Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at The
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on ex at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Hillsdale College history professor doctor Bill McLay.
On this Independence Week, we take a closer look at
the miracle of the Founding Generation and the founding values
as we approach the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
this great Republic. Bill, thank you so much for joining
us on this edition of the Federalist Radio.
Speaker 2: Oh it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: This is I really, I really want to emphasize the
miracle because the older I grow, the more I know,
the more I deeply believe in the miracle of the
Founding Generation. But you have been featured in a number
of places, and I just watched a really good video
starring you, and you were talking about the roots of revolution.
You know, this stuff did not happen overnight. This miracle
was many, many years in the making. Before we get
to that founding generation, let's talk about their experiences, their
parents' experiences, before we got to the revelution era.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you and thank you for your kind words
about the video of I think one way to answer
your question is to say that the revolution wasn't a
sort of sudden thing. It didn't just sort of arise
on the spur of the moment with people saying, hey,
let's do this crazy thing. It had to do with
the fact that their.
Speaker 3: Parents and parents' parents had an experience, a considerable experience
of governing themselves in the British North American colonies going
back one hundred.
Speaker 2: And fifty years or more before the time of the Revolution.
I mean, you know, Jamestown sixteen oh seven, Plymouth sixteen twenty,
to this Bay sixteen thirty. These colonies had been around
for a long time, and they had been used to
governing themselves. They had been used to setting up their
own institutions, having their own way of establishing new townships,
or how they would be ordered, how taxation would be
carried out, and they, you know, in sixteen nineteen was
the year that the House of Burgesses in Virginia was created.
So you know, you can go all the way back
to that, to institutions of self rule, self governance that
they were accustomed to having. They did think of themselves
as Englishmen. That didn't that didn't conflict with the idea
that they were also governing themselves. And it's only when
after the French and Indian War, uh, Great Britain for
reasons that are not that that makes some sense, you know,
there isn't there's another side to this. Uh. I'm a patriot,
but I do have to be an honest person and
an honest historian to say, yes, there are two sides
to this. And and the British felt that, well, the
colonists get all this benefit of our military might defeating
the French uh and uh uh consolidating uh British control
and and and and the safety of British subjects in
the Western hemisphere. Shouldn't they be paying for some of this? Uh?
After all, we were going hugely into.
Speaker 1: Debt sure this which they were doubling their size of
debt because of this war and uh and and.
Speaker 4: Think about the debt at the time.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so so and and there had been and
very little interest up until that time in the idea
of really consolidating the empire into something that was a
unitary character. So this was not you know, Edmund Burgh
famously said that the colonies were governed by according to
the principle of salutary neglect. Salutary meetings were favorable, so
the neglect was a good thing and let them do
their own thing, if I could use the idiom of
the eighteenth century. So this was very good for economic development.
It meant that enterprise was encouraged because people were able
to without regulation under mercantilists or other kinds of economic
concerns from the central power, they could do They could
be creative and inventive and responsive to market needs and demands.
So it was good in most ways that this salutary
neglect existed. There's another saying I like from a historian
who said that the British Empire was created in a
fit of absence of mind, and that's it's a humorous
way to put it, very British, but in fact there's
something to it that if you look at the Spanish
and the French, the main competitors, you know, there were others,
the Portuguese and so on, but the main colonial European
powers they were very Spanish, especially very intent that their
colonial enterprises would serve the interests of the mother country.
And in the case of Spain, that meant, you know,
precious metals, mining, extracting precious metals and bringing them back
to plunt them in the treasury. Since it was believed
that the wealth of a nation was measured by is
it's literal wealth in precious metals, so they bring it.
The English after the seventeen hundreds, we can speak of
them as the British had a different, different take. It
was much more a matter of giving charters to individuals
or groups that had an idea they wanted to pursue.
The Puritans wanted religious liberty, and it was not such
a bad deal to get them out of their hair
in England. So the Puritan colonies of the North, the
Brigina New Colony, was really a group of adventurers that
were seeking gold and silver for themselves, not as part
of a national project. However, there was not a strong
mercantileist tendency and in the makeup of the English government,
so and and then you know William Penn comes to
He's a guy who has a certain kind of idea.
Oglethorpe has a certain idea about Georgia. Uh, Maryland. It
was essentially to be a colony for Catholics and again
getting getting out of the hair of the mother country.
And so it was there was no big plan, there
was no overall plan. It was Friedrich Hayek must have
been pleased with this. There was a plan not to
have a plan. So, uh, that is a long winded
way of answering your question that what what's the background
of this background was that this is somewhat unique situation
arose in the British North American colonies where you had
people who had the benefit of English law, English customs,
and European intellectual formation, including their religion which was by
and large form of Reformed Protestantism with some exceptions, and
they had this relatively less populated, less developed area to
test these things eyed out in. So this was ongoing
for one hundred and fifty years and then along comes
the Parliament, really more the Parliament than the King, saying
you know, we're going to change things. We're going to
we're going to are going to redo this thing where
and uh uh, they're they're often their tactics were kind
of ham handed and even stupid, but their their objectives
was not completely absurd. That's as far as I'll go
as an American patriot. They were perfectly justified. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Your argument is that, you know, you have a mother
country that has spent a great deal of its treasure
protecting the colonists at this time. This is their argument,
and then ultimately somebody is going to have to pay
for it. At this point, England is dealing with, you know,
the effects of that as the economic depression and all
of these kinds of things, and there are a lot
of people in the mother countries saying, hey, let's take
a look at these freeloaders exactly Americas, and they're going
to have to start paying the bill here. I mean,
that's their argument, isn't it. Yeah Yeah, And you know,
and I think in a different moment in time, it
might have been possible to administer the British Empire in
this way. It might have been possible in our era
to have a parliament that would include among its members
people who were not represented the colonies, who were actually
resident in them.
Speaker 4: Sure they could jump on a zoom call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right, just just what we're doing
right now.
Speaker 4: Yes, and.
Speaker 2: I think around Washington, d C. An awful lot of
business goes on with people zooming rather than meeting in person.
Speaker 4: Absolutely right, No, but it was the time.
Speaker 2: That it was. You know, transatlantic travel was possible, but
difficult and time and time consuming.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, there wasn't an easy way that to make
that distance shrink. And when you know, I've found this
even with institutions. I once taught it at Tulane University,
and Tulane had a coordinate women's college, Newcombe College, which
had in effect been been it has been abolished I
think now completely, but it but it had its own
faculty and the the uh uh that that designation stuck
even when the thing collapsed, and when we tried to
combine faculties, it was very difficult because it was like
a different culture in Newcombe College from Tulane College. And
to multiply that by a zillion to arrive at how
the different cultures of the North American colonies, how different
they were from Britain, from England Britain, and that difference
was was bound to widen because, as many people, including
Benjamin Franklin, pointed out, the colonies were growing massively on
the scale that was soon dwarf the population of the
mother country and would dwarf it in terms of economic
output too, potentially. So there is a kind of factor
here just looking back, standing back from it, and not
asking who was right and who was wrong in this,
but that over time the separation was going to happen.
It seems almost inevitable, but the circumstances under which it
occurs would be would be all important. So that's kind
of kind of the way it works out, is that
there is this separation, and Jefferson makes reference to this
in the Declaration of Independence. You know, in the course
of human events, these things happen when one body of
people need to separate and make their own way. So
he's appealing to that notion that, you know, maybe the
time has come that this really is ungovernable from across
the seas.
Speaker 4: That's it, though, isn't it.
Speaker 1: That's really it Because when we get to that point
nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, we have what
is termed in family law or marital law, irreconcilable differences. Yes, yeah,
but we do not have an amicable split. And so
I'm thinking about all that you said, all that has
come before. You have this perfect, perfect miracle laboratory. That
is the laboratory, a perfect laboratory for a constitutional republic.
And maybe certainly the denizens of this land don't know
that they're in the middle of it, but they're growing
more and more aware that they can no longer be
part of the mother country. And so we get to
this great divorce and then take us through those early days.
Because this was not by any means a guarantee. That
declaration was very bold, but we didn't have a lot
to back up that bold.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it meant but for sure, And let
me say one thing that sort of before your question
is that the declaration was bold, but was also came
at the conclusion of a long process of a change
of heart. You know it is you know. John Adams
famously said that the revolution occurred in the arts and
minds of the people before the events of July seventeen
seventy six, and that's that it took basically from seventeen
sixty three, the end of the French and Indian War,
maybe beginning really with seventeen sixty five in Earnest, all
the way to eleven years later, well ten years later
for war to breakout with Lexington and conquered. But it
took all that time for a critical mass of patriots
who said, we've got to go it alone. Now we
are a part enough and together enough to do that.
We're apart from England enough, we're together as Americans enough.
Because you have to think in this recently is the
seventeen sixties for them that recently their primary identity is
of Englishmen, not Americans, or perhaps Virginians or Pennsylvanians or
New Yorkers or whatever, but not as Americans. And the
whole process of forging a national consciousness is some of
what goes on in that period. You have all kinds
of things that mediate that, like the Committees of Correspondence,
in which sort of elite figures in the various colonies
kind of say hey, here's you all know what's going
on here. And so there's a development of a kind
of information network that is an important part of forging
a national unity national consciousness. So all of that had
to have and all that had to coalesce, and you
even have figures like John Dickenson. He's a very very
prominent example of this, who who were you know, very
much with with the patriotic cause, but would not sign
the declaration because the declaration, it was just went too
far and it was He's very beautiful and eloquent in
his saying, you know what, what if we don't pull
this off? You know what if when we really lacked
the strength the unity to do it, and we're up
against the biggest military power in the world, maybe the
world had ever seen. This is an audacious thing. Of course,
the country was already at war after Lexington and conquered
in April of seventeen seventy five, but there were people
who understandably drew back from the oldness of the declaration.
So you're absolutely right to stress that man, that it
is a bold act. But it also comes after, you know,
more or less a dozen years of trying to figure
out what the way forward, and with the British constantly
making unenforceable efforts to impinge on the self rule that
the colonists had formerly enjoyed. So it's a gradual process.
But by the time, you know, the interesting thing to
me is why it took so long after lexing and
conquered for the declaration to appear. It's what fifteen months
from between April seventeen seventy five and July seventeen seventy six,
And that just says this took some time to coalesce.
And even so, as you know, there were many Americans
who wouldn't who were royalists, who wouldn't go that route,
and many of them we left the country somewhere absolutely
persecuted and murdered. You know, it was an ugly business.
So I mean, was not a blood list on that
on the domestic side either. Our revolution.
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Speaker 1: No, there was so much at stake. I mean, you
can understand those who were reluctant first and foremost, their
identities were forged by being part of the crown, being
part of the mother country. All of that said, we
get into some people who say enough is enough. We
get into this founding generation and what makes them what
they are. Our guest today is Hillsdale College history professor
doctor Bill McLay. On this Independence Week we take a
closer look at the miracle of the Founding Generation and
founding values as we approached the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of this great Republic. Bill, who were these folks?
I mean, and we know we know, of course the
biggest players in history, the Benjamin Franklins, the George Washington's,
the Thomas Jeffersons, but there were many, many more obviously
in this Founding generation. It again, I know I've said
this many times, with this miracle of all of these
people coming together for this cause, this unifying cause, in
a very very difficult struggle.
Speaker 2: Well, you won't get any argument from me for the
use of miracle of the term miracle because it is
miraculous that we had. It's not necessarily a miracle that
the situation presented itself, sure of the need to separate,
but what there are all sorts of ways of doing it,
and we did it in a way that in retrospect
you almost have to the more you study it in
comparative history, look at the way other countries have gone,
you almost are driven, maybe against your will, to see
the hand of providence in it, because it is so
much that could have gone otherwise. But to begin with,
and really directly to your question, who were these people?
They were a remarkable bunch. They were very young. The
you know, the average age of I should have that
in my head, but it's the average age was in
the forties, their forties, you know people, I mean, we
barely think of people being adults at the age of forty. Now.
They were very mature.
Speaker 1: My wife barely thinks of me as that, and I'm
fifty three years old.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, I think I think you're just I
think you're doing great.
Speaker 4: But I think.
Speaker 2: And I'm more than that. I think I am as
mature as I'm ever going to be. But all this
can be caught I know. So they were well educated,
but they had something else that mere education cannot necessarily impart,
and that is prudence. They had the virtue of prudence.
They were, they were people, They were wise, wise beyond
their years. They they were, they were interested in you.
Alexander Hamilton famously in the first number of the Federalist Papers,
says that this is really a test of whether it's possible.
And he didn't mean it just for Americans. He meant
it for everybody at all times. It was possible to
create a nation based on reflection and choice or be
dependent on accident and force. And that really states it
very well. Could they manage to create rationally create a
nation that sort of accorded with everything they knew about history,
about the way that republics tended to be fragile, tended
to fall apart in the course of time. Could they
use history to defeat history? Could they? And that depended.
That depends on the power of imagination. That's not just
something you learn in school books, as I learned all
the time. You know, you can have lots of wonderful ideas,
but the way the sense of how those ideas can
shape reality, You know, in a way that's feasible and enduring.
That's another sense altogether. You know, there's a saying variously
attributed that politics is the art of the possible. And
I love that saying because it has two meanings. It's
not just as with the big beautiful bill that we're
all hearing about, what can we stitch together that can pass? Right? Uh,
It's also but there's a flip side to that. It
is the art what what is possible? Uh, the art
the possible. It possible may go beyond uh the usual,
the customary, the we've always done it that way. So
they had both senses of that art of the possible
working for them.
Speaker 1: But this was this was the age of reason. And
these are men and women I will tell you. I
think of the Adamses and absolutely and exactly yes, and
and that particularly in Massachusetts, that proud tradition of intellectual
uh drive that came out of there and and reason
this how so that's I guess my question. How much
of these founding fathers and mothers were shaped by the
Age of Reason?
Speaker 2: Oh, well, that's a great question, and I think the
answer is they were. They highly shaped, but not exclusively
shaped by it, which is actually, the most reasonable way
to use reason is to understand that there's more. As
Pascal says, the heart has its reasons that reason does
not know. And they took into account all the ways
that you can devise machinery of government to perform certain functions,
all the ways you can perfect the organizational chart. But
they also understood how things go astray, how the ambitiousness
of the kind of people who want to be involved
in politics can often get in the way of there
being leaders who lead with the good good of the
public in mind. I'll tell you one thing they had
going for them. You've already mentioned his name, George Washington.
I mean, as I get older, I had my esteem
for George Washington has arisen. It's almost at Titanic levels
now because I and I don't mean the ship Titanic
is a mountainous lessing because you look at all the
things he did and all the ways that he restrained
his ego for the sake of the nation. He you know,
when he became president, and even before that, he lived
his whole life this way, that as if others were
watching him and looking for the example that he set.
This was true in his military career, It was true
at the Constitutional Convention, it was true when he was
president that he was very conscious of it and wrote
about it. How you know, he was he felt that
all the eyes of the world were upon him, and
because he knew, everything he did was set a precedent.
Speaker 1: So hem he was the ultimate leader by example, wasn't he?
Speaker 2: Yes? And I think it's very important that we understand
that the Constitution is not, as one of the framers,
that a machine that would run of itself, and it
had to be actuated and guided by statesmen, that is,
and a statesman is not just a politician. A statesman
as someone who who is really concerned with the well
being of the state over the long haul, over his
own or her own political reputation or success. And Washington
he was enormously successful, but he also was He had
this sort of Christian stone about him that caused him
to always put the needs of the nation first in
his mind. I mean, he longed repeatedly to just retire,
I've done enough, and to hire to his beautiful estate
at Mount Vernon. But there was this awareness that the
country needed him. We were born. Even coming out of
the Constitutional Convention, almost immediately things split up into what
became parties and factions. The very thing that James Madison
warned against and the one thing everybody agreed about, just
about everybody, was the greatness of George Washington and his authority,
which is something that he conveyed in his person. You know,
he was a big man, broadsholder, very imposing looking fellow,
but his behavior was even more remarkable. I think it's
a very noble individual in the very best sense of
the world.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I think of that story while the war is
being fought, and again, as you say, George Washington is
not ancient by any means, but he is. He is deemed,
you know, so widely respected through the colonies and through
his army. But you have a revolt inside the revolution
going on because things are very bad as a certain
point in this war, this struggle for independence, and there's
this moment where he pulls out his glasses, he has
to use his glasses to read something, and there's not
a dry eye in the room of you know, his commanders,
his subordinates, some of them thinking we've had enough of
this war. Now we're going to turn away from it.
And they look at him and they see the ravages
of war and time. Even though this is you know,
this is a guy who is pristine looking at all
of these the majestic on a horse, you know, like
no other.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yet he puts his glasses.
Speaker 1: On and you could and they see, you know, the
the impact of the war on him in his eyes,
and that it's aged him. And there is a moment
where they just kind of take part in that moment
of what George Washington means not only to the country
but to them.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, there are a number of moments like that
with him and and and something else I've just mentioned
during the the terrible times where they kind in all army,
uh just seemed on the verge of dissolution, which was
actually quite often. This is one of the things I
didn't know a lot about earlier on and additional reading
filled it in for me. And I'm reading a lot
about the Revolutionary War now because we're entering into that period,
the toward fiftieth of that period is you know, he
he would wake up in the morning and kind of what,
you know, what, well, how many people have defected today?
How much of an army do we have left? And
they and of course they went through you know, everybody
knows about Valley Forge, and there there were several such
terrible times, winter, terrible cold, smallpox, all kinds of problems,
and on at least two occasions that I know of.
He addressed this by having a play put on, and
the play was Joseph Addison's play Cato, which was about
the great Roman Cato, who was a great defender of
the republic. Unsuccessful, I might add, I mean we did,
we did get the romance pireafterol, but a person of
great nobility who kind of goes down fighting for the good,
the true of the noble, for the republic. And it
tells you something about not just George Washington, but his
troops that they were inspired by this. You know, the
common sense thing would be, what a downer? Why are
you going to show us this? Everything we're doing is
for nothing? Not the reaction, And he knew it wouldn't
be the reaction. He knew his men, but they're elevated.
When you have a leader like that that elevates you,
it elevates your own sentiments. And he had that capacity
so that when he died in seventeen ninety nine, right
before the election of eighteen hundred which was shaping up
to be just a horrible, divisive, beyond belief election eighteen hundred.
I mean, this is just a little over a decade
after the adoption of the Constitution. The things seemed to
be going down in Plainton.
Speaker 4: And we already feel like they're in peril well.
Speaker 2: Of national unity. What's going to happen? Well, it turned
out all right. But he had been the glue holding
the nation together. I think that that's maybe a bit
of an exaggeration, but.
Speaker 1: I think I don't think it is. Though I don't
I don't think it is an exaggeration. I think he
is the glue, among some others Benjamin Franklin. But here
he is, you know, at the the as you said,
every time, he just wants to go back to his
his estate, his farms, his interest, his life. And it's
almost like the Godfather. Every time I think I'm out,
they all be back in. Right.
Speaker 4: And so there we have it.
Speaker 1: And you know, as he's called back to Philadelphia, because
you know, we we have after a revolutionary war, we
have an independent number of states, a confederacy, but we
don't have a country. And so here we are in
eighteen eighty seven and he is back again running the show,
and I want to ask you all of what he experienced,
what America experienced during that war time, that very difficult time,
and all the things we talked about before this laboratory
of greatness. How much did that inform that summer of
eight very hot summer in portions of it of seventeen
eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Well, I think very much so. And I'm glad you've
given me an opportunity to say something I very much
wanted to say with this is the Twitter fiftieth anniversary
were approaching of the Declaration of Independence. But the Declaration
of Independence, as important as it is, as great as
it is, as wonderful and world changing a document as
it is, it didn't create a nation. It didn't create
what it did. Did We created a country in a way,
the the the the the and the act of fighting
the war, the shared experience of the war, the shared
suffering of the war did help to create a national sentiment.
But that's different than having a government. And we've bloundered around, frankly,
because if you look at the declaration, it ends with
saying these these colonies are should be free and independent states. Well,
you know there's a there's a little trick going on
in that formulation. I mean, they're unified, but they're free
and independent. In what way are they unified? In what
way are they independent? I mean they're not just independent
of Britain. Are they independent of one another? Also, that's
not laid out, and that's because it had to be
worked out, and the articles of a Confederation were clearly inadequate.
Although that's the first version of the Constitution, which is
sort of in effect through the war, even though it
was not ratified for most of that time. But it
became very clear in the seventeen eighties that, especially in
the middle years of the seventeen eighties, that there had
needed to be a more vigorous national element in the
national Constitution. There needed to be a stronger what we
would say called federal element. In Washington, by the way,
I mean, when you really see the historical accounts, it's
really when there were some rebellions in various places, including
western Massachusetts and and Washington said, my goodness, work is
kind of falling apart, aren't we And he said that
we've we've thought too well of human nature. We we
need we need a stronger coercive force at the center
of things, not to be coercive in an arbitrary way,
but we need to have the power in the federal
hands of the federal government to do certain things together, like
defend our borders. And that was really an issue at
the time. So he changed his mind. That was like, okay,
now we now we run with it. Hamilton, uh and Madison,
who were the principal you know, instigators, not the only ones,
but ran with it. So Washington having Washington's impromator uh
made a big difference.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And he's he'sily unifying force with all of this
disorder that's coming on. And when he writes in.
Speaker 2: Philadelphia, when in Philadelphia he was mostly silent. He presided
over the convention, but he had very little to say
absolu and he was He left that to the genius
of James Madison, uh and and a few others uh and,
And he understood that conflicts needed to play out, you know, Washington,
when he became president, he showed this ability too. He
brought Hamilton and Jefferson both into his administration, understanding that
they both represented aspects of this new country that you
could not ignore, even if they were in some ways
clashing with one another, and that's part of his political genius.
He didn't. He mainly came down on Hamilton's side, truth
be told, but he didn't make the effort to give
the Jeffersonian voice a place in his administration because.
Speaker 1: He knew that they made very compelling arguments and we're
true patriots and all of that. I think there's one
president who did that arguably as well or nearly as well,
and that of course, was Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 2: You think the.
Speaker 1: Team of rivals, certainly, I want to take a look
at where we stand today, how far we've come, or
maybe the argument is how far we are sliding back.
I know it feels that way sometimes. But what do
you think these geniuses, this exceptional founding generation would think
of today's republic that they created, that they worked for,
led for, died for so long ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's so hard to know, but it's it's
an inevitable and irresistible question to ask. And I think
that it's just so hard to say, But I think
that that they some of them, would just be appalled
at the size our world spanning ambitions. You know, they
would look at even some of the things we are
so proud of like the day our you know, our
achievement in the Second World War and say, oh, we
had no business doing that, and uh So leaving aside
all that, it's it's I like to talk about it
this way, is that you know, there's history, or institutional
history can have. Uh there's sort of specific things that
it deals with, but under an underlying algebra of of
our constitution. And then the underlying algebra is that the
only way to keep the government honest is to have
conflicting countervailing forces within it, checks and balances, separation of power.
So all of these things are constantly being tested. I mean,
the idea that that we the constitution is failing because
we have so much conflict, that's that's just wrong. The
conflict is a sign that the constitution is working. Now,
that doesn't mean the results are always going to be
perfect just because the conflict is in play, but that
conflict is one of the main features of our constitution.
That algebra I think is held even as the numbers
have of very the variable so you plug into the formulas.
So I think Madison, for example, although Madison at the
end of his life was very depressed about he thought
the whole thing had kind of come a cropper. And
but you know, that's that's that's we mortals are only
given so much to see, and you come to the
end of a great project and it hasn't turned out
exactly as you'd envision. You're you're bound to get down
in the mouth about it. But I think from our
point of view, which they didn't, they could not have had.
But from our point of view, it's it's still a
republican if we can keep it, and some of it
we've lost, I think, and I can't avoid being a
little bit partisan here in that. I think the the
administrative state as there is in really over the course
of the twentieth century that has taken decisions that really
ought to be decided in the political realm out of
that realm and given it to unelected and largely unaccountable
administrators in executive branch agencies. That's something I think we're
in the process of reversing that. Supreme Courts made some
very good decisions lately about that, the Chevron deference case,
for example. But there's a lot that everything is always perilous.
Life is perilous, No solution is permanent, except death, and
we don't want that. So I think the fact that
we're struggling and times despairing of our form of government
is not dispositive. It doesn't indicate that it really is dying.
It's we get tired, get tired of wrangling. I don't
know about you. I'm so sick of hearing about the
big beautiful bill that and especially it's it's somewhat hard
to see virtues, uh, and it's not easy to miss
vices that you wonder. You feel tempted at times to say, oh,
wouldn't it be great we just had a sort of benevolent,
strong strong man that would come and say that, you know,
enough of this congressional stuff. We're just going to do it.
This is how we're going to do it. I think
a lot of people get tired, get tired of the
of the the hyperbolic rhetoric of democracy. And there's a
lot we can do to improve the character of our
life as a republic, as a democracy. But I think
I think that a sort of a Madison in a
good mood looking back at and saying, you know, this
has done pretty well. It's still going after what almost
two hundred and forty plus years, so let's keep it going.
It is the world's oldest. We think of ourselves as
a young country, and I'm glad we do. I hope
we always think of ourselves as a young country. But
we aren't. We have the world's oldest, continuously functioning constitution,
and it's very bound up in our national identity in
a way that let's say, the French to have an
identity as a Frenchman even before all the immigration has
kind of shifted that around. But you know, you were
embracing a past that includes feudalism, that includes the great dynasties,
you know, Louis the fourteenth, the absolutism of that period,
the French Revolution, they various French republics and empires of
the nineteenth century. All that's part of your history, Americans.
All we've got is the Constitution and a little bit
of the Articles of Confederation. It's a sort of prologue,
but that we have never been in any serious way
the United States of America without the Constitution being our
fundamental charter. And that's an amazing thing. And it's one
of the reasons why I get very across with people
who just sort of blithely talk about replacing the Constitution.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 2: It's something that's now has the status not just of
being a product of reason, as you said, but a tradition,
something that's sort of worked its way into our national character.
And we'd be better off instead of junking the Constitution
and creating something to conform with our national temperament at
the moment, we'd be much better off conforming our national
temperament to the Constitution, to the idea, for example, that
civic education begins and ends with the notion that there's
always such a thing as the loyal opposition that you
must listen to, that you must respond to. That there's
no kind of the science is settled about issues. The
science has never said about political issues. And you don't
have a vibrant political society unless those issues can come
up again and again and again. So there needs to
be a restoration of the idea of the loyal opposition,
of that that's really the essential element of the two
party system, and of a kind of respect for the
public realm, the public arena, the place where ideas about
politics get tossed around. And I'm not asking for something
simon pure or sanitized I don't think that's realistic, but
something where there's a kind of where there are arenas
in which there's real give and take with people who
recognize and respect the right of one another to have
arguments and positions, and we're losing that. We're losing that
in all sorts of ways. And I don't think all
sides are equally guilty, but I think all sides are
guilty in some way or another of a failing to
respect that. So there's a whole set of there's a
big agenda for the next I'd like to see this
happen of the next twelve years or so, maybe more
than that, to re educate the nation about about the Founding,
about the Founding, it's principles, and the underlying behaviors, which
I don't think we give enough attention to. It's great
to study the Declaration of Constitution, built rights, but it's
even better to inculcate in the young, to use our
schools to indicate, inculcate to the young these habits of
the heart that are essential to the conduct of a
republican society, of a civilized democracy. And we're not going
to have it much longer if we don't begin to
cultivate that.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't Yeah, I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree
with you more. And I think you know that's the problem.
There are there are there are many problems that we're
all facing. But the problem with our republic two hundred
and fifty years on is that we have forgotten that
faith that is at the core of this Republic, this constitution,
this America, that Lincoln rightly called the last best hope
of Earth, and it remains that and if we want
it to remain that we have to, I think, do
exactly what you talked about.
Speaker 4: We have to get.
Speaker 1: Back to the miracle that created this country, this republic,
and the miraculous found who did so. And I so
very much appreciate your time today in taking us back
and reminding us of how we got here.
Speaker 2: Well thank you for having me. And it's really hardening
to talk about these things because these are things that
actually happened. They're not just pipe dreams. They happened. And
what has happened once can happen again or can be renewed.
So let's hope that we can continue down that path.
Because you know, one last comment, you know a lot
of people say that Constitution and even the declaration that
these are eighteenth century documents and we live in the
twenty first century. I've heard that, and therefore these eighteenth
century dogments are outmoded and we need to devise new things. Well,
you know what's out moded are the ideas that the great,
bright and shining progressive ideas of the twentieth century, The
idea of the administrative state, the idea that we can
have government by experts that suld that will short circuit
all the messiness of democracy and of contending parties. No
what what Madison and the others at Philadelphia recognized that
you're always going to have contending parties. That's the nature
of human life. And and by the way, part of
their faith was a Christian belief that we are falling creatures.
Speaker 4: Absolutely we are.
Speaker 2: We are, we are not Our reason is great stuff,
but it's it's without grace, without uh a faith in UH,
in a God that forgives us despite our our impediments,
but that that we need to recognize those impediments. So
as we without that but that kind of leaven, things
are not going to work out very well for us.
So there's a kind of modesty about human nature that
we need to have too. Human nature can't be perfected,
but it can be contained and made to work for good.
Speaker 1: Those are the timeless things, and that is what is
the core of the Founding Generation in what they wrought.
Thanks to my guest today, Hillsdale College History Professor, doctor
Bill McLay, you've been listening to another edition of The
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittles, Senior elections correspondent at
the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the frame