VIDEO: Watch SIA 101.2: Declaration of Independence – Part II (Video time: 45 minutes)
REQUIRED READING:
- Declaration of Independence (pages 37 – 45 in Introduction to American Citizenship)
- Speakeasy Ideas Handout on the Declaration
TERMS, PEOPLE, & PLACES TO IDENTIFY
Where there is a time mark, the answer is provided at the time indicated in the relevant podcast or video. Where there is no time mark indicated, the student should look up in a book or perform an Internet search for the term, person, or place.
- Review the meaning of Multiculturalism
- Perspectivism (3:02)
- Relativism
- Musket with bayonet
- Lee Resolution
- Fratricide
- Friedrich Nietzsche (3:02) (When did he live? Why did he mean when he wrote that “God is dead?”)
- Continental Army
- Battles of Lexington and Concord
- Events of September 11, 2001
STUDY QUESTIONS
- It is natural for a thinking person to want to know what is right and what is wrong. Is there some kind of principle that is objective/moral truth by which a person can judge various cultures? (7:39 – 16:50)
- Did the founders have an understanding that other cultures existed? (15:00)
- What do all cultures contain? (15:35)
- What is the natural law? (16:35)
- Why is it useful and good to understand the idea of natural law? (16:45 – 17:10)
- In judging what is right and wrong the old view used what standard? (18:10 – 18:44)
- In judging what is right and wrong the multicultural view uses what standard? (18:10 – 18:44)
- The Declaration of Independence is based on what premise? (18:45)
- The theory of multiculturalism leads to the self-destruction of ____________________. (23:05)
- Which did the founders believe in? Multicultural Theory or Objective Moral Truth? (24:23)
- Why is the Declaration of Independence a rare document in human history? Summarize. (26:02 – 34:55)
- What was the revolutionary point of view in the Declaration of Independence? (33:20 – 34:36)
- The founders did something that had never been done in the founding of a country. They founded a country based on what? (36:05 – 36:16)
- This founding is unique why? (36:16 – 36:36)
- The Declaration of Independence is radical because it is __________________. (36:37)
- In the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, the American revolutionaries describe themselves as ____ people. (39:10)
- The Declaration of Independence goes on to say that the American revolutionaries are connected to another people. Who were the other people? (39:10)
- Why is this idea of one people significant in U.S. history? (39:40)
- The American revolutionaries describe the specific connection with the British that they are dissolving. What is that specific connection? (40:58 – 42:10)
- According to the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, what do the American revolutionaries want? (42:17 – 43:30)
- Why did the American revolutionary think independence is good and right? (43:30)
