America The Story of Us - Declaration of independence

♪ ♪ The Declaration of Independence, for me, is one of the best pieces of writing I've ever seen. It's a revolutionary document for a revolutionary statement. You cannot help but be stirred when you read those words. Thomas Jefferson's writing is absolutely magnificent. When he wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." That was the first time anybody had bothered to write that down. And then you turn the clock back and think of when he was writing. How young he was. What a statement it was given the history of the world at that point. And you feel the excitement of being on the cusp of something so profound that it's hard to put it into words. If you review our Declaration of Independence as those beautiful words about all men are created equal and governments are formed among men to represent the people is a good statement of what we were all about. And that's the only thing people remember about the Declaration of Independence. That it was about all men are created equal. But it's really a... roughly a 28 count indictment against King George and therefore because of the languish the British crown treated us, we now declare that we are a free country and we want to let you know why now. We're gonna have a war. We're gonna have a war. ♪ ♪ (fast, upbeat) In 1776, you have the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia debating a unified position for the colonies with respect to the hostilities that have already broken out. And the fundamental issue between them is, are they fighting for their rights as Englishmen... within the British Empire or are they going to fight for independence? And they're seriously divided. People who are perfectly willing to resist the tyranny of the British government are not necessarily ready to strike for independence. But there's a groundswell in favor of it, I think in large measure because they recognize that having provoked the lion this far there's no going back. All of a sudden you have this group of people who are going, "No, we're not part of some great chain of being with the king at the top of it. We are free people. We can vote for who we want to have in charge. And we're not going to tolerate you telling us that we have some class status we have to be trapped in." It says, you know, we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. Meaning that Parliament in London, the king himself, the courts cannot interfere and take away your rights because the state can't take power from us. Even to this day it's probably the most central difference between America and every other country in the world. ♪ ♪ (slow) It goes well beyond what was needed in order to declare independence. It establishes a philosophical basis for a civil democracy in which all persons are guaranteed rights by virtue of their personhood. This political genius not just in Jefferson but in Adams of all the other people who collected here, they saw a new time for humankind which is that we can be free and that we can make decisions for ourselves.