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The Declaration of Independence with Matthew Spalding and Jake Meador · Christians Reading Classics

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1:53
SPEAKER_03: A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
2:03
SPEAKER_03: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
2:13
SPEAKER_03: That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
2:18
SPEAKER_03: That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
2:26
SPEAKER_03: That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem more likely, most likely, to affect their safety and happiness.
2:50
SPEAKER_03: So begins the Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4th, 1776, 250 years ago.
2:59
SPEAKER_03: The first draft was famously the work of Thomas Jefferson, but the final product included input from many others.
3:07
SPEAKER_03: Although perhaps this was not quite like high school group projects.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics, podcast from Muir Orthodoxy.
3:18
SPEAKER_03: I am Nadia Williams, books editor at Mir Orthodoxy, and today I'm joined in co-hosting this episode by Jake Meater, editor-in-chief of Muir Orthodoxy.
3:28
SPEAKER_03: Jake, thank you for taking the time.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you for having me on.
3:32
SPEAKER_03: And today, Jake and I are delighted to talk about the Declaration of Independence as an American classic with Dr.
3:39
SPEAKER_03: Matthew Spaulding.
3:41
SPEAKER_03: He is the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.
3:50
SPEAKER_03: He also oversees the Alan P.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: Kirby Jr.
3:54
SPEAKER_03: Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship at Hillsdale's Washington, D.C.
3:59
SPEAKER_03: campus.
4:00
SPEAKER_03: He is the author of several books on the Declaration.
4:04
SPEAKER_03: Most recently, The Making of the American Mind, The Story of Our Declaration of Independence, published by Encounter Books in 2025.
4:13
SPEAKER_03: And it won the ISI 2026 Conservative Book of the Year Award.
4:19
SPEAKER_03: So basically, Matthew is the person to talk to about the Declaration right now.
4:25
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for taking the time.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: No, thank thank you.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: And uh thanks for opening that way, reading those first two paragraphs of what I consider to be the greatest statement of human liberty ever written.
4:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we'll get to that in a second.
4:40
SPEAKER_03: But first, because this is a podcast about reading classic texts and books and so on, I must ask, what is a classic and why should we consider the Declaration of Independence an American classic?
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's a fabulous question.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Um I would say that um I would kind of turn it around, and you know, we sometimes think of classics as what uh you know a bunch of people over time have determined to be the classics, and therefore there's a canon, which there there is actually.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Um but having said that, what what makes something a classic, I think, is first of all, it's beautifully written and it's uh uh well uses words.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: We uh we are animals of language, as Aristotle tells us.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and how we communicate is is it's interpreted.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Um so that's an important component of it.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh the it's what it actually is physically, I suppose.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the other thing is what's I find striking about a classic is they all address um the eternal verities.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh they all approach the the most important points, uh the most important themes, the most important questions of the human condition.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so it's it's that approaching those things in a beautiful way that um I think makes it a classic, whether it's poetry or a novel, or in this case, uh the Declaration of Independence.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's you know, by any of standards, it's not a clearly not a book or a pamphlet.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: It's short, it's a document.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, it's a it's a public document edited by a committee and and and the Continental Congress.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: But it but I think it beautifully does what a classic uh uh writing does.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's wonderful, first of all, it's wonderfully written.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Charles' master with words.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's well edited, probably the greatest example of a legislative editing process I know of.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it clearly talks about things that are transcendent and that are permanent, and indeed, by doing so, really points us towards even more eternal questions.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: So, so in that sense, I think fulfills all the all the requirements to be a classic.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, I love the Constitution.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: The Constitution is a very important document, but it's not classic in the same way.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh I would put the declaration if I were to uh choose a small list of great um uh really classic rhetorical pieces to teach uh, say, classical students or students in a classical school, uh, you know, maybe there might be a Cicero, uh, there might be, you know, um a great Lincoln speech.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: I would consider some uh many of them classics, but really the the Americ the the classic of of all the American things or epic poetry, I like to say, is is is the Declaration of Independence.
7:31
SPEAKER_03: I love that.
7:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh you may have seen, but uh Plough recently had a forum on who is America's Homer, and it sounds like maybe your answer is the declaration.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh I I I actually think it would.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: If you if you think of what is, you know, what is uh what is Homer, right?
7:48
SPEAKER_00: He captured the poetry of his civilization and he and he put it down in word form to tell its story.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh that is the declaration.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: That is the declaration.
8:00
SPEAKER_03: One more question before we turn to the declaration in earnest, because people are shaped by the books they read, life lived with them, and so on.
8:09
SPEAKER_03: So I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about your intellectual journey.
8:13
SPEAKER_03: Uh, what experience have shaped experiences have shaped you as a thinker, reader, writer?
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, sure, I'll try I'll try to keep it uh brief and interesting.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh you know the the uh not a long annal.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: Um I I would probably say the formative things, um, first where I grew up, my place, uh, which is the Central Valley of California in an agricultural area.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: Um the middle of the Central Valley is you know arid farmland that grows cotton and grain.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh that was that was very important in informing me.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: I was at I was in middle school in 1976, for instance.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: So I remember the early part, earlier bicentennial.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Um and I was loved, always interested in history.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Um uh grew up in a great family, uh, great parents.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: Um uh I went to college then in Clarement Men's College, which is now Clarement McKenna College in Southern California.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: And there I had the um uh luck of the draw, if you will.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'd already been influenced growing up by some key figures.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh Ronald Reagan was president when I was young, and uh, a man who knew what it meant to be president.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: He really is a commanding figure, and he's from California, so that was that was influenced me.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh Margaret Thatcher was uh the prime minister in England, and I thought that was, you know, that's a woman.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: That's a real, a great woman.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And then uh John Paul II was the Roman Catholic Pope, and I'm uh Catholic.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And there's a man who knew how to be Pope.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: And so I those were all formative for me.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: And then I go to Claremont, and my uh uh great professor there was a fellow named Harry Jaffa, who's a uh was himself a student of Leo Strauss, the political thinker, but he was a Lincoln scholar.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: And he would studied Lincoln, and he was at that time, but uh, you know, during the 80s, was going back and studying the founding and finding in the founding all these arguments about uh political thought.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: He loved Shakespeare, so he taught us Shakespeare and Shakespearean politics and political thought, all interwoven together.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Fabulous teachers.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: So he and Charles Kessler, who is a Harvard uh educated fellow who was an expert on Cicero and the founding of the Federalist Papers.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: So all that really was that that kind of formed my world.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and then I eventually went back there to do my PhD with Dr.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Jaff and Dr.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Kessler, uh, and uh wrote my own uh dissertation actually on George Washington's farewell address.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, and my uh dissertation was in political thought, specializing in early American political thought.
11:00
SPEAKER_03: Well, that's quite a journey filled with books, ancient and modern.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Yes, very very precisely.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think the the the uh the mix of books, uh ancient and modern, uh I loved modern politics, I loved uh uh history, so a lot of American history, and then I came to love um uh the classics.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: I remember, you know, I at first as a young guy, I was like, ah, I have Shakespeare, I have a gosh, what's so what's the big deal about Shakespeare?
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh but when you start realizing that Shakespeare really not only is about the eternal verities, but I mean, you know, if you don't know English history um or Roman history uh in a poetic way that really captures the the essential qualities of it, um is is really powerful.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: And then you start realizing the, you know, I mean, uh Lincoln famously knew Macbeth and Shakespeare very well, as as a Churchill knew uh Shakespeare.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so all these things are all interconnected.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Once it starts all coming together, it really forms your your intellectual um kind of the attic, intellectual attic of your mind.
12:05
SPEAKER_03: I like that, the intellectual attic of your mind.
12:08
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
12:08
SPEAKER_03: The books that live there rent-free forever.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like the furnishings of your home, right?
12:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean that old chair uh in the corner.
12:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
12:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna turn this over to Jake now.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you so much for being on with us, Dr.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: Spaulding.
12:24
SPEAKER_02: Um to begin, I just wanted to tell you this because I thought you would be pleased.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: So actually, when I was prepping for the interview, I I eventually chased down my own copy, but I first heard about your book from my mom, who read it earlier this year, I believe.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: And I thought it was one, so she's um doesn't have formal education beyond high school.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, my dad is disabled, so she's in a full-time caregiving role with him and is reading books about the history and kind of development of the Declaration of Independence, which in some ways, as I was thinking about it, I was like, that is almost the vindication of the of the text itself, right there.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: I think if you could tell Jefferson and Adams and Franklin and the committee this is what would be happening in 250 years, they'd be thrilled.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, you you recall that Adams' last words when he died in 1826 on July 4th were Jefferson still lives, which was technically wrong.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Jefferson had died a few hours earlier, but absolutely correct.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Jefferson still lives, to your point.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: So the first question that came to mind as I was going through the book, I've been on kind of a history of revolutions binge lately.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: So I've been learning about Russia, France, Ireland.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: And the thing that strikes me with all three of those is that it begins with this kind of generalized list of grievances that the revolutionary party has with the established government.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: But then when it comes time to, like when the the revolutionary dog catches the fire engine, so to speak, right, um, they don't know what to do with it.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: So Ireland shows up to negotiate with Lloyd George and quickly realizes they don't know what they actually want specifically.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: Um, Russia and France, similar stories, and in all three cases, the collapse into kind of civil domestic violence very quickly.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: Um I I suspect I know how you'll answer this, but I'm just curious, what do you see as being different about the American Revolution that allowed them?
14:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we did eventually have a civil war and over tensions that weren't really resolved at the founding.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: Right, in fact, yeah.
14:37
SPEAKER_02: So we can talk about like what was it that allowed that kind of be held off?
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: No, that's that's that's a great and the distinction between revolutions is is crucially important to understand because a lot of times we kind of mix them all together, especially the American and French Revolution.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I would point to two things, I think, one general and one specific.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Um the general one is uh this is something I kind of realize, but now that you know doing this book and other things realize much more.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh the American Revolution was, at least for two years very intensely, but really for some time, say since the Stamp Act in 1765, that's 12 years, was extremely deliberative.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Deliberative, thoughtful.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: How'd they communicate?
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Pamphlets, uh, public pamphlets and arguments.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: They wrote things.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then what did they do?
15:30
SPEAKER_00: They actually invented something new called a Congress, the Stamp Act Congress.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh the Congress as a legislative thing was completely new.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Continental Congress.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: They they sent uh delegates together to argue.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was, it was that sense of it.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't this kind of building fervor uh that was there, there was in the sense of they, you know, they were getting frustrated with the British and it becomes a becomes an actual war.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: But there is this deeper thing that kind of always kept it contained.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a great letter from uh John Adams that talks about the Americ, the real American Revolution occurred long before the war.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: It had to do with these pamphlets, these writings, James Otis, um, uh, in particular, it had to do with a sermon, uh, as as the as the preachers are there kind of thought through what all this meant.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Do should we do we do we have a biblical obligation to be loyal to a king that's a despot?
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh that so there was always that quality, that thoughtful, deliberative quality.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: The particular thing I would point to is actually in the declaration, um, uh, which again is striking, but I I don't you don't think about it until you're kind of thinking all this through and putting all the pieces together.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh the Declaration does two things in particular.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we always focus on one and sometimes miss the other or the other, or don't quite realize the importance of the two things together.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And they're always together.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh they're gonna, the one people is gonna sever their relationships with another and institute a new government uh among the powers of the earth.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: At the end, it's it's about declaring independence from from England, but also claiming the powers of an independent, sovereign country.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Um the right, the the uh which uh Nadia read there, the for the last self-evident truth is that the people have a right to alter or abolish and institute new.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: So these things are always kind of one piece.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: So you don't have in the American revolution a sense of revolutionary, and then what do we do?
17:28
SPEAKER_00: It was always there was this kind of uh this responsibility, this intellectual moral kind of duty to, well, if you're gonna tear something down and and break it up and alter it in some fun sort of way, you have a moral obligation to know what you're going to do and having thought ahead about what the implications of that are and how it's gonna play out as best we can humanly.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: But you you can't separate them.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: And I so I think those things together I would suggest um, and I suppose a third one would be, you know, considering characters like George Washington, um, uh even John Dickinson, the who ended up not voting for the Declaration.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: There are these figures that had a deep moral prudence and and moderation to them that I think kept it contained.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but those deeper intellectual things I think would be the main factor side point too.
18:22
SPEAKER_03: In other words, America was always a country of intellectuals and thinkers at their core.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: I would say thinkers for sure.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: And I I don't disagree with the intellectual point, but I'd make a finer dist a fine distinction, which is uh you know, too often we think of these things as uh intellectual exercises and these ideas kind of playing themselves out if they do it as if they do it on their own.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Um they weren't academics, they weren't political philosophers, although they read much of these things.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh they were statesmen.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Um and so the the coin of their realm was not uh merely, you know, say Plato's Republic, therefore, or or Kant, therefore everything has to be universalized.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Um it was uh more kind of that Aristotelian sense.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: There's the these things, there's these truths, there's these this nature, uh, there's prudential judgment.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh but really the the the coin of the realm is what do we do in actual reality?
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, how do we proceed?
19:23
SPEAKER_00: How do we think?
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is why my book emphasizes right in the middle of that second parody, the very the word right after you stop your quote, Nadia, uh is what?
19:32
SPEAKER_00: What's the next very next word?
19:34
SPEAKER_02: Let me look at that.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Prudence indeed will dictate.
19:38
unknown: Okay.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Um which goes back to Jake's question, right?
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh their world, their intellectual world, was shaped by ideas, uh, which meant principles and and these great things you aspire to and human equality.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: And yes, but their world is also shaped by prudence, the cardinal virtue.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Prudence, which is a which is a a uh it can be an aggressive uh uh factor about action, but also can be a certain moderating role.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Um uh in in in there there might be certain temperance in support of those principles.
20:13
SPEAKER_03: Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.
20:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:22
SPEAKER_03: Huh.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: I I like that.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: The point about pamphlets, especially, I think and you discussed Payne's pamphlet in the book, that the uh given the population, the incredible reach that it had.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: I guess something related to that that I was thinking about is and you and you developed this argument early in the book, is that on the one hand uh they are very clear there are specific grievances we have with the British government that are driving us to take these actions?
20:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh but then they kind of escalate it, take it up a level, and say what are these kind of fund um blending fundamental and foundational, foundational truths of the about the human person, about human politics and society that legitimize what we're doing.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: And I also wonder, would you say that is that also a distinguishing factor?
21:21
SPEAKER_02: Because when I think about like France, first off, there's so much factionalism that they're never able to resolve.
21:27
SPEAKER_02: Right, right, right.
21:28
SPEAKER_02: And the the object seems to be a republic, but a republic is really just a form.
21:33
SPEAKER_02: It's not telling you the like T loss or the positive good that the society's trying to attain.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: Um whereas would you see the the way that they kind of take the critique up a level into nature and nature's god?
21:48
SPEAKER_02: Um so working from British resources, but then also elevating it, does that also play a role in the way that the revolution plays itself out?
21:58
SPEAKER_00: No, no, I I absolutely very Wonderful observation.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: The part of it is there's uh uh especially with the French Revolution versus the American Revolution, is we start to see the splits that we associate with the development of modernity.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Um I mean the the French would say, oh, we we elevated our principles as well because we overthrew all the past.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: We we we uh outlawed the the the everything, including the calendar.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: We started the year counting again.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: And they seem to have a overthrew classical thought and and Christian, you know, everything.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: They also seem to have a universalistic impulse that looks different.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, you see a playing out of uh Rousseau and Voltaire and a lot of French thought, uh, which goes a very different direction.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh the American thought was not a kind of a discovery of a new philosophy, and then let's implement it.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: What it was was they found themselves, and and and here I kind of came to thinking about this and thinking it through more, mainly because I'm I've studied political thought, but I'm very interested in history uh and how these things actually played out.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, they're going to potentially go to war with the King of England.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh they're opposing the king, but also parliament is being, you know, is is uh parliamentary supremacy.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: This is our who we're objecting to, we're objecting to the they're denying our consent.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: And so we we we can't merely um uh refer to the rights of Englishmen and our English heritage.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, we actually want to preserve our English heritage, and those rights of Englishmen were pretty good, actually quite good in in 1776 in terms of how they had evolved over time.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it wasn't sufficient.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: We need a deeper moral grounding.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh think of it more as um it it is you know elevating as you as you refer to, but think of it also as going to the root of the cause.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: Let's see what's behind our those British rights, what's behind the British tradition?
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what's the deeper grounding of all that?
23:58
SPEAKER_00: And that that's where you start seeing that, and they're literally going, these pamphlets are literally stepping back through all that, thinking all this through, and and what do they ultimately appeal to?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, in Jefferson, he's kind of going back, what is the earliest beginnings of British constitutionalism and Magna Carta and all these things?
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what is that grounded in?
24:17
SPEAKER_00: What is that grounded in?
24:19
SPEAKER_00: It's grounded in this older tradition, uh, whether we understand it coming from the Greeks and the Romans, which is a kind of a natural law uh intellectual tradition, or do we understand uh that tradition going back through the Christian tradition?
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh you think of Richard Hooker, Thomas Aquinas, uh, the scholastics, the whole tradition which develops and sees the the um the natural law tradition, but also in a larger sense of uh created order.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: Um and and so I think they actually are very intentionally, indeed, there's a debate at the first continental congress where they uh go through what's the grounding for this revolution.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, charters, okay, but they're not gonna work.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: The British tradition, okay, but it's not good enough, that's not enough.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: Um uh we have to go back to nature.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: We have to go back to nature.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And and I think one of the prime things I've uh I see in my book is that, well, this concept of nature as they go back to the laws of nature and of nature as God, is not the kind of modern uh French um uh you know, Rousseauian or even Lockean sense of nature being an exertion of the passions.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: It's actually nature as the Greeks and the Romans understood, logos, nature, uh, and the Christians understood it, created nature, created in in God's image, nature.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that turn for the Americans is very practical in how they uh set up the turn the grounds for their revolution, uh, very different from how the French approached it, but we can't escape the fact that philosophically, theologically, intellectually, that's a very different turn.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's the way in which the Americans are going back, going, you know, appealing back to this older argument.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the French are looking forward, and as with all modern revolutions, right?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: They're always about tearing down the past and putting something else new, whether it's French or uh the communist revolution or whatever it might be.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh so you're you're right in pointing to that, but there's a much to expand upon it, the the distinction is is crucial, uh, crucial to understanding the American, uh, the American Revolution, American War, the American founding.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting, because something Arendt talks about in her On Revolution is actually like the etymology of the word and how like originally it was a a circle coming back.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Um which comes to mind as you're as you're talking about the American.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: The other word I like to use is uh radical.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: They were Americans were radical.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: And there was, oh, what does that mean?
27:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does radical mean?
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Radical means going to the root, yeah, as in radish.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: Um they were radical.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Um and they were revolutionary in the sense they wanted to come back full circle.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And they thought they were kind of they they thought they were recovering and saving the British Constitution by putting it on firmer grounds.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: And uh as a practical point, that meant they had to break with the British in 1776, because they, the British in 1776, were moving in a different direction of kind of more of an absolute sovereignty, almost a Hobbesian uh understanding of politics, which they rejected root and branch.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: I I was struck in your you were talking about Jefferson's treatment of equality and what he means by that.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: And you also draw on Adams, of course, as well.
27:52
SPEAKER_02: Um while I was reading, I was in my reading of Lincoln, there's the the famous line where Lincoln's his understanding of democracy is if I would not be a slave, I cannot be a master.
28:03
SPEAKER_02: This is what I mean by democracy.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: And I've heard um Jeff Stout, who's a Princeton religion scholar, he's talked about Lincoln's idea of democracy basically being um uh an inclusive anti-domination.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: So it's not just anti-domination for certain classes, but everyone has that right to not be dominated.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Um would you see Jefferson as kind of gesturing in the same direction?
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Or are they doing slightly different things?
28:34
SPEAKER_02: Or like how did how would Jefferson relate to that quote from Lincoln?
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Um no, no, I I I think he would would agree, but uh let me let me back up and make this this observation, which is uh again kind of how I've I've been teaching this a long time, and that this book has been germinating my mind for a long time.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I think uh a lot of times we uh categorize incorrectly, which is we think Laconian democracy, Jeffersonian democracy, this, that, and the other.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: We put things in buckets.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think what's interesting about the American uh way of thinking this through, and I I've always viewed Lincoln as the last great American founder, he completes the founding.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Um uh you have to understand that the the grounding, uh it's not it's not the definition of democracy per se.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: What it is is what's the ground of it.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh and if you ground democracy in a recognition in the nature of things, whether we understand it rationally or intellectually or uh in a uh theological sense, um, if it's grounded in that equality, a fundamental equality, then the only way to proceed, the only way to proceed is some sort of um uh you know a democratic slash republican process, setting aside the details of exactly how, that recognizes that we all have certain fundamental things that cannot be violated.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And if they are, that actually destroys our humanity.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Um this is why, even though Jefferson you know famously owns slaves, he never gets rid of his slaves.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Um uh, you know, he he he understood that was wrong.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and there's no way out of that problem for him.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's exactly the same thing Lincoln saw, right?
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, which is when you look at a black man, in the case of, I'm thinking of Lincoln's meeting Frederick Douglass, you can't tell me that's not a man.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's just patently obvious, which is it's self-evident.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh they all knew that.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: So if you begin there, it's hard not to get to the point where what democracy means is that no man, uh the king of England or a slave owner or the current president, you know, the president of the United States uh has somehow a right in nature to dominate any other human being.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh the one the only caveat I will make there, Jake, of course, is that uh in the very nature of things, there is a difference between that as a general matter and say a family uh uh and their children.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that there's even nature itself makes a certain exception that has to do with the formation, the raising of the of the human being.
31:23
SPEAKER_03: It's interesting because in the Greek polis, I know the Athenians sweated this one a lot, that on the one hand, the best citizen it puts his city first, but on the other hand, naturally, each man wants to put his family first.
31:38
SPEAKER_03: So, how do you reconcile these uh competing allegiances?
31:42
SPEAKER_03: And how does the declaration um help us see them in a way that's more humane?
31:50
SPEAKER_00: So that's one of those questions that we could spend a whole semester discussing.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, but but here's I think here's one of the one of the uh the deeper or or certain broader uh teaching, if you will, of the Declaration.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: The Declaration comes into being at a certain point in time in the move between the classical Christian world and the modern world, uh, which is less classical and less Christian, shall I say.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Um uh but if you recall, they that phrase being the laws of nature, nature is God, is a hat tip to both reason and revelation, the the the rational tradition, the revelatory tradition.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: Um it doesn't see a conflict between them.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and that's very important.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: But but it also means that the structurally the declaration is creating a world, and the Constitution then plays this out, um, in which those two realms can be not made absolutely consistent, but be understood to be friends um in the creation of this order.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that turn on?
32:57
SPEAKER_00: I I would argue that actually turns on uh the whole movement of the uh the the Greek and Roman tradition, but especially as it becomes shaped by the Christian tradition.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and the the real the greatest teaching here, of course, is from from from Christ.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Read under Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh, which they there there is actually, there is a certain separation of of these realms you see in the Bible itself.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you how do you structure that?
33:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh don't think of that as the as the modern separation of church and state, and they these things should never be the wall, great wall of separation.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: What's the declaration's argument?
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, there are there are the laws of nature, and they're the laws of nature's God.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: They're the same laws, seen from different perspectives.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Um what's the what's the the Vinn diagram where we can all agree?
33:55
SPEAKER_00: It's it's that's the declarations argument, right?
33:57
SPEAKER_00: There are these natural laws, which has an intellectual grounding, you it's a perfectly pagan argument.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and then there's uh the same laws of nature's God, the God who creates us, who endows us with the rights, the supreme judge of the world, divine providence.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Um but they can agree on this grounding, this basis, these, these, the, the, the, the beginnings, if you will, upon which to build.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: I would suggest that's the that's the answer to your question.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: That it was not available to the Athenians.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it took us a long time to work our way through it.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Just I think the declaration is the best expression of it, uh, which is there is a city of man, and the city of man uh is built on this these basic precepts, the first precepts, uh which man can grasp by his mind, but are consistent with a theological, if not biblical, understanding of the same thing.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: But it also points to, and there's another thing over which government is not uh the sovereign, uh, the city of God.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And the city of God uh is why we preserve, protect, and uh point to as our highest end man's religious liberty, is uh his ability to pursue true happiness uh and and to come to know the truth about the highest and most important things.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh, in this case, the truth about God.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh but that but the direct doesn't answer that question, but it clearly opens that door and points towards it in a very profound way.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: I like that.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
35:37
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36:15
SPEAKER_02: Maybe this is an interesting kind of follow-up.
36:18
SPEAKER_02: It's not about family, but another kind of form of human community.
36:23
SPEAKER_02: So something I I was struck by, and I knew this already, but I was struck by it while I was reading your book, is just the length of time that was involved with the Continental Congress moving from where they began to the declaration.
36:40
SPEAKER_02: And so I was curious about the role friendship played amongst the members of the Congress.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, you see that really clearly, I think, in Adams and Jefferson.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: But then also just a more general question of what and maybe the answer is as simple as like existential threat, but to to hold together for as long as they did.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: Right.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: And to move as much as they did in that.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: To move together as much as they did.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what I found striking is the extent to which no colony went out on their own, no colony negotiated a separate peace, no colony um uh refused to back up Massachusetts.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: The British try as they may could never split the colonies.
37:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I'm just curious how do they have a certain degree of kind of built-in friendship?
37:28
SPEAKER_02: And like typically you think of the it's 13 separate colonies that have to learn to work together, and yet to be able to go through that process together suggests there was actually perhaps more togetherness than is sometimes said from the very beginning.
37:43
SPEAKER_02: Is that accurate, you think?
37:45
SPEAKER_02: Or does that out of necessity?
37:48
SPEAKER_02: Because Right.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: I I think that's um Yeah, let's let's think that through for me.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's a great question.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Um I think a couple of things.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: One is we have to recognize the fact that uh we're in the 18th century, and so the kind of the the the nat the the the the the ways of society are are uh in many ways much more um civilized, uh even in even the frontiers of the colonies.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean the colonies are really the middle of nowhere, um especially if you think of any anywhere you know slightly westward, it really is is open terrain.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Yet they had been formed by their own background, which is British, uh British educational system, uh, which was a classical and they read stories and history.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: So they're they're well formed.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, to make reference to your earlier point of pamphlets, they're extremely well read on top of everything else.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Um uh but the they they went through this whole process of uh being colonies, they realized in the same boat, um, if they're gonna do this in Massachusetts, they're gonna do it to us too.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: We have more in common than we have common with them.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and uh but then this but then you have to add to this this intellectual formation we've been talking about.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: So one of the things uh took me a long time to figure out there's the the next to last paragraph in the in the declaration talks about our British brethren.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: And and the colonies had written several letters to the British appealing to them as their fellow um um, you know, because they're relations.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: And they always refer to them as brethren, um, and uh their brothers and sisters, their their ancestors.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Um but then they start referring to them uh more and more throughout the those years as their subjects.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: And initially the Americans are fellow subjects, but very quickly they start referring to themselves as a people.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: Um and the declaration famously begins with within the course of events, a people.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: They they they they understand themselves to be a people.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: So somehow it comes to separate them out, and there's a certain, so I'm you you think of uh of personal friendships, I think are very important.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: You think um Dickinson and Adams, who fought, uh were were actually uh also friends.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Um Dickinson goes on to fight in the revolution uh and is uh under the generalship of Caesar Rodney, uh, right?
40:15
SPEAKER_00: Um so there's a lot of those personal relations, but there's this general developing sense of a civic friendship.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: They understood themselves to be friends in a in a public way, all of them, um, and fellow, fellow patriots, which they had they had a common love.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: Um and so I think friendship is very important.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I when the question of friendship comes up, I always think of you know Aristotle's distinction between there are different forms of friendship, right?
40:43
SPEAKER_00: There's there's useful friendship, uh my my buddy the the butcher down the street.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's um uh uh the the the great friendships of um uh of uh having things in common and common interests and whatnot.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: But then the greatest friendships are friendships where you have the highest things in common.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Um and of course, that's you know, greatest form of that is is is your spouse.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but all but all also it kind of can point towards a form of friendship where we have uh a friendship because of the these great common high principles, which we together uh are willing to fight for.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Remember that last Nadia, that last line of the declaration, which is a beautiful sense, I in my opinion a perfect sentence.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: It was never edited, never touched the editing process in which they uh mutually pledge to each other.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: That's that's friendship, right?
41:41
SPEAKER_00: No greater love than to give up one's life for one's friends.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: Mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that actually, I I actually that is the friendship.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it develops develops over time, experience, common things.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: They're there, you know, um uh when when when people are fired upon uh and the war is beginning, this is they all understand that to be the them, all of them.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh they uh they read the same things, the pamphlets cross colonial barriers, uh, the king's closing down their legislatures, uh all having the same problems.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: The Stamp Act made no distinctions, the Intoler Act made no distinctions.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, the the ones directed towards Massachusetts were specific to Massachusetts, but no one, no one I can find makes the argument, oh, that's Boston.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Why should we come to the defense of Boston?
42:36
SPEAKER_00: Never comes up, never comes up.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they become a people.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think that people and the the the friendship uh and the bonds of that are uh you know deep bonds uh that just become deeper over time, especially through the revolution itself.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then uh that common history, and then ultimately eventually something like the Civil War, uh, which was a split, but it was also a great bonding experience, if you will, and a rededication.
43:09
SPEAKER_03: That's really beautiful.
43:11
SPEAKER_03: And that last line, it just reads poetic.
43:14
SPEAKER_03: It reads like poetry.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's why I say it's I think it is a perfect, and I say that uh because a lot of other commentators on the declarations think that's a that's the most beautiful sense of of the statement.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Notice how it's uh it's a um there's actually a a uh literary phrase for this, but uh it it's a play on his other reference, his other triad, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: But now it's our lives.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: It's not liberty, but it's our fortunes, which includes not only money, uh property, but family, reputation, estate.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: And then um honor.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: You can't you can't pledge to each other something you're pursuing, right?
43:54
SPEAKER_00: But you can pledge your honor.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: I was just it's I sat there looking at these things together.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: And it you know, and that's very powerful.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: And then the the the I think the most powerful word in that sentence, the electric word, uh, it had been edited out early in the declaration, they edited out one place and they left it sitting here at the very end.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: Sacred.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: It's not just honor.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: This is not this is not just kind of the you know the the the honor of of of the Greeks.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: This is not Roman honor.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is an honor that is sacred, which say it's it is it's it's an honor that would be understood to be honored before God.
44:31
SPEAKER_03: And it's our it belongs to all of us.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: Sacred honor.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: Okay, and that also I think kind of helps draw out because of course Jefferson and Adams have a quite dramatic falling out later in life.
44:49
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: And yet in their final years, they reconcile.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: And I I I love the way it's depicted in the miniseries HBO Did of Adams, where it's they're both coming to the end of their days and they're writing these letters to each other.
45:04
SPEAKER_02: I don't believe they ever meet in person at this point, so it's a purely epistolary Oh I think that's right.
45:09
SPEAKER_02: I think it's just it's all letters.
45:10
SPEAKER_02: Well, because I mean they were both so advanced in years by then, I think travel at that time would have done much.
45:17
SPEAKER_02: And yet they are able to perhaps fittingly for two men who bonded over writing the declaration together, they they reforged their friendship through writing.
45:27
SPEAKER_02: Right.
45:27
SPEAKER_02: Um and I I I have to think part of what makes that possible is precisely those final words.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: That sense of like, okay, there were political differences we had over the years after Washington and until Jefferson retired from public life.
45:45
SPEAKER_02: And yet there is something more basic and fundamental we share.
45:49
SPEAKER_02: Right.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: So we should find a way of reconciling before we die.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: Which I I think I I hadn't thought about Jefferson's last words there is explaining that what would happen 40 years later, but yeah, no, I I I guess right.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that the the the Jefferson Adams correspondence is one of the great uh correspondences, I think, in world history.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just phenomenal.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: Um one of the second greatest, of course, is John and Abigail Adams letters throughout their lives.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: That's that's those are phenomenal.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh but but yeah, your point is, but what you're you're asking a question.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: What I was thinking about is um uh the American Revolution itself, right?
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're we're we're all perfectly in agreement.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: We're having a we're we're grand, right?
46:35
SPEAKER_00: We're all happy subjects of of the the British, uh the great British Empire, which provides for our protection and uh preserves our rights and is expanding the rule of law, and it's just fabulous.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh but then there's a long series of conflict.
46:52
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh nothing the British as much, but uh but ourselves.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: How do we resolve the conflict?
46:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh we go back to the the basics, the fundamentals.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's kind of like the Jefferson Adams correspondence, right?
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Um they had this great relationship.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: Um in the revolution, I think they were very copisthetic.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: Um the other one I always point to is Hamilton and Jefferson.
47:18
SPEAKER_00: They they, during that whole same period when there's a falling out with Jefferson, Hamilton and Jefferson are also have a deep falling out.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: They really do just strongly dislike each other, but they famously disagree on everything.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: Nothing they agreed on.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: Um yet during the revolution, you can find them writing things that are almost exactly mirroring each other.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh then there's this long falling out period driven by politics, right?
47:46
SPEAKER_00: The device of politics of the 1800s.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then they they come back.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: Now, Hamilton, of course, is is killed, so he doesn't have that opportunity, but Adams and Jefferson uh reconcile.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: And what do they talk about?
47:58
SPEAKER_00: They talk about, you know, uh they they they correspond in Greek sometimes.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: They they um talk about ancient history, philosophy, uh, poetry, uh, politics, but in a very broad sense, you know, and they talk about history.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you go back to the fundamentals.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh actually you would say they go back to the classics, uh, the great, you know, the human verities.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's the ground upon which you can you you can reconcile uh these divisions.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the the the divisions of politics, this has always been the case, right?
48:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh we engage in politics, there are political divisions.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: Those political divisions are very important, don't get me wrong.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: Some very important, some less important because it's just a campaign or election.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: But what what what is so great about uh about all this is to go back to the more important things we have in common.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: And well, we're very lucky, uh, we're blessed actually, uh, in this country, because our country itself, in its origins in the declaration, actually defines uh and points to the ground upon which we can be, we can be, again, um uh civic friends.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: Um and it's not based on uh our ethnicity, it's not based on whether we're Roman uh Catholic or Protestant or Athenian or Spartan or black or white.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: It's it's based on uh something that's true simply.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and we are all equal in the fundamental sense that we're human.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: And the reminding of that, the reminding us of that, uh is just a constant pointing towards something outside of ourselves, above ourselves, that transcends ourselves.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh that's the ground upon which we can be unified as human beings.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: Um and and we can also, by the way, be uh we can love our country.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: It's imperfect, we're fallen imperfect people, but that idea I think is worthy of loving.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Um and and is is the thing that is most lovely about America.
50:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, something I I I've been thinking more about lately for well, the obvious reasons in a second, but something that my former senator Ben Sass talked about a lot while he was in Washington.
50:21
SPEAKER_02: Um I mean he voted in the way you would expect him to as a as a Nebraska Republican, but his public energy, his like project he had for himself, seemed to be like I the phrase I've used and I've heard friends use is civil catechesis.
50:37
SPEAKER_02: Like trying to remember what does it mean like for civic life to be American?
50:44
SPEAKER_02: What are the practices, virtues, kind of things we take for granted that make this kind of life possible?
50:53
SPEAKER_02: And so his his soapbox as a senator was we have to get back to this kind of civic catechesis to preserve what we've been given and pass it on.
51:02
SPEAKER_02: Right.
51:02
SPEAKER_02: And it seems like your book would be an example of the sort of thing he's calling for.
51:06
SPEAKER_00: Would you would you see it that way as trying to No, I I absolutely, absolutely, right?
51:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh look, I um um my our our graduate school in my in the uh the Hillsdale campus here is in Washington DC.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: So I'm in the middle of politics, I have lots of friends in politics.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: I engage uh when I'm pulled in to be an advisor and different things like that, because that's what we do.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm a teacher.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: I will take any opportunity uh I can, despite the fact that that oftentimes ties me to a political party or involvement in something.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: But what are we up to?
51:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm engaging because I think these things have to be taught.
51:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the fact of the matter is that the part of the nature of America is these questions are are inherently political questions.
51:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh, these are public debates.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: This is not a bunch of academics trying to involve themselves in politics or uh politics is interested in us.
51:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's it's just it's all the same thing.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: Um the the debate between Republicans and Democrats since the very beginning has been over what is the meaning of the American founding, and in particular, what is the meaning of the Declaration of Independence?
52:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's no way to avoid that.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: So, but having said that, you're absolutely correct.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: And my my larger purpose here, uh, and I, you know, Ben Sass is a great example of that, uh, and there are others, but what's the larger purpose here is to preserve, to identify, teach, and preserve uh these ideas, which are really the heart of America.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the particular politics will change, the particular leaders and senators are will change.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, what's gotta be the same?
52:47
SPEAKER_00: What identifies us?
52:48
SPEAKER_00: What makes us distinctive?
52:50
SPEAKER_00: What makes America exceptional?
52:52
SPEAKER_00: If you lose that, you don't teach that, you don't pass that along, you don't form people into citizens, um uh then we're we're just no longer America.
53:04
SPEAKER_00: We're something different.
53:05
SPEAKER_00: We might be a modern version of a Republican, pseudo-Republican government, but it's not the same thing, and and and and we can't speak of it in those in those terms anymore.
53:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: So I think this is, you know, we're we're here at this 25th anniversary.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's a great opportunity to publish a book and you know, good timing and all that.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: But what's the bigger thing?
53:28
SPEAKER_00: Um the the the this moment is a is a moment to recall that history and the declaration and these arguments.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: But what is it really?
53:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a bridge.
53:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a bridge to this larger truths, these deeper truths of the human condition.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh the the founders were great because they recognized something that was true, simply.
53:51
SPEAKER_00: Um I can't correct me.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: I may have said this earlier, I can't remember it.
53:54
SPEAKER_00: I always like to point out that you know we still hold these truths we self-evident.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: They didn't say, you know, we have some personal subjective value statements we'd like to share with you, right?
54:06
SPEAKER_00: And so the the the studying the declaration in its deepness, right?
54:11
SPEAKER_00: Augustine said you can't love something unless you know it, uh, points us to that world, which is not our world.
54:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a world, uh, a deeper world uh that still believes in truths or under still grasp truths as a matter of metaphysical freedom, I should say, isn't shaped by historicism, uh, isn't postmodern and all this other nonsense.
54:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so it's a bridge, it's an opening to this deeper understanding of the tradition, uh, which clearly informed them, but but also is something that we can then approach and and rediscover uh as well.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, and even like Jefferson's original words, there were sacred and undeniable, which I think self-evident is an improvement, but sacred and undeniable also speaks to the the way in which they held.
54:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's right, but you're absolutely right.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: So they took out sacred there, I think among other things to leave it at the end, uh, which is a great uh makes that all the more powerful.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: But self-evidence is a much is an improvement.
55:12
SPEAKER_00: Why?
55:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not because it's kind of a modern rationalistic term of art, the greatest expositor of self-evidence is Thomas Aquinas, uh, but it's an old Greek, you know, logical term.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh but it's also more precise, self-evident.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh I also, you know, the other thing is I I I kind of didn't quite know, but in studying this in in more detail, um, Jefferson and Abs were both studied in uh both students of rhetoric, uh, which is about the use of words, but also an oral tradition.
55:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh there are marks in the original, the draft, Jefferson's draft, original draft.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: Um uh there are speaking marks on the on the transcript.
55:57
SPEAKER_00: It was meant to be read.
55:59
SPEAKER_00: And so um, you know, the beginning starts off very slow with long vow of long words.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: We hold, or excuse me, uh win in the course of human events.
56:09
SPEAKER_00: And so you read that first part, it's kind of slow.
56:12
SPEAKER_03: You can almost scan it like metrically, poetry.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a slow thing.
56:17
SPEAKER_00: Wow, this is really a slow intro here.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we hold these truths to be self-evident.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a that's an intentional rhetorical move to use crisp, precise, monosyllabic word, syllabic words.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I it's it's it's just the when you put it together, they they really, this is very intentional.
56:39
SPEAKER_00: It's a short document.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Um uh the the committee edit it, they debated it, they argued.
56:46
SPEAKER_00: We know there were you know 30 or 40 or so edits at the committee level.
56:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh it goes to the Continental Congress, they spend a day and a half, they cut it by 25%, they have now 50 or 60 edits.
56:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, all honor to Jefferson.
57:01
SPEAKER_00: He's the great writer, uh, beautiful writer, but it's not his document in the end.
57:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh he himself said it's an expression of the American mind.
57:10
SPEAKER_00: It was meant to capture all those pamphlets, all those arguments, the Continental Congress, what was what was the American mind in 1776?
57:18
SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, I think he also defined the American mind, simply.
57:24
unknown: Right?
57:24
SPEAKER_00: We're debating that today.
57:26
SPEAKER_00: That is the American mind.
57:27
SPEAKER_00: Either it, and if it's not, then it's not the American mind anymore.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think a lot of Americans still understand that American mind.
57:38
SPEAKER_00: They still partake in it some way.
57:40
SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily as deep, it's not necessarily as well thought out as we would like.
57:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but they think there's something great about this country.
57:48
SPEAKER_00: They think there's something worth preserving, there's something worth passing along to their children.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they think there's something unique about it.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, they think that I think they're not convinced by this, all this stuff about how America is systemically bad or not, you know, wealth.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh they they they have the uh the natural sense that uh that we we do, but also is in in that Christian sense that of course we're not a perfect, you know, we're we're messy, life is messy.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: Um but yet something shines through uh when they when they and they when they read Lincoln or they read the Declaration, they or they or or they they tell their children uh how you know granddad fought in World War II.
58:34
SPEAKER_00: There's there's something deeply influential about all that that comes back to the beginning.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: Um that's what I'm appealing to.
58:43
SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm appealing to.
58:45
SPEAKER_02: I I had a wonderful experience that a few years ago I was in DC on a work trip and I was able to bring my oldest son with me, who was eight at the time.
58:54
SPEAKER_02: And we started off going to the National Archives so I could show him the declaration, constitution, bill of rights.
59:01
SPEAKER_02: And like I I told him a little bit, but mostly I just kind of let him look at it, let him read.
59:07
SPEAKER_02: He asked questions.
59:08
SPEAKER_02: So like he asked about what are the rights in the Bill of Rights.
59:11
SPEAKER_02: So I was telling him.
59:13
SPEAKER_02: Then the next day we're walking down, I think it was Independence Avenue by the Capitol and the um National Mall.
59:20
SPEAKER_02: And there's a group of protesters in front of the Capitol, and he asks what that group of people is.
59:27
SPEAKER_02: I tell him they're they're protesting.
59:29
SPEAKER_02: I wasn't sure what the cause was they were protesting for.
59:32
SPEAKER_02: But he looks at it and I can see his kind of eye turning, and he goes, So they're using freedom of speech and freedom to assemble, aren't they?
59:42
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
59:43
SPEAKER_02: You got it, you got it.
59:44
SPEAKER_02: Like you encountered these texts yesterday in a in a deeper way for the first time, and you're eight, but you got it.
59:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, sometimes we we shouldn't forget here.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: I I I mentioned before I was I was in middle school in 1976.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, what what really forms one's mind uh and what makes one a patriot?
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, it's it begins very instinctively.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's a great story, you know.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_00: My remembering the the freedom train and the great chips and the parades, um, you know, hearing a story about an uncle or a granddad, um, you know, meeting somebody, uh, that stuff marks the beginnings.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then it becomes more reflective over time.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then it's because it's and then when you combine the two things, right, when someone sees it physically, sees it, um, and someone embodies those ideas, and then they read the documents, they they learn more about it, and then at that point it becomes the the the that's the kind of the American sense of uh what is necessary to be a patriot, because it has to be reflective at a certain point to become a self-governing citizen.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that's you know very powerful.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_00: Um and and and you know, the the these these these ideas have to be embodied in a physical way.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: And you know, sometimes I think we forget that um and how we do it.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_00: But that that's why I think really the best way to teach these things is through history, but especially stories, but especially biography.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_03: And as you noted in your book, sometimes it's the visitors, the foreigners who arrive and look at this and fall in love with this country who remind us it is lovable.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: Like Tocqueville.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: No, that's that's that's right.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you so much.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_03: We have a final question for you, which is not about the Declaration, or maybe it is.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_03: What classic of any classics in world history do you wish you had written and why?
1:01:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, that's a um so um uh well he actually here's the answer I would give.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: And if you I don't know if you notice this, but the very first uh quote in my book, the beginning of the very first, I think it's the introduction, is a quote from C.S.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_00: Lewis.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_00: It's from his um autobiography, Surprised by Joy.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_00: But I I have really most re more recently in my life, but I always to some extent, but more recently, become a really big uh C.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_00: S.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_00: Lewis fan.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh what he's what he did in uh telling stories, especially children's stories.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the you know the Narnia series, but all of his books really are about trying to recover this deep sense of moral truths and natural law and these concepts, but through a different but but through a different way.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: It's obviously heavily Christian and it's gonna Christian apologetic, which is very important as well.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_00: But I think there's something to that that is very powerful.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_00: So I would, you know, and he's he's clearly a classic, um, all of his works, but I I would like to be that kind of writer and that kind of uh thinker who has deep influence um uh and and uh shaping.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean he's he's still extremely well read today, and and uh, you know, especially Abolition of Man, um uh the his work on the four loves.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean many of his books, uh Mere Christianity, of course, and one of the uh I use that quote at the beginning of my book precisely because uh that I wanted to uh it it get have that sense.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, his his argument in Surprised by Joy, I don't know if you ever read it, his autobiography is about his turn to Christianity, but but prior to that he was a teacher of um pagan mythology.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_00: But he also believed and and writes about how uh reading great history, great poetry, uh, the classics, um, oftentimes surprise us.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's his first use of surprise by joy, uh, which is that um we are surprised to find these works which we don't expect.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_00: And here I would add the Declaration of Independence.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_00: We're surprised sometimes that they actually point us towards the eternal things.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think the Declaration does that.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to bring that out in my book.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: And so what I want to do in my book was tell the stories of the Declaration, these decl the story, this is mirror history, um, but of actual events, start to capture it through stories and biography, and then let the text tell its own story.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_00: But what ultimately does it point us to?
1:04:33
SPEAKER_00: It points us towards the the eternal things, things that transcend ourselves, and uh by it through its many references to the divine, uh points us towards um uh eternal things.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_00: So I that's I'm sorry, that's too long of an answer, but I would say um uh C.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_00: S.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_00: Lewis and uh not not one particular thing, but because of course the prudent thing is like what would be the what would be the C.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: S.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: Lewis book written today?
1:05:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's what I would like to do.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_03: That's beautiful.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you so much.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: This has been delightful.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have to say that for an author and for someone like myself, uh speaking with you know two delightful people like yourselves who have uh not only read the book but are very thoughtful uh has been uh wonderful.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_00: So uh thank you very much for that.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_03: And listeners, we uh again encourage you to take advantage of America 250 anniversary to read the Declaration of Independence or reread it, hopefully.
1:05:35
SPEAKER_03: And of course, you can pick up a copy of Matthew Spaulding's The Making of the American Mind about the Declaration.