SHOW NOTES: Ted Widmer joins to discuss his recent book, The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text. Widmer traces the antecedents of the Declaration’s big ideas and finds in the words of succeeding generations of Americans, and people around the globe, the key to understanding the durability of America’s founding ideas.

Participants

Ted Widmer was Distinguished Lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College of the CUNY. A former director of the John Carter Brown Library and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, he is the author of 10 books and recipient of the Lincoln Forum Book Prize.

Jeffrey Rosen is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.

Additional Resources

• Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality” (2015)
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
• Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream” (1963)
• Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States” (1876)
• Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address” (1863)

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Thank you to our presenting sponsor, FIRE, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to defending freedom of speech and free thought. Learn more about FIRE’s work at FIRE.org/blessings.