What Calvin Coolidge Said About the True Meaning of Independence
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1926, on the 150th anniversary of American independence, Calvin Coolidge delivered a Fourth of July address that went far beyond celebration. Speaking in Philadelphia, he argued that America’s prosperity did not create its founding ideals, but that its founding ideals created America’s prosperity.
Coolidge warned that abandoning the principles of the Declaration of Independence would mean losing the very source of American freedom. Drawing on the same moral tradition invoked by Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, he defended equality, natural rights, and self-government as final truths, not outdated ideas. Vince Benedetto, joined by Coolidge interpreter Tracy Messer, share the story of a speech that still challenges Americans to remember the real heart of their independence.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:13.9 | And we return to our American stories. |
| 0:16.4 | And now, Vince Benedetto of Bold Gold Media Group and also an Air Force Academy graduate tells the story |
| 0:23.9 | of Calvin Coolidge's speech given on our nation's 150th anniversary. It's a beauty. And here to help |
| 0:31.1 | tell the story is Coolidge interpreter and impressionist Tracy Messer. Let's get into the story. |
| 0:38.3 | Today, in America, there are many who seem to be ready to cast aside the foundations and founding document of the nation, |
| 0:45.3 | or certainly diminish its importance. |
| 0:53.3 | This desire often seems to be rooted in the claim that the men behind the creation of the nation |
| 0:59.2 | had personal flaws so great that the product of their work must be condemned as unredeemable. |
| 1:06.8 | Therefore, progress can only be made if and when we unmoor from our founding ideals. |
| 1:13.6 | As we close in on the 250th birthday of America in 26, |
| 1:18.5 | it's worth revisiting President Calvin Coolidge's defense of the Declaration of Independence |
| 1:23.0 | and the men who wrote it on America's 150th birthday. |
| 1:28.3 | Coolidge, who was our 30th president, |
| 1:31.3 | speaking in Philadelphia on the 5th of July, 1926, stated, |
| 1:37.3 | We live in an age of science, |
| 1:42.3 | and of abound an accumulation of material things. |
| 1:48.0 | These did not create our declaration. |
| 1:53.0 | A declaration created them. |
| 1:57.0 | Things of the Spirit come first. |
| 2:00.9 | Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, |
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