This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, December 2nd, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Constitution protects a wide range of individual rights,

but the Supreme Court has chosen to protect some rights more than others.

Tim Sanford argues it's time to reassert the principles of the Constitution through properly

understanding the Declaration of Independence.

His book, The Conscience of the Constitution,

is available at Cato.org.

I think the Declaration of Independence

is the guide star of how we interpret terms in the Constitution that might otherwise be ambiguous.

So for example, the Constitution refers to due process of law, it refers to the blessings of

liberty, it refers to the people of the

United States and what these terms mean can really only be understood in the

broader context of the philosophical and political achievements of the for the sake of the governed, that the primary concern is protecting individual freedom, and

that from that freedom we derive the authority to create a government which is run by the consent of the governed.

The big problem that we have, have, the problem that we have managed to get ourselves into

as far as constitutional interpretation is concerned today

is that we have this notion that democracy is the centerpiece of our Constitution

and that the whole point of our form of government is to allow the majority will to prevail.

And what the Declaration of Independence in league with the Constitution demonstrate is that that's backwards.

The reason for democracy is only to protect individual liberty and liberty is the standard by which we determine whether democracy is healthy or not.

Let's talk about some contemporary issues and how we ought to think about them with respect

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