WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.220 We hold these truths to be self -evident that 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:04.960 all men are created equal. It's probably, you 00:00:04.960 --> 00:00:07.540 know, the most famous sentence in the English 00:00:07.540 --> 00:00:10.039 language, maybe in all of history. It's the bumper 00:00:10.039 --> 00:00:12.800 sticker for the American experiment, the bedrock 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:15.019 of the culture. But, you know, we usually just 00:00:15.019 --> 00:00:16.500 sort of nod along with it. We don't really stop 00:00:16.500 --> 00:00:18.460 to think about how weird those six words actually 00:00:18.460 --> 00:00:20.920 are. It is so deceptive. We treat it like this 00:00:20.920 --> 00:00:22.899 pillar of stone, something that has always existed. 00:00:23.059 --> 00:00:25.300 But when you really dig into the origins, that 00:00:25.300 --> 00:00:29.320 phrase isn't some static fact. It's a battlefield. 00:00:29.719 --> 00:00:33.020 It's the result of fierce editing wars, ancient 00:00:33.020 --> 00:00:35.700 theology, political maneuvering, and some truly 00:00:35.700 --> 00:00:38.859 intense contradictions. And that is exactly our 00:00:38.859 --> 00:00:41.539 mission for this deep dive. We are looking at 00:00:41.539 --> 00:00:44.299 the biography of a single sentence. We've pulled 00:00:44.299 --> 00:00:46.560 together a massive stack of source material here. 00:00:46.679 --> 00:00:49.359 We're talking original historical drafts of the 00:00:49.359 --> 00:00:52.140 Declaration, analysis from historians like Jack 00:00:52.140 --> 00:00:55.079 Rakow from Stanford and Howard Zinn, and even 00:00:55.079 --> 00:00:58.579 some obscure congressional resolutions, all to 00:00:58.579 --> 00:01:01.380 figure out a central mystery. How could a document 00:01:01.380 --> 00:01:04.599 declaring equality be written by slave owners? 00:01:04.959 --> 00:01:08.329 And how has the mean... of all men changed from 00:01:08.329 --> 00:01:10.849 a self -evident truth to a self -evident lie. 00:01:11.390 --> 00:01:14.469 And, well, back again. It's a wild journey. It 00:01:14.469 --> 00:01:16.569 really is. It's a phrase that has been weaponized 00:01:16.569 --> 00:01:18.810 by revolutionaries, dictators, and civil rights 00:01:18.810 --> 00:01:20.549 leaders alike. So let's start at the very beginning, 00:01:20.730 --> 00:01:22.870 the authorship. If we played trivia right now 00:01:22.870 --> 00:01:24.450 and I asked who wrote the Declaration of Independence, 00:01:24.689 --> 00:01:26.730 everyone says Thomas Jefferson. They'd get maybe 00:01:26.730 --> 00:01:29.230 half points for that. Jefferson certainly penned 00:01:29.230 --> 00:01:31.909 the draft in June of 1776. He was absolutely 00:01:31.909 --> 00:01:35.120 the wordsmith. The specific flavor of that sentence, 00:01:35.159 --> 00:01:37.500 the philosophical punch of it, that owes a huge 00:01:37.500 --> 00:01:39.959 debt to Benjamin Franklin. I love this part of 00:01:39.959 --> 00:01:41.819 the research. It's the ultimate example of why 00:01:41.819 --> 00:01:44.420 everyone needs a good editor. Absolutely. So 00:01:44.420 --> 00:01:47.560 you have to picture the scene. Jefferson drafts 00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:50.260 this thing. He hands it over to Franklin. And 00:01:50.260 --> 00:01:53.060 in Jefferson's original version, he wrote, we 00:01:53.060 --> 00:01:55.439 hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable. 00:01:55.739 --> 00:01:59.319 Sacred and undeniable. Wow. That feels heavier, 00:01:59.560 --> 00:02:03.290 more religious somehow. Exactly. Sacred implies 00:02:03.290 --> 00:02:07.069 the truth comes from God. It's dogmatic. It requires 00:02:07.069 --> 00:02:09.689 faith. If something is sacred, you don't question 00:02:09.689 --> 00:02:12.370 it, but you also can't prove it. Franklin took 00:02:12.370 --> 00:02:15.090 pen, crossed out sacred and undeniable, and wrote 00:02:15.090 --> 00:02:18.430 in self -evident. Why does that one word change 00:02:18.430 --> 00:02:21.289 matter so much? Well, it changes the entire foundation 00:02:21.289 --> 00:02:23.669 of the argument. Self -evident is a term from 00:02:23.669 --> 00:02:25.110 the Enlightenment. It's the language of science 00:02:25.110 --> 00:02:27.870 and reason. Think about geometry. A self -evident 00:02:27.870 --> 00:02:30.449 truth is an axiom, like the whole is greater 00:02:30.449 --> 00:02:32.509 than the part. You don't need a priest to tell 00:02:32.509 --> 00:02:33.969 you that. You just look at nature and you see 00:02:33.969 --> 00:02:36.150 it. So Franklin was basically saying, we don't 00:02:36.150 --> 00:02:38.009 need the chirps to justify our freedom. It's 00:02:38.009 --> 00:02:41.509 a scientific fact. Precisely. It moved the entire 00:02:41.509 --> 00:02:44.849 argument from the pulpit to the laboratory. It 00:02:44.849 --> 00:02:47.590 was a radical shift to base a government on reason 00:02:47.590 --> 00:02:50.810 rather than divine right. But here's the thing 00:02:50.810 --> 00:02:53.289 that really surprised me in the notes. We give 00:02:53.289 --> 00:02:55.370 the founders credit for inventing this idea of 00:02:55.370 --> 00:02:57.349 equality, but they didn't just pull it out of 00:02:57.349 --> 00:02:59.590 thin air, did they? No, not at all. Not even 00:02:59.590 --> 00:03:01.789 close. If you look at the lineage of the idea, 00:03:01.990 --> 00:03:04.030 it's like a relay race that spans a thousand 00:03:04.030 --> 00:03:06.629 years. You can go all the way back to Pope Gregory 00:03:06.629 --> 00:03:09.590 the Great in the 6th century. He wrote in his 00:03:09.590 --> 00:03:11.949 Morelia and Job that nature produces all men 00:03:11.949 --> 00:03:14.520 equal. It's only sin that creates hierarchy. 00:03:14.860 --> 00:03:17.479 So it actually started as a theological idea. 00:03:17.659 --> 00:03:19.780 Right. And then it just it pops up in the wildest 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:21.500 places. Look at the peasants revolt in England 00:03:21.500 --> 00:03:25.199 in 1381. There was this radical priest, John 00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:27.639 Ball, and he used to preach to the crowds asking 00:03:27.639 --> 00:03:30.740 when Adam delved in Eve's span, who was then 00:03:30.740 --> 00:03:33.430 the gentleman. That is such a great line. Basically, 00:03:33.509 --> 00:03:35.669 when Adam was digging in the dirt and Eve was 00:03:35.669 --> 00:03:37.490 spinning thread, where were all the Dukes and 00:03:37.490 --> 00:03:39.889 Arles? Yeah, exactly. He was stripping away the 00:03:39.889 --> 00:03:42.229 social titles to say, look, underneath all the 00:03:42.229 --> 00:03:45.569 clothes, we are the same. You see it again with 00:03:45.569 --> 00:03:47.610 John Milton defending the execution of the king 00:03:47.610 --> 00:03:51.550 in 1649. So by the time Jefferson sits down in 00:03:51.550 --> 00:03:54.090 Philadelphia, he's tapping into a very deep, 00:03:54.289 --> 00:03:57.610 very old well of thought. OK, speaking of tapping 00:03:57.610 --> 00:04:00.250 into walls, we have to talk about the Italian 00:04:00.250 --> 00:04:03.180 connection. This blew my mind. I had never heard 00:04:03.180 --> 00:04:05.139 of Filippo Masaya before reading this packet. 00:04:05.319 --> 00:04:08.080 Most people haven't, but he's crucial. Masaya 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:10.979 was an Italian physician and merchant who actually 00:04:10.979 --> 00:04:13.000 lived right next door to Jefferson in Virginia. 00:04:13.240 --> 00:04:15.560 They were close friends. I think they even started 00:04:15.560 --> 00:04:17.610 a wine company together. So they're just hanging 00:04:17.610 --> 00:04:19.910 out, drinking wine, discussing philosophy. And 00:04:19.910 --> 00:04:22.389 politics. Yeah. Massey was, I mean, this guy 00:04:22.389 --> 00:04:24.350 was all about liberty. He wrote a series of articles 00:04:24.350 --> 00:04:28.370 in 1774, which Jefferson translated. And in them 00:04:28.370 --> 00:04:30.930 he wrote, all men are by nature equally free 00:04:30.930 --> 00:04:33.410 and independent. That sounds almost identical 00:04:33.410 --> 00:04:37.350 to the Declaration. is incredibly close. So close, 00:04:37.430 --> 00:04:39.329 in fact, that there is a joint resolution from 00:04:39.329 --> 00:04:43.790 the U .S. Congress from 1994 of all times that 00:04:43.790 --> 00:04:46.689 explicitly acknowledges Mazzei's influence on 00:04:46.689 --> 00:04:49.379 the phrase. So you have this Italian enlightened 00:04:49.379 --> 00:04:52.019 thinker whispering in Jefferson's ear, helping 00:04:52.019 --> 00:04:54.240 shape the American creed. But this brings us 00:04:54.240 --> 00:04:56.800 to the first major hurdle, right? If Mose and 00:04:56.800 --> 00:04:59.360 Jefferson are throwing around phrases like equally 00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:02.240 free and independent, how does that survive a 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:04.720 room full of slave owners? It almost didn't. 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:07.699 And this is where the legal nuance is just fascinating. 00:05:08.060 --> 00:05:10.949 Just before the Declaration, George Mason. Wrote 00:05:10.949 --> 00:05:12.810 the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He used that 00:05:12.810 --> 00:05:15.889 Mose style phrasing. All men are by nature equally 00:05:15.889 --> 00:05:18.009 free and independent. And the Virginia Convention 00:05:18.009 --> 00:05:20.329 rejected it. They had to. I mean, think about 00:05:20.329 --> 00:05:22.850 it. If you sign a legal document in 1776 Virginia 00:05:22.850 --> 00:05:25.649 saying everyone is equally free, you have instantly 00:05:25.649 --> 00:05:28.110 outlawed slavery. It would have caused a total 00:05:28.110 --> 00:05:30.689 economic collapse of the colony. It was factually 00:05:30.689 --> 00:05:33.449 untrue in their society. So Mason's draft was 00:05:33.449 --> 00:05:36.670 a little too honest. In a legal sense, yes. So 00:05:36.670 --> 00:05:39.189 Jefferson, being the lawyer he was, had to massage 00:05:39.189 --> 00:05:41.610 the language. He changed it from being equally 00:05:41.610 --> 00:05:44.509 free, which describes your current status, to 00:05:44.509 --> 00:05:48.589 created equal. Ah. So created equal refers to 00:05:48.589 --> 00:05:51.050 the moment of birth. It's an abstract concept 00:05:51.050 --> 00:05:54.230 about your soul or your origins, not a description 00:05:54.230 --> 00:05:56.490 of your actual rights in the real world. Exactly. 00:05:56.490 --> 00:05:58.829 It was a brilliant and, yeah, slightly cynical. 00:05:59.279 --> 00:06:01.699 piece of legal maneuvering. By making it about 00:06:01.699 --> 00:06:04.160 creation, he allowed the delegates to sign it 00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:05.680 without having to free their slaves the next 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:08.379 morning. However, and this is where the story 00:06:08.379 --> 00:06:11.259 gets incredible, that abstract language didn't 00:06:11.259 --> 00:06:14.100 stay abstract for everyone. We have to talk about 00:06:14.100 --> 00:06:16.639 Massachusetts and the story of that. This is 00:06:16.639 --> 00:06:19.040 one of the most powerful examples of words having 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:21.959 consequences the authors didn't intend. So in 00:06:21.959 --> 00:06:24.860 1780, John Adams writes the Massachusetts Constitution. 00:06:25.579 --> 00:06:28.160 And he puts in the phrase, all men are born free 00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:30.160 and equal. Which was pretty standard boilerplate 00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:32.579 by then. Right. But there was an enslaved woman 00:06:32.579 --> 00:06:34.720 named Bette, who later became Elizabeth Freeman, 00:06:34.920 --> 00:06:37.319 living in the household of a Colonel John Ashley. 00:06:38.139 --> 00:06:40.680 The story goes that she overheard the men discussing 00:06:40.680 --> 00:06:43.360 this new constitution at the dinner table. She 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:46.620 heard that phrase. Born free and equal. She's 00:06:46.620 --> 00:06:48.519 serving dinner, just listening to them talk about 00:06:48.519 --> 00:06:50.740 liberty. And she takes it literally. She walks 00:06:50.740 --> 00:06:53.420 to a lawyer's office, a man named Theodore Sedgwick, 00:06:53.560 --> 00:06:56.879 and basically says, I heard that paper says we 00:06:56.879 --> 00:07:00.139 are born equal. If that's true, then I am not 00:07:00.139 --> 00:07:03.199 a slave. And she sued him. She sued. The case 00:07:03.199 --> 00:07:06.740 was Brahm and Bedvi John Ashley. And the court 00:07:06.740 --> 00:07:09.720 agreed with her. The jury ruled that under the 00:07:09.720 --> 00:07:12.319 text of the Massachusetts Constitution, slavery 00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:15.060 could not exist. She won her freedom. That is 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:18.040 just profound. In Virginia, the words were a 00:07:18.040 --> 00:07:20.699 loophole to keep slavery. In Massachusetts, the 00:07:20.699 --> 00:07:22.720 same words were the hammer that smashed it. It 00:07:22.720 --> 00:07:24.660 just shows that once you write an idea down, 00:07:24.839 --> 00:07:27.100 you lose control of it. You can't dictate how 00:07:27.100 --> 00:07:29.600 people will interpret it. But we can't let Jefferson 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:31.759 off the hook here. We're talking about interpretation, 00:07:31.980 --> 00:07:35.420 but let's look at the reality of 1776. We have 00:07:35.420 --> 00:07:38.959 the Great Contradiction. Jefferson owned hundreds 00:07:38.959 --> 00:07:41.319 of people while writing this. It is the stain 00:07:41.319 --> 00:07:43.779 on the document that never washes out. Yeah. 00:07:43.879 --> 00:07:46.920 And it wasn't ignored at the time. It's not just 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:49.600 us looking back with modern eyes. Right. The 00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.220 sources mention a specific passage in Jefferson's 00:07:52.220 --> 00:07:54.420 original draft that was actually critical of 00:07:54.420 --> 00:07:58.100 slavery. Yes. Jefferson included this long paragraph 00:07:58.100 --> 00:08:00.480 that was a scathing critique of the slave trade. 00:08:00.680 --> 00:08:03.500 He called it a cruel war against human nature 00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:06.060 itself. Now, he blamed the King of England for 00:08:06.060 --> 00:08:08.910 it. which was a bit of a deflection, but he clearly 00:08:08.910 --> 00:08:11.389 labeled the slave trade as a moral evil. And 00:08:11.389 --> 00:08:13.269 Congress just took a red pen to it. They cut 00:08:13.269 --> 00:08:15.509 the whole thing. The delegates from Georgia and 00:08:15.509 --> 00:08:17.730 South Carolina refused to sign if it stayed in. 00:08:17.949 --> 00:08:19.730 And the New England merchants, who were making 00:08:19.730 --> 00:08:22.089 a lot of money shipping those slaves, quietly 00:08:22.089 --> 00:08:25.990 agreed. They deleted 168 words to save the alliance. 00:08:26.329 --> 00:08:28.310 So they chose independence over consistency. 00:08:28.709 --> 00:08:30.990 They chose a united front over human rights. 00:08:31.610 --> 00:08:33.429 And the critics at the time noticed immediately. 00:08:34.039 --> 00:08:36.399 There was an English abolitionist named Thomas 00:08:36.399 --> 00:08:41.000 Day in 1776, the same year He wrote a letter 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:43.419 that just savages the Americans. I have that 00:08:43.419 --> 00:08:57.580 quote right here. He wrote, The pen and the whip. 00:08:57.700 --> 00:09:00.259 It's such a devastating image. And that tension 00:09:00.259 --> 00:09:02.360 leads right into the modern debate we see today 00:09:02.360 --> 00:09:04.500 between historians. You mean the difference between 00:09:04.500 --> 00:09:06.600 someone like Nicole Hannah -Jones and someone 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:09.000 like Howard Zinn? Well, Nicole Hannah -Jones 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:11.299 with this. 1619 project, she argues that the 00:09:11.299 --> 00:09:13.320 founders simply did not consider black people 00:09:13.320 --> 00:09:16.059 to be part of all men. That the hypocrisy wasn't 00:09:16.059 --> 00:09:18.419 a mistake, it was a feature. That the racism 00:09:18.419 --> 00:09:20.679 was foundational. And John Hope Franklin said 00:09:20.679 --> 00:09:22.879 something similar, right? That Jefferson never 00:09:22.879 --> 00:09:25.940 meant it for anyone other than white landowners. 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:29.759 Exactly. And then Zinn adds the layer of sexism. 00:09:29.840 --> 00:09:32.580 He points out that men was literally interpreted 00:09:32.580 --> 00:09:36.679 as males. Women were, in his words, beyond consideration 00:09:36.679 --> 00:09:38.940 for political rights. Although I have heard the 00:09:38.940 --> 00:09:41.580 counter argument that men in the 18th century 00:09:41.580 --> 00:09:44.740 was just a synonym for humanity. Linguistically, 00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:47.080 yes. If you look at the dictionaries at the time, 00:09:47.159 --> 00:09:51.600 man often meant mankind. But legally. Politically, 00:09:51.639 --> 00:09:54.399 it absolutely meant males. Women couldn't vote, 00:09:54.539 --> 00:09:56.419 couldn't own property in their own name if they 00:09:56.419 --> 00:09:58.500 were married. So even if the word was inclusive, 00:09:58.700 --> 00:10:01.320 the world wasn't. So we have this document that 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:03.820 is arguably a lie from the moment the ink is 00:10:03.820 --> 00:10:06.639 dry. But here is the twist that really hooked 00:10:06.639 --> 00:10:09.340 me in this deep dive. We assume the bad guys 00:10:09.340 --> 00:10:12.059 in history, the pro -slavery faction, would just 00:10:12.059 --> 00:10:14.940 pretend the Declaration supported them. But they 00:10:14.940 --> 00:10:17.200 didn't. No. And this is a critical turning point. 00:10:17.419 --> 00:10:19.639 In the mid -19th century, as the Civil War gets 00:10:19.639 --> 00:10:21.539 closer, the defenders of slavery stop pretending. 00:10:21.740 --> 00:10:23.940 They realize that the Declaration is actually 00:10:23.940 --> 00:10:26.240 their enemy. They can't reconcile their worldview 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:28.960 with all men are created equal. So they decide 00:10:28.960 --> 00:10:31.279 to attack the text itself. They went right after 00:10:31.279 --> 00:10:33.179 the bumper sticker. They tried to peel it right 00:10:33.179 --> 00:10:35.559 off. You have Senator John Pettit of Indiana 00:10:35.559 --> 00:10:38.879 in 1853. He stands up in the Senate and calls 00:10:38.879 --> 00:10:42.240 the phrase a self -evident lie. A self -evident 00:10:42.240 --> 00:10:45.620 lie. That is bold. He's not mincing words there. 00:10:45.799 --> 00:10:48.559 Not at all. And it gets worse. Look at Alexander 00:10:48.559 --> 00:10:50.720 Stevens. He was the vice president of the Confederacy. 00:10:50.940 --> 00:10:54.440 In 1861, just weeks before the Civil War starts, 00:10:54.600 --> 00:10:57.200 he gives the cornerstone speech. This speech 00:10:57.200 --> 00:11:00.259 is terrifying to read. It is. He explicitly says 00:11:00.259 --> 00:11:02.759 that the American founders were wrong. He says 00:11:02.759 --> 00:11:04.980 their idea of equality was a sandy foundation. 00:11:05.519 --> 00:11:07.679 And then he says the Confederacy is founded on 00:11:07.679 --> 00:11:11.159 the opposite idea, the great truth that the Negro 00:11:11.159 --> 00:11:13.279 is not equal to the white man. So the Civil War 00:11:13.279 --> 00:11:15.460 wasn't just a fight over territory or states' 00:11:15.559 --> 00:11:17.919 rights. It was a fight over whether that sentence 00:11:17.919 --> 00:11:20.139 in the Declaration was true or false. Exactly. 00:11:20.340 --> 00:11:22.639 The Confederacy was an attempt to explicitly 00:11:22.639 --> 00:11:25.179 reject the Declaration of Independence. So how 00:11:25.179 --> 00:11:27.840 do we get it back? If the South rejected it and 00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:30.139 the North was still pretty racist by modern standards, 00:11:30.340 --> 00:11:33.259 who saved the phrase? Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln 00:11:33.259 --> 00:11:35.500 is the one who dusted it off and repurposed it. 00:11:35.679 --> 00:11:38.279 Yeah. He had a very, very interesting interpretation. 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:41.860 He argued that the founders didn't mean men were 00:11:41.860 --> 00:11:44.779 equal in capacity like. We aren't all equal in 00:11:44.779 --> 00:11:47.539 height or strength or intelligence. Right. I'm 00:11:47.539 --> 00:11:49.080 never going to be equal to Einstein in physics. 00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:51.669 Right. Lincoln said they meant equal in rights, 00:11:51.870 --> 00:11:55.190 life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. But 00:11:55.190 --> 00:11:57.570 he went further than that. He called the Declaration 00:11:57.570 --> 00:12:01.669 a standard maxim for free society. A standard 00:12:01.669 --> 00:12:03.809 maxim? What does that even mean? He meant it 00:12:03.809 --> 00:12:07.090 was an aspiration, a North Star. He said the 00:12:07.090 --> 00:12:09.169 founders knew they couldn't achieve perfect equality 00:12:09.169 --> 00:12:12.730 in 1776, but they placed it there as a goal, 00:12:12.929 --> 00:12:15.490 something to be constantly approached, even if 00:12:15.490 --> 00:12:17.799 never perfectly reached. He turned it from a 00:12:17.799 --> 00:12:20.320 statement of fact into a mission statement. That 00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:22.460 feels like the bridge to the modern understanding. 00:12:22.679 --> 00:12:24.759 But there's another historian in our stack, Jack 00:12:24.759 --> 00:12:27.600 Rakow, who throws a curveball at this whole individual 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:30.460 rights thing. Rakow is great because he forces 00:12:30.460 --> 00:12:34.039 us to take off our 21st century glasses. He argues 00:12:34.039 --> 00:12:36.399 that when Jefferson wrote, all men are created 00:12:36.399 --> 00:12:38.899 equal, he wasn't thinking about me and you as 00:12:38.899 --> 00:12:41.820 individuals. He was thinking about peoples. Collective 00:12:41.820 --> 00:12:44.580 groups. Yes. He was saying the American people 00:12:44.580 --> 00:12:47.830 are equal to the British people. It was a diplomatic 00:12:47.830 --> 00:12:50.529 argument for sovereignty. We are just as good 00:12:50.529 --> 00:12:53.870 as you, so you have no right to rule us. Rako 00:12:53.870 --> 00:12:55.970 suggests that the idea of individual personal 00:12:55.970 --> 00:12:58.769 rights, that I am equal to you, is something 00:12:58.769 --> 00:13:00.850 that Americans projected onto the document later, 00:13:00.950 --> 00:13:03.889 over the next few decades. So we basically remixed 00:13:03.889 --> 00:13:06.090 the song. We took a diplomatic letter and turned 00:13:06.090 --> 00:13:08.730 it into a personal creed. And that remix went 00:13:08.730 --> 00:13:11.889 global. The legacy of that one phrase is astonishing. 00:13:12.230 --> 00:13:14.190 I was shocked to see Vietnam in the breakdown. 00:13:14.529 --> 00:13:17.850 1945. Ho Chi Minh declares independence from 00:13:17.850 --> 00:13:20.929 France. And how does he start his speech? He 00:13:20.929 --> 00:13:22.549 quotes the American Declaration of Independence. 00:13:23.070 --> 00:13:26.070 All men are created equal. Using America's words 00:13:26.070 --> 00:13:28.269 to declare independence, essentially from the 00:13:28.269 --> 00:13:31.509 West. From colonial power. It shows how universal 00:13:31.509 --> 00:13:34.269 the language had become. But then look at the 00:13:34.269 --> 00:13:37.529 flip side. Look at Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe 00:13:37.529 --> 00:13:40.559 in 1965. The white minority government there 00:13:40.559 --> 00:13:42.419 issued their own Declaration of Independence, 00:13:42.759 --> 00:13:45.159 right? They did. And they modeled it almost word 00:13:45.159 --> 00:13:47.259 for word on the American one. But they made a 00:13:47.259 --> 00:13:49.980 very specific edit. They kept the structure, 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:53.500 but they deliberately cut out all men are created 00:13:53.500 --> 00:13:57.820 equal and consent of the governed. Wow. That's 00:13:57.820 --> 00:13:59.879 the exception that proves the rule. They knew 00:13:59.879 --> 00:14:01.600 they couldn't say those words and keep their 00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:03.740 apartheid system. Exactly. They knew the words 00:14:03.740 --> 00:14:05.600 were dangerous. If you say them, eventually you 00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:07.320 have to answer to them. And that brings us to 00:14:07.320 --> 00:14:10.240 the man who made America answer to them, Martin 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:12.480 Luther King Jr. The ultimate closer for this 00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:15.759 timeline. In his I Have a Dream speech, King 00:14:15.759 --> 00:14:17.840 doesn't burn the Declaration. He doesn't call 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:20.299 it a lie. He calls it a promissory note. A check. 00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:22.799 A check that had come back marked insufficient 00:14:22.799 --> 00:14:26.210 funds. It was a brilliant rhetorical move. He 00:14:26.210 --> 00:14:28.529 wasn't asking for something new. He was demanding 00:14:28.529 --> 00:14:31.629 that America simply pay what it owed. He used 00:14:31.629 --> 00:14:34.129 the founders' own words to hold the country accountable. 00:14:34.409 --> 00:14:36.350 It seems like that is the recurring pattern. 00:14:36.649 --> 00:14:39.730 The words are written, often by hypocrites, but 00:14:39.730 --> 00:14:41.649 then the words take on a life of their own and 00:14:41.649 --> 00:14:44.450 demand to be made true. That's the paradox, isn't 00:14:44.450 --> 00:14:46.649 it? Self -evident sounds like it means automatic. 00:14:47.210 --> 00:14:50.629 But history shows us that these truths are anything 00:14:50.629 --> 00:14:53.519 but automatic. They have to be fought for. argued 00:14:53.519 --> 00:14:56.559 over and constantly redefined. So if we look 00:14:56.559 --> 00:14:59.240 at the whole arc from a philosophical edit by 00:14:59.240 --> 00:15:02.559 Franklin to a legal loophole by Jefferson to 00:15:02.559 --> 00:15:05.320 a rejected lie by the Confederacy and finally 00:15:05.320 --> 00:15:08.860 a demand for payment by MLK, what are we left 00:15:08.860 --> 00:15:10.799 with? We're left with a living document. The 00:15:10.799 --> 00:15:13.320 definition of all men. who counts as a person, 00:15:13.460 --> 00:15:16.600 has expanded. The definition of equal, what rights 00:15:16.600 --> 00:15:19.279 you get, has expanded. And it hasn't expanded 00:15:19.279 --> 00:15:21.399 by accident. It expanded because people like 00:15:21.399 --> 00:15:23.840 Mumbet and Martin Luther King took the words 00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:25.659 more seriously than the people who wrote them. 00:15:25.759 --> 00:15:27.860 That's a powerful way to put it. They believed 00:15:27.860 --> 00:15:30.279 the text more than the authors did. They really 00:15:30.279 --> 00:15:32.480 did. Here's a final thought I want to leave everyone 00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:34.730 with. We've spent this time talking about how 00:15:34.730 --> 00:15:37.610 the definition of all men has grown over 250 00:15:37.610 --> 00:15:41.370 years to finally include black people, women 00:15:41.370 --> 00:15:44.789 and non -landowners. But history doesn't stop 00:15:44.789 --> 00:15:47.490 in 2025. No, it certainly doesn't. So you have 00:15:47.490 --> 00:15:50.870 to wonder, if we look back at 1776 and see these 00:15:50.870 --> 00:15:53.529 obvious blind spots, what are the blind spots 00:15:53.529 --> 00:15:56.590 today? Who are we currently excluding from all 00:15:56.590 --> 00:15:59.029 men? And when people look back at us in the year 00:15:59.029 --> 00:16:02.169 2076, will they think our definition of equality 00:16:02.169 --> 00:16:05.269 was just as limited as Jefferson's? That is the 00:16:05.269 --> 00:16:07.330 uncomfortable question, isn't it? The circle 00:16:07.330 --> 00:16:09.669 of re is always trying to grow, but it's always 00:16:09.669 --> 00:16:11.570 a struggle. Something to think about. Thanks 00:16:11.570 --> 00:16:13.590 for diving deep with us. Always a pleasure. We'll 00:16:13.590 --> 00:16:14.190 see you on the next one.