Bill Norton is a constitutional scholar and author who has studied America's founders for more than thirty years, and co-author of "Speaking the Language of Liberty" and "Behind the Bill of Rights."
Jenny Beth Martin is co-founder of the Tea Party movement and Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action, representing three million grassroots conservative activists.
Key topics covered:
- Why the colonists saw themselves as defenders of self-government, not rebels
- The forgotten testimony of Revolutionary War soldier Levi Preston
- How Cicero, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney shaped the founding
- The Declaration as "an expression of the American mind"
- Answering the "anti-government" smear with the founding itself
- What natural law is and why it cannot be repealed
- What the founders actually meant by "all men are created equal"
Timestamped topic breakdown:
00:01:01 — Levi Preston: why the colonists really fought
00:05:24 — Could the colonists vote? Self-government in the colonies
00:12:57 — The ideas that shaped both England and America
00:19:37 — Answering the "anti-government" smear
00:24:46 — Who wrote the Declaration: an expression of the American mind
00:31:10 — Cicero, Locke, and the great thinkers behind the founding
00:44:08 — What natural law actually is
00:48:51 — Why natural law cannot be repealed
01:04:43 — Equal, separate, and the individual in society
01:10:35 — Inside the Declaration's first paragraph
01:14:45 — What "created equal" really means
01:37:19 — Turning the principles into a way forward
Links: teapartypatriots.org, jennybethshow.com