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The Declaration of Independence and the Classics with Brad Birzer · Christians Reading Classics

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  SPEAKER_02: That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: So wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1776, 250 years ago, as he concluded the Declaration of Independence.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: The rest, one could say, is history.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: But today's guest would like us to consider more seriously also the history that came before and not just after.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: After all, the history that took place even millennia before the Declaration affected it deeply.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from Muir Orthodoxy.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: I am Nadia Williams, book's editor at New Orthodoxy.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And today, it is an absolute delight to talk about the Declaration of Independence with Dr.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Brad Burser, the author of many books, including most recently the Declaration of Independence, a radical experiment in liberty.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Brad wears many hats.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: He is Professor of History and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: He is also the co-founder of the Imaginative Conservative, where he writes in his free time, like how many thousand pieces already?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: For those counting, he's publishing not one but two books this year alone.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm looking forward to reading his next book, Tolkien and the Inklings, Men of the West, coming this fall from Encounter Books.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: But today, it's all about the declaration.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Brad, welcome.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Nadia.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good to see you.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have been such a good friend and ally for years now.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we finally met just uh a couple of months ago when you gave that brilliant lecture in Hillsdale.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's great to connect in person.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing wrong, of course, with being friends on social media, but it's very nice to actually have something tangible too.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's great, Nadia.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Really great.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I've considered you a friend and ally for a long time.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's mutual.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate how you conduct yourself in a public sphere, even on Twitter.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Twitter is usually where, as the cliche goes, ideas go to die.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: But you really promote thoughtful intellectual conversations there, which is difficult.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I can be obnoxious too, but I appreciate that.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: So last week, Jake Meeter and I had the privilege of speaking about the declaration with your colleague, Dr.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Matthew Spaulding, the author of The Making of the American Mind.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And originally, of course, you were supposed to be part of that conversation, but you know, your daughter got married, and like we figured, okay, that's fair.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: He needs to be at the rehearsals and everything.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: But also, had we done this conversation with the two of you together, it might have been like a five-hour conversation, and it would have been brilliant.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, we split it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: So as we get rolling, let me ask you, what makes the Declaration of Independence an American classic?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I would say this, Nadia, and I loved your reading, you just did.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh actually, even though I know those words, inside and out, I've heard them many times.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: I still kind of got goosebumps as you were reading them, especially thinking, you know, we're recording this on the day before the actual 250th anniversary, uh, just to realize how important it is.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess I would say this.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: The the first thing I would note is the Declaration is an American classic, but it's also a classic of Western civilization and of world civilization.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I would argue, and you know, to throw the gauntlet down right at the beginning of our conversation, I think that that sentence we hold these truths to be self-evident, I believe that's the single most important sentence ever written by man outside of what we see in scripture.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it changed, it radically altered our consciousness.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: It changed the world.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that it's a really important statement of human dignity.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that for us, when we think about the Declaration of Independence, especially as Americans, we have to recognize that almost all of our history has been a playing out of making real the Declaration of Independence.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And there are parts of it to this day we're uncomfortable with.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we should all be very proud of we hold these truths to be self-evident, that, you know, whatever sins America has committed, and we've committed several, uh several huge ones, but whatever sins we've committed, they're they're in so many ways washed away by that sentence.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: But then there are other sentences too.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the idea that if our government is acting against our interest, we have not just a right, but a duty to overthrow it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's something that, you know, I think it's brilliant.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if I started tweeting that out on X right now, I wouldn't be surprised if I got a call from the FBI.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, the those are the the idea that within our founding document, we have its expiration date, too.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty stunning in and of itself.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a you know, it's just an unusual document in almost every way.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's beautiful.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the part you read at Nadia, you may well know this, but the part you read was actually added by Congress.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was not in Jefferson's original.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh half of it was, but the last line, under divine providence, we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: That was added by Congress.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it it makes sense.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Jefferson, the deist, was not quite as orthodox as other people.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And most of Congress was orthodox.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so what they did with that last sentence, again, which you read so beautifully, what they did was make they made a covenant out of the declaration.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so it changes it from a mere political document to uh, again, a foundational Western document, not scripture.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to suggest it's scripture, but it is at least in a political sense akin to what scripture was doing.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it reminds me, like speaking of Western legacy and Western documents, reminds me even of ancient treaties, because ancient treaties usually invoke blessings and curses.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like, if we do this, may it go well with us.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: If we don't do this, here's the curse.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Especially, I mean, you take that straight from Deuteronomy.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the blessings and curses.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that's there as well.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we do have to recognize, you know, uh, in hindsight, it looks like the founders got away with it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: But imagine if this were July 4th of 1776, or actually the signing day, which was August 2nd of 1776.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you signed your name to that document, you are forefooting your life, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you're caught by the British, uh you are absolutely forefooting your life.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we forget that, that this was a serious thing that these guys were putting their lives on the line.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And others, you know, someone like Charles Carroll of Carrollton, uh, who was probably, we don't know for certain, but was probably the wealthiest man in America in his day, certainly a multi-millionaire, even in his money, was a multimillionaire.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, and again, probably the wealthiest guy, but he ended up losing close to a third of his wealth during the American Revolution, in large part because he was funding the Continental Army.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we we don't often think about that.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: The kinds of sacrifices that these men were making were were very serious, and they could have been the ultimate sacrifice.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, thankfully that didn't happen, but it certainly could have could have been the case.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: That is that is striking to think about.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: I did not think about it.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Granted, my excuse is I'm not an Americanist by training.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah, sure.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: But that's uh so why do you think they were it it's almost it's surprising, right, that they all came together and were willing to take on this sacrifice?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, the whole thing is odd.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's odd in a beautiful way, but it's odd.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, imagine if we just, I mean, if you and I, Nadia, basically said we don't like our legitimate government, and so, or the government that's considered legitimate, and we're gonna go form our own Congress and we're gonna invite 50 of our friends to meet in this Congress, right?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: What by what right did the first Continental Congress have to meet?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: They had absolutely none, but it's so American.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: This, you know, it goes all the way back to the Mayflower Compact.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a political society we like, we make our own.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we do this, and I I would say this, I mean, again, I'll throw the gauntlet down.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I think we do this better than any people in the world.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: We know as Americans, and I think it's deeply Protestant, but we know as Americans that we can come together and form our own communities, and we do that all the time.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the term that we as historians use for this is that something like the Stamp Act Congress or the First Continental Congress or the Second Continental Congress, these are extra legal institutions.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're not quite legal, but they become legal.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my favorite examples of this, Naughty, is uh in Maryland.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in in May of 1774, a whole group of angry men meet in Annapolis, Maryland, and they pass what are called the Annapolis Resolves.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a bunch of guys.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they have no official sanction at all.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in that sanction, or what they do with their petition, their resolutions of this committee, they basically condemn Britain for invading Boston and declaring martial law in Boston and closing the port and so forth.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they then send their list of grievances to the legitimate government of Virginia.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Virginia mistakes this and thinks it came from the Maryland legislature, not just from this group of guys.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so Virginia then passes all of these resolutions as their resolutions, and then most of the 13 colonies do.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that, you know, there, that's a perfect example of where we just have private citizens in a republic saying, you know, we govern ourselves.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what's astounding, Nadia, is that they that group that met in Annapolis, they called themselves a convention.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And after nine such meetings, they are absolutely without question the legitimate government of Maryland.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: They, the, the actual government that had been legitimate just dissolved itself because they could no longer rule, only this committee could rule.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the kind of thing, and it's just from 1774 to 1776, you know, basically that if we used a term, and I know this term is loaded, but the closest term we have for describing what was going on in America was anarchy.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean anarchy in the bomb throwing sense, I just mean absence of authority.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really no absence of authority.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's authority everywhere.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's just private.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's private authority, not legal or public authority.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a part of what's going on as well.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when you ask Nadia, you know, what's the the atmosphere like of the Second Continental Congress and why would these men do this?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: It just for them, this is what men did.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Men stood, men were armed, men knew what they wanted.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if they were denied that, they very much believed they had the right to rectify it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that again takes us back to an earlier part of our conversation, Nadia, where you think about those lines in the declaration that we have the duty to overthrow our government.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yo, that's amazing.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it would be one thing to have a right to revolution, but to have an actual duty to revolution, that's incredible.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely incredible.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, these guys are amazing in every way, but I I would say utterly American.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: I really like this, Brad, that just this super local rule.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, but they also seem very but they don't seem to be acting selfishly.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Usually I think anarchy has such a bad um, we think of it as again, like as you you said, bomb throwing crazy guys, but these are reasonable, like normal husbands, neighbors.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right, right.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and they love they love civil society.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, so I mean, I'll throw this in, Nadia.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't ask this, uh, but I'll throw this in because we're in this conversation.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I really, even though I speak as a Roman Catholic, I really credit Protestantism for, you know, two very important things.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, Protestants by their very nature are distrustful of authority.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: They they love community and they love recognizing one another's sovereignty, but they distrust higher authority, not God's authority, of course, but an intermediary.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's very healthy for a people to be that distrustful.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the second thing we can say about Protestants, they're literate.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they read everything.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when we're looking at the American population in say 1775, uh among whites, not among blacks because of slavery, but if we look at the white population in the colonies, you know, especially the farther north you're going, you're talking about close to 90 to 95 percent literacy.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the American colonists were the most literate people in the world in their day.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So what a combination.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Distrusting authority and being literate, right?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: It I think that's a very, and again, I say this as a Roman Catholic, but I thank God for those Protestants because I think that they understood very well what civil society is all about.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: That is really striking, Brad.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: And we're gonna loop back around um later in this conversation to the literacy, what they're reading, and those influences.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: But um, I actually wanted to um ask you a question that perhaps hopefully you're willing to share.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: But I wanted to know what is your own intellectual journey?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what experiences shaped you as a reader, thinker, writer as you bring these things to your work now?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a nice, that's a nice question.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I have a my mom is about to turn 90.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're uh two months short now, uh two and a half months short of her being 90.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And she is by far the most influential figure in my life, uh, in terms of especially what I love with ideas.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she just from the very beginning, uh as far back as I remember, she just encouraged reading and reading everything.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we were also fairly political.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my mom was very active.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is in a small town in Kansas.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: My mom was very active in politics.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what now, I don't think this term would have been used quite when she was younger, but she basically would have been a really libertarian Republican.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so very uh we loved in my house, we loved Barry Goldwater.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: My mom was a what was called a Goldwater girl in 1964, that is a young woman who supported Barry Goldwater.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were really active, and again, as far back as I remember.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And my first two books that I remember reading, not not the primers, but the the first two actual books I read on my own.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: One was a biography of Lewis and Clark.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was a children's biography, but it was a biography.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I can still, I can see that book, I can smell it.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I that book meant everything to me.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then I read uh a fantasy story called Ben and Me.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you're familiar with that, Nadia.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Most people my age would know that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're too young, probably.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was a big deal.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm born in 67, I'm 58.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so that this book, Ben and Me, is a fantasy story about Ben Franklin, in which he gets all of his ideas from a mouse, um, a very intelligent mouse.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, as a first grader, I loved that.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely loved it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I've always loved fantasy uh as well.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that idea that Franklin had this mouse and that they worked out the revolution together.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it was great.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I mean, even today, I would still recommend that book.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can read it in an afternoon.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's hilarious, it's great.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I just was so taken with that time period.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, I was eight during the American Revolution of uh the bicentennial of the American Revolution in 1976.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember that very well.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: I have great, wonderful memories of uh neighbors.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we had like three days of just celebration, you know, basically July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, fireworks and hot dogs and music, and all the kids got to paint the fire hydrants as our favorite patriots.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So my brother and I painted our local fire, our neighborhood fire hydrant as Betsy Ross.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just I have great memories.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember one of my one of my neighbors, uh beloved guy, Gary Mundhank, walking around reading the declaration in our neighborhood.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so real, it was just so genuine.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and as an eight-year-old, that just impressed me.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And plus, you know, remember, Nadia, again, with my age, you know, almost every adult male I knew had served in World War II.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, these guys were incredible guys.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just amazing.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember one guy, Bruce Huey, uh, who was just one of the most dignified men I'd ever met.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: But he had taken against the Nazis, he had taken machine gun fire all down his back.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, as kids, we loved that.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Mr.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Huey, Mr.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Huey, show us your back.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, he'd lift his shirt up, and there are holes all down his back.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was crazy.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: But as a kid, we loved it.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, and so I grew up with those kind of men everywhere, leading our communities, you know, leading our churches uh everywhere.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: These were manly, manly men.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: These were virtuous men, these were men who knew who they were.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just great.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and then I went to Notre Dame for undergrad, and I had uh several really good professors, especially the American Revolution.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: One in particular, a guy named Greg Dowd, uh, was amazing.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went on to Indiana University for my PhD, and there I had Bernard Sheehan.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Russ Hansen for my revolutionary and Dave Edmonds for my revolutionary scholars.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just great.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just, for me, it's always the idea of the revolution has always been a part of my own writing.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, as you mentioned earlier, I've got books on Tolkien and I love doing that kind of stuff too.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get me wrong.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to my strictly scholarly side, that's where, you know, the American Revolution, Charles Carroll, or the Declaration, that's where I've come down.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had the great privilege.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I've been at Hillsdale now for 28 years.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I get to teach American founding every fourth semester.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's been a great learning experience, too.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, Nadia, that's probably more than you wanted.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: But uh it's it's fun to talk about.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for asking.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Fun to talk about it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a reminder.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's uh I think it makes a really good point, connects to the point about those anarchists in Maryland.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're all given the opportunity to be quote unquote anarchists of that kind of stripe in our own communities.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Who we are in our communities shapes us or can shape us for the better if we let it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it sounds like your mom's story, for instance.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Being that sort of well, being that kind of person in her small town in Kansas.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and think about a woman in the early 1960s, you know, for my mom to have that kind of gumption.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's it's really cool.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm proud of her.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: She's great.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it is really cool.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: So you opened your book with uh President Calvin Coolidge's reflections on the declaration of independence on the 150th anniversary.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, you experienced the 200ths, as you just mentioned.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: What are the differences that you note in these different uh anniversaries?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I I think it's a great question.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: We have always on the 50th anniversary, the 100th anniversary.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, the 100th anniversary is interesting.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was a bit of a downer.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the reason was Americans were really excited to celebrate the 100th, but the night, so tonight, back in 1876, was the news that Custer had been killed.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: He was killed on June 25th, but nobody knew that in a in the East until July 3rd of 1876.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that's actually one reason we remember Custer as well as we do, too, because the news of his defeat overshadowed the 100th anniversary.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was considered a huge blow to America that these Indians had just defeated Custer and defeated the cavalry.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there was a bit of a damp uh dampening on that.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the 50th anniversary was huge.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you think about, you know, on that day, something that every American knows, but I don't think we take it fully as much as we should.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: That is, that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on that day on the 50th anniversary.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for Americans at the time who were deeply Christian, you know, we're talking a population of 99% Christian at this point.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that for them was absolute proof that God loved us.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: There was, and it's when the Declaration became a big deal.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: In the first 50 years of its history, the Declaration, it mattered, but nothing like it matters today.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's really where it really starts.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Americans start taking it very seriously with that dual death in 1826.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the 100th anniversary we just talked about, the 150th anniversary was a time uh that is of 1926.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: That was a time of incredible prosperity and a time of incredible pride.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so the Americans 100 years ago were deeply, they they were astounded that they had made it that long.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when Calvin Coolidge, who was beloved, you know, we forget that, uh, because Calvin Coolidge isn't one of those presidents.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Outside, if you're a conservative, you love Calvin College, uh, Calvin uh Coolidge.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you're uh if you're not a conservative, you barely think about him at all.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And most Americans barely think about him, but he was an incredibly popular president at the time, and he fit the time so well.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: So when he gives that speech, the beautiful, I you know, I not only bring it up at the beginning of my book, I bring it up at the end, uh, because I don't think anyone has ever said anything better about the declaration than he did.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he tells us if we say that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that's final.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's no more discussion.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's no more debate.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can't go anywhere except to make that real.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's, you know, for me, that's what American history is.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: We have tried to make that statement real.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we've fallen down and we've failed and we've done stupid things.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we've done brutal and evil things, but that statement still stands.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Coolidge is recognizing there.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, he's challenging the progressives of the day, people like Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to argue that we should interpret things dar in a Darwinian fashion.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: That is, that the declaration was important on July 4th of 1776, but that moment is long gone and it's no longer important.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this was, you know, the progressives were deeply racist.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: They hated the idea that all men are created equal, they thought it was a scam, and so they're trying to overturn it.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there, here comes Coolidge, you know, a decade later.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: He says, You can't overturn this.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's true, right?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: If we say that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that's it.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: That you're you're not going anywhere.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: You've made the conversation, you've made the argument, now live with it.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's really amazing, too.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: 1976 was weird.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I know you're way too young, Nadia, for this, but you know, think about 1976.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: We had just had Watergate, which was a huge that my first political memory.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was a little kid, I was six, um, you know, five and six, but I remember my my mom was so upset, and we didn't like Nixon because we were Goldwater Republicans, you know, libertarian, not Nixon Republicans.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we didn't like Nixon, but we still go, you know, the Watergate scandal was horrific.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and and I hate that I have this in my mind, Nadia, but you know, I I do.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my first really serious memory is of the evacuation of Saigon on April 30th, 1975.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's no greater image of defeat than all of those helicopters taking.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we completely, we utterly abandoned the people of South Vietnam to hell.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: We abandoned them to communist tyranny and gulags.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there's no greater sign of defeat than for me than looking and remembering so vividly those helicopters taking off from the embassy.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you've seen images of it, Nadia, but I and I'm not exaggerating, there are literally Vietnamese women throwing their babies, throwing them into the helicopters as the helicopters take off so that the U.S.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: soldiers will take care of their kids.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's amazing, you know.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me as a kid, I loved America.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were a deeply patriotic family, but we had just been through hell, you know, in terms of Watergate and in terms of that defeat in Vietnam.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I would argue that that defeat in Vietnam, you know, maybe we've had worse moments as a country.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, not only did we lose, but we betrayed a people.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we left them to tyranny after promising them that we would do everything to protect them.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just at every level, it's horrific.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: But we get to 19 uh 76 and the mood changed.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how to describe it, except again, you know, that term's not right, anarchy, but but localist, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was this idea of okay, I mean, here I am in Little Hutchinson, Kansas, this beautiful little, very wealthy middle-class farm town, uh, very wealthy, but but farming, right?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like all wealthy farmers.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, what do we decide?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And here I am, eight, but I watch my elders do this.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: We just decide, you know, whatever Nixon did, whatever Ford did, it doesn't matter.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're Americans and we believe in this, and we believe in equality, and we believe in natural rights, and we believe in taking care of one another.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, 1976 is this amazing moment where basically people just like you and me, who have no power, we just said, we're gonna do this.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is what matters, you know, and to have three days of celebration in my little neighborhood in Hutchinson, Kansas, that's incredible, right?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And again, no one told us to do that.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: We just did it.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so that for me, and you know, I I've got a very anti-authoritarian streak, but not when it comes to my elders, I respect them immensely.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to the bureaucrats and the politicians, yeah, I don't think highly of them.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I never have.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I put my hope in a couple and have been disappointed in almost all of them, uh, except Reagan.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: I love Reagan.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think Reagan, I mean, that that's another topic, but you know, he's he's amazing.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I I put my trust in him.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I did then, I do now.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, incredible.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: But otherwise, you know, I think it's been pretty disappointing.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not true when I look at my neighbors.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love them.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I absolutely love them.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: When I look at my colleagues, when I look at the families around here.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, it's it's not distrust of locality, but distrust of monstrosity, I think.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that was engendered.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, let's just take it up to today, Nadia.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, one of the things that disappoints me is it seems like half of the country doesn't like America.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's one thing to disagree with America, it's another thing to dislike it actively.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are in 2026, and we desperately need to be reminded of not only 1776, but 1826.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be reminded of 1926, we need to be reminded of 1976.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we could use a dose of healthy patriotism right now.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't make us right wing, doesn't make us anything except we should love our country.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, again, maybe not love our government, but we can love the people that make up this country.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: I just, you know, I as you know, Nadia, we haven't talked about this when we're recording, but I just got back from a week in Colorado, you know, and and so I crossed Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, back into Michigan.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the country's gorgeous.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's gorgeous.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: People are friendly, and so that's what we need to focus on.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we need to see right now.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're just so polarized and so divided that it's just we're at a very unhealthy spot.
• 34:09
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• 34:44
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• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: That is a sobering reminder, Brad.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the point you made that to love America does not it's not the equ equivalent of loving your government.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: That it's really the local people, our neighbors, and our neighbors are loveable.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: And our localities are like the places we live.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I look at my small town and it is so lovely and it is easy to love.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've been to Ashland.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great place.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: So see, you know.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's you know, thinking of 1926, um uh you may not know this, but I was born in Russia.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I am not know that.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: I am an immigrant.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Explains your first name.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly, it does.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: And also when I'm tired, the accent gets stronger.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well, my Kansas accent comes out too when I'm tired.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Things that have uh yeah, things that come through, the secrets.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, uh, but 1926 would have been less than a decade removed from the Russian Revolution.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if Coolidge was even thinking of that as he was um expressing his gratitude for the American Revolution.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: But as we look uh at these other revolutions with a hindsight now, uh, we can see just the brutality of the Russian Revolution and the fact that it failed.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: All it did was create a vicious cycle that still continues to today.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: What we see in Russia today is in many ways just a continuation of what happened with Lenin's revolution.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, you know, I Coolidge was obviously anti-Bolshevik.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I I my my understanding is that speech was directed against Wilson, that is against American progressives.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, there's, I mean, clearly, even if Wilson is not a Bolshevik, his progressivism is related to Marx's progressivism.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that so they share philosophical roots, even if they take them in different directions.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think that's a very apt point, Nadia.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Very apt.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: So one uh one point that uh Matt Spalding made uh in our conversation last um last week was um that the Russian Revolution and the French Revolution, these modern revolutions, were very modern in a sense that they were trying to destroy the past and move ahead.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the American Revolution was very much trying to look to the past and take the best of the past, build on history rather than destroy history.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: So um I wanted to hear your thoughts on this.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: And also let's let's travel back in time.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: You spend most of your own book on the Declaration before 1776.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: So we might as well go to that history which has made America what it is.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you know, there's a reason I did that, Nadia, and it's kind of a probably a strange reason at some level.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: But when I I so I was solicited to write this book, um, and you know, they the Stonehouse Press called me now two and a half years ago and said, look, we want to have a book ready for the the 250th anniversary.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Would you be willing to do this?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I had written on Charles Carroll before, you know, one of the signers of the declaration.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was thrilled.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, of course, I'll do this, you know, uh immediately.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I started, I tried to figure out then what did I want to do?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I thought there was definitely a story to be told about how the declaration shapes America.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I had read, and I I mean, one of my favorite books on the founding is written by my college president, Dr.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Larry Arne.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's a book called The Founder's Key, and it looks at the relationship of the Constitution to the Declaration.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, that's already been done and done by my college president.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: But what hasn't been done is a journey through independence up to the Declaration.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why I did the retro look rather than the futuristic look.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and I loved it.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: I had a great time going through, you know, basically starting in February of 1761 and going forward and looking at the 15 years leading up to the Declaration.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I was very taken with that.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in doing that kind of thing, I had to really think about well, what was the mindset of the American founders, of the colonists at the time, right?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because Jefferson, very famously in 1825, you know, 49 years after writing the declaration, his memory is probably not great, but he's asked in May of 1825, you know, what were your in what was the inspiration for the declaration?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, there's absolutely nothing original in it.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing, right?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Not a single thing is original.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: The entire thing was written to be an expression of the American mind as the Americans then saw it.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: These were the ideas of Aristotle, Cicero, Sidney, and Locke.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have to put this into historical context for a moment.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: When Jefferson gives the lineage of Aristotle, Cicero, Sidney, and Locke, what he is saying, that that's a mythic, symbolic shorthand.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: What he's saying is this is a product of Western civilization.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's the lineage.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you would make a lineage like that to say essentially this is Western civilization.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we think about the Americans, who they were, white Americans, right?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: We'll leave black slaves out of this for a moment, though many of them were exceptions too.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: But if we look at white Americans, what can we say about them?
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Two things just immediately, uh, let me say three things, just immediately jump out at us.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, they're almost all Protestant.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: Almost every one of them.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, nine, even Maryland, which we call the Catholic colony, was only 8% Catholic in 1775.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was 92% Protestant.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and and I get frustrated when I hear liberal historians say, oh, well, the the found the founding was all enlightenment-based.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it wasn't enlightenment-based at all.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: There were four really important enlightenment figures: Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Tom Payne, and Benjamin Rush.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they mattered.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're crucial, absolutely crucial.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: But if you would walk up to 99 out of a hundred white colonists, they wouldn't have a clue what the Enlightenment was.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: It would mean nothing to them.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: But they were deeply Protestant.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: And as Edmund Burke said, they're not just Protestant, they're the most Protestant of Protestants anywhere in the world.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we often forget this, Nadia.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's frustrating that Americans forget this.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when the English come over to America, they are literally coming over during their Reformation and the English Civil War, right?
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: The Anglicans and the Puritans hate each other.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the Puritans, of course, go to New England and the Anglicans go to the South.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing that they don't fight each other earlier, you know, that they wait until the American Civil War to fight.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's astounding that it takes that long, but the seeds of the Civil War are already there.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so these aren't people like Germans.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Germans had gone through their Reformation in the early 1500s.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: The English go through their reformation in the middle of the 1600s as they're settling in America.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: So these are an utterly reformational people.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's how they think.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's number one.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, and this is also lost on us in 2026.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: It won't be for you because of what you do, but it's lost on most Americans.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the founding generation, they're deeply classical.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they they love the classics.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so everywhere a Calvin everywhere uh a Puritan goes, they always carry with them the Geneva Bible, Calvin's Institutes, and the complete works of Cicero, right?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: They and so they're everywhere they go.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you again, we forget this, but you know, any education, Nadia, at all, even if I had gone to uh a common school, what we now would call a public school, what they called a common school, let's say it was 1750, and I went to a common school maybe at ages eight, nine, and ten, because by the time I turn 10, I can work on the farm, so I probably wouldn't go to school anymore.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: But if I only had three years of schooling, eight, nine, and ten, all I would have learned.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing, strictly, no exaggeration, the only thing you learn in school is Latin and Greek.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's all you learn.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: No reading, writing, or arithmetic.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's Latin and Greek.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: And So, you know, it's it shouldn't be surprising that when we look at the nation's capital, it's a Roman Republican building.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't look like Parliament, it doesn't look like a European cathedral, it doesn't look like Timbuktu or the Hanging Gardens, right?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is a second century Roman building.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea that we call our upper legislative body the Senate comes straight from Rome.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or the idea that the Federalist Papers would be under the name Publius, right?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: That the we are Romans.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: We are Romans.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I love this.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, even take an example.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take Yorktown, the Battle of Yorktown, which was two-thirds French and one-third American.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a Franco-American alliance right there at Yorktown, the most significant battle of the American Revolution, the one that, for all intents and purposes, ends the war.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: It still goes on for two more years, but basically the major conflict is over.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, very few Frenchmen spoke English, and hardly any Americans spoke French.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: So all the battle orders at Yorktown were in Latin, because it was the only language that they had in common.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: So these are a deeply classical people in every way.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so they're Protestant, they're classical, but the third thing is cultural.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're Anglo-Sax.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we have to be careful with that, because in the 1840s, to say someone is Anglo-Saxon means that it becomes racist.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because to say that you're Anglo-Saxon is a code word for white by the 1840s, that's not the way the founders mean it.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: To say they're Anglo-Saxon means that they are culturally, linguistically, and legally Englishmen.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that Anglo-Sax is older than Christianity.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: So things that most Americans absolutely take for granted, and they never should, something like the right to a trial by jury or the right to be innocent until proven guilty, that is all Anglo-Saxon culture.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's older than Christianity.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: When the first Christian missionaries meet the Anglo-Saxon tribes, they already have a trial by jury.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so the early Christians, they baptize that, but they don't invent it.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so to say basically common law matters is significant.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that we often forget about the founding, because we think about no taxation without representation, the thing that angered Americans most was that the British were imposing admiralty courts on the Americans.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: What they were doing was they were taking naval law and imposing it upon common law.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the Americans said, you can't do that, right?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Our legal system is 2,000 years old.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: So again, Nadia, this is a long way of answering your question.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: But when you ask about what ancient things the Americans believe in, I would say this.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: The Americans believe in Jerusalem, they believe in Rome, and they believe in London.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: And all of those things, as Dr.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Russell Kirk said, they all come together in Philadelphia.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got these great cultures and ideas that come together in Philadelphia.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are new ideas in the founding, right?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: There, and it's the reason I subtitled it a radical experiment.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: There are new ideas.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that we would give everybody, without exception, religious tolerance, never been tried before, right?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the modern world, that is outrageous.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's wonderful, but it's so radical.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And yet we're so deeply conservative, too.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: The common law is over 2,000 years old, and that's our law, right?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: In every way, it's our law.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the kinds of things that matter.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree with Matt completely.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually, I'm really glad.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: I love Matt.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's one of my favorite colleagues, but I would have thought that Matt would have made more of an argument that the revolution was new than old.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: That would have, if you had, if you had told me, if you had asked me without saying that, I would have said, no, Matt's got to believe that this is all new.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm I'm really glad to hear that he thinks it's ancient, too.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he mentioned that it's radical in the original sense of the term radical, you know.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Taking it back to our roots.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's great.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like he and I are on a similar wavelength.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: You are definitely.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I want us um to dive a little deeper into a Ciceronian idea that like once you see it, you can't unsee it in the declaration and really a lot of those documents.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: All this mention of duties, of course, this is like um a shout out to Cicero on Deophicus on duties.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about that because it seems like this was a particularly influential text on everyone.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Cicero's influence could never be exaggerated at all.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: So just think about him from a historical perspective.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's a martyr, right?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's killed for the republic.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: And as Dr.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Kirk always said, with Cicero, so fell the republic, right?
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I teach Western Civ, which I get to teach every fall, but when I teach it, I always tell my students, I know your textbook will say the republic fell here.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't put it that way.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: I say the republic fell when Cicero was beheaded, right?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: That and so I always have my students date the fall of the republic to his beheading.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so automatically, like Socrates, and of course, like Jesus, not that they're at the same level, Jesus is right off the charts.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you think about Socrates and Cicero, they foreshadow Jesus.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I I you know, I firmly believe in God's providence that was intentional, uh, that the Greeks and the Romans each had an example to be ready for when Jesus came.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think God was preparing them.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't prove that, it's just a belief.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I believe that God was preparing both the Greeks and the Romans for that.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so Cicero automatically is a great figure because he's a martyr.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: But remember, the Americans love the Latin language, and Cicero is the best at Latin.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no harm in Cicero, right?
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: They can admire him in every way.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: They can admire him for his statesmanship, they can admire him for his rhetoric, they can admire him for his orations, but they especially admire him for his ideas.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that his ideas were backed up by martyrdom makes him even greater.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so the founding generation, Adams, Jefferson, any American who was literate at all, which means most Americans, they loved Cicero.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: Cicero was their role model.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so we see that.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's one of the things we don't do anymore, and I think this is a shame, Nadia.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at the time, to be an educated person, men and women, uh in the 18th century, you would always keep what's called a commonplace book.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: And a commonplace book is an intellectual diary.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea was as you read scripture or the classics, you would put put down verbatim in your diary what you had been influenced by in the original document.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Again, whether it's the Bible or Cicero or Aristotle or Virgil, whatever it may be, Dante.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you put them in the original language.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so what do we have?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've got Thomas Jefferson's commonplace books, and what are they filled with?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Page after page after page, Cicero, more than any other figure.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's so clear that as a young man, Jefferson just loved Cicero.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing with John Adams, the same thing with Charles Carroll of Carroton, same thing with James Wilson, you know, all of these guys.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: They love Cicero.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he's just, he's everywhere.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so what do they like most?
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I talk a little bit about this in my final chapter in the book.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what do they love most?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: They love Cicero's idea of natural law.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that there's a law higher than man, there's a law that emerges from our experience.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: It is not imposed from government, but it is imposed by God.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so, if you can imagine the natural law stems from the divine, but it's discovered not by divine revelation to us directly, like the Ten Commandments.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one example, but it's it's an example that proves the rule.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: How does it come?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: It comes from human experience.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll give you a kind of crazy example here, Nadia, but one that I think explains a lot about this and the way that we understand common law.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm recording this from Hillsdale.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in my family room in Hillsdale right now.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hillsdale is in very southern Michigan.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're just north of Ohio and Indiana, where the three states meet.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're like 18 miles north of there.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: Five miles north of us is another town called Jonesville.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a road between us, the Hillsdale-Jonesville Road.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's about five miles long, uh curvy road.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty, actually, very pretty road.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: But for a long time there was no speed limit on it.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so that meant that there were people who did 80 between here and Jonesville, and there were people who did 15 between here and Jonesville.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And about 10 years ago, the police set up a monitoring station, you know, a radar.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: There was no punishment.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: What they did was they just calculated the average speed.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: And sure enough, the average speed was 35 miles an hour.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so what is now the speed limit?
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: 35 miles an hour.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, notice what that is.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: That was all habit and custom.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody said, I am imposing 35 miles an hour upon you.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: We did it.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: We, the American people, we Hillsdale and Jonesville citizens, did it.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the kind of law that the founders believed in.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: Law was not to be imposed from above, it was to emerge from experience and habits and customs.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: And think about just the logic of that.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the reasons I'm happy to obey the 35 mile an hour speed limit law is it's reasonable, but it was also given by me.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody told me to do this.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and so there's no contrarian streak.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, that was our habit.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was our custom.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we as Americans still have a bit of that kind of idea.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: We don't like people telling us what to do.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not, we're not anarchists in the sense that we don't disobey the law, but we obey the laws that are reasonable.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: And why?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're laws that have emerged from experience.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: They've not been imposed upon us.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's what I think is so important about Cicero.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: Cicero recognizes that there is a divine law, but that divine law is revealed in very fundamental ground-level ways.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: We're ready for the final question.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: What American classic do you wish you had written?
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: And why?
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, this uh I don't know if this is where you would want me to take this, but my my favorite American work of art is Willie Cather, and in particular, uh Death Comes for the Archbishop.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think that's the finest American novel, and I would love to have written that, but that has nothing to do with what we've been talking about.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if you're thinking political document or no, no, this is really open, but you have to explain yourself now.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, I just I love Catherine.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: I I think she is the best, I think she's the finest prose stylist that America has produced.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, there are other greats, don't get me wrong.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I I love Moby Dick, I love Steinbeck, um, I love Ray Bradbury, but I I really think that there's just something about Catherine and I'm sure part of it, I'm from Kansas, she's from Nebraska.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she's a Virginian originally, but ends up in Nebraska.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I have never come across anyone who understands the beauty of the Great Plains like she does.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I love my Antonia, I love Oh Pioneers.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just think these are incredible.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the professor's house, you know, Shadows on the Rock.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's not Great Plains, but Shadows on the Rock as well.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she just there's something about the way she describes the land and the way she describes the human person that I don't think, you know, and again, and I love Lovecraft and I love it, Ellen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, but nobody quite gets what America is like Willa Cather.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, again, you know, if I I can speak as a Roman Catholic for a moment, I think it's really important that she's Anglican and not Catholic, because I think it allows her to be extremely pro-Catholic without being a sycophant about it.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: It gives her a certain distance.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: And Death Comes, you know, is this incredible story about, I mean, it's a true story, it's fictionalized, but it's a true story about the first archbishop into the American Southwest.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the whole thing that Cather is doing in the novel is she's sanctifying the land.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, what does the land mean?
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason, for example, in Death Comes, that the cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico is built where it's built.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is built to resemble both an Indian burial area, but also a European cathedral.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's neither European nor Indian, but this third thing.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really Cather baptizing the land and making the land Christian.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's what I think is so important.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's also, and I don't want to give this away for your listeners who've never read it, but there's an O.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Henry ending to the novel.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the last paragraph of the novel, which is brilliant, it's not a cheap gimmick, but the last paragraph of the novel completely turns on its head what you thought was happening in the novel.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that as well.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's not cheap, it's brilliant.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when you realize it, once you get to that final paragraph, it all makes total sense.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just, it's a revelation uh in every way.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it also, what that last paragraph does, it teaches us about humility and about sacrifice and what those mean.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I and I'll I'll just say this um, Nadia, one of the reasons I love that story of Death Comes, I really firmly believe, and I'm sure I've failed at this, but I really firmly believe as a dad, as a husband, as a teacher, as a neighbor, my job always is to bring the best out of someone else.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if I I have seven kids, if I had spent my fatherhood trying to mold them into my image, I think that would be horribly sinful.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: Horribly sinful.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my oldest Nathaniel, I mean, I've got seven.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just use my oldest as an example.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: He has to be Nathaniel.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: And my job as Brad is to make him the most Nathaniel he can be.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that's just uh incumbent upon us in everything we do.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we should never mold people in our image.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's diabolical.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's what, that's literally what the devil does.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you think about all the saints.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: The saints are the most individual expressions of Christ ever.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're supposed to do.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that to me is what death comes, especially that last paragraph.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: You realize oh my gosh, what I thought was true was not true.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a beautiful revelation of my job is to make another person better.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not me, them.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I really feel like that's what we're called to do.