NPR Reads the Declaration of Independence

By John Ballard

Here is the link to this year's reading of the Declaration of Independence by NPR journalists. I look forward to this feature every Independence Day, a tradition that goes back many years. It takes less than ten minutes. I miss the voices of the late Red Barber, Baxter Black and Bob Edwards but some years when I get nostalgic I go back into the archives, like revisiting old records, to hear them again.

This part echoes in my head year after year.

...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.

In the early years when the reading was done, Bob Edwards would note that On this day in history George VI wrote in his diary, "Nothing of importance happened today."