Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
The Declaration's Golden Promise: Life, Liberty, and Happiness Explored
We explore the meaning and significance of unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, unpacking Jefferson's deliberate choice of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as fundamental human rights that cannot be taken away.
• "Unalienable" and "inalienable" mean the same thing - rights that cannot be separated from you as a human being
• The Declaration capitalizes "Rights" to emphasize their significance
• Three specific unalienable rights are named: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness
• The phrase "among these" implies there are other unalienable rights beyond these three
• Jefferson chose "pursuit of Happiness" instead of Locke's "property," elevating the concept
• "Happiness" connects to Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia (human flourishing), not just pleasure
• Lincoln described the Declaration as an "apple of gold" with the Constitution as its "silver frame."
• The Declaration presents universal principles of justice that transcend mere political rebellion
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Hi, my name is Audrey, I live in Arizona and I am in 11th grade. My question is what are unalienable rights and which are listed in the Declaration.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, audrey, for that question. This episode, again, we're really digging into the Declaration of Independence and kind of taking it piece by piece, because it's a short document but there's so much in it, and I'd love to welcome back Dr Carice, who you've already heard on the podcast, kind of diving into things. So, dr Carice, you know, audrey asked a really good question and I want to add to that question because I've heard unalienable rights. I've heard inalienable rights what's the difference, Does it matter? And which are listed in the declaration.
Speaker 1:Thank you, liz. Great question On this particular point unalienable versus inalienable? I'll just say that spelling was not as uniform in the English language in the late 18th century as it is now for us. I'll just give you one example, the second to the last paragraph in the Declaration which begins Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. It spells British with two Ts B-R-I-T-T-I-S-H, so I wouldn't make too much of it in versus on. It means the same thing here Awesome. Unalienable here means fitting with what we've talked about in earlier episodes.
Speaker 1:There are universal principles of justice, the laws of nature, nature's god, self-evident truths to all reasonable human beings who can just argue their way through. What principles of justice are embedded in human nature. These rights can't be erased, cancelled, removed by any human will, by any human government, by any human law, by any conqueror. You can kill me, you can imprison me, you can torture me, you can oppress me, whatever. I still have the rights because I'm a human being. You can imprison me, you can torture me, you can oppress me, whatever. I still have the rights because I'm a human being. They're not alien. You can't take them away from me, alienate them from me or me from them because I'm a human being.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that that's the meaning, however it's spelled, but you can see the weight, the way it's worth thinking about. This is a hugely important word in the whole complicated fabric of argument of why the colonists, now members of the American states, have to separate. This is a matter of necessity, because the British king is trying to crush these rights and is referred to as a despot and a tyrant. Okay, so, as Liz and I have said before, have your copy of the Declaration in front of you. We're in the second paragraph, as I've mentioned the context in the first paragraph. The laws of nature and nature's God are the foundation for making these arguments about self-evident truths and a creator who endows us with these unalienable rights. So actually, liz, would you read the first long clause in the second paragraph, up to the word happiness, just to get the full context here.
Speaker 2:So 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.
Speaker 1:Important point. One word to note is certain Unalienable rights. So we talked a lot about unalienable just before. It's certain, so they're particular rights here. Another important thing to notice is rights is a capital R Capitalization, just like spelling, is not as uniform in the 18th century as we would think of it now, 18th century as we would think of it now. So I will not be an expert on the use of the English language in the period, I'll just make this general claim. But it makes sense, right, it's common sense. Capitalization was used with some judgment, given the writer, to say, boy, this idea is important, this is significant, and so the very last word of the declaration is capital H, honor. And here we get capital R rights. Now creator. Just above it is capital C, creator, but that's a person and obviously divinity important. But rights means this is a big deal. So now we have certain unalienable rights, not a laundry list. It's going to be a small number of big ideas, capital R rights, and then we get among these. So there's an implication that this is not an exhaustive list. We're going to name three of them. There are others, okay. So I think that's all fair to get out. And then we get the three and they're each capitalized Life, liberty, happiness, life, liberty, happiness.
Speaker 1:The first two are, I think, more obvious in their meeting that a government cannot randomly, arbitrarily take away your life, as I said in an earlier episode. As Sean has talked about in an earlier episode, the bulk of the Declaration of Independence, the bulk of it is charges made drawing on the English common law, about how the king and the parliament have violated the common law as well as these universal principles of justice. So a government that would arbitrarily take away your life is unjust Because you have an unalienable right to your life and you are endowed by this with your creator. Liberty, a little more complicated than life, and the bulk of the Declaration tries to give a sense of what does this liberty mean? It means living under the rule of law. It means living according to these universal natural rights. It means, as we're going to talk about in another episode, consent of the governed as part of the necessary principles to form government. Make sure it's the right kind of government. So life and liberty. And now the third one is more complicated.
Speaker 1:I mentioned happiness, capital H. It's actually more complicated than that. It's pursuit of happiness is the right that is endowed in us by a creator, presumably the same laws of nature, nature's God creator. We hold this as a self-evident truth that we have a right by nature all human beings to pursuit of happiness. What does this mean?
Speaker 1:First, let's talk a little bit about what the happiness means. Does it mean, like pleasure, I'm in a good mood and I feel good in my body, you know? Does it have a sort of strictly material meaning like that? Does it sort of mean whatever we'd like? You know, happiness for you, happiness for me, whatever you think it is?
Speaker 1:We also might notice, by the way, that for the philosopher John Locke, who's an important influence on the Declaration in the second treatise of government, which he lays out principles evident in these first two paragraphs about a right of revolution If a government is oppressing you, denying your rights, his phrasing of the fundamental natural rights of human beings is life, liberty and property, and he actually uses property as the larger concept to say our rights are our property, each individual person's property. It's very interesting that Jefferson in his draft and the Congress committee agrees with it they use life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. But as I said earlier, it's among these rights our life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Property is there in the text of the Declaration as a right, presumably one of these fundamental natural rights, because several of the charges listed, drawing on the English common law, refer to violations of property. But it is interesting that property is not there. So I'll say property is implicitly there, but it is demoted a bit from the status it had in Locke's philosophy. So the Americans are thinking a little bit independently of Locke and I think they want to elevate things.
Speaker 1:So here's my reading of what happiness means If it includes material pleasures, and you know, feeling good and you know I'm of Italian descent, so a nice glass of wine. You know that is not the whole story. Happiness means something bigger and I'll refer, as I have a few times already, to the last word, the last clause of the Declaration of Independence. We mutually pledge, we signers, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. And even later, in this second paragraph of the Declaration, there'll be a reference to the fact that if a government is abusing rights, suppressing rights, you have not only a right, you have a duty to throw off that government. You put those ideas together, a duty to stand up for your unalienable rights, and it's a matter of sacred honor. You put that together with pursuit of happiness, it suggests that pursuit of happiness means both private property means enjoying a nice glass of wine, it means larger meaning in life as a citizen. We're getting the implication A self-governing citizen of a decent, free political order, and that you're going to exercise your rights and stand up for them if they're threatened.
Speaker 1:So this goes all the way back to the Greek philosopher, aristotle, who writes in a book called the Ethics the Nicomachean Ethics is the full title of it that the point of making the right decisions, what we call ethics, also called morality, the point of that is to lead a fulfilling life, to be a fulfilled, complete, proper human being. And he calls that happiness. The Greek word is eudaimonia. It's translated by some scholars as flourishing, even flourishing. So it doesn't just mean I'm in a good mood, happiness right. It's translated by some scholars as flourishing, even flourishing. So it doesn't just mean I'm in a good mood, happiness right. And we know that Jefferson Adams, other members of the Second Continental Congress and they knew other people would be reading this, knew Aristotle, knew this ethical philosophy.
Speaker 1:So again, to conclude here, declaration is a big, complicated document, big in the sense of big ideas, and big ideas that we have to fit together here it's happiness is included among the fundamental on the alienable rights. It's pursuit of happiness. The government's not going to guarantee happiness to you. Rights, it's pursuit of happiness. The government's not going to guarantee happiness to you Any government's not going to. But you have a right by nature to pursue happiness. Of course that's going to have to fit together with ideas of rules of law and with other human beings who want to pursue happiness. Right, complicated, but as I talked about it in an earlier episode, lincoln being so impressed by the claim inserted here that all human beings are created equal, here's a big idea inserted into the Declaration of Independence these three rights at a minimum, and there are others of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1:Lincoln, in one of his fragments while president or just before he's president, we think in 1860, refers to the Declaration as an apple of gold and the Constitution as a frame of silver around it. The relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution. But just think about it an apple of gold as a frame of silver around it. The relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution. But just think about it, an apple of gold. It's from the Proverbs in the New Testament. For Christians. This is signaling to Lincoln. This is not a merely political document. This is not a mere rebellion, a mere revolution. The Americans are stating from 1776, there are big stakes here for all of humanity as well as for us. There are big principles of justice involved and obviously these unalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are part of that apple of gold.
Speaker 2:I love that speech and, yes, it will be linked in. It's a great speech to pair with the Declaration of Independence, especially if you're teaching high school. Junior high students can do it too, because it does pair nicely and it also shows the influence of the Declaration of Independence even after the 1700s. Thank you so much, dr Kreis, and again, please join us on the next episode, because we are really breaking down this paragraph.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Liz.
