We're going to run for about another hour because this is going all on video. We like to make them one hour units. So we'll finish at about quarter to one and then we'll break for lunch. go out next door. We are currently on page 13 of the handout.
And this is handout session 9 for those of you that are on video. We are going to talk a little bit about the founding documents. Those of us who went to school a long time ago probably had a little bit of this. Anybody that's gone to school recently, as far as I know government schools no longer teach American history. We don't want you to know.
know your rights, you might be able to defend them. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you kind of a crash course in American history. We said that people migrated from England, came to the North American continent. They started setting up all of their houses and businesses here. They were English.
Just like if we Americans moved up to Canada, we'd be living... in Canada, but we'd still be Americans. You're just living someplace else. So they were under English rule, and they were proud to be English. Eventually, the king started laying and collecting taxes.
Why was the king registering all these taxes? Because England was at war. Who was England at war with?
Anybody remember? France. France and Spain.
So the king is He's in England and he's fighting France and Spain. And he's got to raise money for his armies. He's like, wow, I've got all this land that I own in North America.
I'll just lay taxes on the people over there. Well, we were paying all these taxes for what? Hospitals, roads, national defense?
No. We were just paying it to the king and he was spending it for whatever he wanted. He was the king. So we got...
We got sick and tired of taxation without representation. You're taking our money and we don't have any say-so over what we're doing with it. We wrote, eventually we wrote the Declaration of Independence.
And we severed all of our ties with England. We say we are not going to be English anymore. We no longer have any allegiance to the crown. The Declaration of Independence was not the start of the fighting. The fighting had been going on prior to that.
In fact, in 1775, the British soldiers came to Lexington and conquered. to take all of our guns. Why? Well, gosh, you can't resist if you've got guns. That's why we want to collect them all.
What did the Americans do? We went, no, no you won't either. these are our guns.
And we ended up firing the shot heard around the world. So a year later, 1776, we formalized the war. The Declaration of Independence was the formal... start of the Revolutionary War.
Now, what was the end of the Revolutionary War? If the Declaration of Independence started it, what was the official end? The official end of the war was the Treaty of Paris.
Wait a minute, what were we fighting with, England? Why is it the Treaty of Paris? Why wasn't it the Treaty of London? Because you want neutral territory.
Someplace that's not yours and it's not mine. We're going to go to neutral territory. We're going to go to Paris.
And we're going to sign the Treaty of Paris. Now, I've got a copy of the Treaty of Paris in here. And this book is really excellent because it shows you everything in type that you can read. It also has a photograph.
It also has a photograph of the actual document so that you can see what the document looked like. Now, I purchased this. This book from the National Archive in Washington, D.C. Guess what the title of this is? The Cornerstones of American Democracy.
Are we a democracy? No, we're not. We don't like a democracy.
This is from the National Archive. Well, if you're going to Washington, D.C. and buying official...
books with the Declaration of Independence, and it's called the Cornerstones of Democracy, why do you think people think we live in a democracy? They are lying to us all the time. Now, the book is very, very good. I just don't happen to like the title.
Now, If I get married, and then several years later, I decide to split up, we're going to have to do something. We're going to have to have a divorce settlement. You get the kids, I get the dog, you get the house, I get the car.
We've got to split up the price. property. Again, everything derives from property. The Treaty of Paris, if you sit and read it, is a divorce settlement. We are getting divorced from England.
We're no longer part of England. And so we're splitting up the property. What did the United States get?
Property, a lodeal title. It no longer belongs to the king. It's yours.
You can own property for the first time in human history. Ta-da! Isn't that great? That's why the Treaty of Paris is so important. Now, we got the property.
We are now a lodeal landholder. What did England get? What did we give England in this settlement?
Trade, home, rights. Well, if you ever have a divorce and there are children involved, usually there are custody rights. The kids are going to live with me, but you get to come and visit them every so often.
Well, England basically got visitation rights. They get to come here and sell all their products, because we had 2 million people in the United States. Those are customers.
England didn't want to lose customers. So we're going to give you the land as long as we can still buy and sell over in America. And we basically gave them the privilege of traveling up and down the Mississippi.
River. So that's what England got out of the Treaty of Paris. So now, during that time, you know, while they were fighting the... Revolutionary War, did we have the Constitution?
No. What did we have as our form of government at the time? The Articles of Confederation. So the Articles of Confederation basically set up a loosely organized group. Thirteen independent colonies that kind of joined together like a club.
In fact, the title was the Articles of Confederation. The title of the Declaration of Independence is really the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. And united is a small u. It's not an uppercase u. It's not United States.
They are states. They just happen to be united. United is an adjective.
And this is a unanimous declaration. Anybody have a unanimous declaration? declaration all by yourself?
I mean, it's a contradiction, isn't it? If something is unanimous, that means everybody in the group agrees. So if this is the unanimous Declaration of Independence, it means there had to be a group.
Yeah, 13 states, 13 colonies, they all agreed, and they joined a collective organization which was a confederacy. And the Articles of Confederation were really like the first Constitution. Now, we did not win the American Revolution. We were not really strong and tough and just kicked butt.
Didn't happen. George Washington won two battles out of all of it. He was constantly running away. He was retreating.
Yo, bang, bang, bang, bang. They pick up his guys and go. And the British are going, wait a minute.
What are you guys doing? Stand still so we can shoot you. How are you supposed to have a battle if you're not strong enough?