In Pursuit Live: America at 250 Town Hall at the National Constitution Center
What are the principles at the heart of the American experiment? How have those ideals guided us in the past? And how do they speak to us now as we commemorate 250 years of American independence?
On this special live episode of In Pursuit recorded at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Colleen joined Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, Harvard University Professor Danielle Allen, and moderator Robert Costa of CBS News in a wide ranging conversation about how we can connect new generations to the enduring ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Special thanks to Julie Silverbrook, Kevin Altman, and Bill Pollock of the National Constitution Center.
This special live episode was edited and mixed by Bill Pollock. Theme music for this episode provided by Artist.io.
In Pursuit with Colleen Shogan is a podcast by More Perfect. The series is written and produced by Jim Ambuske. Production Services by Stand Together
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Colleen Shogan: What are the principles at the heart of the
American experiment? How have those ideals guided us in the
past, and how do they speak to us now as we commemorate 250
years of American independence? I'm Colleen Shogan, the 11th
archivist of the United States, and we're asking those questions
and more on this special live episode of In Pursuit, the
podcast that explores lessons from America's past to write the
history of America's future. At the National Constitution Center
in Philadelphia, just down the street from Independence Hall, I
joined historians Jon Meacham and Danielle Allen, along with
Robert Costa of CBS News, in a wide-ranging conversation about
how we can connect new generations to the enduring
ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution. We've learned a lot about what's worked and what
hasn't since the founding era, and we'll dive into where we go
next. Just after the news, I'm Colleen Shogan. This is a one
hour special from the podcast In Pursuit. We're exploring the
principles at the heart of the American experiment and how
these ideals speak to us now as we commemorate 250 years of
independence.
Robert Costa: Good evening. Thank you all for being here.
Thank you very much to the mayor, the whole team here at
the National Constitution Center. It's an honor to be here
with such an esteemed panel during such an important week
for this country to be here in Philadelphia, of all places, at
this place. It's truly special. And thank you all for taking the
time. Professor Allen, I thought we'd begin with you for this
conversation as we step back and reflect on this country in this
this proposal of the American idea, when we look at your
scholarship and work over the years, you have focused a lot on
words that matter, equality, liberty, how they're related to
the Declaration of Independence, when we think of words like
those words, what do they mean, especially at this time in the
context of everything that's come before, going back to the
Declaration.
Danielle Allen: Well, thank you for that question, and just
thank you to all the mayors for being here, and for all the work
that you do every day, and to the National Constitution Center
for giving us the opportunity to have this important
conversation. The words are at the heart of our nation's self
understanding, of course, but they're never just about the
abstractions. I think that's the important place to start. And
although we're celebrating the 250th and that feels like a
really long time, it's actually not that long, I like to think
about the 250 years in family time. All right, so my granddad
in the 1940s helped found one of the first NAACP chapters in
Northern Florida. That was exceptionally dangerous work. He
was taking his life into his hands to try to secure the right
to vote. Why? Because he understood empowerment to be the
bedrock for human thriving and flourishing. Now, my great
grandparents, as well, my on my mom's side, they helped fight
for women's right to vote, so you know, 1917 when Woodrow
Wilson had troops in the streets of DC suppressing suffragists,
my great granddad was showing up, marching on Boston Common,
my great grandmother ended up as president of the League of Women
Voters in Michigan in the 30s, and same thing on that side of
the family. Again, empowerment was the bedrock of human
thriving and well-being, and they were doing that work, you
know, my great grandmother, great granddad were doing that,
you know, barely halfway into the life of this nation, you
know, just a little more than 100 years, they're sort of doing
that work, and hearing I've been alive for a fifth of the life of
the nation. If you think about yourselves, I think you'll be
astonished what a percentage of the life of the nation you've
actually experienced. We are that young, but what does it
mean to think about it in terms of family time and those stories
that I'm trying to invoke the point is that empowerment is
about the fusion of liberty and equality. All right, so
empowerment, the notion that it's important for human beings,
is a recognition that we are all creatures of purpose, we're
striving every day to make tomorrow better than yesterday,
and that striving and that sort of purposiveness is also an
expression of our desire for freedom to shape our own lives
and to steer with others in shaping our collective life. We
all have that striving, that is how we are equal. So that's the
sense in which equality and liberty belong together, and the
sense in which a strong society, a good society, will protect
both freedom and equality. To protect them both is to provide
that foundation of empowerment that gives people the chance to
shape their lives and flourish.
Robert Costa: I feel like we could talk just on this for an
hour, Professor, but I would love to have others weigh in.
But Dr. Shogun, I, as a reporter, have witnessed up
close your commitment to not only ideas but to insight.
Institutions that protect and amplify ideas throughout
history. You recently spoke in one of your lectures about how
democracy is dependent on memory, and that institutions
have a role to play. We are in an important institution here at
the National Constitution Center, but beyond here,
thinking about so many institutions, why do they matter
at this crossroads for the country?
Colleen Shogan: That's a great question. And thank you to the
National Constitution Center for bringing us all together this
evening for such an important conversation. For the past 20
years, I've worked in and out of institutions that work to
preserve history and preserve our nation's cultural memory,
and I think for most of that time I spent the longest period
of time at the Library of Congress, but I think for most
of that time I viewed those institutions as we would call
them federal cultural institutions, and that would
consist of the Library of Congress, the National Archives,
the Smithsonian Institution, and I would say, in the past several
years, especially when I served as Archivist of the United
States, as I led one of those institutions, I changed my
perspective of how I thought about those institutions. They
still are their job is to preserve collectively our
nation's history and memory, and share that with Americans, share
that with scholars that are here on this panel that can then
write terrific books that we can all read and learn from, but I
also think that these institutions need to be thought
of as democratic infrastructure. They're really the scaffolding
of our democracy, we can't have a strong democracy without our
nation's memory, and I'll use the example I think of the
archives as since I knew it best, because I led it, and the
idea that the National Archives is our nation's record keeper,
and why are records, and why would records be important?
Records are important because they hold our leaders
accountable. They hold our elected leaders accountable.
They hold people like me, who were appointed and nominated and
confirmed into positions. They hold us accountable, and that's
very important in a democracy, because accountability leads to
transparency, and with those two values, with accountability and
transparency, then we start to have legitimacy in our
institutions, and we can't have a strong democratic republic in
the United States if we don't have those ingredients, that's
the essence of what it means to be self governing. Self
government isn't something you know we don't just have our
rights and become a citizen in the United States and then it's
that's it. We have responsibilities and that's
always to be reconsidering what our leaders have done in the
past, sometimes we might learn about the decisions, and we
might change our mind. We actually agree with the
decisions that they made, because we learn that those
decisions were much more complex than we actually imagined. And
other times we may not agree, but then that enables us as
citizens to think about the future of the republic and
hopefully improve, and you know, speaking about the Declaration,
since we're coming up on a big birthday here in a few days,
work to, of course, fulfill the principles in the Declaration,
which is really the quest that we're on as Americans,
Robert Costa: speaking of that quest, John, when you reflect on
America 250 so many Americans I've encountered in my
reporting, they talk about the 250 mark as being a failure or a
success, it's almost a debate about what America has become,
but in your work you have used the phrase the quote promise of
America, that this America retains a certain promise as an
idea beyond whether it's just a success or failure in the eyes
of people at this time,
Jon Meacham: That's true. I think this is not a celebratory
moment in the country. Does it feel that way? But it should be
a commemorative one, and there's a distinction to commemorate, is
particularly in religious terms. If I may, Moses said in his
final song, 'Remember the days of old, remember the years of
many generations. Ask thy father, and he will tell thee,
thy elders, and they will show thee, and arguably there's been
no command in human history as often obeyed as when Jesus of
Nazareth said, "Do this in remembrance of me. That moment
is revivified and reenacted countlessly, innumerably every
day. And so to me commemoration and memory are not passive, they
are active. They're not about nostalgia, they're about agency,
they're not about looking back at the dead or the past, but
looking ahead, looking around in that moment, but also looking
ahead, and what Danielle's family story tells us, and what
I think Colleen's great point about accountability leads to
transparency
Colleen Shogan: leads to legitimacy.
Jon Meacham: Legitimacy, the theme there is a moral one,
because the only reason accountability and records lead
to transparency. The only way transparency leads to legitimacy
is if you worry about being caught doing something you
shouldn't do. I know there are politicians in the room, so
that's a foreign concept. But work with me. So I think that
that's. I think we're in a.. I think America is a moral
undertaking, and I don't think the left should be afraid to say
that. I think that, and I don't.. I think the right, in
many ways, has tried to take that issue, take that angle of
vision in a way that divides more than unifies, and I think
broadly put, the left has been skittish about it they shouldn't
be, because what happened over there was a bunch of men who
looked a lot like me. I'm a boringly heterosexual white
southern male Episcopalian. Right, things work out for me in
this country. The point, as Janelle's story tells us, is
that it's supposed to work out for everyone. That's the
promise, and they understood their moral natures. They were
for a bunch of white guys pretty self-aware, and now to say
you're a very self-aware white man is like saying you're the
best restaurant in the hospital, right? It's not, it's not a huge
category, but they understood that they were sinful, that they
were driven by appetite and ambition, even little James
Madison understood that he got more things wrong than he got
right, and so they created a system that is commemorated and
studied so well here at the center. They created a system
that would check their appetite and ambition, because they knew
that most of their appetite and their ambition led them in the
wrong direction, because democracies are about give and
take, and it is a hell of a lot more fun to take than to give,
right? Since the second chapter of Genesis, there was a piece of
fruit, we were told not to take it, we took it, mayhem ensues,
right, but that's we are here. There's a great moral
expectation of us as Americans, and as Churchill said, you can
always count on us to do the right thing once we've exhausted
every other possibility. But they understood this, John
Witherspoon understood it, President of Princeton. We think
of that as the Vanderbilt of New Jersey, but I think the
Constitution is as theological a document in many ways as a legal
one, because it made it really hard for us to do things quickly
on the expectation that most of what we would want to do quickly
would be bad or self-serving, and that puts an enormous, to go
to Colleen's word, it puts an enormous responsibility on us.
You all are in the arena, you're doing it. I salute you. I've
never been on a ballot. I admire this. I know Bob does. We've
talked about it. You are active agents of this democracy. I
would just plead with you to remember that the incentives
can't just be for the likes and the algorithms of the afternoon.
Colleen Shogan: Well said. said. I'm Colleen Shogan. This is a
one hour special from the podcast In Pursuit at the
National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, just down the
street from Independence Hall. I joined historians Jon Meacham
and Danielle Allen, along with Robert Costa of CBS News. We're
exploring the principles at the heart of the American
experiment, and how these ideals speak to us now as we
commemorate 250 years of independence. More after the
break, the. I'm Colleen Shogan, and welcome back to this special
one hour live episode of the podcast In Pursuit. Now, let's
rejoin Daniel Allen, Jon Meacham, Robert Costa, and me as
we continue exploring the last 250 years of the American
experiment.
Robert Costa: I would argue students are also active agents
of democracy. You teach, Professor, the Declaration of
Independence, beyond, of course, the Constitution, but you've
taught it not only to Ivy League students but to working adults
who are returning to the classroom. What does the
teaching of the Declaration reveal as you go about it. What
do you learn? What, what is.. is there a certain magic to it, or
life to it, that you see in the process of sharing it?
Danielle Allen: Absolutely. I mean, well, Lincoln, I'll just
bring him in for a moment, because he said something that
always mystified me when I was young, he said that the
Declaration of Independence was the golden apple sitting in a
frame of silver, which was the Constitution, meaning the
Constitution just to hold in place the golden apple that
comes from Proverbs. In Proverbs, it's a word of a wise
man, fitly spoken is like a golden apple in a frame of
silver, and it's a beautiful image, right? You can imagine
that golden apple, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure
out what it meant. But yes, I had the incredible good fortune,
you know, more than 25 years ago. I've been thinking about
the Declaration of Independence for more than 25 years at this
point, which is crazy, but I had the good fortune, more than 25
years ago, of helping to build a course for low-income adults, a
night course I taught at the University of Chicago, and we
were going to try to deliver the same quality of education we
gave on campus to students who had maybe not finished their
high school degree, didn't have a GED, working two jobs,
juggling child care, terrible Chicago transit. Sorry, Chicago,
if you're here. Rise was tough, tough, you know. And there was
Jon Meacham: Philadelphia, is much better. There we
Danielle Allen: go. There was a puzzle of, you know, how were we
going to hit that caliber in that kind of context. We decided
we are not going to compromise on the quality of instruction,
not going to compromise on the quality of materials that we
shared, but we would compromise on the length of the reading we
assigned, and for that very transactional instrumental
reason, we decided to assign the Declaration of Independence,
because it is 1337 words, nobody would claim plain about the
reading, so we assigned it in history, in philosophy, in
literature, in writing, and it was the most explosive teaching
experience of my career. Why? Pretty simple, because all my
students were in that room because they were ready to
change their lives, and the Declaration of independence is
just the story of people who have decided to change their
lives, it's that basic, it's just a story of human agency.
When, in the course of human events, they're surveying their
circumstances, they're finding them wanting, they have a long
list of the way in which their circumstances are wanting, and
they've decided to set themselves in a new direction,
but to do that, they lay out some principles, and then they
figure out the next steps, and then they link arms, right? That
last line, where they mutually pledge their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor. So it's just this kind of
crystalline story about human agency, and it is a moral story
to pick up on John's point, because it is that capacity for
agency again, that capacity to choose a direction based on
principles that we all share. We may exercise it, some of us
better than others, worse than others, but we all have that
capacity, and it's that vision, powerful vision about what human
equality consists of, and why it's precious, and why we should
enable it, that's the golden apple, but that's what my
students gave me, and they gave it to me because they took that
declaration. They're like, my workplace has some problems, and
here's some principles I have for how my workplace should be
better, and the city of Chicago has some problems, and so here
are some things I'm going to take to my alderman or to my
mayor now, and get some things done. It activated their agency
really fast, so that's the power of the declaration. And again,
that is the golden apple.
Jon Meacham: I think it's also worth noting that Lincoln wrote
that point in private notes to himself, we believe after an
exchange with Alexander Stevens, who became the vice president of
the Confederacy, who delivered a speech that for those in my
native region who believe that the Civil War was not about
slavery might otter. Read in which he says that the
inferiority of the black race is the cornerstone on which the
Confederacy is built, a speech he delivered in Savannah, and
Stevens and Lincoln had served together in the House in the
1840s and Stevens had written him asking for a word fitly
spoken to reassure the white South that he, Lincoln, was not
going to force emancipation, and that's part of what led Lincoln
to working out this scriptural image. Lincoln also was the best
friend Thomas Jefferson ever had, right, because he elevates
the Declaration in 1859 Lincoln wrote all honor to Jefferson, to
the man who had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to insert
into a revolutionary document an abstract truth that would be a
forever reappearing stumbling block to tyranny and oppression.
That in my business, our business is what you call a hell
of a blurb.
Robert Costa: Briefly, Professor, you've spoken about
and written about how the Gettysburg Address is connected
to so much of what the founders said.
Danielle Allen: Well, this is the theme I think that we are
consistently developing here. I mean, the Gettysburg Address is,
from my point of view the most economical, most profound gloss
or interpretation of the Declaration of Independence that
anybody has ever written. So Lincoln arrives in Gettysburg,
and months before, not many months before, the field has
been just strewn with more bodies than any other battle in
the Civil War, 1000s of dead, a true human catastrophe. That
battle, and as you know, Lincoln is there to dedicate the field.
The soldiers, he says, have already dedicated it with their
lives, and what have they dedicated it to? They have
dedicated it to the proposition that all men are created equal,
all people are created equal, as we would say, and in focusing on
that, though Lincoln doesn't just name the proposition and
then invite everybody to rededicate themselves to it, to
the golden apple, he also holds it up as really a lens we can
use to consider how things are going. This question of how is
it going, the 250th and he gives us that lens in the last line of
the Gettysburg Address, when he hopes that never will perish
from this earth a government of the people, by the people, for
the people, and it's those last two phrases that are so
important. I mean, they basically sum up the core
argument of the Declaration of Independence, the idea is that
the only way to have a government for the people is if
it is actually by the people, and when you think about it that
way, that phrase itself is an invitation to consider whether
or not, at any given point in time, America actually has a
government by the people. We have all kinds of ways in which
people don't think it's currently for the people, and
you don't have to be in any party to hear that. Hear people
complaining about housing, to hear people complaining about
health care, to hear people complaining about child care, to
hear people complaining about prices. There is a very loud
story coming from the whole American people about a politics
that is right now not for the people, and what Lincoln would
have us ask, what the Declaration would have us ask
is, is that because perhaps our government is not currently by
the people, that's the question we are invited to ask, and if
you ask that question, you will observe things. For example, if
you look at how our institutions run, consider things like
gerrymandering, closed primaries, low turnout in
primaries. We've reached a point where 60 million Americans do
not have a meaningful vote in federal elections. That is a
quarter of the electorate. Do we have government by the people?
We do not have government by the people.
Unknown: The professor helped so many people by her selection of
the Declaration to learn more about it when you were the
Archivist of the United States, and we've covered you, you had
to have a strategy and approach to documents to these artifacts
about which to put on display, which to build around, which to
highlight, as we mark 250 beyond the Declaration in the
Constitution, or do any documents come to mind that we
all, as Americans, should read again? Think about
Colleen Shogan: One of the great perks of being the Archivist of
the United States is that how many people have been to the
National Archives in Washington, D.C. and seen the, okay, so you
know this beautiful chamber where. Declaration, the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights are housed the rotunda of the
National Archives. Well, my office was really just behind
that rotunda, and it opens to the public every morning at 10
o'clock, and when I would get in, I would try to get in a
little bit early, you know, around eight or 8:15 so before
my meetings would start, I would just walk over to the rotunda.
It was very quiet, but the documents were out, and I would
spend a few minutes just looking at them, because I could, and
you know, I also thought that they kind of spoke to me, and
they would, if it was going to be a particularly challenging
day, there were a lot of challenging days, it would give
me perspective about why I was doing the job, why I was there,
and I don't think those documents, even though they are
on parchment, even though they are on paper and static in that
sense, these are dynamic documents, they are not
documents that we should look at that, that are frozen in a
moment in time, so at one of those points when I was in the
rotunda thinking about it, and also thinking forward to 2026
this was 2023 at the time, I thought this is terrific that we
have these three founding documents that a million
Americans every year come to look at them and make this
almost like it's a religious thing, it's a pilgrimage, right,
for Americans, it's American civil religion to come and see
these documents in person, you can see them online, you can,
they're very good, you know, pictures online, but people want
to actually experience being in front of them, but I thought,
you know, it's 250 years and the Declaration and these principles
once again are organic. How else can we continue to tell this
story of the American founding? What else can we do? So I made
the decision early on that we would put the Emancipation
Proclamation inside the rotunda, and that would become another
document that would be added, and why the Emancipation
Proclamation. There could have been other documents. One of the
main reasons was that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, and for the reasons that Danielle talked
about, I wanted Lincoln to be in the rotunda because Lincoln is
responsible for the refounding of the republic. If we had the
founders portrayed in the rotunda, what about the
refounding of the republic? So the Emancipation Proclamation
does not solve the problem of equal rights or even slavery at
that, at that point in time, but it's the beginning, it's the
beginning of the fulfillment of that promise. And then there was
another corner in the rotunda that I had a little bit of room
and for balance reasons, and I thought, what other document
could be put permanently inside the rotunda for 2026 that would
also inspire Americans to understand that the Declaration
is a continuation, it's a continuing promise, and so I
settled on the 19th Amendment, because the 19th Amendment,
which of course removes restrictions for voting on the
basis of sex, so enables women to vote in the United States.
The 19th amendment is the largest single enfranchisement
in American history. It is the one moment in time when we give
full citizenship to more Americans than any other one
moment in time, and let's face it, I mean, more than 50% of
Americans are women, and there were no women in the rotunda.
There were no women represented in the rotunda. How could I
bring that representation and that fulfillment of that promise
into the rotunda? And the answer was, was through the 19th
amendment, and I have to say that I left the archives in 2025
but before I left, I had raised the money for the cases.
All the plans were in place, signed the contracts for the
construction of those cases, and I went back to the National
Archives a few months ago, at the end of March, the end of
Women's History Month, and I was amongst the first people to see
those documents installed in those cases, so if you go to the
archives, you're going to see not just our founding documents,
but those other documents that you know help fulfill that
promise. It's not the end of the story, but it tells us a little
bit more of a complete story of America,
Unknown: And John, just building off of that for a moment. We
have done a lot of talk, understandably, at this time
about the founders, but we do keep coming back to Lincoln, and
what are the lessons of Lincoln? For America, 250
That imperfect people can leave us a more perfect union, which I
think is incredibly empowering, because I don't know about
y'all, but I'm kind of imperfect, you know. We haven't
been invaded by aliens, right? I mean, the divisions we've chosen
to be this divided, and one of the things that I argued to
Colleen when she was archivist, the archivist, to put in the
rotunda, and she did not, and I want you all maybe to help me
now, but and I don't want to overly, I know this is a little
Scott, what am I? I'm the sesquicent. Okay, yeah, I can't
say this word, so this is kind of in character. It's very
dorky, but I want to quote a political philosopher named John
Belushi, who said in Animal House, we did not give up when
the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, right? We can't give up here.
And so remember that letter I sent you. Yeah, I do. I wanted
the script from Animal House. She said she was very unkind,
actually. If Nicholas Cage had wanted to do it, they would have
been all over. You know, the
Colleen Shogan: Movies are at the Library of Congress, John.
Oh, the archives.
Unknown: See that's. see, you were being all persnickety about
that fake news. Anyway, we come back again and again to this
ongoing journey, and at the risk of being the skunk at the at the
250th this country's 60 years old, right? It's 1965 is when we
became a multiethnic, multiracial democracy, right? It
is, it just, I mean, it just is, and as, as marvelous as Abraham
Lincoln is, and I've killed a lot of trees writing about him.
He was not until the very end, and it's a very positive view,
was he an egalitarian? You could be anti truly dork for a second,
you could be in the 19th century anti-slavery without being an
abolitionist, and you could be an abolitionist without being an
egalitarian, and there were, for instance, William Lloyd Garrison
was not an egalitarian, right? He burns the Constitution at a
picnic, saying it's a covenant with death and an agreement with
hell. Wendell Phillips, the great abolitionist, you know,
called the Constitution a pro-slavery document. You know
who disagreed was Frederick Douglass, who I think is the
most important American who requires a monument in
Washington. If we can figure out a way to do it, imagine what it
took for a black man in the middle of the 19th century, born
into enslavement, escapes from Maryland, and says, I, for one,
do not despair of the republic, the fiat of the Almighty, let
there be light, has not yet spent its force. Why on earth
did he not despair of the republic? I would have. He
didn't. He called the Declaration the ring bolt of the
nation's destiny, and he's the one who coined the phrase that
Dr. King would use in the March on Washington sermon that it was
a promissory note. Imagine the act of faith that takes.
Colleen Shogan: I'm Colleen Shogan from the podcast In
Pursuit. More after the break, I Colleen Shogan. Welcome back to
this special one hour live episode of the podcast In
Pursuit. Now let's rejoin Daniel Allen, Jon Meacham, Robert
Costa, and me as we continue exploring the last 250 years of
the American experiment.
Danielle Allen: I take us back for a moment to your eloquent
and powerful words about Frederick Douglass, which I
would second, and you asked the question, you said, "How could
he not despair? And so I want to speak to that question out of
the story of my grandfather. My grandfather helped found one of
the first NAACP chapters in northern Florida, outside of
Jacksonville, tough place in the 1940s Basically,
Unknown: Georgia.
Danielle Allen: It was southern Georgia, exactly. Basically the
same, same kind of thing. And so in my family, the sort of
lessons that that come from that time are that again the. Drive
that humans have to secure their own agency is so powerful, so
important, so beautiful, so necessary of protection that
there is never a question of whether protection will be
achieved. Okay, it's never a weather question, it's only a
how question, because it's necessary. Failure is not an
option, so despair doesn't appear, and what you do if
you're oriented towards the how question, that is a powerful
force for channeling energy. So I share that, just because often
we people do say, is this democracy going to survive, is
it all going to end, and it's just the wrong question. It's
the wrong question. It is the question of despair when people
ask that question. The right question is free self-government
for free and equal citizens is necessary for human flourishing.
So, the only question is, how do we get it?
Unknown: Can I ask, is the do you think that having a
compelling answer to why is critical to the how,
Danielle Allen: Which, what, which why, and all that?
Unknown: Why so, so much of our current crisis, but also the
debate over who's included in the all men is about power, and
there is a school of thought that if someone else is
enfranchised, it isn't additive, it's subtractive, that is my
power being taken away, all right. And so there has to be a
compelling, seems to me positive case for why everyone is
included in that promise.
Danielle Allen: Okay, now that's interesting. This is gonna get
too, too dorky to me. You just sketched.
Unknown: They came, and we're here.
Danielle Allen: They were fully on warning. Okay, to me, you
just sketched out a how question. So, yes, part of the
how you protect freedom is you have to have the account of why
it matters, why it's grounded in this commitment to universal
human equality, equal moral worth. So, I mean, the why is a
motivator in the first place, but you don't even need it,
because we all just feel the spirit of freedom, the desire
not to be dominated, not to be oppressed. So, you don't need
the explanation to make the project exist. You need the
explanation to build the community of people who are
pursuing the project.
Jon Meacham: What I would argue is that the people on the other
side do need the why, the people who are pushing back, the people
who want to keep the power,
Danielle Allen: and I mean that actually takes us quite deep
into the mistakes that were made at the founding and the ongoing
work that we are working on, so let me be very precise about
that, because it is a conversation about power, and to
explicate this, you'll forgive me, I have to recite the second
sentence of the Declaration, which we all know, but listen
really closely. Okay? Ready. We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are
endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among
people, driving their just powers from the consent of the
governed. That whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter
or to abolish it and institute new government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their
safety and happiness. Now, be honest, did you remember it was
that long? That's the whole sentence. Okay, and do when you
read it, some versions have a period after pursuit of
happiness. It's a typo, got in there by mistake. Ignore it.
Read the whole sentence. Why? Because it ends on that last
clause about the purpose of citizenship. The job is to lay
the foundation on principle and organize the powers of
government in such form as shall seem most likely to affect our
safety and happiness. John Adams, alongside Jefferson, was
one of the key drafters of the Declaration. He never held
people in bondage. He always thought enslavement was wrong.
The text would. Used very fast in Massachusetts to abolish
enslavement, and at the time people would write to him,
knowing some of those commitments, and say, what about
women, where do they fit in? What about free blacks, where do
they fit in? What about working people without property, where
do they fit in? He gave roughly the same kind of answer to
everybody, he said that principles part, that's for
everybody. Everybody does have rights that we have to protect,
but with regard to a question of how we're going to organize the
powers of government. In a letter to Abigail, for example,
he said, for that we will retain our masculine system. Okay.
okay, so they started with this idea that you could, in fact,
intend to protect the rights of all while reserving power only
to some, and Abigail said
well, you know, husbands have a history of tyranny, will maybe
give you a try one more time here, but we women are not going
to be bound by laws in which we have no voice or representation,
and we may have to foment a rebellion for that voice and
representation. In other words, she was saying you can't
actually protect the rights of all if you give power only to
some, and so that has been the project for 250 years. Is how do
we learn to share power? And so you're right, people need to
actually understand that they have to share power, and that
was where King Martin Luther King Jr. took the argument at
the end of his life, one of the last things he wrote, his
Testament of Hope essay, he said the goal is a full sharing of
power and responsibility, and that is for sure what we are
still working on.
Robert Costa: So powerful, I don't know about you, but I wish
I could take the professor's class. I would worry about my
grade, but I wish I could be in that class. John, looking at
Jefferson, we had the professor mentioned Jefferson as a
collaborator as well as author when it comes to the
Declaration. How do we understand Jefferson in terms of
the Declaration, as well as those around him who did have
input and real influence?
Jon Meacham: It was the hell it was. I know you all are on a lot
of committees. It was a hell of a subcommittee. It was the
greatest subcommittee in history, right? It was Adams,
Sherman, Livingston, Franklin, and Jefferson, you know, I would
give them the zoning problems in the event that that's on your
minds. Look, Jefferson wrote the sentence that I think Danielle
is the only person I've ever met who knows the whole thing, and I
believe it is the sentence that is arguably the most important
sentence originally rendered in English, Hebrew, and in Greek
sentences have been of equal importance. That may sound
hyperbolic to some of you. It's a little like the story about
the Texas school board candidate who was against teaching Spanish
in the public schools, and said on the stump one day, 'If
English was good enough for our Lord Jesus Christ, it's good
enough for Texas. Jefferson embodies our aspirations and our
failings. He did not live up, live out the principles he
articulated, but as our colleague and friend Annette
Gordon Reed says, How much do you want from one person? You
know, it's a very cold-eyed and I think generous-spirited view
of Jefferson. I think without that particular document, and I
know this, John Adams, it drove him crazy, you know, like all
lawyers, he thought that the reorganization of the state
governments was the real day for fireworks, and he, Adams, very
unhappy, as he put it, Jefferson ran away with all the glory of
the declaration, and then Jefferson goes and steps on his
headline, and they die on the same day. You know, poor Adams
didn't get his own obedient, you know, but I think without the
poetry of it, I think the prose would be even harder, and it's
interesting that of the Constitution, really the
original Constitution, really the most eloquent parts, the
only eloquent part, really right, except for the First
Amendment, which was later, is the preamble, and if you think
of the Declaration. Operation as our mission statement, and the
Constitution as our user's guide, which is not a bad way to
think about it. I think Jefferson gave us a North Star
that shines pretty bright
Robert Costa: In the final few minutes here, one by one. If you
could just offer a few thoughts to those people who are about to
join this nation. july 4 is such a period of naturalization and
people becoming American citizens. I was at Mount Vernon
the other day, down in Northern Virginia, and I ran into a woman
who became an American citizen from, moved here from the
Philippines in 1980 I said, does George Washington matter to the
Filipino American community? She said, of course, he's on the
test. And you see this love of the country from those who
encounter it for the first time. What would you tell someone
who's about to become an American citizen about the
American idea this july 4.
Danielle Allen: Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is
simply welcome, and I would be grateful to them, and I would
want to express my gratitude to them for proving a truth, which
is that these core propositions, all people are created equal,
that government is for the people when it is by the people,
are indeed an electric cord uniting all Americans and also
all humans who respond to them, because it's their desire to
join us is proof of the power of the propositions, so I say thank
you to them, because we need that proof, that affirmation
that we do have something to be proud of here, all the
difficulties, all the troubles, the histories of oppression, the
histories of domination, those are all true. And at the same
time, we can and should be proud to be a free society, committed,
dedicated to that proposition that all people are created
equal. So, again, I would say thank you to them for affirming
the value of what we have.
Colleen Shogan: I grew up next to Hungarian immigrants in my
neighborhood in Pittsburgh who escaped the communist regime in
the 1950s and somehow found their way next to my parents,
and I will tell you that growing up next to them was one of the
most fortuitous and fortunate, really fortunate things in my
life, because they instilled even in me the gratitude that
they had for this country, explained what they had actually
escaped, and all the freedoms that they had: speech, their
freedom to exercise religion as they wanted to, freedom of
movement, freedom of self-determination to decide
what professions they would pursue, and it was reiterated to
me all the time, and I'm so thankful that I had that
opportunity to do that when I was the archivist. I think I
presided over five naturalization ceremonies right
there in the rotunda, and you know, a common theme was these
truths are self-evident, but they're not self-executing, and,
and that comes from President Obama's second inaugural. He had
that line in his second inaugural, and how true that is.
I mean, they're self-evident, because rationally we can all
come to this conclusion, if we think about it. These truths are
self-evident, but that's not enough. It's not enough for us
just to be able to agree, when we think about it in theory and
in practice, that these are the rights that we're endowed, that
come to us by nature's God or the laws of nature, both are
covered in the Declaration, but we have to do something about
them to protect them, and that's the whole second part of the
sentence. It doesn't just end at the self-evident, that along
with those privileges and that fulfillment of rights also comes
responsibility, do I
Jon Meacham: I think I'd say, please be patient. God isn't
finished with us yet, and we can't be finished with
ourselves. There's a difference between nationalism and
patriotism. We are in a nationalistic season. There are
people who are more loyal to their own kind, and that's
nationalism. Patriotism, more properly, is allegiance to a
creed, to words, and anyone who ascribes to the creed is a fully
engaged, active and sacred person before the bar of history
and the bar of God and the bar of the law and I think it is an
immense act of faith for someone to come here, and we have done
some of the most amazing things in the history of the human
race, and we have done some of the worst, and guess what,
that's because we're human beings, and we have good days,
and we have bad days, and the whole point of history is to
just try to get to 51% good days, and that's an hourly
struggle. I know it is for me in my own life, and so why would it
be any different in a democracy, which is the fullest expression
of all of us. So I echo, I would say, welcome, and help make us
better.
Colleen Shogan: To read essays by Daniel Allen, John Meacham,
and Robert Costa, and to enjoy other great essays and podcasts,
head to inpursuit.org Special thanks to Julie Silverbrook,
Kevin Altman, and Bill Pollock at the National Constitution
Center. In Pursuit with Colleen Chogen is a podcast by More
Perfect. Please rate and review the show on your favorite
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