The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks

Episode Date: December 12, 2020

First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author offers a revelatory new book about the founding fathers, examining their educations and, in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics—and how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation. On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation’s founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders’ thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch’s Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero. For though much attention has been paid the influence of English political philosophers, like John Locke, closer to their own era, the founders were far more immersed in the literature of the ancient world. The first four American presidents came to their classical knowledge differently. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the laws and rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially Epicureanism; and Madison, both a groundbreaking researcher and a deft politician, spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. Each of their experiences, and distinctive learning, played an essential role in the formation of the United States. In examining how and what they studied, looking at them in the unusual light of the classical world, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of men we thought we knew. First Principles follows these four members of the Revolutionary generation from their youths to their adult lives, as they grappled with questions of independence, and forming and keeping a new nation. In doing so, Ricks interprets not only the effect of the ancient world on each man, and how that shaped our constitution and government, but offers startling new insights into these legendary leaders. About the Author Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for The Washington Post from 2000 through 2008 and was on the staff of the Wall Street Journal for seventeen years before that. He reported on American military operations in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq. A member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, he is also the author of several books, including The Generals, The Gamble, Churchill & Orwell, and the number-one New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote First Principles while a visiting fellow in history at Bowdoin College.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly, certainly, certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. And, wow, what do we do here with this, all this stuff? If you want to see the YouTube video recording of this, you can go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can also subscribe to all nine podcasts at thecvpn.com or chrisfosspodcastnetwork.com. You can subscribe over there. You'll also probably see this on our book author podcast and Chris Voss podcast copied over. You can follow me on Goodreads at goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss.

And also you can go to Facebook.com, The Chris Voss Show. And you can also find groups for The Chris Voss Show on LinkedIn. There's 135,000-size group over there. And also there's three or four groups on Facebook. So today we have a very prolific author. In fact, I just got done watching his interview with, I guess, I believe it's his good friend, General Mattis. And this episode is brought to you by IFI Audio and their new NEO IDSD. The NEO is the new wave of digital sound listening for your desktop, music, gaming, and bleeding-edge Bluetooth, even MQA audio file decoding. We're using it in the studio right now. I've loved my

experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. IFI Audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. He has published a very new book. He's an author of a multitude of books, but he's got this book out. Let me see if we can get that right. First Principles, What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country. His name is Thomas E. Ricks.

He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. And let me tell you a little bit more about him before we bring him in the show. He is the military history columnist for the New York Times Book Review and a visiting fellow in history at Bowdoin College. Ricks has covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for 17 years. He's received two Pulitzer Prizes as part of reporting teams at those newspapers. Ricks is the author of seven books, count them up, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Fiasco, The American Military Adventure in Iraq. His most recent book, Churchill and Orwell, The Fight for Freedom, was his fourth consecutive book, the New York Times bestseller as well.

Born in Massachusetts, Ricks grew up in New York and Afghanistan and graduated from Yale University. He's married to Mary Catherine Ricks, the author of Escape on the Pearl, with whom he shares two grown children. Welcome to the show. How are you, Thomas? I'm good. It's good to be here. It's wonderful to have you. Very honored to have you. Congratulations on the book. Give us your plugs so that people can find congratulations on the book uh give us your plugs so that people can find you on the interwebs um probably the best thing is twitter tom ricks

one like tom ricks and then the number one or just go to amazon and buy my books there thomas e ricks r-i-c-k-s and i believe you listed on uh one of the lists of book sales, and I forget, was it the New York Times? Yes, last week it was number four on the New York Times bestsellers list. There you go, guys. Pick up the book. You're definitely going to want to read this. This is really important. It talks about the founding of our country. So, Thomas, give us what motivates you when you write this book. It's funny. With some books you can't tell this. I can tell exactly where and when. It was in the house.

I'm speaking to you from right now on an island off the coast of Maine. And it was the Wednesday after the presidential election in 2016. And I woke up that morning and I said to myself, what happened last night? I did not expect Donald Trump to win this election. I don't know quite what people think they're doing by making this guy president. What do they think this country is? And I decided, okay, I learned in college. If you want to figure out something, go back to the basics, go back to the fundamentals

and figure it out. So I went back down to my library and I took out my college textbook copy of Aristotle's Politics, the first great book in Western civilization about how governments and politics work. And I started reading that and actually rereading it in the context of Donald Trump. The first thing that struck me was that Aristotle said that oligarchies that is ruled by the rich are the most unstable form of government. I thought, that's interesting, Mr. Aristotle. What else you got? And that led me on through a bunch of other books into Roman history, Roman politics. And that in turn led me to a bunch of

books about a subject I didn't know much about, the influence of ancient Roman Greece on the people who founded that country. And so I basically spent the last three years in the basement of the Bowdoin College Library in the ancient philosophy and history sections, and in the American history section, reading about this enormous influence, especially that Rome had, the fact that the entire political vocabulary of the people who designed this country comes from the ancient Roman Republic. Wow. I mean, it's quite a basis. And I think now more than ever, we're taking a look at the Constitution. And of course, the Supreme Court's being called into that for some of the things that go on and so on.

So give us, if you would, just like a general arc of the book. Sure. What we find is that when the people who won the American Revolution, especially George Washington, and the people who designed the Constitution 15 years later, they all had very few examples to go by. There had not been a lot of countries that were republics. Most countries have been led by monarchs, by kings or queens, or emperors. And so they're looking around, okay, we're going to start a new country that's going to belong to the people. How does that work? And they go back and they say, okay, well, there's the example of Roman history, and there's a few Greek city-states. And that's the essence of where they get their inspiration for how to design this country. The two biggest problems for them was what happened to the Roman Republic? Why didn't

it last? And how can we make a republic last? And they say the two mistakes they made on ancient Rome were what they called factionalism and what they called corruption. By factionalism, that means political partisanship, parties. The second thing was corruption, the influence of money and luxury in politics. And they consciously designed this country to try to avoid those problems. And I think they did so for a while. Have we fallen far and away from that now? Would you say in common today, Paul? We still have a rough and rowdy and rambunctious

country, and that's not a bad thing. The three most important words in the Constitution are the first three, we, the people. The American people should decide what this country is and how it works. The American people will make mistakes sometimes, and the Constitution is designed for that. James Madison is the most important person in designing the Constitution, and one of the great things he does, and I've been thinking about it this week, he disperses power. He puts power into the states and into the federal government. In the federal government, he puts it in three different branches, executive, judiciary, and legislative. In the legislative branch, he creates two different houses,

the House and the Senate. The purpose of throwing all this power around is that no one person can have too much power, can force his or her views on other people. If you want to make any progress in this country, you've got to be able to make deals, cut, arrive at compromises, form alliances. And if you can't, things freeze. So James Madison, when he looks at political gridlock, would say that's not a bug. That's a feature. If you people can't get your act together, things will come to a stop. But I've been really admiring James Madison this week for something I'd never, ever thought about. Why do the states control elections for the federal government?

Well, that goes back to the Constitution. The Constitution says that's how it's going to work. But think of how impressive it is. Imagine if the federal government ran the election of the president, then the person who's president would be able to say, nope, I'm declaring all the results false. Instead, you have 50 different states who've said, no, we ran the election and it's cool, we did it. You have judges who come in and say, actually, no, there are no credible facts of fraud that would have changed the outcome of this election here.

Again and again, I got to say thank you, little Jimmy Madison. The guy was five feet tall, he had a lousy speaking voice, weighed maybe 110 pounds, suffered from some form of epilepsy, yet has this incredible effect. I think James Madison is the second most important person in the formulation of the country after George Washington. And you talk about this in your book. Yeah, I've been learning a lot about states' rights and stuff like that. So they designed this for that purpose, that it would be harder maybe for someone to take power or seize power at the federal level? Exactly. James Madison is not a memorable writer either. This is why I'm so impressed that God has such influence. But one phrase that James Madison did write that we remember is he said,

if men were angels, we wouldn't need a government. And so it's specifically designed. Some people will be selfish. Some people do need to look out for their families. But he says instead of punishing that or trying to stop that, balance interest with interest, checks and balances. And the checks can be quite rough. You know, like in a hockey game, a check is a tough thing. But it's actually bigger than that.

It also goes back to just their whole conception of the world. And when you look at, say, George Washington, each of these people takes inspiration from different parts of the ancient world. George Washington comes along. He's not well educated. He never learns a foreign language. He never travels to Europe. And these are things that were kind of expected of a young gentleman who was going to rise in the world. He reads only a few books, mainly about agriculture, but he's very smart and he learns well from experience. And he realizes the person he wants to be like is Cato, ancient Roman politician. Remember, these people didn't have sports heroes, movie stars, almost the celebrities for them, the people who were their role models, were all from Rome or Greece. So George Washington wants to be a Cato. Cato is a politician who opposes the rise of Julius Caesar. He's remembered for a few characteristics, frugality, prudence, reserve. And these are the things that George Washington tries to be.

George Washington's favorite play, remember there weren't movies or TV then, so plays are one of the few forms of public entertainment. George Washington's favorite play was a play called Cato. It was a very big play in the 18th century. There are two interesting lines in the play Cato that you will recognize. One is, I regret that I only have one life to give for Rome. Another line is, give me liberty or give me death. These are lines that people quoted in their speeches. So George Washington wants to be Cato. John Adams, who succeeds him as president, is very different. John Adams is a relatively poor guy, modestly poor guy from Boston. He goes to Harvard and then becomes a schoolteacher. He doesn't have any money. He becomes a schoolteacher in this backwater job that he hates in this town that doesn't even have a post office that he wants to become the American Cicero. Cicero is another Roman politician, also opposed the rise of Julius Caesar, notable for his beautiful writing and his oratory.

He's a great speech maker. And John Adams, I have a lot of problems with, but to his credit, he becomes an American Cicero, a great orator, a great speech maker, and John Adams is one of the first people to get the idea of an American Revolution going. John Adams has had kind of an unfair boomlet in recent years. David McCullough wrote a book about him that kind of was rosy, and recent years. David McCullough wrote a book about him that kind

of was rosy. And then you had this HBO miniseries starring Paul Giamatti. And kind of portrays John Adams as a little teddy bear. John Adams was not a little teddy bear. He was a lousy president. He believed, remember I mentioned faction was something they were afraid of? He believed that faction, having political partisanship, was close to treason. And so John Adams, as president, says, newspaper editors who criticize me will be thrown in jail. And he throws 12 of the 25 opposition newspaper editors in jail, simply for criticizing the president. But what John Adams is most memorable for, as we speak right now,

in the moment of American history we're living through, John Adams was the first one-term president. He lost re-election. And man, he was bitter about it the rest of his life. He felt humiliated. He was the first person ever to be rejected as president by the American people. And he's kind of begrudging about it. He sticks it to his successor, Thomas Jefferson, by making a bunch of last-minute appointments to the federal government. And then in March in 1801, when Thomas Jefferson is inaugurated, John Adams doesn't show up. He catches the 4 a.m. coach to Baltimore. That said, I want to give credit here to John Adams. He's the first president to turn power over to the political opposition, to Thomas Jefferson. And that is an important precedent in American history, that you turn over power peacefully to the opposition. There's an old saying among

political scientists that anybody, any country can elect a president the first time. The real test of democracy is can the opposition win an election and have power turned over to them peacefully. And right now, I think power is being turned over peacefully, slowly, by Donald Trump. But I'd be surprised if he attends the inauguration of Joe Biden. I will be too.

I think, do you think it's because the U.S. government is bigger than any one man? I mean, the machinery of how we do these transitions is so inlaid. And you talk in your book about how these are all new formats that inlaid this and brought us to this point and that hopefully keep us from the precedence, precipice of losing a democracy. Well, two things here. First, again, thank you, James Madison, for dispersing power, for having the states run the election, not the president.

Think of what a mess we would have right now. Oh, we'd be screwed. But that said, there's the constitutional rules and laws, and then there's norms. Where Donald Trump has been surprised is when he stubbed his toes in the Constitution, when he finds out that Nancy Pelosi actually runs a different part of the government and doesn't have to do what he wants. When even the Supreme Court that he appointed a bunch of people to says, no, Bob, you're wrong. This has been a shock to him. Where he has succeeded more is where he steps on norms. And these are kind of the things that put the flesh on the bones of the Constitution.

George Washington, as the first president, worked hard to establish norms. So he said the president should be reserved, should not attack political opponents, should step down after two terms. These are not laws. These are just norms, the way that people grow to expect behaviors to occur. Another norm that was established was an easy transition to help your successor take the reins of power. Now, Donald Trump is stepping on those norms. Some of the things that we kind of thought were almost laws, they just turned to be expectations. And I think what we might have to do is sit down and say, okay, what are the norms that need to be made legal? For example, should we have a law that says when 50 states or when enough states certify that somebody has won the presidency

the transition must begin that you can't halt just because you don't like the outcome that could that could be a law as of december 8th or whatever day when certification occurs you must start a transition definitely so like as there's so many things I think that even I was surprised with Donald Trump that I was like, wait, these are norms? These weren't laws? Like the emoluments clause or the enforcement of it, if you will, or a better definition of it, setting aside your trust and assets. You also talk in the book about, you get into Jefferson's influence to William and Mary. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. I mentioned earlier sort of how impressed I am by Washington and Madison. There's an old saying among historians that the more you know about George Washington, the more you admire him. I think the same is true of James Madison. Likewise, I said I think that John Adams has had kind of an inflated reputation in recent years. I think Jefferson has had an

enormously inflated reputation. Jefferson intrigues me because of all the major subjects in my book, the first four presidents. With Jefferson, you have the biggest gap between his words and his actions. In other words, he's a big hypocrite. His words are beautiful. The Declaration of Independence is the single most important document in American history. That phrase early on, all men are created equal, is something that this country constantly tries to live up to. It's almost like this goal we've been chasing for 250 years. And we are getting closer to it with some hiccups, with some regressions.

It is an aspiration for this country. So it's amazing to think of this thing written in 1776 as an aspirational document. And to that, we are all in Thomas Jefferson's debt. That said, this big old hypocrite spends his life dreaming about liberty and writing about it while he's living off the sweat of captive human beings he considers his property. One of the most astonishing things that Thomas Jefferson ever wrote is he's making a comment in a letter to a friend, and he says, I grow enough food on my farm

to feed all my animals, including the Negroes. Wow. These are very complex people. Writing about Thomas Jefferson, I felt kind of like I was trying to write about the giant marshmallow man in Ghostbusters. Sort of this big, important thing, but you can never kind of get your arms around. And he kind of recedes. You try to poke Jefferson and see what's there, and he kind of falls back.

Jefferson, I want to mention in this context, is the least Roman of the first four presidents and the most Greek. Cato and others that George Washington emulated were Stoics. These are people who are kind of wise, prudent, reserved, not loudmouths. Let your deeds speak, not your words. Jefferson is much more Greek. He's an Epicurean. He says at one point in the letter, I am an Epicurean. What does that mean? It goes back to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the philosopher who said, life is all about avoiding pain and pursuing happiness. Why is that important? Go back and look at the Declaration of Independence.

Happiness is all over it. It's about epicurean happiness. Now, he's not just sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It's about pursuing a moderate, wise, just form of happiness. But it also is about avoiding pain, and Jefferson is very much about avoiding pain all his life. For example, he likes many, he loves many things, good music, good wine, and women. And he spends a good part of his life pursuing married women. Why? Because I think it has all the prospects of romance without any risk of permanent entanglements. Jefferson lives all his life with an eyesight of the Blue Ridge Mountains, just west of Monticello, but he never crosses those mountains.

It's not that he doesn't like to travel. When he lives in Europe, he travels all over. But he is very much about avoiding risk, avoiding pain, making Thomas Jefferson happy. And unlike Adams, Madison, and Jefferson, Adams in Washington, he is very much about the heart as much as he is the head. He's not a man of the Enlightenment. He's becoming more a romantic of the 19th century. You know, it's interesting to me how, like you say, how complex these guys were. I believe when they, and I'm posing this as a question to you, but I believe when they wrote, all men are created equal, they didn't see slaves as full men, and I believe women were also excluded from that thing. So when they meant men, they meant basically white men. Is that correct? I'm glad you brought up slavery. Yeah, they have

this compromise that they cook up in the Constitution. They decide that for the purposes of American law, black people are three-fifths of a person. Now, the Constitution is many things, but in one way, it's a peace treaty between different states. The problem they had as they wrote the Constitution was two states, South Carolina and Georgia, said that if there is if they were outside the United States, if they were independent nations, that would give European powers a toehold in America. France, Spain, England could come back in and have an influence down there and perhaps cut off the Mississippi River, things like that. So they write the Constitution with slavery included in the fundamental law of the land this is significant slavery is not just a stain on the american fabric they weave it into the american fabric and here we are 250 years later still trying to pull it out that yarn of racism now

a question about the ancient world they they relied on the ancient world. They said, well, the ancients had slavery, so we're just like them. No. The ancient world had a different form of slavery. The most important thing about ancient Greek and Roman slavery, it was not race-based. Anybody could be a slave in the ancient Roman world. The word slave, in fact, comes from the Slavs, where today's Yugoslavia was. They were, for our purposes, Caucasian. Roman and Greek slavery generally was also more benign than American slavery. It wasn't as harsh. For example, slaves could be freed, and the children of freed slaves could hold public office.

So it's a very different form of slavery. And I think the founders, if they could see us today, would be embarrassed at what a mess they made of slavery. I don't know what else they could have done. But man, they basically, with the Constitution, light the fuse for the Civil War. And I think here we are now, 150 years after the Civil War, still in reconstruction, still with some people considering black people to be second-class citizens. Unfortunately, some of those people are wearing police uniforms. Would we have gotten the Constitution signed by those states if we've been able to form a union if they hadn't made that transition? They said they were going to walk. And then in the 19th century, the southern states made it very clear

that they would basically shoot any congressman who talked about abolition, talked about getting rid of slavery. There was a lot of violence in the Congress in the 19th century. I don't know if there's another way around it, but man, they sure made a mess of it. It's, it's interesting. Our journey, the, the fight that we go on, like you mentioned, the, that search for, uh, the full, the full, uh, the full assumption or the full realization of all men are created equal and how we put that through the courts and everything else.

What were some of the other aspects of the book that we haven't touched on that you cover? Sure. To come back to James Madison, it amazes me that he isn't as appreciated as much as he should be. George Washington wins the Revolutionary War, and that was not a given. I think if somebody else had been the top general in the American Revolution, we probably would have lost. Washington is so impressive because he's fairly young. When he takes command of the nonexistent U.S. Army and starts building it, he's 43 years old. And he's a rather conventional man, a conventional military officer.

He thinks kind of like the British officers he's fighting think. But he gets defeated badly. Battle of Long Island, late 1776, or summer 1776, he gets kicked out of Long Island. Then he gets kicked across Manhattan. Then he gets chased across New Jersey. By December, he writes a letter to a relative of his saying, we may be losing this thing, we may be lost. But to his great credit and to the benefit of our country, Washington begins changing. He starts thinking differently about the war, and he starts thinking differently

about his soldiers. Initially, he had a lot of contempt for these militiamen, especially these dirty, rather rude New Englanders who didn't show him the deference that a Virginia gentleman expected. Their attitude was, hey, Bob, we're all Americans. But he learns to use the militias. No, they're not going to fight well if you send them in with the British doing bayonet charges against them. But if you let them fight around their farms in the fields and the forests they know, where the roads they know, they can be very good. And this really shows New Jersey. In New Jersey, in the six months after he gets kicked out of New York, he has the militia chasing the British around when they're out

looking for food. This is important because battles don't happen every day, but armies have to eat every day. And the British are going out, and're looking for food and they're trying to capture cattle. And the militia are ambushing them when they go after herds of cattle and so on. In the six months after losing New York, the British army goes from 34,000 troops to 16,000 troops around New York City, basically through killed, wounded, sick, or deserted, or taken prisoner. So Washington changes. Now, Washington's great achievement is he wins the revolution. James Madison, I think, is as important as Washington because Washington gives us the country, Madison designs it. And Madison is not just at the Constitution. Jimmy Madison, during the 1780s, you have the Articles of Confederation government, this kind of crazy little system that didn't work very well. A very weak central government that doesn't do much, kind of like Donald Trump in the last year with the virus. You have this federal government that

hardly exists, and you have all these state governors trying to handle all the problems themselves. Madison said, this ain't working, and he begins beating the drum. We need to have a new fundamental law of the land, a constitution. And not only does he get a constitutional convention called, he is the first guy to show up for it. He has spent the last four years studying Greek and Roman history. What are examples we can use? So, for example, the reason that all the states have two senators is because Madison said, well, that's the way the Greeks did it in one confederation they had.

If you're a big city state or a small city state. Madison gives the first important speech at the Constitutional Convention. Then he leads the ratification battle because each state had to have these state meetings to ratify the new convention. He invents American politics. Remember, the Federalists, people like George Washington and John Adams, said, no, you don't want political parties. That's bad. Madison said, come on, guys. People always will have interest. People want to take care of their families. They want to make some money. And so he says, let's balance partisanship with partisanship. Let's have political parties that represent what people want. And the American people come charging in and say, we're going with that. We, the people, we own this country. This is a really novel thing in history. No other country ever said,

the country belongs to the people. John Adams didn't quite believe it. And his revolutionary cousin, Samuel Adams said, no, Bob, he actually writes a letter. He says, the people don't have part of the sovereignty. They have all of it. Wow. That's really important. Yeah. And it's inspiring. I mean, it really is a revolutionary thing. Finally, on all this, I want to end with the thought of the American experiment,

which is George Washington, in his first inaugural address, talks about the American experiment, saying not only are we trying something different here, this thing could fail. And it really struck me recently that Barack Obama was talking in an interview, and he referred to America as an experiment in multicultural, multi-ethnic democracy. So it is still an experiment, and we still could blow it. We still could have the experiment blow up in our faces unless we pay attention to how this country is supposed to be run. This is one of the reasons I love books like yours, because it's really

important for everyone to read these books and get to know their history, especially where a lot of education curriculums now have taken history or lightened history up in the thing. But a lot of people have the perception. I mean, even I was raised with that perception that, hey, a bunch of guys got together over beer and wrote a constitution and fucking America. That's not a bad thing. What I love is the more you know about this, the more you realize that it's kind of what happened. These guys sat around in the hot summer days in Philadelphia without air conditioning. And they kind of decided how this country should run. And then they went out for a beer. And so when you realize that,

for example, one day they're sitting around talking, how many people should be in the presidency? Should it be one person? Should it be two people? Should it be three people? And they decide pretty quickly. Now, you know, when the Romans had three people, those triumvirates didn't work real well. They went to war with each other. So let's make the presidency one person. Another question comes up. Alexander Hamilton, who is really smart, but also batshit crazy in some ways, he comes in, shows up at the Constitutional Convention, says, okay, fellas, I'll tell you what you need to do. The presidency should be for life, and the Supreme Court should be for, and the Senate should be for life. Wow. And then he leaves town, like, I've explained it to you, do what you will.

Hamilton's fascinating, because he's kind of a tragic figure. By the end of the 1790s, he says to a friend, there's no place in this country for me. He really doesn't feel, he helped to design this country so much, yet he doesn't feel there's any place anymore for him. Another thing they're discussing in the Constitutional Convention is the Supreme Court. And here I think they made a big mistake. They made Supreme Court positions for life. I think they should be for 18 years. A long term, but one 18-year term. That's a lot of power, and you don't have people sitting there

for 50 years. And they also gave us the way to get there. They designed the Constitution to be changed. They hoped it would be changed. They expected it to be changed. There are these things that aren't just called changes to the Constitution. They're called amendments. And the notion is they improve the Constitution. They amend it. In the early part of our history, the Constitution was amended a lot. In the last hundred years, we haven't amended it so much. So I think there are questions we should be asking about the law, about how this should work. For example, when they looked at the states, they said, okay, every state's going to have two senators. The biggest state, Virginia, was 12 times the size of the smallest state, Delaware. Well, now the biggest state, California, is 50 times the population of Wyoming. Should we change that? Should the biggest states

have three senators, the middle third have two, and the smallest third one? I don't know, but it's worth asking these questions. And if you understand that these guys kind of sat around Philadelphia making this up, we can sit around and make it up too. We can make changes. And I think they would say to us, you need to make changes. A big change that I think most of them would endorse is they would say you have let money become too important in American politics. to be run by the billionaires. We designed this for the middle of the country, the middle class. They didn't think that having a lot of rich people was good. They didn't think having a lot of poor people was good. They wanted a lot of middle income people. And they certainly didn't think the dollar should outweigh the vote. They made the vote the basic building block of this country. And when money becomes more important than votes, that undermines

the way they design the country. So I think they would actually come and look at us today and say, you know, you guys criticize us for not being democratic enough. You know, as you mentioned, only white males who held property initially could vote. And you've had this expansion of the franchise. But they would say, if the vote's unimportant, then do you have a democracy? If money is more important, they would say you are in danger of becoming an oligarchy ruled by the rich. So that leads to a question. Should we have a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court decision Citizens United that said corporations have all the

political rights that people do. Corporations aren't mentioned in the Constitution. People are mentioned in the Constitution. Sure, associations of people should be able to express political views, but they shouldn't have all the rights of the people. The Supreme Court has made a lot of disastrous decisions in its history. Tread Scott, the decision in the 19th century that said black people have no rights that white people need to respect. Plessy v. Ferguson, which says segregation is okay by us. And Citizens United, which builds on the bizarre view that corporations should be treated like people, and then says corporations can walk all over politics if they like. Yeah. So do you think SCOTUS needs to get back to we the people more? I know how disastrous that was in putting money in PACs into our politics. You know, like you say, I think even

President Jimmy Carter recently said in the last few years that we were becoming an oligarchy. Certainly Mitch McConnell plays and most of the republican party plays to their donor class well they have to because republicans are declining as a voting class there are fewer but if you can suppress the vote and get the money then you can still hold power yeah And you sell yourself out to the highest bidder. Yeah, but it keeps your party alive. So I think, yeah, SCOTUS needs to do a couple of things. First, I think we should think about terms for members of the Supreme Court. But I think here's something where conservatives have done much better

than liberals have with American history. Conservatives tend to know their early history better. And so they can kind of cherry pick what they call originalism and point to parts of the Constitution. But they don't, there's other parts of the Constitution they don't look at at all. One part of the Constitution, twice the Constitution refers to the general welfare. That is the common good. We need to talk about the common good more. What is the common good? Well, it's things that no one state can do by itself. The environment is a classic example of common good because pollution moves across state lines in the air

and the water. There's other forms of the common good. I would argue that education is part of the common good, because the more educated your people are, the more productive they are. And what is really striking in the last year to me, another form of the common good is public health. I was just going to say that. In the last year, yeah. The common good, the federal government has fallen down on providing for the common good. This is the basic law of the land. The federal government is supposed to make sure

that public health occurs. And if they're not doing that, they are remiss in their duties. So talk about impeaching Donald trump for some crazy stuff in the ukraine sure but i think the really impeachable offense is asleep at the wheel on this epidemic over the last year yeah we recently for those of you who may be watching this later but we recently saw this texas lawsuit that was brought to the supreme court by an attorney general who's being chased by the FBI, which is interesting. It appears he may be chasing a pardon from Donald, who's got the drive-in pardon he's setting up,

I guess, outside the White House there. You could just drive up and order what you want. Pardons are us, yeah. Pardons are us. There you go. But we recently saw the extraordinary thing of 106 members of Congress signing on to the amicus brief. of history and and are they is that is that an affront to the constitution they took an oath to i've heard people say that they're you know they're doing it because they they can play to their base but they took an oath to the constitution is that

a violation of that oath i think it is a violation because there are no facts that have been found by any court to support it it's one thing that if you allege fraud and there's evidence of it, then you are defending the American system. But if 50 court decisions, 56 I think now, across the country have said there is no evidence here, if you aren't calling the election fraudulent, you are not supporting the American system. You are undermining it. So I think that what the congressional Republicans are doing with Donald Trump and these state's attorney generals is the biggest smear job in American history. It's one thing to smear one person or to smear a group. These people are smearing the American system. And I am dead serious about this. This is about people believing that their vote counts and people believing that the system

works. And we just had a bunch of officials certify across the country, state and local and federal officials, Republican, Democratic, certify that the election was free and fair, and a bunch of judges say, anybody got any evidence here? I'm going to look at it, and nobody had anything. Yet, the Republican Party persists in undermining and attacking the American system. I mean, this seems to me like classic, I mean, classic subversion. This is close to sedition. That was going to be the next thing I was going to ask you.

And it does come circle back to what we talked to earlier, the protection that Madison gave us with the states having this power. Because if they could go to SCOTUS with the federal government overseeing the election, if that had been put into the Constitution, we'd probably be in a little trouble right now, maybe. Imagine if Donald Trump could certify the election. Oh, God. Imagine if it was the president. Because, you know, I'm the head of the U.S. government, and I proclaim this election invalid. He wants to do that, but he can't.

And again, thank you, James Madison. It's been an extraordinary history lesson, like learning that you can't, I didn't even know that states couldn't sue each other over stuff like this without getting permission from the Supreme Court, which I think is pretty brilliant. It's actually a fascinating

little corner of the law. It's the only subject in which a lawsuit can originate with the Supreme Court rather than a lower court. It's the only subject in which a lawsuit can originate with the Supreme Court rather than a lower court. It's when states are suing each other. That's actually, it's called an original suit at the Supreme Court. But this one's a joke. This one's going to go nowhere. And as you say, it's more, the Texas Attorney General, not only is the FBI investigating him recently, some of his staffers allege that he had acted fraudulently. People who work for him are saying he's blowing the whistle. So, yeah, I think it is more a bid for a pardon for this guy than anything else.

And, you know, there's going to be a lot of pardon bargaining, I can think, in the next four weeks in America. So your book talks a lot about how our founders learned from the Greeks and the Romans and what shaped our country. And we know that I'm not too familiar on Greek history, but I know the Romans failed their state. And I imagine what a lot of what they were trying to learn from them was trying to figure out how to set our wheels in motion the right way and not fail like the Roman Empire. We've seen empires fail. I mean, we've seen, you know, the sun used to not set on the British Empire, and we've seen what happens to that.

Now they're looking to become basically an island with Brexit. Do you see us avoiding the fall of Rome, or are we still in that early experiment where it might hinge on what happens the next 40 days? I think this country has the beauty of the Constitution, which is it is a pretty resilient system. Donald Trump stomped all over a lot of norms, but he constantly stubbed his toes when he got to the Constitution. Judges in this country understand the Constitution, unlike the president, and they support it, and they act constitutionally. And I'm saying this about Republican as well as Democratic judges. It is not a partisan statement to say that judges in this country generally want to see facts in front of them, not ideological assertions. Now, first of all, on behalf of the Roman Empire,

I've got to say, lasting 500 or 800 years is pretty good. If we could pull that off, bravo for us. The second thing is, this is actually an issue the founders were concerned about. Remember I mentioned earlier that they saw the Roman Empire is brought down, or the Roman Republic is brought down by factionalism and corruption. But they also read a lot by Montesquieu, a French philosopher of the Enlightenment of the early 18th century. And Montesquieu reads a lot of Roman history. He's standing on the basis of Roman history. And he comes to some conclusions. And he says two things, guys. Republics have to be small. Successful republics are city-states. They can't get big.

And the second thing he says is republics tend not to be sustainable. So those are the two things that Madison especially is worried about. How do you make a sustainable republic? How do you make a big republic? Because we're going to be big. They all know this country is going to grow. At one point, this is amazing to me, John Adams predicts this country will have thousands of millions of people. We're still not there.

We're at 300 billion now. We're not at 1,000. But he looks way down through the centuries and predicts there will be thousands of millions of people who may enjoy liberty one day because of what we are doing here now. A fascinating thought. Another thought, I just want to mention it, discussing all this with norms and how things change. And I've been kind of beating up on John Adams here, so I want to mention it. You have this first president, George Washington, a titan of a figure. He would be a hard act for anyone to follow, but especially for John Adams, he's kind of the Woody Allen of his day. And they have the inauguration ceremony, and they're about to leave the room. And Adams

indicates that Washington should leave the room first as the person of greatest honor. And President Washington, ex-President Washington, turns and says, no, John, Mr. Adams, you're president, you leave first. And again and again, my heart goes out to Washington doing the right thing the right way at the right time. One other model I want to mention for him, early on he wanted to be like Cato, but there's another model, another Roman model, Cincinnatus, a mythical Roman general, or maybe legendary Roman general, who had retired and gone back to his farm. And one day he's plowing his field, and a runner comes and says, we're losing a war, the country needs you. And he immediately leaves, goes, and he leads the Roman army into battle. And he wins the battle.

And then he turns and goes back to his waiting plow. Literally, the plow is still there two weeks later. Twice, not once, but twice in his life, George Washington voluntarily goes back to his farm. After the revolution, he's won the war. He goes to Congress and resigns his commission. And actually, he does it in an interesting way. He bows to Congress in a sign of deference to them. Congress does not rise from their seats or bow to him. Why? Because civilian power is superior to the military power in this country. And he wants to emphasize that. The second time is he serves two terms as president. He could have gotten elected again. There was no law against him. He stepped out. He said, eight years isn't enough for one man.

I'm going back to my farm. And again, he emulates Cincinnatus. Like I said, the more you know about George Washington, the more you appreciate him. This is why I love books about this, especially this time. There's an old basketball coach whose name escapes me. Go back to the basics. And sometimes in times of crisis in my life, I've thought, okay, maybe I'm off base somewhere. I'm screwing up somewhere. Let's go back to basics and just focus on what's important and i think hopefully we're at that point in our history where we're at a crisis uh venue and we survive it and and it

teaches us because we're you know i've talked to so many more people that are reading the constitution learning about the the levers of our government all this stuff like you talk about the book that that washington madison jefferson laid here. And it's extraordinary too, to me, like some of the things you talked about, it's just astounding how much these people understood human nature. And that hasn't changed in 240-ish years that they saw Donald Trump coming. They could see the evil of man coming, and they prepared us for it in this incredible gift of democracy and a republic. Well, they knew some of the people around them were bums and rogues and scoundrels. I mean, Aaron Burr elected vice president through a mistake of the Constitution, which they then fixed. Aaron Burr is elected vice president, shoots Alexander Hamilton while vice president,

kills him, and then goes west and does some things which the U.S. government eventually indicted for treason. So the experience of that, early on, I think it was the first person ever impeached from a federal position was blunt. A Senator from Tennessee who led a conspiracy to split off Tennessee and Kentucky and join the Spanish empire. Wow. People,

people were doing nutty things early on and they saw this and they said, we got to have laws again. Madison says, if all men were angels, we wouldn't need a government, but we need a government. And I'm glad that people are going back and looking at the Constitution because it is a living document. And because there are things in there that can help us today.

If you understand the system they designed, you actually can have some hope for this country. I think we will get through the current crisis. And I personally believe there's a significant chance that Donald Trump will be wearing an orange jumpsuit in a couple of years. I'm all for that. In fact, we just saw today that I think the Manhattan Attorney

General has expanded into some of his insurance things. It probably deals with his property values and different things they were doing there. So that should be interesting. The thing I've always thought about Donald Trump was here's this guy presenting himself as very rich, but he declares bankruptcy a few times in the 90s,

about 30 years ago. Nobody in America will lend to him anymore. And he starts getting money from overseas. And my guess, it's just a guess, is that he eventually borrowed a lot of money from Russian oligarchs and was unable to repay that money. And the question is going to be, did he report that failure to repay those loans on his income taxes? Because a forgiven loan is treated for tax purposes as a gift. So did he fail to report those forgiven loans? Or did he actually report, yep, I wound up taking many millions of dollars from Russian oligarchs, some of whom are involved

in some of the dirtiest business in the world, sex trafficking, drugs, and money laundering. And we may be seeing those things come out in the next couple of years. People say, boy, I'm going to be glad when I don't hear about Donald Trump anymore. You may be hearing a lot more about Donald Trump in the next couple of years. I think a lot of authors agree with me over the last year that we've been talking about this.

I mean, we're probably going to spend the next 10 years unpacking and, and, and reconciling all the, all the bodies in the basement of the white house and picking up the mess and finding new bodies and new problems and finding out things that happened when he was president. It's going to be extraordinary. I just, I just pray to God. And I, I think, I think Biden has signaled this, that he's not going to pull a Ford where he pardons him. And then, of course, we're probably going to see an interesting constitutional point made where he's going to self-pardon and we're going to have SCOTUS deciding that. Well, the thing is, he can't pardon himself for the state crimes.

He can pardon himself for federal crimes. Again, thank you, Jimmy Madison. Yeah, there you go. Although Madison did want to have a federal veto over state laws. He was very disappointed. He couldn't get that in the Constitution. He thought it was essential. Later on, he was kind of embarrassed about that.

I've heard some people say that the basis of that no man is above the law would make it so you couldn't self-pardon because then any president could go in and be the biggest giant criminal in the world. Oh, I think absolutely. One of the things that's very clear in the Constitution is the president is not above the law and that's why you have things like impeachment.

Not just for high crimes, but also for misdemeanors. But remember also, they're very inspired by Montesquieu, again, the French philosopher who invents the modern liberal democratic state, who says what you want is division of power, tolerance, and trying to find a balance between liberty and justice, between freedom and social order. And there are always going to be these tensions, but it's a system that is designed to get us through bad periods as well. There you go. So the book, First Principles, folks, what America's founders learned from the Greeks and Romans and how that shaped our country and then how it's saving our ass today. Maybe you should add that on the end.

Thomas, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Give us your plugs so that people can find you on the interwebs and order up the book. Sure. Best way to find me on the interwebs is on Twitter at TomRicks1. And a way to find my book is on Amazon or at your friendly local independent bookstore. They really need support, guys. I have visited my local independent bookstore to sign a lot of books, and if you want to get a signed copy of my book, it's Blue Hill Books in Blue Hill, Maine, and they love getting your orders.

You can go online and order, or you can call Matt there, and Matt will send you a book. If you call soon, you'll get it by Christmastime. There you go. That's a great way to get a signed copy. I like that idea. Support your independent booksellers, guys, because those are the guys who are probably hurting now the most with coronavirus. I know a lot of them are going to some extraordinary things.

It's been wonderful to have you on, Tom. Thanks for coming on and sharing these wonderful details with us. You're welcome. I enjoyed it. Anytime. Thank you very much, sir. To my audience, be sure to watch the video versions on youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification. It's free for unlimited time. Go to goodreach.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can

see a reading and all the authors we've had on the show and reviews and stuff we're doing on books. Go to facebook.com forward slash the Chris Voss show and the CBPN. You can see online podcasts over there. I appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here and we'll see you guys next time.