New York Times bestselling author and committed constitutional conservative Senator Mike Lee reveals the little-known stories behind the Founder's takedown of a tyrannical king and the forgotten document that created America. There is perhaps no more powerful sentence in human history, written in Philadelphia in the oppressively hot summer of 1776: "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." Despite the earth-shattering power of Jefferson's simple sentence and the document in which it is found, many Americans today don't understand or appreciate the Declaration's gravity. As a result, we have lost touch with much of what makes our country so special: the distinctly American belief in the dignity of every human soul. Our nation was born in an act of rebellion against an all-powerful government. In Our Lost Declaration, Senator Mike Lee tells the dramatic, little-known stories of the offenses committed by the British crown against its own subjects. From London's attempts to shut down colonial legislatures to hauling John Hancock before a court without a jury, the abuses of a strong central government were felt far and wide. They spurred our Founders to risk their lives in defense of their rights, and their efforts established a vision of political freedom that would change the course of history. Lee shares new insights into the personalities who shaped that vision, such as: • Thomas Paine, a populist radical who nearly died making his voyage from Great Britain to the colonies before writing his revolutionary pamphlet, Common Sense. • Edmund Randolph, who defied his Loyalist family and served in the Virginia convention that voted for independence • Thomas Jefferson, who persevered through a debilitating health crisis to pen the document that would officially begin the American experiment. Senator Lee makes vividly clear how many abuses of federal power today are rooted in neglect of the Declaration, including federal overreach that corrupts state legislatures, the judicial system, and even international trade. By rediscovering the Declaration, we can remind our leaders in Washington D.C. that they serve us--not the other way around.
Mike Lee, a respected member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reveals the answer to that question and warns of the dangerous norm-shattering precedent that would be set by politically motivated attempts to turn the Supreme Court into just ...
But how would a lowly clerk manage that? Award-winning journalist Anna Crowley Redding and Sibert Honor illustrator Edwin Fotheringham bring to life this riveting true story about how Stephen Pleasonton saved the words that built America.
And yet, writes Larry P. Arnn: “The words of the Declaration of Independence ring across the ages.
Signing Their Lives Away introduces readers to the eclectic group of statesmen, soldiers, slaveholders, and scoundrels who signed this historic document—and the many strange fates that awaited them.
It was offered by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, another colleague who entered Congress with me in the Watergate class of 1974. But even though he represented the same state as Chuck Grassley and had entered the House the same year, ...
Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites ofNationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst, MA, 1997), 21–23, 161, 206; David Waldstreicher, In the Midst ofPerpetual Fetes: The Making ofAmerican Nationalism, ...
When Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court in 1991, he found with dismay that it was interpreting a very different Constitution from the one the framers had written—the one that had established a federal government manned by the ...
No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize Winner of the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize Winner of the Chicago ...
But how would a lowly clerk manage that? Award-winning journalist Anna Crowley Redding and Sibert Honor illustrator Edwin Fotheringham bring to life this riveting true story about how Stephen Pleasonton saved the words that built America.
Presents the story of how the original document that changed the fate of the nation still exists proudly today, despite being rolled up, transported on horseback, tucked away, inproperly repaired, and kept under lock and key.