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 of Independence: America's Founding Values Explored
The Declaration of Independence articulates uniquely American values, reflecting a society prepared to govern itself while respecting profound religious differences among citizens. Expert Matthew Brogdon explains how Jefferson's words captured "the American mind" while still resonating with today's diverse society.
• Thomas Jefferson described the Declaration as expressing "the American mind" rather than creating original principles
• The core principle of self-government reflects over 100 years of colonial experience before independence
• Congress deliberately added religious references beyond Jefferson's single mention of "nature's God"
• The Declaration presents a "double character" – confident about human equality while humble about government power
• Religious liberty emerged from deeply religious Americans who respected the diversity of faith
• Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation demonstrates America's inclusive approach
• The Declaration's principles provide common ground for Americans to debate without abandoning shared values
• As America approaches its 250th birthday, these founding ideals remain central to our national identity
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My name is Jonas, from Michigan, and I'm in fifth grade. My question is how does the Declaration reflect American identity and values? So that was a really great question and I'm really excited today because we have a new guest expert to answer that, matthew Brogdon. Matthew, we wouldn't introduce yourself for our listeners.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Liz. I'm delighted to be here. I'm Matthew Brogdon. I am the Senior Director at the Center for Constitutional Studies, just up the road from Arizona State in Utah Valley University and I've got to say I'm a great admirer of the work that the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State does and the Center for American Civics and all the work that you're doing, Liz, and really excited about this podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I think that's my fun. What I really like about the civics world is it's not a competition, it's very much like you're doing this. That's really cool and sharing and working together. So thank you. I'm excited to have somebody from Utah on our podcast. I think this is actually the first time. So we're looking at these ideals from the Declaration and one of the things that I love about early American history is there's usually a primary source to talk about. A primary source and specifically, we're looking at Thomas Jefferson. So near the end of his life, he described the Declaration as this expression of the American mind that gave voice to harmonizing sentiments of the day, and that is in a letter to Henry Lee that we will link in our show notes. That was written on May 8th 1825. So what sentiments is Jefferson really referring to that? So unite Americans, jefferson really referring to that.
Speaker 2:So unite Americans. Jefferson really makes the case that the Declaration is articulating something that's bigger than the thoughts of just one person. It's an act of creativity. He says it was not intended to have any originality. No-transcript principles that he's pointing to is the idea that a society of people are capable of crafting their own form of government. There's the idea of self-government, which I think is deeply rooted in the American experience and in the American mind.
Speaker 2:We have to remind ourselves that by 1776, some of the colonies had been in effect self-governing republics we can call them republics, self-governing republics for as much as 150 years, and so over a century almost all of the colonies had been around for about 100 years or more.
Speaker 2:Georgia is kind of the exception. So these are political communities with a long lifespan already I mean just in terms of self-governing communities and they have traditions of self-government and I think that had really when Americans encountered ideas and the kinds of writers that Jefferson actually points to he points to Locke and Aristotle and Cicero and Sidney and when he point when Americans encountered those writers writing about self-government, they saw themselves in them and I think that formed a kind of consensus view that the government is created by the community over which it governs and therefore we have to have some kind of reference to the rights of the people in that community and to the kind of limits that that community imposes on their government. So that really at the really central core in the Declaration, I think is part of the American mind that he's discussing that he's discussing and when we look at this.
Speaker 1:Dr Carice and Dr Beinberg have kind of talked about the Declaration in previous episodes but looking at this, religion plays such a crucial part really in any political culture because it's part of who we are as people. How did the Declaration's references to God or a deity really reflect American identities and values, Dr Carice?
Speaker 2:This is important and it's connected to that letter from Jefferson, because he talks about giving voice to an American mind. And something that a lot of people don't realize is that Jefferson, as he drafted the Declaration, he proposed a draft only really had one reference to the deity in it. There was a mention of the laws of nature and nature's God, of the laws of nature and nature's God, and Congress, in revising the Declaration over the course of a few days before they published it on July 4th, actually added additional mentions. And the Declaration mentions the deity, it mentions the divine in a couple of contexts. It speaks, of course, as the laws of nature and nature's God, presenting the deity, the idea of a higher law that is legislated or promulgated by someone that's not human. It also speaks of a creator and of people being created equal, and sometimes we're tempted to skip over that bit, but it is somewhat important, but it is somewhat important. It's important historically because many people who argued for, for example, the abolition of slavery would tie a connection, draw a line between that idea of created equality and some of the more famous statements in the book of Acts in the Bible that talked about all men being of one blood, god having made all nations of men from one blood, and that was a sort of core idea, a notion that human beings really fundamentally had something in common, that there was not a meaningful sort of subset of human beings that got to lord it over everyone else. And that idea of created equality, it reinforced equality to think that human beings were all the common creatures of some providence. So that's a very important idea at the founding, I think, and it pervades people who have very different religious views. So we have a tremendous religious pluralism at the founding in many ways and that grows over American history. But I do think there is that sort of core idea.
Speaker 2:There's also toward the end of the Declaration, a reference to the Supreme Judge of the world that the writers of the Declaration of Independence are submitting their reasons, they're submitting their arguments and their intentions, they say, to examination by the Supreme Judge of the world, the idea that they're going to be accountable for the arguments they make, the actions that they take. So those are sort of ideas that pervade the Declaration and Congress is very insistent about putting these in, even though Jefferson thought they were less essential. He was somewhat skeptical of the need to make that argument quite so forcefully, but it is a pervasive element of the political culture at the time and, I think, continues to be. I think it's also important to recognize that this presents us with a sort of double character of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration points to essential basic truths, right, self-evident truths about human equality, about the possession of natural rights, about the purpose of government, and argues that those truths are rooted in a sort of an eternal fixed order. At the same time, the Declaration is very skeptical of government's ability to discover all those truths, to enforce them. So there's a way in which the Declaration points to a really ambitious view of human beings, that we're able to discern the truth and we know these things about who we are and our duties to each other and our duties to God and so forth. And at the same time, we know that because the declaration tells us that rights are insecure, that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights. It tells us that human beings are not necessarily great at coming to agreement about all those things. We know them, and so you have a high view of human beings coupled with a great deal of humility about what government and human community can achieve, and I think that's a really important combination.
Speaker 2:It also marks sort of the way that Americans tend to look at religion. We're a very vibrantly religious people. Americans were at the founding. We still are. We're also a very different religious people. We have a lot of internal differences and that has produced a setting in which we tend to be very modest in our expectations of government whenever it comes to our religious belief, while at the same time privately or I shouldn't even say privately, but in community with each other in our voluntary associations we take religion very seriously and I think it's sort of reflected in the text of the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 2:The fact that the Declaration points to the divine being and human beings' responsibilities to God and the reality that human beings are created and have a sort of providential origin don't add up to the idea that government is then going to superintend religion for all of us, and I think that's a kind of dual character that marked American political culture at the time I think helped generate a robust religious liberty in America. I mean, you know it was not religious liberty and the disestablishment of religion were not foisted on Americans by some atheistic invading force. It was something that deeply religious people did themselves, in part because they took religion so seriously. So I think that you know the Declaration points there and I think that's still a sort of incumbent or essential part of what makes Americans Americans.
Speaker 1:I love that and I love that you talk about, like I mean, the variety of religions too. Right, like that is a bigger conversation. And can I ask do you think that that's the reason that different wording was utilized in the declaration, instead of just saying God, right, it's nature's God, it's the Supreme judge, there's. There are different ways of saying it. Do you think that that was purposeful?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, I think so. And you know, the founding generation, even what we think of as the founders, sort of capital F, these people who are engaged mainly in these deliberative bodies and leading our military through this period of independence and then founding. They are very different people in terms of their religious beliefs. Some of them are deeply devout, some of them are deeply theological and attached to very specific religious traditions, right Like a John Jay or James Wilson or John Dickinson, and others are more, I guess, attached to what we might call in the 20th century mere Christianity, you know, sort of a bit of a what's the word? Ecumenical kind of view of their own religious fate. And so that variety is reflected. Also there are important but in some cases beleaguered religious minorities. Quakers, baptists, catholics, jews are in significant numbers in some of the colonies and in the face of that I think the founders showed a quite able statesmanship.
Speaker 2:The principal people who were articulating American views that includes in the Continental Congress with the Declaration, that includes Washington, both as general and commander-in-chief of the army during the revolution, later as president have a way of talking seriously about religion that takes people's religious faith seriously, doesn't make it a sort of public mockery or, you know, just a tool, but at the same time opens the American political tradition to people who come from different backgrounds and faiths.
Speaker 2:You know, there's probably no better emblem of that than Washington's letter to the Hebrew congregation at Newport, which he writes in the 1790s, you know, where he talks about this vision of American politics, where he quotes the prophet Micah and says his vision is we would have a republic where everyone could sit under his own vine and fig tree and none would make him afraid. And he's writing that to a small religious minority that many Americans were uncomfortable with. And Washington is able to articulate the American project, the American constitutional project and the American idea in a way that tries to welcome those people in without losing our character, our identity. And I think that's a deeply rooted American tradition that represents a kind of statesmanship on the part of Washington, on the part of those writing the Declaration of Independence. That is admirable and worthy of emulation.
Speaker 1:I and for the general public, if you've seen the play Hamilton in the song One Last Time, that line is in there. Everyone should sit under their own light. So now we know where it comes from. We have kind of a piece of that. I really appreciate that. I think that as soon as you said it, the song started in my head.
Speaker 2:That's right. I remember, and I don't know if it was accidental my grandfather kept a garden my whole life and they had a home that they lived in for 70 years and he had a grapevine over a trellis and next to it was a fig tree and I didn't realize until I was grown and he was passed At some point. I was reading this line from Washington and then reflecting on the verse, I thought I wonder if my grandfather planted this because of that sort of biblical metaphor about what it meant to live in peace alongside other people and freedom and prosperity, you know, sort of both helping each other and leaving each other alone in very important respects, and that's. It is a kind of American tradition and I think Washington's just so good at articulating that.
Speaker 1:That is. That's really cool. It's a cool thing to reflect on, because I mean how many people listening right now are like actually my grandparents did the same, or maybe my parents did. So we're coming up on America 250, which is crazy because you talked about Jefferson's letter and that was 50 years after the Declaration and now we're 250 years. Are these ideas still central to American identity and values? You know, things have changed so much and now, especially with technology too, it feels like the changes just warp speed. Do you think that those ideas are still central?
Speaker 2:I think that they are. It's easy to focus on the differences among us and it's also easy to look back at the founding and assume there's more uniformity than there was. There were royalists living in America I mean, a lot of them left after the revolution. But you know, jefferson says at the beginning of that letter that practically all American Whigs and he's referring to a sort of political movement, the Arab Party believe the same on these subjects. So he even gives it a little bit of a partisan cast. It's not like everybody just subscribes to this stuff. So if you say anything important, someone disagrees, and that's probably healthy because that's part of a free society. So we do have differences about it.
Speaker 2:But I think it's important that when Americans argue over the things that are really divisive in American politics and we argue over the direction of our country and the policies our governments ought to adopt, quite often we are employing the terms and principles of the Declaration and then arguing over how those ought to apply and then arguing over how those ought to apply.
Speaker 2:There's very little basic questioning of the idea that these principles human equality, self-government according to consent, the idea that government is principally about protecting some way of life that people make for themselves in community with other people through free associations.
Speaker 2:Government's not about dictating how we all live and worship from the top. Those ideas of created equality, natural rights, self-government are still the basic principles we argue over. We tend not to question whether those are the basic criteria of good government. We instead tend to argue over how well are we achieving them, how well is our government achieving them, and what exactly do they mean? That is, we're engaged in an interpretive task. What do those principles mean for us in the present? And I think that's a very important indicator that the principles are alive and well. We just have to argue over whether we're doing a good job of achieving them or not, and that's healthy too. You need to leave room for robust debate, and I think the Declaration does a good job of stating these principles at a level of generality that allows Americans to disagree deeply about important things and still recognize that we subscribe to some kind of common criterion about what a just government is.
Speaker 1:That is, I think, the perfect wrap up to this. Dr Brogdon, thank you so much for your expertise and for being on our podcast.
Speaker 2:It's been a delight. Thank you so much for having me on, Liz.
