U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently gave a stirring speech at the University of Texas at Austin in which he urged young Americans to stand up for our nation’s founding principles.
As part of a lecture series commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas underscored the need for courage at a time when our most sacred rights, freedoms and values are under attack.
“As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the very values announced in it have fallen out of favor,” Thomas said.
“The devotion expressed in the final sentence of the Declaration, the willingness to do anything for our principles that has, throughout American history, been most indispensable,” he continued. “It is that devotion that we are missing today, and that we must find in our hearts if this nation is to endure.”
Thomas also pointed to modern progressivism as one of the biggest threats to the ideals found in the Declaration.
“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government,” Thomas warned. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the Government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.”
The Justice said that Americans must heed the lessons of history and nations where progressive ideology eventually “led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen.”
“Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” Thomas said, “and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based.”
Despite many clear and present dangers, Thomas offered encouragement and hope. He said that the values and truths listed in the Declaration are transcendent and withstand the test of time. In fact, it is because of truths that Americans found the will to fight and press forward through the darkest moments of America’s history.
“At home, at school, and at Church, we were taught that we are inherently equal; that equality came from God; and that it could not be diminished by man. We were made in the image and likeness of God,” Thomas said. “We knew that life, liberty and property were sacrosanct. These truths were self-evident to the adults in our lives and were taught to us as undeniable truths.”
“That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter. Others, with power and animus, could treat us as unequal but they lacked the divine power to make us so,” he added, referencing the Civil Rights Movement. “Those around us could endure with dignity the insults of segregation because they knew that, in God’s eyes, they were equal.”
“Those ideas have been so powerful that they convinced our nation to finally end segregation. They continue to be so powerful today that they have inspired people throughout the world to throw off the shackles of their oppressors.”
He encouraged students to be strong in their faith.
“It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to ‘live by lies.’ It may mean confronting today’s fashionable bigotries, such as anti-Semitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor.”
Thomas concluded his remarks with a firm call to action, encouraging students in the audience and people watching online, to renew their commitment to defending the freedoms that define America.
“By all means, celebrate the Declaration of Independence,” he said. “It is the most important act in American history, the foundation of our Constitution and, as Lincoln said, ‘the sheet anchor’ of our Republic.”
“But, I implore you to celebrate it by standing up for it, by defending it, and by recommitting yourselves to living up to its ideals. Channel the courage of the men who faced down a king and signed it. Or a President who led the nation in a civil war rather than permit this house to be divided by the great contradiction of slavery. Take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion.”
