The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen https://amzn.to/3IXIp80 A fascinating examination of what “the pursuit of happiness” meant to our nation’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy. The Declaration of Independence identified “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles. The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.

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chris voss show go to goodreads.com for just chris voss linkedin.com for just chris voss chris voss one of the tiktokity and chris voss facebook.com as always we have the smartest most brilliant authors the ceo of the billionaires pulitzer prize winners the people who write all the stories and stories of the owners manual to life as we always talk about and we've got another amazing gentleman multi-book author on the show his newest book has just come out february 13th 2024 it's called the pursuit of happiness how classical writers on virtue inspire the lives of the founders and defined america as long as it's still in business we'll see what happens next year jeffrey rosen is on the show in business, we'll see what happens next year. Jeffrey Rosen is on the show with us today.

We're going to be talking about his amazing new book and insights. He is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He was previously the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and staff writer for The New Yorker. We'll get into his new books. He's a graduate of Harvard, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and Yale Law School. Boy, you've been cruising them all.

Welcome to the show, Jeffrey. How are you? Good. Great to be with you. Great to have you as well. Do you prefer being called Jeff or Jeffrey? Jeff. There you go, Jeff.

So, Jeff, give me your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Constitutioncenter.org, the amazing interactive constitution where you can find liberal and conservative thought leaders on every clause of the constitution and it's at rosen jeffrey there you go so thank you for coming on the show congratulations on the new book give us a 33 000 overview of what's in the new book so this is the book where i set out to understand what the founders meant when they put that famous phrase the pursuit of happiness in the declaration and i spent the year of happiness in the Declaration. And I spent the year

of COVID reading the classical moral philosophy that inspired Jefferson and the other founders. And these are books like Cicero and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, stoic and classical Greek and Roman philosophers. And when I read these books, which are on Thomas Jefferson's reading list, I discovered that for the founders, happiness meant not feeling good, but being good. Not the pursuit of pleasure, but the pursuit of virtue. And this just changed the way I understood what it meant to be a good person and a good citizen. And it was an amazing reading project. That's interesting because a lot of people, I think, ascribe some different beliefs to that or attach some different meanings to that, don't they? I always thought it was the pursuit of happiness was being like, let's all get drunk on Fridays. No, I'm just

kidding. That's true. Let's find the best vodka and wine. But so do you find that a lot of people ascribe the wrong things that maybe the founders, they misinterpret, or maybe they just put their own definition of what the founders meant? Absolutely. Of course, I had the same definition of happiness. That's the normal definition that we have today, the pursuit of pleasure, just sex, drugs, and rock and roll, whatever you want to call it, just pursuing your immediate gratification. And that was what was so amazing about this reading. I found this reading list of Thomas Jefferson, and I felt that I had to work my way through it because I've had this great liberal arts education, and I just never encountered these classical sources. And what's so striking is all the founders read these books, and all of them used the phrase, the pursuit of happiness, and all of them interpreted it in this completely

different way that really prevailed for much of human history until the 1960s. And that's what's so striking about this whole effort to understand what the founders meant. For most of human history, happiness meant not immediate gratification, but deferred gratification, using your powers of reason to moderate your unreasonable passions or emotions so you can achieve the calm tranquility that will allow you to serve others and be your best self. So really what the founders meant by happiness was character improvement, self-improvement, self-mastery, basically a purpose-driven life. And this was the definition of happiness that prevailed for most of human history. Wow. Maybe why our empire seems to be in decline right now, because everyone's for instant gratification in the Instagram era now.

Absolutely. This is a very serious point because the founders said repeatedly that the whole experiment would collapse unless citizens achieve self-mastery. All the great republics of history have fallen. Greece and Rome. These are republics and democracies that had given way to demagogues like Caesar or Cleon. And the main warning in the Constitutional Convention is, let's not be like Greece and Rome. The only way we can avoid that is through self-mastery. I found this amazing letter that Thomas Jefferson sent to Madison when he first got a copy of the Constitution. And he said, I'm really worried because the president is eligible to run for reelection.

I'm concerned that in the future, an unscrupulous president might lose an election by a few votes, cry foul, enlist the states who voted for him and refuse to leave office. It's just an amazing thing. And you'd see a lot. That would never happen, I'm sure. It sounds like somebody dying in an election and trying to overthrow the U.S. government. That never happened. Yeah. They predicted it. They predicted it all. And they said the only way we can avoid this is just through tending to ourselves, making sure we don't, you know, we're not incredibly partisan. We don't use social media to express our anger all the

time. Basically, try to look out for the common good and elect wise leaders who will serve the common good rather than their own egos yeah it is amazing how they saw so much of the future or they seem to have seen but you know history repeats itself you know like you said the the roman uh the fall of the roman empire and what what what alluded to that you know they they knew the history i i assume they know you may know better than i they knew history repeats itself and human nature is human nature and you know the what is the old line that i always say the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history thereby we go round and round and you

know reading the federalist papers is it, you know, reading the Federalist Papers. Is it the Federalist Papers? Yeah. The Federalist Papers and seeing the thought that they put into the Constitution. I really wish they'd make the Constitution and the Federalist Papers required reading to every American child to say they read it. Because it seems like every time I see somebody on social media quoting the Constitution, you're sitting there going, you've never read that document, have you? Because that is not in there. Absolutely.

And that's why the National Constitution Center is this amazing resource, this nonpartisan website and educational institution that has leading liberal and conservative thinkers on every clause of the Constitution. There's a free Constitution 101 class. There are links to the primary sources like the Federalist Papers in a Founders Library. It's just this amazing document, and I'd love listeners to check it out. There you go. So let's get a little into your background. People like to hear about the author as well. You've written massive amounts of wonderful books on our government and some of the leaders and stuff. Tell us a little about you. How did you grow up? What influenced you? When did you know you wanted to become a writer? And

what got you writing some of the content that you're writing about our government, our leaders, et cetera, et cetera? I grew up in New York City. My dad was a hypnotherapist and a psychiatrist, and my mom was a social worker. And they really introduced me to the power of the imagination. And my dad used to quote a mystic called Paracelsus, as we imagine ourselves to be socially be. And I found in writing this book that dad's teaching about hypnosis, and the ability of the mind to shape our reality had a lot to do with the classical thinkers. I went to college and loved literature and history, but didn't know what else I could do. So I went to law school because I couldn't think of anything else to do. And in law school, I really fell in love with the Constitution

and had the most amazing teachers who kindled my love for studying it. In law school, I decided I didn't actually want to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a journalist, which my mom wasn't too psyched about, but it was just a passion I had. And I had an incredible break after law school. I got hired to be the legal affairs editor of the New Republic magazine by Andrew Sullivan, who's now running the Dishcast. And I just talked to him about the book and I owe my whole career to him because he gave me this great break. And it was the early 90s. And it was a really exciting time to be writing about the courts for the New Republic. Remember, there's no World Wide Web. So it was a really significant platform to have. And just had an amazing time writing about the justices and the

courts at this really crucial period. Then started teaching at GW Law School, where I've been teaching ever since, and basically spent 20 years as a law professor and a legal journalist. And then out of the blue in 2013, 10 years ago, the National Constitution Center called and decided to take a flyer on me and gave me the chance to run this amazing institution, which I've been doing ever since. And I just feel so fortunate to be able to be leading this great team that has this mission to inspire people to learn about the Constitution on a nonpartisan basis, hosting the podcast every week, bringing together liberals and conservatives on the constitutional issue of the week

or the questions in history. And then the opportunity to write these books about constitutional history and the American idea is more fulfilling than I could possibly describe. There you go. Quite the journey. You've written some excellent books, people should check out as well when they go on Amazon to order this one. And so I'm looking at constitutionalcenter.org, correct? Constitutioncenter.org, exactly. There you go. It looks like you guys have some amazing stuff there. And you try and, I guess, cut it down the middle and be bipartisan or be just open to the interpretation of the Constitution from both sides?

Exactly. You know, let's say nonpartisan because we definitely flag all the major debates. But we always have diverse voices, generally a liberal and a conservative, to explore areas of agreement and disagreement. So the core of the interactive constitution that I really want to share my enthusiasm for, we convinced the conservative Federalist Society and the liberal American Constitution Society to nominate 80 scholars each to write about every clause of the constitution. And it just blows your mind when you see the quality of these people. For example, we have Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Katyal with a thousand words about what they agree on the habeas corpus clause, and then separate thousand word statements about what they disagree about. And you multiply that

by 80 or 160 all in all. And it's just extraordinary to have this caliber of people seriously engaging agreement and disagreement. And that's the model we use for the podcasts, which are called We the People, which listeners can check out. And also for these great Constitution 101 classes, where there's kind of a 15 weeks of everything you need to know about the Constitution, again, with scholars on both sides talking about it. And we have this great new partnership with Khan Academy, which we're going to push out starting next fall, to bring this to hundreds of thousands of high school kids for free across the country. So you get the basic idea, and it's just all Constitution all the time.

Oh, I love it. I'm going to subscribe to it and check it out. We need more people to read this damn Constitution. It's just anytime I hear somebody popping off about, this isn't the Constitution. I'm like, when was the last time you read it you know i kind of know the dunning-kruger disease when it comes to people quoting the constitution i mean i i don't even think i quote it without pulling a copy of it to make sure is that really in there am i interpreting that right and i'd probably quote it directly but you know it's it's such an amazing, like you said, an amazing document.

The law that's founded around it, the rule of law that's found around it is so important. A lot of people don't realize it until they either get into law or they get into trouble with the courts and they end up in the court system. And they realize how powerful some of those aspects are. The right to defend yourself in the court of law. The ability to call witnesses and things of that nature you know they don't realize how some countries you know you can you know we've seen that in russia where they throw our journalists into prison over suspicions of anything and there's no real justice system over there. Exactly. Absolutely.

That's such an important comparison. As you said, what's the difference between us and Russia? In Russia, Putin can murder journalists. He can poison people who are his enemies without being checked because the president is a king and has all the power. Whereas in America, we have separation of powers. The president can't order the Justice Department to kill his enemies, and we all the power. Whereas in America, we have separation of powers. The president can't order the Justice Department to kill his enemies, and we have independent courts. And in some ways, that basic constitutional structure of separation of powers, which ensures the president is not a king, is the glory of the American system. And then, as you said, there are all these individual

protections. If you're accused by the police or the justice system, you have a lot of rights that you can invoke. I teach constitutional law and also criminal procedure, and criminal procedure is an amazing class. It's the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments. And the basic advice that I share, which is one I got from my great crim pro teacher, if the police are ever questioning you, say the magic words, I want a lawyer. And that's so powerful because then all the questioning has to stop and you can make sure that you're not saying stuff you shouldn't say. Simple knowing your rights like that can be incredibly helpful. So that's why it's so exciting and important to study the

constitution, both as a citizen and an individual. and there's so much to learn. Oh, yeah. I mean, just the rule of law and basically, you know, defining a society that's civil instead of, you know, where we don't have roving bands of mobs running around. You see that in Haiti now with the fall of that government and other places around the world where there's literally no safety and there's no value to life either when it comes down to it in some of these countries. So in The Pursuit of Happiness, you mentioned Stoicism. I'm a big fan of Stoicism and Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca and stuff. Were those some of the books that were

on their list? Those are exactly the books. So Jefferson has this incredible reading list. And when people would ask him, what should I read to be an educated person? I'm going to law school. He would send out this reading list. And it kind of blows your mind because he's very rigorous about how much you have to read and when you have to read it. You've got to get up before sunrise, spend the morning reading the Stoics and moral philosophers and political philosophy.

Closer to lunch, you can have some history. After lunch, some science, literature in the evening, and then to bed is 12 hours a day. And in the section called ethics or natural religion, there are those Stoic philosophers you mentioned, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, as well as some Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke and Francis Hutchison and Lord Bolingbroke. So those are the, I just worked my way through the reading list, and all of them have that basic idea that we should focus on the only thing we can control, which is our own thoughts and emotions, rather than being attached to results or trying to control the

thoughts or actions of others. And that incredibly liberating wisdom encourages us to really tend to ourselves and to be perfect. And there's also this very strong injunction, which comes from philosophers like Pythagoras, of all people, that we've got to try to become more perfect every day. And the way to do that partly is by using time well and being mindful about what we do and when we do it, which is why Jefferson's reading list, which has all those, you know, long schedule and says you've got to use every moment productively, he's getting that from the Stoics in particular. And here's the book that set me down this whole passage. There's a book by Cicero called The Tusculan Disputations. And when people would ask Jefferson, what's the meaning of happiness? He would send out this passage from Cicero that basically says, he who has achieved calm tranquility of soul,

who's neither unduly exuberant or overly despondent, he is the wise man of whom we request. He's the happy man. So Cicero is kind of summing up this wisdom from Aurelius and Epictetus and saying that it's this calm self-mastery that really defines happiness. There you go. So why were they concerned about happiness when they're writing the Constitution and putting that pursuit of that in the Constitution? Why did they feel

that was important? Great, great question. So this is, you know, they're writing the Declaration of Independence and all the philosophers, the Enlightenment and the ancients, say the very purpose of life is to pursue happiness so that you can achieve public and private happiness. On a private level, we've got to be free so that we can use our faculties of reason to choose the occupations that we think best and will best contribute to our own self-improvement and well-being. And then on the public level, the reason we form government, the happiness of the people is the end of government. We've got to create governments that will let us be free enough to engage in this kind of virtuous self-mastery, self-improvement and freedom. So when Jefferson is saying, let's think about the famous words of the Declaration, we hold these truths to be self-evident. All men, all people are created

equal. We're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. What's an unalienable right? It's a right that we can't alienate or surrender to government when we move from the state of nature to civil society. Why is happiness an unalienable right? Because it's based on our powers of reason, and we can't alienate or surrender our powers of reason to government. They're inherent in who we are as human beings. This is why Jefferson didn't say

life, liberty, or property. John Locke, in his second treatise on government, says that life, liberty, and property are natural rights, but property is an alienable right because obviously I can alienate or exchange property, or you can trade, and you can also give government the power to regulate the economy to create greater security of the whole. So property is alienable, but happiness is unalienable because it's based in reason, and it's the very purpose of

our existence is to pursue happiness. So Jefferson is just stating basic social contract theory when he says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights. And then he adds that final sentence, but whenever government becomes destructive of these rights, it's the right of the people to alter and abolish it. Amendment or revolution are inherent in our ability to protect our reserved rights to pursue happiness. Do you think that's what's, you know, one of the things that's made America a leader in the world is our ability to, as a collective, and with the freedom and, you know, the ability to pursue your happiness and do what you want, it seems we've attracted some of the best

minds in the world and brought them here. And by having that melting pot that we've always had, it's, it's inspired people to do their best. And, and they were looking for the, it, I, when I was young, I looked at the USSR because that's where I grew up in. And I looked at communism and it's, you give everybody everybody gets a piece and everybody's technically supposed to be happy and i looked at how communism seemed to kill the human spirit how it seemed to dampen it and it was it basically was unlike america where if you really want to work hard if you really want to excel if you really want to improve the quality of other people's lives you can become an entrepreneur or or do something that's successful that contributes to people,

and you'll be paid in direct proportion to the value of that service. And that's not guaranteed, but you have that option. You have the potential. If you want to be a billionaire, you can possibly go be a billionaire. There's no limit. We're in a communist country. It doesn't matter how hard you work. It doesn't matter how hard you excel. It doesn't matter how hard you excel. It doesn't matter how bright you are, unless you're in the oligarchy or the kleptocracy. You're, you're just going to pay the same as everybody else. And you're not going to be exemplary or ability to shine with your personal spirit and everything else. That pursuit of happiness plays into that sort of thing, that being able to have loftier ideals and more drive and to tap into the essence of the human spirit is really what's made this great experiment work so well. Absolutely.

You put it so well, and that's amazing that you grew up in the USSR and you saw it. I didn't. I watched it from afar. You watched it. Yeah. are and you saw i didn't oh i didn't i just i watched it from you watched it yeah you know from observing it that that's exactly the the contrast just as you said between a society that values freedom and allows us to pursue happiness in terms of following our own path and choosing how best to use our talents without being directed by the state and a society that tries to crush people's

freedom and tell them what to do. And that's the very difference between a free society and a oppressive authoritarian society that the founders look to other tyrants and czars and thugs who are running Europe and oppressing freedom around the globe. This was the last best hope of earth. It was the place that was, for the first time in human history, going to test the proposition that a government could be based on reason and conviction, not force or violence, as Alexander Hamilton said in Federalist One. So that's why our conversation about the pursuit of happiness is directly relevant to the difference between the U.S ussr here we let people follow their dreams and there they try to tell people what to do yeah and they improve the quality of our of our country and our and our

ideals hopefully and and and just make for a better union for everyone the rising tide lifts all boats as it were. You know, you talk about the book that part of their interest was self-improvement, character development, calm self-mastery. And I imagine a lot of that in stoicism comes down to being self-aware, being self-accountable. We kind of live in a really sort of victimhood society now, where there's a victimhood competition where it's, no, you're not a victim as much as I'm a victim. I'm a bigger victim than you are. to equate that the Holocaust and the Jews struggle was not as valid as a persecution as what black people went through for hundreds of years. And, you know, trying to say one

person's experience of horror and torture is worse than another's and trying to one up one, you know, I actually had to say to some people who live in victimhood hey it's not a competition man and so seeing that sort of thing in this victimhood society do you think that that going against those things that the founders were into self-improvement character development calm self-mastery is going to lead to the fall of our country if we don't quit being victimhood culture and living in the now sort of Instagram era? The founders thought so. They absolutely were concerned that unless citizens took individual responsibility and learned about liberty so they could defend it and made wise choices in voting, the whole republic would collapse. And you're absolutely right that a victimhood mentality is the opposite of the self-accounting

and self-reliance that was the basic definition of the pursuit of happiness. Ben Franklin, in his 20s, resolved to achieve moral perfection, as he put it, and he developed this system of self-accounting that he got from Pythagoras, the Greek moral philosopher and great genius, who recommended every night before you go to bed, you should make a list of how you fared and measure yourself against 13 virtues that Franklin came up with, things like temperance and prudence and industry and frugality. And if you've fallen short, you make an X mark. Now, Franklin tried this for a while. He found there were so many X marks that he gave it up because it was depressing. But he thought he was a better person for having

tried. And that idea that we're all responsible every single night for just looking to ourselves and asking, how well have I done on all these metrics, not trying to blame others for our problems or to cast stones, but just to ask how can we be better is the essence of what the founders meant by the pursuit of happiness. There you go. What I do is I keep a list on my desk when I go to bed at night and I make sure I check off the boxes of the seven deadly sins. So did I engage in lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, and wrath today? And maybe some envy and pride there. That's great that you do that, and that's very much in the Franklin spirit, and you can either focus on the virtues or the vices.

And the deadly sins are the opposite of the virtues, and God knows they're hard to avoid, but it's really important to keep track. I mostly stick to, you know, the gluttony part for dinner. So there you go. What further thoughts on the Pursuit of Happiness book that you've written have we not touched on? It's just so incredibly exciting and meaningful to ask, how did the founders apply these virtues in their own daily lives? And I have chapters on all the major founders, John Adams, George Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson, and Madison, as well as people like Phyllis Wheatley, the first Black poet, or Mercy Otis Warren, James Otis, other well, less known founders. And what's so striking

is how they talked constantly about their efforts to tame their anxieties, to be better people. They're always beating themselves up for not doing well enough. I love that quotation from John Quincy Adams, who's one of my favorites in some ways, because he's so hard on himself, but also tries so hard to be perfect. And he kind of says, you know, I'm 27 years old. He's just turned down a Supreme Court appointment. He's the ambassador to Russia. He says, I haven't achieved anything

because I'm not working hard enough to be perfect. And then he has this incredible series of tragedies. First, he loses the reelection as president. And then his oldest son, George Washington Adams, commits suicide. He just can't take the pressure of being an Adam's son. He becomes an alcoholic and he jumps off a steamship. And Adams is just crushed.

He doesn't know how he can continue. He prays for the strength to continue. What does he do? He spends a year reading Cicero in the original. He reads Cicero. He wakes up in the morning. He writes sonnets about what he's read. And this transforms

his purpose in life. And he resolves to devote the rest of his life to fighting slavery. And he then becomes the greatest abolitionist of his time. He introduces constitutional amendments to end slavery. He denounces slavery in Congress, where he's returned as a representative. He represents enslaved people in the Amistad case before the Supreme Court. And then he casts his final vote against the war in Mexico. And then he dies on the floor of Congress. And his last words are, I am composed. And he gets that from Cicero, where he's kind of has the sense that a self-mastered life where you spend your life trying to be as virtuous as possible will give you that self-composure that defines virtue and happiness. It's incredibly inspiring, and it's

just one example of how seriously the founders took this wisdom. There you go. We need to get back to that. I mean, our society over the last three generations has become an emotional society, and we seem to have abandoned a lot of logic and reason and like i say it's a victimhood mentality emotionalism mentality it's all about feelings instead of logic and reason and you know once you step into that you you step away from the principles of stoicism self-accountability is one of those and you know your emotions take precedent number one over logic and reason and you know it stoicism teaches if you you've got to be able to you know analyze and control your emotions and have some emotional intelligence really what i think what part of it really is

and where you you know you're just not running around with your hair on fire pulling cairns all day long so there you go that's exactly right and just to share it the the founders completely agreed with what you just said and they tried to live it i mean you look take take someone like george washington the source of his greatness was his self-command and he spent his whole childhood he had a very hot temper his mom was always nagging him for not you know working hard enough and he was didn't like her, the fact that she was so critical. But he just struggles to control his temper, and he succeeds. And he's one of his greatest moments is at Newburgh when the soldiers are rebelling because they can't get paid for their service in the Revolutionary War and Congress is

dragging its feet. They're about to rebel. Washington mounts the temple of virtue, as the specially constructed stage is called. He struggles to read his appeal, calling on them for patience, promising that Congress will eventually make them whole. He can't read his speech, so he puts on reading glasses and he famously says, forgive me, gentlemen, I've grown old in your service and now I've grown almost blind. The soldiers weep because they've never seen him confess any weakness before. But then he, by appealing to their self-control and their self-mastery, persuades them to avoid the rebellion. And Congress eventually does make them whole. And people say Washington has never seemed so great as at that moment when

he displays by his own self-mastery a model for the soldiers. And that was why, you know, many of the founders don't look as good on close examination. We can talk about Jefferson, if you like. He's kind of really troubling in a lot of ways. But Washington, the closer you look, the greater he appears. And much of that is because of his self-mastery, which was all based on the Stoic literature, including Seneca, that he read when he was a kid. There you go. Yeah, Seneca is so inspiring in all the different things.

Yeah, I think this is important, what you've put down here, to help get us back to the original stuff. And, you know, reading the Federalist Papers was so enlightening to me. I didn't read them until, I don't know, a year or two ago, I started reading the Federalist Papers. And just seeing the thoughts that went in, the debates that went into the creation of the Constitution. And, you know, this wasn't something they just threw together and just throw some stuff together and just go with that, right? They really thought this thing out, debated it and the aspects of it i mean you look at i don't know if it was i don't know who which of the founders was or maybe i think it was a compilation but they put the the voting in the states so the states had control of the the voting

because they knew that if if the voting was controlled at a federal level it would be easier to seize power and we would probably not be in democracy right now if it were not for that forethought. They saw the future coming in such an extraordinary way. It was just amazing. I think it was Madison whose idea was behind that. Absolutely. As you said, that's one of the very central decisions that the founders made to keep voting at a decentralized level and And think about all the

checks at the state level that we have against a federal official who wants to, you know, run away with an election. And that's such a wise choice. And it's so great that you're reading the Federalist Papers because they're just the handbook, the owner's manual for the US government. Think about I read the Federalist Papers in a totally different light after reading all this on the pursuit of happiness because you suddenly realize they're a manual for how to achieve public happiness madison has this famous definition of faction any group majority or a minority animated by passion rather than reason devoted to self-interest rather than the public good so madison's saying the same way we got to use reason to master our passions to achieve private happiness in the constitution of our mind, we also have to use in the constitution of the state. And the whole system is designed to slow down deliberation, to prevent mobs from forming, or by the time they do form, people will get tired and go home. That's why Madison says in Federalist 55, in all large assemblies of any character

composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Even if every Athenian had been Socrates, Athens would still have been a mob. Again, that antithesis between passion and reason and that sense that direct democracies are going to lead to mob violence. We've got to prevent mobs from deliberating face-to-face in ways that might inflame them so that they can take the advantage of sober second thoughts. I hadn't realized how incredibly thoughtfully they connected the construction of government with their thoughts about private happiness, and both are based on the same idea of reason over passion.

Yeah, and you see the danger of a mob onuary 6th you do i mean it's it's a non-partisan thing to say the constitution center is non-partisan we're not allowed to have political opinions but it's a totally non-partisan statement that january 6th was the founder's nightmare this is exactly what they're concerned about is armed mobs trying to shut down the government based on passion yeah and violence and taking away the will of the people to to whatever sort of violent ends people want to jump the government so give us a final pitch out on your book and the national constitution center tell people how they can join on board and get involved i love what you guys are doing for high school students and getting people educated

i'm going to subscribe to it. I just love the Constitution. I'm just so amazed at how beautiful. What a great gift it's been. So well said. Beautiful. And all listeners who share our view that the Constitution is a beautiful document, well, first, do check out the Pursuit of Happiness book.

This is the most meaningful project i've ever been engaged in and the big takeaway is the radically liberating power of deep reading just just spending a year reading all these great sources recommitted me to setting aside an hour or two in the morning just to to to read and learn and grow just like the founders did and it's been really gratifying that folks who've read the book across the country are writing to say they're also getting back in the habit of setting aside those devices, turning them off for an hour or two a day, and reading about the history of our country and philosophy and how to be a good person. And as for the Constitution Center, that's just, you got to go online, constitutioncenter.org. There's also an interactive Constitution app. And just treat yourself to the incredibly gratifying experience of learning about the Constitution.

Check out the Constitution 101 class. Check out the weekly podcast, We the People. Or just pick a provision of the Constitution you want to learn more about. The First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Habeas Corpus Clause know, take your pick and then make sure you read not only start with the text, just like Chris said, but then you want to read the opinions of different thinkers on both sides and read both sides before you make up your own mind, because it's that openness to different points of view that defines the Constitution. Justice Holmes said the Constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing points of view, and it's what allows us to disagree without being disagreeable, and to keep this glorious republic that we're fortunate enough to live in.

Yeah, and republics are fragile. We are all stewards of this republic. It's so important that people realize that, especially with what's going on nowadays. You know, some people, you know, they look at both of our candidates that we have coming up in 2024 and they're concerned about different issues. But you have to remember that it's a baton that's gone on for almost 250 years. It's a baton race. And you have to look at the candidates and go, who is the best person who can take this baton forward of this great democracy of experiment and continue to where at the end of four years, the constitution will still stand. This democracy will still stand.

Maybe you don't agree with some of the policies of whoever that was. Maybe you do agree with them. But it's really just the continuation of this because democracies can fail. They can be over in a heartbeat. We saw that in 2020 with the fall of Hungary and other countries. I can't remember. There's two in 2020 that fell. But we see the rise of fascism, populism, authoritarianism.

You know, it seems a lot of people in this country are discouraged about stuff. And they just feel that throwing a wrench or burning everything down is the solution. And it's really not, because if you want to see what burning everything down looks like, look at Haiti right now. Look at Somalia. It's not cool when you burn down the whole government. There's no government. It's not fun. It's just roving bands of mobs, and it just becomes medieval at that point. So I

really appreciate you coming on the show and writing this book, Jeffrey. It's really important. It's too bad we can't make it recommended reading. Like, turn off the Kardashians folks and your Netflix for five minutes and read something. You can listen to an audiobook too. I listen to a lot of audiobooks at the gym.

So thank you very much, Jeffrey, for coming on. Thank you. It's wonderful to talk to you. Thanks to you and your listeners for inspiring people to learn about the Constitution. And happy reading. There you go. And rights really become important when you don't have them anymore.

Believe me. And so don't take them for granted. Thanks to Moniz for tuning in. Order up the book where refined books are sold. The Pursuit of Happiness, How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of Founders and Defined America. Remember, you get the government you deserve. So we're all stewards of this government, of this democracy, and you have to read it, understand it, and appreciate it,

and want the beauty of it to continue. Because without it, it's just going to be a medieval nightmare. And you look at other countries, they're not better off. And it just makes all the difference. But you have to remember that you, each of us, is the steward of that. And each of us have a responsibility to make sure it continues. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss.

LinkedIn.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the TikTok and the almost crazy place on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good goodreads.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the TikTok and the almost crazy place on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.