Thanks as always for listening to The American Idea.

Today's episode, in celebration of July 4th, is a special one.

We're giving you access to the first session of our free online course, The American Idea.

In this segment, Jeff discusses the meaning of America's first core document,

the Declaration of Independence.

Now, if you're interested in learning more, we've

included an enrollment link in the notes for this episode. You can study at your own pace what

three great Americans recognized as the American idea starting with the Declaration

of Independence. Thanks for listening and happy Independence Day.

I want to welcome everybody to this class session in our course The American Idea.

We're going to be talking about the first document in our series,

The Declaration of Independence, a remarkably important document for understanding who we are as Americans.

And join for that conversation by our

friend Professor Chris Burkett. Chris, thanks for joining us. Happy to be here. The Declaration of Independence,

why are we starting the course with this document? What is so important about the declaration?

A fantastic question, one's certainly worth thinking about. So I would say the importance of the declaration, first of all, is that it lays out the ideas,

the principles that really tell us who we are as Americans, what makes us Americans, what unites

us as one people, forms what Thomas Jefferson in a famous letter to Henry Lee calls the American

mind and does so, as Jefferson says in a way that is very plain and unmistakable and

clear and common sense, so that not just Americans at the time that this was written would

get it, but so that people in the future could

become Americans or partake and participate in that American mind as well by seeing the ideas

...