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It's a beauty. And here to help tell the story is Coolidge interpreter and impressionist Tracy Messer. Let's get into the story. Today, in America, there are many who seem to be ready to cast aside the foundations and founding document of the nation or certainly diminish its importance. This desire often seems to be rooted in the claim that the men behind the creation of the nation had personal flaws so great that the product of their work must be condemned as unredeemable. Therefore, progress can only be made if and when we unmoore from our founding ideals. As we close in on the 250th birthday of America in 2026, it's worth revisiting President Calvin Coolidge's defense of the Declaration of Independence and the men who wrote it on America's 150th birthday.
Coolidge, who was our 30th president, speaking in Philadelphia on the 5th of July, 1926, stated, We live in an age of science, a end of abundant accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. Things of the Spirit come first.
Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. Coolidge understood our founders being mortal men were by nature imperfect. However, the Declaration's stated principles were the closest thing to a perfect statement on human freedom that was, and could, ever be written. Coolidge believed, as with all grand plans and promises, the mission statement comes first. How could we live up to great principles without defining first what they indeed are? Until the ideas developed and the plan made, there can be no action. July 4th, 1776, is the day our Founding Fathers pledged their lives in writing to the mission statement of America.
They wrote it down for all to see. Our founders, with no prior precedent in history, boldly proclaimed a new nation formed on self-evident truths that until that time no nation had ever dared declare. Coolidge continued, It was not because the Constitution was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4th, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Coolidge, a lover and student of history, also understood that while the Enlightenment era and its supporting philosophies influenced our Founding Fathers, there were things uniquely revolutionary in our beginnings, things not found in any other charters of freedom that had come before.
We could search these charters in vain for an assertion of the doctrine of equality. The principle had not before appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It was profoundly revolutionary. These great truths were in the air that our people breathe. Whatever else may be said of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American. It's important to keep in mind that at the time of Coolidge's remarks, it had only been 61 years since the Civil War had ended.
Many of those who remembered President Lincoln's defense of the Declaration were alive when Coolidge delivered his prescient defense of it. Much as Lincoln had warned about the dire consequences of abandoning the principles of the Declaration, Coolidge, too, sounds the alarm. It is a declaration not of material, but of spiritual conceptions.
Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, rights of man, bless the faith of the American people, these religious convictions is to endure, principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon what is to be done. We neglect and abandon the cause.
We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. Of course, governments can help to sustain ideals, but their source is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities.
There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws that creates the character of a nation. With these words, Coolidge echoed the sentiments of Benjamin Franklin, who had warned, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need for masters. As Coolidge continued, he also expresses his concerns about the tendencies of people to assume that their current time is the wisest time. His reasoning? The Declaration was a statement of fundamental truths. About the Declaration, there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts, new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.
But, that reasoning cannot be applied to this great chatter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is the end of the world. 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 rules. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward, towards the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.
Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those of the revolutionary fathers. With these words, Coolidge makes clear, if America is to endure, the importance of July 4th must endure. Independence Day is not foremost about the men who declared our independence, but about the ideals and principles they had the courage to declare. July 4th, 1776 is the moment when imperfect men had the courage to declare perfect ideals.
Such an astounding occurrence had not happened before or since. 74 years to the day before President Coolidge's remarks, Frederick Douglass on July 5th, 1852 proclaimed, I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny. So indeed I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles. Be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. As with our founders, Douglass and Lincoln, President Coolidge well understood that the United States could only make progress by keeping faith with our declaration.
The mission statement comes first. It remains the responsibility of all Americans who wish to see our nation united and making continued progress on our 250th birthday to remain true to our ring bolt and remember that great truths are final, not flexible. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Tracy Messer for performing the Coolidge speech. And also a special thanks to Vince Benedetto for penning this piece for Newsweek. I did it with him.
We co-wrote it. The story of Calvin Coolidge's 4th of July speech here on Our American Stories. Tired of boring lunches? Picture this. You're at Chipotle ordering the same old burrito bowl.
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