Here is the First part of the entire speech, minus the introduction.
I am pleased to join you all today. I hope that my talk today will help in some small way to inaugurate another great initiative, the State of Texas’s plan to restore the teaching of civics and western civilization to a central place in its flagship university. And, I am grateful and honored to have been invited by Justin Dyer, the dean of the new School of Civic Leadership. I am also grateful for the assistance of my former law clerk Professor John Yoo who has spent the last three decades at Berkeley law school but is joining Justin Dyer and his team. The school’s stated mission is to help students “encounter the distinct inheritance of Western civilization and the American constitutional tradition as part of a larger quest for wisdom about how to live and how to lead.”
Your plans could not come at a more important moment for our nation, when, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the very values announced in it have fallen out of favor. It is my sincere hope that your work to revitalize the teaching and research of western civilization and the American constitutional tradition will lead the way in the reform of our nation’s colleges and universities. And, I hope that your example will help to rejuvenate our fellow citizens’ commitment to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
I seem to always enjoy my travels to this amazing state. My wife, Virginia, and I have many wonderful friends and acquaintances here. And, it is so special to have our dear friends, Harlan and Kathy Crow join us today. One of the features of this state that stands out is the way that Texans talk about it. What comes through is the sustained and sustaining affection that they have for their home state. That reverential feeling for and attachment to Texas is to be respected, admired, and, if possible, emulated. This affection is similar to the attachment that I grew to have for my home state of Georgia and certainly for our country, despite the indelible mark of segregation and its companion evils. I was proud to say that I was American by birth and Georgian by the grace of God. And, it was not uncommon to hear others proclaim their allegiance to “God and country” or, as Superman was wont to say, “Truth, justice, and the American way.”
At our grammar school, St. Benedict’s, we started each school day by lining up two by two and class by class in the school yard to watch the raising of the American flag and to say the pledge of allegiance before silently marching to our respective classrooms. Even as so much of our God-given and Constitutional rights were denied us, we still faithfully said the pledge of allegiance, memorized the preamble to our Constitution, and yearned for the fulfillment of its promised ideals.
Sadly, these sentiments are not as widely shared among our fellow citizens today. And, they certainly do not seem to have that sustaining strength that they had back then. In fact, all too often the sentiments tend toward cynicism, rejection, hostility, and animus toward our country and its ideals. With the foregoing in mind, I would like to begin by addressing my first encounter with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is perhaps not what you would immediately think.
The second paragraph of the Declaration proclaims: “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….” Throughout my youth, these truths were articles of faith that were impervious to bigotry or discrimination. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “self-evident” as “obviously true, and requiring no proof, argument or explanation.” Whether they had a divine source, or a worldly one, they were never questioned. They were the Holy Grail, the North Star, the rock – immovable and unquestioned.
Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that reeked of bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had very little or no formal education, that “in God’s eyes and under our Constitution we are equal.” This was also the case with my nuns, most of whom were Irish immigrants. At home, at school, and at Church, we were taught that we are inherently equal; that equality came from God; and that it could not be diminished by man. We were made in the image and likeness of God. That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter. Others, with power and animus, could treat us as unequal but they lacked the divine power to make us so.
Somehow, without formal education, the older people knew that these Godgiven or natural rights preceded and transcended governmental power or authority. When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment, it was obvious that you did not get your rights or your dignity from those governments, but from God. Though not a literate man, my grandfather often spoke of our rights and obligations coming from God, not from the architects of segregation and discrimination. Men were not angels. They were subject to the constraints of antecedent rights. And, we were not subject to them even as we were subjected to their whims. We knew that life, liberty, and property were sacrosanct. These truths were self-evident to the adults in our lives and were taught to us as undeniable truths. Those around us could endure with dignity the insults of segregation because they knew that, in God’s eyes, they were equal.
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.
But the principles of the Declaration of Independence, as I encountered them, are a way of life. They are not an abstract theory that you learn in college or law school but the basic premises of our Constitution and government that you learn from the people all around you. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited early America from France, he was struck that there was “no country in the civilized world where they are less occupied with philosophy than the United States.” But there was likewise no country where the principles of the Declaration were more deeply ingrained or more fiercely defended than those same United States. That is the sense in which I knew the principles of the Declaration in my childhood; that is the only sense in which those principles can sustain our country; and that is the sense in which I will speak to you about those principles today.
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 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 Godgiven 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.”
Recently, I came across a definition of “courage” that is attributed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” In essence, the signers of the Declaration were saying that they were willing to die for the principles they were asserting, the supreme act of courage.
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.”
That devotion has driven the great achievements and heroism of Americans in the 250 years since. Think of the frontiersmen who settled the west. Think of the families who built little towns on the prairies. Think of the women who raised their boys to love God and country and sent them off to war. Think of the soldiers on the battlefields of the Civil War, who sang together “as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” Think of the innovators and laborers and engineers who, Tocqueville observed, were so infused with patriotism that they felt every triumph for their country as a triumph in their personal lives. Think of how that devotion carried us from Independence Hall to the Alamo to Flanders Field and the beaches of Normandy. Think of the memorable scene in Band of Brothers when the American soldiers arrived at the concentration camp, saw the suffering, emaciated, desperate prisoners, unlocked the gates, and gave them food and blankets and warm embraces. The soldiers looked around and knew in their hearts, as the episode is titled, “why we fight.” Think of the passengers of Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/ or the young men and women whom we send into harm’s way, even as we sit here today.
Think of my grandparents who heroically, quietly, without fanfare sat my brother and me down at the kitchen table in August of 1955, and committed the rest of their lives to us so that we would have a chance. They said: “We didn’t have no education and no chance but you boys are going to have a chance. But, we goin’ to devote the rest of our lives to you boys.” It was their devotion, their love, their dedication to raising us right that has made the difference -- not the words -- though the words expressed as best they could what they intended to do.
Similarly, it is the devotion expressed in the final sentence of the Declaration, the willingness to do anything for our principles that has, throughout American history, been most indispensable.
It is that devotion that we are missing today, and that we must find in our hearts if this nation is to endure.
I arrived in Washington, D.C., 47 years ago. I arrived as a staffer for Senator Jack Danforth in 1979, telling myself that the job on Capitol Hill would be a short stop on my way home to Savannah. I then joined the executive branch during the Reagan Administration, served in two federal agencies for nearly a decade, served as a judge on a federal court of appeals, and have, for the past 34 years, served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
Since the day that I arrived in Washington, there was never a shortage of people espousing noble purposes. All around me, there have always been people, full of promises, claiming a commitment to some righteous cause—to traditional morality, to national defense, to free enterprise, to religious piety, or to the original meaning of the Constitution. These people can be just as high-minded as the men who signed the Declaration. They can mouth the words of the Declaration and parrot its principles. They can write essays and talk at conferences about the Declaration with the best of them. All too often, however, this was but lip service camouflaged, by grand theories in the tall grass of big words and eloquent phrases.
What seemed to be lacking, however, was the devotion. People come to Washington and you learn who they really are. To paraphrase something I recently read, combat strips us down to our essentials. But once in the spotlight, in that combat, many people fall prey to the lures that are set up to turn them away from their previously untested principles. They become controlled by criticism, so fearful of negative attention that they find ways to avoid doing the right thing. Or, they fall prey to the enchanting siren songs of flattery, and become so bewitched by praise that they will desperately seek to conform accordingly. They are enticed by access to things that were previously unavailable to them. They get so swept up in the euphoria of acclamation and acceptance that they put aside their convictions. They water down their message, negotiate against themselves, vote against their principles, and hide in the tall grass. They recast themselves as institutionalists, pragmatists, or thoughtful moderates, all as a way of justifying their failures to themselves, their consciences and their country.
It did not take me long in Washington to stop wondering why the Supreme Court took sixty years to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that endorsed government racial segregation and validated the Jim Crow South that I grew up in. It could not have taken my Court sixty years to know that Plessy was a hideous wrong and that racial segregation was grossly incompatible with our colorblind Constitution. The Justices must have known it all along. The right thing to do, as Justice Harlan spelled out his lone dissent at the time, was obvious, as it so often is. What stood in the way was cowardice. The Justices were afraid of the societal consequences. They were afraid of coming under political fire. They were afraid of losing their social standing. They were afraid of bad press. They were afraid that, if they began to enforce a colorblind Constitution, they would have to address interracial marriage next. So, for sixty disgraceful years, they made American children like me grow up in a racial caste system because it was easier to do nothing than to do the right thing.
When Americans look to Washington and wonder why it so often disappoints, it is not because there are too few people who know what is right. It is not because we lack the intellect, or the capacity, or the talent. It is instead because there are too few people who are willing to do what it takes to do the right thing—to sacrifice the popularity, flattery, comfort, and security that are the costs of principle. It is because too few of us reflect on and reflect the courage and commitment of that final sentence of the Declaration. And, so many seem to have forgotten what others have sacrificed so that this nation exists and endures.
I will state this more poignantly, do any of us have what it took our young soldiers to storm Normandy Beach, to fight Guadalcanal or later at Chosin Reservoir. If we can’t say we have the courage of these young men in battle to defend our founding principles, then how do we preserve them and this republic? Until we find a devotion that matches the courage of those who made this country possible, I doubt any amount of study or development of insights about our Constitution will make much of a difference. There is a world of difference between what it takes to score academic points and what it takes to protect and defend the Constitution as we are sworn to do.
I have faced this struggle myself. About 43 years ago, in the early spring of 1983, I was at the lowest point in my life. I had just buried both of my grandparents, the man and woman who raised me and the two greatest people that I had ever known. I was broke. I was living in, and nearly evicted from, a cockroach-infested apartment. I could not pay my credit card bills on time. I would soon sell my only car to pay for my son’s tuition. I was being constantly attacked by the media and Congress because, as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I did not bow to the prevailing orthodoxy on race.
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
