President Trump defends his immigration stance by citing 11,888 criminals entering via open borders while honoring Gold Star moms and opposing transgender sports. Wilfred McClay then recounts the April 19, 1775, battles of Lexington and Concord, highlighting enslaved heroes like Prince Esterbrook and James Armistead Lafayette who fought for independence. The episode concludes by asserting that American rights stem from God-given dignity and natural law, as argued by Jefferson and Aquinas, rather than mere political consensus. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Remembering The Walk Of Fame00:11:47
Thank you for joining us on another edition of America's Mayor Live.
Tonight we'll play some remarks that President Trump made today.
Thank you for joining us on another edition of America's Mayor Live.
And defend her still today, because there ain't no doubt I love her.
The Walk of Fame, right?
And you have some of your favorite presidents there, some of your least favorite presidents.
Some were good, some were great.
Some were terrible, but that's the way life goes, right?
And you notice the roses.
This is a rose garden, and we added a lot of roses, I will tell you.
This was a rose garden that didn't have too many roses, and if you look now, we cornered the market on roses.
And you deserve the magnificent speech.
And she'd be standing in mud, and she'd say, I ruined my shoes.
Her speeches would never be as good.
And it's really become great.
And we added the pictures of the presidents from.
George Washington to a guy.
I call them stupid borders, not open.
I call them stupid borders by stupid people that put them there.
And the migrant criminals that let them pour into our country, and bad things happened.
Bad things happened.
25 million people came into our country.
Many of them were criminals.
Many of them were murderers.
They allowed them in with their open border policy of stupidity.
These incredibly brave and resilient women have turned terrible tragedy into unyielding resolve.
becoming advocates so that their mothers do not have to endure the same heartache that they've felt all their lives.
They've felt for so long.
They've raised the most beautiful child that is taken, and they've spent so many years.
In many cases, I see some up.
You know, you used to read about the thousands of people that would pour in, and they'd just come up in caravans.
I think it was my name I came up with.
It looked like a caravan.
25,000, 30,000 people pouring up.
Walk through Mexico.
They come from all different locations.
Come from all over the world, actually.
But they came in through our southern border and they'd come up and just let them walk in.
Nobody had any idea who they were.
They were murderers.
11,888 murderers.
They were allowed to come into our country.
We've gotten a lot of them out.
Many of them murdered more than one person.
They don't come anymore because they know they're not going to get through.
So when they know they're not going to get through, they just don't come.
And just on that, we save a lot of lives because that journey up from.
Honduras and El Salvador and lots of other countries, or from the Congo, where they drop them there and they walk up and they come through our country.
They emptied the prisons of the Congo into the area of the southern border and then told them to just walk in because stupid Americans are going to accept you beautifully.
And these were hard, mean, vicious criminals they allowed into our country.
How anybody can vote for these people is hard to believe, okay?
It's hard to believe.
But to a friend of mine.
Marianne Mendoza.
Marianne, where is Marianne?
Where are you, Marianne?
I got to know you right from the beginning, right?
And I won't ask her that, but I would often ask, is it easier with.
But you'll see it coming down.
They come through Mexico for the most part.
We have a problem because the cartels rule Mexico and nobody else.
The cartels, they just rule it.
And, you know, we lose 200,000 people a year through.
This poison that pours into our country.
So we have the sea done, meaning the ocean, waterways, pretty much done 97%, and we're going to have the land done very soon.
I want to thank the brave moms fighting the epidemic of drug addiction here, addiction, and this afternoon, including Ann Funder.
Ann, you're here someplace?
Ann Funder does a great job.
Wow, good.
That's a great job you do, Ann.
Stephanie Rowe.
Stephanie, thank you.
Thank you, Stephanie.
Thank you.
I'll be behind the cameras there.
Some of the most extraordinary mothers our nation has ever produced are cherished Gold Star moms.
These are Gold Star moms.
These mothers raised up children so selfless and so devoted that they volunteered to wear the uniform of our nation and laid down their lives for all of us.
One of those mothers is Janice Chance.
Janice?
Where's Janice?
Thank you.
Thank you, Janice.
Hi, you look great.
That's a beautiful hat.
Thank you, Janice.
Who lost her son, Marine Captain Jesse Melton, and I heard he was an outstanding.
They give me lists and they tell me about people.
You know, they said that Jesse was outstanding, Janice.
They have the word outstanding.
Thank you for being here.
Just before he went to Afghanistan in 2008, Jesse told his mother, Mom, I want to go change the world and make it an even better place.
I want to make it a better place, Mom.
Just before his 30th birthday, even though he had the day off, Jesse volunteered to take the place of a fellow.
And I got to know you very well.
Very well.
And these are college and selling them because they were better than other computers.
And he just, I said, how did you do that?
He said, well, I did it.
So important.
We do things like we keep men out of women's sports, a very popular issue.
We stopped transgender mutilation of your children for everyone.
We don't have that.
But I want to thank every single mother here this afternoon and all across our nation for your work every single day.
America's moms are raising, really raising the future of our country, the most important.
You have the most, we don't call it a job because when you love it, it's not a job, but let's, for this purpose, you have the most important job there is in America or anyplace else, and you're doing an incredible job.
I just want to wish you all a very happy Mother's Day.
We're going to have a great Mother's Day.
And for those mothers that lost their child, many of whom are with us today, the Angel Moms and others, Gold Star Moms, we love you especially.
We love you maybe even the most.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everybody.
Appreciate it.
The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year with an open heart.
The college is honored because it loves the Declaration of Independence.
Our oldest building was dedicated on the 4th of July in 1853.
Then the president of the college at that time, who became known to Abraham Lincoln, gave a speech in which he said, Freedom and learning go together, and ignorance and slavery go together.
One of the things we must do to commemorate anything, commemorate just means to remember.
Together, first we have to know the thing.
And we can't remember it very well if we don't know it very well.
And so part of the purpose of this series of lectures is to remember.
President Trump does this in part, I think.
I don't speak for him.
But the word again is important to him.
He has a famous slogan that I will not repeat here, but everybody knows what it is.
And it ends with the word again.
He wants to do something again.
Something already been done.
You must see it happen again.
This places him somewhere near the politics of Abraham Lincoln, I think.
George Washington did something for the first time, extremely honorable, including the defense of the Declaration of Independence on battlefields.
Abraham Lincoln comes along later and he wants to restore all of that.
He took the view that that was a very hard thing to do, but it wasn't a new thing to do.
It was something that we should remember and commemorate.
In introducing this series, I want to begin by encouraging you to read the Declaration of Independence.
It's just over 1,300 words long.
It is one of the most consequential and beautiful political documents in all of history.
You should read it again and again.
You should memorize the beginning of it.
It's very beautiful.
It is grand and eternal and eloquent, and it proclaims the rights of us all.
It begins universally.
When in the course, that means anytime.
And that he has interfered with representation, our ability to elect.
Our government, which means consent of the governed, has been interfered with, and he's interfered with the judicial branch.
Separation of powers, consent of the governed, representation.
Those things are the very structure of the Constitution of the United States, later made to defend the principles and institutionalize the principles of the Declaration of Independence, according at least to those who wrote it and to later the very great Abraham Lincoln.
If you learn those things, it's a sort of guide.
To the understanding of American politics.
After the charges against the king comes a particular, also very beautiful, final section that becomes so particular it is confined at the end to the actual people in the room voting to approve the Declaration of Independence.
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
It starts out with all eternity, and it ends up with those people.
And that room and everything they have pledged to this eternal cause.
It becomes the American cause, the cause of our people, eternity.
And it ends up with those people and that room and everything they have pledged to this eternal cause.
It becomes the American cause, the cause of our people, formed under principles of all people by a resolution they made unto death to defend it.
That, I think, is the foundation stone.
Of America right there.
In the course of the American Revolution, in April of 1775, in two villages in Massachusetts, a bunch of people, first about 70, then maybe 3,500, were called out to fire the shot heard around the world.
Several hundred British regulars were coming down the road to seize an arms depot and, you might say, assert the might of the British Empire.
Wilfred McClay Teaches History00:02:10
And they gathered to stop them.
And they did.
They were organized to do that.
Somehow it wasn't just individuals rising up, they had already bound together to cooperate.
very stirring story
first great test came here weeks after we declared ourselves free if they took me hello
my name is Wilfred McClay, and I teach history at Hillsdale College.
Hello, my name is Wilfred Maclay and I teach history at Hillsdale College.
My assignment today is to relate the story of how the American Revolution began with the dramatic clashes between British regular troops and American militiamen in the New England towns of Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775, 250 years ago today.
Paul Revere And Lexington00:07:43
The fuse of war was lit at last when orders from Britain reached the royal governor.
Of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, instructing him to move aggressively to stop the growing rebellion.
After careful deliberation, Gage decided he would march 700 red coated British troops to Concord, a town about 20 miles west of Boston, where they would seize a militia supply depot that had been established by the Patriot forces.
The fact that such a depot had already, Gage's operations depended on secrecy, surprise, And sound intelligence, thus the words of historian David Hackett Fisher.
Gage would have to strike at the heart of the rebel movement and cripple it with quick, clean blows, preferably with as little bloodshed as possible.
But it didn't quite work out that way.
It was a disaster, instead, for the British.
In many ways, the outcome of Lexington and Concord provided the Patriots with a great, Public relations victory, putting the enemy firmly in the wrong and keeping him there.
Along the road to Concord was the town of Lexington, which was not an objective of Gage's troops.
And yet, when the British arrived there at dawn, they encountered a group of 70 or so minute men gathered in the mist on the town common.
The men were there because they'd been warned by means of the famous midnight ride of Paul Rivera, who was one of Maybe as many as 60 messengers whom he'd help organize, Tasso informed the scattered militias in the area that the British in the mist on the town common.
The men were there because they'd been warned by means of the famous midnight ride of Paul Rivera, who was one of maybe as many as 60 messengers whom he'd help organize.
Tasso informed the scattered militias in the area that the British regulars were coming from Boston, had crossed.
The Charles River at Cambridge and were now heading west to Concord.
They came to Lexington upon an awkward confrontation.
After some taunting shouts and argument coming from both sides, the Patriot militiamen appeared to be beginning to withdraw.
And then a shot was fired, no one knows by whom, which led to the British opening fire on the assembled Patriots, killing eight of them.
It was more of a skirmish than a full throated battle, but blood was shed on both sides and deaths on the Patriot side.
News spread quickly throughout the countryside of what was already being called the massacre.
The sniper fire, they were outnumbered, outmaneuvered at every turn.
In the end, they limped back to Boston, having lost three times as many men as the Americans.
And so the war had begun.
And now a few words about historical memory, because that, after all, is why we're here to remember and to gain the value of remembering our own past.
Why is it so important to do that?
Much of what we remember Lexington and Concord for today flows from a single poem written in 1860 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The poem is called Paul Revere's Ride.
It used to be memorized by every school aged child in America.
It opens like this Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere on the 18th of April in 75.
Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.
It's really such an infectious poem.
You catch the It has the rhythm it has as a rhythm of drum taps.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear the midnight ride of Paul revered.
But why did Longfellow address the poem to children?
Surely children were not the only audience he had in mind, maybe not even the primary audience he had in mind.
No, but he's indicating something.
He's indicating that his poem is primarily meant as an expression of a precious memory, a memory of something.
That needs to be preserved, needs to be passed along to successive generations, lest it be lost.
The memory, in this case, of Paul Revere and his heroic deeds.
To be sure, the poem does not provide a fully accurate rendering of the events that took place in those days.
For that, I recommend you turn to David Hackett Fisher or other historians who have covered that territory.
But the poem does something different.
It conveys the essential spiritual meaning of the events, the legacy they had left with us, a meaning that we can and should and must make our own.
And it conveyed that meaning at a crucial moment in American history.
The poem was composed in 1860 on the cusp of our greatest national crisis and trial, the American Civil War.
We were being called to look back.
By Longfellow.
Just as Abraham Lincoln urged Americans to heed the mystic chords of memory when he's inaugurated as president and to remember the spirit of 76 and their heroic forebears, so Longfellow reminded them of a hero of Lexington and Concord.
On the very moment when the nation was entering the great trial, the great crisis of revolution.
The poem concludes too with a haunting prediction that speaks to our moment as well.
And let me close with that.
For born on the night wind of the past, through all our history to the last, in the hour of darkness and peril and need, the people will waken and listen to hear the hurrying hoofbeats of that steed and the midnight message of Paul Revere.
If Longfellow's right, the deeds of Lexington and Concord exemplified enduring qualities of the character of the American people that will continue to manifest themselves.
If we have the willingness to call on those memories, the capacity to respond to darkness with light, to peril with energy and determination, buoyed by the knowledge that others have done these things before us.
Enduring American Qualities00:02:57
and in a sense for us.
What was done before can be done again.
Thank you.
Here we are, pretty much at the beginning of the process here at this pristine, I call it a laboratory.
It's not like a factory, it's like a hospital.
This is the beginning of the process for roasting.
Deep grain, very good quality.
Most people don't use this quality.
We deal with small farmers because they like to know who we're dealing with.
They give us the highest quality, all organic, non GMO.
You should know all Arabica beans.
No robusto.
All Arabica.
They're going to go into the roaster and it'll get roasted for about 20 minutes or so.
Oh my goodness.
Look at these.
My goodness.
They're going to want to specially order these.
This is what goes into Rudy's coffee.
We are the people in order to form a more perfect union.
We can be placed to each other, our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor.
Nearly 250 years ago, 56 men signed their name to a document that sparked a revolution in political thought and changed the course of history.
They declared to the world 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.
In the 250 years since those immortal words were delivered to King George III, Americans of all backgrounds have risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
To fulfill the promise of the Declaration.
Unfortunately, in recent years, some have sought to spread the falsehood that the practice of slavery made America's founding principles irredeemably flawed.
Spiritual Freedom For All00:15:17
No doubt slavery is evil.
No circumstance justifies treating human beings as commodities to be sold and subjected to indescribable cruelties.
As the Bible teaches, every person is made in the image and likeness of God.
Galatians 3 28 says, There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor Free, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Unity in Christ transcends all earthly divisions, for we are all workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.
Many of the founders did not fully live up to the biblical principles of freedom, but the words of the Declaration of Independence set in motion a chain of events that ultimately set slavery on a path to extinction.
Our story is a redemption story.
What makes us the greatest country in the world is that we overcome flaws and work through conflicts together as one nation under God.
From the very beginning, heroes of all backgrounds risked their lives to secure American independence 250 years ago.
Thousands of African Americans, enslaved and free, fought in the revolution.
They did not wait to be liberated by others, but they seized their claim to liberty upon the anvil of revolution.
Their names are less well known, but their courage was no less valiant.
Today, I would like to tell you the stories of just a few of these brave, forgotten heroes who helped win the freedoms we hold today.
On April 18, 1775, the night of Paul Revere's ride and the eve of the first shots of the Revolutionary War, Prince Esterbrook, a slave of Lexington's Esterbrook family, was summoned to join the local militia under the command of.
Captain John Parker at Lexington.
Though not a free man, Esterbrook marched into battle alongside his master's own son.
Struck by a musket ball in his left shoulder, he became the first African American to suffer wounds for our young republic.
He returned to battle after recovery, standing guard at Bunker Hill and serving for eight years in the fight for independence.
At the war's end, Esterbrook was finally free.
In the southern campaigns, James Armistead Lafayette.
Performed deeds worthy of the ancients.
With the revolution broken to open fire, the Virginian slave obtained the permission of his master to enlist under the Marquis de Lafayette.
A slave turned double agent, Armistead infiltrated British camps by posing as a runaway slave, gathering intelligence from the army of General Cornwallis.
Given his deep knowledge of Virginia, Armistead quickly infiltrated the British army and passed critical military plans and information to the Marquis de Lafayette.
Thanks in no small measure to Armistead's efforts, the Battle of Yorktown was a resounding victory for the Continental Army, making it the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.
Though initially denied emancipation, he was freed through the personal advocacy of the Marquis de Lafayette.
Their reunion during Lafayette's 1824 American tour, when they embraced as brothers in arms, arguably remains one of the most poignant scenes.
In revolutionary history.
In the literary salons of Boston, Phyllis Wheatley emerged as the most prominent wordsmith of the revolution.
Sold into the African slave trade as a child before making the harrowing journey to Boston, Phyllis was educated by her masters in subjects ranging from the Bible, classics, literature, history, astronomy, and geography.
By age 12, Phyllis began publishing her own verse.
She later became the first African American to release her own book of poetry and gained her emancipation from the yoke of slavery.
Wheatley's works included a recollection of her journey from Africa to America, a poem praising General Washington, and verse that wove classical learning with Christian hope, stirring the conscience of patriots as she reminded them of their ideals.
Wielding the pen as her sword, Wheatley held freedom's cause in every Human breast, she wrote.
God has implanted a principle which we call love of freedom.
While Phyllis Wheatley advanced liberty through her poetry, other African American heroes did so from behind the pulpit.
One such American was Emuel Haynes, a preacher, a minute man, and a firebrand for freedom.
He became the first African American ordained minister in our republic, abandoned by his enslaved father and Scottish mother shortly after he was born in 1753.
Haynes grew up as the indentured servant of Deacon David Rose, under whose roof he developed a passion for teaching the Bible.
When his indentured service expired at the age of 21, he enlisted in the local Massachusetts militia.
In May of 1775, Haynes and the Green Mountain Boys surprised the British soldiers and captured Fort Ticonderoga, securing a strategic pathway to the north, a wealth of artillery, and a glimmer of hope for the discouraged Continental Army.
After his service, Haynes became a full time preacher.
And he spread the gospel for nearly 30 years.
In his sermons, Haynes denounced slavery as a sin that defied the heart of God Almighty and professed that America would never be free until it ended the practice of slavery.
Patriots like Prince Esterbrook, James Armistead Lafayette, Phyllis Wheatley, and Lemuel Haynes are just a few of the thousands of African Americans who risked their lives for our independence.
But one question we all can ponder.
Is why?
Why did these brave patriots make such valiant sacrifices to secure freedom and sovereignty when they had not been afforded their own?
The answer lies at the very heart of who we are as Americans.
The Declaration of Independence, the very charter of our nation, laid out America's foundational principles.
The self evident truths expressed in the Declaration are the words that unite us as citizens and define our inheritance as one people united.
Under one great American flag.
At first, America did not fully live up to the ideals expressed in the Declaration.
But the spirit of 1776 declared to the world the eternal truths that ultimately toppled the evil of slavery and recognized the rights of all Americans, regardless of background or skin or color.
Our nation's story is not a black story, it's not a white story, it is an American story.
Promise of the Declaration of Independence.
This is our story, and these brave men and women are forefathers who bestowed a righteous and honorable legacy upon us all.
As we approach 250 glorious years of American independence, we remember the wisdom, courage, and the unwavering perseverance of every hero who breathed life into our republic.
Our liberty was paid for by the sacrifice of generations so that we could live as.
Free men and women in the greatest nation the world has ever known.
Today, it is our duty to preserve this sacred inheritance and ensure that the eternal principles of the Declaration remain alive and flourishing for our children, grandchildren, and every future generation of American citizens.
When I
was a kid, people often spoke of the American dream.
It was usually described in terms of the hope that honest middle class families could own a home, care for their loved ones, and leave their children better off than themselves.
Many of my friends' parents had lived through the Great Depression and some fought in World War II.
They knew privation, grief, and sacrifice.
It shouldn't surprise us that their understanding of the American Dream was largely rooted in a sense of material security.
And yet, I would suggest that this desire for economic security.
Was undergirded by something more profound.
The aspiration for spiritual freedom.
The freedom to live in accord with one's conscience and to follow the teaching of one's religious beliefs.
This reverence for Americans' religious convictions formed the bedrock of our country from the beginning.
Some might say this notion of spiritual freedom belongs to the private sphere.
It is a matter of personal practice and not of public affairs.
Some might even argue that to debase matters of religion to those of politics is to muddy the waters of public discourse with pious sentiments.
One of the most prominent voices of the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson.
A deist and one of the founders most influenced by the Enlightenment thinkers, Jefferson nevertheless wrote just five years after drafting the Declaration Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis?
A conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God.
And to that question, Jefferson and his fellow founders would have said no.
Rights, as understood by the drafters of the Declaration and the Constitution, are not conjured into existence by political consensus, nor are they granted by parliaments or princes.
Our rights exist not on parchment alone, but on the immutable foundation of the laws of nature and nature's God.
That is to say, that even if the drafters of the Constitution disregarded a fundamental right to life, the American people, just like every people across history, can claim a share of that right, or that gift, as Jefferson recognized, because of the basic fact that life comes not from the government, but from God.
This is the animating principle behind what the founders called natural rights rights inherent to the human person, not because of race or wealth or nationality, but because of the dignity bestowed by the Creator.
As Alexander Hamilton put it one year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.
They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
In our day, I fear that we are at risk of losing this metaphysical grounding of a person's rights.
There seems to be no limit to the number or Kinds of rights individuals can claim.
Rights have become assertions of will, often severed from truth or justice.
Sadly, deeply immoral acts are often defended under the banner of individual rights.
But I would posit to you that this conception of rights is really a misconception.
Rights do not exist just because we say they do.
And here I call to mind one of my intellectual heroes, St. Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas rarely spoke of rights in the plural.
Instead, he referred to the Latin word jus, which means the right, understood not as a claim but as that which is due to another.
In Thomistic terms, a right is what justice demands, as measured by the divine order.
By this, he meant something in accord with God's design for mankind and the universe.
This is a far more substantive and sobering understanding of rights.
It places rights not in the realm of popular preference or ever evolving societal demands.
But in the realm of respect for the human person and the common good.
At the same time, the natural law tradition insists that these principles of freedom, justice, rights, and responsibilities are not hidden from us.
On the contrary, these fundamental truths are accessible to all, discoverable by natural reason, written, as St. Paul says, in their hearts.
This is precisely the claim made in the opening of the Declaration of Independence.
That the American cause is justified not by majority will nor sectarian creed, but by the self evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Importantly, the Declaration's appeal to the British is not a democratic one.
The colonists did not declare political independence from their ancestral homeland simply because the majority agreed.
No, the appeal of the Declaration was fundamentally moral and philosophical.
It was a practical application of moral reason to political greediness.
In the estimation of the signers of the Declaration, British governance had devolved from stewardship into tyranny.
In fact, they all agreed in the Declaration that the Crown involved itself in circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.
This claim is not for mere rhetorical flourish.
Inherent Desire For Liberty00:05:40
Rather, it signals a moral judgment.
The abuses of the crown were more than an inconvenience, they were a grave injustice.
The signers of the Declaration committed a revolutionary act, one that led to a devastating war.
Yet they acted to restore the moral law that had been lost, the rights that we are given by God.
And while it's impossible for us to know the thoughts within the hearts and minds of men, I believe it was the conscience, the inner witness of the divine law, that stirred many of the founders to affix their names to the Declaration.
Conscience is the key to understanding how the founders accessed the truths of the eternal law and applied them to their circumstances.
The Second Vatican Council in Gaudium at Spez describes conscience as the most secret core and sanctuary of a man.
There he's alone with God, whose voice echoes in its depths.
The founder's defense of the colonists was not only an act of courage, but one of justice.
Prior to America's founding, many nations only recognized the rights of a privileged few.
But the Declaration laid the foundation for recognizing the rights of all Americans.
Now, this promise of liberty was not fulfilled instantaneously.
It took a bloody civil war and many courageous abolitionists to end the sin of slavery and respect the dignity of all persons.
But from the very beginning, our founders understood that rights do not exist within a vacuum.
With every right comes responsibilities to our families, our fellow citizens, and our Creator.
In other words, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not render the political order neutral on questions of good and evil.
It does not leave us in a naked public square, to use Father Richard John Newhouse's famous phrase.
Rather, it presumes that citizens are moral actors capable of discerning the good and obligated to pursue it.
The founding fathers anticipated.
That the American people would not passively receive dictates from the state as distant subjects, but that they would actively participate in moral and political deliberations as citizens.
This is why George Washington famously said in his farewell address Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.
In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism.
Who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens?
Today, nearly 250 years after the birth of our republic, we find ourselves the recipients of this great moral inheritance.
For if our rights are real, then so too are our responsibilities.
To be an American citizen is to be entrusted with the freedom to pursue the good, the duty to care for our neighbors and uphold justice, and the burden and the privilege.
of conscience.
May we prove or reveal it.
It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
It was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought to us the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776.
One of the first American bestsellers in which Thomas Paine explained, by rational principles, the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the Kingdom of Great Britain and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, for freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the ability to select the people who govern them.
And he explained it in ways that were understandable to all the people.
not just the elite.
Because the desire for freedom is universal.
The desire for freedom adheres in the human mind and it is part of the human soul.
This is exactly the time we should consult our history.
Look at what we've done in the past and see if we can't use it to help us now.
We understand that our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world.
The greatest democracy, the freest country.
A country that has taken more people out of poverty than any country in the world.
ever all of us are so fortunate to be Americans.
But a great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we're able to reason, we're able to talk, we're able to analyze.