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The Most Disputed Statement in The Declaration · The Becket Cook Show

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  Speaker 1: Life Audio.
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  Speaker 2: You are listening to The Becket Cook Show with your
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  Speaker 2: host Beckett Cook. For more information about Beckett and his ministry,
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  Speaker 2: visit his website at Beckettcook dot com. To help support
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  Speaker 3: Hey, guys, welcome to the show. Today. I have a
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  Speaker 3: special guest, John G. West.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I know that rhymes, but if we're gonna be talking.
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  Speaker 1: He's been on the show before. We talked about his
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  Speaker 1: book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, and he has a new book
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  Speaker 1: out which we're gonna discuss today called Endowed by our Creator,
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  Speaker 1: the Bible Science in the Battle for America's Soul. It's fascinating.
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  Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. It's not a long book. It's
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  Speaker 1: only a couple hundred pages or less.
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  Speaker 3: And John G.
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  Speaker 1: West is the Vice president of Discovery Institute and the
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  Speaker 1: Distinguished Scholar of American Government and Civic Christian Civic Engagement
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  Speaker 1: at Cornerstone University. He formerly chaired the Department of Political
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  Speaker 1: Science at Seattle Pacific University, and he holds a PhD
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  Speaker 1: in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he's written many books,
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  Speaker 1: but first award from our sponsor.
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  Speaker 3: Please welcome John G.
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  Speaker 4: West Beckett. Thanks for having me again.
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  Speaker 1: It's so good to have you back. I love the
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  Speaker 1: book endowed by our Creator, the Bible, Science and the
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  Speaker 1: Battle for America's soul.
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  Speaker 3: First question, which.
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  Speaker 1: Is, you know, the boring question, but why this book now?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, of course this year is the two hundred
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  Speaker 4: and fiftieth anniversary of America and of the creation of independence.
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  Speaker 4: So I wouldn't have expected to have two books in
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  Speaker 4: two years. That was not my plan. I don't wish
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  Speaker 4: it on anyone. But about last spring, I was on
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  Speaker 4: a sort of a week long break with my wife
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  Speaker 4: and I was thinking and actually swimming at the time
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  Speaker 4: and praying, and it hit me that not only was
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  Speaker 4: the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary coming up, but I
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  Speaker 4: actually had something to say about it, And so I wondered,
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  Speaker 4: could I actually dash off something in six months? And
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  Speaker 4: that was kind of daunting of my PhD work actually
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  Speaker 4: originally was. I did focus a lot on the American founding,
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  Speaker 4: so I actually have done this before. But there was
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  Speaker 4: a particular thing I wanted to say that that did
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  Speaker 4: require some more research, and that's sort of how I
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  Speaker 4: got into it. But really, you know, the two hundred
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  Speaker 4: and fiftieth anniversary is a great time, I think for
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  Speaker 4: Americas to take stock about where we're at and where
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  Speaker 4: we're going.
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  Speaker 1: Right, I'm excited about the two hundred and fiftieth And
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  Speaker 1: so in the beginning of your book, you say, you
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  Speaker 1: quote GK. Chesterton and he says America is the only
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  Speaker 1: nation in the world that is founded on a creed,
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  Speaker 1: and you say, many Americans are apt to miss the
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  Speaker 1: full significance of Chesterton's observation.
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  Speaker 3: Can you talk about that for a second.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is especially among some conservatives, is becoming
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  Speaker 4: very controversial now, but so for most of human history
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  Speaker 4: and even today, say, if you're in Japan, you're likely
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  Speaker 4: an ethnic Japanese who have been there for time immorial,
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  Speaker 4: and so nations usually have been built around ethnicities, even
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  Speaker 4: races and religions. Now, America does have a lot of
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  Speaker 4: commonality coming from the original founding, and even today most
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  Speaker 4: Americans would culturally identify as Christians, even though that has
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  Speaker 4: gone down. Nonetheless, I think Chesterton hit on something that's
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  Speaker 4: really absolutely unique about us, which is that we have
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  Speaker 4: from the very beginning been what might be called a
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  Speaker 4: creedle nation. That we have this create of fundamental beliefs,
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  Speaker 4: that the number one thing is if you embrace those beliefs,
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  Speaker 4: you can become an American. And that's why I say
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  Speaker 4: someone like me on one half of me actually goes
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  Speaker 4: back to Puritan dissenters coming over in the sixteen hundreds
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  Speaker 4: and founding Hartford, Connecticut. But the other half of me
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  Speaker 4: actually had grandparents who came through Ellis Island shortly before
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  Speaker 4: World War One from Ukraine. And I think loads of
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  Speaker 4: people and both sides loved America. And they both imparted
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  Speaker 4: to me a love for America, and that is different
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  Speaker 4: in human history. And Chesterton, who you know, great writer
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  Speaker 4: from England, after he visited America, that hit him how
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  Speaker 4: special that was.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And you say that the Declaration and Capulpsle capsulates these
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  Speaker 1: ideas in fifty five words, and I just want to
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  Speaker 1: read these words so we can remind the audience what
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  Speaker 1: this part of the declaration says. We hold these truth
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  Speaker 1: to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
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  Speaker 1: that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
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  Speaker 1: that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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  Speaker 1: That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
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  Speaker 1: deriving their just powers from the consent of the government.
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  Speaker 4: Now, right on, right on.
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  Speaker 1: You mentioned that Americans, many Americans are ignorant, ignorant of
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  Speaker 1: the meaning of the teachings of the Declaration, or they're
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  Speaker 1: ambivalent about them. And I think you say eight and
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  Speaker 1: ten Americans still affirm the truth of the Declarations propositions
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  Speaker 1: in four and ten Americans except the Declaration's view of
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  Speaker 1: the source of our rights. So talk about those numbers.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so tied to this book, and there is actually
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  Speaker 4: like a seventy five page survey report that we put
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  Speaker 4: out called how Americans view the American Faunidly. But we
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  Speaker 4: did a survey, a couple surveys, actually a couple thousand
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  Speaker 4: Americans to find out what were their views on the founding,
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  Speaker 4: what were their views on the Declaration, and so some
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  Speaker 4: of it was really positive, some of it was kind
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  Speaker 4: of troubling. And the younger you get, the less people
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  Speaker 4: actually know. But overall people will say that they agree
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  Speaker 4: with things like all men are created equal, governments are
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  Speaker 4: based on consent, and that we have unaligable rights. Very
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  Speaker 4: few people can. Actually, many people don't know where the
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  Speaker 4: phrase all men are created equal comes from. Many think
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  Speaker 4: it's from the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights or
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  Speaker 4: somewhere else. Only a fraction of Americans know that it
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  Speaker 4: comes from the Declaration. But then, more concerning to me,
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  Speaker 4: and this is true of both self identified Christians and
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  Speaker 4: non Christians, only about four in ten or about thirty
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  Speaker 4: eight percent of Americans say that they think our rights
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  Speaker 4: come from God. Now, I don't want to get ahead
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  Speaker 4: of myself, but that's a really key thing that distinguishes
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  Speaker 4: America from like the French Revolution, from the Russian Revolution,
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  Speaker 4: from a lot of other things. And when you have
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  Speaker 4: even self identified Christians, most people thinking, well, rights come
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  Speaker 4: from government or some people actually a few percentage stay
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  Speaker 4: from evolution or from other people, or from social tradition,
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  Speaker 4: that our rights don't come from God. That is a
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  Speaker 4: real break from what the founders thought.
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  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after this short break.
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  Speaker 1: I want to just touch on some of these the
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  Speaker 1: meaning of some of the Declarations, exalted phrases as you say,
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  Speaker 1: and trace their roots in both biblical tradition and natural philosophy.
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  Speaker 1: But before I get to that. Let's you say that
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  Speaker 1: most people pass over this phrase without thinking much about it,
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  Speaker 1: and it's the laws of nature and of Nature's God.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, that's really foundational to the whole declaration. And I
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  Speaker 4: think most people in the here were laws of nature
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  Speaker 4: or less, like the laws of physics or the laws
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  Speaker 4: of gravity, something that's not really what the founders are
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  Speaker 4: talking about. They were talking about the laws of human nature,
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  Speaker 4: basically morality, and they thought that the moral law, the
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  Speaker 4: underlying moral law both was provided by God. And even
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  Speaker 4: those who were non Christians, like Thomas Jefferson's served more
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  Speaker 4: of Adist or Benjamin Franklin, they thought that biblical morality
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  Speaker 4: was true because they also thought that the same morality
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  Speaker 4: was something that was written on our hearts that you
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  Speaker 4: could know through reason and conscience. And they thought that
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  Speaker 4: reason and conscience and the Bible said the same thing,
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  Speaker 4: and so that provided a common moral ground or moral
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  Speaker 4: common ground that everyone that you could actually base your
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  Speaker 4: society on. And this had deep roots. You know, sometimes
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  Speaker 4: Christians today think, well, well, you know, morality just has
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  Speaker 4: to be on the Bible. And I'm a Christian, I
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  Speaker 4: believe in biblical morality, but the standard Christian view from
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  Speaker 4: the apostle paul On was that God all also wrote
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  Speaker 4: these things on our hearts, and this was not a
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  Speaker 4: difference between Protestants and Catholics. A Quinnas believed that, so
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  Speaker 4: did Luther, so did Calvin. That that God revealed himself
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  Speaker 4: definitely through the Bible, but he also revealed himself in
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  Speaker 4: other ways through creation. And that's why you know C. S.
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  Speaker 4: Lewis could write a book in the nineteen forty is
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  Speaker 4: The Abolition of Man, where he catalogs really moral fundamentals
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  Speaker 4: across cultures. Like it's really hard to find a major
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  Speaker 4: world culture that says lying is great, or treating your
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  Speaker 4: parents badly is good, or breaking your promises is wonderful.
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  Speaker 4: You don't find that. Yeah, you can find I guess
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  Speaker 4: some really depraved people who say that, But most world
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  Speaker 4: civilizations say the opposite. There was this common this moral
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  Speaker 4: common ground, and the Founders really believed in that, and
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  Speaker 4: I sort of, you know, discussed that more because they
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  Speaker 4: do it in their own writings. They actually say, you know,
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  Speaker 4: the biblical morality that you see in the Bible is
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  Speaker 4: also the morality of common sense. It's the mora written
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  Speaker 4: on our hearts. And they both point to the same truth.
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  Speaker 4: And that's one, sadly, one of the things today that
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  Speaker 4: we have lost to a degree, and I think that's
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  Speaker 4: one reason why we're in the situation we're in.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, okay, well let's look at the first phrase, we
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  Speaker 1: hold these truths to be self evident. Now, you say
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  Speaker 1: that some Christians don't like the declaration's claim of self
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  Speaker 1: evident truths, and Thomas is correct me if I'm wrong,
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  Speaker 1: But Thomas Jefferson's original draft said we hold these truths
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  Speaker 1: to be sacred and undeniable, and then Benjamin Franklin changed it.
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  Speaker 3: Is that correct?
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  Speaker 4: No, No, that's not actually correct. That that is what
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  Speaker 4: journalists Walter Freeman anyway, that's said. But we actually don't know.
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  Speaker 4: No one took credit for that rewrite. There's a difference
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  Speaker 4: of opinion among scholars of whose penmanship did the correction,
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  Speaker 4: and so we actually don't know. The best we know
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  Speaker 4: is that during the UH revision stage it was changed,
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  Speaker 4: just like there were a lot of other changes. There's
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  Speaker 4: no evidence that anyone thought it was a substance of difference,
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  Speaker 4: and there's really no evidence of who made the change.
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  Speaker 1: And you say that Christian the evangelical Christian thinker Vishal
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  Speaker 1: Mango Waladi Wadi. I can't say his name, Mangoai. He
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  Speaker 1: says that definite the declarations change of this wording was
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  Speaker 1: the fundamental mistake of the American founding, and it's a
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  Speaker 1: mistake that unleashed the horrors of the French Revolution.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and Visual, I love Visual. He's done a lot
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  Speaker 4: of great work. He was mentioned by Francis Schaeffer, among others,
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  Speaker 4: So he's a I look up to him. I think
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  Speaker 4: on this, you know, he's he's wrong, probably largely because
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  Speaker 4: he's actually was listening to the wrong people. Because the
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  Speaker 4: idea that Benjamin Franklin changed this and that the change
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  Speaker 4: from you know, from sacred and undeniable to to saying
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  Speaker 4: sell evident, that that was somehow a significant change from
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  Speaker 4: biblical revelation to just unassisted human reason that has been
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  Speaker 4: propagated by some left wing secularists because they like it,
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  Speaker 4: they think that's good. They want to tell that story
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  Speaker 4: because they think we'll see Jefferson, which had the same
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  Speaker 4: exact views as Benjamin Franklin. But Franklin tried to make
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  Speaker 4: clear that this wasn't consistent with the Bible and it
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  Speaker 4: was just exalted human reason apart from God. And that's
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  Speaker 4: the story they're trying to tell, and I understand why
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  Speaker 4: they're trying to tell it. Unfortunately, Vishaal has sort of
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  Speaker 4: bought into that for different reasons, and as a Christian
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  Speaker 4: he thinks, well, that's awful. Well that would be awful,
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  Speaker 4: but it's not true. Really, The meaning was the same
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  Speaker 4: whether it's sacred or undeniable or self evident. What they're
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  Speaker 4: communicating is that these are fundamental truth We regard these,
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  Speaker 4: we hold these as fundamental truths. And they weren't saying
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  Speaker 4: when they're saying self evident that the only that means
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  Speaker 4: that you know, the Bible doesn't matter, that God doesn't matter.
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  Speaker 4: And let's understand, on that drafting committee, along with Franklin
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  Speaker 4: and Jefferson, they may have been deast was Roger Sherman,
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  Speaker 4: who was a hardcore New England Calvinist. If he thought
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  Speaker 4: they were changing that, I mean, he would have protested.
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  Speaker 4: So I think they protest too much that they try
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  Speaker 4: to find some Vishal actually made the argument with me
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  Speaker 4: at a conference and I note this in the book,
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  Speaker 4: and I referenced people can watch the YouTube video that
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  Speaker 4: Jefferson meant by saying that our rights were sacred and undeniable.
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  Speaker 4: He was saying that they're just based in the Bible.
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  Speaker 4: And that then, which first of all, is not what
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  Speaker 4: Jefferson or any of the Founders believed. They thought the
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  Speaker 4: Bible and human reason went together, So they're not separate,
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  Speaker 4: they go together and reinforce each other. So that couldn't
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  Speaker 4: have been Jefferson's original view with the original wording anyway,
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  Speaker 4: because of what we know his views, and it wasn't
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  Speaker 4: the view of the devout Christian Founders. They all thought
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  Speaker 4: the Deist and the Christian Founders agree that there was
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  Speaker 4: this moral common ground between us, and there were these
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  Speaker 4: truths that we understand both from the Bible and by
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  Speaker 4: looking at nature by what God has written on our hearts,
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  Speaker 4: served what Christians traditionally have called general revelation as well
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  Speaker 4: as special revelation. So they all, the Founders all agreed
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  Speaker 4: on that. So to make this up to this sort
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  Speaker 4: of significant thing. And so then where Vishal goes on
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  Speaker 4: to say, well, this was the fundamental mistake that led
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  Speaker 4: to the horrors of the French Revolution, is because he
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  Speaker 4: thinks that by saying there are truths that are self
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  Speaker 4: evident and that you can sort of plainly see or
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  Speaker 4: hold that we misled the French to believe that reason alone,
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  Speaker 4: without the Bible or without the Gospel, can create your
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  Speaker 4: heavenly utopian society. Well, for one thing, the French didn't
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  Speaker 4: need us to tell them anything on that, because the
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  Speaker 4: French had their own philosophy going back to Rousseau and others,
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  Speaker 4: that was very well developed. So they weren't really listening
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  Speaker 4: to us. But that's also just not true what the
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  Speaker 4: founders meant. So I so I you know, and Vishaal
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  Speaker 4: is great, but I think he's really wrong on this,
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  Speaker 4: and because he's listening to the left wing secularists and
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  Speaker 4: too trusting of what they said.
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  Speaker 1: In Robespierre or didn't he march into the into Notre
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  Speaker 1: Diamond declare at the Temple of Reason.
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  Speaker 4: Oh they did all sorts of things.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they.
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  Speaker 1: Did all sorts of horrendous things, But yeah, I mean
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  Speaker 1: that was said.
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  Speaker 4: They had the Goddess of Reason in there. They took
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  Speaker 4: over another actually church and turned it into a a
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  Speaker 4: pantheon of for Voltaire and other non Christian people of
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  Speaker 4: great patron saints of the of the Secular Republic. I mean,
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  Speaker 4: they tried to replace the Christian calendar with a new
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  Speaker 4: calendar that wasn't based on the Christian calendar. They were
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  Speaker 4: so anti Christian. I mean, it's just.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I always say, you know, seventeen seventy six and seventeen
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  Speaker 1: eighty nine, are you know a million miles apart those
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  Speaker 1: those two revolutions? Okay, so all them interre created equal.
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  Speaker 1: You say that this is the most hotly disputed statement
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  Speaker 1: in the Declaration, and it's likely the most misunderstood.
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  Speaker 3: Why is it the why? Why is it so?
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  Speaker 4: Well? You know, I think for one thing is when
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  Speaker 4: most people really think about it, they think of all
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  Speaker 4: the ways we're not equal, and so what do you
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  Speaker 4: mean we're equal? You know, because people have different levels
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  Speaker 4: of wealth. Some people are great mathematicians, other people like C. S. Lewis,
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  Speaker 4: basically failed the math part of trying to get into Oxford.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, but he was brilliant in other ways. And
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  Speaker 4: so we're we could think of all the ways we're
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  Speaker 4: different and not equal, and so what do they mean
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  Speaker 4: by that that we're equal? And then I also think
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  Speaker 4: among some conservatives, they have not they don't like it
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  Speaker 4: because they think they equate what the Founders say as
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  Speaker 4: as what the left wing says, well, equal means everyone
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  Speaker 4: needs to be equal in every way. We need to
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  Speaker 4: equalize incomes, we need to take away from some to
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  Speaker 4: just make everything flat, and that's of course not what
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  Speaker 4: the Founders were saying. But then it gets back to
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  Speaker 4: well what did they mean? And we can get into
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  Speaker 4: that if.
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  Speaker 3: You want, well what did they mean?
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  Speaker 4: So it turns out that if you really read through
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  Speaker 4: what the Founders wrote.
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  Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about seven ways that all
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  Speaker 1: humans are equal.
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  Speaker 4: But yeah, go ahead, yeah, yeah, you can identify seven
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  Speaker 4: different ways that what they themselves said they were talking about.
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  Speaker 4: And you know number one is they thought we were
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  Speaker 4: all created by the same God, and they didn't think
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  Speaker 4: belief in God. We can get into this load too.
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  Speaker 4: But they unlike today when many people think, oh, well,
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  Speaker 4: you know God is you know, you can believe in
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  Speaker 4: God or you cannot, and it's just sort of the
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  Speaker 4: subjective belief and feeling. The Founders were part of a
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  Speaker 4: couple thousand years of philosophy and natural philosophy, the beginnings
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  Speaker 4: of natural science that said that no, the belief of
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  Speaker 4: a creator is really an objective truth that reason and
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  Speaker 4: nature point to, just like the Bible. And so when
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  Speaker 4: they said that we're all by the same God, they
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  Speaker 4: thought that was not just a fairy story, that was
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  Speaker 4: an objective truth. So we're all created by the same God.
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  Speaker 4: Humans as a class, unlike say mosquitoes or rocks, we
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  Speaker 4: have reason, we can discuss, we have language, we can
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  Speaker 4: talk about that, and and even really every human culture
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  Speaker 4: we know about has language of some sort, so that
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  Speaker 4: that exercise of reason. We also have morality that we
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  Speaker 4: don't follow it, but we can discuss. I mean, again, last,
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  Speaker 4: I know that the rooster that lives across the street
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  Speaker 4: from my house that bleets out every time of the day,
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  Speaker 4: not just in the morning, is not debating with the
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: fellow chickens around him about moral laws. Human beings do
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: do that. So that's that moral capacity. But they also
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: thought James Wilson, a founder who signed both the Declaration
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: of Independence and the Constitution, wrote about how we have
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: immortal souls, so every human has a soul that survives death.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: Founders believe that. But then and then you know, there's
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: some other things. But then on the other side, one
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: key thing, and this really was a key thing that
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: distinguished us from the French Revolution is they thought humans
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: are sinful, humans are corruptible, So we're equal in good things,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: but no human is so superior to any others that
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: they can rule over other humans like God rules over
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: us and that so that also means that we have
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: to limit government power. And so they thought we were
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: equally fallible. And the Founders were very strong on that.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: And when you compare that, say to the French Revolution,
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: the utopianism of it through the general will that they
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: thought that they could perfect society and didn't have a
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: deep appreciation for humans in you know, sinfulness that could
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: have prevented things like Robespierre or ultimately Napoleon taking over
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: at the end when everything fell apart. So those are
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: just some of the ways and it's really easy. They
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: did think about it. And I'm not going to give
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: away all the book, but you know, even some of
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: the children of the Founders said so, Like I talk
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: about this these letters between John Adams and one of
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: his sons where his son asked, what do you mean
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: that all people are equal? This is just obviously false, dad,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: And John Adams writes back and says, well, no, actually,
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: what all we met was x y Z. And so
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: it's kind of interesting because a lot of people, I
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: think today, they assume when they debate about what the
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: founders meant, that they don't actually go back to what
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: they said. They were really bright, thoughtful people, and they
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: didn't just spout off for no reason. And if you
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: read their writings, not just their public but their private letters,
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: they actually explained it.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And going back to the French Revolution, I was
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: just thinking about Rousseau. Rousseau's philosophy was kind of the
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: progenitor to the French Revolution. And when Rousseau's ideas were
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: basically I mean, he basically said man is basically good,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: and so that and that's the opposite of what our
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: founders said, and so that that's what leads to the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: completely different outcomes that we see that we saw in
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: those revolutions exactly.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, so tell us the story.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, so all men are endowed by their creator with
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: certain unalienable rights. Tell a story about Heidi. I don't
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: know how to pronounce her last name, prisbl.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I looked it up. At some point.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: She was on MSNBC and she said, well, do you
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: know what do you remember what she said.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and then it gets even worse with
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: Tim King sitting United States Senator. Okay, so we can
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: may have, but you know basically that it's you're a
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: Christian nationalist theocrat if you think that rights come from God?
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: And how and and actually fanning the flames of fear
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: that there's still some America to think our rights come
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: from God. But in some ways it's even worse. Tim
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: King sitting United States Senator last year, so after the
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: Heidi political thing, well or Congress was berating some comments
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: that Mark Rubio had made that our rights come from God.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: And he said, that's what Iran believes, and how dare
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: we believe that? Just and this is the sitting one
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: of the sitting United States senators from Virginia, the same
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: place that Thomas Jefferson came from who wrote the declaration
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: about this. You have the sitting senator from Virginia basically
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: claiming that you are an Iranian theocrat. If you think
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: our rights come from.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: God, well, according to him, where do our rights come from?
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Then?
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: That's an interesting question. He did in his colloquis. He
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: didn't really say it, but he did tell how he
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: was a devout Catholic. Well, look, I mean the thing
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: why this is so you know, people might think this
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: is a rhetorical thing, but it really isn't. If you think,
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: I mean, the founder said the rights came from God,
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: and that means that no human being can rightfully take
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: them away. So if rights really are just social convention,
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: then willing neely is just the strongest has the right
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: to do whatever they want. There isn't any But if
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: you think that rights are fundamental and they were given
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: to us by God, then government cannot rightfully violate or
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: take them away. And I actually think you even today
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: in Americans, despite the fact that apparently only four and
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: ten Americans think they come from God, think about the
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: comparison of what happened in most American states during COVID
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: versus what happened in Canada. And there were lots of
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: in my view, things that I talked about in part
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: of the book that happened in America. But if you
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: compare what happened in Canada where they actually jailed pastors,
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: where they did all sorts of things that didn't mostly
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: happen in the United States. And why because Americans are
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: a lot more ornery and they take their rights a
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: lot more seriously. And you know, you think of the
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: slogan during the Revolutionary War, don't tread on me, I mean,
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: or rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. I mean,
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: when you think that your rights are fundamental and they
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: don't come from us, so we don't have the right
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: to either you give them away or or we don't
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: have the right to violate them. That does set a
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: tone for society that that really I think helps protect
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: you against human tyranny.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: Yes, amen to that.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, So, and the next phrases among these are life, liberty,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Now, what what is meant by well.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: What is meant by those three words, and especially the
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: word happy and the pursuit of happiness?
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: What does that mean? And is that just go ahead,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: go ahead?
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: Well, I said, so life means what? And it's interesting
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: just to talk about life, because think about what is
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: the most important thing the government can do. It can
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: protect human life, protect us from killing each other, protect
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: us from crime, protect us from foreign invaders. And the
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: founders really did believe that, and not you don't want
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: a government actually going against that with secret police actually
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: arbitrarily take your lives. Interestingly though, especially in the works
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: of James Wilson, who I wish more people would read again.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: This guy was the probably the most gifted legal theorist
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: at the time of the founding. His opening law lecture
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: that he gave was actually attended by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: John Adams. He was appointed by George Washington as a
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: Justice of the Supreme Court, and he signed both the
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: Declaration and helped draft the Constitution, which is only a
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: handful people did, so he was a big deal. James
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: Wilson talks about that since ultimately life comes from God,
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: that also means we don't actually have the right to
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: take our own lives. So the right to life. And
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: I didn't put this in the book because I found
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: it later. I sort of remembered it, but I didn't
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: find it. But James Wilson also talked about abortion. Oh,
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: I didn't part of the right to life. This is
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: not gonna set now. He didn't understand when that human
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: life begins at conception because they scientifically didn't understand that.
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: But he basically says in the womb, when when when
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: you're stirring that that is life, and that you can't
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: take that life. So he would even apply that. So
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: the pro life people who apply the right to life
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: today to abortion, James Wilson would have agreed with them.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: So okay, So that's one thing. Liberty and pursuit of
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: happiness I think really go together. I'll treat them a
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: little separately. But so liberty is that these capacities for morality,
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: for reason, for invention, for creating things comes from God.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: So that means that no human should be trying to
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: interfere with that. Now, liberty was not license. So the
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: founders and I discussed this in the book. Liberty doesn't
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: mean you have the right to hurt other people, doesn't
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: mean the right that you need you could do really
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: morally obnoxious things. But liberty does mean that for example,
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: and Thomas Jefferson talked about this, that he wanted a
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: government as frugal as possible that basically let people alone
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: so that they could benefit from the fruits of their
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: innocent labors. So, in other words, if if you're going
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: to be an entrepreneur, if you're going to be a
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: small businessman or a large businessman for that matter, or
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: an artist or something you don't want a governments just
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: confiscating all your earnings. You have a natural right because
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: God gave you those capacities, and so if you exercise them,
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: you ought to have the right to enjoy them. So
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: when they talked about liberty, that's the sort of thing
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: they were talking about, also, freedom of speech, freedom of religion,
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: because ultimately they thought wasn't because they were irreligious, they
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: supporred religious freedom. Some Christians today have this idea that
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: religious freedom is somehow anti Christian. That's absurd, and in
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: fact that the strongest supporters of religious freedom during the
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: founding were devout evangelical Christians because they knew that their
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: ultimate duty was to God. And so you don't want
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: government getting in the way of that, because if you have,
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: you know, government is corruptible too. And so once you say, oh,
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: the prince or the head of the government gets to
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: dictate what your religious beliefs are law, and behold, it
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: probably isn't what you consider a true religious belief. So
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: you don't really want to give government that power. So
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: liberty involved the right to be able to earn your
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: own way, to benefit from the fruit of your labor,
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: to express your own beliefs in politics, to worship God,
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: how your conscience dictated, and that flows into I think
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: pursuit of happiness. Now a lot of scholars have talked
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: about this. I didn't go a lot in the book
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: on it, but in most of the Founding that the
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: big three that you had was life, liberty, and property.
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: And so it's kind of interesting that Jefferson and the
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: drafters of this put pursuit of happiness instead. I sort
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: of like that because pursuit of happiness is broader than property. Now,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: I agree with the Founders that you want widely dispersed
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: property ownership, because as C. S. Lewis talked about that,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: it's the man who has some property, who has some
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: sense of independence, who isn't dependent on the government, who
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: can say no to the government, and you stand up
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: for their belief So property is a part of living
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: the good free life, but it's broader than that. And
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: I think if you go back to like the Massachusetts
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: Constitution or the other Founding documents, they did talk a
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: lot about happiness. And unlike today where you think, oh,
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: happiness is just whatever gives you your kicks, no, the
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: Founding generation thought that happiness was tied to virtue and
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: actually tied to your pursuit of God. So I think
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: your religious duties are actually part of happiness, your pursuit
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: of happiness. Now you're not guaranteed worldly happiness here. And
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: that's interesting is that pursuit of happiness, not that you're
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: guaranteed you know, say, physical happiness. But I think that
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: that phrase does encompass the uses of your liberty to
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: things that you find meaningful, to your family, to your faith,
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: and that it's tied to virtue.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I speaking of virtue, you I want to quote.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: You mentioned these two quotes in your book and may
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: you can just comment on them, and they both basically
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: say similar things from George Washington and ben Benjamin Franklin.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: George Washington says, of all the dispositions and habits which
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: lead to political prosperity, and prosperity, religion and morality are
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: indispensable supports. And then Benjamin Franklin says, and this is
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: very this is very popular.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: People will recognize this.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: to secure these rights. Governments are instituted. Wait, governments are
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of the government.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Especially, I think the Franklin is so profound that
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: because today we're actually sold a bill of goods. That well,
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: freedom means freedom from all restraint and freedom from moral
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: restract freedom to do how many spouses either at one
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: time or add seriatum, that you can have just you know,
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: use hallucinogenic drugs, use prostage, you name it. Freedom is
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: freedom of all restraint. But the founder's point was actually
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: that if you want a genuinely free society where you
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: can make your living in the way that you want to,
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: where you can run your family the way you want to,
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: where you can worship God how you see fit, where
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: you can have free speech that that actually takes self control.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: And let me just do sometimes I talk about this
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: in the book, but I would do it when I
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: taught college students would do it sort of thought experiment. Hollywood.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: I know you're down there, but but sometimes like to
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: One of their big examples, iconic examples of of no
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: freedom is the Americans. The archetypal American small town with
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: the prudes and the busy bodies from the churches who
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: are just hyper controlling fundamentalists, and you could just people
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: can think about the Hollywood movies that actually express that.
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: Whereas you know, freedom is to be in this hip
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: urban environment. But let's actually think about this, which is
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: truly more free. If you're living in a small town
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: where you actually know your neighbors and you don't lock
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: your doors because you're not really concerned about your kids
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: can go wherever they want to play because you're not
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: concerned about child molesters or other things happening, and that
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: you try and that people actually when you lose things,
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: they actually return them, which is more free that or
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: say you're in an inner city where you have to
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: triple dead boat lock your door and have twenty four
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: to seven surveillance, and you need to do where your
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: kids aren't twenty four to seven because you know there
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: may be a child molester down the street, there may
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: be who knows, which is really more free. And if
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: you understand that difference, you get what actually the conundrum
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: we're in today and what Franklin was talking about. Only
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: a virtuous people are capable of freedom because if you're
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: not self controlled, as he said, as you become more vicious,
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: you actually need to have masters to control you. And
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: so it's really the complete opposite of what some of
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: our culture tells us is that, you know, liberty is
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: the freedom of all constraints. No, you want to be
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: self controlled so that you don't have to be controlled
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: from the top down.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that explanation.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: And so, okay, you and you have a chapter called
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: a Second American Revolution, and you talk about the Founders
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: owning slaves, talk about slavery.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: How did that?
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: How did they reconcile that, the Founders, and then talk
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: about the how the invention of the cotton gen kind
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of exacerbated the problem.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So just to without getting into everything else in
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: the book, just understand. So part of my book is
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: about the American Founding and then but the rest of
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: it is, well what happened afterwards, the revolt against the
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: American Founding, largely in the name of science. And then
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: at the end I tried to point to good things
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: that are actually pointing back to the Founding. So what
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: happened with slavery? And it's a good question, you know,
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: how did the founders reconcile all men are created equal
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: with slavery. Well, actually they didn't, which is good because
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: they felt guilty about it. And it's really interesting. Most
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: people don't really know this story because we have to
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: have stick figure villains on the left and everyone in
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: the past has to be a stick villain. But in reality,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: after the Declaration of Independence was declared and then the Constitution,
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: eight nine states, you know, most of them were in
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: the North or mid Atlantic, A ballis slavery, and they
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: did so because they saw it. There was a contradiction here.
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: In fact, the founders in their private writies wrote, how
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: can we this is a contradiction. They knew it, and
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: so it actually put pressure on them and so many
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: states a ball of slavery. When we extended America through
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: the Northwest Territory into Ohio, they actually said that that
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: terrictory would be forever free of slavery. These were the
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: same founding generations, and even in the South, who you know.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: I do think there's some culpability of people like Jefferson
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: and Madison who continue to own slaves, but I also
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: think you need to give them credit because Jefferson was
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: troubled by it, and you know, a famous passage he
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: wrote in notes on the state of Virginia is that
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: he basically trembles for his nation when if he thinks,
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: if God is just, and he was actually writing about slavery,
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: you know that he knew that this was a blot.
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: And Jefferson and Madison, to their credit, did actually propose
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: legislation for Virginia even that after a certain date people
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: who were born to slaves would be born into freedom,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: and so it would have been gradual emancipation. It failed, unfortunately,
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: and so but the Founding generation, I think some of
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: them can be criticized for not being diligent enough on that.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: But it still is an amazing story because slavery has existed
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: for most of human history. It still exists in many
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: areas of the world today. The truly amazing thing is
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: that we got rid of it, and that there were
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: so many people who went against their own self interests
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: to realize that this was wrong and they actually tried
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: to do something about it. But why did the things
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: I just talked about that were in the initial decades
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: after the Founding where things were moving towards against slavery,
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: why did that sort of stop in its tracks? And
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: I think there were two reasons I mean, there are
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: always lots of reasons people, but I think two big reasons.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: One is the cotton gin that made it a lot
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: more economically prosperous to and lucrative to have large plantations
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: that relied on hundreds of slaves, and because you could
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: process the cotton a lot more and so you can
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: once you farmed it. So that sort of rejuvenated these
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: industries that depended on slaves. But then there was also
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: an intellectual change just within the few decades after the founders.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: The founders believed in natural philosophy and what today we'd
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: call science. They thought it point to a creator, they
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: thought it pointed to human equality. Well within the early
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: decades of the nineteenth century, you had people who came
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: on the scene, both in America and in Europe that
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: basically said, well, no, science is actually showing that we're
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: fundamentally unequal and that in every potential way. And in fact,
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: they argued for a while that there were separate origins,
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: so that blacks particularly weren't even humans in the way
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: that were sold in the name of science. And this
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: was sort of pre Darwin. And then we could talk
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: about what happened wh darwink Can because he had his
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: own skin on it. But I think those were the
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: reasons that sort of stopped in the tracks. Now, the
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: abolition movement went ahead, but it was more polarizing. At
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: the time of the founding. Most of the founders, even
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: those who ended slaves, did not think it was a
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: good thing. They were embarrassed about it, and most of
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: them thought it should eventually be gotten rid of which
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: is why Jefferson and Madison did try to do what
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: they did. But once the Cottingen manute more lucrative, and
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: then once the scientist got involved in saying, oh no,
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: this isn't a tragedy, this is the way nature has it,
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: so it's dictated by nature, then that changed the debate.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, as you mentioned just mentioned, Darwin
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: changed the debate dramatically when he published on the Origin
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: of Species. When was that eighteen fifty seven, And so
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: let's talk about Darwin a little bit.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: So his.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Ideas about evolution there you let you you get into
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: like different kind of ways.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: His his theory.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Denied many things, and about the declaration and so the
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: one of the first things that it denied was the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: denial of human equality, So talk about that denial.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so many people make a lot. You know that
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: Darwin himself was not pro slavery, and that's true. I
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: mentioned in the book. That's because he lived after William Wilberforce,
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: so basically slavery was already on the out there, so
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: he was reflecting his own society. The key thing, though,
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: Darren's intellectual contribution to this conversation was to say, Okay,
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: there aren't separate origins, so he was better in that
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: he didn't actually say that blacks were a separate animal group,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: I guess, But what he says is, actually we all
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: go back to ape like creatures, and so some like blacks,
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: he was very clear on this, are at the stem
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: of evolution, so they're much closer to our evolutionary ape
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: like ancestors, and others like whites are at the apex.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: We're much further evolved. And he said that that is
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: what you should expect from natural selection, because if you
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: think about it, if if we're not created by say,
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: a benevolent God who actually says, you know, I'm planning
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: human beings to be created in my image, and the
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: only reason we have the capacity that we do as
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: humans is because our ancestors were in an environmental niche
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: that had some survival needs, and so we were evolved
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: just for those survival needs. Darwin's point, and the point
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: of his followers, was there's no reason you should expect
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: that different human groups being subjected to different survival pressures
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: should be anything like equal in any fundamental sense, because
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: it's just a happenstance of history based on the survival
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: needs they had. Of that's the case, that's why they
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: have their capabilities, and they could be wildly different than others,
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: and so off of this the darwinness, it wasn't just Darwin.
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: It was as followers in Germany, it was as followers
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: in America argued that blacks were the lowest part, you know,
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: the lowest part of the latter. In fact, some ernch
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: Heeckel from Germany was one of Darwin's most devoted scientific
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: followers in Germany came up with a graphic of of
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: human invovation that makes very clear that the gap between
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: the lowest human and the highest ape is a lot
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: smaller than the gap between the highest ape and the
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: highest human. And of course who was the lowest human
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: right above a well, it was a black person who
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: had African features. And so this was actually even Stephen J. Gould,
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: who was a noted evolutionist you know in in our
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: lifetimes he's dead now from from Harvard, pointed out that
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: this was earth shattering. So, you know, Darwin was not
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: the first scientific racist. But after the Origin of Species
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: came out, where people bought into this idea that there
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: are lower stages of evolution and that some humans are
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: low on the totem pole and that's where they stay,
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: and that the whites are sort of at the apex.
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: That became tremendously influential and among the leaders, you know,
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: not among the leading scientists in America that the founders
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: of the National Academy of Sciences biled at Harvard, Princeton, Yale.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: This was the standard consensus of the scientific community thanks
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: to Darwin, and so that yes, so that's one of
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: the things. So you actually had people by the latter
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century saying
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: that this idea that all men are created equal is false.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: It's been disproven by science. Today, we have an influential,
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: unfortunately secular conservative atheist named Curtis Jarvin who has been
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: sadly praised in various things by I think our vice
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: president and other things. I'm not saying our vice president
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: believes everything Curtis Jarvin says. But Curtis Jarvin, who actually
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: hates thinks the wrong side won the American Revolution. But
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: another thing that he believes is that this idea that
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: all men are created equal has been most obviously refuted
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: by science. So that idea is still with us. And
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: some of these sort of alt right or groper rights
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: who are spewing lots of vile things. If you read
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: some of their writings, they're actually citing some evolutionary arguments
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: for racism. So this is sort of still with us
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: among I think, still the fringe, thankfully. But so that
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: was one thing, but that wasn't the only thing. I mean,
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: just quickly, you know, Darwin's idea of evolution is it
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: wasn't just change over time, It was that it was
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: not guided. And so he thought that that nature didn't
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: require a creator. And so the founders thought again objectively,
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: nature pointed, through its complexity, through its teleology, its purpose,
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: point to a creator. And Darwin and then his followers
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: that no, actually nature points to the opposite that we
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: don't need a creator. So the Darwinian story, if you will,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: fundamentally contradicted the idea that there's an objective, you know, creator,
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: laws of nature, nature's God, and morality. One of the
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: things Darwin wrote about in his book The Descent of Man,
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: which is one of his sequels to On the Origin
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: of Species, was that morality develops because also of survival
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: needs in any given situation, and so you should expect
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: morality should evolve radically over time, depending on the situation,
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: depending on the survival needs. So you know, sometimes caring
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: for your children might be right thing, sometimes killing them
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: might be right for in fantaside I mean really really,
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: Darwin provide a scientific justification for moral relativism. And so
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: that whole idea of the founder's idea that there was
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: an objective moral order that we could discern that was
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: that was always everywhere true. That was also placed under
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: assault by Darwin and the followers after that, not just Darwin,
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: but his his, his followers and so so human equality,
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: you know, there is no creator. Science refutes that there's
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: a creator. Science refutes human equality, and science refutes the
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: idea that there's an objective moral law. And then one
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: other thing that we're still living with today. Well, if
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: we're fundamentally unequal according to Darwinian, well, then this whole
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: idea that the very end of the part you quoted
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: from the declaration is that because of all this stuff,
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: you know, governments, just governments are based on consent of
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: the government. Why, because human beings, although we're different in
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: many ways, we still are fundamentally equal. And so that
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: means that government can't just be by totalitarian government. It
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: needs to be based on consent. Well, but if human being,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: if most human beings are biologically inferior, why do you
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: have government by consent? And so you actually had the
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: rise in the latter part of the nineteenth century and
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: early twentieth century of the idea that, no, we should
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: be ruled by unelected experts who are exercising scientific expertise
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: in the bureaucracy, and we don't want them accountable even
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: to elected officials, because these are superior great minds and
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: everyone else's inferior. Well, if you want to understand ultimately
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: the roots of what happened in co Or are lots
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: of other things of unelected experts, deep state, deep today
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: it's with this view. And you see among the political
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: scientists in America, the academic ones, people at like Harvard
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: Columbia where they talk about one guy John Burgess talked
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: about this new view of the state and where the
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: state the goal of the state is now the apotheosis
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: of man apotheosis meaning deification, making goblin. So they pitched
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: the claim suddenly of the state and government is so
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: much higher. And they also dissed the idea that there
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: were natural rights. They actually explicitly said, oh, you know,
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: the founders did believe that, but that's outdated because of science,
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: and we don't believe that anymore. So so what we
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: have today, you know, sometimes think, well it just happens,
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: Willy Neely. No, there was a logic and rationale, and
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: the whole discipline of political science bought into this in
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: the end of the nineteenth century. And so you sort
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: of the good biblical aphorism, you you know, reap what
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: you sew.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, exactly.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: And of course Darwin also his ideas were was an
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: assault on human exceptionalism as well.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: Right, yeah, that's part of really the attack on that
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: that humans aren't equal, because we should be clear that
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: part of the case for human equality is human exceptionalism.
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: In other words, it's not just comparing humans to each other,
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: it's comparing humans to the rest of creation. I mean,
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: whatever differences you and I or other people may have,
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: they pale in comparison to our differences with the mosquito
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: or rock. But in the Darwinian sense, they tried to
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: maybe not with the rock, but with the mosquito or dogs,
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: and I love dogs or cats. You know, they tried
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: to really. I mean, last year I talked about we
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: have this new book called The Arrogant Ape that a
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: primatologist who basically tries to say that the idea that
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: humans are exceptional is just is ludicrous and evil. And
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: the odd thing is she starts the book off with
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: a quote from Shakespeare, completely oblivious to the idea that
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: if you want to have a good understanding of what
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: difference humans are from that there are signific differences. Shakespeare
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: is a great example. And so she excites Shakespeare in
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: a book that she's arguing that there are really no
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: fundamental differences between that humans aren't exceptional.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: The blind leading the blind.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: Now, how did Darwin's ideas also affect because I mean it.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Rousseau's ideas affected this as well. But how did Darwin's
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: ideas affect crime and punishment?
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so again Darwin. And you know, I'm not
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: trying to see monocausal that it all goes back to Darwin.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: But Darwin was part of a larger movement to try
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: to understand human activity and choices as just really the
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: result of blind matter and motion and these these blind
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: biological or hereditary forces that we really have no control
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: overistic determinism, scientific determ terminism, materialistic determinism. So you know,
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: the abuse excuse. You know, if you commit crime, you
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: really have no choice because either your heredity or your
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: environment or your biology just it forces you to do that.
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: And Donalin didn't write a lot about that. He wrote some,
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: but in his private notebooks we know he actually worried
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: about this a little bit that that you know, that
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: what he was talking about meant that there really was
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: no human accountability. It's interesting in his private notebooks he
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: said the one reason why he didn't really worry about
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: his idea of that determinism would really be awful is
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: that he didn't think most ordinary people would believe it.
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: He thought it was true, but that they wouldn't they
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: wouldn't believe that we were just determined. But of course
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: what happens if a society actually does embrace his beliefs. Well,
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: we've learned about that. So so, yes, that the whole
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: idea that criminals are not responsible for anything they do
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: really does come out of that mindset. And it's hard
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: to have a free, you know, or just society if
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: you can't hold people accountable, if you treat people really
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: like animals who can't make choices.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, obviously in California that this this
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: whole the treatment of crime and punishment is very dark.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: It's very Darwinian slash Brusilian.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: But what about so.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Obviously Darwin's ideas affected how we understand life and death.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: What is what is this You talk about this in
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: the book, this phrase embryonic recapitulation.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: What does that mean?
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, So the idea is that as we go
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: through developing from conception to the baby, that the the
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: fetus or the embryo uh goes through the history of
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: evolution so that they recapitulate, that they replay the history
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: of evolution. So that means, you know, the claim of
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: Darwinian biologists was so if you're early in your embryonic development,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: it's like the fish stage. And then and so then
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: if you if you kill the baby at that point,
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: well it's just like killing a fish. And this was
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: a popularized argument from Ernest Heckle up to people like
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: in our own Age of the late Christopher Hitchens made
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: this argument, or or oh, the guy who did the
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: original Cosmos series, the physicists, Carl Carl Sagan made argument, So,
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: so this has been and leading geneticists, this has been
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: junk science. Fortunately, most scientists today do know that this
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: is junk scize, but it still keeps popping up. But
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: the idea was we replayed the history of evolution in
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: the womb so that you can you know, if you
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: kill the baby in the womb before they're actually born,
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: well there are actually some other lower animal stage that
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: they're going through, so therefore it's not important. It was
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: really junk science even when it was proposed, and it was,
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: but it was tremendously influential, and people made this as
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: an argument for abortion being okay.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: And yes, and I like picking on Darwin because he
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: really just had such a terrible impact on on our
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: culture and life. But you talk about I didn't know that.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: I get Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, was recognized as the
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: founder of eugenics.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: Well, and by the way, it comes from.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: The Greek word, the Greek root word meaning good at
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: good in birth.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so the idea was, let's try to well. Darwin
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: set out the problem in Descent of Man. He said, look,
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: the only way reason we have good capacities, again, it's
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: not because we were designed that way by a creator,
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: is because through ruthless natural selection that killed off all
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: the week and defectives. That's the only way we are
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: So so death, famine, disease, that's what created humans as
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: the apex. So if that's really true, what about the
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: modern world where you have things like hospitals where you
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: try to save the sick, help the poor, the people
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: that nature would have killed off. And Darwin writes about
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: this in The Decendive Man. He says, no one who
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: was attended to the breeding of domestic animals. Basically that's
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: almost a direct quote. But then he goes on to say, well,
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: you know, they'll understand that what we're doing with humans
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: is going to ruin us basically, and so you know,
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: inoculating people against smallpox, that was another view, helping the poor,
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: saving the sick. That was going to destroy humans because
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: we were counteracting the only thing that created us, which
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: was ruthless natural selection. So if that's your view, you
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: have two choices. Well, you could go back to the
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: law of the jungle. But Darwin himself thought, well, you know,
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: our sense of sympathy won't allow us to do that,
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: and so he was ambivalent. And I'd say the genesis
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: thought that too, So so they said, well, maybe we
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: can mimic something like natural selection. That's kinder and gentler.
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: And that was eugenics. Let's find ways to stop the unfit,
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: however you define that to breed, and then let's find
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: ways to breed a race of Superman and the and
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: that became the eugenics movement. And the people who regarded
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: as unfit were largely people who are non white or
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: poor whites. They were people who may have easily you know,
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: untreatable can dislike dyslexia. They were I mean, it was just, yeah,
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: they categories all sorts of people as well, let's stop
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: them from reproducing. Let's sterilize them by force, or let's
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: segregate them into categories. Now America never did what they
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: did in Germany, but this was the same. These were
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: actually the same ideas, which is, in Germany they started
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: with force sterilization and then they Most people don't know
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: that the gas chambers they all used on the Jews
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: were actually first used in their killing of supposedly mentally
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: handicapped children as their euthanasia program, and so the and
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: again America didn't go that far, fortunately, but we did
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: sterilize tens of thousands of people against the well, many
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: of whom today would have been considered perfectly normal. For example,
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: the case that got to the Supreme Court Carrie Buck.
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: She was actually pregnant because she was raped by someone,
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: but they then blamed her and they decided that, well,
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: she was descended from poor white trash. Basically, therefore she
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: must be genetically so the doctors, who never even saw
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: her but just looked at her pedigree, determined that she
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: must be genetically defective, and so then her tubes need
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: to be taught so she can't have kids. In the
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: nineteen twenties late twenties like nineteen twenty seven and the
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: Supreme Court. Good social darminist material us Oliver Wendell Holmes
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: wrote the opinion that even many people have heard the
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: phrase three generations of imbeciles are enough, by which he
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: meant that, you know, she came from poor white trash.
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: She was poor white trash, and that her baby was
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: poor white trash. The interesting thing is none of that
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: was true. Her her baby, who grew up was actually
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: when she went to school, was regarded by her teachers as,
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: if anything, maybe kind of gifted and smart the baby.
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: That the child died from a childhood disease later but
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: for the time she was in school, was not meant.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: And there was no indication that Carrie Buck was really
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: mentally out of either and in fact, later in life,
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: I mean she read, she wrote letters, she was in
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: the church choir, She had a couple of husbands because
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: she outlived her husband, so she was a faithful wife
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: and served in the church choir. There was nothing mentally
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: effective about her. But these scientists said, because of her pedigree,
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: she must be because of its sort of Darwinian mindset,
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: and so she was never able to have to and
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: there were lots of cases this. They're just tragic of
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: people who were actually not defective at all, who were
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: who were stopped from having kids by force by our
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: government in the name of eugenics, of Darwinian eugenics.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: Wow, it's incredible.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: So Okay, the last thing, last thing we'll talk about,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: the last chapter of your book is where do we
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: go from here? Leave us with a hopeful note, because
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about all the bad stuff. Give us
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: something to give us some hope.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: So what I would say is this the penultimate chapter,
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: right before that last one, I lay out how modern
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: science and what we're learning from it is actually pointing
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: back again to the truths of the founders. It's plenty, even.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Meyer who's been on the show, and you've got to
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: get the god hypothesis and read that.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: But yeah, there is a creator.
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: We are exceptional. You know, morality is actually real, and
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: actually there's some really interesting evidence. We don't have time
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: to go into it, which is great because the people
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: haven't assent to get the Book of Human Equality. I mean,
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: the ideas of significant genetic differences between different racial ethnic
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: groups is false. The idea that you know, some some
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: groups are biologically programmed to violence is false. And there's
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: a lot of research on this now, and I cite
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: a fair amount of it. And so if you're wanting
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: to know how science today is actually pointing back to
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: the truths of our founding, got my book and reach
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: out the next to last chapter.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: I love it and we're going to leave it there.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: The book is endowed by our creator, the Bible, Science
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: and the Battle for America Soul, John g.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: West. Thank you. When is the book available?
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: It's available now, so okay.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: Goody good yeah March twenty six.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: I think, all right, Well, thank you for coming on
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: the show, and guys, please go out and get or
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: not go out, just go online and buy the book.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: And because as I said the intro, it's fascinating, there's
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: so many things in there that I was I just
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: was like, why didn't I ever know this?
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: So get the book. Thank you John.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Gus for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: Thank you Beckett for a great conversation.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Beckett
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: Cook Show. Your support makes this content possible. All episodes
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: of The Beckett Cook Show are also available on YouTube.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: For more information about Beckett and his ministry, visit his
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: website at Beckettcook dot com.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you to the team at life Audio for their
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: partnership with us. If you go to lifeaudio dot com
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: you will find more faith centered podcasts about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: and more