Latest / The Elsa Kurt Show / Refusing A Crown with PragerU Historian, Richard Lim

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Refusing A Crown with PragerU Historian, Richard Lim · The Elsa Kurt Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when a self-proclaimed history nerd sits down with a self-proclaimed history slacker?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're about to find out.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Richard Limb, Prager used resident historian and host of this American president, joins ELSA to talk about refusing a crown, how George Washington changed the world, and a question that still matters.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: What makes someone powerful enough to lead and humble enough to walk away?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking faith, character, and the history ELSA probably should have been paying attention to.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, pretty much.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: That's okay, because Richard's going to give me this really great crash course.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_04: Richard, welcome.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for coming on today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the funny thing is, um, when I was growing up in grade school, uh, even though I was this big history nerd, I wasn't that good of a student because I would also like I'd be so into what I wanted to learn that I didn't want to learn what I was learning at school.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: So it took me a while.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember my mom would say, Hey, like you're you're such a nerd.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Why aren't you doing better in school?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: And and then finally, you know, it clicked and I realized, look, you you gotta you gotta care about the stuff that you don't care about as much.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but there were times where I was a slacker as well.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: So that makes me feel better.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: But you love you, it you're curious about history, and that that alone I think gets you a little bit out of the slacker category.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate that.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: And I appreciate that you said that too, because I it's so funny.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_04: I was, I was honestly, it was the same way.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_04: I only cared about what I cared about.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_04: And for me, it was English, you know, the English literature classes, all of the that was the only thing I cared about, and they would get so mad at me because I would do so well in that, right?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_04: And everything else, they'd be like, what are you doing?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_04: Like, all you have to do is just do the bare minimum at the very least.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I was, you know, I was a brat.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, no, I'm not gonna make me.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I've all been there.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: We've all been there.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: So you're that a student in your class, I bet they don't have a podcast show.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: So there you go.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so there, huh?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: In your face, yes, whoever, whoever that was.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: Whoever you were, I can name them.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_04: I won't because I'm nice, but I know him right on right at the top of my head.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_04: I can name them all.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: And that teacher, too, that history teacher who kicked me out of class.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_04: Just saying.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, okay, yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: He was a sweet man.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_04: It's not even his fault.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: It was me.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: I was the problem.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: Surprise.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: He he would be proud.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: I think he would.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: I think he would.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: He was a real sweet guy.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I was, again, the slacker.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but you, so you you tipped me off a little bit here because I was gonna ask you where and when did this love of history um come from?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: And it goes as far back as your childhood.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me a little bit about that.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: What about American history or just history in general called to you?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: So this was, let's see, in 2000, no, 2000.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I'm older than that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: This was in the early 90s.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was actually one of these things where it was my my there was a gateway drug.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, not a not a drug, I guess a gateway president.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so when I was eight years old, the movie JFK came out.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: And um that movie is an amazing movie.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's also a really inaccurate piece of of quote unquote history.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: It it's so inaccurate, not not just for dramatic effect, but actually in a very manipulative way.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but as a as a piece of art, it's very good.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so, anyways, I remember that movie came out, and suddenly there were all these documentaries about the Kennedy assassination.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: And when you're a kid, suddenly you become Mr.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: Detective, and you're like, hmm, I want to figure out who killed JFK.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but you realize, hey, history is actually quite fascinating.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: And and so when you learn about one president, you learn about Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: You learn about all these presidents.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that was kind of my gateway right there.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I from there I was hooked, and my mom would take me to the library, just picture like nine, 10-year-old Richard Lim going to the library with his mother on Saturdays, and I would just check out every book I could on presidents, and I I was just fascinated by them.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: I and and that's you know, I I've been ever since, and I have had lots of other interests, um, sports and other things, but I I've always come back to the presidency.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, I was talking to my coworker about this.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how you can't find it fascinating.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we give presidents more power than any human should actually have.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they literally have the nuclear codes, they um have guided our country from the start.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: The presidency is such a unique office in all of humanity, and um, yeah, it's and the very it's a very human drama as well.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: It is, and you know, and I wish, I wish that, and I I'm just speaking from my personal experience.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: I wish that the history teachers that I encountered who were wonderful human beings and and truly loved their jobs and all that stuff, but I I think every kid is reached differently.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, I I wish that somebody showed the kind of enthusiasm and passion for it like you do.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_04: And because I think that is infectious.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_04: Even as I'm listening to you, I'm like, that really does sound so exciting and interesting and impactful and important.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_04: And of course it is, but convincing that, uh convincing someone of that who doesn't already think that is yeah, that's that might be a little bit of a challenge.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_04: So um uh I I think it's wonderful the way that you are even just presenting this here, showing and sharing that excitement and enthusiasm for it.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm curious what what called you to write a book, of course, about Washington?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so my my fascination with Washington actually started almost 20 years ago.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was on a family reunion, and of all places, it was in China.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, what does China have to do with George Washington?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, well, so there I was, uh it was my first time in that country, and we were visiting my stepdad's family, and um, this this relative, he didn't speak any English.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't I don't speak any Chinese, Mandarin, Cantonese, whatever.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: And my dad, however, can speak both, and so he was translating for us, and we were talking about the current events of the day.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: The biggest thing was the Iraq war, and he spent most of the conversation just kind of bashing American foreign policy, and it I just kind of sat there and listened.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was, you know, I didn't want to get into a debate with my relative or anything like that.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it was it was interesting hearing his perspective.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then the conversation just kind of randomly turned to history, and you know, it's kind of a natural progression.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: And out of nowhere, he says, the historic figure that I admire so much is George Washington.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that really struck me because I thought to myself, what was it about somebody 200 years ago in a different culture that struck this person?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: Even if he's not a fan of what Washington, the country started, you know, uh the the country's current policies.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so that got me down the rabbit hole.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, I I realized, and I I think this is uh, you know, I'm I'm guessing here, it's not like he said this, but I think it's the fact that Washington gave up power, that idea, he did it twice.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: And as Americans, we take it for granted.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: We we take for granted that presidents step down after a term or two, um, if they're defeated for re-election or if they're elected to two terms.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: And the peaceful transfer of power is so normal that we don't think about it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: We, you know, we just kind of assume it's gonna happen.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, people around the world who live under dictators, who are in power their whole lives, who just grasp at power and never let it go, to them, seeing someone like Washington give up power, that's stunning.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's something it goes against the entire grain, not just of history, but of human nature itself.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think as Americans, we take that for granted.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I think uh I wanted to write a book to reintroduce that to Americans because this story has so much power.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's power, you know, people talk, uh it's a very political science y term, but the the term soft power and ways America can use quote unquote soft power.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is one of the most powerful ways the founder of our country did something so different from the rest of the world, and he set the pattern for the rest of our country's history.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_04: That is amazing.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: And just listening to you speak about it made me realize how extraordinary that really is.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, because as I am one of those Americans that have never even given it a second thought that because that's that's just the way we do it.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_04: Never really thought about the origin of that or the man who who really started that and the impact, or not even uh the impact, of course, but uh more of the remarkableness of of him doing that, of him saying, and I'm done, and I'm done.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_04: And to walk away from power, because as we know, you know, power is is basically a drug for so many people, especially the people that are in power.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_04: And I always think, and you can correct me if you think I'm I'm wrong on this, um, I always feel like the people you would want to have in power are often the people that would never ever want the job.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_04: And Washington almost sounds like he was kind of that guy.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: Is is there any accuracy in that?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I, you know, I don't want to portray Washington as if he didn't have ambition.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think, you know, and and here's the thing when he was a young man, this I think makes it even more remarkable, and I talk about this in my book, is that when he was a young man, he was very much ambitious.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: He was very much of a social climber.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, he came from kind of like a uh, you know, middle crust uh Virginia family and very much aspired to become a Virginia gentleman at the time you were you know aspiring to be an Englishman, um, English gentleman.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so he had that and he kind of elbowed his way into different prominent positions.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: But then what you see is over time he really matures into somebody that realizes that there's greater satisfaction and uh greater meaning in serving a cause.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I think Washington, he cared a great deal about duty, he cared about what his duty was to God, man, and country.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so by the time the war starts and he's in his early 40s, by that point, Washington is willing to risk everything.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: He's he's a very wealthy landowner at this point.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: And most people at the time, uh well, a lot of people, I shouldn't say most, but uh, you know, a third of the population, uh, these are very rough numbers, but you know, let's say about a third supported the revolution, a third opposed it, and a third were kind of hedging.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: They were trying to see, let's see who I'll join the winning side.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Washington made very clear very, very early on that his fate would be the the c the fate of the cause, and he was willing to risk everything.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that shows that change in character, that at that point for him, it wasn't about personal ambition, it was about service, and it's a remarkable change.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and yeah, I think uh we're very fortunate that we had that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: And here's the thing you mention current political leaders, and you're right in that basically we have all these people that seek public office, and it's because they've seen themselves, they love the idea of seeing themselves in power.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: And you you get members of Congress.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: There's what, a hundred senators, four hundred and three members of Congress.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's a little sliver of power, right?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's a that's a power over a district, right?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, a congressman, you know, is elected by constituents, represents a district.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: You give them that little bit of power, one 400th of the country, and they build empires of it.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: They stay in power their whole lives, they do everything they can to stay in power.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: And Washington had the admiration of the whole country.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, literally the whole country, and he refused to take advantage of it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: And to me, that's remarkable.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, we can get into this, but there's so many ways that he quote unquote refused.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: I I use the term refuse a crown.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of mythology behind it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of historians like to say, oh, he didn't, there was no actual crown really offered.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: Fine, you know, we can get into the mythology of it.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: But the fact of the matter is that he always used power responsibly and he he never abused it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_04: Can we have more of that, please?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_04: We'd we'd be living in the world that we're supposed to be living in, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, people who actually care about the constitution.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, and here's the thing: so much of what Washington did was restraint.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: When Congress during the con during the American Revolution, when it granted him basically dictatorial power, he made a promise.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: He kept saying that, you know, when we took up so we took up arms, we did not lay aside the citizen.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so he respected the rights of the citizen, he respected the civilian leaders, uh, the people that the citizens put in place.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's it's really unprecedented for its time.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: So your book centers on, of course, Washington giving up power.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, for those of us who need the refresher, walk us through those two decisions and why exactly, and I know you did touch on it, but just expand on a little bit more as to why they were so extraordinary, whether it was for the times or if it's in relation to how things are now.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh there are two elements to this.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: The first is that there was so much that led up to Washington giving up power that I think you you have to mention those because if he doesn't get those right, he doesn't put himself in the position where he can give up power.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: So uh a year before he gave up power, a year and a half, uh he actually got a letter from an officer who suggested that he become king.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: And this this letter reflected it was an officer um who had served in Europe for a while and then he had come to, he had immigrated to the United States.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it was a reflection of the fact that many people within the United States and relatively prominent people felt that look, the system has been failing.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: We barely beat the British, and we really beat them because we had French support.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: We it took another empire to defeat an empire.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: And they felt that the system wasn't working, we were under the Articles of Confederation, the soldiers were starving because they were they weren't being paid, the f the government was in massive debt, the economy was in the toilet.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, literally, the historians of economic historians have looked at the revolution and they've said the type of economic depression we experienced during those years is comparable to the Great Depression in the 30s.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was a complete disaster.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and one of the officers suggested to Washington, why don't you take the crown?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: And this is the example that you could say is the closest Washington came to being offered any kind of crown.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't like a formal offer by the country, but it was a suggestion.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: And Washington understood the symbolism that the United States had rebelled against the king.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: If he gave even a hint of openness to a monarchy, it it would have had disastrous, you know, consequences.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, maybe, you know, civil war would have been talked about.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so he refused it.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of those things, you know, in the Bible where it's like, you know, to be above reproach, don't even give a hint of this.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: That that's that's the road he took.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then a few months later, there was uh actually discussions of congr of uh the army disobeying Congress because they were so upset they weren't being paid.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it was at that moment where I I would say it was one of the most dangerous moments in American history because we've had the greatest record in all of history of civilian control of the military.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it was at that moment, before the country even got started, that before it really got started, that the military was considering disobeying the civilian authority.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: And as a as a West uh one West Point historian wrote that once you shatter that trust between the military and the civilians, it's like broken glass.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's never the same, right?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so Washington, in a very dramatic moment that I cover in the book, wins over the officers, and he basically ends this what might have been a coup and um what might have kind of snowballed into who knows what.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it could have been very ugly, it could have been a civil war, but Washington stops it and he reaffirms their loyalty to the civilian authority.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: And then a few months later, uh in December of that year, two days before Christmas, he goes before Congress and he resigns his commission and he gives up all of his power.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: He had the loyalty of the military, he could have exploited that.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here's the thing a lot of people look back at that and they say, well, you know, the war was over.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: What why wouldn't he go home?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: And okay, that's a fair observation.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: But the thing is, what people don't realize is that um throughout all of history, lots of people have said that they were gonna do something and then they fudged it, right?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: Even to this day, right?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, uh Russia and China, they technically have constitutions with rules.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: You think their leaders are respecting those rules?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Caesar Augustus, arguably the greatest uh Roman emperor.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, he was basically deified as a god, but he always maintained the fiction that he was uh a citizen, the first citizen.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, lots of leaders fudge it.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oliver Cromwell refused the crown technically, but he basically was a monarch.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so Washington refused to fudge it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: And for the whole world to see somebody not do that was truly stunning.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: If you look at what people in Europe said at the time, they were stunned.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then several years later, Washington is elected unanimously as president, re-elected twice.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: And once again, he could have stayed, he could have had a third term, could have served until his death, but he understood that the country had to wean itself off of him.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: It couldn't be, if it was a republic based on self-rule, it couldn't be so dependent on one man.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the last thing I'll say about it is that both times Washington gave up power at the end of the revolution and at the end of two terms as president, he had very clear ideas on what the country had to do in terms of policy uh to succeed.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: And he could have forced his way.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: He could have said, you know what, you guys don't get it, and I'm gonna make it so, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: But both times he said, I'm not gonna force this.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna give my advice and then I'm going to leave and I'm going to let the people quote unquote work out their own salvation.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: Again, to quote uh to quote scripture.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: So so Washington understood that no matter what his personal views were, even if he believed that his personal views were the right views, having led the country, you know, having having been in public service for decades, he knew that the people had to make that decision for themselves.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what leaving power meant.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: It meant trusting the people, even if he didn't know what decision they would make.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_04: That's a lot there.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_04: I know that's a lot.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_04: It it it is.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, it's it it really is.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like the more I listen to this, the more extraordinary um I realized that that he was, and and almost, I mean, I don't even know anyone um in in our history afterwards that you could compare.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_04: You probably do.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_04: You probably could make some comparisons.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_04: I have to ask, can you make any comparisons?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: Is there anyone since him that you could say, you know, with that level of power uh, you know, given to him and authority given to him or her, um, that walked away?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, is he singular in this?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think in terms of circumstance, because the fact that he was the first one and everything he did was an example.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: So what he did, people did follow uh in some ways because Washington's example was so ingrained in the American people.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: So after Washington, every single president, save for one, respected the two-term limit.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Now, of course, now they have to do it by law, right?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but prior to 1951, when we passed the amendment which limited presidents to just two terms, every president followed that precedent except for one, Franklin D.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: Roosevelt.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason that he didn't was because of World War II.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: It was the biggest war in human history that basically uh forced uh the American people to accept a president for you know a third term.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: So you could say that how all how many presidents were elected to two terms after Washington?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: Many.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, so on and so forth, Ulysses Grant.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Washington's president, they all respected.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here's the thing: a few of them tried to break it.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: Grant tried to break it, he he considered a third term.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Woodrow Wilson did the same thing.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: But each time that happened, there was so much pushback against them.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: They would say, look, Washington didn't have two terms.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: What makes you think you should have more than two terms?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so so I would say that you know, many of them did follow that.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, Jefferson Jackson, a lot of these guys could have run for a third term.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: They're very popular, but but uh they they respected Washington's precedent.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: But here's the thing almost none of them followed Washington's example in terms of restraint.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: So uh lots of presidents have done everything they could to influence who replaced them.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: And uh many of them chose their own successors.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Van uh Van Buren was chosen by Andrew Jackson.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um Theodore Roosevelt chose William Howard Taft.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, when you're that popular, you can kind of choose, you can put all your weight behind who you want to succeed you as president.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: Washington refused to do that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: And he, as president, sought to govern above politics because he wanted to govern, first of all, on behalf of the Constitution and for the whole people.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: He did not see himself as attached to party.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: He saw himself as for the whole country.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so, in doing so, there's actually a letter.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I wish I had learned about this letter while I was writing my book.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: I learned about it afterwards, but there was a letter Washington wrote uh at the end of his second, uh, at the end of his first term, where he finds out someone's running for office and using Washington's name and claiming Washington's endorsing him.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: And Washington writes a strongly worded letter to this guy.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the president of the United States, the most you know, influential man.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: He writes a letter to this guy and he's he basically says, knock it off, stop using my name.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason why, he says, the people have the right to choose whoever they want without any interference, meaning I am not going to interfere in who uh they choose.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't think it's proper for me to try to cajole people.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: And again, Washington had very clear ideas on which candidates he thought were better than others, you know, which side he thought was better than, but he refused to impose that on anybody.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that takes a remarkable level of restraint.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Once Washington leaves office, the two political parties have basically developed.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it takes time for them to become the parties that we all know, but they've essentially developed.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: And at that point, you know, Washington um his his whole vision of the president being above politics and all that, it it's it's no longer in operation.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's early after his successor, John Adams, that every president embraces this idea that I have to lead this party against the Other party, and I have to support a successor and I have to endorse him.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so, in that sense, fall his his successors didn't follow him because now they have to choose a party and they see the other side as a threat to the country and all that.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: So he was singular in that respect.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but he was he always remained an example um of of love of country.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: It actually makes me sad because like the example was set.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: Like how amazing would that be?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_04: And it and it feels so ironic to me that the the you know, one of the few men that you would actually want to choose a successor refused to, right?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_04: Because he probably would have chosen exceptionally well.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I mean he did want his vice president John Adams to succeed him, but he did nothing to push it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: He knew that this, you know, the people have to choose.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: And Washington was so deferential.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: And just to give an idea, during the revolution, we have this idea right now of civilian control of the military.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of the most important aspects of our republic that, and it's a great dilemma.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I talk about this in the book.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one of the things that a republic, if a republic is really about rule of the people, this the military has to respect the civilians.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: But this is a very difficult balance to find because uh militaries are empowered to protect the country.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: But how do you protect the country if that military gets too powerful?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's this it's a dilemma.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's called who guards the guardians, right?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: The military is supposed to have enough power to protect us, but what stops them from taking us over?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: And throughout history, that's been a very difficult issue.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: We've had, you know, throughout the world, there have been coups all, you know, through that's happen that have happened all throughout history, even in first world countries.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: And America has had the greatest record of civilian control of the military.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it's because of that guy right there, George Washington.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: He set the precedent.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: But this was very hard to do.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: During the American Revolution, there was the national government and there were the state governments.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: And at the time, the states had a lot of power.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: So, what did that mean for Washington?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: He really had 14 masters.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: He had 13 states and one national government.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it and at the time the states had most of the power, and the states weren't coordinating very well, and they were often just kind of looking out for themselves instead of the whole country.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of hurt the whole cause.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Washington had to respect all of those masters.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: He had to respect 13 states and the national government.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times they would do things that weren't very helpful for the war effort.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: The fact that he did it is absolutely remarkable.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that he maintains civilian authority when civilian authority, as it always is, is frustrating.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's oftentimes incompetent.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it does things for dumb political reasons, not for the good of the country.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he still found a way to respect that authority while winning the war.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_04: So Washington sounds like he would be a figure that was so, and by, you know, by our conversation so far, um, that he was such a universally um respected and and admired figure.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_04: But there were people who didn't like him, didn't agree with him, and were against him.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me a little bit about what you found in in your research for the book uh about that.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_04: I know one of them was uh Franklin's son.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Benjamin Franklin Bach, yeah.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: No, here's the thing.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, as commander-in-chief, he had the respect of the whole country.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: And not only that, but the British respected him, which uh how often do the British respect any adversary, right?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: How often does anyone respect their adversary?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like the Southerners were in love with Abraham Lincoln.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but the British knew that here's a guy that's willing to risk everything.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: And uh he had this level of prestige.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it's one of those things where uh when you look back through American history, there there's been this thesis that, and I think it's an accurate thesis, that whenever America's faced the challenge, the you know, destiny history, God has provided the right person for the job.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: When America had zero credibility at the beginning, what country has credibility right when they start?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they had a man with incredible credibility, somebody that the whole world respected.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: That was Washington.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: It gave America the gravitas it needed to survive.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: And when the war ends, he is so universally loved.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, to the point of, hey, you know, calm down, everyone.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: He he is a man.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: And Washington would have said the same thing.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: He was almost kind of you know taken aback.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: And when he would travel through the country, he would literally write to the mayor of the town and say, Look, I'm passing through.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Please don't make a big stink about it.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because he would, if they did, he would have to sit through a long dinner that would last hours and there'd be like 30 different toasts, you know, and all that stuff.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so he literally had to start writing to the local authorities and say, please just let me pass through, no big celebration.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now, it wouldn't work because it was their one time in their whole lives to see George Washington.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so with that said, when the Constitution is written and the the presidency is created, everyone knows it's gonna be Washington.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: And there is no person in America dreading being president more than George Washington.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: If you if you read his letters, he says, I feel like a culprit going to his execution.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um that's what he wrote on the way to his inauguration.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: He's he's elected unanimously, and as he goes to his inauguration and he stops by all these cities, once again he's being feted everywhere, you know, rose petals at his feet.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: And but he's very astute.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: He understands human nature, and he writes he that he knows that all this adulation can change in an instant.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: That, you know, what is is hero worship can turn into uh disappointment and hatred.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: And he had been a member of the Virginia colonial legislature before the war.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: So he knew politics, he understood how it worked, and he knew he was gonna have to make decisions that were going to disappoint people.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: And and he had to make very hard decisions.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: When you are the first president, you have to make a lot of hard decisions.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: You have to take a constitution that is in theory and you have to turn it into practice.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: You have to add meat to the bones.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: And they knew that.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: They knew we have this great document, but we have no idea how it's gonna play out.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: I hope it works.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: They have no idea what's actually gonna work in the document and what isn't.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was up to Washington to choose that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: It was up to Washington to figure out what this looked like in practice.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: And when you do that, you're gonna disappoint people inevitably.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's what happens when you're president, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: And what do we do to our presidents?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: We abuse them.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's just the fact.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: We trash them.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we're thinking short term, they're thinking long term, and that's what happened.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: And there are moments where Washington has thousands of people descending onto his presidential, his executive uh residence and screaming things, calling for his head, attacking him.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: It shocked a lot of people.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: People were shocked, and they said, How can you be doing this to Washington?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is our father of our country.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so people viciously, viciously attacked.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: His own cabinet uh members, you know, Thomas Jefferson actually started an opposition without Washington's knowledge.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: He was actually doing things under the table to oppose Washington and undermine him.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: So it gets ugly very quickly.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: And um, he was right.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: He knew that he was only gonna go downhill as president.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: He knew getting into politics was gonna be nasty, but he did it anyways because he knew the country needed it.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_04: What a what a remarkable um what a remarkable foresight he had to have that understanding of the bigger picture of the implications of accepting of accepting uh that that presidency and and just leaping full force into that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's just it's so extraordinary.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's a it makes me think, and I and I only half mean it cheekily, uh to say that, you know, he understood heavy is the head that wears the crown, right?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_04: Like he understood what was what what this all entailed or what it could mean.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_04: And he was a he was a family man already at that point, married four kids, I believe, right?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_04: At that point.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so he was um uh married to Martha Washington.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um he had no kids of his own.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um a lot of historians speculate on that, no one knows why, but for sure at least.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: But um Martha had two children from her previous husband.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: He had died, so she was widowed when she married uh Washington.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: And Washington raised those two children as his own.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Sadly, both of them died.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um one of them died at uh about 13 uh from epilepsy, and then before the war, and then another one uh, so that was the daughter, uh Patsy, and then uh the son Jackie died uh actually right as the war was ending in 1781.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: So Martha lost her two her two children, but uh Jackie had uh four children, and two of them they adopted as their own.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: So they they basically adopted Martha uh George basically um helped raise Martha's two grandchildren as as his own.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so when he was president, they they were in the in the White House, not not the White House, there was no White House at the time, but uh they were in the executive residence with them.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, just incredible.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_04: There was something in your book that actually gave me a little chuckle.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you you talked about a a hostile letter that he received and he marked it, no answer given, the address too rude to merit one.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_04: And it just gave me just this funny little chuckle because I I paralleled it to the modern day comment section of, you know, it and I I don't know what you know of my platform, but as you can easily imagine, anyone who has a conservative Christian platform um gets a lot of provokes, yeah, yeah, no, yes.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_04: Provokes people's demons, that's for sure.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and I and that's kind of that's always my response.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_04: Anytime somebody uh not not even as nicely as he said it, um, but that is kind of my general response.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: I like it, just it's not even worth answering.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_04: So I I just found it pretty funny that that uh Washington.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: He went through that.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: He would have sympathized with you in that respect.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: And it it wounded him a great deal because he had been, I think he had been used to being revered.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't say that in a negative way, who wouldn't be who wouldn't get used to that, right?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like anything in life that when you're so popular, you don't want to do anything to compromise that.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, he he knew he had to make hard decisions as president that were gonna disappoint people.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: And in that particular case, they were mad that he had signed a treaty with the British, uh, basically um securing peace between the two countries.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it was one of those things where at the time people felt, hey, we just fought against the British, and our ally was the French, and the British are fighting the French.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: Why are you securing peace with Britain?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: When you look through the whole scope of history, you realize that securing peace with Britain gave America the time it needed to grow.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: And but America didn't have that hindsight at the time, so people were calling him a British traitor.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, imagine George Washington being called a British traitor, a traitor to the British.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so um it was ended up being the right decision, but he suffered from it.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: He really, he really uh took his hits from it.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: And it disheartened him.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think his farewell address was meant to uh defend his record without striking back.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think too, it really shows, you know, Washington had incredible restraint.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: He did not consider anything as far as striking back at his opponents or uh, you know, uh compromising their right to free speech or anything like that.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: And and it was really remarkable in all of history that that you know a president was would basically not do any a head of state, a head of government would not do anything about the criticism uh leveled against him.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, nothing retaliatory, nothing, just kept stayed the course, right?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_04: Just stayed the course, did the job that he was hired to do.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_04: And uh yeah, he he is, my goodness, uh this has been so fascinating because just to hear how exceptional and fascinating uh and filled with integrity uh he truly was.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um talk to me a little about what where his faith, where his um, I don't know if Christianity is even the right term to use in regards to Washington, but what part did that play?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_04: Because I know that there's you you share, you know, letters and and there's something where he he asks Americans to practice qualities like mercy, humility, uh, and charity, which, you know, in in uh to me are are very Christian values.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um tell me what you learned about where that played uh for him.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: So George Washington grew up in the context of the Anglican church, that was the dominant church uh in Virginia at the time.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: And uh he was an active member of his church, he was a vestryman there, and then he became church warden, which basically meant he was, you know, one of the leaders of the church.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um and Washington identified as a Christian, and uh Martha was uh known to be a very devout Christian.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's interesting because there has been a big debate about this.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Now, as Christians, we know, you know, God knows the heart, right?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, only he knows the heart.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I will say, Washington, you know, if you ask them what he was, I mean, there are letters where he he talks about on my honor and the faith of a Christian, where he he's very explicitly identifying as a Christian.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: And during the war, he talked so much about God's providence, about how providence allowed this to happen.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and there are moments during the war that are miraculous.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: He actually said that victory in the revolution was a miracle.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: He called it a standing miracle.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: And he talked so much, so much in his own life, he talked about divine providence.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: When he survived a battle in his youth with bullet holes through his coat, he talked about how he is protected by providence.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: And providence was a term that Christians used at the time to describe God uh and to describe God's acting in um in the world.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: Now, there has been this push to make him out to be a deist, which is fundamentally which is just it it's it's just wrong.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because what does a deist believe by definition?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: A deist believed that God created the universe and then just stepped away from it.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: And if if you have Washington as well as all the founders talking about God intervening, and and these are in personal letters, this isn't like posturing for the people, but you know, in letters to his family, he's saying, I was protected by divine providence.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: A God who intervenes to protect, by definition, is not the God of the deists, right?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Washington also talks about how we uh as a country, the universe is designed in a way that if a country uh respects God's eternal rules, it will prosper.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: So uh, you know, he's just talking about this inherent design to the universe that I think is consistent with scripture.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, many close friends of his identified him as a Christian.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: John Marshall, who was a very good friend who uh ended up becoming uh Chief Justice, uh, wrote a biography and he knew Washington personally.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: He said he called him a sincere Christian.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: There are accounts of Washington um uh spending his morning uh quiet times and prayer with scripture in front of him.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um and at the very end of the war, he gives what would have been his farewell address had he not become president and actually issued his farewell address that became more famous.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: But he wrote this circular, and I cover it in my book, and you you quoted it with the you know from Micah.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: He he says uh at the very end of the document, because he gave his advice to the American people on on certain policies, and then at the very end of the document, he he does a benediction where he says he makes it his he prayed to God that he God would influence the people to do justice, to love mercy, and then uh to and to demean ourselves as you know, the way the divine author of our religion uh acted, where he's talking about Jesus.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: Ron Chernow, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning biography on Washington, he wrote the book also on Hamilton that became the musical.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he's very much not, he doesn't identify as a conservative or a Christian.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what he is, but you know, uh, he says that it's very clear Washington's talking about Jesus here.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he, you know, he actually said in a podcast that Washington was clearly Christian.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so I I would say that again, only God knows the heart, but it's very clear to me that Washington was within that Christian milieu at the time and uh had had no uh there are no examples of him, you know, saying anything against Christianity, and he identified as Christian.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: And the funny thing is, I I've read a lot about this topic, and there's this kind of weird, first of all, there's this weird expectation people have that, oh, uh George Washington um talked so much about Providence, but he didn't talk that much about Jesus.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: And to me, it's like, well, I know a lot of people who are Christians, me being a Christian myself, I go to church with Christians, and they talk about their faith um in certain ways, but it's not like they're publicly posting about it all the time.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like like it and you know, they've made their profession of faith, but it's not like someone was documenting it perfectly.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it it's it's what's it's it's what's in the heart.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: And and you know, when they declared it, it wasn't like they said, okay, I need you to record this so that 200 years from now some historian is going to affirm it.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like it, you know, it's kind of this weird idea that that somehow Washington should have, you know, like done this in a way that historians later could have recorded.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: And right while at the same time, every day when he or every time he went to church, he was affirming all the Anglican oaths that that explicitly said that you know Jesus was the Son of God and trusted for salvation.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: So there's this kind of bizarre expectation for what a Christian should look like at the time.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, that that, yeah, and I think part of it is because other founders uh were were so explicit about everything they believed.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, they wrote so many letters and they would talk about, you know, uh their kind of theological struggles.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: And Washington, he just didn't talk like that.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: He he he he had a different uh personality and he didn't he didn't wear his heart on his sleeve.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_04: He actually walked the walk.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he actually walked the life, right?
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and and uh Martha Washington's granddaughter, who they raised as their own child, uh her name is Nellie, uh Nellie Customs.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: She said that she thought it was the greatest heresy to doubt that George, who was basically her adopted father, was a Christian.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, it just to her, it's like, yeah, of course he was a Christian.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I and you know, there are really these bizarre arguments.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: There are people that say, oh, all the founders were deists.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I've even heard Christians say this.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: Christians, I respect, say this.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: And to me, that's ludicrous because it assumes, first of all, that there was this club called the Founders, and one of the requirements to get in was being a deist.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's not that's not the case.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: These were hundreds of people.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: There were 50 plus people that signed the declaration and 39 people that signed the constitution.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: So you're talking about 80 to 90 people and and more military leaders who are part of this founding generation.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: They came from different parts of the country.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like they had one club, right?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: And and they came from a Christian context.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_03: And if you look at John Witherspoon, who signed the declaration, he was a founder.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: He explicitly, he was a clergyman who explicitly talked about Christ as the savior and putting salvation in Christ.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: He's he's clearly not a deist.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's so easy to break the deist thesis.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think Christians need to understand that this is just like any Christian, any Christian that thinks that the founders were deist, I just have an honest question to ask.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: Have you read their letters?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: Have you actually have you actually taken the time to not listen to what someone said about them, but read, look up what John Witherspoon said about Christianity and tell me whether he was a deist or not?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Look at what Patrick Henry said about Christianity and look up Washington Circular in 1783 and tell me that George Washington uh was a deist when he talks about the divine author being Jesus.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's so it's like I just you know, anyone It's absurd, right?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's just absurd.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: If you think the founders were a deist, honest question have you actually read their letters?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Have you read John Witherspoon?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: Do you even know who John Witherspoon is?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: He was a clergyman who was the head of Princeton.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: Have you actually read his letters?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: And you'll realize that that man was uh, I mean, he everything he wrote indicated he was a Christian.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: So so yeah, I yeah.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I I almost liken them to the same people who say things like, Well, the Bible doesn't mention abortion by name, so you know, it's it's the same concept.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's like by imposing their own expectation.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: And you have to take people historically in the context, just like all of us would love to be judged according to everything we know.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we you can't judge us according to, you know, I'm not saying there aren't eternal standards, but I am saying that there are ways that we all think and act that are that are incomprehensible unless you understand them in the context that we're in.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: So if you don't study the founders in the context that they're in, you'll you'll realize, hey, wait a minute, why am I imposing my expectation of what a Christian is on this person when the expectations were so different?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that was the context that they grew up in.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me, is there was there anything there had to be something.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_04: What specifically surprised you in your research for this book about Washington or just any part of it?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_04: Was there was there something that kind of made you go, wait a minute, I would have never guessed that.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I I think it I don't know if this surprised me per se, but one thing I'll say is that history is so messy, especially the uh when we look back at the American Revolution, it's the American Revolution looks so linear.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: The whole founding, you know, the the we're colonies, the the British tax us, we get mad, we declare independence, we win the war, we create a constitution, we have a president, the end, right?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: It just it looks so neat, right?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: The way the history played out for those at the time was anything but neat.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was scary, it was fraught.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: They were committing treason against the most powerful empire on earth.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and they really should have lost.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you look at the revolution, and Washington knew this more than anyone.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: He had the the unique perspective on the war.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: He was the leader of the revolution, and he called it a miracle.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so, so much of it, it you know, they say that um when you master something, you make it look easy, right?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: The fact that the founders made it look easy, I think, speaks to how brilliant they were.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_03: And if you look at revolutions all throughout the world, you'll find that basically all of them fail.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: But the American one succeeded.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the French had their revolution not long after the Americans had uh their revolution.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: And theirs, they've had what, five governments since then?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: They've had five constitutions.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: We've had one, and it's ever since we were out of Fight our Constitution, we've had uh recurring regular elections every two years at the federal level, um, every four years uh for the president.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's insane.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's really insane.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: We've even had a similar War and it didn't uh stop us from having an election.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: We we've had elections through wars, World War II.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it's that's an incredible record that we've built.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it was so difficult to get there.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: And the other thing uh I think that kind of surprised me is that uh, and I talk about this in in the book, I talk about refusing a crown, and I talk about what what did crown mean at the time?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: What did monarchy mean at the time?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I found that Americans for you know, the founders for most of their lives were content to be under a monarchy, the British monarchy.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it wasn't until uh Washington's 40s that he finally, you know, uh was part of something that broke off from the monarchy.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: So that's 40 plus years where he was a loyal subject.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it took Americans longer to kind of let go of this paradigm of we need a monarch to kind of provide that central stability.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: And the founders actually, when they created the presidency, in some senses, that presidency was not a monarch, but had some element of uh some of the qualities that a monarch did have.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: They wanted the monarch to check all the factions in Congress.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: They knew Congress was just going to turn into a bunch of corrupt factions that sought their own advantage.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way they are to this day.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: And they hoped the president would check that just the way a monarch checked those factions in parliament.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: And and the and Washington really imaged that.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: Washington, even though he was president, not a monarch, and he refused to be a monarch, he uh he he he would check all the he would try to check the factions in Congress and he gave a warning against factions.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so he tried to play that role as a unifying symbol.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's one of the surprising things.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_03: And it shows that Americans uh they had rejected British rule, but they didn't reject everything from the old world.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: They wanted the best from the old world to create a new world, and creating a presidency that wasn't a monarch that didn't have exactly the same powers, but did have some of that symbolic role.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: That was part of that idea of taking the best from the old world and adapting it for the new.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_04: So fascinating.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think I'm sitting here a little bit shocked that I'm so fascinated.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_04: And forgive me for that.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_04: I it's like like I I would keep this conversation going for like another hour and just keep picking your brain, but that's not really fair to do, especially when there's a whole wonderful book that we can read, read it all in.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but if you would tell me, like if you had like a most important takeaway for readers from this book, what would you say it is?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so Washington talks so much when he gives advice to the American people, he talks so much about how there are times where we are going to be able to have an advantage in the short term, but it's gonna cost us, right?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Let's say if we uh have an alliance that's inconvenient, we can kind of screw over that country, right?
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Washington says, don't do it.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: He says, always think about what's right in the long term.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_03: And he he there's actually uh a quote in the farewell address where he says, whatever advantages we might reap in the short term uh won't compare to the long-term advantages if we conduct ourselves with integrity and with honesty.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: And if we make an alliance, we should honor that alliance.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: Now, he also warns don't make unnecessary alliances, don't get entangled in the world.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: But he says, when we make a commitment, go through with it.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's how he lived his life.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: He had lots of opportunities for short-term political gain, and he always turned away from that and did what he felt was right in the long term.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: And even though that sometimes was painful, uh, there's there are times where uh he could have given in to his soldiers' desires to threaten Congress in some way, he knew that what mattered was doing what was right in the long term.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: And he knew that you would gain so much credibility and respect and and you know, reputation from doing that.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I think as Americans, we can think about that in for our country in terms of policy, but we can also think about that individually.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: That whatever we would gain in the short term for something convenient, we will lose in terms of reputation in the long term and always, you know, do always uh hold out for what is right um because it you know, in the long run, it's going to benefit us so much more.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like this should be required reading for like every American.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_04: Can we can we make that so?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_04: Can we make it required?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_04: I would love that reading, right?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: In every classroom not just for me, but for Washington and his message and needs to be an American.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_04: I love and and you know, you of course just hit right on it.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_04: The the the central theme, the central message um that I take away from this is just that that level of integrity.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_04: If we could just keep that at the forefront of all of our actions, whether it's as a country or like as you said, as as individuals, oh my goodness, we'd be in so much a better position than we are right now, right?
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_04: Richard, this has been uh such a such a treat for me and my audience, of course.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_04: Will you tell everyone where they can find you, where they can find your books, and anything else that you want to share with them?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so my book is on Amazon and Barnes Noble, where everyone usually buys their books, Target as well.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you can go online and and get a copy.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I have a website, RichardMlimb.com.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: I also have a podcast.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so and you can listen to this on Spotify or wherever, you know, your Apple Podcast app.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it's called This American President.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: So make sure you check all of that out.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: Refusing a crown, my book.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh RichardMlimb.com, my website, and This American President, my podcast.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_04: Phenomenal.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_04: And I and I want to uh quickly congratulate you too on the success of the book.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_04: It is doing wonderful.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_04: It was just released on uh October 13th, and you know, the reviews are are just flying in and they are exceptional and deservedly so.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: So again, I thank you so much for coming on today.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_04: All right, my friends.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_04: The uh show notes, of course, will have all of those links for you to go right to them.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I thank you all for watching or listening, whichever one it is, and we will catch you in the next episode.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_04: Take care.
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