Constitution 101: Property, Morality, and Religion
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss whether or not the government should legislate morality before introducing Thomas West.
The United States Constitution was designed to secure the natural rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. Signed by Constitutional Convention delegates on September 17, 1787—Constitution Day—it was ratified by the American people and remains the most enduring and successful constitution in history.
In this twelve-lecture course, students will examine the political theory of the American Founding and subsequent challenges to that theory throughout American history. Topics covered in this course include: the natural rights theory of the Founding, the meaning of the Declaration and the Constitution, the crisis of the Civil War, the Progressive rejection of the Founding, and the nature and form of modern liberalism.
While the first purpose of government is to protect citizens from foreign and domestic threats, it must also undertake other essential actions in order to secure natural rights. These include the protection of property rights, the defense of religious liberty, and the promotion of the moral character necessary to sustain free government.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College online courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan. |
| 0:12.5 | And I'm Juan Davilos. We're back with Constitution 101, the meaning and history of the Constitution. |
| 0:17.6 | We're going on to lecture number five today to secure these rights, property, |
| 0:21.7 | morality, and religion. That might seem kind of interesting because the Declaration |
| 0:25.7 | talks about securing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not |
| 0:29.9 | morality and religion. What role does the government have regarding morality? Well, we were |
| 0:35.6 | talking earlier about, you know, you hear a common phrase today, you can't legislate morality, which is, of course, nonsense, |
| 0:43.8 | because what else would you legislate? What's the purpose of legislation? I mean, |
| 0:48.2 | legislation is don't do this, or you'll get this penalty, or do this and you'll get this reward. |
| 0:53.5 | What is morality? It's the same |
| 0:55.2 | thing. It's do this, don't do that. If you're legislating morality, the question is, what morality |
| 1:00.7 | are you legislating? So what do we learn in this lecture about the purpose of government? Well, the |
| 1:05.6 | founders understood this very clearly. They knew that you needed to have a good and virtuous citizenry in order to have a |
| 1:14.1 | republic. And in order to have good citizens, you need to teach them what to do and what not to do. |
| 1:20.2 | There are things that are good for human beings, like raising a family and working hard and |
| 1:26.7 | enjoying the fruits of liberty. There are things that are bad |
| 1:28.9 | for human beings like theft, rape, murder, you don't want to do those things. So you need to |
| 1:33.9 | legislate against those things. That's a view. That's a moral view. That's morality. If the purpose of |
| 1:40.6 | government is to secure rights, life, liberty, and property so that people can |
| 1:45.1 | pursue happiness, you have to legislate the things that preserve life, liberty, and property. |
| 1:50.6 | And that means things like do not steal, do not rape, do not murder, the purpose of government, |
| 1:56.5 | or the means by which government accomplishes its purpose is legislating morality. And that comes |
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