The Michael Berry Show

Special treat for you on this July 4th. We have stage actor Max McLean reading one of the greatest documents ever written. The Declaration of Independence. I know you've read it. I know you've heard it, but listen to it with fresh ears. A new in Congress July 4th, 1776. The unanimous declaration of the 13 United States

of America. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth a separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just

powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes

destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people

to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such

principles and organizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely

to affect their safety and happiness.

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for

light and transient causes, and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are

more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to write themselves by abolishing

the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably, the same object

evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism.

It is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards

for their future security, such as been the patient's sufferings of these colonies.

And such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and

usurpations all having indirect object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over

...