December 25, 2025
Evening Show
4h 2m
Complete
Radio Episode
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Summary
This episode consisted entirely of a recitation of the Declaration of Independence followed by patriotic songs and musical content. No substantive radio commentary, current events discussion, or caller interaction occurred during the broadcast.
Transcript
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satisfied to the sea. One chance I have to change my life. I must everybody else. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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 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 forms, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient's sufferance of these colonies. And such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. Prove this? Let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained. And when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his mentions. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, reposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected. whereby the legislative powers incapable of annihilation have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states. For that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount in payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of offices to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislators. He has affected to render the military, independent, dull and superior to the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us, for protecting them by a mock trial. from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states, for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, for imposing taxes on us without our consent, for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury, for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses, for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province establishing therein an arbitrary government. and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments. For suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfectly scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens taking captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections among us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers. The merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. 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. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarranted jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity. and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been death to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which tenounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends. We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled Appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare 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 and that as free and independent states they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. 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. I raise up my head and kick my feet and toward the light I go The heartless jailer left behind the locker far below. For deep fathoms deep he walks with rusty keys his locker locks just like he's half asleep he stops Forty fathoms deep Forty fathoms deep he owns Each sleeping sailor's soggy bones The legend they call Davy Jones at Forty fathoms His eyes were bellwood that night For a Christmas truce had been declared By both sides of the fight As we lay there in In our trenches, the silence broken too By a German soldier singing to lay Then I heard my buddy whisper, hearing how it's surrounding me As I die if I was my trench night again Then I thought the soldiers smiled But for just one feeling more The answer seems so clear Heaven's not beyond the clouds It's just beyond It's a big day I've got a picture and a letter In this small picture is told And my tune has been sung before I'm gonna walk all over I'm gonna walk all over you Are you ready boots? But trials come