All too often, there is an unfortunate tendency, when discussing the Declaration, to make these self-evident truths and first principles of government obscure. Intellectuals want you to believe that our founding principles are matters of esoteric philosophy or sophisticated debate. Even those who support them too often talk about them as if they were academic playthings. They overcomplicate them, take the spirit out of them, and discuss them in a manner that puts us to sleep…
I still believe now, as I did then, that the Declaration of 1776 provides us with the principles to guide us as citizens of our great Republic. Even in this time of questioning and criticism of our founding, we should not forget that the Declaration established the principles that produced – despite all of our imperfections, miscues, and tragic mistakes – the freest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in the history of the world. It provided the moral principles by which Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. could criticize the institutions of slavery and segregation. The Declaration is, in fact, along with the Gospels, one of the greatest antislavery documents in the history of Western civilization. It did not establish a form of government – that was the job of the Constitution that followed – but it stated the purpose of government. The Declaration made clear in clear prose that the purpose of government is to protect our God-given inalienable rights, rights that all individuals equally possess. As Abraham Lincoln declared in 1858, in the midst of his great debate with Stephen Douglas, “drop every paltry insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity – the Declaration of American Independence.”
The ideas of the Declaration were so powerful that our nation could not coexist with the contradiction created by the great evil of slavery. Those principles were so powerful that hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and died in the Civil War to make men free. Those ideas have been so powerful that they convinced our nation to finally end segregation. They continue to be so powerful today that they have inspired people throughout the world to throw off the shackles of their oppressors.
And, it all began with our Founders declaring in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence that: “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.” We should also not forget the important sentence that follows: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The principle of consent follows from the principle of equality. We the people can never legitimately consent to the violation of our God-given equality.
However, when I encounter the Declaration of Independence anew today, I am most struck by the final sentence. It can be easy to forget, 250 years later, the courage it took for those 56 men to sign the Declaration. Arguably, these men committed treason against the King, risking death at the hands of an empire far mightier than the newborn United States. They thus concluded with the memorable final sentence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.” I will say that again: “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
…Nothing in the Declaration of Independence, I now realize, matters without that final sentence. Without that sentence, the rest of the Declaration is but mere words on parchment paper. Nice words, but, nonetheless, just words. What changed the world was not the words, but the commitment and spirit of the people who were willing to labor, sacrifice, and even give their lives—what Lincoln at Gettysburg called “the last full measure of devotion”—for the Declaration’s principles.
It is that devotion to which we owe our rich inheritance. It was that devotion that sustained the Founding Fathers and the Continental Army as they fought and won the Revolutionary War, braved the winter at Valley Forge, crossed the Delaware, and defeated an army many times their number and firepower to win their freedom. It was that devotion that Nathan Hale expressed when, before being executed by the British, he reportedly stated: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for this country.” It was that devotion that Patrick Henry invoked when he stood before the Virginia Convention and asked, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
…At this point, I asked myself a simple question: what are your principles worth to you? The answer I gave then is the same I would give today. It is worth life itself?
What are those principles? They are the same principles in the Declaration. They were bequeathed to me by my grandparents and reinforced by my nuns and my faith. In God’s eyes we are equal. We are all equally created in the image and likeness of God. We are all endowed with natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Our rights and our dignity are inherent. They do not come from others and that they do not come from the Government. And, our Government derives its legitimacy and authority from our consent; we do not get ours from it.
The primacy of our rights in relation to our government is crucial in reconciling the immortal words of the Declaration with our Constitution and our history. None of our rights come from the government; all of the government’s authority comes from our consent. And, the structure and limited role of government is to assure that it does not exceed the authority to which we have consented or intrude on our natural rights. The Constitution is the means of government; it is the Declaration that announces the ends of government. The Constitution achieves this purpose by protecting our natural rights and liberties from concentrated power and excessive democracy. Our Constitution creates a separation of powers and federalism – truly for the first time in modern history – to prevent the government from becoming so strong that it threatens our natural rights. Federalist No. 10 proposed the idea that the great threat to our rights comes from majority faction. Human history teaches us, alas, that numerical majorities frequently seek to control government, and use the state to violate the rights of the minority. Because man is fallen and the desire for power was, as James Madison described it, “sown in the nature of man,” government had to be limited. For, as Madison said, “if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” But men are not angels. The slaveholders used the power of government to deny the fundamental natural rights of the slaves; the segregationists used the state to oppress the freed men and women – including my ancestors.
As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the 28th President, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism. Since Wilson’s presidency, progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever. Progressivism was not native to America. Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it from Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired. Progressives like Wilson argued that America needed to leave behind the principles of the Founding and catch up with the “more advanced and sophisticated people of Europe.”
…Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement—with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War—to openly oppose the principles of the Declaration. Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident. To Wilson, the inalienable rights of the individual were “a lot of nonsense.” Wilson redefined “liberty” not as a natural right antecedent to the government, but as “the right of those who are governed to adjust government to their own needs and interests.” In other words, liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God, but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government. The government, as Wilson reconceived of it, would be “beneficent and indispensable.” Progressives such as John Dewey attacked the Framers for believing that “their ideas [were] immutable truth good at all times and places,” when instead they were “historically conditioned, and relevant only to their own time.” Now, Dewey and the progressives argued, those ideas were to be repealed.
…We can argue over whether you believe in immutable, absolute natural rights or the Wilsonian idea of ever-progressing history. Indeed, your School of Civic Leadership was created to host such arguments. But let me ask you to consider the consequences. European thinkers have long criticized America for remaining trapped in a Lockean world, with its weak decentralized government and strong individual rights. They say our 18th century Declaration has prevented us from progressing to higher forms of government. Why has America never had a socialist party, one German sociologist famously asked. But we were fortunate not to trade our Lockean bounds for the supposedly enlightened world of Hegel, Marx, and their followers. Fascism – which, after all, was a national socialism – triggered wars in Europe and Asia that killed tens of millions...
None of this, of course, was an improvement on the principles of the Declaration. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is largely about how America owed its superiority over Europe to its conscious decision to reject central planning and administrative rule root and branch. Progressivism, in other words, is retrogressive. As Calvin Coolidge said on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration,
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.
When Abraham Lincoln addressed the assembled crowd at Gettysburg, they had gathered to memorialize the past. But Lincoln’s address urged them to not do so with complacency. Instead, Lincoln said, they would look to the past as inspiration to take them to greater heights in the future. “It is rather for us,” Lincoln said,
To be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
As we are gathered to celebrate this 250th anniversary of the Declaration, it may be tempting to do so as if we are passive spectators. It may be tempting to get out our tea and crumpets, treat the Declaration like a shiny object or a keepsake, and listen to the sound of our own voices. We could get into debates over whose conception of the Founding is better, over how we were so much better than the Founders, over what we would do differently. We could be careful to not do anything that exposes us to criticism, costs us friends, or hurts our career prospects.
…These are the choices that will confront you, and you must decide whether to respond with timidity or with courage, as the signers of the Declaration did. It will, of course, not be easy. It never is. But, if, like me, you need a greater source of strength than yourselves, you will need to rely on your faith to guide and sustain you through it. You will disappoint people you thought were friends and endure personal attacks as well as attacks on those you care about.
But, if you stand, you will find that courage, like cowardice, can be habit forming – a part of your life and who you are. And, I may dare say, it is liberating. You will also be a living example for others to emulate. So by all means, celebrate the Declaration of Independence. It is the most important act in American history, the foundation of our Constitution and, as Lincoln said, “the sheet anchor” of our republic. But, I implore you to celebrate it by standing up for it, by defending it, and by recommitting yourselves to living up to its ideals. Channel the courage of the men who faced down a king and signed it and, or of a President who led the nation in a Civil War rather than permit this house to be divided by the great contradiction of slavery. Take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion.
And, “…with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence…[let us] mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Thank you, and may God continue to bless this great nation.”
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Selections from speech given April 15, 2026, at the University of Texas at Austin
