- Let me also explain to
you and your audience,
how the Founding Fathers
as a whole understood
the issue of slavery,
because it's simply not true
that all Founding Fathers
were slaveholders,
that's just not true.
(dramatic music)
- I'm Dave Rubin, and
this is "The Rubin Report"
reminder guys, to subscribe
to our YouTube channel
and click that pesky
notification bell.
Joining me today, is a Professor
of Political Philosophy
at Clemson University and
author of the new book,
"America's Revolutionary Mind:
A Moral History of the
American Revolution
and the Declaration That Defined
It," C. Bradley Thompson,
welcome back to
"The Rubin Report."
- Hi Dave, great
to see you again.
- It's good to have you Brad
well, we have to do what we
legally have to do first,
which is I have to ask you
how you're coping with COVID?
How's it going down
at the University?
How's life what's going
on with the school
and the rest of that stuff?
Before we get into the book.
- Sure, everything's fine here.
The university has been closed
now for about two months.
We finished the last month
of the semester or so online,
which was new and different,
but it actually
worked pretty well.
I teach a seminar
with 10 students
and we did it by zoom
and that was fine.
But otherwise I've been
setting every day, all day
in my, what I call
my redneck office,
which is outside here
in warm South Carolina
and working on
writing my next book.
- You're a capitalist,
I know that.
You teach about capitalism,
you're a free market guy,
how do you feel about
the state of capitalism
and the free markets in
the midst of this lockdown?
- Well, I don't feel
very good about it.
I'm actually genuinely worried
about where this
country is headed.
And I don't mean just the
current economic crisis,
I mean, it is ironic to me
that that China passed along
this coronavirus to
the United States.
And in response,
our government is turning more
into the Chinese government.
We're becoming considerably
more authoritarian
than we ever have been before.
And I'm genuinely concerned
about the freedoms and rights
of ordinary everyday people
to go about their business,
to work and to live their lives.
- So I've had a
bunch of different
senators and economists
talking about, what to do with
stimulus and all this stuff
from Marco Rubio and Rand Paul,
and a couple other people,
what would be the sort of
pure capitalist approach?
We've got, something
creeping up to now,
40 million unemployed people,
we're not letting enough
people go back to work
some of the States
are doing things
a little bit differently,
but as you know, I'm
here in California where,
we're still in lockdown now
they're telling us till August,
even though we
flattened the curve,
we did what they asked
yet they seem to still roll
out these draconian measures.
What's the right policy if
you believe in free markets,
if you believe in capitalism
and you believe in
human ingenuity?
- Yeah, I think the simplest
and the first and foremost
thing is you government,
I think probably has
an appropriate role
to protect those who
are most vulnerable,
to protect the elderly.
And I think veterans
facilities and old folks homes
could have been on lockdown,
but I don't think that
the rest of the country
should have been on lockdown
and we are free rational
individuals and we have rights.
And each of us has to
assess the risks ourself
and we have to take
the appropriate actions
that we think will protect
ourselves, our families,
our coworkers, and the
members of our community.
And I think Americans have by
and large done exactly that.
I mean, it's been remarkable,
what ordinary, everyday
free people can do
to protect themselves, I mean,
nobody wants the coronavirus.
And I think the Americans
without the government
have done an extraordinary job
in taking the necessary steps
to prevent getting it.
- So what do you think the
role of the government then is
at the state level
and the federal level?
What do you think the role is
when they're not letting
people go to work?
Is it to bail out everybody,
is it to help small
business, big business,
some combination thereof,
is there a role at all?
- Yeah, I don't think that
there's really very much role
certainly for paying the
American people not to work
and for all of the bail outs.
I mean, because I would
have had a lockdown
that would have been
much, much less draconian.
And so therefore the economy
would've not been burdened
by this and ordinary,
everyday Americans
would have just
continued working.
- All right, so let's
shift to your book
because some of the things that
you talk about in the book,
actually, probably everything
you talk about the book,
we can frame around
sort of what's going on
with us right now.
And as I was reading
it, I thought,
"Man, this guy hits
every buzzword that
any meaning to me."
But I'm just gonna read
the first couple sentences
of the inner flap 'cause
I think that really
can almost set us off
for the whole rest
of the conversation.
'Cause you're really trying
to do two things in this book
that I think you do quite well.
So it says "The purpose
of this book is two-fold,
"to elucidate the
logic, principles
"and significance of "The
Declaration of Independence"
"as the embodiment
of the American mind,
"and to shed light
on what John Adams
"once called "the real
American Revolution".
"That is the moral
revolution that occurred
"in the minds of the people
in the 15 years before 1776."
So that's the part that I'm
super interested in right now,
because it seems to
me in 2020 with corona
and everything else that we
are in some sort of idea,
churning state right now
that may be could 15 years
from now, we'll go back and go,
"Whoa, this is where a lot of
these ideas actually started."
So let's start with
the first part though.
"The Declaration
of Independence"
as the embodiment of
"The American Mind."
Can you talk about
that a little bit?
- Yeah, sure.
So in 1825, just before he died,
Thomas Jefferson wrote a famous
letter in which he described
the object of "The
Declaration of Independence"
as an expression of
"The American Mind."
And that statement
has always struck me.
So that indicates that "The
Declaration of Independence"
is a kind of summing up.
It tells us what Americans
were thinking in 1776.
It tells us what they thought
their moral and political
principles were.
And the declaration lays
out four self-evident truths
and I think those four
self-evident truths
are at the heart
and soul of what
the American Revolution
was all about
and subsequently what the
United States of America
has always been.
So it is the declaration
is the heart and soul
of the United States.
It provides the
moral foundation.
So it's on the one hand,
it's a summing up of the
principles of the revolution,
but it's more than that.
It's also a statement of who
and what we are as a people,
it's at the heart and
soul of the philosophy
that I call Americanism.
- So you mentioned those
self-evident truths
that we hold these truths
to be self-evident.
That's what it says in "The
Declaration of Independence".
Why is in and of itself,
is that so important?
This, we hold these
truths to be self-evident
that we don't have to relitigate
that some things are
because they are.
- Yeah, so I think the first
and most important thing
to note Dave, is that "The
Revolutionary Generation"
actually believed in
the concept of truth.
They believed that there
are certain moral principles
that are objectively,
absolutely, permanently
and universally true.
And that is very
different from the world
in which we live today.
So in 2016--
- Can you lay out
some of those principles just
so we can put them in contrast
to kind of where
we're at right now?
- Yeah, so I mean, the
first thing to say is
we live in a postmodern age.
In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary
described its Word of
the Year as "post-truth."
And "Time Magazine" ran a
cover asking the question
"Is truth dead?"
So in 21st century America,
we no longer believe in
the very concept, 'truth.'
And that is
dramatically different
from what "The Revolutionary
Generation" believed.
They, as I said, they
believed in the concept truth
that there are absolute,
certain, morally,
universal principles and
the particular principles
that they believed in the
four self-evident truths
of the declaration,
which are contained in
the second paragraph.
I think each one of
them can be summed up
in one word and they
would be first equality,
second, rights, third,
consent, and fourth revolution.
Now you have to read
the second paragraph
to get the full flavor of
those four self-evident truths.
But that is the core of
what Thomas Jefferson
referred to as in my
view, "The American mind."
- So let's preempt the haters
who will say, "Wait a minute,
"how could a quality be in there
"because not everyone
was created equal,
"we know men and
women were not equal,
"we know these were slave
owners, et cetera, et cetera?"
We've talked about this
a little bit before
when you were on
the show last time,
but can you unpack that
for us a little bit?
- Yeah, so that's, it's
both a complicated,
and obviously now a
controversial subject,
particularly in the light
of the New York
Times's 1619 Project
So I'm sure your audience
and you, of course,
you're very familiar
with The 1619 Project
The purpose of which is to
argue that America was founded
not in 1776, but rather in 1619
when the first slaves were
brought to the United States.
And what that means of course,
is that the United States
is founded on slavery,
which therefore means
that it is by definition
immoral and evil, right?
That is in sum what The
1619 project is all about.
But America's Revolutionary
Founders in 1776
rejected the idea of slavery.
But let me unpack that because
that's obviously complicated.
- [Dave] Yeah.
- So the first thing to note
is that in 1776, slavery was
the norm around the world.
There had always been
slavery through all time
over all continents.
Slavery had universally been
accepted around the world.
The second thing to
note is that in 1776,
no Founding Father supported
slavery as an institution.
They regarded it as what
they called a necessary evil.
And the emphasis has to
be put on the word "evil."
Now take Thomas
Jefferson, for instance,
he clearly, and explicitly
States that slavery is an evil,
immoral institution, why?
Because it violates
the doctrine of rights.
He also believed that
slavery was an inherently,
corrupting
institution, all right.
So that's what's important
to say at the outset.
Now, let me also explain
you and your audience,
how the Founding
Fathers as a whole
understood the issue of slavery,
because it's simply not true
that all Founding Fathers
were slaveholders,
that's just not true.
And so you can divide the
revolutionary generation,
I would say, into four camps.
So first there were Founding
Fathers like John Adams,
for instance, Samuel Adams,
who never owned a slave
and were morally
opposed to slavery.
And then there's a second camp.
People like Benjamin
Franklin and John J
who created the first
anti-slavery organizations
in the United States, but
earlier in their lives,
they had been slaveholders,
but certainly they came
to condemn slavery.
And then you get people
in the third category
like George Washington,
who yes was a slaveholder
his whole life,
but upon his death freed
his slaves in his will.
And then finally,
there's the hard category
consisting of people
like Patrick Henry
and Thomas Jefferson
who owned slaves and
who did not abolish
or did not free their
slaves upon their deaths.
So how are we to evaluate that?
I think the first thing
to say is that both
say Patrick Henry
and Thomas Jefferson,
as I've already
indicated with Jefferson,
were adamantly opposed to
the institution of slavery.
If you read their
private correspondence,
they lamented slavery.
They saw themselves
as morally culpable,
but they didn't
abolish their slaves
and the institution of slavery,
I think for two primary reasons.
The first... Actually
I'd say three reasons.
The first is that
they thought slavery
would eventually
die a natural death.
About that, they were mistaken.
They could not have
imagined in 1776,
the invention of the cotton gin.
Secondly, both Henry
and Thomas Jefferson
were deeply concerned
about what I call
the post-emancipation problem.
And by the post
emancipation problem,
what I mean is it's
the question of
all right, So we free
the slaves today,
which is the morally right
thing to do, but then what?
And Jefferson, himself
was deeply concerned
about the possibility,
the very real possibility
of a race war in the Southern,
particularly in the
slave majority States.
So the question is how
do you free your slaves
without creating
any kind of race war
between whites and blacks?
So, I mean, these
were the big issues.
And then the last thing
I would say, Dave,
is it is important and I
try to do this in my book,
and that is to hold like Thomas
Jefferson, morally culpable.
He was a slave owner, he
didn't free his slaves.
And part of the reason
he didn't free his slaves
is because of his own personal
habits, his lifestyle.
Jefferson lived high
and when he died,
he died in debt.
And as a result of living
the lifestyle that he did,
he didn't have the resources
he thought to free his slaves.
So we have to judge someone
like Thomas Jefferson
as morally culpable, of that
there can be no question.
- Yeah, so it's interesting.
We talked about this last time,
but, when you visit Monticello,
which I've been to
probably five or six times,
which was his
estate in Virginia,
they spend, when you go
on the tour, they spend
what I would say is almost a
disproportionate amount of time
talking about slavery,
which in a weird way,
even though it feels
disproportionate
it's sort of like, we're
not shying away from this,
I mean, they are
very open about it.
And it does go to the complexity
that they're not saying
he's not culpable
or anything like that.
Are you ever concerned that
when you write a book like this
and when you talk
about these great minds
that founded the country, that
so much of the conversation
gets funneled to
the slavery issue,
not to diminish the importance
of discussing it, obviously,
but that's so much of it
seems to go in that direction
because of the way we look
through a racial lens in 2020,
or at least the media
does, or many of us do.
- I am concerned about it
because it's not what defined
the American Revolution,
and it's not what defines
the American Founding.
In fact, I would argue
just the opposite.
So rather than actually
lamenting the fact that
it always comes up, I
take it as an opportunity
to tell people that ""The
Declaration of Independence""
authored by Thomas Jefferson
is the single greatest
document in human history
that led to the
abolition of slavery.
And in the decades
immediately after
the publication of
the declaration,
the Northern States, in fact,
every single Northern Sate
between 1776 and 1803
passed manumission laws,
where they put in place laws
that would lead to the gradual
emancipation of slavery.
And then at the federal
level, the federal government
in 1787 passed the
Northwest ordinance,
which prevented the
extension of slavery
into the Northwest territory,
which was the land West of
the Appalachian Mountains
through Ohio and Indiana.
And then secondly, there
was the prohibition
in the constitution of
the Atlantic Slave Trade
ending in 1808.
So given the time, given
the reality on the ground,
they did, I think as
much as was possible,
given the circumstances, right?
So it's a hard question
it's complicated,
but in my view, in the end,
the Founding Fathers
are vindicated
by the principles
that they enunciated
which led...
And the United States
is in many ways,
I mean, it's history
of antislavery
is simply one of the great
stories of American history
through the 19th century.
And so, yes, we need to
tell the story of slavery,
but we also need to tell
the equally important story
of how and why slavery was
ended in the United States.
- So I want to back up to
those self-evident truths
because it's one of the topics
that I'm actually most
interested in right now
and I write a little
bit about in my book
that there has to be
something outside of us
to organize a society.
Do you know how much
sort of internal arguing
they had as to what
those self-evident
truths were actually
and how they all arrived
at what they were?
- Yeah, that's a great question.
So I would say that
the principle division
amongst colonial Americans
in the 1760s and in the 1770s
was between American Patriots
and the so-called Loyalists
or American Tories.
That's the great division.
And in the end, they had really
very different conceptions
of what America ought to be.
And they had very
different conceptions
of the underlying moral
principles of the United States.
But once "The Declaration
of Independence" was passed,
that disagreement became moot.
And I think what's
most important
and the story that I
try to tell in my book
is the story of how and
why American Patriots
came to search for, discover
and develop, the principles
that would ultimately
be elucidated
in "The Declaration
of Independence".
And so going back to
your first question
and the two-fold
purpose of my book.
So on the one hand,
yes, the book is about "The
Declaration of Independence".
It's a close textual
analysis of the declaration,
particularly of the four
self-evident truths.
But the book actually
in the end, Dave,
is about a lot more than just
"The Declaration
of Independence".
It's about "The American Mind,"
and it's about the
deepest causes and meaning
of The American Revolution.
So, as I said, the declaration
is a summing up of
those principles.
But the real question,
the really fascinating
part of the story
is how the Americans
came to those principles.
Because they didn't
hold them necessarily
in say 1760, right?
These were principles.
And let's take any one of, of
the four self-evident truths,
equality, rights,
consent, and revolution.
These were principles
that the revolutionaries
discovered and developed.
So for me, the key year is 1765.
And 1765 is the year in which
the Stamp Act was passed.
And that's the moment when
everything in America changes.
Now the second quotation
that really drives
my interpretation
of the revolution as a whole
in addition to the one
by Thomas Jefferson,
describing "The Declaration
of Independence",
is one by John Adams.
And John Adams late in
life in trying to describe
to a friend what the causes
of the revolution were.
He says that the revolution
was not the war
for independence.
The true American
revolution, he says,
was put into effect
in the 15 years
before a shot was ever fired
at Concord and Lexington.
And the revolution, the true
American Revolution, he says,
was a moral revolution in
the minds of the people.
So that's what my book is really
about, the moral revolution
that occurred in the minds
of the American people.
And Adam's statement is
supported by Thomas Paine,
who at that time also
in describing the causes
and meaning of the
American Revolution
said that because of
the American Revolution,
the American people, he
said here with new ears,
see with new eyes and
think new thoughts.
And the new thoughts he said,
had to do with the doctrine
of individual rights.
It's the discovery of the
doctrine of natural rights
by the Americans that really
is the most important,
I think, revolutionary moment.
And so what my book then does is
it takes each one of the
four self-evident truths,
equality, rights,
consent, and revolution,
and it gives a kind of
intellectual history over,
I devote two chapters
to each of the four
self-evident truths.
And I trace a kind of
intellectual history
of, let's say the idea
of equality or rights
from the late 17th century,
from the English
philosopher, John Locke,
up through the
early 18th century.
But then really I spend
most of the time in the book
discussing how the Americans
developed these ideas
during the 1760s and
during the 1770s.
And that's really how
the book is framed
and that's really the
story that it's telling
how the Americans
discovered these principles.
- So we did equality, I want
to hit on the other three more.
But first as they were
debating these things,
one of the things that I
talk about all the time
is they were saying, there
are truths outside of us.
And then they're saying
these are God given rights.
And then also we're
separating church and states.
That concept is,
is pretty profound,
at least in our modern times
that men could do
something like that.
Where they all sort
of on board that
was there any pushback
that we can't,
well, it's church and state,
certainly there was pushback,
but that we can't say that
there are truths outside of us,
it will lead to anarchy
or something like that.
- Well, I think it's true to say
that every single
American Revolution
believed in the idea, as
I said earlier, of truth,
of absolute objective, certain
permanent universal truths.
But the question is what is
the source of those truths?
- [Dave] Right.
- That's the key question.
I can also tell
you that virtually
every single American
Founding Father
believed that for instance,
the concept of rights
was grounded in nature.
And by nature, I mean,
nature out there, right?
You look out into the
world and you see nature
and one of the really
important things
that the Founding
Fathers did was
they adapted the ideas of
17th century,
English scientists,
and philosophers like Francis
Bacon in his Novum Organum.
And Sir Isaac Newton in
his Principia Mathematica,
and John Locke, in his Essay
Concerning Human Understanding,
And they took the
enlightenments ideas
of the laws of nature, the
scientific laws of nature.
And they attempted to
apply them to man, right?
And they asked the question,
are there moral laws of nature?
Which means laws that
are absolute permanent
and universal, right?
That you can look out into the
world and you can identify.
And so, in order to
discover those moral laws
and rights of nature, then you
have to study human nature.
And so all of America's
Founding Fathers
were students of
the enlightenment.
They believed that
there were moral laws
and rights of nature
that could be discovered
by examining human nature.
The more difficult question
and where you do
see some division
is, I think it's
true to say that
most of the Founding Fathers
were practicing Christians.
And so therefore they
believed that the laws
and rights of nature we're
grounded in an ultimate source.
And that ultimate source
of course, was the being
as he's called in "The
Declaration of Independence".
Now, but it's also the case
that not all of the
Revolutionary Founders
were practicing Christians.
And so they discovered the laws
and rights of nature in nature.
And they didn't
go the next step.
But the most important
thing to remember
is that they all believed
in the moral laws
and rights of nature, and
nature is the key term there.
- So with all of this in mind,
you're talking about
the enlightenment
and how they were
incorporating these ideas
and, had traveled,
literally across the world
to form this new nation
in a weird way, was this
sort of timing is everything
that made America so great
that it was sort of
following the enlightenment,
finding a new land like
there was the opportunity
and in many ways had the timing
been a little bit different
and they wouldn't have been
able to find this new land
right then?
That these ideas really
never would have taken root
the way they have.
- No, I think that's
right, all right?
So these ideas never
really quite took root
at least socially and
politically in the old world
where those ideas
came from, right?
So there is something about
the American experience,
the American experience
of leaving Europe
and discarding all of the
old world manners and mores
and institutions ideas
and starting de Novo
starting in a new place.
And they were able to
put into effect ideas
that they never really
could have put into practice
in the old world.
Now, eventually, beginning
with the French Revolution
and then over the course
of the following century,
many of these ideas were
eventually put into practice
in the old world,
but you should view America
as a laboratory, right?
A laboratory where
free men and women come
and they are able to experiment
socially and politically,
and they are able
to put into practice
ideas that they simply they
would not have been able
to put into practice in Europe.
And so I think
it's a combination
of these ideas coming
to the new world
and then the fact that they
have a blank slate, right?
They get to begin with a
Tabula rasa that is America,
which was not
possible in Europe.
And so it is a kind
of fortuitous meeting
and was one of the
ways I think about it.
When I think about
what America is,
there was kind of a
fortuitous meeting
of the ideas of "The
Declaration of Independence",
which passed through
the Cumberland gap
after the revolution and
where American pioneers
like Davy Crockett
and Daniel Boone
were able to
implement those ideas
in a place that had
no institutions.
So it was an extraordinarily
fortuitous meeting
of both ideas
and a place that had no
heritable institutions.
- It's funny 'cause it
almost sounds like a miracle
in a lot of ways, that all
of these things came together
as these people are
traversing the new world,
and they're having
this awakening
and that's why at the
beginning of this conversation.
I sort of likened it to what I
think is happening right now.
I sense, although it feels
very authoritarian right now
in draconian and kind of scary,
especially, if you're in
California where I am.
It's like there are
people waking up,
I think people are
suddenly realizing
what individual rights are,
what personal responsibility is.
We may not see the fruits of
that in the next election,
but, if this all goes
according to plan,
I suppose you would say, well
we'll see the fruits of that
in about 15 years.
- Yeah, I think
that's probably right.
I certainly hope it's right.
I still believe,
and I do write about
this a lot in the book.
So one of the key
concepts in the book
is this idea of the
spirit of liberty.
And that's one of the
key moral concepts.
I think of the
American Revolution was
what I call the American
Spirit of Liberty.
And I don't think any people,
in any place at any time,
anywhere in the world
has had what I call
this Spirit of Liberty.
I mean, there's no other way
to explain the American reaction
to the Stamp Act in 1765
without understanding what
the Spirit of Liberty was.
I mean, if you think
about what the Stamp Act
or the Sugar Act or the
Townshend Acts were,
I mean, they were having a
certainly compared to today,
these were relatively small
taxes on the American people,
but it wasn't just the taxes.
And this is actually
directly comparable
to the United States of today.
So you can think about what the
British government was doing
to the colonists in the
1760s, in the 1770s,
as something akin to
the British deep state,
the British deep state
not only taxing and
regulating the colonists,
but imposing
draconian regulations
and forced by the military
on the American people.
And so it's not just,
it's not just the rallying cry,
no taxation without
representation.
No, the American people
really saw a much larger
sort of web of laws
and regulations
that were being imposed by this
kind of British deep state.
And it ignited in them,
I mean, the Americans
during this period,
they were sort of overwhelmed
by this kind of, and Edmund
Burke, the British statesman
speaks of the American
Spirit of Liberty.
He had never seen
anything like it.
And so the Stamp Act
was like a trip wire
that the American stepped over
and it ignited the
Spirit of Liberty.
And the Spirit of Liberty
is first and foremost,
a recognition of power
and what power can do
to ruin the lives of people.
So the American
revolutionaries understood,
I mean, there are
basic operating premise
is that power corrupts
and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.
They understood that principle
to the core of their being.
And the second they saw,
even the slightest
intrusion of political power
on their lives, either
in the form of taxes
or regulations or
British troops,
the trip wire was hit and
they reacted immediately.
And I do not believe that the
American Spirit of Liberty
in 2020 is dead.
I think we are seeing the
American Spirit of Liberty
being enacted by all
kinds of Americans
all across the country,
particularly those Americans
who have been forced by the
government to not work, right?
So in many ways you could
say that our situation
in May of 2020 is
considerably worse
in terms of our rights and
liberties than it was in 1765.
And I do think ordinary
everyday Americans
are ready to stand
up for their freedom.
- Yeah, well, I love that, I
love that you're seeing it too,
and it's not just rattling
around in my brain,
but I, I keep telling people,
I'm seeing it in Los Angeles
when I walk around now
and I'm walking, my dog
and neighbors come up to me
and they know who I
am and they'll say,
"You know, Dave, I'm starting
to think about things
"a little differently."
And you know, this is the
bastion of LA progressivism
over here so I do
think there are
some good things happening.
So let's go back to
those four things.
So we talked about equality,
we talked about rights,
let's talk about consent.
- Yeah, so it consent was also
one of the early rallying
cries of the revolution.
So the most famous
rallying cry in 1765,
"No taxation without
representation."
Representation is the idea
that our government officials
have received the consent
of ordinary everyday people
to make laws for them.
But the purpose of these laws
is to protect the
rights of individuals.
So the third self-evident
truth of the declaration,
that what I call the
so-called consent truth
says that to secure
these rights,
governments are instituted
among men, right?
So it says that the
purpose of government,
the sole purpose of government
is to protect the
rights of individuals.
It does not say that the
purpose of government,
unlike certain
conservatives today,
it does not say that the
purpose of government
is to promote, let's say virtue.
It says it's to protect rights.
That is to say,
to create spheres of
freedom for individuals.
But the key though, is that
at the heart of the principle
of consent is the idea
of self ownership.
It says that each and every
man and woman owns himself,
we are self sovereign.
We are self-owning and
therefore self-governing.
And because we
are, self-governing
a legitimate government
only receives its legitimacy
if it is based on the consent
of each and every individual.
Now it doesn't mean
unanimous consent,
but it, in the context
of the United States,
it's majority consent,
but we all consent to live
by the rule of the majority,
which of course has its problems
because majority's can
often be tyrannical.
And this is precisely the
point that James Madison
makes in the 10th
Federalist Essay.
So there's always
a delicate balance
between between consent and
the protection of rights
but consent really is
one of the core principles
of the revolution
and it's one of the
core principles of
American civic life.
- So you mentioned something
that's like bouncing
around a lot on Twitter
over the last couple of months,
that a certain set of
conservatives think that
it really is to protect virtue
or a certain sense of
morality, something like that.
What would you say to
those guys when they say,
"Well, if we don't
protect virtue now,
of course, now that
becomes an amorphous term,
depending on how they see virtue
but if we don't defend
virtue or morality,
which they usually tie
very close to religion,
that then individual
rights ultimately
will be trampled upon any way
that you sort of need that
as a precursor.
- Yeah, when did government
ever make men moral, right?
You need freedom to be moral.
The best inculcate or in my
view of virtue, and believe me,
there is no greater
proponent of the importance
and necessity of moral virtue
in society than myself.
I mean, in my view, you
to have a free society,
you have to have a nation
of moral men and women.
You cannot have a nation
made up of moral reprobates.
That goes without saying so I
stand no man stands a heaven--
- Do you think we
sometimes need them,
do you think we sometimes need
some morally corrupt people?
So the, I mean, we've
made it somehow 40 minutes
without mentioning the T word,
but in many ways, Trump to
me is something like that.
Like, this is obviously no
great moral virtuous person,
but in many ways
he was the hammer
that we needed to sort
of shake up the system,
to break a lot of bad things
that had been sort of calcified,
but didn't do it out
of, no one's looking,
I don't even think the
biggest mega supporter
is looking at Trump thinking,
"Oh, this is the greatest
moral man on earth."
But in a weird way, he
was the necessary tool.
Do you think that is,
is that possible to
bridge that divide?
- Well, sure, I mean,
I do think it's a fact,
two facts that you've mentioned.
First, Donald Trump
is not a paragon of
personal moral virtue,
but on the other hand, no
politician in my lifetime,
in fact, I would say
of the last 70 years
has done a more important job
of going after the deep state.
The deep state is something
that I think that is real
and the deep state also
includes the mainstream media.
And so Trump has launched a
three and a half year assault
on all of the certitudes and
platitudes of the deep state
and I do think that's been
an extraordinarily
important development
in American political life.
- So do you sort of
separate that from morality
in a traditional sense
or is that a type of
morality actually?
- Well, I mean, it's
a type of morality
if it's directed at breaking
down tyrannical power, right?
So we're sure, the
defenders of freedom,
and I'm not
suggesting that Trump
is necessarily a
defender of freedom
'cause he's certainly
passed I think a lot of laws
that have been
antithetical to freedom,
but in the sort of
in the macro picture,
he's done many things.
Reducing taxes, massively
cutting regulations,
but most importantly, you
know, is its identity,
I would say the single most
important thing that he has done
is literally just simply
to have identified
the deep state, right?
And then to be attacking
it on a daily basis,
which as I've said,
includes the media.
That has that itself
has been one, might say
a kind of revolutionary act.
- Yeah, well, it feels like
we're kind of in right now.
So revolution, since you're
talking about revolutionary acts
that's the fourth one that
they found to be self-evident.
That's probably the
scariest one for most people
and especially in a
weird time like this
let's talk about
that a little bit.
- Sure, so I think the most
important thing to remember Dave
is that America is a
revolutionary nation.
And what I mean by that is we
were founded by a revolution.
We created a new nation
de Novo out of nothing
on a Tabula rasa.
But built into the
principles of the declaration
is the idea that whenever
any form of government
becomes destructive of
those ends or purposes,
which is the
protection of rights,
the declaration says that
the people have the right
to alter or abolish
that government, right?
And that truth, and it
was meant to be a truth,
not a truth specific to 1776,
but a universal,
permanent truth.
So it applied in 1840,
it applied in 1940
and it will apply again in 2040.
America is a
revolutionary nation.
However, it's also
important to note that
in "The Declaration
of Independence",
the first word that appears
after the fourth self-evident
truth, the revolution truth
is the word prudent.
And what that means,
the importance of that
is that you can't
have some crazy guy
living out in the woods of Idaho
declaring war on the
American government, right?
Revolutions are
dangerous things,
and America's
Revolutionary Founders,
they understood that,
it's a dangerous thing.
And you can't try to
overturn your government
for as the declaration says,
"Light and transient causes."
So Jefferson never
would have said
that with the passage
of the Stamp Act,
that would be
appropriate to overthrow
the British government.
But according to Jefferson,
when you get the Sugar Act in
1764, the Stamp Act in 1765,
the Declaratory Act
in '66 and then,
the Townshend Acts in
1767, the Tea act in '73
and then most importantly,
the Coercive and Prohibitory
Acts in 1774 and '75.
Jefferson says, "Look,
there is, there is clearly,
"self-evidently a design."
And that's a word that
you see in the declaration
and you see it in the
revolutionary literature.
There is a design on the part
of British Imperial officials
to enslave us, to deny us
our freedoms and rights.
So if each of those laws
had been passed by
the British government
separated by 50 years each,
there probably would have
been no cost for revolution.
But when compacted in
an 11 or it just really,
it was a 10 year period,
Jefferson, John Adams,
George Washington even said,
"Oh, look, these are
not just passing acts,
"these are not mistakes
"on the part of the
British parliament"
or George the third, we can
clearly discern a pattern
and that pattern
leads in one direction
and that direction is slavery.
So--
- Yeah, I mean,
it's pretty chilling
because listening to that,
it sounds alive today.
I mean, again, I'm
here in California,
we flatten the curve and
now they tell us August 1st
and on July 30th,
I sense that they'll
tell us November 8th
and, it's like,
so what do you do
in a modern sense,
what do you think the
founders would have us do
as we watch governments
that aren't transparent,
that don't really tell us
why they're doing things
that are keeping us
locked in our homes
and not letting us go to work?
I mean, what does that type
of revolution look like
in a modern sense?
Because as you
said, these things,
if these laws had taken
50 years in between,
well, then you don't
kind of realize it,
it's not as self evident,
but as we find every few
months, there's a new odd law,
"law" or it's not
there even laws,
I mean, their edicts
basically being placed.
- Yeah, so I think it
begins as we are seeing now
across the country of,
it begins with small acts
of disobedience, right?
We see a barber in Detroit
who refuses to be shut down
and is cutting hair and
is prepared to go to jail.
We see the operator
of a gym in New Jersey
reopening against
the governor's orders
and being willing to go to
jail as a result of reopening.
And we see American starting,
you know, GoFundMe campaigns
to support these people.
So it begins with small
acts of disobedience.
Now there are of course
formal things that we can do.
We can petition our government,
we can peaceably assemble
and we can protest.
But in the end, Dave, the
single most important thing
is we have to vote
with our feet.
We have to vote with
our feet here and now,
and then we have to vote with
our feet on election day.
And we always have to remember
that our government officials
are really nothing more
than a representation
of who and what we
are as a people.
And so therefore, if you think
your government is corrupt,
what you're really saying
is that on some level,
in some way, we the
people are corrupt, right?
But there are moments
in our political lives
when the spirit of liberty,
the Revolutionary Spirit of
Liberty is reawakened in us.
And I think you're right.
I think this is one of those
moments in our national history
when that Spirit of Liberty,
which has been sleeping
for many decades, I think
it has been reawakened
and the American people,
I don't think a majority
of American people,
I don't think we've
crossed that threshold
where a majority of American
people are willing to roll over
and just take it.
- Our working is cut out
for us, it's a great book
and I love the fact that
we were able to link it
to so many other
things happening today.
So stay safe,
and I hope are they telling
you you're gonna open up,
are you going to be in
classes in the fall?
- Apparently we will be, we
will be back in the fall,
but it won't be face
to face necessarily,
some teaching will be online
some classes you teach
a face to face one day,
and then you're
online the next day
so there's a whole
spectrum of ways
that they're gonna reopen.
But of course, as you
can, well, imagine
at Clemson University, the
single biggest question is
will there be football?
- (Davis laughing)
So I've covered.
All right Brad, it was great
seeing you, thanks a lot.
We're gonna link to the
book right down below.
- Wonderful, Dave, great to
see you, thank you so much.
- If you're looking
for more honest
and thoughtful
conversations about academia
instead of nonstop yelling,
check out our academia playlist.
And if you wanna
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