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July 5, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
32:06
What Does The Fourth of July Really Mean
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Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
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The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
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Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
Welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast and happy 4th of July.
This is a great day.
This is one of those days for me that always sort of, I had a lot of them mixed to most about.
My father grew up, when I was growing up, my dad was a state trooper.
He was a state trooper for 31 years here in Georgia.
And so holidays were a little different in our house in the sense that dad always had to work.
And no matter what holiday it was, for the most part, dad would have to work or he had split a shift or do something.
And 4th of July was always one of those that he had to work with.
Whether it was going to be on the roads, because everybody traveling, everybody going different places, or he had to go to an event.
So it was one in which we learned to celebrate, and probably not the way that everybody else does with big barbecues and other things.
We celebrated it, going to see fireworks, which are just up the...
We could go from my house and walk up the road just a piece and sit on a little hill, and we could watch fireworks as I was growing up.
I remember sitting on that little hill watching the fireworks, And it was one of those times, and maybe for you as well, those childhood memories where you're sitting there, you're waiting on the fireworks and other people carrying around, and it was just that night, you're out, you just get to think.
And I can remember some of the best memories of childhood summers, being around the 4th of July, being around those fireworks, being just in a sense of Just freedom.
It was just a sense that I look back on now and think, wow, of all the stuff that's going on in my life, all the things that's been on in my life, those were the moments when I thought I really had it rough.
Was I going to get to play outside longer?
Was my friends going to be able to come over and play football?
Are we getting ready for football season?
We're going to get to see the fireworks clearly this year.
Those were the big decisions in life back then.
And for many, the 4th of July sort of signals that mid-summer time, in which this is mid-year, you're in July, but also for summer.
For kids who've gotten out of school in May, going back in August, it's sort of that mid part of the summer in which everybody is looking toward family, friends, doing something together.
I read an interesting statistic just yesterday that last year on the 4th of July in 2021, I believe it was, is that it was the largest consumption of beer in the United States on a single day was 4th of July.
So I'm not sure if that's really the way the founders thought about this, John.
John Adams and Jefferson and others thought about the 4th of July.
But I wanted just to spend just a few minutes today on maybe here early on your 4th of July.
Maybe you're spending this with family.
Maybe you're traveling.
But you're with us today.
I'm glad you're with us.
I just wanted to put out a message today talking about the 4th of July.
Talking about what it really means, it comes from the Declaration of Independence.
It was our declaration that we were going to be free from England after many, many years of being overrun, disrespected, left basically more as a servant colonies than we were a full member of England in which we came from.
They'd had enough.
And I think the battle in the revolution and war battles had already started.
The Second Continental Congress gathered.
Now, I want to put it in perspective here.
A little bit.
Because I think today we lose sight of really the Declaration of Independence.
We lose sight of what was going on at this point in time in our history.
King George basically had gotten tired of dealing with the independence of the United States.
At that time, we were not the United States.
We were a bunch of colonies that were under British rule.
And we got tired of the taxation.
We were tired of the underrepresentation.
We just got Basically being used as non-full citizens of England, if you would.
And that created the continuation of this strife, which led to the conflict that we now know as the American Revolution, was just getting started.
When they gathered in 1776, in the end of May, 1st of June, The discussion was on what was going on in the battle, what did they want to do.
And up until this time, and even probably a few months before, there was a discussion that the battle was not necessarily for independence.
The battle was for recognition.
The battle was for...
The full restoration of rights under English law and that we would be treated as equal citizens.
And the country was very divided upon this point.
In fact, many going into it in the months before the Second Continental Congress would have said that they wanted to stay in the British system, but they were just wanting reforms.
They wanted changes.
They wanted representation.
They didn't want to be as the famous lines, no taxation without representation.
They wanted to make sure that That their voices were heard here in this new world.
But when King George decided that he wanted to escalate and bring into heel, as his words were, the American colonies, he did something that was very...
I think troubling to many and finally pushed most over the edge to say, look, we've went as far as we can go.
We've written our discontents before.
We've written our grievances before.
We've laid them all out.
We've talked about how we're just, you know, we're tired of what's going on.
But in escalating this war, King George didn't even really...
He put faith in his own, you know, the British troops who were here, but he went out and hired Prussian or mercenaries, German mercenaries, to come over.
And I think this was the, for many in the United, it was in what was the colonies at that point, not the United States yet, but we were there.
They saw this as a violation, that not only was King George not listening to them, not representing, you know, hearing their voices and their concerns here in the United States, What would become the United States was that the colonies were being treated almost as slaves.
They were being treated in a sense of being servants to the king without having the rights of being a member, as they were, of England.
And so bringing in foreign mercenaries to carry out this task at that point really pushed over a lot who were...
I guess not on the edge, but very hopeful that this could be resolved in a better and more civilized manner.
Now, coming into 1776, this became what we would know as the birth of the United States, the birth of the independence of these colonies.
And as they came into the meetings, Lee of Virginia proposed and made the proposal for independence.
And at this point in time, the proposal for independence was made and it was not acted upon at that point.
It was not acted upon in the sense that they We put it into a committee in which we had five on the committee.
The most prominent, of course, were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Ben Franklin was also on there and others.
At the end of the day, Jefferson ended up writing the document that we now know is the Declaration of Independence.
Now, when they brought back the Declaration, there was a lot of edits done.
Jefferson, even himself, was very frustrated, although he had written the Declaration.
There was edits taken out.
One of the interesting points from a historical perspective he was very frustrated with, which is interesting to know, was that there was a taking out of the slavery.
Uh, part in his original draft and he was, uh, did not want to see that come out, but it came out, uh, anyway.
So when it was brought forth and talked about that on July the 2nd, the Continental Congress actually approved or voted for independence.
In other words, they, they approved the, the resolution by Lee.
They approved it.
Um, July 4th, the Declaration of Independence, as we now know it, was approved as well.
It was not actually signed until later in August, but the declaration was signed.
So an interesting story here, if you wanted to just some sort of factoids, some fun stuff here for the July 4th holiday.
Adams and Jefferson both eventually died on July 4th, 50 years after the signing of this document.
They died on the same day.
There's a long history there and story of You know, who was dying first and Adams and Jefferson and they had reconciled their relationship because their relationship had gotten strained, if you know and look at history, in the presidential races later on in which and also their division of Federalists and the non-Federalists kind of attitudes that were in the early, quote, parties at that point.
So they had become very much political adversaries and It was not until much, much later in life and really right before the years before their death that they actually reconciled, although the two of them were writers of the original declaration.
They died 50 years on July 4th after that declaration was written.
John Adams also, on an interesting note here, if you're a student of history, John Adams also never believed that July the 4th was the actual birth of the country, the celebration of independence.
He thought it was July 2nd when the actual Continental Congress voted on the Lee Resolution from Virginia.
He always wanted to celebrate it on the 2nd.
In fact, he wrote to his wife saying this should be celebrated all over the country from across the continent with every kind of imaginable celebration that you would have.
And later in, as time was going on, as people would remember July 4th, they would celebrate it.
It was not until in the 1900s that it actually became a federal holiday.
But Adams would not, he turned down actual speaking engagements to go speak on the 4th of July because he actually believed it was the 2nd of July.
Again, our founding fathers had their quirks about them.
This one was one that Adams and Jefferson were two very interesting individuals.
We may actually do a more in-depth look at them at a later podcast.
Because these two individuals had a sort of a setting and a political tone that really shaped our early existence and then set the stage for much later.
What I like to do is we talk about the 4th of July and there's so many things out there and you see the The celebrations, you see the excitement.
I'm hoping that more and more today, I'm very concerned that the independence of our country in 4th of July is being overshadowed because of the divisive nature of our politics today.
But the 4th of July is something that we should celebrate.
It is our independence.
It is also the first real stepping out of a group of people who actually took the ideas of governance and self-governance from the people And put it into a practice that has now endured well over 200 plus years.
It is that idea of Self-governance, that idea that when change needs to be made, it needs to be put back into the hands of people, that the Declaration of Independence subscribes to.
It took us a little bit longer to get there through the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution writing, but this was the foundation and the basis of that.
So as we're celebrating today, I just want to go through and look at a few things in the Declaration of Independence, sort of share some ideas on things that I believe today that if we focused on not only would bring us together, But also lift us up and also I think believe show the drift that I believe is happening from the original founders intent of this idea of freedom, this idea of government, this idea of who is actually in control.
Now, the preamble, it actually starts, is the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America.
When in the course of human events, we've all heard this before, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 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, a decent respect I love the founders writing.
I love Jefferson's writing here, the input that came in.
Notice as he talks about this, he says there's going to be come time to time when that a group of people through the actions of the government are going to say, you know, it's time for us to separate.
It's time for us to In other words, there was a recognition that the laws of nature, that we're all to be free, that inherent freedom, and that God himself was the ordaining of that nature, that actual freedom nature that we have.
But he also, and I love how he puts this, Today's language, we might say, look, we're independent.
We don't care what you think.
But he goes on and he says, In other words, what we're going to do in this document, We're going to lay out a bunch of grievances.
In taking from England's time, the Declaration of Independence would have very much followed what would have been known in their times as the impeachment against the Crown.
If the Crown did something illegal, the impeachment of the Crown.
So in many ways, this was an impeachment document and an indictment, if you would.
It was an indictment It was an indictment of what was going on with the way that England was treating the United States.
And so out of this came the document known as the Declaration of Independence, known as our declarer to the world.
This is why we're separating.
One of the facts about the Declaration of Independence, too, and Benjamin Franklin actually tried to get this And he was trying to get this to France.
There was very much of an understanding that as this war developed, that we were going to need allies, France being one that we were courting at the time.
And he sent documents of the copies of the Dutch Russia independence to France, hoping that it would get publicized there.
ended up in less than a month.
It was publicized in England and in Scotland and Ireland and then in Germany.
So it got out there, but not in the way that they were hoping.
But it did later encourage France to join the American side of the revolution.
Why is this important?
Because what they're saying here is we don't want the world to just think that we're doing this for no reason.
We're doing it for selfish reasons.
We're doing it because we're just unhappy, we're spoiled, whatever they want to call it.
We're doing this because there are legitimate, honest reasons on why we're splitting from England.
And we want you to understand this is why we're doing it, and we want you to be a part of our side.
He goes on to say,"...we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is one where I just want to stop today as we begin to talk about the 4th of July, because these truths are self-evident.
In other words, he believes that these truths, he's speaking of the injustice, but also that people are created equal, that we're not to be...
We're treated as a second-class citizen or even a non-citizen by our governments, and in this case, England, and that we're endowed by our Creator, the Creator God, that these unalienable rights, and look what he lists.
He lists life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
life, this pursuant of life, that we are entitled to live our life as we have been gifted by God, that it is not the government's decision, it's not anybody else's decision, that we have that ability to live in harmony with others around us, but at the same point have the ability to chase the dreams and the ambitions but at the same point have the ability to chase the dreams and the ambitions and the other thoughts of life that come to us by our inalienable
This is what he's saying, that liberty, that liberty allows us to exercise that right, that liberty and freedom that we get are the two of the three things that are proposited by Jefferson in his writing and the declaration that lead to one that I think is probably the most misunderstood and And today, if you look at it, I believe it has become one of the problems that we have in celebrating our country and the freedoms that we have.
And that is, he said, the pursuit of happiness.
Now, Jefferson very much could have said in the guarantee of happiness, he could have said that the government and that we're now looking for making sure that our needs are met, but he said it's the pursuit of happiness.
An amorphous term, happiness.
But at the same point in time, the happiness of the person who exercises their life has the freedom of their liberty to pursue that happiness in which they have this unalienable right that they're created equal.
They can do whatever they want to do.
And I think that is when we look out across our country today.
It is frustrating to me that not only in our country, but across the world, we're still dealing with the fact that people look at others as not equal to them.
Folks, I'm going to tell you, That we are all created in God's image, that we have equal birth from Him, if you would, and that this idea of racism, this idea of prejudice, this idea of us against them is not compatible with the founding documents of our country, and it should not be compatible with those of us as we go about living.
There are going to be rules, and there are going to be the...
Process of government to keep our civil society civil, to keep us safe, to protect the general welfare.
Those are all functions of government, very valid functions of government.
But when you look back at our founding document, the thing that declared our independence, Jefferson was very clear to write that it was the pursuit of happiness.
Why is that important?
Because if you have a government that is out to guarantee your happiness, to make sure that you are happy, I hear this a lot, especially from our liberal friends who say, look, government should be there to maintain your wage, to maintain your health care, to maintain your...
Schools, to maintain everything.
And if you get to the point where government is supplying all that, where government is guaranteeing you a certain level of happiness, I'll guarantee you it will not be the full happiness that is intended by the creators.
It is not an equal access, as Jefferson's writing here.
And what will happen is they will have to take from some to give to others.
Because in the end of the day, remember, government is not the answer in which they make things, they produce things that they have upon themselves to give to you.
In order to give to you, they have to take from someone else.
And this is, I think, the very antithesis of the pursuit of happiness.
We're able to have the foundation of a government that keeps us safe, provides for the general welfare, does the things that government only can do.
And for us, it is our pursuit of happiness.
It's going out and doing it.
It is going out and taking what the founder said was that life and that liberty and finding it inside of us.
What are we to be able to do to make sure that we can find the proper role in our life?
That is what our country's found.
Remember, we're reverting back from a government that was founded into itself To a government that finds again its purpose in the people that it actually serves.
So as you look at this, It goes on, and the pursuit of happiness is so important.
So anytime you hear anybody out there talking about what government can give you and how government can satisfy you, just remember, it was never intended by our founding fathers that an outside agency, so to speak, was to give you your pursuit or your guarantee of happiness.
It was always to come from the people themselves.
It was always to come from you.
To secure those rights, governments were instituted among men.
This is what Jefferson said.
Again, what we just talked about.
It was not for government to give these rights.
They were already there.
They're already inherently who you are and what you have, that all men are created equal under God.
That is the basis for what the rights that you have.
It doesn't come from a government.
But to secure these rights, to make sure that you have these rights to protect, as we've said, from safety, general welfare, Jefferson said that government was instituted by men and among men in deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
In other words, the government derives its power from the governed, not all the way around.
Government does not have its inherent rights and then takes those from the people that they govern.
In fact, they get those rights from the governed.
Us, the folks here in the United States now, that we're the ones that give government the power and decide what direction we want as a government to take.
This is where the struggles come.
This is where the political upheavals have come over the years, is deciding what is the best for our country and those that are governed.
When this document was written, he was reminding the readers all across the world and to those in the colonies that their rights were being trampled by England at this point.
He goes on to say that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter it or to abolish it and to institute a new government.
In other words, what he was saying was that England and King George had overstepped these rights, that government was there to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not to take it away, not to inhibit it, not to bring it into another rule, but to say, hey, we're there to protect it.
But when government does not do that, when it's actually destructive, when it inhibits life, when it inhibits liberty, when it inhibits your pursuit of happiness, At that point, it needs to be abolished.
And I think this is where we get into today and we look at the situation in our government today is bringing that government back into its original founders' intent when it gets out of this and actually starts attacking these principles that we see.
And he goes on to say that government shouldn't be changed just because you don't like it.
I love this part.
It seems like he was already thinking ahead to those who said, well, my decision, the government's decision in this arena didn't fulfill what I want, so we just need to change governments.
That's not what he's saying here.
In fact, he says governments long established should not be changed for life or transitory causes.
And accordingly, All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evil rules are sufferable than the right of themselves by abolishing the forms on which they are accustomed.
But, notice the but, when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably The same objective evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism.
It is their right, it is their duty to throw off such governments and to provide the new guards for their future security, such as in patient suffering of these colonies.
Look at what he said.
We've been suffering under this for a long time.
This is not just coming up overnight.
We can go back and list the list of grievances that we had proposited a few years ago.
This has been known to England for a long time.
We have told them about this.
We're now making moves to change our status and to change our government.
This is...
You know, the very essence of what Jefferson is saying speaks to the very essence of who we are today as a people, that it is not the government that gives us the 4th of July, it's the people that gave us the 4th of July.
It was the outpouring of a cry for freedom that gave us the 4th of July.
It was the outpouring of freedom and the desire for happiness and the desire to pursue those dreams living here in the colonies that was expressed through the pen and then the We're not getting that in our current setup.
So folks, again, this is a participatory action that the founders are talking about here.
It's not something that others do for you or others do because of you.
It is actually being put together because the 4th of July symbolizes a nation of people who take an active part in their government.
To take an active part in their society, who take an active part in making sure that not only for their generation, but generations to come, that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are protected.
That's what we're celebrating today.
And you can have a grill, you can have a barbecue, you can have whatever you want to celebrate this.
You can go to parades, you can watch fireworks, you can shoot off fireworks.
But at the end of the day, remember that our independence came not from being dependent On government to give us these ideas, as the Declaration of Independence declares, that we have these in unalienable rights from a God who created us, and we're to exercise on those.
Now, over time, those...
And he talked about this, that they were submitting these grievances to the world in a candid environment.
And Jefferson said, look, look at these grievances and then make a decision for yourself on why we are doing what we do.
Now, the last line of the Declaration of Independence is something I think you also ought to be aware of as well.
And it says, and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of our divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor.
This is saying that all of those who signed that saying, look, we understand what we're doing here is radical.
We understand what we're doing here is not going to be well-liked.
We understand what we're doing here is actually going to be challenged.
They were already at war.
It was getting ready to get worse.
And actually, the history shows that through their decision to maintain war, to fight for independence, that many of those signers of the Declaration of Independence lost a great deal of what they had, their personal wealth, their fortune, even their life.
As they went forward, fighting in the Revolutionary War, fighting for the freedom of what became the United States of America.
They did this, but they pledged to each other.
They said that our lives, our fortune, our sacred honor are more important to put on the line to gain the freedom that we believe God is entitled to us and given to us that we're willing to do that for what at that point was not even a country.
So when we look at the 4th of July today, My question for you today is what is your legacy of the 4th of July?
Why are you celebrating?
I hope you're celebrating because you have the benefits of family and friends and you live in a country of freedom.
But just for a minute today as you take the 4th of July and you take the actual document that signified our birth, if you would, as a country, an independent country.
Whether you're like John Adams, you celebrate on July 2nd, or everyone else which celebrates is on July 4th.
This is a day in which you take those two, in which men were gathered in a room, not air conditioned, not the nicest of life.
In fact, they were under the cloud of war.
They were under the cloud of treason because this was a very treasonous document in which they were signing.
They knew that by signing this, that they were in essence putting a mark on their own lives, especially from the England's perspective and King George's perspective.
So they knew that it was worth sacrificing for.
So for the 4th of July today, I just wanted to spend just a few minutes with you, not a long time, but just to say, hey, think about why you have the freedoms you have.
Think about the pursuit of happiness and find your way to live out your life, your liberty, and your pursuit of happiness.
And never, ever, ever come to a time in which you depend on the government to give you those things.
In fact, a government that can, quote, give you those things is also the government that can take away those things.
You don't believe it?
Simply look at the colonists who first started out under England.
They wanted to stay there, but England was a government that said, no, we're going to treat you differently than we treat other citizens.
We're going to make it harder for you.
You're not going to get the representation.
You're going to be taxed, and we're going to do whatever we want to do.
And finally, the people said, no, we're not.
We're going to take our place among the nations of the world, and we, the people, will decide what kind of government we will have.
The people will decide the direction of our government.
And they gave to us this constitutional republic, eventually, that we signed in our constitution, that lets the voices of the people be heard, lets the voices of the individual states be heard, and has a government, a federal government, that should be watching over of the states that we now have.
The Declaration of Independence is a wonderful document.
Many of you have heard it, but maybe for the day, if you spend some time on the 4th of July, you will see that the 4th of July is worth celebrating because it's about life, it's about liberty, and it's about the pursuit of happiness.
So folks, as you celebrate today, go out and have a great day.
Go out and remember that it is the endowed and equal creator who gave you these rights that you're celebrating today.
The Declaration of Independence is the founding document for freedom.
It is a founding document for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Go out today and pursue that happiness.
We'll see you next time on the Doug Collins Podcast.
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