Onto a commute to the National Book festival and to this presentation on the new book, our declaration. Earlier today Walter Isaacson discussed his book, the innovators in which he places creativity at the intersection of science and art. Danielle allen, the author of our declaration finds her creativity at the intersection of classical studies and political theory, subject of which she is a master or a doctor tissue holds ph. D. S in both subjects. Isakson found that the brilliance that gave the world a programmable computer and eventually the internet could not have come from the inspired efforts of an individual. Of necessity they sprang from the collaboration of many inspired individuals. Similarly dr. Allen finds the assembling of the 1337 words of the declaration of independence was the result of a vast array of conversations, collaborations and debates among a surprisingly large number of collaborators. Indeed, this book itself is a brilliance collaboration. While a single hand, hers, wrote the text via thought, the analysis and the philosophy embodied therein is a result of more than a decade of collaboration, debate and discussion between her and her students. She received much wisdom from them even as she taught them the mechanics of the declarations language. And a mechanic she is. Like many really good mechanics she disassembled the decorations and gin word by word, san blas it clean, shines them, moved them and put them back together so that they run better than new. Dr. Allen has earned five university degrees, bachelors and classics at winston, a masters in philosophy and a doctorate at Kings College cambridge and a masters and a doctorate in government from harvard. She has written five looks of which this is one. She is just completed an appointment at the institute for advanced study at princeton, yes that institute the one about einstein and j. Robert oppenheimer, that place in new jersey and has taken up an appointment now is professor in harvards Government Department and is director of the edmund j. Soffer center for ethics so please help me welcome dr. Danielle allen. [applause] thank you so much dan. That was an incredible introduction. Im in your debt. Truly appreciate it and greetings to all of you. Its wonderful to see you here. I have to say i dearly loved dans description of me as a mechanic because there is a sense in which you have just given me a way of overcoming a certain childhood failure that has always plagued me that my dad when i was 11 gave me a car engine and it was my job to take it apart and reassemble and of all the things i was given in childhood it was the only one that utterly con founded me grade there was no way i could do it and i still have an image of that engine sitting in the dining room unfinished so thank you. Now i can have a different way of reporting. It did at last finish my project is a mechanic. Its terrific to see you all here tonight and to have the chance to talk with you about my book, our declaration and about the declaration of independence. I wanted to tell you a little bit about why of wrote the book, what i was trying to do with it and then to share a couple of what i think are some of the key stories in the book were key ideas in the book. I think the best way of trying to explain why i wrote the book is to Say Something about the first version of the book that i wrote, not the book that is in front of you but the one that when i gave people to read it that try again danielle so the very first version of this book was a dialogue. It was a conversation between a teacher and the students. I want to give you a picture of the actual group of teachers and students. Im sitting at the head of mike table with my coteacher and students and we are working on the declaration of independence. This is a picture of me explaining to people what a syllogism is. A syllogism is if philosophical term for a kind of an argument based on the premise and the conclusion. The traditional example is with socrates would have liked to use bill gates comic give the charge a little bit better. The example goes bill gates human being, all human beings are mortal, therefore bill gates , even bill gates will die. So to premises and conclusion drawn from it. A syllogism is understanding part of the argument of the declaration and i will come back to that but at any rate this as an class in this group of students is a group i should taught in chicago and southside and a course called the odyssey project whose purpose was to give people who had fallen out a chance to start over again. And it was ambitious because it was taking a group of students many of whom didnt even have a High School Degree and was saying we are going to give the students the same quality of education as during the day we are giving to the university of chicago undergraduates. Chicago undergraduates are kids that come from the best high schools from all over the country. How do you give the same quality of education to people of that kind of preparation on the onehanded people adopt the same preparation on the other hand. It turns out theres a very threepart answer. You pick short but great text to talk about. And this comes back to dans point, the declaration is only 1337 words. I have never had a student complained about the reading load when i assign the declaration. That in itself is a great gift to a teacher. So out of basically pragmatic efficiency or started using the decoration to teach u. S. History and in some cases philosophy writing and literature that something magical happened in that classroom. It was the students that the magical thing happened which is why my first ever to write this book as i said was a dialogue conversation of a teacher with 18 students but i gave it to my agent and i gave it to my friends and i gave it to my family members and they all said yes up danielle. You are the teacher. Stop pretending that this is about somebody else. On what you have to say in this book and write it in your own voice. So thats what i try to do. The book that you actually have is my admitting to the fact that i was that teacher that i was trying to write about and that teacher trying to share the magical thing that it happened with my students. So let me explain the magical thing and then Say Something about why i think it matters not just for history, not just for teachers but for all of us as citizens of a democracy. So the declaration again. 1337 words. You all know it. My students actually have mostly not read it, the whole thing and some had read excerpts but none of them had read the whole thing students at the university of shot chicago had mostly not read the only 1237 words, but anyway so the magical thing that what happened was the text was so sharp that it has in the middle to long list of complaints about king george and thats really is those who dont read it excessive that lisping sort of opaque but nonetheless if you get all the way through it turns out that the text is extremely simple. Human in the most fundamental way. It is the voice of a group of people who surveyed their circumstances, diagnose them and decided to change their lives. And take the time to explain themselves to the world. Thats it. Diagnosis, prescription, justification. The students of mine going back to that last photo in this class, moral people who have decided to change their lives so they went to the heart of the declaration faster than i had ever seen students do. My day students again if the university of chicago princeton and later were wonderful talented brilliant exciting students from all over the country but who nonetheless had always known they were going to college and his whose parents had gotten ready to go to college they hadnt yet had to set the course of their lives. My adults were people who had encountered all kinds of diabetes or other difficulties unstable employment, complexities with childcare arrangements, trying to manage a couple of jobs simultaneously and raise children in Public Schools that were necessary good for the kids. The fact that they were sitting in that class on those nights that already made this decision that they were going to change our lives and for that reason they were more proximate, closer in lift experience than people who wrote the declaration of independence than anybody else i have ever spoken to. And thats an extraordinary thing to think of the text. We think of it as belonging to these he would demand some of who held slaves as the people who might be the most close to that text, living its most directly with these ordinary people among us struggling to make their lives flourish, to flourish in their circumstances. That was the magic i got out of the class and the reason i think it matters not just for the teacher or just for my students there but for all of us because that is sick lesson, that little lesson about human agency in the declaration is the foundational idea underneath the ideal of equality. One of the twins links so tightly to freedom that count as the foundation for democracy. So equality. We need to talk about equality. Its a concept that has been covered a lot in last year and came up because the black lives Matter Campaign and came up because of Marriage Equality and, in many ways but as the concept of equality has returned from the public conversation is also revealed something about us. We dont actually know how to talk about equality. We have lost our intellectual capacity to do that. We are good, very very good at talking about liberty and freedom and we have been working on those concepts for a very long time and we have lots of cliches. Think about things like a man is the home of this castle and thats describing a certain freedom connected to property and freedom of less privacy and interests. He can save things like government encroaches on freedom and yet to be careful about the relationship between government and freedom in ideas like that can slip our time but what cliches do we have for a quality . What trips off the tongue . Not very much in my experience. And yet the declaration of independence is built on that notion that any human being, any human being is trying to flourish. A simple idea. So simple and any human being has that capacity of human agency to survey their circumstances diagnose whats wrong with their circumstances set a new course in life and justify it. Thats it. Democracy is built out of that idea. So how do we come to think about it . How can we start remembering the ideas that make a quality something that we can talk about easily, that we can use to diagnose their own circumstances to look around our own society, our politics, this is working and this is not working and here we need to make a change because its blocking our efforts to realize for everybody the opportunity to be human agents in this kind of way. So how can we acquire that capacity . My Firm Conviction is that the declaration of independence can help us there. And im going to comment on the declarations second sentence that we hold these truths selfevident but before i do i think i have to Say Something else about the history of the declaration and who wrote it because the truth is that every time i suggest to people that we cant take the declaration seriously in 2015 to understand our circumstances people will say that jefferson wrote that document. And lots of us admired jefferson and others of us dont necessarily admire him so much because of the complication of him having been a slaveowner. Wasnt jefferson a hypocrite . Isnt every word of the declaration of independence name merely an example of the selfserving hypocrisy . Thats a question ive gotten a lot as i talk about the decorations over last year or decorations over last year or year so before i take you into the text of the declaration briefly abandon me to Say Something about who wrote the decoration of independence. This is important because on the u. S. Citizenship exam theres a question on who wrote the declaration of independence and the correct answer by the state department as thomas jefferson. Im going to give a different answer. Thomas jefferson as you know authored the declaration of independence. That is a very good way to make sure you get credit for something. Keep that in mind. Consider now what you want credit for. This is not to say he doesnt deserve credit. He does deserve credit. He was the chair the committee of five people who drafted the declaration. But who else was on that committee . John adams, benjamin franklin, roger sherman, Robert Livingston adams and franklin in particular made substantial contributions to the draft and congress got the grafton edited it down by 25 so was truly a Group Writing effort. But even be on that the declaration itself, the fact that there was a declaration to declare is really thanks to john adams. Thomas jefferson was a draftsman. John adams was a politician turning the wheel allowing let me show you a quick picture here. These are the men who havent got enough credit for the decoration and above all john adams a man from massachusetts who never held slaves. Adams wrote it todo list. This is one of my favorite artifacts from the archives. February 1776 he wont be able to see it from where you are sitting to go and find it on line. The fourth item on the lefthand side says government to be assumed in every colony. This was adams strategy for getting to independence was to condense all of the colonies that they basically were already in a state of anarchy but it was time for them to write their own constitution and they would be ready to declare independence. On the righthand side forth from the bottom on the declaration of independence, thats where it comes from. John adams todo list and the work consistently through 75 to 76 to get to the point of being ready to write constitutions and declare independence and he is the person who works to get the committee elected after richard penny lee on the right to serve served in congress and resolved the colony should declare themselves a free and independent state. These were the two who drove the process forward. So we are going to come back to that because its john adams who really gave us the pursuit of happiness. Its important to understand that. But let me now for a moment just dwell on that allimportant second sentence. Again why its so important for all of us who are citizens in a democracy. Lets remind ourselves of what it is. We hold these truths to be selfevident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. But among these but among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And to secure these rights the government instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governor. Whenever government becomes destructive of these ends its the right of the people to alter or to abolish it to Institute New governance laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such a form as for them shall be most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Did you remember that it was that long . Lots of times people think it stops at the pursuit of happiness. Do i not have my second sentence in your . There we go. In fact the sentence goes all the way from the beginning we hold these truths to safety and happiness and heres where we get back to her syllogism as i indicated in the beginning. That piece of philosophical argumentation. We start with a premise, all people have rights among which are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness describing human beings. The second premise governments are instituted to secure these rights. This is why birds build nests human beings build governments and the conclusion then when the government is not working and doing the things for which was built its the right of the people to alter or abolish it. The argument leads us from individual rights through the tool that we build together, government and used together to explain what our responsibility is and our relationship to that tool and its our responsibility to make a judgment about whether that tool is achieving our shared safety and happiness and take responsibility for such alterations are necessary to get us to that goal. Its a profound and economical philosophical simultaneously and again its important to read all the way through. It doesnt end after pursuit of happiness. Its important think about what the whole santa misa gathers it takes us from her individual rights, life liberty and pursuit of happiness to that share project of safety and happiness. Its here in the sentence that we getting capsoff on that story of human agency that i describe for you as being at the heart of my students experience. Each of us is charting a course for ourselves, pursuing happiness, that democracy is the best form for realizing our Human Potential but in order for democracy to achieve that we have to find a way to build something together so that together we can protect ourselves, protect our freedom on the Egalitarian Foundation of democracy shared projects. Theres a lot more that can be said about the sentence and how important it is for helping us think about the work of democracy but what i would like to do in my final minutes before opening it up to you for questions as to Say Something again about that happiness idea that i just alluded to. Again we think of the pursuit of happiness is being one of jeffersons most important phrases but its really adams to whom we owe the idea and this matters as the choice of happiness was caught up over slavery. For those of you who read other texts in the history of puggle five and thought about the history of rights in the 18th century you will realize that this phrase life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is radical. It says because the more common formulation was life, liberty and property so how did we get from property to happiness in the declaration . Adams and Richard Henry lee served together on the committee in october of 1775 that had to answer the question of what New Hampshire should do given the fact that its British Royal governor had fled and the governor was responsible for all of the operations of the administration in New Hampshire. New hampshire was in anarchy. What was the colony to do . The answer that adams and they crafted with the three others on the committee was as follows. That it be recommended convention of New Hampshire to call full and free representation of the people and is the representative to make it necessary to establish such a form of government in their judgment will thus produce the happiness of the people and most essentially secure peace and good order in the province. This language of the happiness peace and good order coming from adams and they know that because in april of 1776 he produced a pamphlet arguing about what his vision of government was. Richard henry lee produced a poster that basically excerpts from adams pamphlet and these were circulated throughout the colonies that spring to campaign to get all of the colonies to be ready to write the constitution. But heres the introduction to adams pamphlet. We have to consider what is the government before we determine what is the best form. Upon this point also that good of politicians will agree that the happiness of society and governance is defined and philosophers will agree that happiness of the individual is from this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort and security and in one word happiness to the greatest persons and the greatest degree best. Jefferson wasnt using the vocabulary of happiness in this period and we know that because we have other texts of his. For example this from 1775. The core list of rights is the conventional life and property. And in the fall of 75 as the british were telling slaves in virginia in particular as they fled and fought for the british to freedom virginians have begun to complain about that move on the part of the british and the violation of their rights of property. The vocabulary of property became quite closely linked to the effect of slavery in the fall of 75 in the spring of 1776. In may, george mason draft at virginia of rights rights and the fuses the argument coming from adams in massachusetts thought slavery was a bad thing with the conventional view of the virginians and he wrote all men and nature equally free and independent to have certain inherent rights of which when they enter the state of society they cannot die in a compact deprive or divest their posterity. And with the enjoyment of life and liberty the use of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Here we see the two strings of conversations coming together leaving with us the mystery of why it was that property dropped out of the declaration of independence. Let me give you a snippet from the debate and Continental Congress that july under the articles of confederation to show you how close property and slavery had been connected to each other. Lynch of south carolina. There is the end of the confederation. When we look at the declaration of independence and look at the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we are actually reading it was the first compromises that made the new nation possible. A language is patient enough to be acceptable to a nascent antislavery side and a slavery side. Last to be said about the danger and problematic nature of compromises and the american founding. Its important to recognize at this moment this formulation was a victory for the antislavery position. The core rights described life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and this victory we can attribute to john adams who over the course of that year as i said was making the case that happiness, society as it is for the individual person and that was the ideal the colonists should use to pull themselves together and chart a new course for themselves. So let me conclude then by simply encouraging each of you to revisit the declaration of independence and to think of it as a living document. Let me take you back again to the second sentence. I will just read it one last time because again its orientation into the continual responsibility of the Democratic People telling agents that they have the potential to be. Its not a historical claim. Its a present claim, claim for the present or now for 1776, a claim that is always alive. We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers to the government that whenever government is constructed of these and to alter or to abolish it to Institute New government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form them together shell seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Thank you. [applause] very glad to take questions. Thank you for your book. I havent read all of it. I just started today that i really appreciate your deconstructing the supposed it dichotomy or conflict between liberty and freedom on the one hand and inequality on the other the focus on the last sentence in that declaration of the collectivity of effort that it took to get the nation going and also the point about the ongoing need to participate together. I am retired and i spent my career practicing psychotherapy. When you use the term human agency its a psychological term as well as some other disciplines but you are talking about a collective new agency in the creation of the country and the arising of the the writing of the declaration. Ive thought about this a lot and affect the psychology, psychotherapy tends to focus on the individual i think historically in the liberation of the individual being the endpoint, the goal of Psychological Health than psychotherapy, which leaves out all of these other issues that you are bringing up, put in the context of psychology which i think serves kind of a consumerist culture focus on the individual and liberation to commodity and consumption, acquisition of commodities so i wonder if this is how you think about the stuff and the role that psychology has played in the modern era . Thank you, thank you very much. Its interesting because one of the experiences of teaching my students and working with might students in writing this book was a bizarre discovery of a process between individual human agency and the psychology of an individual trying to improve their lives and the political question. The fact that we think of politics as being so far removed from individual psychology and yet the same thing about human beings is at the heart of both. So yes i do think policy is incredibly important. Laws are incredibly important. Having the capacity to look at policy, look at laws and look for reforms is incredibly important but so too is capacity to actually build healthy interaction in relations within the citizenry and i do think it would be a great thing if psychologists would pay more attention to that issue of how we help build healthy relationships set in a broader collective and not just the individual or family unit, so thank you. I have a question about one of the. To you brought up of James John Adams . John adams and what did he mean when he said happiness would be the end of the individual in and the end of government . Great, so by and there he met goal, the thing you are reaching to, not conclusion. I should clarify that but your objective in the thing you are aiming for. What he meant was hes really connecting to a longlived philosophical tradition that focuses on fleur shing or wellbeing. Any human being is trying to do more than survive. We want in some to be able to get to the end of our lives and say that was life well lived. And that i think is at the court of adams conception of happiness and the folks of 1776 women as well as men including Abigail Adams are the group of thinkers who thought that human beings directed themselves in order for them to achieve that experience of being able to say that was a life well lived. Thank you. Hi. Im from massachusetts and freedom seems to be a rivalry in the family because an individuals link to family and freedom and happiness because they want the control of their children but they want their rights to be free of choices individuals. I think trying to oppress the freedoms of families so how would you resolve the rivalry that starting in massachusetts for freedom and individual lives . Thank you for your question. So its important that freedom, that equality be linked to each other. I think when people build their way of thinking about their lives and society around freedom alone it can lead to precisely that infringement on the rights of others. And so its important, this is a little technical history of philosophy that but theyre two different ways of thinking about freedom. To think about freedom as being freedom from interference or we can think about freedom as being freedom from domination. Theres a difference. Freedom is the idea that anything that interferes with ones life so the laws interfere with their lives. The point of a law is in fact to put rules of the game on the ground instead of constraints and affect. That protects everybody from domination and thereby provide everybody with freedom from domination, ensuring that those are interviewed by the law are legitimate. So if you can focus on freedom as a core definition it becomes clear how freedom and equality are linked to each other. If we are seeking freedom for all then there has to be limits on our behavior toward one another. They cant be such a thing as interference of freedom for all requires egalitarian limits that we expressed through laws in order to protect one another. I think we have some folks waiting over here if you dont mind. We have got to take turns. Professor allen thank you for making it over over here in bali worker princeton and the university of chicago. Your education speech at the university of chicago, very inspiring. Im a teacher and he said we often lack the intellectual capacity to talk about equality. We have the capacity to talk about but we dont have intellectuals capacity to talk about equality. Can you talk about this in the context of happiness . Sure. Let me say two things in one was the remark i made about equality and how its connected to happiness. Its important that somebody invokes equality to ask them what kind they mean. Do they mean political equality, do they mean moral moral equality, do they mean social equality . Is a something to do with economic relations, quality, just as her opportunity and you have to take the concept of heart. We have forgotten how to do that thats what i meant about that. The declaration focuses primarily on political equality which rests on the ground of moral equality and some elements of social equality into account that doesnt have that much to say about economics questions. Its important to be precise about the way equality works. Your question about happiness is whether we are good at happiness or whether we also have the capacity to do that. I would say yes i think our capacities about happiness. You see some massaging. Want to work on the declaration you see it everywhere. I dont know if the rest of you have noticed is that the pursuit of happiness is all over the place and act. Its a basic way of talking about what it means to buy stuff. That counts as pursuing happiness. And yes that is absolutely a remarkable weekend sense of what happiness means. How does one rebuild an idea that happiness is about forcing of the whole person mind and spirit well beyond matters of material question and happiness is being able by the end of your life to ask and satisfactorily answer that question have i lived well into feeling yours. That yes i can look back and say the path that i crafted was a life worth living. So i think it takes a lot of work in and our ability to understand what happiness consists of. Thank you for coming. I learned a lot in the session but my main question is what inspired you to write actually about the declaration of independence . Thank you. Im not good at answering that question. The answer on one level its my students. As i said in the beginning it was truly magical in the classroom. Well i think by the end of my life be my best teaching experience. Today it certainly has been, teaching my students the declaration and it was magical because the tax that the students did not think of as belonging to them are pertaining to them and the centrality of the agency that they were claiming over their own lives and the fact that that is what the text was about to crystallize and let them to say that text is mine. That declaration is mine. Maybe i will pull out some grievances and put in a new list of references that pertains to my own list of grievances but that declaration is mine. To see people come into their personal and Political Agency is a privilege, and comparable to any other i can imagine. So is my students who inspired me and there was a paper in an article about the course im teaching in where students are quoted as saying the declaration is one of her favorite parts. So that confirmed to me that it hadnt just been me they was doing something so that was what inspired me to put it on paper. Dr. Allen, wonderful to hear your lecture. Thank you so much. I appreciate your comments about how some people today dont appreciate the relevance of the declaration of independence today. I take that to mean some people just dont see that it has necessarily a lot of value. It seems a significant contrast between the writers of the declaration and today of course the writers of the declaration of independence were revolutionaries who were feeling oppressed. They were looking for freedom from england. Leaders today in the United States are not in that position and so im not certain if you were to ask many of the elected officials today how closely they identified with the declaration of independence they might not if they dont feel that kind of oppression that the american revolutionaries felt. So im wondering whether you see that as an issue in terms of getting elected officials today and government to response to be responsive to our requirements . Thank you for your question. Our politics is confounded by a long list of problems and so i would probably myself described our difficulties somewhat differently in the sense that i dont think you need to be subject to the oppression of Something Like the British Empire to understand the declaration and make use of it again because what the declaration charges us with this is the responsibility of conveying our circumstance. What are the course of the human events around us now and would have been the course of the human offense over last 20 years but what patterns and what trends and what directions . Responded to that question about how our world is changing around us is as relevant today as then. For me to greater concern is pointed to by the end of the second sentence which i emphasize in quoting it when it is the responsibility of the people, laying its foundation on such principles organizing its powers in such a form that will be the most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Principle form, what are these two things . The declaration of independence was a statement of principle and the articles of confederation were the first ever to form and we tried it again with the constitution. What im most concerned about with regard to her temporary leaders is there very poor i dont know how else to say a capacity to engage with principle and in a principled fashion. [applause] thank you. My question professor and certainly appreciate your analysis of this, i would just suggest perhaps it needs to go a tad bit further because the greatest challenge to this union occurred of course during the civil war when we have secession purportedly everybody was almost at a point except john wilkesbooth of this move forward once the gettysburg address was displayed and want to head general made gift general grant his sword. In my view from what the president followed lincoln did i think he should have been impeached and he should have been tried for treason and what occurred in terms of safety all of the Northern Union troops out of the south and allowing a rampage against these former slaves to take place and the horrors that took place for many years thereafter i think there is a bit trail of these lofty statements that are contained in the forming of this union. In a further betrayal happens to be what has occurred in every war were africanamericans were told you will be free. You will have equal rights essentially and we have riots, murders etc. Taking place thereafter. Do you think that maybe the next step thats important would be to right the wrong maybe wear a lot of folks who are in the confederacy just think we just gave grant his sword and that was it. He wasnt president of the confederacy etc. And your thoughts on that . Thank you very much. Thats a very challenging question. For me its very important to say that there were multiple political traditions that flowed out of the moments of 1776. So from the moment of the writing of the duration he saw the beginning of an Abolition Movement that use the language of the decoration to make its case. He filed a motion a motion to move forward massachusetts by 1782. In the south you have in the nottoodistant future the invention of the cotton gin which entrenches slavery up until the point of the it invention of the cotton gin it was reasonable for people to believe as George Washington did that slavery was on its way out. Its important to recognize actually that the politics of slavery in this country have not been stable. Its not just been one thing from the beginning all the way through so a there have been multiple traditions and b a policy of slavery was powerfully affected by the invention of the cotton gin which change the direction. With that slavery was headed out and that in transit and made it durable so the story of the country is one about tradition contesting and struggling with each other. That is true from the beginning to the present day. I dont have a Silver Bullet to answer the question how do we take this struggle and move in the direction of peace and resolution . I think it continues to be hard work but i think we have to be committed to the idea of achieving peace and resolution and i think we have to be explicit that multiple traditions in the country some are worthy, others are not and in that regard we have a hard challenge of helping ourselves to discard those traditions which are not worthy of us. [applause] i was intrigued. I just finished reading your book on our declaration and im trying tying that in the book ive read in a while back the american epic by garrett epps worked. A similar method was used for the text of posts im trying to tie the two and im thinking the linkages between the catalogue of grievances against the king and how would that fit in with no longer when they were going to try to ratify the constitution they wanted to have rights not just implied by the enumerated. So thats why the bill of rights almost some of the things listed in that list of grievances n