the revolution, later as
president have a way of talkingseriously about religion that
(12:07):
takes people's religious faithseriously, doesn't make it a
sort of public mockery or, youknow, just a tool, but at the
same time opens the Americanpolitical tradition to people
who come from differentbackgrounds and faiths.
You know, there's probably nobetter emblem of that than
Washington's letter to theHebrew congregation at Newport,
(12:28):
which he writes in the 1790s,you know, where he talks about
this vision of American politics, where he quotes the prophet
Micah and says his vision is wewould have a republic where
everyone could sit under his ownvine and fig tree and none
would make him afraid.
And he's writing that to asmall religious minority that
(12:48):
many Americans wereuncomfortable with.
And Washington is able toarticulate the American project,
the American constitutionalproject and the American idea in
a way that tries to welcomethose people in without losing
our character, our identity.
And I think that's a deeplyrooted American tradition that
represents a kind ofstatesmanship on the part of
(13:09):
Washington, on the part of thosewriting the Declaration of
Independence.
That is admirable and worthy ofemulation.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I and for the general public, if you've seen the play
Hamilton in the song One LastTime, that line is in there.
Everyone should sit under theirown light.
So now we know where it comesfrom.
We have kind of a piece of that.
I really appreciate that.
I think that as soon as yousaid it, the song started in my
head.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's right.
I remember, and I don't know ifit was accidental my
grandfather kept a garden mywhole life and they had a home
that they lived in for 70 yearsand he had a grapevine over a
trellis and next to it was a figtree and I didn't realize until
I was grown and he was passedAt some point.
I was reading this line fromWashington and then reflecting
on the verse, I thought I wonderif my grandfather planted this
(13:58):
because of that sort of biblicalmetaphor about what it meant to
live in peace alongside otherpeople and freedom and
prosperity, you know, sort ofboth helping each other and
leaving each other alone in veryimportant respects, and that's.
It is a kind of Americantradition and I think
Washington's just so good atarticulating that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That is.
That's really cool.
It's a cool thing to reflect on, because I mean how many people
listening right now are likeactually my grandparents did the
same, or maybe my parents did.
So we're coming up on America250, which is crazy because you
talked about Jefferson's letterand that was 50 years after the
(14:40):
Declaration and now we're 250years.
Are these ideas still centralto American identity and values?
You know, things have changedso much and now, especially with
technology too, it feels likethe changes just warp speed.
Do you think that those ideasare still central?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I think that they are .
It's easy to focus on thedifferences among us and it's
also easy to look back at thefounding and assume there's more
uniformity than there was.
There were royalists living inAmerica I mean, a lot of them
left after the revolution.
But you know, jefferson says atthe beginning of that letter
that practically all AmericanWhigs and he's referring to a
(15:21):
sort of political movement, theArab Party believe the same on
these subjects.
So he even gives it a littlebit of a partisan cast.
It's not like everybody justsubscribes to this stuff.
So if you say anythingimportant, someone disagrees,
and that's probably healthybecause that's part of a free
society.
So we do have differences aboutit.
But I think it's important thatwhen Americans argue over the
(15:44):
things that are really divisivein American politics and we
argue over the direction of ourcountry and the policies our
governments ought to adopt,quite often we are employing the
terms and principles of theDeclaration and then arguing
over how those ought to applyand then arguing over how those
ought to apply.
There's very little basicquestioning of the idea that
(16:05):
these principles human equality,self-government according to
consent, the idea thatgovernment is principally about
protecting some way of life thatpeople make for themselves in
community with other peoplethrough free associations.
Government's not about dictatinghow we all live and worship
(16:27):
from the top.
Those ideas of created equality, natural rights,
self-government are still thebasic principles we argue over.
We tend not to question whetherthose are the basic criteria of
good government.
We instead tend to argue overhow well are we achieving them,
how well is our governmentachieving them, and what exactly
(16:48):
do they mean?
That is, we're engaged in aninterpretive task.
What do those principles meanfor us in the present?
And I think that's a veryimportant indicator that the
principles are alive and well.
We just have to argue overwhether we're doing a good job
of achieving them or not, andthat's healthy too.
You need to leave room forrobust debate, and I think the
(17:10):
Declaration does a good job ofstating these principles at a
level of generality that allowsAmericans to disagree deeply
about important things and stillrecognize that we subscribe to
some kind of common criterionabout what a just government is.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
That is, I think, the perfect wrap up to this.
Dr Brogdon, thank you so muchfor your expertise and for being
on our podcast.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
It's been a delight.
Thank you so much for having meon, Liz.
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