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The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty · Liberty + Leadership

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty, and friends who are making an impact today.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Roger Reim.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm pleased to welcome Professor Bradley Burzer to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Berzer is the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's also a fellow of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and a fellow at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Brad is a prolific writer, concentrating on conservatism and political thought across history.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: He serves as a senior contributor to the online journal The Imaginative Conservative, which he co-founded with Winston Elliott III in 2010.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Burzer is the author of six books, including his latest, The Declaration of Independence, a Radical Experiment in Liberty, which traces the ideas and events that led Americans to independence in 1776.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Brad, welcome to the show.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Roger.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to see you.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: We have a long history, so it's wonderful to be connected to you here.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just mention that Brad has often taught at our various seminars for young people and is very well loved by all of us at TFAS.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's mutual.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is definitely mutual.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is the third recent published book that I've read on the Declaration of Independence, which is fitting given that we're in the semi-quincentennial year and we're very close to the Fourth of July celebrations.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I must say that all three emphasize different aspects of the document and of the American founding.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And yours really stands out because it provides the context that led up to the Second Continental Congress adopting the Declaration of Independence.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it really gives a great analysis of not only the intellectual influences on the document and on the founders, but also on the drafting of it and the changes that were made after Jefferson wrote the first draft.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: But my first question I'd like to ask is about your subtitle.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a radical experiment in liberty.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure you made that case.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was interesting because I think you gave a very balanced perspective on that.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: You note that the founders were fighting for what they called their inherited rights as Englishmen.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the quote I wrote down is that it gave to the American Revolution a deeply conservative cast, even though it possessed radical aspects as well.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to talk a little bit about that subtitle, which may have been written by you, may have been written by the publisher, but you cover that very well in the book.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there were currents going both ways, I know.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so thanks, Roger.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh again, it's so good to be talking to you about all of this.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that subtitle was not mine, and uh it did come from the publisher, and they wanted what I had originally, and I thought it was funny, but it probably wasn't really effective.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had 1776 and all that, which I was making fun of, the British book 1066 and all that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I like the whimsy of it, but the publisher said, no, no, that's not, that's not going to go over well.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: We need to change that.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And they came up with the radical experiment in Liberty.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I actually like the new title, the new subtitle.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason is, you know, Roger, you may disagree with me on this, but the way I think of American history, we are at once so deeply conservative, and we are at the same time so deeply radical in the kinds of things we're trying to achieve.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when I think, and I think part of this is for me, just growing up in the 1980s, I'm a I'm a total 80s kid.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: In seventh grade, for me, Ronald Reagan was elected, and then my senior year of college was when the wall came down.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: That decade for me just really defines everything.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love Ronald Reagan.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's one of my favorite presidents, one of my three favorite presidents.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: I love everything he stood for, but think about how deeply rooted he was in traditional values.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: But my other great hero of the 1980s is Steve Jobs.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Jobs doing so much with Apple and with Macintosh, and then eventually with the iPhone and the iPad.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I always, to me, that just strikes me what America is.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: America is at once deeply rooted in the past, but also innovating its way into the future.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I see it, the founding does one thing that is just immensely conservative, and that is it continues common law, right?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: This law that is actually older, as far as we know, than Christianity that goes back to the pagan Anglo-Saxons and Germanic tribes, and that's the law that all of the 13 colonies implement, and it's what Congress implements.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: But then we have radical statements like we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's always this forward-looking element to what America is as well.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that explains a lot of the American tension.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, for me, the founding is at once deeply conservative and deeply radical.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: In the book, you also present the influence that Thomas Paine's common sense had and his writings about government as kind of a necessary evil.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then you contrast that with John Adams' thoughts on government, which challenged that view.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Adams wrote about government as a Republican form of government necessary to achieve human happiness and human flourishing on earth.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that was an interest juxtaposition between the two of them.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: That shares that idea of the tension that was going on among the Whigs.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: That same tension is within my own soul when I think about the founding.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are things like if I had to hang out with either John Adams or Tom Payne, there'd be no question I'd hang out with John Adams.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: But if I had to disagree or if I had to agree with one of them, I think that I would probably rather debate Thomas Paine in doing that.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think Paine has a lot to say.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, I come down on Adam's side that we need the republic.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I've got that in me too, where I think, okay, a little anarchism is not bad for anybody.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: So not the bomb-throwing kind, but the kind that's reluctant to establish too much government.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's something, again, very healthy in what we see in both Payne and Adams.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they both matter, right?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: These are two major founding fathers.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So even if they do disagree, they make a kind of interesting team, whatever the disagreement is.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have this quote of Jefferson's, I think it was from a letter, I forgot which one, but where he writes that, and this gets back to your subtitle, I guess, but as such, there was nothing truly new in the Declaration.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: This was an object of the Declaration of Independence, he continued, not to find new principles or new arguments never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never before been said, but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, so plain and firm as to command their assent and to justify ourselves in independent stand we compelled to take.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Probably you would disagree some with Jefferson when he says there was nothing new in there, right?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the whole idea we hold these truths, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: That which I think is one of the most important sentences in human history.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that definitely is something that Jefferson is bringing from the past, but putting it in such a new way that he's he really is adding something new.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you know if we think about the ancient world, it does sound very much like St.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Paul telling us there's neither Greek nor Jew, neither female nor male, right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: But all one.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's a kind of stoic Christian element in what Jefferson's saying.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: But Jefferson is the first to make that as a political statement.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, that's generally new.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we also have to remember, Roger, that that letter that Jefferson writes, you know, he is an old man at that point.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's 14 months away from his death.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's hard to know.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's 49 years after the declaration.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is he really remembering?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's the best evidence we have, but I think we can also legitimately question his memory at that point.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: In your book, you also have a great account of the intellectual influences on the founders, from Cicero and Tecadus to Locke and Elgernon Sydney and the Scottish Enlightenment.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they were all, as I've learned from you, you know, the founders were conversant in Greek and in Latin, some in Hebrew.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: They were very well-educated people.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have a great appendix showing the people they cited in their writings.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was surprised to see St.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Paul was number one, I think, on that list.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the religious influences were definitely there as well, right?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things, and I get very frustrated with liberal historians about this, they always emphasize how radically enlightenment-oriented the founding was.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: But when we look at the numbers, and I say this as a Roman Catholic, but when we look at the numbers, you know, it's pretty clear that there are only four serious Enlightenment figures, and they really matter.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're a big deal.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it's Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, and Benjamin Rush.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: But if you would talk to 99 out of a hundred colonists at the time, they were radically Protestant.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is even Maryland, which is the Catholic colony, was only 8% Catholic at the time of the founding.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was 92% Protestant.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as Edmund Burke said, they're not just Protestants, they're the Protestant of Protestants.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: These are people who escaped England during their own Reformation.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's deeply personal to them.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, again, I say this as a Roman Catholic, but we would never, never understand the founding without understanding its deep Protestant character.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're a fan of Edmund Burke, as am I.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Was he influential on the founders?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Very much so.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially on figures like John Adams.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was hugely influential on Adams.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Burke is such an interesting figure.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I try to mythologize this a little bit, but when I'm teaching American Founding, which I get to do every four semesters at Hillsdale, so every other year, I teach it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I always talk about George Washington and Edmund Burke as the twin pillars of Atlantis.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I love Burke because, you know, Burke, his entire career from his opening virginal speech in January of 1766 all the way up until the Peace of Paris is signed in 1783.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing Burke ever speaks about in Parliament is American rights and American independence, to the point where he's treasonous.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: He could have been executed for the things he was saying.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, and I always love this, and I think this is hilarious, and only Burke could have gotten away with it, but King George would declare something a fast day, a day for fasting and prayer, in which we pray for the brave British soldiers fighting the American rebels.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And Burke would stand up in Parliament and he would say, I declare this a feast day, and everybody meet at my estate after our day's dealings, and we're going to celebrate the American Patriots as the true Englishman.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this is it's pretty wild what Burke was able to get away with.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: But there's no doubt he was treasonous from a British perspective, and yet he never backed down.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: He was our single greatest advocate in parliament.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I always find this very telling, Roger.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of my favorite stories as well.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that we as Americans, we had what was called non-importation.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so we would not allow any British goods at all to touch American soil, with one exception.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: All of Burke's books and speeches were exempted.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was the only thing that was exempted.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that the founders made a deal of that, right?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: That they made sure that Burke could still sell his books in America, I think that's very telling.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are those in our country in the progressive left that want to focus on 1619 as a key date in our history and denounce the founders because many of them, while opposed to slavery in their writings, own slaves.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts about judging the founders based on what I would say is contemporary standards?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do they still deserve credit for efforts made to try to uh temper slavery in the colonies?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a hard question.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I always, Roger, I this happens to me every semester that I teach the founding.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I will teach all about common law rights, natural law, natural rights.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I go through the documents, and then it's always about a third of the way through the semester, a very good Hillsdale student will raise his hand and say, but Dr.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Burzer, what about slavery?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I always wait for that.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's coming.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always for me an object lesson.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we have to talk about.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's critically important that we talk about it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: We should never whitewash it in any way, shape, or form.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I would say this, Roger.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a couple of responses to that.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, I think it's worth remembering that that time period from 1761, starting with James Otis's great speech in front of the Admiralty Court in Boston, up until 1793, with the development of the cotton gin, slavery during that time in the American colonies was radically decreasing.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we know that the low estimate is that one out of every three slaves was freed.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the high estimate is that one out of every two slaves was freed.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So anywhere between 33 to 50% reduction in slavery in that time period.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason, of course, is simply because you can't say all men are created equal and have slaves.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so when the founders are writing the declaration, when they're writing the Northwest Ordinance, which of course forbids slavery, when they are creating the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, all of those critical documents that define who and what we are, they are all being written at a time that slavery is naturally dying.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, from the perspective of all the founding fathers, slaveholding or not, slavery was on its way out.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Whether this was because of nature or God's providence, they didn't know, but they believed it was on its way out.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have this crazy thing happen.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: This young anti-slavery, pro-black evangelical from Yale goes down to the South and he creates a labor-saving device to help blacks in the field.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: He creates the cotton gin.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens to Eli Whitney?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: His cotton gin becomes the thing that makes slavery actually economically viable.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so slavery explodes after 1793.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: But that again, that's past the founding period.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that we can say that the founders truly did believe this thing was over.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the other thing I would say about this, if we look at the founding and we take, for example, just the Constitutional Convention, and we look at the debate over slavery, which starts on August 8th, 1787, and ends around August 13th.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's about five days of really intense debate about this.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt that the founders knew that slavery was immoral and unethical.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can't escape that by reading those debates.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: There are too many people saying, look, this is a curse.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is terrible for both slave and slave holder.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is terrible for the economy, everything.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And yet they make a decision.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: That is, they decide to keep South Carolina and to keep Georgia in the Union.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: They have to allow slavery to continue.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a conscious decision on their part to do that.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: So when I teach this, Roger, I always say, look, it's a very complicated issue.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: On one hand, it's dying, or at least they think it is.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other hand, they accept this immoral decision.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of where it's left.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I wouldn't hide it.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: My third thing I would say, Roger, is this.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this trumps everything.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Jefferson says we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's a passage later in the original declaration that is excised by Congress, because again, South Carolina and Georgia can't stand to have it in there.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it says in this long paragraph, the king has taken men, all caps, M-E-N, all caps.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: He has taken men from a distant land who never caused him harm and enslaved them in a foreign land.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we know textually that when Jefferson says all men are created equal, he is absolutely including black men.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: That we know from the text.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And as Martin Luther King says, you know, this is a promissory note.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Once you've made the statement all men are created equal, you can't return on that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can't go back on that.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's no regression from that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: You've made that statement, and so now you have to make it real.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where I would fundamentally disagree with the 1619 project.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: They are so deeply myopic in looking at slavery that they don't recognize that we're also the country that ends slavery.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the beginning of the end is the declaration and that statement, we hold these truths.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's right there.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I would go so far as to say that all of American history is a playing out of that sentence, making that sentence real.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I live in Washington, D.C.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: and I was out on my bike recently, and I rode by the George Mason Memorial, which is a very nice memorial close to the Jefferson Memorial, and they've got engraved in the granite there just these wonderful quotations from George Mason about the evils of slavery and how terrible an institution it was, and a warning, I think, to his children about not owning other men and things like that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just it's all there.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went home and you know pulled up the Wikipedia on George Mason, and I I read that he owned X number of slaves.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: He never made a provision to free them when he died.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of like, wow, that's just really strange a man would have these views and you know, Jefferson as well, you know, and yet not make provision to free their slaves.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I agree with you 100% that this was the beginning of the process of from the declaration forward and the Constitution.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Vermont and what 1787 may have prohibited slavery, and the states began to systematically outlaw slavery.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is a problematic.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: I will say this about George Mason.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he refuses to sign the Constitution because it did not end slavery.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So again, there's that complication.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: But then you have someone like George Washington, right, who frees all of his slaves and not only frees them, but he gives them an education, he gives them property, his estate is not done paying his former slaves until 1832, 33 years after his death.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that's great.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or John Randolph of Roanoke, right, who also frees all of his slaves, gives them land, divides his estate up.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there were good guys at the time, but they do seem to be rare.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any thoughts in the run-up to our semi-quincentennial, which is coming fast?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are you uh hopeful that we'll really stay focused on the important ideas of the founding and that perhaps we'll have somewhat of a reset in terms of civic education in this country?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're a history professor, for instance, and what are your thoughts on civic education in America today and our need to focus on the meaning of the declaration?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, of course, I would like there to be a revival.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: I remember very well.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was only eight at the time, but I remember 1976.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember, you know, just my little hometown in Kansas.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: We just went overboard in a great way, in a very just way.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: We went over the top to celebrate 1776 in 1976.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: I would argue that we would not have had the Reagan revival of 1980 without that patriotic moment in 1976.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it laid the ground.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, it wasn't the only thing.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Goldwater, Kirk, you know, Hayek, they had all done a lot to get ready for Reagan.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think 1976 did that.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I would love it, you know, whether it's Ron DeSantis or somebody coming forward.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would love it if somebody like a Reagan, you know, four years from now, two years from now, could come forward.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And really remind us, you know, think about Reagan in his first inaugural.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're ready to be worthy of ourselves, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that when we look at something like the Declaration, I want to just yell as loudly as I can.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're ready to be worthy of ourselves.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that for me, the Declaration is timeless.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is an internal thing that finds its way into time itself.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so it will always be there.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: We hold these truths to be self-evident, is a statement that applies to all men and women, everywhere, in every place, in every time.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so even if we forget it, which we have, or if we mock it, or if we ignore it, it's still there and it only has to be remembered.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I have great hope for the future.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It may be my grandchildren or my great-grandchildren, but I do have hope for the future that there will be a kind of we'll get past this populism, we'll get past all of the radical left and all of their wokism.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think we can get past the ideologues on both the left and right and actually embrace what's true and honestly what's just perfectly American, what's deeply American.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite speeches, and I quote it twice in my book, is Calvin Coolidge's speech from 1926, right?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: The 150th anniversary, where he says, you know, if we claim that we hold these truths to be self-evident and that all men are created equal, that's final.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's no more debate.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: If we say that they are endowed with their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that's final.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's no more debate about that.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that to me is utterly American.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I I love that.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever the left or the populists are trying to do, I think they can distort things for a time, but they're a flash in the pan.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And in the long run, I think we can reclaim what it means to be truly American.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that Coolidge speech, which I also love, was delivered on July 5th because July 4th was a Sunday and they wouldn't do it in the event.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that, Roger.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Only Coolidge.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: That makes the story even better.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: In 1976, I was attending a Fund for American Studies program in Washington, D.C.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: that summer, one of our summer programs.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I recently moved, and when I was packing up a house I'd been in for 40 years, I found a copy of the Washington Post from July 4th, 1976, that I had purchased.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it was remarkable about how little things change, Brad.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: There was one story in there about despite our political polarization that we're coming together on the Fourth of July to celebrate our bicentennial.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Above the main headline about the uh bicentennial was a subheading about Israel Frees Hostages.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh front mentioned.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Something's never changed.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought interestingly, with what you just said, on page three, there was a story that Ronald Reagan opens up his ranch to reporters for the first time.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: They get to go up to his ranch above Santa Barbara and see the ranch.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the article went on to say this may be a sign that he's planning to run for president in the future.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there's actually a direct connection to the Fourth of July.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: I hope we can really celebrate that and not just celebrate it, but also, you know, have a reset.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's been a revival of interest in trying to improve civic education in our country, and we need to keep pushing that forward.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely, Roger.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: You've been teaching at Hillsdale now for a number of years.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a school that has a great reputation nationally, probably internationally, for its focus on, you know, the education of students, the liberal education that we would hope.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: In your book, I remembered a reference to, I can't remember if it was John Adams, but to a belief that a liberal education was very important to the success of our experiment in liberty.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you find teaching at Hillsdale?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm 58 and I've been here since I was 31.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just starting my 28th year this fall.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so you, my my whole adult life really has been here.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Except I had the one year I was the visiting conservative chair at UC Boulder, at CU Boulder, and I had a great time.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was a blast.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was following Steve Hayward.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: I just had a great time doing that.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: But no, I'm I'm so happy to be at Hillsdale.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: My students are just incredible.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: They come in, they're always prepared.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody has their phone out.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's no screens, no distractions.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: They care about ideas, they're very patriotic, they care about religion.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, I if I look back at say age 29 or 30, I would never, first of all, I didn't think I would ever make it this long to 58, right?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's hard to imagine as a as a young guy making it that far.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea that I've been able to raise my kids under Larry Arne's guidance to have, you know, this great profession here.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been amazing.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't know if you caught this, Roger, but actually, my book, the reason I wrote it the way I did, is it's meant to be a prequel to Dr.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Arne's The Founder's Key.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I when I first started writing the book, I didn't know if I would start with the Declaration and then go forward with its reputation.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I I read Larry's book, Dr.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Arne's book, and I thought, well, no, he's already done that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been done.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought what we really need is a lead up to the declaration, and that's why I started in February of 1761 and went forward.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a blast.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I really I wrote that book relatively quickly.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I took my time researching it, but I wrote it pretty quickly, and uh, I just had a great time doing it.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really think, you know, for anyone who's a pessimist about things in our country today, there's so much out there that's happening now that's very positive.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Hillsdale College is one such thing, and the academies you're building around the country to reach people at a younger level.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are a number of organizations like the Fund for American Studies and many others, too many to name right now, but that are working with the rising generation.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a note from a donor just the other day in an email that said, you know, compared to when he was a youngster involved in YAF in the early 60s, there are just so many more young people that are getting a good education and our founding principals who are going to become leaders in the next decade or two that it gives him optimism for the future.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hope he's right because I think we are all doing a lot right now, and young people are looking for better answers than are offered by the progressive left or the populist movement.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're in a strange place right now because conservatism and libertarianism are in flux.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in part because we haven't quite figured out how to respond to the extremes on either side.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the great ironies, Roger, and and you know, feel free to disagree with me on this, but being a conservative or a libertarian right now, we're actually the moderates.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the center.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I I've never been in the center in my life.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been on the right, and now I find myself in the center, and I find that very interesting.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was struck by something you said in there that the founders weren't founding this country as a commercial republic, but as a virtuous republic.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't discount their belief in freedom and and economic freedom, but I I found that interesting.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a virtuous republic, not a commercial republic.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: I would never ever want one to override the other.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's no doubt.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the founders, you know, there for them, the greatest natural right we had was property.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you had property, you owned yourself.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so that you know, that means you're morally culpable for all of your good and your bad decisions.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, property is absolutely essential.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they believe, you know, they're very free market, they're very laissez-faire, in large part, not because they're theoretically so, but just practically so.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: They had always been left alone and they didn't see any reason not to.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: But they also, you know, when you look at someone like John Adams or even Thomas Jefferson, not predominantly, but in Jefferson as well, but especially in Washington and Adams, you have this argument over and over again that as a people, we have to be virtuous.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is, we really do have to believe in the common good of the republic, the res publica.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: We have to believe that we give ourselves.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, this is where I find it fascinating, Roger.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, you know, to take us back to our anarchist question, maybe a little bit earlier in the discussion.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the founders are very clear that what should happen in society should happen in private civic society.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: It should not be happening in political society.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's a role for political society, but it's a very small role.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they believe so strongly in the right to associate one with another, association for family, for church, for community, for schools.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so they definitely, the virtue that we practice is virtue that we practice in a freely chosen community.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is not virtue that's forced by the government.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, they would say if that virtue were forced by the public entity, it would no longer be a virtue, right?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is, they're taking that straight from Cicero.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime any of the virtues are coerced, they're no longer virtues but vices, as Cicero tells us.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, they take that very strongly.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what I would say is this, and you know, coming from a very libertarian perspective, the founders definitely believed in virtue, but it was virtue in private life that led to a flourishing public life rather than the public imposing upon the private.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was one that was leavened from the bottom up, just like the common law does as well.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I think one of the greatest things the founders did was they really wrestled with the age-old problem of individualism versus communitarianism, and they found a kind of perfect solution and balance of where you could have both.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, wonderful.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: My guest today has been Professor Brad Burser, author of The Declaration of Independence, A Radical Experiment in Liberty, or 1776 and all that stuff.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me today, Brad.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Roger.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had a great time.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's always good seeing you.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfas.org.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five star review.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Roger Reim, and until next time, show courage in things large and small.