Rand Paul responds to hit piece over his "audit The Fed" stance

February 19, 2015

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Earlier this week, Politico published a hit piece on Senator Rand Paul over his push to audit the Federal Reserve. The article claims that Sen. Paul isn't telling the truth and this is just a calculated way for him to energize the Libertarian base. Glenn invited Sen. Paul onto the radio show today to respond to the attacks one by one.

Below is a rush transcript of the interview

GLENN: Welcome to the program. Senator Rand Paul is joining us. We're excited to have him on. He was supposed to be on yesterday. There was a scheduling conflict. Misunderstanding. We missed him yesterday. We're glad to have him on today to respond to an article that was in Politico that I think was a massive hatchet job on him on -- in many ways. But they -- they bring up a lot of points that, unless you're really well-versed in The Fed, you might look at this and say, well, gosh, I don't know who to believe because this all makes sense. Maybe Rand Paul is lying. But they bring up very specific points that he should be able to answer. And if he can't answer them, then we know that it was an absolute hatchet job and it only makes his case stronger and we see the game that is being played.

Welcome to the program, Senator Rand Paul. How are you, sir?

SENATOR PAUL: Good morning, Glenn. Thanks for having me.

GLENN: You bet. So, Senator, I want to talk to you about the Politico article. But I really want -- how much time do we have with you?

SENATOR RAND: Oh, a couple hours. Whatever you need.

[laughter]

GLENN: So I want to just kind of go over exactly what they said so you can explain it. Because you're an expert on The Fed. I mean, you know, relatively speaking. And they bring up a lot of points that somebody like me looks at and says, well, gee, that kind of makes sense. What's Rand talking about? So let's go over these point-by-point. They say, The Fed has $4.5 trillion in assets, mostly treasury bonds, mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the federal government. It only has 57 billion in equity because it spends -- sends most of its profits to the US treasury, a total of around 500 billion over the past decade. So it actually has no leverage in the traditional sense of the word, meaning debt, because it doesn't borrow money like Lehman Brothers before it went bankrupt.

SENATOR PAUL: It kind of makes me laugh, a little bit, Glenn. They don't borrow money, they just create it. So they bought during the last several years, they bought trillions of dollars of assets. And you say, well, an asset should be good. Right? To have an asset. Well, they create the money to buy the asset. So on the liability side of the ledger, they have almost the same amount of liabilities. But they didn't borrow money from someone. They didn't go out and work and earn it. They just created a computer entry to pay the banks for these assets.

And the point I've been making is, who did they buy these things from, and what did they pay for them? So for example, let's say I'm the chairman of The Fed and my brother owns the bank, shouldn't the American public know if I buy my brother's bank and I pay 100 percent value when maybe it was only worth 10 percent? The whole idea during this crisis was that they forced private industry to mark to market. Meaning you had to immediately discount what your company was worth if it was losing value, whether you were selling it or not. The Fed doesn't do the same thing. The Fed has 4.5 trillion dollars' worth of so-called assets. We don't know what they are. We don't know what they're worth, what they paid for them. And are they marking them to market? And what would happen to The Fed and to the country if they were to mark them to market?

GLENN: They said in your op-ed, you claimed that The Fed has $4.5 trillion in liabilities, not assets, and $57 billion in equity. Donald Kohn, the former vice chair said, there's essentially no credit risk on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet right now. I don't know of any institution in the United States that is subject to more oversight than The Fed.

SENATOR PAUL: When they say there's no credit risk, they created four and a half trillion dollars to buy these bad mortgages. So is there no risk in creating it? If it's a great thing -- they brag they made 500 billion or whatever they made in interest over the last 10 years. Well, if it's good, why not create more money?

So if they bought 400 trillion dollars' worth of asset by printing up money or by computer entry, why not create, oh, I don't know, 9 trillion worth, and they can double their so-called profit. See, it's like the emperor has no clothes when people finally discover, yeah, they have a profit, but their profit is made by creating money out of thin air, or creating a computer entry and buying stuff. But then there's a whole question of favoritism. Is there any conflict of interest? Are any of these assets, so-called assets, which are sometimes bad car loans, bad home loans, are any of these assets owned by friends of theirs? You know, for about the last two decades, there's been a revolving door between the fed, the Treasury, and Wall Street again. And I frankly live and fly over America, and I'm tired of paying for it. I'm tired of bailing out these big banks when they make bad decisions.

STU: I think you're being rude to Lehman Brothers by comparing them to Lehman Brothers.

GLENN: Okay. So here's Politico. Problem number one. They say problems with your bill. Problem number one. The article says the bank's finances are already subject to an audit by the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, the Federal Inspector General and outside audit firms.

SENATOR PAUL: There's a really great exchange, and your staff can find this. There was a committee hearing, and the congressman asked the auditor if he brought the auditor before the committee, he asked the auditor, during the crisis, you know, it was like four or five, six, $7 trillion had changed hands. I think the question and the point was: Do you know what was purchased with the $2 trillion?

And the auditor said, oh, we're not allowed to audit Federal Bank Reserve activities. So the auditor has no idea what they purchased. So really, I don't think that's a real audit. We have a bunch of fake audits. And the fake audits don't reveal any of the information we want to know. We want to know: Who are they buying the stuff from. What are they paying for it? Are they paying a fair market rate or because it's someone's brother-in-law, they're actually paying more for something than it's actually worth.

If your home is worth 150,000, that's the mortgage on it, but the market drops off by a third, shouldn't the Federal Reserve be able to buy that at 150,000? And what if it's their brother-in-law or cousin? We don't know any of that. So we don't really have an audit. It's appalling that something Congress creates is such an enormous creature -- a creature that creates its own money is now lobbying government. They should be forbidden from lobbying government and forbidden from trying to influence legislation. I think it's appalling that they're trying to stop any oversight of the Federal Reserve.

GLENN: Well, they're saying, again, back to the article, those interested in what is on the Fed's balance sheet can actually find out. Down to the individual bond on the website of the New York Federal Reserve.

SENATOR PAUL: I think that that's true and untrue at the same time. There are lists of what their assets are. But they aren't individualized. You can't tell who they bought them from or whether they were bought at fair market price or whether they were bought at a haircut and whether or not there were any conflicts of interests in the buying and selling. I mean, Bear Stearns is bailed out, Lehman Brothers isn't. Does that have anything to do with who runs the bank or who owned the banks? I mean, these are questions -- the bank was created by Congress. So they talk about independence from Congress. Well, no, Congress created the bank. Congress should be the one overseeing the bank. The independence we need is independence from the executive branch. The executive branch is always meddling in The Fed. And I frankly think that we need to break up some of the -- you know -- of the I guess intermingling of policy between Treasury and Fed and have more congressional oversight on what's going on.

GLENN: Let me -- this kind of goes right into problem number three, they say. Critics of the bill say that it's aimed much more directly at repealing a 1978 law establishing Fed independence on monetary policy decision. Paul's Bill, though vaguely written, would likely allow the GAO to investigate monetary policy actions and report back to Congress immediately.

SENATOR PAUL: You know, it's just a lookback provision. It's actually a one-time audit that looks back at the end of the year. And we think it would be a good idea. And basically what the bill does, it reveals prohibitions against auditing. So when they say there are being audited, there are four prohibitions that prevent full audits from occurring. All we do is repeal the prohibitions on full audits. And I think most American people have a little worry. We went to where people making $100 million a year on Wall Street ran their banks into the ground by poor decisions, buying derivatives and doing all this crazy trading, and what happens, those people don't miss a beat, and the next year they're making $100 million. But there's a lot of us living in middle America who are struggling. When we talk about the middle class still struggling, the rich getting richer, some of us want to know what the Federal Reserve is doing and whether they're bailing out their wealthy friends or -- and what are the consequences for the rest of us in middle America.

GLENN: Just off the subject here for a second. Have you seen the documentary, Money for Nothing?

SENATOR PAUL: I think so, or I've seen bits of it.

GLENN: It's really good. If you happen to be listening and want to know the history of The Fed and what some of the things is that senator Rand Paul is talked about. Watch this. You can find it on Netflix. It's from Liberty Streets Films. It's called Money for Nothing. And it's about The Fed and, quite honestly, many of the problems that they've caused. And part of it is because of this 1978 bill where they were also charged with -- and this to me makes so much sense, they were charged with also worrying now not just about inflation, but the unemployment numbers. And so now the balance is, do we care -- do the people care more about inflation, or do the people care more about the unemployment numbers? And so it's become wildly politicized. And you can't serve both of those masters. And right now, we're printing up the money because they're not concerned about inflation, and the pressure is, get the economy moving, get the jobs created. And they'll destroy our monetary base.

SENATOR PAUL: Here's another thing, Glenn. In the crisis of 2008, there are reports that The Fed bought 3 trillion dollars' worth of foreign bank securities. Really, we now have a bank created by Congress that is actually buying foreign banks and buying foreign debt. And that's really concerning, that this all goes on in secret, even after the fact. They don't want to tell us after the fact what they did. And it's very concerning. And it's too much power to have gravitated into one sort of secretive bank. And I think most Americans would like to see it audited. If you look at polling on it or look at the votes, in the House, every Republican voted for this. And 100 Democrats. 350 votes in the House twice now. And yet, now The Fed has come all out onslaught push against this. It should worry people that an individual bank that has the monopoly privilege granted to it by Congress is able to print money to be able to lobby against legislation that would cause more oversight. That should worry all of us.

GLENN: Real quick, two other things that need a quick comment on. One of them was kind of a smear on you. The whole piece was a smear. This one they just talked about how you were on my show on 2011. You said, I worry about the Weimar Republic. I worry about 1923 in Germany when they destroyed the currency when they elected Hitler. I don't want something like that to happen in our country. They're trying to make you sound like a nut job by saying that we could have hyperinflation. Do you stand by that worry?

SENATOR PAUL: Well, I think the question they have to answer to the American people is that, if create a computer entry for four and a half trillion dollars and you buy a bunch of stuff with it, is it really -- it's like the emperor has no clothes. They go around the world saying we're such a great and productive bank. We have all this profit. We created four and a half trillion dollars' worth of money. We bought some assets that bear interest. So we're making money. It's like, wow, that's great. Make more money then. Is there no limit? This is the question we should ask. Is there no limit to the amount of money that The Fed can create? And is there -- at some point, is there some ramifications? In Germany, it was hyperinflation. Right now, some of what they're doing worries people in the opposite direction because all this money that's being created, The Fed buys stuffs for the banks, distressed assets often, from the banks, but then the banks put it back in The Fed, and it doesn't get out into the system. And then The Fed pays them interest, which is a relatively new phenomenon. But as a consequence, there's enormous amount of money piling up. The banks are getting richer. Who are making -- you know, they're only making a quarter of a point of interest. But if you give some banks billions of dollars for assets that weren't worth much and then they're able to make easy money on it, is that really fair to the rest of the country that's struggling?

GLENN: The last point in the article, they say, this is only you. You don't believe any of this. You are smarter than this. You know that anybody can see, there's no use to the audit, and you're just playing to a dumb conservative or Libertarian base.

SENATOR PAUL: Well, that sounds like the people who call us Flyover America. They discount any knowledge. But they also discount any true belief and worry about our country. I think the one sincere thing that came out of the Tea Party movement and that still exists in the country is that there are millions of us that are worried about the future of the country. We're worried about the enormous death debt we're incurring. We're worried about the ramifications of the Federal Reserve simply creating money to pay for that debt. And, yeah, I'm very sincere in this. I do none of this for gamesmanship. I'm very concerned about the future of our country. Does that mean I think that it will end tomorrow in a Weimar Republic-type inflation? No one knows the future and when things will happen or if it will happen. But I am concerned about a bank that creates trillions of dollars of money, buys up distressed assets, and then says, hey, look how profitable we are.

GLENN: Last question on a different topic. The FCC net neutrality. We are so against net neutrality. There is a lot of confusion on this. A lot of people that just I think don't know what they're doing and don't know they're in bed with Marxists. I think this is a killer of the economy and a killer of freedom of speech. Is it going to pass?

SENATOR PAUL: You know, I think it won't get through the legislature. Like everything else, the president is doing it by executive Fiat. This is the biggest worry in our country right now, the president's usurpation of power. The checks and balances that our founders gave us, net neutrality is one example. Amending Obamacare is another. Immigration is another. Even going to war without Congress voting. All of these things are leading to an extraordinarily strong president and that's bad fort republic.

GLENN: Can you stop net neutrality if the FCC takes it on? Will you stop net neutrality?

SENATOR PAUL: Actually we might be able to. We couldn't when the Democrats were in charge, but there is a special rule called the Congressional Review Act. By a simple majority in the House or the Senate, we can overturn regulation when it comes forward. The only downside is that it would still have to be signed by the president. But I think we can actually in both houses turn enough numbers to overcome any terrible regulations that he does now. But the difficulty will be is that it still has to be signed by him, which he is unlikely to do.

GLENN: Senator Rand Paul, thank you so much. Thanks for clearing this up. I stand by, I think this was a bad smear job. By desperate, desperate people. And we wish you all the best.

SENATOR PAUL: Thanks, Glenn.

GLENN: Senator Rand Paul.

Featured image courtesy of the AP

Why the Declaration of Independence still matters — Part 2: The Declaration's structure and purpose

From the moment the 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson arrived at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1776, he was on the radical side. That caused John Adams to like him immediately. Then the Congress stuck Jefferson and Adams together on the five-man committee to write a formal statement justifying a break with Great Britain, and their mutual admiration society began.

Jefferson thought Adams should write the Declaration. But Adams protested, saying, “It can't come from me because I'm obnoxious and disliked." Adams reasoned that Jefferson was not obnoxious or disliked, therefore he should write it. Plus, he flattered Jefferson, by telling him he was a great writer. It was a master class in passing the buck.

So, over the next 17 days, Jefferson holed up in his room, applying his lawyer skills to the ideas of the Enlightenment. He borrowed freely from existing documents like the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He later wrote that “he was not striving for originality of principle or sentiment." Instead, he hoped his words served as “an expression of the American mind."

It's safe to say he achieved his goal.

The five-man committee changed about 25 percent of Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration before submitting it to Congress. Then, Congress altered about one-fifth of that draft. But most of the final Declaration's words are Jefferson's, including the most famous passage — the Preamble — which Congress left intact. The result is nothing less than America's mission statement, the words that ultimately bind the nation together. And words that we desperately need to rediscover because of our boiling partisan rage.

The Declaration is brilliant in structure and purpose. It was designed for multiple audiences: the King of Great Britain, the colonists, and the world. And it was designed for multiple purposes: rallying the troops, gaining foreign allies, and announcing the creation of a new country.

The Declaration is structured in five sections: the Introduction, Preamble, the Body composed of two parts, and the Conclusion. It's basically the most genius breakup letter ever written.

In the Introduction, step 1 is the notification — I think we need to break up. And to be fair, I feel I owe you an explanation...

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…

The Continental Congress felt they were entitled by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" to “dissolve the political bands," but they needed to prove the legitimacy of their cause. They were defying the world's most powerful nation and needed to motivate foreign allies to join the effort. So, they set their struggle within the entire “Course of human events." They're saying, this is no petty political spat — this is a major event in world history.

Step 2 is declaring what you believe in, your standards — Here's what I'm looking for in a healthy relationship...

This is the most famous part of the Declaration; the part school children recite — the Preamble:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That's as much as many Americans know of the Declaration. But the Preamble is the DNA of our nation, and it really needs to be taken as a whole:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Preamble takes us through a logical progression: All men are created equal; God gives all humans certain inherent rights that cannot be denied; these include the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; to protect those rights, we have governments set up; but when a government fails to protect our inherent rights, people have the right to change or replace it.

Government is only there to protect the rights of mankind. They don't have any power unless we give it to them. That was an extraordinarily radical concept then and we're drifting away from it now.

The Preamble is the justification for revolution. But note how they don't mention Great Britain yet. And again, note how they frame it within a universal context. These are fundamental principles, not just squabbling between neighbors. These are the principles that make the Declaration just as relevant today. It's not just a dusty parchment that applied in 1776.

Step 3 is laying out your case — Here's why things didn't work out between us. It's not me, it's you...

This is Part 1 of the Body of the Declaration. It's the section where Jefferson gets to flex his lawyer muscles by listing 27 grievances against the British crown. This is the specific proof of their right to rebellion:

He has obstructed the administration of justice...

For imposing taxes on us without our consent...

For suspending our own legislatures...

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us...

Again, Congress presented these “causes which impel them to separation" in universal terms to appeal to an international audience. It's like they were saying, by joining our fight you'll be joining mankind's overall fight against tyranny.

Step 4 is demonstrating the actions you took — I really tried to make this relationship work, and here's how...

This is Part 2 of the Body. It explains how the colonists attempted to plead their case directly to the British people, only to have the door slammed in their face:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury...

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice... We must, therefore... hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

This basically wrapped up America's argument for independence — we haven't been treated justly, we tried to talk to you about it, but since you refuse to listen and things are only getting worse, we're done here.

Step 5 is stating your intent — So, I think it's best if we go our separate ways. And my decision is final...

This is the powerful Conclusion. If people know any part of the Declaration besides the Preamble, this is it:

...that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved...

They left no room for doubt. The relationship was over, and America was going to reboot, on its own, with all the rights of an independent nation.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The message was clear — this was no pitchfork mob. These were serious men who had carefully thought through the issues before taking action. They were putting everything on the line for this cause.

The Declaration of Independence is a landmark in the history of democracy because it was the first formal statement of a people announcing their right to choose their own government. That seems so obvious to us now, but in 1776 it was radical and unprecedented.

In 1825, Jefferson wrote that the purpose of the Declaration was “not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of… but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm… to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

You're not going to do better than the Declaration of Independence. Sure, it worked as a means of breaking away from Great Britain, but its genius is that its principles of equality, inherent rights, and self-government work for all time — as long as we actually know and pursue those principles.

Why the Declaration of Independence still matters — Part 1: The Declaration and slavery

Patrick Perkins / Unsplash

On June 7, 1776, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, better known today as Independence Hall. Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies' independence. The “Lee Resolution" was short and sweet:

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Intense debate followed, and the Congress voted 7 to 5 (with New York abstaining) to postpone a vote on Lee's Resolution. They called a recess for three weeks. In the meantime, the delegates felt they needed to explain what they were doing in writing. So, before the recess, they appointed a five-man committee to come up with a formal statement justifying a break with Great Britain. They appointed two men from New England — Roger Sherman and John Adams; two from the middle colonies — Robert Livingston and Benjamin Franklin; and one Southerner — Thomas Jefferson. The responsibility for writing what would become the Declaration of Independence fell to Jefferson.

In the rotunda of the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., there are three original documents on permanent display: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. These are the three pillars of the United States, yet America barely seems to know them anymore. We need to get reacquainted — quickly.

In a letter to his friend John Adams in 1816, Jefferson wrote: “I like the dreams of the future, better than the history of the past."

America used to be a forward-looking nation of dreamers. We still are in spots, but the national attitude that we hear broadcast loudest across media is not looking toward the future with optimism and hope. In late 2017, a national poll found 59% of Americans think we are currently at the “lowest point in our nation's history that they can remember."

America spends far too much time looking to the past for blame and excuse. And let's be honest, even the Right is often more concerned with “owning the left" than helping point anyone toward the practical principles of the Declaration of Independence. America has clearly lost touch with who we are as a nation. We have a national identity crisis.

The Declaration of Independence is America's thesis statement, and without it America doesn't exist.

It is urgent that we get reacquainted with the Declaration of Independence because postmodernism would have us believe that we've evolved beyond the America of our founding documents, and thus they're irrelevant to the present and the future. But the Declaration of Independence is America's thesis statement, and without it America doesn't exist.

Today, much of the nation is so addicted to partisan indignation that "day-to-day" indignation isn't enough to feed the addiction. So, we're reaching into America's past to help us get our fix. In 2016, Democrats in the Louisiana state legislature tabled a bill that would have required fourth through sixth graders to recite the opening lines of the Declaration. They didn't table it because they thought it would be too difficult or too patriotic. They tabled it because the requirement would include the phrase “all men are created equal" and the progressives in the Louisiana legislature didn't want the children to have to recite a lie. Representative Barbara Norton said, “One thing that I do know is, all men are not created equal. When I think back in 1776, July the fourth, African Americans were slaves. And for you to bring a bill to request that our children will recite the Declaration, I think it's a little bit unfair to us. To ask our children to recite something that's not the truth. And for you to ask those children to repeat the Declaration stating that all men's are free. I think that's unfair."

Remarkable — an elected representative saying it wouldn't be fair for students to have to recite the Declaration because “all men are not created equal." Another Louisiana Democrat explained that the government born out of the Declaration “was used against races of people." I guess they missed that part in school where they might have learned that the same government later made slavery illegal and amended the Constitution to guarantee all men equal protection under the law. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were an admission of guilt by the nation regarding slavery, and an effort to right the wrongs.

Yet, the progressive logic goes something like this: many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, including Thomas Jefferson who wrote it, owned slaves; slavery is evil; therefore, the Declaration of Independence is not valid because it was created by evil slave owners.

It's a sad reality that the left has a very hard time appreciating the universal merits of the Declaration of Independence because they're so hung up on the long-dead issue of slavery. And just to be clear — because people love to take things out of context — of course slavery was horrible. Yes, it is a total stain on our history. But defending the Declaration of Independence is not an effort to excuse any aspect of slavery.

Okay then, people might say, how could the Founders approve the phrase “All men are created equal," when many of them owned slaves? How did they miss that?

They didn't miss it. In fact, Thomas Jefferson included an anti-slavery passage in his first draft of the Declaration. The paragraph blasted King George for condoning slavery and preventing the American Colonies from passing legislation to ban slavery:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights to life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere... Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

We don't say “execrable" that much anymore. It means, utterly detestable, abominable, abhorrent — basically very bad.

Jefferson was upset when Georgia and North Carolina threw up the biggest resistance to that paragraph. Ultimately, those two states twisted Congress' arm to delete the paragraph.

Still, how could a man calling the slave trade “execrable" be a slaveowner himself? No doubt about it, Jefferson was a flawed human being. He even had slaves from his estate in Virginia attending him while he was in Philadelphia, in the very apartment where he was writing the Declaration.

Many of the Southern Founders deeply believed in the principles of the Declaration yet couldn't bring themselves to upend the basis of their livelihood. By 1806, Virginia law made it more difficult for slave owners to free their slaves, especially if the owner had significant debts as Jefferson did.

At the same time, the Founders were not idiots. They understood the ramifications of signing on to the principles described so eloquently in the Declaration. They understood that logically, slavery would eventually have to be abolished in America because it was unjust, and the words they were committing to paper said as much. Remember, John Adams was on the committee of five that worked on the Declaration and he later said that the Revolution would never be complete until the slaves were free.

Also, the same generation that signed the Declaration started the process of abolition by banning the importation of slaves in 1807. Jefferson was President at the time and he urged Congress to pass the law.

America has an obvious road map that, as a nation, we're not consulting often enough.

The Declaration took a major step toward crippling the institution of slavery. It made the argument for the first time about the fundamental rights of all humans which completely undermined slavery. Planting the seeds to end slavery is not nearly commendable enough for leftist critics, but you can't discount the fact that the seeds were planted. It's like they started an expiration clock for slavery by approving the Declaration. Everything that happened almost a century later to end slavery, and then a century after that with the Civil Rights movement, flowed from the principles voiced in the Declaration.

Ironically for a movement that calls itself progressive, it is obsessed with retrying and judging the past over and over. Progressives consider this a better use of time than actually putting past abuses in the rearview and striving not to be defined by ancestral failures.

It can be very constructive to look to the past, but not when it's used to flog each other in the present. Examining history is useful in providing a road map for the future. And America has an obvious road map that, as a nation, we're not consulting often enough. But it's right there, the original, under glass. The ink is fading, but the words won't die — as long as we continue to discuss them.

'Good Morning Texas' gives exclusive preview of Mercury One museum

Screen shot from Good Morning Texas

Mercury One is holding a special exhibition over the 4th of July weekend, using hundreds of artifacts, documents and augmented reality experiences to showcase the history of slavery — including slavery today — and a path forward. Good Morning Texas reporter Paige McCoy Smith went through the exhibit for an exclusive preview with Mercury One's chief operating officer Michael Little on Tuesday.

Watch the video below to see the full preview.

Click here to purchase tickets to the museum (running from July 4 - 7).

Antifascist mob goes FULL fascist in Portland

Over the weekend, journalist Andy Ngo and several other apparent right-leaning people were brutally beaten by masked-gangs of Antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon. Short for "antifascist," Antifa claims to be fighting for social justice and tolerance — by forcibly and violently silencing anyone with opposing opinions. Ngo, who was kicked, punched, and sprayed with an unknown substance, is currently still in the hospital with a "brain bleed" as a result of the savage attack. Watch the video to get the details from Glenn.

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