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Professor Carli Conklin was recently quoted in a story by BBC on the American Constitution:
“The document was both political and philosophical, asserting the ‘separate and equal station’ of the new United States among the nations of the Earth, while also laying out the philosophical underpinnings for that assertion. As both Thomas Jefferson and fellow drafter John Adams stated, the Declaration was not asserting anything new. It was not intended to do so. These ideas were commonplace in Enlightenment Era discussions about politics and law, with many of these ideas stretching back millennia. What was new was the opportunity to practically apply these principles in the formation and establishment of a brand new government in the new United States.”