Guest: Bill Norton is a constitutional scholar and founding-principles educator and the author of Behind the Bill of Rights. He is a recurring guest on The Jenny Beth Show, where he leads a lesson-by-lesson training on America's founding documents. His companion books Behind the Declaration of Independence and Behind the Constitution continue the same project of returning to the principles behind the text.
In this lesson, Jenny Beth Martin and Bill Norton cover:
- Why "endowed" and "unalienable" are the two most powerful words in the Declaration
- Why the founders rejected the divine right of kings and any claim to rule without consent
- The right to life as the right to self-preservation, and its link to self-defense
- Jefferson's "rightful liberty": freedom bounded only by the equal liberty of others
- John Locke and property as the fruit of your labor: life plus liberty equals property
- The pursuit of happiness understood as the pursuit of things of true value
- The people's right to alter or abolish a destructive government, and the duty that comes with it
- Madison's warning that liberty is lost by gradual, silent encroachment
Timestamps:
00:00 — Welcome and Lesson 2 introduction
01:02 — Endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights
02:10 — John Adams: a Constitution for a moral and religious people
03:46 — Rejecting the divine right of kings
07:00 — What "unalienable" really means
11:53 — The right to life and self-preservation
15:29 — Rightful liberty: freedom within limits
22:35 — Consent of the governed
36:15 — Property and the fruits of your labor
45:33 — Time plus choices equals property
54:50 — The pursuit of happiness, rightly understood
01:10:21 — The right to alter or abolish government
01:17:10 — Prudence and the long train of abuses
01:19:41 — How liberty is lost: gradual encroachment
01:51:33 — Jefferson and Adams: friends, enemies, and July 4, 1826
Learn more at teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.