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The Masonic Roundtable - 0560 - The Grand Masonic Experiment · The Masonic Roundtable - Freemasonry Today for Today's Freemasons

• 0:22
  Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Masonic Roundtable, a weekly
• 0:24
  Speaker: program where Masons from around the world get together to talk
• 0:27
  Speaker: about Masonic news and opinions in a friendly and social manner.
• 0:30
  Speaker: As a reminder, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are
• 0:33
  Speaker: solely the opinions of the participants and do not
• 0:36
  Speaker: represent any Grand Lodge statements or positions.
• 0:38
  Speaker: Make sure you keep your conversations open for the
• 0:40
  Speaker: public and on the level to interact with us.
• 0:43
  Speaker: We love seeing you live every Thursday night.
• 0:45
  Speaker: Facebook and YouTube land.
• 0:46
  Speaker: So hello and good evening.
• 0:47
  Speaker: The chats are always fun and remember your chats may show up
• 0:51
  Speaker: in the show and if you can't catch us live, that's okay.
• 0:54
  Speaker: Catch us on the replay or in your favorite podcast app.
• 0:57
  Speaker: You know me, John Ruark, past
• 0:59
  Speaker: master of the Patriot Lodge,
• 1:00
  Speaker: number nineteen fifty seven, in
• 1:02
  Speaker: Fairfax, Virginia.
• 1:04
  Speaker: Next up for his introduction.
• 1:05
  Speaker: Who do we have spinning the Wheel?
• 1:07
  Speaker: Let's do Robert Johnson.
• 1:09
  Speaker: Hello and good evening.
• 1:11
  Speaker: Hello and good evening.
• 1:13
  Speaker: Um, Robert Johnson, past master,
• 1:15
  Speaker: Waukegan, seventy eight, and
• 1:16
  Speaker: Space Novum, eleven eighty
• 1:18
  Speaker: three, a premier Masonic lodge
• 1:20
  Speaker: in the state of Illinois and a
• 1:23
  Speaker: host of the Whence Came You
• 1:24
  Speaker: podcast.
• 1:25
  Speaker: Happy to be here this evening.
• 1:29
  Speaker: Good to see you.
• 1:31
  Speaker: You know who's also better seen than viewed?
• 1:35
  Speaker: Joe Martinez.
• 1:37
  Speaker: How's it going, Joe?
• 1:38
  Speaker: Wouldn't you like to know?
• 1:40
  Speaker: Um, hi.
• 1:41
  Speaker: Joe Martinez.
• 1:42
  Speaker: That's why I asked you.
• 1:43
  Speaker: I'm fixing to tell you.
• 1:44
  Speaker: So, Joe Martinez, uh, past master of Lodge number one
• 1:48
  Speaker: eighty two in Manassas, Virginia, home of.
• 1:51
  Speaker: Oh, wait.
• 1:53
  Speaker: Former home of esoteric.
• 1:55
  Speaker: And, uh, yeah, great to be here, but we'll talk to.
• 1:58
  Speaker: you.
• 1:58
  Speaker: Have to tell me more about that.
• 1:59
  Speaker: Yeah, we'll pull that thread.
• 2:01
  Speaker: Yes, but certainly not least for tonight, the Jason Richards,
• 2:06
  Speaker: everybody, Jason Richards, past master of Acacia Lodge, number
• 2:11
  Speaker: sixteen in Clifton, Virginia.
• 2:13
  Speaker: Glad to be here.
• 2:14
  Speaker: Huzzah!
• 2:15
  Speaker: Huzzah!
• 2:18
  Speaker: As always, we'll start things
• 2:20
  Speaker: off by giving a special shout
• 2:21
  Speaker: out to the patrons who support
• 2:22
  Speaker: the show.
• 2:23
  Speaker: You guys are amazing.
• 2:24
  Speaker: You rock my socks and, uh, we appreciate you.
• 2:27
  Speaker: So thank you for all that you do
• 2:29
  Speaker: to support Freemasonic education
• 2:31
  Speaker: for many years to come or until
• 2:33
  Speaker: twenty forty.
• 2:35
  Speaker: Uh. Didn't we, what was the last week or the week before?
• 2:37
  Speaker: Didn't we have to revise that twenty thirty six twenty thirty
• 2:41
  Speaker: six that's right, that's it.
• 2:43
  Speaker: Strike it, send it, send it to the press.
• 2:45
  Speaker: Ten more years of your favorite Masonic education.
• 2:51
  Speaker: Forever.
• 2:53
  Speaker: It'll be on the internet forever.
• 2:54
  Speaker: What are we going to do after twenty thirty six?
• 2:57
  Speaker: That's it.
• 2:58
  Speaker: I'm gonna start my own grand Lodge with blackjack.
• 3:03
  Speaker: All right, uh, next up, let's, uh, what do we do?
• 3:08
  Speaker: Last weekend.
• 3:11
  Speaker: We had the thing.
• 3:12
  Speaker: We had the thing.
• 3:13
  Speaker: We did have the thing.
• 3:14
  Speaker: How was the thing?
• 3:15
  Speaker: How was esoteric on Joe?
• 3:17
  Speaker: Uh, well, y'all were there, so
• 3:19
  Speaker: you can give me a quick
• 3:20
  Speaker: synopsis.
• 3:20
  Speaker: I thought it was, uh, probably one of the best run and, uh,
• 3:25
  Speaker: very well attended ones that we've had in a very long time.
• 3:27
  Speaker: Um, yeah, uh, pack the place up.
• 3:31
  Speaker: Uh, we had phenomenal speakers that came to present.
• 3:34
  Speaker: We had Jamie Lamb, we had Jason
• 3:37
  Speaker: Richards, we had Kevin Homan, we
• 3:39
  Speaker: had Robert Johnson, we had Ike
• 3:42
  Speaker: Baker.
• 3:43
  Speaker: And who am I forgetting?
• 3:44
  Speaker: Billy Hamilton right from Texas.
• 3:46
  Speaker: And, uh, a whole bunch of patrons.
• 3:48
  Speaker: We got to see some, some fans in real time.
• 3:51
  Speaker: That was absolutely phenomenal.
• 3:52
  Speaker: Uh, both on Friday and Saturday, a little bit on Sunday.
• 3:56
  Speaker: Uh, yeah, it was absolutely fabulous time.
• 3:58
  Speaker: So, uh, the reason why I said earlier that we are former, the
• 4:02
  Speaker: former home was Manassas, Virginia, where we I think we've
• 4:04
  Speaker: held it for seven years now.
• 4:06
  Speaker: Um, is we are taking this on the road.
• 4:09
  Speaker: So, um, yeah, we're checking the
• 4:12
  Speaker: list off of, uh, John's bucket
• 4:13
  Speaker: list, and we're going to leave
• 4:15
  Speaker: Manassas and we're going to have
• 4:17
  Speaker: esoteric on retreat in twenty
• 4:19
  Speaker: twenty eight.
• 4:20
  Speaker: So unplug your phones, turn off the Wi-Fi.
• 4:23
  Speaker: Um, we're going to go somewhere deep in the woods or the
• 4:26
  Speaker: mountains, and we'll let you know when and where.
• 4:28
  Speaker: And, uh, yeah, that's all the deets we have.
• 4:30
  Speaker: So, but not next year.
• 4:32
  Speaker: No, twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty eight eight.
• 4:35
  Speaker: It just rolled off your tongue.
• 4:36
  Speaker: And I want to make sure that was caught.
• 4:38
  Speaker: You know, one of the things that kind of blew my mind guys was,
• 4:42
  Speaker: um, after a couple of the presentations, I ended up
• 4:46
  Speaker: getting a text from a couple of like, big deal, big deal.
• 4:56
  Speaker: Uh, Masons and Esotericists
• 4:58
  Speaker: saying how awesome it was, even
• 5:01
  Speaker: though they were attending
• 5:02
  Speaker: virtually.
• 5:03
  Speaker: So that was pretty, pretty amazing.
• 5:07
  Speaker: Um, you guys always like, I don't know, man.
• 5:10
  Speaker: Y'all throw a heck of a party.
• 5:13
  Speaker: That's what it feels like.
• 5:14
  Speaker: Uh, so really cool.
• 5:18
  Speaker: Well, thanks.
• 5:19
  Speaker: Yes.
• 5:21
  Speaker: We tried.
• 5:22
  Speaker: We did.
• 5:23
  Speaker: Now, now I'm just counting.
• 5:24
  Speaker: I already made my paper chain.
• 5:26
  Speaker: I take a ring off every day till the next esoteric con.
• 5:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 5:32
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 5:34
  Speaker: See you in two years.
• 5:36
  Speaker: Uh, what do we have next?
• 5:37
  Speaker: Oh, we have, uh, Joe's favorite segment of the show where we can
• 5:41
  Speaker: explicitly talk about tarot cards of the week.
• 5:47
  Speaker: That's right.
• 5:51
  Speaker: Tarot card of the week.
• 6:00
  Speaker: Not t a r o t but tarot card of the week.
• 6:06
  Speaker: You know, uh.
• 6:10
  Speaker: I don't know why this.
• 6:11
  Speaker: Does this segment feel dirty now?
• 6:13
  Speaker: I'm just kidding.
• 6:13
  Speaker: I, I need a shower.
• 6:15
  Speaker: Uh, none of us are on lodge
• 6:16
  Speaker: property, so I think that's
• 6:18
  Speaker: true.
• 6:19
  Speaker: Oh, also, you guys know somebody came up to me at Esoteric Con
• 6:23
  Speaker: and said, hey, uh, not a question on your presentation,
• 6:27
  Speaker: RJ, but can you tell me what that song is you guys play for?
• 6:34
  Speaker: I had somebody ask me, yeah, Jason.
• 6:36
  Speaker: They want the, um, I think Jason was the one who mixed it.
• 6:39
  Speaker: They want the music from that.
• 6:41
  Speaker: Who was it?
• 6:43
  Speaker: That's.
• 6:44
  Speaker: Oh I did, yeah, I did a while ago.
• 6:46
  Speaker: I said I'll, I said I'll have to
• 6:48
  Speaker: look because I don't remember
• 6:50
  Speaker: it.
• 6:50
  Speaker: It was like a, you know, license free thing.
• 6:53
  Speaker: He's like, yeah, I want to know the whole song.
• 6:55
  Speaker: Okay.
• 6:57
  Speaker: So I'll send that out.
• 6:58
  Speaker: It'll be awesome.
• 7:00
  Speaker: All right.
• 7:00
  Speaker: Uh, tonight's episode on the Grand Masonic experiment.
• 7:04
  Speaker: We haven't done tarot card of the week yet.
• 7:08
  Speaker: That's why we're selecting a tarot card that aligns to the
• 7:11
  Speaker: theme of tonight's show.
• 7:14
  Speaker: Oh, okay.
• 7:15
  Speaker: Which is confusion justice.
• 7:22
  Speaker: Oh, and the American way.
• 7:26
  Speaker: Which is back.
• 7:28
  Speaker: Nice.
• 7:29
  Speaker: Cause and effect.
• 7:30
  Speaker: Prior to twenty sixteen.
• 7:33
  Speaker: The.
• 7:33
  Speaker: Yeah, I am the.
• 7:35
  Speaker: It should be Judge Dredd.
• 7:36
  Speaker: I am the law.
• 7:38
  Speaker: That's one though.
• 7:40
  Speaker: Yeah, I think this one's fine.
• 7:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:43
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:43
  Speaker: But the Karl Urban one is way better fairness.
• 7:47
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:48
  Speaker: Good stuff.
• 7:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:49
  Speaker: I, You know, a lot of times I'm
• 7:53
  Speaker: just curious on you guys thought
• 7:54
  Speaker: a lot of times the justice card
• 7:56
  Speaker: comes up and, you know, and it's
• 7:58
  Speaker: the scales.
• 8:00
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 8:00
  Speaker: True.
• 8:00
  Speaker: And here we see a sword.
• 8:03
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 8:04
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 8:05
  Speaker: So I'm wondering how we can
• 8:09
  Speaker: interpret a sword in that
• 8:11
  Speaker: similar fashion.
• 8:13
  Speaker: Uh, at least for penalties.
• 8:16
  Speaker: Uh, well, the sword has.
• 8:20
  Speaker: It's divided into two.
• 8:22
  Speaker: A double edged sword, a double edged sword.
• 8:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:26
  Speaker: I wonder if that constellation means anything either.
• 8:30
  Speaker: I'm curious now.
• 8:33
  Speaker: So, yeah, that's actually a good that's a good card to lead off
• 8:36
  Speaker: the Grand Masonic experiment.
• 8:38
  Speaker: There are four stars on each side.
• 8:44
  Speaker: MM. Equality under the law.
• 8:47
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:47
  Speaker: I'm Awesome.
• 8:55
  Speaker: Well, let us segue from that into tonight's topic.
• 8:59
  Speaker: Um, in case you guys didn't know, we're coming up on the two
• 9:02
  Speaker: hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of America.
• 9:07
  Speaker: So, um, we're going to give you
• 9:10
  Speaker: not one, but two America
• 9:11
  Speaker: episodes.
• 9:13
  Speaker: And so this, this being the first, um, I thought tonight we
• 9:16
  Speaker: would explore a little bit about the ideals of the founding of
• 9:23
  Speaker: America as a new nation.
• 9:25
  Speaker: And is there any validity to the
• 9:28
  Speaker: hypothesis that, uh, parts of
• 9:33
  Speaker: the founding of America were
• 9:34
  Speaker: based off of Masonic values or
• 9:37
  Speaker: principles also deemed a Masonic
• 9:40
  Speaker: experiment?
• 9:41
  Speaker: So tonight we'll unpack that, explore that, find some
• 9:45
  Speaker: parallels, some similarities, as well as maybe some wild
• 9:49
  Speaker: conspiracy theories along to go with the ride.
• 9:51
  Speaker: So let's begin just off the top of your head.
• 9:55
  Speaker: Like what?
• 9:57
  Speaker: What have you heard people say
• 9:59
  Speaker: about the influence of
• 10:01
  Speaker: Freemasons and the founding of
• 10:03
  Speaker: America?
• 10:04
  Speaker: Right, wrong or indifferent?
• 10:06
  Speaker: What are some of the common things that come up?
• 10:13
  Speaker: All of the Founding Fathers were Masons.
• 10:16
  Speaker: All of them.
• 10:17
  Speaker: All of them.
• 10:23
  Speaker: Yeah, that's a good one.
• 10:24
  Speaker: Um, one of my favorites is that, uh, the layout of Washington,
• 10:31
  Speaker: D.C. is a square and compass.
• 10:34
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 10:35
  Speaker: Because it was designed by Freemasons.
• 10:37
  Speaker: By a Freemason.
• 10:39
  Speaker: Oh, big one here.
• 10:41
  Speaker: Someone heard that George Washington was a Freemason.
• 10:48
  Speaker: And that Benjamin Franklin was contacted by the Illuminati.
• 10:54
  Speaker: Uh, let's see.
• 10:57
  Speaker: Uh, the.
• 11:01
  Speaker: Ah, the shadow government.
• 11:04
  Speaker: Uh, so so-called the, uh, the loyal nine, uh, that gave way to
• 11:09
  Speaker: the Sons of Liberty.
• 11:11
  Speaker: Uh.
• 11:15
  Speaker: Uh. What else?
• 11:16
  Speaker: I got the new World Order.
• 11:18
  Speaker: I got one.
• 11:19
  Speaker: The whole, uh, Boston Tea Party
• 11:22
  Speaker: was, um, conducted by
• 11:24
  Speaker: Freemasons.
• 11:25
  Speaker: It was a Masonic event.
• 11:26
  Speaker: Masonic sponsored event.
• 11:28
  Speaker: That Masonic fundraiser.
• 11:29
  Speaker: Yep.
• 11:30
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 11:31
  Speaker: All the.
• 11:31
  Speaker: They weren't doing pancake breakfasts.
• 11:33
  Speaker: They were doing tea dumps.
• 11:38
  Speaker: Um. Let's see.
• 11:41
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 11:41
  Speaker: There's there's just so much.
• 11:42
  Speaker: And I think we've spent so many
• 11:44
  Speaker: years like Dispelling these like
• 11:48
  Speaker: they've lost.
• 11:49
  Speaker: I've lost the list.
• 11:52
  Speaker: You know, they like moved off into garbage land somewhere,
• 11:54
  Speaker: which is good, which is good.
• 11:56
  Speaker: It is good.
• 11:56
  Speaker: But at the same time, it's it's hard.
• 11:58
  Speaker: What am I supposed to tell new
• 12:00
  Speaker: master masons, besides erroneous
• 12:02
  Speaker: information that's been passed
• 12:04
  Speaker: on without any regard to
• 12:05
  Speaker: historical context or the
• 12:09
  Speaker: History Channel only after ten p
• 12:12
  Speaker: m. Yeah.
• 12:15
  Speaker: Uh, so, um.
• 12:19
  Speaker: There is some truth to some of these.
• 12:21
  Speaker: As with most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle.
• 12:24
  Speaker: Um. Oh, yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker: I can't forget the pyramid on the dollar bill.
• 12:29
  Speaker: All seeing eye on the dollar bill.
• 12:32
  Speaker: Right.
• 12:34
  Speaker: It's obviously a good one.
• 12:35
  Speaker: Um, let's see, of the fifty six men who signed the Declaration
• 12:39
  Speaker: of Independence, exactly nine were confirmed Freemasons, Which
• 12:46
  Speaker: actually is interesting.
• 12:47
  Speaker: I used the word confirm because you do get a lot of people who
• 12:52
  Speaker: are speculated to be Freemasons.
• 12:54
  Speaker: But you know, we as being owners of history, you know, we want to
• 12:58
  Speaker: make sure that we actually have evidence to prove that.
• 13:02
  Speaker: Um, for example, Thomas
• 13:04
  Speaker: Jefferson, not a Freemason, but
• 13:08
  Speaker: would have been awesome if he
• 13:08
  Speaker: were.
• 13:11
  Speaker: So I think, um, that's cool because reading a lot of Thomas
• 13:16
  Speaker: Jefferson, we're going to go on a little tangent.
• 13:18
  Speaker: Gosh, he dances around Masonic
• 13:20
  Speaker: values and principles all the
• 13:22
  Speaker: time.
• 13:23
  Speaker: And, uh, purely my posit is that he was just so much around it,
• 13:30
  Speaker: even if he didn't join, he was just hearing it on all sides.
• 13:33
  Speaker: And so he started to emulate a lot of those, uh, those values.
• 13:37
  Speaker: He was like that Masons wife who
• 13:39
  Speaker: like, knows all the ritual
• 13:40
  Speaker: because he practices with her,
• 13:42
  Speaker: you know?
• 13:43
  Speaker: So this brings up a really.
• 13:45
  Speaker: Oh, the secrets are written on the back of the declaration.
• 13:48
  Speaker: Oh, yeah.
• 13:48
  Speaker: Lemon juice.
• 13:50
  Speaker: We're gonna steal the declaration.
• 13:53
  Speaker: Um, so when you say he's like around all these masons or
• 13:58
  Speaker: whatever, I mean, this is a time when these ideals are sort of
• 14:06
  Speaker: being shared around and it's, it's the purveying, you know,
• 14:13
  Speaker: it's in the air.
• 14:14
  Speaker: It's impossible.
• 14:16
  Speaker: It's the zeitgeist.
• 14:17
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 14:18
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:18
  Speaker: And what's interesting too, I think you guys, I think I
• 14:21
  Speaker: thought we were all together, we went somewhere and they were
• 14:25
  Speaker: showing us, uh, one of their rooms, maybe it was a Grand
• 14:29
  Speaker: Lodge building or something.
• 14:30
  Speaker: And they had all of these, uh,
• 14:33
  Speaker: stained glass windows of famous
• 14:35
  Speaker: masons.
• 14:37
  Speaker: And then the guy asked me or one of you guys, he said, uh, do you
• 14:43
  Speaker: guys notice anything?
• 14:44
  Speaker: And we were like, nope.
• 14:45
  Speaker: And he's like Thomas Jefferson.
• 14:48
  Speaker: And he was like, it's highly contested.
• 14:51
  Speaker: I was like, yeah, I can't remember where we were though.
• 14:54
  Speaker: Um, but anyway, yeah, that's a wild one.
• 14:57
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:59
  Speaker: You are the average of the five people you hang out with, man.
• 15:04
  Speaker: All right.
• 15:05
  Speaker: I'm you guys.
• 15:06
  Speaker: Sorry, guys.
• 15:08
  Speaker: Scott and Spencer.
• 15:09
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:10
  Speaker: Um, I want to pull that thread that you were mentioning, John,
• 15:14
  Speaker: a little bit more because.
• 15:15
  Speaker: And then.
• 15:15
  Speaker: And then RJ danced around a little bit.
• 15:17
  Speaker: I mean, you gotta remember, speculative Freemasonry goes
• 15:22
  Speaker: smack dab in the middle of the age of enlightenment, right?
• 15:25
  Speaker: This is when speculative Freemasonry was born.
• 15:28
  Speaker: And what's interesting is that
• 15:31
  Speaker: it wasn't enlightenment in
• 15:33
  Speaker: Europe.
• 15:33
  Speaker: It was enlightenment in this brand new world that didn't have
• 15:37
  Speaker: those structures that Europe was contending with at the time.
• 15:41
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 15:42
  Speaker: So I think we can call them Masonic values.
• 15:45
  Speaker: We can call them Masonic ideals.
• 15:46
  Speaker: But this was I think I think you
• 15:47
  Speaker: said it, Robert, this was the
• 15:49
  Speaker: zeitgeist.
• 15:50
  Speaker: Or maybe John did.
• 15:52
  Speaker: Um, this was the zeitgeist at
• 15:55
  Speaker: the time, but it was allowed to
• 15:56
  Speaker: flourish here, you know what I
• 15:57
  Speaker: mean?
• 15:57
  Speaker: Because there was no mom and dad watching for the most part.
• 16:01
  Speaker: So I find that really interesting that but again, you
• 16:05
  Speaker: can always claim that these are absolute Masonic values because
• 16:08
  Speaker: we espouse them.
• 16:09
  Speaker: Well, and I think I think you said something kind of key
• 16:11
  Speaker: there, which is because Mom and Dad weren't watching that.
• 16:16
  Speaker: I think that is laying the
• 16:17
  Speaker: foundation of why, even if it's
• 16:21
  Speaker: not explicitly masonically
• 16:24
  Speaker: influenced, it is certainly
• 16:25
  Speaker: implicitly masonically
• 16:26
  Speaker: influenced because as you look
• 16:29
  Speaker: at how the revolution started,
• 16:31
  Speaker: that, um, and I like the word
• 16:34
  Speaker: experiment.
• 16:35
  Speaker: Lots of little things were being
• 16:37
  Speaker: tried, some secret, some, some
• 16:40
  Speaker: public.
• 16:41
  Speaker: and they were really testing the
• 16:42
  Speaker: boundaries of what they could
• 16:43
  Speaker: get away with, um, with I mean,
• 16:46
  Speaker: with being, you know, having
• 16:47
  Speaker: Tories occupying, you know, the
• 16:50
  Speaker: mainland.
• 16:50
  Speaker: And so, uh, because again, even George Washington grew up as a,
• 16:56
  Speaker: as a Briton, right?
• 16:57
  Speaker: He was, he was, for all intents
• 17:00
  Speaker: and purposes, he was still a
• 17:01
  Speaker: British citizen.
• 17:02
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 17:03
  Speaker: And they, uh, having the Masonic principles come over from, uh,
• 17:12
  Speaker: from Europe and the, the seventeen twenty three
• 17:15
  Speaker: constitutions, which I'll talk about later, gave men a sacred
• 17:20
  Speaker: space, a private space to form representative democracy and to
• 17:25
  Speaker: do all sorts of other cool things, which gave them, I
• 17:28
  Speaker: think, some confidence, either, you know, privately or
• 17:33
  Speaker: eventually publicly to start forming a new structure.
• 17:39
  Speaker: You can also think about it in
• 17:41
  Speaker: terms of this idea of, of, of
• 17:44
  Speaker: confidence building.
• 17:45
  Speaker: Um, in no joke here, I mean, we
• 17:48
  Speaker: are talking about people who are
• 17:49
  Speaker: galvanized in the times that
• 17:51
  Speaker: they were living these, these
• 17:52
  Speaker: colonialists, right?
• 17:54
  Speaker: Um, you have these people who
• 17:56
  Speaker: today probably like we wouldn't
• 18:00
  Speaker: understand it.
• 18:01
  Speaker: Um, the closest thing I could think of today is like a laundry
• 18:04
  Speaker: mat, but back then it's the tavern or the pub, right?
• 18:09
  Speaker: And these guys are getting all the confidence they need, you
• 18:12
  Speaker: know what I'm saying?
• 18:13
  Speaker: These guys, I haven't heard that one before.
• 18:16
  Speaker: They are like, they're getting riled up.
• 18:19
  Speaker: Um and what and the thing is, is like all these different social
• 18:23
  Speaker: stations, they're meeting on the level in these types of places.
• 18:28
  Speaker: Um, and this is where the best it's just like we always talk
• 18:35
  Speaker: about, right masonry, like we're solving all the best problems
• 18:39
  Speaker: after the lodge.
• 18:39
  Speaker: That's what these guys were doing, man.
• 18:41
  Speaker: And maybe they weren't even Masons, but, you know, it's like
• 18:46
  Speaker: it was in miniature.
• 18:47
  Speaker: A tiled lodge room.
• 18:49
  Speaker: No, I think that's a beautiful point.
• 18:52
  Speaker: I mean, and again, we, we, we didn't live in this world, so we
• 18:55
  Speaker: don't think like that.
• 18:56
  Speaker: But you got to remember, in
• 18:58
  Speaker: sixteen hundreds and seventeen
• 19:00
  Speaker: hundreds, especially in Europe,
• 19:01
  Speaker: your identity was inherited,
• 19:04
  Speaker: right?
• 19:04
  Speaker: Whatever your last name was or who your dad was and how much
• 19:07
  Speaker: land you owned, you were born into your station, whether you
• 19:10
  Speaker: were a nobleman or a priest or a vassal or a shipbuilder or, you
• 19:17
  Speaker: know, whatever your place in society was, was already
• 19:20
  Speaker: determined for you.
• 19:21
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 19:22
  Speaker: And I think your point is really, really poignant where
• 19:25
  Speaker: that was a pun, um, where people of all different stations and
• 19:30
  Speaker: trades and, and no, it wasn't um, ha ha ha, you bum.
• 19:36
  Speaker: Um, in the sixteen hundreds Joe
• 19:38
  Speaker: was not still master of his
• 19:40
  Speaker: lodge.
• 19:41
  Speaker: Um, but no, you say something really important, RJ, where we
• 19:46
  Speaker: take that Masonic idea of meeting on the level.
• 19:49
  Speaker: You know, it doesn't mean that
• 19:50
  Speaker: every person is the same and is
• 19:52
  Speaker: identical.
• 19:52
  Speaker: Right?
• 19:52
  Speaker: It doesn't mean that every person has the same wealth or
• 19:55
  Speaker: the same education, or the same rank or the same responsibility.
• 19:59
  Speaker: It means that outside you, besides all the exterior crap, I
• 20:05
  Speaker: think in this country, what was decided was that everyone has an
• 20:09
  Speaker: equal moral standing.
• 20:11
  Speaker: You know, but to your point, I
• 20:14
  Speaker: think that's where it was
• 20:15
  Speaker: espoused.
• 20:15
  Speaker: It was espoused in the taverns and the pubs.
• 20:17
  Speaker: And, and when these guys and their hanger ons, like Thomas
• 20:21
  Speaker: Jefferson, were getting together and talking, you know.
• 20:28
  Speaker: Right.
• 20:28
  Speaker: Because this doesn't happen overnight, right?
• 20:29
  Speaker: This thing is fomenting over decades.
• 20:35
  Speaker: And so there's discussions
• 20:37
  Speaker: happening, there's clicks being
• 20:39
  Speaker: formed.
• 20:41
  Speaker: Like, and you mentioned the enlightenment, right?
• 20:46
  Speaker: We talk about all the time these
• 20:48
  Speaker: these ideas as this, the great
• 20:50
  Speaker: experiment.
• 20:52
  Speaker: When you look at some of the most popular and let's be we
• 20:57
  Speaker: have to be honest here.
• 20:58
  Speaker: At the time, scandalous documents that were being passed
• 21:02
  Speaker: around were things like Thomas Paine's Rights of Man.
• 21:07
  Speaker: Right?
• 21:07
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 21:08
  Speaker: Um, this, this is, this is the current that's running through
• 21:10
  Speaker: the veins of a budding revolution, uh, to, to, to take
• 21:18
  Speaker: these rights of man.
• 21:19
  Speaker: Right?
• 21:19
  Speaker: I think he says, uh, whatever is my right is as a man is, uh,
• 21:24
  Speaker: also the right of another.
• 21:25
  Speaker: And it becomes my duty to guarantee as well something as,
• 21:31
  Speaker: as to possesses, I think, but like talking about this equality
• 21:35
  Speaker: across the board, regardless of life form, right?
• 21:39
  Speaker: Like basic, just taking it down to the bare minimum of what it
• 21:43
  Speaker: means to be a person.
• 21:45
  Speaker: And then everybody has those same rights and to protect them.
• 21:48
  Speaker: And this was right.
• 21:50
  Speaker: Like Joe, you were talking about
• 21:51
  Speaker: how this is you inherited your,
• 21:53
  Speaker: uh, sort of like social status
• 21:56
  Speaker: and things.
• 21:57
  Speaker: And it's just weird that, that
• 22:03
  Speaker: we took so long, I think as a
• 22:06
  Speaker: society to, to kick that stuff
• 22:07
  Speaker: out, right?
• 22:08
  Speaker: And then start to use these sort of experimental, crazy ideas
• 22:14
  Speaker: that you guys are just as cool as anybody else.
• 22:17
  Speaker: Uh, yeah.
• 22:19
  Speaker: And I mean, it's amazing because I, I can, I can say with
• 22:22
  Speaker: absolute certainty that, you know, you read our founding
• 22:25
  Speaker: documents like the Bill of rights and the Constitution.
• 22:28
  Speaker: Um, there is absolutely Masonic values in there.
• 22:31
  Speaker: Right.
• 22:31
  Speaker: And you can't, you can't convince me otherwise because,
• 22:34
  Speaker: you know, just the way in which we set up our government.
• 22:37
  Speaker: And I'm not going to talk about the government today in twenty
• 22:40
  Speaker: twenty six, about how it was designed and how it was set up.
• 22:44
  Speaker: Um, I mean, the first thing was
• 22:46
  Speaker: we did not want a sovereign,
• 22:47
  Speaker: right?
• 22:48
  Speaker: We had a president that was elected by the people.
• 22:52
  Speaker: Right.
• 22:52
  Speaker: It was a regular person and he
• 22:54
  Speaker: was a regular and national
• 22:56
  Speaker: religion either.
• 22:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 22:57
  Speaker: No, absolutely.
• 22:58
  Speaker: And I mean, just just going from the the people part of it, we
• 23:01
  Speaker: haven't even touched the, you know, the freedoms that that
• 23:03
  Speaker: were not allowed to people in Europe around that same time.
• 23:07
  Speaker: Um, Congress is not this estate
• 23:10
  Speaker: was not sorry in seventeen
• 23:12
  Speaker: eighty three.
• 23:13
  Speaker: Was not this estate of nobility.
• 23:15
  Speaker: Right.
• 23:16
  Speaker: It was meant to represent the
• 23:17
  Speaker: people for a finite period of
• 23:19
  Speaker: time.
• 23:20
  Speaker: Now, whatever we did to it and messed it up, that's that's a
• 23:22
  Speaker: conversation for another day.
• 23:24
  Speaker: But, you know, then look at our judges.
• 23:26
  Speaker: You know, our judges did not rule by, you know, personal fiat
• 23:29
  Speaker: or personal will, right?
• 23:30
  Speaker: They're bound to the laws that people allow their elected
• 23:34
  Speaker: officials to to vote in, write or vote out.
• 23:37
  Speaker: So, you know, I love when people say it's like, oh, we're a
• 23:40
  Speaker: democracy or we're a democracy, we're not a democracy.
• 23:43
  Speaker: Like, why do people say that we
• 23:44
  Speaker: are not a democracy, we're a
• 23:46
  Speaker: republic, a constitutional
• 23:48
  Speaker: republic.
• 23:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:49
  Speaker: And that's how our founding fathers designed it specifically
• 23:52
  Speaker: that way, right?
• 23:53
  Speaker: Because too much democracy leads
• 23:55
  Speaker: to mob rule, you know what I
• 23:56
  Speaker: mean?
• 23:57
  Speaker: Um, democracy is two wolves and
• 23:59
  Speaker: a sheep deciding what's for
• 24:00
  Speaker: lunch, right?
• 24:05
  Speaker: But yeah, but going back to Jason's point, um, we haven't
• 24:08
  Speaker: even talked about the personal freedoms that again, we're not,
• 24:11
  Speaker: we're not part of the, the mainstream at that time.
• 24:14
  Speaker: Right.
• 24:16
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 24:17
  Speaker: And I think I cut you off, Jason.
• 24:21
  Speaker: No. I'm good.
• 24:22
  Speaker: What were some of those freedoms, Jason.
• 24:29
  Speaker: Freedom of.
• 24:33
  Speaker: Throwing tea in the harbor?
• 24:37
  Speaker: No, I mean, you had you had freedom of religion.
• 24:43
  Speaker: You had freedom of expression, of ideas, right?
• 24:49
  Speaker: Like freedom of the press.
• 24:50
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 24:51
  Speaker: These are all of these, you
• 24:55
  Speaker: know, these are all of these
• 24:56
  Speaker: ideals that America was founded
• 24:59
  Speaker: on that, you know, came directly
• 25:03
  Speaker: out of Renaissance, you know,
• 25:06
  Speaker: like enlightenment philosophy,
• 25:09
  Speaker: which also birthed speculative
• 25:12
  Speaker: Freemasonry.
• 25:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:15
  Speaker: And I think one of the wildest
• 25:17
  Speaker: things that, um, I think about
• 25:21
  Speaker: when I, this whole, the idea of
• 25:23
  Speaker: the great experiment, uh, the
• 25:25
  Speaker: George Washington National
• 25:26
  Speaker: Masonic Memorial, um, a number
• 25:29
  Speaker: of years ago published a sort of
• 25:31
  Speaker: a ceremony.
• 25:32
  Speaker: It's like a George Washington's birthday ceremony.
• 25:36
  Speaker: Um, and it's really cool.
• 25:37
  Speaker: My lodge used to do it every,
• 25:39
  Speaker: uh, president's day, and we
• 25:41
  Speaker: would memorize the parts or read
• 25:43
  Speaker: them off a parchment kind of
• 25:44
  Speaker: thing.
• 25:45
  Speaker: And one of the lines I think the
• 25:47
  Speaker: junior warden said was, uh, that
• 25:50
  Speaker: formed a, formed a basis talking
• 25:53
  Speaker: about the United States, um,
• 25:56
  Speaker: that other countries tried to
• 25:58
  Speaker: emulate.
• 26:01
  Speaker: And in that way, um, the, the whole idea of.
• 26:10
  Speaker: The great experiment and it's.
• 26:16
  Speaker: Sorry about that.
• 26:17
  Speaker: Oh you're good.
• 26:18
  Speaker: I feel like I'm back at esoterica.
• 26:20
  Speaker: The, the, the great experiment and it's influence by Masons.
• 26:26
  Speaker: I mean, it's and others, uh, Around that same time, they are
• 26:34
  Speaker: almost daring the rest of humanity to step up and meet in
• 26:40
  Speaker: that same way.
• 26:41
  Speaker: And a couple countries do, right?
• 26:43
  Speaker: France takes the key, takes it further than we do, though.
• 26:48
  Speaker: Um, but these, these ideas are the basis of, I think maybe the
• 26:59
  Speaker: closest we've come.
• 27:03
  Speaker: That I know of to a true
• 27:05
  Speaker: objective philosophy of
• 27:08
  Speaker: individual freedom.
• 27:10
  Speaker: And nobody can tell you what to
• 27:12
  Speaker: do that, that idea that your
• 27:14
  Speaker: rights end or mine start and
• 27:16
  Speaker: vice versa.
• 27:20
  Speaker: I think you you said something really important.
• 27:23
  Speaker: And I mean, to your point, I
• 27:25
  Speaker: mean, if France didn't take it
• 27:27
  Speaker: as far as they did, then we
• 27:28
  Speaker: wouldn't have all those funny
• 27:29
  Speaker: memes or any lovely musicals,
• 27:31
  Speaker: you know?
• 27:32
  Speaker: So, um, but but to your point,
• 27:35
  Speaker: um, it's hard for us as modern
• 27:38
  Speaker: people to understand that the
• 27:41
  Speaker: old world, you know, the old
• 27:42
  Speaker: European system, that society
• 27:45
  Speaker: required a monarch or feudalism
• 27:48
  Speaker: or, you know, established church
• 27:52
  Speaker: rulers to, to hold everything
• 27:53
  Speaker: together.
• 27:54
  Speaker: Right.
• 27:54
  Speaker: They did not believe, they honestly didn't believe that
• 27:56
  Speaker: people could govern themselves.
• 27:58
  Speaker: Right.
• 27:59
  Speaker: They thought it would just all
• 28:00
  Speaker: go to crap and look like a Monty
• 28:01
  Speaker: Python skit.
• 28:02
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 28:03
  Speaker: That's genuinely what they they believed, right?
• 28:05
  Speaker: They had to have this established order.
• 28:08
  Speaker: And for a lot of times it had to have this divine right.
• 28:10
  Speaker: Right.
• 28:11
  Speaker: Um, in order to, to function.
• 28:13
  Speaker: Well.
• 28:13
  Speaker: So, you know, going back to John's great experiment line, it
• 28:17
  Speaker: really was experimental because people for centuries could not
• 28:21
  Speaker: fathom governing themselves.
• 28:24
  Speaker: Isn't it interesting though?
• 28:26
  Speaker: And this is a total separate topic.
• 28:28
  Speaker: And I'm not trying to throw a turd in a punchbowl here, but
• 28:32
  Speaker: the idea that we said to give people this equality and to do
• 28:40
  Speaker: these things and to have land ownership and things and the
• 28:42
  Speaker: right to vote somebody into office, how long has it.
• 28:48
  Speaker: We are still fighting the the battle of allowing people to
• 28:54
  Speaker: vote in this country today.
• 28:57
  Speaker: Uh, you know, systematically we've had, you know, they turned
• 28:59
  Speaker: on the right for women to vote.
• 29:01
  Speaker: They turned on, uh, all of the, uh, the social justice laws that
• 29:06
  Speaker: came out of the fifties.
• 29:08
  Speaker: 60s, you know, allowing everybody to vote.
• 29:12
  Speaker: And so even still like that, we had this system, like, we're
• 29:16
  Speaker: going to let you vote, but.
• 29:21
  Speaker: Kind of, right?
• 29:22
  Speaker: Like we had the electoral system or we have the electoral system.
• 29:25
  Speaker: And so there are still some things that were interesting.
• 29:28
  Speaker: Um, and I'm not saying like it was nefarious.
• 29:31
  Speaker: Uh, I think it was started as a, as a way to sort of ensure that
• 29:35
  Speaker: people knew the people that knew what was going on were the
• 29:39
  Speaker: people sort of casting a vote.
• 29:41
  Speaker: It's just we're still using that and we have CNN.
• 29:44
  Speaker: So yeah, that is true.
• 29:48
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 29:49
  Speaker: And I think to pull it into some
• 29:52
  Speaker: of the research I was doing for
• 29:53
  Speaker: this show, um, using the word
• 29:57
  Speaker: experiment is still apropos
• 29:59
  Speaker: because we're still evolving,
• 30:01
  Speaker: right?
• 30:02
  Speaker: It shall continue to be an experiment because we are going
• 30:06
  Speaker: to test hypotheses, see what works and what doesn't.
• 30:09
  Speaker: Um, you know, we have, we have
• 30:11
  Speaker: laws that come and go or get
• 30:13
  Speaker: repealed, right?
• 30:15
  Speaker: And we're still trying to get
• 30:16
  Speaker: incrementally better towards
• 30:18
  Speaker: those ideals of equality and
• 30:23
  Speaker: liberty, right?
• 30:24
  Speaker: So those are things that will continue to strive for.
• 30:29
  Speaker: And that's, you know, you've
• 30:31
  Speaker: heard it said before that while
• 30:34
  Speaker: we have lots of very high ideals
• 30:36
  Speaker: in our Constitution, in our
• 30:37
  Speaker: Declaration of Independence,
• 30:39
  Speaker: we're probably still working
• 30:41
  Speaker: towards getting to those even
• 30:43
  Speaker: two hundred and fifty years
• 30:44
  Speaker: later.
• 30:44
  Speaker: Right?
• 30:44
  Speaker: It's yeah, that doesn't make them bad.
• 30:47
  Speaker: It just means that we're humans and suck sometimes.
• 30:49
  Speaker: And we need to continue to work on that look.
• 30:52
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 30:53
  Speaker: Uh, when we think about the idea of just the, the, the, the, the
• 31:01
  Speaker: laws around life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, right?
• 31:05
  Speaker: There are laws on the books that like, because these are almost
• 31:11
  Speaker: loose philosophical ideas.
• 31:14
  Speaker: And I think maybe those enlightenment ideals were like,
• 31:17
  Speaker: oh, you can't.
• 31:18
  Speaker: Nobody's going to like question what this means, right.
• 31:22
  Speaker: But in a world that's so
• 31:24
  Speaker: bureaucratic, that is today,
• 31:25
  Speaker: everything has to be
• 31:26
  Speaker: micromanaged and sort of like
• 31:30
  Speaker: brought down to its most finite
• 31:33
  Speaker: thing.
• 31:33
  Speaker: What, what each of these rules actually means, you know, um,
• 31:37
  Speaker: there are laws on the books federally that say, um, you
• 31:41
  Speaker: know, you have the right to not live in squalor, um, to feel
• 31:45
  Speaker: safe to, you know, all of these kinds of ideas.
• 31:49
  Speaker: Um, and it's all underneath that umbrella of, uh, pursuit of
• 31:52
  Speaker: happiness kind of thing.
• 31:54
  Speaker: And they're very lofty goals.
• 31:58
  Speaker: You know, it's almost like they
• 31:59
  Speaker: put out there the idea of a
• 32:02
  Speaker: utopia, right?
• 32:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 32:04
  Speaker: I see where you're going with that.
• 32:05
  Speaker: We would somewhere someday get there.
• 32:07
  Speaker: Like I always say, you know, if you shoot for the stars and you
• 32:09
  Speaker: reach the moon, that's still better than if you had just just
• 32:12
  Speaker: try to go to the moon, right?
• 32:13
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 32:14
  Speaker: No, I agree one hundred percent.
• 32:15
  Speaker: I think our founding fathers had this idealized version of, like
• 32:20
  Speaker: you said, a utopia, right?
• 32:21
  Speaker: But and and to John's point, I don't think the American
• 32:24
  Speaker: experiment is finished.
• 32:25
  Speaker: Right.
• 32:26
  Speaker: It's it's always going to remain unfinished.
• 32:28
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 32:29
  Speaker: It changes and morphs every
• 32:30
  Speaker: single generation, every
• 32:32
  Speaker: election, every transfer of
• 32:34
  Speaker: power between different groups
• 32:36
  Speaker: of people, every, you know,
• 32:37
  Speaker: every, every town and school
• 32:39
  Speaker: council.
• 32:40
  Speaker: Right.
• 32:40
  Speaker: Something changes every, every time somebody does a, a selfless
• 32:44
  Speaker: act of public service.
• 32:46
  Speaker: You know, um.
• 32:49
  Speaker: Like you touched on going into the fifties and 60s every time
• 32:52
  Speaker: we correct an injustice.
• 32:55
  Speaker: Um.
• 32:55
  Speaker: Right.
• 32:56
  Speaker: Basically every time we try to
• 32:57
  Speaker: expand that definition of
• 32:59
  Speaker: liberty, I think is that litmus
• 33:01
  Speaker: test to see if this experiment
• 33:03
  Speaker: is still going or if it's
• 33:04
  Speaker: failed.
• 33:05
  Speaker: And I don't think it has yet.
• 33:07
  Speaker: Agreed.
• 33:08
  Speaker: And so, um, one of the most passionate people, if you get a
• 33:12
  Speaker: chance to listen to him speak, is, um, most worshipful.
• 33:17
  Speaker: Akram Elias, uh, from the Grand Lodge of D.C.
• 33:21
  Speaker: He, um, has a very rousing and inspiring talk.
• 33:25
  Speaker: Um, definitely worth checking out.
• 33:27
  Speaker: And he turned that into his, um,
• 33:30
  Speaker: twenty twenty three Prestonian
• 33:32
  Speaker: lecture about the founding of
• 33:36
  Speaker: America.
• 33:37
  Speaker: And he, he posits, and you can
• 33:40
  Speaker: certainly go on Amazon, you can
• 33:41
  Speaker: actually download or buy his a
• 33:44
  Speaker: copy of his Prestonian lecture,
• 33:46
  Speaker: where he posits that the
• 33:51
  Speaker: seventeen twenty three
• 33:53
  Speaker: constitutions of Freemasonry,
• 33:56
  Speaker: uh, became a blueprint to
• 34:01
  Speaker: American Constitution, the
• 34:03
  Speaker: American Constitution.
• 34:04
  Speaker: And we all know that American Constitution has been replicated
• 34:07
  Speaker: or copied to other countries that are still forming today
• 34:11
  Speaker: because, you know, we we did a really good job with it when it
• 34:16
  Speaker: first came out.
• 34:16
  Speaker: And so it was really weird that
• 34:18
  Speaker: these Not as not as educated men
• 34:22
  Speaker: came up with this really cool
• 34:24
  Speaker: framework that needed some
• 34:25
  Speaker: tweaks, but it still stands
• 34:27
  Speaker: pretty strong.
• 34:28
  Speaker: Two hundred and fifty years later with some amendments.
• 34:31
  Speaker: But then that actually has
• 34:33
  Speaker: parallels to the seventeen
• 34:34
  Speaker: twenty three constitutions of
• 34:36
  Speaker: Freemasonry, which that got a
• 34:39
  Speaker: lot of its structure from the
• 34:40
  Speaker: old charges.
• 34:42
  Speaker: Right.
• 34:42
  Speaker: So you could argue very surface level, that the guild system of
• 34:49
  Speaker: the old charges and the responsibilities and duties of
• 34:52
  Speaker: the officers within a lodge and the democratic nature which we,
• 34:59
  Speaker: you know, elect our representatives in the Lodge,
• 35:01
  Speaker: can then has influenced the structure of the checks and
• 35:07
  Speaker: balances that we have today.
• 35:12
  Speaker: And so he pulls that thread through three major, three,
• 35:15
  Speaker: three major themes.
• 35:17
  Speaker: It's a three.
• 35:19
  Speaker: So it's a three.
• 35:20
  Speaker: It's it's like three, but a theme.
• 35:23
  Speaker: First one is religious tolerance.
• 35:25
  Speaker: We talked about religious
• 35:26
  Speaker: tolerance, um, where, you know,
• 35:30
  Speaker: Congress shall make no law,
• 35:31
  Speaker: right?
• 35:31
  Speaker: And this is all about how even in the old charges where you had
• 35:38
  Speaker: to be a Trinitarian Christian before operative masonry
• 35:42
  Speaker: actually opened up to men of all faiths, right, of, you know,
• 35:46
  Speaker: what the the religion of which all men could agree.
• 35:49
  Speaker: So that's that's point one.
• 35:51
  Speaker: Uh, the second point is about equality.
• 35:55
  Speaker: We talked a lot about equality
• 35:57
  Speaker: and imply there is meritocracy,
• 36:00
  Speaker: that you don't have to be born
• 36:01
  Speaker: into nobility.
• 36:02
  Speaker: You don't have to be born into certain things.
• 36:04
  Speaker: Uh, we have freedoms in America that lets you, you don't have
• 36:08
  Speaker: to, but it helps, right?
• 36:10
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 36:10
  Speaker: But at least we can all have the same same starting line and
• 36:14
  Speaker: then, um, go from there.
• 36:17
  Speaker: So it's not, it's not, uh, by your position in life of, of how
• 36:23
  Speaker: much you can achieve.
• 36:24
  Speaker: And then the third and final
• 36:27
  Speaker: theme is out of many, one E
• 36:31
  Speaker: pluribus unum that we are, um,
• 36:35
  Speaker: because of the equality factor,
• 36:36
  Speaker: because of the meritocracy
• 36:37
  Speaker: factor that we are a united,
• 36:41
  Speaker: just like in Freemasonry, you
• 36:43
  Speaker: know, we are united, uh, sacred
• 36:46
  Speaker: band of, of friends and
• 36:48
  Speaker: brothers.
• 36:49
  Speaker: And so the same thing is true that in a federalist system that
• 36:55
  Speaker: we are all united together and we're not trying to, you know,
• 37:00
  Speaker: usurp each other.
• 37:01
  Speaker: So that's, it's an interesting,
• 37:04
  Speaker: it's an interesting, uh,
• 37:05
  Speaker: comparison, right, of how at
• 37:08
  Speaker: least those three themes, um,
• 37:10
  Speaker: and I'd probably argue a couple
• 37:11
  Speaker: more were really structurally
• 37:14
  Speaker: came from the The seventeen
• 37:16
  Speaker: twenty three Constitutions of
• 37:17
  Speaker: Freemasonry.
• 37:18
  Speaker: What do you guys think about that?
• 37:19
  Speaker: I think it's amazing.
• 37:21
  Speaker: I mean, you can't have this, uh,
• 37:25
  Speaker: this much congruency or, uh, you
• 37:29
  Speaker: know, without there being a real
• 37:32
  Speaker: connection.
• 37:32
  Speaker: Um, it's not, it's not like
• 37:34
  Speaker: reaching your it, the language
• 37:37
  Speaker: is there.
• 37:37
  Speaker: The concepts are there.
• 37:39
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 37:39
  Speaker: It's literally, uh, constructing.
• 37:43
  Speaker: Maybe you could even say maybe this is a reach turning the
• 37:49
  Speaker: nation into a lodge.
• 37:50
  Speaker: Do you know what I mean?
• 37:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 37:52
  Speaker: No, I, I could see where you're going with that.
• 37:54
  Speaker: It's just, it's just there and
• 37:56
  Speaker: and maybe it maybe we can say it
• 37:58
  Speaker: isn't Masonic.
• 38:00
  Speaker: Right.
• 38:00
  Speaker: But it one hundred percent is enlightenment.
• 38:04
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:05
  Speaker: Structurally enlightenment.
• 38:06
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:07
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:07
  Speaker: This this is where we are.
• 38:09
  Speaker: And I think that one of the things, you know, we we've had
• 38:14
  Speaker: the pleasure of speaking with Akram on a number of occasions
• 38:18
  Speaker: and watching his talks.
• 38:19
  Speaker: And one of the things that I find amazing, and I could
• 38:23
  Speaker: probably hear him say this, I bet he would say this like he
• 38:29
  Speaker: could go into any country and they'd be like, we don't know
• 38:32
  Speaker: what to do.
• 38:33
  Speaker: We're just starting over.
• 38:34
  Speaker: And he would just hand you a
• 38:36
  Speaker: copy of the US Constitution or
• 38:37
  Speaker: the, you know, the Declaration
• 38:38
  Speaker: of Independence and Constitution
• 38:40
  Speaker: with all the amendment, he goes,
• 38:41
  Speaker: start here.
• 38:43
  Speaker: Right, right.
• 38:43
  Speaker: And don't.
• 38:44
  Speaker: He's not going to like he wouldn't redline it or anything
• 38:47
  Speaker: like, hey, take this out and substitute your own.
• 38:49
  Speaker: Nope.
• 38:50
  Speaker: Just take this and use it.
• 38:53
  Speaker: And because it's not failed, it's not failed yet.
• 38:58
  Speaker: Uh, will it inevitably everything comes to an end.
• 39:03
  Speaker: Uh, Benjamin Franklin was asked
• 39:06
  Speaker: after the, the, uh, what's the
• 39:09
  Speaker: constitutional?
• 39:11
  Speaker: What do we have it?
• 39:11
  Speaker: What type of type of government should it be?
• 39:14
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 39:14
  Speaker: A republic, ma'am, if we can keep it right.
• 39:18
  Speaker: And and so this will be that.
• 39:21
  Speaker: That's the whole idea behind this.
• 39:25
  Speaker: But to your point earlier,
• 39:26
  Speaker: drawing it back, I think the
• 39:28
  Speaker: hope in all of this, especially
• 39:30
  Speaker: today, people are so politically
• 39:32
  Speaker: just right.
• 39:34
  Speaker: Everybody wakes up and they go,
• 39:36
  Speaker: they go, uh oh, today's the last
• 39:39
  Speaker: day of the whole world, you
• 39:41
  Speaker: know, and yeah, maybe okay, but
• 39:46
  Speaker: probably not.
• 39:48
  Speaker: But the interesting part about this is when you said the
• 39:52
  Speaker: experiment continuously evolves and sort of changes, right?
• 39:58
  Speaker: Because we have this transfer of
• 40:00
  Speaker: power, because we enable our
• 40:02
  Speaker: young people to get involved in
• 40:04
  Speaker: civics, um, more so now than has
• 40:06
  Speaker: been in the past twenty or
• 40:07
  Speaker: thirty years.
• 40:08
  Speaker: But we're really pushing it these days.
• 40:09
  Speaker: We want people to get involved.
• 40:11
  Speaker: And I think that's starting to come back into the sphere, and
• 40:14
  Speaker: people are getting really psyched about those original
• 40:19
  Speaker: ideas, um, that allow everybody to have, uh, to feel safe.
• 40:26
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 40:26
  Speaker: In terms of, I have a place to live.
• 40:29
  Speaker: I don't want to worry about somebody taking anything.
• 40:32
  Speaker: I can get medical help when I need it.
• 40:34
  Speaker: Right.
• 40:35
  Speaker: Um, I can, I can have a living
• 40:38
  Speaker: wage and I can work and not live
• 40:40
  Speaker: in poverty.
• 40:41
  Speaker: And, you know, it's this is just the dream.
• 40:45
  Speaker: And will it end?
• 40:47
  Speaker: I don't think we can actually
• 40:49
  Speaker: ever say that the American
• 40:50
  Speaker: experiment will end because
• 40:52
  Speaker: we're done.
• 40:53
  Speaker: We're good.
• 40:53
  Speaker: We don't need to change anything.
• 40:55
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 40:57
  Speaker: To your point, to your point is constantly evolving, right?
• 41:02
  Speaker: It's it's the Nietzschean idea.
• 41:04
  Speaker: Like, uh, yay, you think you are the ebb of human evolution?
• 41:12
  Speaker: Nope.
• 41:14
  Speaker: Keep trying.
• 41:15
  Speaker: That's right.
• 41:16
  Speaker: Well, you know, you know, like a hundred years ago, the U.S.
• 41:18
  Speaker: Patent and Trade Office decided
• 41:21
  Speaker: they almost shut down because
• 41:22
  Speaker: they thought everything that
• 41:23
  Speaker: could have been invented was
• 41:25
  Speaker: invented.
• 41:26
  Speaker: So. And they were this close.
• 41:29
  Speaker: I mean, I think we're almost there to to perfection.
• 41:32
  Speaker: I think once we get a Bucky's in every state in the union.
• 41:36
  Speaker: That's true.
• 41:37
  Speaker: Then we're that needs to be constitutionally protected.
• 41:44
  Speaker: Uh, fun fact.
• 41:45
  Speaker: What is the first Masonic book printed in America?
• 41:50
  Speaker: Wasn't that Anderson's constitution?
• 41:53
  Speaker: It was Benjamin Franklin.
• 41:56
  Speaker: Yep.
• 41:56
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker: And it was copyright law.
• 41:59
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:00
  Speaker: Not yet.
• 42:01
  Speaker: Yep.
• 42:02
  Speaker: And then he started distributing that.
• 42:05
  Speaker: And so, um, so I had a, I do
• 42:08
  Speaker: some deep, deep research and
• 42:10
  Speaker: comparing and contrasting
• 42:11
  Speaker: Anderson's constitutions from
• 42:13
  Speaker: structurally, uh, with, uh, our
• 42:16
  Speaker: Constitution and or the
• 42:17
  Speaker: seventeen eighty seven
• 42:19
  Speaker: Constitution.
• 42:19
  Speaker: And it's interesting.
• 42:21
  Speaker: So, uh, some parallels that, that it found.
• 42:23
  Speaker: Uh, first off, the
• 42:25
  Speaker: administrative mechanism is
• 42:26
  Speaker: supreme code.
• 42:27
  Speaker: So, uh, the book of
• 42:29
  Speaker: constitutions was the supreme
• 42:31
  Speaker: law of Freemasonry replacing
• 42:34
  Speaker: oral customs.
• 42:35
  Speaker: And just like our Constitution today is the, the rule of law.
• 42:41
  Speaker: This is where all laws are based off of.
• 42:44
  Speaker: The next mechanism is federal
• 42:46
  Speaker: hierarchy, where now we're
• 42:49
  Speaker: introducing a a supreme Grand
• 42:51
  Speaker: Lodge that oversees local lodges
• 42:53
  Speaker: for administrative and
• 42:56
  Speaker: centralized authority.
• 42:58
  Speaker: Which leads us to, you know,
• 43:00
  Speaker: the, uh, Federation of States,
• 43:03
  Speaker: right?
• 43:03
  Speaker: Uh, forming a federal government as well, which led to the
• 43:08
  Speaker: Federation of Planets.
• 43:09
  Speaker: Yeah, obviously, because they use Anderson's constitutions.
• 43:13
  Speaker: They do?
• 43:14
  Speaker: Yeah they do.
• 43:14
  Speaker: For real?
• 43:15
  Speaker: Well, there's some there'll be some cool fan fiction.
• 43:17
  Speaker: Um, then we have another mechanism.
• 43:20
  Speaker: Representative mandates.
• 43:22
  Speaker: Um, that article ten of
• 43:25
  Speaker: Anderson's constitutions
• 43:27
  Speaker: mandates that lodge officers act
• 43:29
  Speaker: as delegates bound by
• 43:30
  Speaker: instructions of their local
• 43:31
  Speaker: lodge majority.
• 43:34
  Speaker: And so we also have a
• 43:36
  Speaker: representative system of
• 43:37
  Speaker: government where we
• 43:40
  Speaker: democratically elect our
• 43:42
  Speaker: legislators to represent the
• 43:43
  Speaker: interests of our home states and
• 43:44
  Speaker: districts.
• 43:46
  Speaker: Two more, um, separation of powers.
• 43:49
  Speaker: This is interesting where we
• 43:51
  Speaker: have in the constitutions a um,
• 43:56
  Speaker: division of power between a
• 43:57
  Speaker: grand master, a grand lodge and
• 43:59
  Speaker: internal tribunals.
• 44:02
  Speaker: And so you can kind of think of
• 44:04
  Speaker: kind of say again, where'd that
• 44:07
  Speaker: go?
• 44:08
  Speaker: I know right now we just have authoritative grand lines.
• 44:12
  Speaker: Um, but then obviously that that
• 44:15
  Speaker: implies the checks and balances
• 44:18
  Speaker: we have in government today with
• 44:20
  Speaker: legislative, executive and
• 44:21
  Speaker: judicial and finally conflict
• 44:26
  Speaker: resolution.
• 44:27
  Speaker: Um, again, as espoused in the
• 44:29
  Speaker: old charges you had, uh, how do
• 44:31
  Speaker: you resolve disputes and how do
• 44:34
  Speaker: you have an appeals process to
• 44:36
  Speaker: go higher up, which still, uh,
• 44:39
  Speaker: we still use today with our
• 44:41
  Speaker: court system?
• 44:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:43
  Speaker: I mean, maybe it started
• 44:44
  Speaker: masonically, but at some point
• 44:46
  Speaker: due process left the Masonic
• 44:48
  Speaker: system and they just expel you
• 44:50
  Speaker: sometimes, and then you got to
• 44:52
  Speaker: wait for your lodge to try to
• 44:53
  Speaker: vote you back in, if that's even
• 44:54
  Speaker: allowed.
• 44:56
  Speaker: It's just the way it goes.
• 44:58
  Speaker: I think Nick, Nick Johnson, uh, coined it a long time ago.
• 45:01
  Speaker: He called it a, uh, what did he
• 45:03
  Speaker: call it, a benevolent
• 45:06
  Speaker: dictatorship.
• 45:07
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:07
  Speaker: Oh, yeah.
• 45:10
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:11
  Speaker: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
• 45:16
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 45:18
  Speaker: So at a point, right, we've we see this happen all the time.
• 45:21
  Speaker: I think people set a bar.
• 45:23
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 45:25
  Speaker: And then others like launch over it and do even better.
• 45:32
  Speaker: For instance, people just feel like, oh, we hit, we hit it.
• 45:38
  Speaker: This is it.
• 45:39
  Speaker: This is the good stuff, right?
• 45:41
  Speaker: Uh, no. Uh, arguably, um, I won't, I won't hold like, don't
• 45:48
  Speaker: argue with me.
• 45:49
  Speaker: Don't send me hate mail or anything.
• 45:51
  Speaker: I will just say, like, I think the European style of government
• 45:55
  Speaker: that took our ideas and implemented them, improved them,
• 46:01
  Speaker: uh, in many cases.
• 46:04
  Speaker: And I find the same thing
• 46:05
  Speaker: happens, uh, in every, every
• 46:08
  Speaker: organization that starts and
• 46:10
  Speaker: puts out something, another
• 46:12
  Speaker: organization comes along, copies
• 46:13
  Speaker: it and makes it a little bit
• 46:15
  Speaker: better, just like products on
• 46:16
  Speaker: the market.
• 46:17
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 46:18
  Speaker: But the bad part is the iPhone seventeen.
• 46:21
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 46:22
  Speaker: Right.
• 46:22
  Speaker: The, the bad part is though, what how do we stop?
• 46:28
  Speaker: How do we keep our keep from resting on our laurels?
• 46:31
  Speaker: And that will happen like in, in this great experiment.
• 46:37
  Speaker: What stops us from resting on
• 46:39
  Speaker: the laurels are those very wide
• 46:43
  Speaker: open.
• 46:44
  Speaker: I don't want to say opaque, but just obtuse in a good way.
• 46:49
  Speaker: Broad spectrum conceptual rights.
• 46:54
  Speaker: And those inspire people
• 46:56
  Speaker: continually, each generation,
• 46:58
  Speaker: and then they move into the
• 46:59
  Speaker: area.
• 47:00
  Speaker: Seventeen point five point one yeah.
• 47:04
  Speaker: So And it inspires people and
• 47:06
  Speaker: they want to do better and keep
• 47:08
  Speaker: going.
• 47:09
  Speaker: And this is good.
• 47:10
  Speaker: Um, I wish we would do some of
• 47:14
  Speaker: that in our fraternity
• 47:17
  Speaker: sometimes.
• 47:20
  Speaker: Uh, I, I like, I like how you said it, and I definitely agree
• 47:24
  Speaker: with you on the last part, but the whole, I don't think I want
• 47:29
  Speaker: to go back to what we were talking about earlier.
• 47:31
  Speaker: I don't think the freedoms and rights that we have are opaque,
• 47:36
  Speaker: as you said.
• 47:37
  Speaker: I think they're idealized, right?
• 47:40
  Speaker: They're the idyllic form of what we would like a platonic form.
• 47:45
  Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
• 47:46
  Speaker: Um, what does the perfect concept of liberty look like or
• 47:49
  Speaker: the perfect concept of religious freedom look like?
• 47:52
  Speaker: I agree, I like that and I think
• 47:55
  Speaker: but to your point, the, the, the
• 47:56
  Speaker: change engine is generation
• 47:59
  Speaker: after generation.
• 48:00
  Speaker: Every single generation we have has changed something for the
• 48:04
  Speaker: better or for the worse.
• 48:05
  Speaker: You know, based on the the
• 48:06
  Speaker: temperature of the people in the
• 48:08
  Speaker: room.
• 48:08
  Speaker: But, um, change does happen and it happens about every twenty
• 48:12
  Speaker: years, you know.
• 48:13
  Speaker: Um, so we're, we're just, we're just in a, in a, in a sinkhole
• 48:18
  Speaker: at the moment.
• 48:18
  Speaker: Also article, article twelve of the old, of the Anderson's
• 48:22
  Speaker: constitution says you should actually be the change.
• 48:27
  Speaker: So that's, that's codified in law there.
• 48:31
  Speaker: Yeah, I love that.
• 48:33
  Speaker: I love that for him.
• 48:35
  Speaker: I love that for Joe.
• 48:38
  Speaker: Good old Jimmy.
• 48:39
  Speaker: Jimmy a good guy.
• 48:43
  Speaker: Nice.
• 48:43
  Speaker: Couldn't even put his name on his book.
• 48:47
  Speaker: But he could write, you know, a very long chapter about Adam
• 48:51
  Speaker: being a Freemason.
• 48:52
  Speaker: Yes.
• 48:53
  Speaker: As long as he.
• 48:54
  Speaker: Why was that necessary?
• 48:57
  Speaker: You gotta be the change in the Anderson Constitution.
• 49:03
  Speaker: You, John Paul.
• 49:05
  Speaker: That's funny.
• 49:07
  Speaker: Idealistic, like the whole Second Amendment.
• 49:10
  Speaker: You could technically, but w I l I. I don't know what that means.
• 49:16
  Speaker: I don't know what that means either.
• 49:16
  Speaker: Don't get me started on the Second Amendment.
• 49:19
  Speaker: So yeah, ideals versus reality, right.
• 49:22
  Speaker: And like most things that are idyllic, it's, uh, ruined by
• 49:26
  Speaker: human beings being human beings.
• 49:29
  Speaker: Yep.
• 49:30
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:30
  Speaker: We suck.
• 49:30
  Speaker: Sometimes we do, we do.
• 49:32
  Speaker: But that doesn't stop us from trying to be better, right?
• 49:35
  Speaker: Because we recognize that we suck sometimes, right?
• 49:38
  Speaker: Some of us do.
• 49:39
  Speaker: Well, I think, I think we we, I think everybody does.
• 49:44
  Speaker: They just internalize it differently.
• 49:46
  Speaker: Whether that means they're going to dig their feet in and sort of
• 49:50
  Speaker: like they know it and they're mad at themselves.
• 49:52
  Speaker: So they just keep pushing it.
• 49:55
  Speaker: And then there's other people in the complete opposite, right?
• 49:57
  Speaker: Who go, I was wrong, sorry.
• 50:00
  Speaker: How can I help?
• 50:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:04
  Speaker: All right.
• 50:04
  Speaker: So, masonry.
• 50:06
  Speaker: We take sucky men and make them less sucky.
• 50:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:13
  Speaker: What is another Nick Johnson's two for two tonight.
• 50:15
  Speaker: He used to say we make better.
• 50:17
  Speaker: Make better men and make them good.
• 50:21
  Speaker: Nice.
• 50:22
  Speaker: Or as Jason would say, we take good men and make them bitter.
• 50:30
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:30
  Speaker: Sometimes.
• 50:32
  Speaker: All right.
• 50:32
  Speaker: We're at that time to start bringing things home.
• 50:35
  Speaker: And so final question for tonight.
• 50:38
  Speaker: Let me get the little banner.
• 50:39
  Speaker: Did you do.
• 50:40
  Speaker: Final question is.
• 50:45
  Speaker: Did the Masons influence the founding of America?
• 50:51
  Speaker: Joe.
• 50:54
  Speaker: Um, I think we did.
• 50:56
  Speaker: I, I think America is can be
• 50:59
  Speaker: considered the the great Masonic
• 51:02
  Speaker: experiment.
• 51:02
  Speaker: As Brother Akram so famously loves to point out, and I love,
• 51:06
  Speaker: I love, uh, you know, um, absolutely adore him.
• 51:11
  Speaker: Um, it, it, it took Masonic
• 51:13
  Speaker: ideals and basically said to the
• 51:15
  Speaker: world, um, can a free group of
• 51:19
  Speaker: people who are citizens of a
• 51:22
  Speaker: nation rather than the subjects
• 51:24
  Speaker: of a king or a queen or a, or an
• 51:26
  Speaker: organization?
• 51:27
  Speaker: Could they live a life of liberty?
• 51:31
  Speaker: Could they live a life of
• 51:32
  Speaker: virtue, of being reasonable, of
• 51:34
  Speaker: showing restraint and, and
• 51:37
  Speaker: obligating ourselves mutually to
• 51:39
  Speaker: one another?
• 51:40
  Speaker: Um, at least that's what we put on paper.
• 51:41
  Speaker: Right.
• 51:42
  Speaker: Um, and I think that's where the
• 51:44
  Speaker: Masonic influence hits in this,
• 51:46
  Speaker: right?
• 51:46
  Speaker: Because the lodge teaches us, I would say we all do it, but
• 51:50
  Speaker: teaches us to meet on the level, um, to value, to value our, our
• 51:55
  Speaker: character over our station, um, to respect the differences in
• 52:01
  Speaker: the beliefs of others.
• 52:02
  Speaker: Um, even if they're not your own.
• 52:04
  Speaker: Um, and to bind each other to those, those moral duties that
• 52:08
  Speaker: we share with one another.
• 52:10
  Speaker: You know, um, so I don't, I don't think, I don't think we
• 52:14
  Speaker: can simply say it's just, hey, just came out of the
• 52:17
  Speaker: enlightenment and that's why it's a great experiment.
• 52:19
  Speaker: No, I think it was absolutely based on people who had a moral
• 52:23
  Speaker: language that came from their lessons in masonry.
• 52:28
  Speaker: Right.
• 52:28
  Speaker: So I, I think that the great
• 52:30
  Speaker: experiment that is America is,
• 52:32
  Speaker: is Masonic.
• 52:32
  Speaker: It's a nation that was built to be equal, to have a conscience,
• 52:37
  Speaker: um, to be obligated to one another, um, to be tolerant, um,
• 52:42
  Speaker: and to believe that people who are free are worthy of that
• 52:46
  Speaker: freedom and that we'll fight for it, um, just like Masons should.
• 52:49
  Speaker: So.
• 52:50
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 52:52
  Speaker: Nice.
• 52:54
  Speaker: Boom.
• 52:54
  Speaker: Alrighty.
• 52:56
  Speaker: Robert.
• 52:58
  Speaker: The question to me is interesting for a number of
• 53:04
  Speaker: reasons, because I when I hear you ask that, what I really hear
• 53:08
  Speaker: is did masonry influence the founding of America, or was it
• 53:12
  Speaker: just the enlightenment?
• 53:14
  Speaker: And the Masonic theme is coincidental.
• 53:20
  Speaker: I think eighteenth century Masonic lodges were literally
• 53:25
  Speaker: structured like many republics.
• 53:27
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 53:29
  Speaker: Um, I think that.
• 53:34
  Speaker: Like in almost every way I can think about this, it's like,
• 53:39
  Speaker: yes, you could, you could say that the enlightenment is what
• 53:44
  Speaker: caused the American experiment because it, it influenced Masons
• 53:48
  Speaker: to think a certain way.
• 53:50
  Speaker: But what we have is foundational
• 53:55
  Speaker: documents that go earlier than
• 53:59
  Speaker: Anderson's constitutions.
• 54:01
  Speaker: Granted, these are operative lodges, but the.
• 54:04
  Speaker: The the tenants in the the the
• 54:08
  Speaker: rules that governed an operative
• 54:12
  Speaker: stone Masonic, you know, quarry
• 54:16
  Speaker: or lodge.
• 54:17
  Speaker: I'm sorry.
• 54:17
  Speaker: Um can be seen to directly
• 54:21
  Speaker: influence where later
• 54:23
  Speaker: speculative lodge and masonry
• 54:24
  Speaker: goes.
• 54:26
  Speaker: So I'm with Joe on this one and
• 54:28
  Speaker: in particular, I loved that you
• 54:31
  Speaker: said, uh, you mentioned a nation
• 54:35
  Speaker: that has a conscience, uh, to
• 54:40
  Speaker: the point in the world history
• 54:43
  Speaker: that we know and recorded
• 54:44
  Speaker: history.
• 54:45
  Speaker: I'm not sure another form of government had a conscience per
• 54:49
  Speaker: se, you know, the ability to be sort of self-reflective and say,
• 54:53
  Speaker: was that right?
• 54:55
  Speaker: How do we correct this?
• 54:56
  Speaker: How do we stand up for constituents before this?
• 55:00
  Speaker: You have the kings and queens, and it's just that's the law in
• 55:06
  Speaker: most cases, I should say.
• 55:08
  Speaker: You know, it's not universal.
• 55:09
  Speaker: But yeah.
• 55:11
  Speaker: Joe one hundred percent.
• 55:13
  Speaker: I double down.
• 55:16
  Speaker: All right.
• 55:18
  Speaker: Be the freedom.
• 55:19
  Speaker: Be the conscience, be the freedom.
• 55:22
  Speaker: Yes.
• 55:22
  Speaker: Be the UFC fight.
• 55:25
  Speaker: Oh, my.
• 55:27
  Speaker: All right.
• 55:27
  Speaker: How about you, Jason?
• 55:29
  Speaker: Uh, did Freemasonry influenced the founding of America?
• 55:33
  Speaker: Yea or nay?
• 55:34
  Speaker: I think Masonic ideals greatly
• 55:37
  Speaker: influenced the founding of
• 55:38
  Speaker: America.
• 55:40
  Speaker: Um, I think enlightenment
• 55:44
  Speaker: philosophy underpinned the very
• 55:47
  Speaker: fabric of our founding
• 55:48
  Speaker: documents.
• 55:50
  Speaker: You know, you know, Jefferson
• 55:52
  Speaker: may not have been a mason, but
• 55:54
  Speaker: he was a student of the
• 55:56
  Speaker: enlightenment, and those ideas
• 55:59
  Speaker: flowed through his pen just as
• 56:02
  Speaker: much that of Ben Franklin or
• 56:04
  Speaker: George Washington.
• 56:06
  Speaker: And so I think I think it's very, very easy to kind of tie
• 56:15
  Speaker: Renaissance philosophy to our kind of founding freedom and
• 56:22
  Speaker: documents of as a country.
• 56:25
  Speaker: So yes.
• 56:28
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 56:30
  Speaker: All right.
• 56:31
  Speaker: Bring it home.
• 56:32
  Speaker: Yeah, I would probably agree that, yes, the Freemasons
• 56:36
  Speaker: absolutely influenced the founding of America and the
• 56:39
  Speaker: great Masonic experiment.
• 56:42
  Speaker: And, um, I'm cracking up over here.
• 56:45
  Speaker: What you put into America is what you get out of America.
• 56:49
  Speaker: Be the freedom, be the enlightenment.
• 56:52
  Speaker: So many, so many new shirts.
• 56:55
  Speaker: They work.
• 56:55
  Speaker: It really works.
• 56:56
  Speaker: You.
• 56:57
  Speaker: I need to get these printed out in the next two weeks.
• 57:00
  Speaker: Um, yeah, so I do think and just looking over the arguments made
• 57:06
  Speaker: by um, I think also make a compelling point structurally,
• 57:11
  Speaker: um, we define our constitution on something that kind of worked
• 57:15
  Speaker: with masonry that, that itself evolved over time.
• 57:19
  Speaker: I think some of the um, ethics
• 57:21
  Speaker: and virtues of masonry, uh,
• 57:24
  Speaker: like, um, meritocracy, like um,
• 57:28
  Speaker: tolerance and reason and logic
• 57:31
  Speaker: and equality all came out of
• 57:35
  Speaker: whether they were, because we
• 57:37
  Speaker: all know, uh, Freemasonry was a
• 57:39
  Speaker: syncretic system that has
• 57:40
  Speaker: evolved and taken many pieces
• 57:44
  Speaker: of, of, of good systems over
• 57:47
  Speaker: time.
• 57:48
  Speaker: And so absolutely, I think that,
• 57:49
  Speaker: uh, while we may not have
• 57:51
  Speaker: Planted specific shapes in the
• 57:54
  Speaker: nation's capital.
• 57:55
  Speaker: Because if you go look at the supposed star diagram on on in
• 58:02
  Speaker: the United States, in Washington, D.C., we couldn't
• 58:04
  Speaker: even complete the star, right?
• 58:05
  Speaker: We couldn't even as with our
• 58:07
  Speaker: grand design, still couldn't
• 58:08
  Speaker: even connect that one, that one
• 58:10
  Speaker: road.
• 58:10
  Speaker: So I don't think we went that far.
• 58:12
  Speaker: But certainly, um, we created something, something special,
• 58:16
  Speaker: something unique, and something that has lasted almost two
• 58:19
  Speaker: hundred and fifty years.
• 58:20
  Speaker: And so hopefully here's to two
• 58:22
  Speaker: hundred and fifty more or until
• 58:24
  Speaker: twenty forty.
• 58:25
  Speaker: So with that, I want to thank
• 58:26
  Speaker: you all very much for watching
• 58:28
  Speaker: and keep searching for more
• 58:29
  Speaker: light.
• 58:29
  Speaker: Be the freedom.
• 58:31
  Speaker: Wow.