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Hello, this is Matthew Spalding. I'm the executive director of the 1776 Commission. I'm also

a vice president with Hillsdale College back at our Washington, D.C. campus. I'm joined today by Dr. Larry Arne,

who's the chairman of the 1776 Commission and also the president of Hillsdale College, and Dr. Carol

Swain, who's a former professor of political science at Princeton

and Vanderbilt Universities, who's the vice chair. Thank you both for being with me. As all of you know,

the 1776 Commission issued the 1776 report on January 18, 2021. And two days later, that report and the commission was abolished by

executive order on January 20th, 2021. Despite that, the 1776 commission has just met in Washington,

D.C. at the Hillsdale College, Washington, D.C. campus. We've had a a great meeting and we'll be issuing a statement about that.

But the chairman and the vice chair are here to give us some of their sense of the meeting and some reactions

so that we can get the message out to continue this great work of recovering the principles of the American founding and taking in the advice, but also the

potential threats that were issued by the 1776 Commission Report. So with that, Dr. Arnd,

would you like to give us some opening thoughts or comments about how the meeting went?

I agree. It was a great meeting. The commissioners are all people

appointed because they have a lifelong interest in the meaning of the United States of America.

We're very keen to see that we marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in

2016, nobly, and in a way to revive understanding of it. Of course, that's in great disrepute

today among most of the intellectual classes. And we think that's mistaken. It's a disastrous

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