Continuing the excerpt from a speech President Coolidge made on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (continuous/connected from previous text)
Part 1: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/21/calvin-coolidge-on-the-ideals-of-the-declaration/ 

We are prone to overlook another conclusion.  Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments.  This is both historically and logically true.  Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people.  The people have to bear their own responsibilities.  There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. 
It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.  It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter.

If all men are created equal, that is final.

If they are endowed with inalienable (sic) rights, that is final.

If governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.  
Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
In the development of its institutions America can fairly claim that it has remained true to the principles which were declared 150 years ago.  In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people.  Even in the less important matter of material possessions we have secured a wider and wider distribution of wealth.
The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guarantees, which even the Government itself is bound not to violate.  If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self-government—the right of the people to rule.

If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them.

To be continued.