In Saturday\u2019s discussion, Gorsuch said the ideals enshrined in the Declaration have served as a touchstone for change during the abolition of slavery, the suffrage movement and the Civil Rights Movement.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Frederick Douglass is right. Hold fast to the Declaration in everything you do, always,\u201d he said, referring to a sentiment attributed to Douglass\u2019 1852 address \u201cWhat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd in order to do that, I think you need to arm yourself with a lot of information, and we need to know our history better than we do,\u201d he continued.\n<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s release comes at a time when the conservative-majority Supreme Court is refuting accusations of political bias<\/a> in the wake of a ruling limiting the Voting Rights Act<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n On Saturday, Gorsuch spoke to the importance of \u201cthe separation of powers,\u201d and having \u201cneutral, independent judges decide cases and controversies.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s kind of disheartening how few people know that we have three branches of government and can name the three branches of government,\u201d Gorsuch said. \u201cAnd then how few people know why those branches are the way they are, but to me \u2026 that was the brilliance of the design.\u201d.\n<\/p>\n On Saturday, Gorsuch acknowledged present-day political polarization in the United States. He said John Adams\u2019 and Thomas Jefferson\u2019s complicated relationship demonstrates that partisan politics is not a new phenomenon.\n<\/p>\n \u201cAdams believed in a strong central government, [and] Jefferson \u2026 a weak one,\u201d he said. \u201cThey wrote terrible things about each other in newspapers, terrible things. I mean, if you think \u2026. today\u2019s political discourse has its troubles, and I\u2019m not saying it doesn\u2019t, go read what Adams had written about Jefferson.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Adams\u2019 and Jefferson\u2019s reconciliation and work together on the Declaration shows that \u201cfor all that divided them \u2014 and there are things that divide us \u2014 more united them than separated them,\u201d Gorsuch said.\n<\/p>\n \u2018The Declaration served a purpose\u2019<\/p>\n Dominic Orlando came down from New York City with his wife and two daughters to hear Gorsuch speak.\n<\/p>\n He appreciated the \u201csmall anecdotal stories\u201d about the American Revolution shared in the book and the discussion.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe words have meaning,\u201d he said, \u201cand I feel that we lose a lot of that meaning with some of the things that go on today, and that if we would remember that the Declaration served a purpose and the Constitution, as written, served a purpose, we would do so much better.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Peter Ghidu, 10, of Glenside, said the event was \u201ccool,\u201d and he liked learning about \u201cunknown stories from the Revolution.\u201d\n<\/p>\n He said he\u2019s currently learning about the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in school, and he thinks the most important parts of the nation\u2019s founding documents are \u201cthe rights they had \u2026 that everyone has these unalienable rights that couldn\u2019t be taken away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s \u201cCivic Story Hour\u201d is one of a slew of activities and events the National Constitution Center has planned to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe want families to discover that history is not simply something that happened long ago to other people,\u201d said Vince Stango, interim president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, during his introductory remarks at Saturday\u2019s event.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe people and events we study are part of our shared American story,\u201d he added. \u201cThey help us understand the principles that shaped our nation, inform the world we live in today and remind us that each generation has a role to play in writing the chapters that follow.\u201d\n<\/p>\n The National Constitution Center will be open free of charge on the Fourth of July in celebration of the country\u2019s 250th anniversary.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Saturday\u2019s discussion, Gorsuch said the ideals enshrined in the Declaration have served as a touchstone for change…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12360,7346,90809,69,4001,71,70,7738],"class_list":["post-206488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-american-revolution","tag-national-constitution-center","tag-neil-gorsuch","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-250","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}