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Below is part of a transcript from Fox News show Life, Liberty & Levin March 18. Mark Levin interviews Dr. Larry Arnn about the Declaration of Independence:

LEVIN: Renowned president of Hillsdale College, expert on matters related to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Churchill and today's show we're going to dive deeply into these issues.

Let's start with the Declaration of Independence. Everybody knows we celebrate July 4th as Independence Day, but let's read part of the Declaration of Independence and maybe can you help explain some of these words to us, because we read it, goes really in our mouths, out our ears but these words have meaning.

First of all, before I read, they were very, very meticulous, weren't they, about what they put in the Declaration?

ARNN: Yes, well they -- mostly on the motion of John Adams, they picked Thomas Jefferson who had proved to be a beautiful writer of pamphlets leading up to the American Revolution, and they wanted somebody who could write in an elevated way and a moving way.

LEVIN: And they had various iterations of the Declaration until they finalized it, isn't that right?

ARNN: That's right, that's right. He sat and wrote it in a room by himself, July 1st and 2nd and then they debated it and then they voted and they altered it in some ways.

LEVIN: Let's start at beginning. "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Now, here are the words I want to focus on with you, "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." Are those important? What does that mean?

ARNN: Well, the document is unprecedented, and it is unprecedented for two reasons. One is, it's a law. It's a political act of a people, a people formed by this act. And yet it starts out in the way you said, right, so the opening sentence is, "When in the course." that means any time, "One people," that means any people. So, it is eternal and universal.

Now the legal act that they undertake is to separate themselves from the strongest man on earth -- the King of England. And that's an act of war or treason, depending on who wins the war, and they need some standard to do that by.

And so, for the first time in human history, in this particular political act, they appeal to laws that are eternal and divine. That is to say, above what any -- no one can ever change them, right?

These are things that are set in nature. And so they go up that high in part because they simply have to, as you see in the very last sentence, it probably talked about that, it becomes -- it starts with this grand, sweeping universal and it ends with a particular pledge unto death of the people in the room, and they feel like they need some justification for this, and so they don't say "we want to," they say, "This is an act done in light of the great laws that always prevail. [read more]

An article about American Exceptionalism: “America Is More Than Political Differences — We Must Preserve American Exceptionalism, Not Throw It Away.”

A video by Glenn Beck:  Glenn on Understanding the Declaration of Independence

When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.  -- Carl Sandburg

The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.  -- Edward Grey (1862-1933), British statesman

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.  -- Samuel Adams

The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible. -- Patrick Henry