Today, we're on our fourth of seven in the series on freedom principles, and we finished
the foundation for freedom with our sixth and seventh citizen mandate.
That is next.
Hey, welcome back to the Barry Ferris Show.
I hope you're doing great.
I really do.
Today, we finish the final citizen mandates.
We'll look at the sixth and the seventh coming from the Declaration of Independence.
It is true that the social contract that the founders were contemplating would be more
like a firm contract terms and conditions with the government that they were forming.
But it's also true that they would have accepted the concept of citizen mandates.
The government is operating at the direction of and for the benefit of the people.
Plus, we're trying to strengthen our political fortitude.
We're endeavoring to remember that the government is not in place to rule over us.
Anyone in government actually works for us.
I've used the term citizen mandates to resurrect the concept that the government is supposed
to operate with some humility as the servant of the people.
So today, we look at citizen mandate number six and citizen mandate number seven.
We have so far looked at five citizen mandates.
Number one, government shall be limited.
Wouldn't that be great?
Number two, government shall submit to the rule of law.
Number three, government shall apply all laws equally.
Number four, government shall protect the rights of the individual.
That should be the government's number one job.
Number five, government shall not interfere with your economic freedom.
You built the business.
You get to keep the profits.
You work the hours.
You get to keep your pay.
You get a total right to the rewards of your efforts and to dream.
The sixth and seventh mandates, these citizen mandates that are derived from the Declaration
of Independence, are government shall be governed under the consent of the people it governs.
Of the people, by the people, for the people.
And number seven, my favorite, government shall honor that these three freedom rights
are timeless and that these rights are preeminent over all others.
All legislation should be subordinate to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
So to envision the driver for these last two citizen mandates, let's go back to the meeting
of the Continental Congress on June 2nd in 1776.
So on the floor is a resolution to debate independence.
There are a bunch of roadblocks, and they're just making it impossible to even debate the
topic by those that are opposed to independence.
It's a political zoo.
Every procedural point imaginable is raised to delay even getting the resolution on the
floor.
Here it is, resolved, that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent
states that are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political
connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.
Plain and simple, direct and to the point.
So for George Washington, who's just been fighting like crazy and had weary troops,
it was disappointing that the resolution didn't just pass right then and there.
It could have actually passed, but it wouldn't have been unanimous.
So the guys who were opposed to it made the case that it just has to be unanimous.
That was actually a pretty compelling argument.
You can't ask me to put my whole colony into this new government unless my colony agrees.
Otherwise, you're sort of forcing us out the gate to do something we don't really think
is going to hold up.
So we've been at war for almost a year, but some of the states were opposed to independence
for a whole bunch of other reasons.
So Dickinson, who's opposed to independence, and he's from Pennsylvania, he makes the case
that the vote must be unanimous, which was clever.
So Hancock, John Hancock, the president, who's pro-independence, believes Dickinson's
argument's actually pretty good.
So he votes against John Adams and says it must be unanimous, otherwise he believes the
new nation will fall soon.
It's just not going to hold up.
So now what do you do?
I mean, we could lose everything.
So Adams, who is quick on his feet if he's anything, proposes a declaration first.
It was actually a pretty brilliant political move.
So to go straight to the resolution assumes too much.
This document, whatever we want to call it, will be a good intermediary step.
It'll help establish why we need a new government.
It'll lay out why we want independence before voting for independence.
And it would give more time to win over those opposing votes.
So Adams, John Adams, proposes a committee
to write a declaration.
He basically says, we need a declaration,
a document of some sort to kind of lay out
what it is we're voting on.
The guys who have seen the brutality
of the British firsthand and have witnessed
so many violations of human rights say,
we all understand what we're voting on, John.
We have no questions about it at all.
They're in total support of the resolution to separate.
They see it really clearly.
They're the early adapters.
So John Adams says, but the rest of the world
doesn't see it.
The army doesn't even see it.
We need a declaration and it's gotta be established
so that when we vote, it will be noticeable
that we're voting in a fair way.
So three days go by, it's June 10th.
So who should write it, John, you?
No, he says, it's gotta be broad.
It's gotta be a committee of five.
Of course, I have to be on it, John Adams says,
but we need Ben Franklin on it for all kinds of reasons.
But Jefferson's gotta be on it.
We've gotta get Virginia and he's a great writer.
We won't get the South without him.
We got Robert Livingston of New York
and Roger Sherman of Connecticut
because they hold so much clout.
So in the committee, they have a brief argument
over who's actually gonna write the actual document.
And Adams, to his credit, leads again.
He steps up and he says, let's be honest, they hate me.
It has to come from Virginia.
If we have any hope of winning the South and Jefferson,
you are a great writer and you're good at that
and you're poetic and for some reason, people like you.
So we're still on June 10th and Ben Franklin stands up
and gives this stirring speech on the new nation.
It's a vision of what it could be.
It's a less refined people, more enterprising, more rugged,
a new people, a new spirit.
But if you look around the room,
Washington is reading the room
and he slinks back in near despair.
He doesn't think that it's gonna go through.
After all the bloodshed of the past year,
he's thinking, are we not able to see
the writing on the wall?
Britain wants to rule us.
This whole process seems like a political,
bureaucratic, irritating one.
We've got men dying for the cause right now.
But the committee to write the declaration is approved
and they go to work with vigor.
So from June 28th to July 1st,
Thomas Jefferson writes the first draft
and the committee makes some semantic changes
and they expand the list of charges against the king.
Well, I thought of something else he did.
And then it includes a strong anti-slavery provision.
John Adams has the cleanest hands of all.
He doesn't own any slaves
and he has the strongest moral argument.
He's unbending on the issue.
We have to include the rights of all men
or we're being hypocrites out the gate, John Adams argues.
So the committee agrees.
It comes out of the committee and goes to the whole Congress.
Congress makes some more substantial changes.
They delete a condemnation of the British people.
You can't say all the British people are bad.
And they delete a reference to Scotch mercenaries.
Some of Congress is made up of Scots.
But the most sad thing is they delete the denunciation
of the African slave trade.
Now, before this is deleted,
the number of people in the room against the slave trade
actually outnumbers those who are for it,
even though 41 of the 56 own slaves.
They have all their own rationalizations.
They rationalize that they treat them well
and that they should be set free,
but that they can't quite set them free yet
until everyone else does at the same time.
And then when everyone else sets them at the same time,
then there won't be as much comparative
adverse economic impact.
They have their arguments.
But the South and the New England delegates won't budge.
If the antislavery provision remains,
they will not vote for the declaration.
So John Adams is adamant as well.
Look, we believe in natural rights.
I believe in God.
He created us all equal.
We have to start things out the right way.
We've got to have an antislavery provision
in the declaration.
So the South gets up and walks out of the room.
No deal.
Now what do you do?
Either you get nothing,
or you get a declaration of independence
that argues for treating all people equally
in its preamble,
even though it omits and leaves out
a glaring violation in current day
of treating people equally.
But since it argues for natural rights
and does not say one way or the other
anything about slavery,
the advocates of making it explicit in this document
slowly get won over,
except John Adams.
But to keep things moving,
they move forward with a revised declaration
that edited out antislavery.
So they decide to move forward with Lee's resolution.
We're going to separate from Great Britain.
Forget the declaration of independence.
We're going to separate from Great Britain.
So Lee's resolution actually passes 12 to zero
with one abstention.
But it wasn't without some drama.
So on July 2nd,
this really old guy that's the rep for Rhode Island
is literally on his deathbed
and they tote him back in there
so that he can vote.
And he votes yes.
New Hampshire guy says yes.
Texas says yes, Rhode Island says yes, Connecticut says yeah.
New York abstains until July 19th because they hadn't gotten word yet from Albany.
Things took a lot of time back then.
New Jersey says yeah, Pennsylvania passes.
That's because Ben Franklin's still working on Dickinson to get him to vote yes.
Delaware, by a majority vote, says yeah, two to one.
Maryland says yeah, Virginia says yeah, North Carolina yields to South Carolina.
We're not going to vote until South Carolina votes.
South Carolina says you've got to remove the anti-slavery provision from the Declaration
of Independence or the dream of independence is gone.
We're not going to vote for this.
So Ben Franklin says, John, you've got to let this go, which he finally does.
His argument to John is, look, I know you feel this is immoral and you're right, but
we don't have independence at all if we don't pass this resolution.
And if we don't allow for the process here, we have nothing.
Let's get independence now, then you can go after the anti-slavery provision with all
your energy right after we get this.
So with Adams' reluctant approval, Thomas Jefferson dramatically crosses out the anti-slavery
provision right in front of Rutledge of South Carolina so that he can vote for the resolution.
So South Carolina votes yeah, North Carolina votes yeah, Georgia says yeah.
Pennsylvania is now on its second call for a vote.
Franklin knows that Dickinson still has his reservation, so he asks that the delegates
be polled and Dickinson gets outvoted.
So Pennsylvania finally says yes.
So the resolution to separate from British rule passes.
Now New York actually abstained and they allowed for that because they just didn't get the
information back yet from Albany.
And they'll sign off on the 19th of July and the resolution to separate will be tacked
on to the end of the Declaration of Independence, but we haven't finished the Declaration of
Independence yet.
So now back to the Declaration of Independence, it's July 3rd and Hancock asks if there are
any objections.
A quarter of the text has been removed.
All the stuff on anti-slavery is killed.
There are a few little improvements to sentence structure.
They eliminate some redundancy.
They get some final edits in place and it's agreed to.
So on July 4th, McNair goes and rings the bell.
Everyone's name is called out to come forward and sign the document and 34 of the 56 signers
sign as the bell is rung dozens of times.
That's how many people were there at the time.
The rest sign August 2nd, the one after that.
So the Declaration of Independence was approved and on July 4th, 1776, the 13 North American
British colonies were going to separate from Great Britain.
Though this document changed world history, John Adams said a very interesting thing.
The Declaration itself didn't really contain any novel political philosophy.
He pointed to the fact that others had previously discussed these ideas of freedom.
It was based on the absolute truth that all people were given rights by God to be treated
with freedom rights.
Every student of natural law agreed.
What made this novel was that never before had a nation been founded on these notions
of freedom.
Madison said that the truth had been discovered much earlier, but that the object was to assert
not to discover truth.
In other words, the truth had already been out there.
It just needed to be upheld.
And now that would happen with the founding of a new nation.
But it was a cliffhanger.
Many were reluctant to revolt due to honor of authority.
They just didn't take this lightly.
But once that bell rang, they were all in.
Up until now, the freedoms that were enjoyed were limited to interpretation.
They ebbed and flowed over the years.
If you had a good king and a good house of commons, the everyday Joe might have a shot
at some decent protections.
But with a bad king, not so much.
And the grievances of the colonies were legit.
To the founders, the Declaration was based on a belief in absolute truth.
It was based on the fundamental doctrine of natural rights.
And the government's role would be limited and explicitly put in its proper place under
a social contract.
We talked about why the founders believed natural rights are absolute and natural law
is absolutely true in a bit of detail last week.
To this day, even though the U.S. Constitution is borrowed in many countries from around
the world, the Declaration of Independence remains a great historical landmark.
It's the first formal assertion by a whole nation that they have the right to be governed
by a government of their own choice with the primary purpose of that government explicitly
set all established to protect those freedom rights.
Now these freedom rights are the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
They're inherent.
Every human has the nature that wishes to live safely, choose freely, and benefit from
her own efforts.
Natural rights do not come.
government or from laws, they come from God, the Creator. Or if you don't believe in God,
they come from nature and what you can observe. They belong to every human being. Just as every
human owns his own mind and body, he owns the freedom rights equally. Natural rights do not
depend on some group membership. You don't gain access to natural rights because of your views or
your economic status. You are born with natural rights. The Declaration was really an answer to
the question of government versus the people. Do people exist to serve government like modern day
leftist believes? Or does government exist to serve people so that the individual will remain
free? This document was a triumph of the individual over government as an institution.
It also promulgated equal treatment under the law. No one group or entity would have special
privileges over another. Private property will be respected. The government would need to be
limited and not have the power to harass or otherwise unnecessarily regulate you or your
business. You have the right to govern and sustain yourself. The Declaration of Independence possesses
two sentences that sum it up. So let's break that down. We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Now this was to clarify that they believed the following to be absolutely true and they changed
it from sacred to self-evident to remove any doubt that the U.S. would not be a church state.
That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator.
Creator they used instead of God. It gave the deists that are in the room comfort to come to
their own conclusions. But everyone agreed that all of us are created by the same creator and
that gives us a certain equality. We are created and we have equal value. Now in the Judeo-Christian
belief that were among the founders, the dominant belief, it also meant that we are special among
the animals and created in God's image. That we could find purpose and meaning in life with the
capacity to think, believe, trust, hope, produce, and operate autonomous from our appetites and
instincts. And that we have the capacity to aspire, dream, and shoot for the stars with
certain unalienable rights. These rights are without dispute. Kind of funny they went back
and forth on unalienable and inalienable but they are incontrovertible. Everyone agreed that these
rights are owned. You can't separate these rights from the person. You can't give up these rights.
You might give up your right to decide the traffic laws but no matter what you can't give up these
three freedom rights. That among these are life straight from natural rights and law and others.
No person or government can unlawfully take the life of an innocent citizen. You should not be in
fear of the government interfering with your life in any way at any time. Liberty straight from
natural rights and law and bacon and others. You are free to move, worship, work, marry as you please.
You are a slave to no man. Now slavery at the time was a worldwide problem and the transatlantic
slave trade was horrible in the Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States and it was getting worse.
This right to liberty repetitively pronounced did cause early success against slavery even before
the U.S. Constitution was ratified but after the declaration Pennsylvania, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New England adopted measures to abolish slavery and by 1804
all the northern states had adopted policies to abolish slavery and though the south was
persistently obtuse and wrong this right to liberty was the energy that eventually won the
Civil War and established the 13th and 14th amendments. It would have happened in 1776 if
John Adams had his way. And the pursuit of happiness unique to the United States. This expansion from
private property to you can have purpose you have no upper limit to your aspiration. That to secure
these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed. The social contract based on the mandates. So the Declaration of Independence
adds two more mandates upon the government and here are all seven together. Government shall
be limited. Government shall submit to the rule of law. Government shall apply all laws equally.
Government shall protect the rights of the individual. Government shall not interfere
with your economic freedom. Government shall be governed under the consent of the people that it
governs and government shall honor that the three freedom rights are timeless and that these rights
are preeminent over all others. These
Seven mandates build a strong foundation for the three pillars of freedom.
Freedom rights are hopeful. They stand tall.
The right to life builds confidence that you can enjoy a peaceful existence free
from
arbitrary rule. The right to liberty encourages free expression and the
ability to worship
according to your beliefs. And the right to pursue happiness
allows you to dream big. So,
with these seven citizen mandates, we've got a pretty good foundation.
If we obey these as a government,
we can now build the pillars of freedom. Next week we're going to look in more
detail at the first pillar,
the right to life. To your freedom. God bless you.
Hi, I'm David Farah. Thank you for listening to my dad's podcast,
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