Dr. Larry Arnn Explains the Constitution and Declaration in Six Minutes

On this episode of Our American Stories, here is Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, with your daily briefing on the foundational claims - and the founding stakes - of the American system of government.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So this is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
All show along. We're celebrating the Constitution because today it's
Constitution Day. On this day in history in seventeen eighty seven,

(00:23):
thirty nine delegates signed it up. Next, doctor Larry arn
who's the president of Hillsdale College and author of the
Founder's Key. He was giving a talk with the Hoover
Institution at Hillsdale and he was read a statement of
his and asked to respond, and that statement was you

(00:43):
can read the Declaration and Constitution in a few minutes.
They're simple, beautiful, can be understood and retained. Here's what
doctor Arne had to say about that statement.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, they're very They've never been anything like them in history.
There still is nothing like them. But remember the King
of England, who was a nice man by the way,
and a humble man for a king was referred to
by the title majesty. And it took the founders, a
lot of them for a long time thought the only
way you can have stability is if some family is

(01:21):
appointed to rule. And so the king was a very
humble man. But when his son wanted to marry somebody
a noble but of lower station than the king's family.
He said, princes may not marry subjects, ever, no matter
what your heart says. So the one is that's the world, right,
that's what's known. And that's the first incredible thing about

(01:45):
the Decoratate's independence. They're three. The second incredible thing about
the Dectrit's independence is in the last sentence, the Detroatus
of Independence was written by people for whom the military
was looking. General Gage had an order, and the order said,
find these people, even if it means complete war, rd
detain them. In other words, they were guilty of treason,

(02:08):
and now they're gonna put their name on a document
and send it to the king. And they write in
the last sentence in the mood that somebody who was
about to do that would write in support of this declaration.
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes,
and our sacred honor. That's how people talk. On a battlefield,
they die for each other. We mutually pledge to each other.

(02:31):
That's the second extraordinary thing. And then the third becomes
more amazing because of the first two. The opening of
the declarations independence has nothing to do with them. In fact,
it demotes them. It's not our unique situation. It's not
us a special people here to do a grand deed.
It duh. It begins universally and abstractly when, in the

(02:53):
course of human events means any old time, it becomes
necessary for one people, means any old people, to dissolve
the politicals that have connected them with another and to
assume among the powers of the earth the separate and
equal station to which the laws of nature and of
Nature's God entitle them. It's an act of obedience to
a law that persists beyond the English law and beyond

(03:16):
any law that they might make. So for them to
be the particular people whose lives are at risk, and
for them to be turning over an entire way of
organizing society that had dominated for two thousand years, and
then for them to begin that way, it's very grand.
But also you can't miss it. It's partly humble. These

(03:36):
are the ways that people must comport themselves. We are
going to do that, and if you will do that, British,
we will get on and if not, we will not,
and we will be in the right because of that.
So that's what's remarkable about it and why it's very
beautiful the Declaration and it connects to the Constitution. You

(03:57):
have to first know that modern scholarship claims, and you
know Gordon Wood and Joseph Ellis and famous people, excellent
scholars claim that there were two foundings, one for the
Decorates of Independence and one for the Constitution, and they
mean different things. Is the claim. That's a very powerful thing,

(04:18):
because if it's true that they changed their mind right
in the middle of the revolution, their example to us
might be we can change our mind whenever we want to.
But the Constitution doesn't read that way. The Constitution has
three grand things in it and they're very lovely and
they are all commanded in the Declarace of Independence. The

(04:42):
first is that government be limited in the Declaration, and
it's limited in obvious ways, right, it's a doctrine of
enumerated powers. In the Constitution. There's a list of things
that the Congress can do, and the Constitution and the
other things that it's not listed it may not do.
And you'd think that some change from the declaration, But

(05:03):
in the declaration. The middle part of the Declaration of
Independence is the charges against the King, and if you
want to understand American constitutionalism. It's basis read those because
the things that the king has done justify the revolution
and they amount to violations of constitutionalism. So he has

(05:23):
sent swarms of officials among us to eat out our
substance and harass our people. He has brought troops from
a foreign jurisdiction. So, in other words, it's a breach
of limited government. But once you have limited government, you
have a vast, big society that's independent and you can

(05:44):
locate sovereignty in it. Now, James Madison takes pride in
the sixty third Federalist that this is the first form
of government in which the sovereign does not operate any
part of the government. And this is the second principle.
It is a representative form of government. It is limited,
and because it's limited, it's possible for it to be representative.

(06:08):
And what that means is in the government nothing will
operate except that it gets its authority from outside. But
since everybody's human, who's going to get governed, then you
don't want the people outside to be of unlimited power either,
And so they can only act through the government. They
can't act directly. They can talk and talk and talk

(06:30):
and argue and argue in argument, just like we are
right now, but we have to wait for elections to
do anything that makes us more deliberative. The charges against
the King and the Declaration of Independence are full of
a list of where the King, the executive branch has
messed with the legislatures and the judges and disrupted representative institutions.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
And what terrific storytelling and what terrific teaching in the end,
and so often the best teaching can indeed be storytelling
the story of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,
how the two are connected. No one tells that story
better than doctor Larry Arn celebrating Constitution Day all show

(07:16):
long here on Our American Stories. Lia bebe here host
of Our American Stories, where you'll hear stories about everything
from the arts to sports, from business to history. And

(07:38):
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