The Eric Metaxas Show - #130 - Rod Martin

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric celebrates the official launch of Revolution and talks with Rod Martin about why the American Revolution was the only true revolution in history, how the left rewrote the meaning of revolution, and why Americans must recover the story of liberty before it is lost. They discuss the Declaration of Independence, God given rights, the difference between the American and French Revolutions, the danger of socialism, the crisis of free speech in Britain, immigration, Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and why America’s founding story must be told again. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.⭐ PRE-ORDER TODAY:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:⭐ FREE SLAVES with CSI: https://csi-usa.org/metaxas/⚖️ Legal Help Center - Get Free Legal Help Today: https://www.legalhelpcenter.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/💧 Sentry H2O: https://sentryh2o.com/

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Preferred. That was easy. Hey there, folks. Welcome to June 2nd. I was going to say 1776. Actually, it's not. It's 2026. But today is launch day for the book.

Oh, what book you ask? Eric, do you have a book out? You've hardly mentioned it. I know. I'm shy. But yes, today is the day that my book revolution has officially launched. Oh, let's get it now. An hour ago, I was out. I came back and our doorman handed me a box and I thought,

the book has arrived. I ordered my own book and just as many of you pre-ordered the book as I did, it arrived today. I hope you'll start reading it. I kind of want to have this journey with you reading through it together because there's fun stuff that I got excited about when I was writing it. and I want to share it with you. But many of you today, many thousands of you, many thousands of you, pre-ordered the book, and today you get your copies. I hope you'll start reading it immediately. I hope you'll race through it and underline stuff.

The first chapter starts on a scatological note, not eschatological, scatological. That's all I can say. The footnote on the first page of chapter, one is it's interesting. And I think those of you who got the book, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And there you have it. It's a party joke.

I don't know what it is. It is kind of a party joke. But I, well, okay, so first of all, some crazy stuff has happened. Chris, my producer, sitting here with me. Some crazy stuff has happened. I want to share that with you. In a few minutes, my guest will be Rod Martin.

to talk about everything that's going on in the world. Coming up on this week, we will have Dave Rubin will be my guest. John Zmirak will be my guest. And I don't know, all kinds of stuff going on. But a couple things. Earlier today, I did Steve Bannon's show again, the second time. And I'm sure many people, as a result of watching War Room with Steve Bannon.

found their way to my book. And then the other day I did Wall Builders with Tim Barton. That video is about an hour-long interview, Tim Barton and Wall Builders, has been seen as of this moment almost 750,000 times. In Base 10, that is three quarters of a million times. That's unfathomable to me. And so I want to thank Tim Barton and Wall Builders.

I've done so much media. I guess Dave Rubin is going to have me on this Thursday. I'll be on his program. Larry Taunton's interview with me, I think, dropped today. I've just been doing tons of interviews. So it's an exciting time. But tonight at the Union League Club, it's a private event. If you haven't bought tickets, you will be bounced.

But you probably still buy tickets. I don't know. Maybe not. But I will tell you, it's going to be a party it's going to be a party George Washington is showing up now this is true the man I can't think of his last name

maybe I can't even think of his first name his first name is Dan Dan if you saw the film American Miracle he plays Washington in that film but he is a Washington scholar who knows more about Washington maybe than anyone and he played Washington

and Mount Vernon, you can go up to him and talk to him. Dan Morgan, Dan Morgan. He is a phenomenon, and he's going to be there tonight. I will be interviewing him as part of the Socrates and the city launch of my book Revolution. I'm going to be interviewing George Washington. And my first question to him, I'm going to stump him. What's capital of North Dakota?

He's not even aware of the existence of North Dakota because it hadn't been a state when he was alive. So it's a trick question. It's kind of cruel for me to. Ask Washington. And I like you. Dan Shippey. Dan Shippey. Daniel Shippey.

Daniel Shippey. That's right. What am I saying? Anyway. If you want to find more about him, you can go to meetwashington.com. Yeah. Highly recommended. Highly recommended, ladies and gentlemen.

He's bringing a guest. I don't tell Martha because it's a hot little number. No, actually it's Martha. Okay. So, but here's a weird thing. Today, I discovered that. that this is so weird. Mike Pence has a book coming out today also.

If it's not enough for me that you buy my book, I also want you to be sure not to buy Mike Pence's book. It's very important to me personally. I can't tell you why. But also, Jill Biden has a book coming out today. And I just, I guess I have to laugh. Anyway, I don't want to talk about this. I called up President Trump today.

Somebody gave me his number and I called up President Trump. He didn't answer. And I'm very, very hurt. And I'm going to vote against him in the midterms just because I'm ticked. Nah, I wouldn't do that. But I could joke about it. I could joke about it. No, no.

But I mean, you know, whatever. But I just thought on the day that my, you know, super patriotic book is coming out on the American Revolution that I would try to reach the president and, you know, try to get him to tweet or something. Post on Truth Social. But I failed. And I wanted you as my audience to know that I failed. He might be busy. You know, he might have.

What could he have to do? That's more important than tweeting about my book. Let's be honest. Come on. What is the name? Mike Pence's book. In my mind, it's called Confessions of a Wead.

No, no, no, no, no. No, no. I'm pretty sure it is hop on pop. I'm pretty sure it's hop. It's a rhyming. It's a fun. It's a fun book. I'm pretty sure it's hop on pop.

I'm not Joe Biden. Or on beyond, no, it's on beyond zebra. I always get them confused. It's on beyond zebra. My book is called Revolution, the birth of the greatest nation,

the history of the world. And I really have been very busily trying to promote it because, you know, I know that once today happens, I'm going to be traveling and stuff. And I should share that I'm going to be on Friday traveling to Houston. I'm speaking at the Woodlands in Houston on Friday.

I'm sorry, on Sunday. I'm going to be on Chad Robes Show's podcast. We're taping that Friday. That's in Houston. On Monday, I'm going to be speaking at an event in Orlando, Florida. If you go to my website, Erictaxas.com, it's all there. You can look it up. I'll be in Orlando on Monday.

I will Tuesday night be in Phoenix or Scottsdale, whatever, where Mark Driscoll's Church is. He's got a Tuesday night service. I'm going to be speaking at his church in the Phoenix area on Tuesday night. I have an event in Colorado. I think it's the next day. And then the day after that, I have an event in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Two events in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And then I fly to Orange County, California, where I will be speaking at Greg Lurie's Church. If you can get to Greg Lurie's Church, while he's got a couple campuses. One's in Riverside, one's in Irvine. I guess. So I'll be there. And then I will come home only to pack to leave again and again and again. I'm doing a lot of traveling. I think I'm speaking in a church almost every Sunday for the next two months or something like that and a lot of other speaking engagements and a lot of other events and a lot of other meets. A lot of stuff. But listen, you only have a supercentennial 250th one time. And I'm very excited about it. I will be speaking. I know. on June 15. Did I say 14th, 15th? No, I already said that. I will be at, yes, that's Greg Lurie's Church.

The weekend after that, I think I will be, I'm speaking in Washington State on Friday the following week. That's a big event. It's FreedomCon. Freedom Fest, sorry. Freedom Con is in Las Vegas in, in August. Freedom Fest, which is a huge men's event in Washington State. Men are flying there from all around the country, and I'm going to be speaking there. That is a very, very special event.

Freedom Fest, 2026, please look it up. A lot of people that I admire very greatly are going to be there. That's in Washington State. It's right in the middle of the state. The name of the town is George. So it is George, comma, Washington, where we'll be speaking. It's kind of crazy. We're not making this up.

Folks, before I forget, before we go to my first guest, the great Rod Martin, CSI, we've extended our campaign with them. They are freeing slaves in Sudan. I don't know who I was talking to

the other day. I was doing, doing an interview someplace. It might have been on Steve Bannon's show. And I just have to tell you the thought that the Democrats are complaining about this or this. There is slavery in the world today. Are you talking about that? There's slavery today in Africa.

We have Islamists, radical Islamists who have enslaved. You can do something about it. You have to go to Eric Mataxis.com. I beg you to go to Ericmatakis.com. Join us. Every $250, freeze a human being, sets them up in a life for freedom. This is as important as it gets. I beg of you, folks, join us. This is the last few days, but we need everybody to be involved. Doesn't matter what level, just do what you can. Eric Metaxus.com. You'll see it. It'll come up. God bless you.

I just decided I want to write a book on the American Revolution book because this is extremely important. Unless Americans know our story. We cannot possibly continue to keep the Republic. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow, AI Cloud ERP for any size business.

Welcome back, folks. I'm excited today because today is the day, Tuesday, June 2nd, where my new book on the American Revolution is out officially. And if you haven't ordered a copy for the love of Mike, for the love of Pete,

would you order a copy, please? It is published under my imprint, Odysseus books. I'm really excited about this. And I'm excited that Rod Martin, who's going to be my guest, right now, who is my guest right now, may well himself have a book published by Odysseus Books. I don't know if it's official, Rod, but I'm hoping. Welcome to the program.

It's as official as we can make it. And I'm so grateful for you doing what you've done with this magnificent new book. You've got out. Everybody needs to read it. All of us went to went to college and grad school and were taught all this Marxist clap trap about how the American Revolution wasn't even really rightly called a revolution. It was just a colonial uprising. And the true revolutions are Cuba and Nicaragua and Mao. No, no, none of those were anything revolutionary at all in the strict sense because all of them just transferred power from one elite,

to the next. That's all communism ever does. That's all the French Revolution ever did. And the American Revolution literally upended the social order, collapsed most of the existing social classes, down to really two or three. You know, you didn't get rid of slavery, all in one leap. You still have, you know, wealthy people who have some prestige

and have some ability to do things that, you know, Joe Blow on the frontier maybe can't do. but if Joe Blow wants to move to Tennessee or Texas or California and millions of them did, then all of a sudden Joe Blow can be governor. Joe Blow can be in that upper class. So the American Revolution actually transformed the world in ways that are completely unappreciated by our pathetic institutions of higher learning. And thank God we have you, Eric, to set everybody straight.

Well, I just have to say parenthetically, Joe Blow is currently governor of New Jersey. I want to be clear. The thing about everything you just said, and I don't know if you've heard me talk about this, but you know, you're singing my song. People say, why is your book titled Revolution and not the American Revolution? And I say it's because the adjective is redundant. There never has been a true revolution, a successful revolution apart from the American Revolution. It is a revolution in the history of the world, a new epic in the history of the world, in the history of nations.

And every other quote unquote revolution is a false promise, is a joke. I mean, the French revolution descends into anarchy, bloodbath, terror, and ends up with a dictator emperor. What a joke. We got rid of the king. Now we have a dictator emperor. And that's basically the story over and over. if you don't have God at the center, which is what all of the revolutionary men understood,

that we're going to go back to the Sinai covenant, we're going to be under God. And only because we're under God, can we govern ourselves, just like the Israelites 3,000 years before, never been done since then. Every other revolution is a joke. And here we are,

and most Americans don't know that. And I, you know, when I decided to write my book, it's not like I thought, oh, Americans need to know this. I just thought we need to tell, you know, in one volume, the whole story of the revolution. And in the course of it, this stuff just becomes so clear, Rod. And again, you get this, but so many don't see this. And it is a joyful thing to see this.

It's a joyful thing to understand what it is that these heroes, heroes fought for, died for, suffered for and we owe them a great debt. And I always say the first debt is to know their names, to know their stories. And, you know, I tell about Dr. Joseph Warren and I talk about, you know, Paul Revere and John Hancock and Samuel Adams. And I thought every American used to know those names, every American used to know those stories. In the last 50 years in our lifetime, this has sort of drifted away. And if you want to know how we got into the mess we're in, it's because we don't know this. So we need to know it. So today on the day where my book officially launches, I say to people, folks, these are beautiful stories. These are heroes. And I am just, you know, I feel honored.

I get to tell the story. But it's also very important. And it's why you, Rod and I, we talk about what we talk about. Because these ideas matter. They matter in the world, where we are with President Trump right now. You know, all of this. These ideas matter. And if we, the people, don't understand this stuff, we descend as we were doing very precipitously under the fake Biden administration, the Autopent Administration. Indeed. Indeed. And look, Americans do need to know these things, and there aren't many people telling them. Some of you know that we are right now doing a campaign to free slaves literally. This is a big deal. I see it as a great opportunity. for people who believe in truth and justice to be able to act on those values. And Todd, we're just always grateful when you can come on and give us a little more explanation of what it is we're talking about.

These women, they've been enslaved in Sudan since the 1990s. And CSI, in partnership with Eric Metaxus, thanks to your generosity, has been able to free literally tens of thousands of those individuals and bring them back into a new life of freedom. So we're so excited to be here and invite you to help us free even more slaves this month. I guess the way I see it, Todd, is this is faith in action. Again, the easy way to do it is go to Ericmetaxis.com. The banner comes up. All the details are there. I beg you, folks, please participate and thank you.

There are some good books out there. Many of them are older. Gordon S. Wood's scholarship on this is exceptional. and I certainly drank deeply from it at Cambridge. But the truth is this story has to be retold again and again in Scripture. We are told to tell the story, that we are to tell the story all the way from our father was a wandering Aramian, you know, before he ever came into the promised land, and before he had Isaac, and before he had Jacob, and before Jacob's sons went to Egypt.

And you're supposed to tell the story to your sons again and again and again and again because story is the only way that we transmit truth in the real world. And the left has counterfeited that again and again. They counterfeited the idea of a revolution when really they're just transferring power from one elite to a new elite. They have just co-opted every good and perfect thing that God has created. and we have to actually learn from them at times because we're too dumb to figure it out ourselves. Our book tells us what to do.

We're supposed to be evangelizing for the truth, the way and the truth and the like, and we're supposed to be telling our story to our children so they won't lose it. America is worth preserving. Praise God, we get to live here. We have won the lottery of life. I got to tell you, I mean, it's so funny because when I wrote my book 10 years ago, if you can keep it,

this is the first time, that was the first time I saw that if we Americans don't know our story, if we don't celebrate our heroes, it goes away. Somehow this biblical idea that we've all got to know our story and tell our story and teach our children our story and celebrate our story with each other communally on July 4th

and whatever, all of our stories at Christmas time at Easter. Like, we need to do. do this as people because we forget. And if we don't know these things and don't share them and celebrate them, it goes away. And so that fundamental idea of does every American know, does every American know the story Lexington and Concord and the Stamp Act? And did we know this? I know that in 1960, if you stuck a microphone in somebody's face in Main Street, America, they all knew this stuff.

They've had the Sons of Liberty and Paul Revere and Joseph Warren and John Hancock and all these folks and Samuel Adams and everybody kind of knew this who was part of the cultural knowledge. That has drifted away since we have been in the world. This stuff has drifted away. So the most people don't know this. And it's why we're in the mess we're in. Because if you don't know that stuff and celebrate that stuff, it will be replaced by other stuff. And that other stuff is diabolical. It's bad stuff. You will lose your liberties. You've been losing your liberties. So it is very, very important. But I guess the joy is that these stories are wonderful stories. And I think, you know, as I dug into this and doing my research, I thought every American, not only do we need to know these stories, you'll want to know these stories.

Once you know them, you're happy that you know them. They're beautiful stories. And the heroes, incredible heroes and a few horrible villains. The British really were, I keep saying this, they were barbaric. I didn't know that. Yeah. They were. When I did my research, how barbaric.

how barbaric they were, how monstrous they were. I just thought, you know, they had a different point of view. No, they were really nasty. That point of view led them to be cruel, very cruel to their captives, quite the opposite of how we behave toward them. Yes, absolutely. And look, that is the beauty of the Declaration of Independence. If you read it to the end, which no one ever does,

you realize that it is a statement of principles followed by a remonstrance against the king. Virtually the entire document is laying out the case for the breach of covenant between the sovereign and his people. And it establishes the biblical concept that political power on earth flows from God to the people upward to its magistrates. And the lesser magistrates, in perfect Samuel Rutherford fashion, the lesser magistrates stood up to the king and defended the people they had been elected to care for. That's exactly how it's supposed to work. And they were very, very careful to dot their eyes and follow their principles. Well, we've got a lot more coming up with Rod D. Martin.

I don't know what the D stands for, and I don't care. All I know is I like talking to this guy. Folks, we'll be right back. We've just got plenty more. We're going to talk about some current events or whatever. But just to remind you of our campaign with CSI, very important. We are freeing slaves, literally. Go to Ericmetaxis.com.

You'll see the details. Please join us. If you haven't joined, everybody needs to be part of it. Erictaxas.com. Be right back. Hey there, folks. I've been saying that 2026 must be the year of accountability, whether talking about government spending or the way we

steward our own families, we have a moral duty to seek the truth. But let's be honest, in the world of Medicare, truth is often the first casualty. Seniors, like my 91-year-old mom, are bombarded with mailers and pushy phone calls that feel more like propaganda than helpful guidance. This is why I value my partners at Chapter. They operate on a different principle independence. Chapter is the only national advisor that reviews every single plan available to ensure you have the coverage that actually fits your needs. They've helped people find clarity, and on average have historically helped members save an average of $1,100 a year on health care costs.

Their support is completely free and takes under 20 minutes. If you have questions about your Medicare or want to ensure you're a good steward of your resources, please call Chapter at 571-421-1-2-5-3. That's Chapter at 571-4-21-4-1-2-5-4. Talk to a real person and get the honest answers you deserve. Welcome back. I'm talking to Rod D. Martin. Today is the day that my book has officially launched.

You could tell I'm kind of excited and there's a lot to talk about. But we're talking about everything, as usual, with Rod Martin. Rod, it's, you know, we're living in tumultuous times, but I believe that it's God's providence calling us back. to our founding. Just as in 1860, Longfellow writes, I think, is the greatest poem in American history. It's the midnight ride of Paul Revere. He's calling us back just before we enter the second existential crisis of our history, which is a civil war. He's telling us to look back for strength and vision to the founding, to Paul Revere and to Lexington and Concord. And I feel in my book, although it's not of the literary quality of Longfellow, it, I'm calling us back again, because only by knowing that story and that history

can we have strength for the moment, and can we deal with the moment appropriately? Otherwise, we really won't know even which side to take. And we despair sometimes foolishly of being able to retell these stories successfully, but it's just silly. I mean, somebody will start watching Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or,

or a Star Trek movie, and they can give you all of the dates and place names and who did what to whom 300 years before the story began in a day or two. People absolutely respond to narrative. And when we tell the story of the revolution, the principles jump off the page and people are enlightened and the world gets better. So it's just absolutely vital that we do it. and don't despair of it, but we certainly want to start young. This should be something that parents have on their lips all the time, just like they would,

the gospel from before their children can even speak. And if we teach people to be good Americans, good citizens of this republic, we will have a republic for generations to come, and it will only get better from here. Well, it's interesting when I think of, you know, we know what the greatest story ever told is, but in some ways the story of the birth of America is the second greatest story ever told. It's an amazing story in history that it has no parallel. I mean, it's really a crazy thing that a nation comes into history where the people say, we're going to do what's never been done before, at least not since the Sinai covenant 3,000 years ago.

We're going to govern ourselves without a king. We're going to look directly to God. That is a wild idea in history. And it has produced the greatest nation in the history of the world. And we need to know that story. And I think, you know, it's like when, I mean, nobody got this better than Abraham Lincoln. And Lincoln called us Americans, God's almost chosen people. It's kind of like, yeah, maybe not the chosen people.

But, you know, you're in that neighborhood that God has appointed you for something sacred and special in history. And you need to know that and you need to take that seriously and you need to understand that's a burden. That comes with a debt. You have a debt that you don't deserve what you have and you need to be thankful for it and you need to tell people about it and what it is and where it came from. You're responsible for that.

And I think of the stories, you know, just the stories in my book. Every American used to know those stories and some of us still know some of them, but I've forgotten most of it. And that's why I was ashamed. I thought to myself, boy, we need to know this. This is too beautiful to forget. And by the way, if we forget it, it goes away. We lose everything.

And we were on the verge of that in the Biden administration. They were basically deconstructing this beautiful country at the speed of light. And it's only, you know. Visit BetMDM casino and check out the newest exclusive. The price is right for. chin pick. BetMGM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge.

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and what is the meaning of America? That's the title of the epilogue of my book. What is the meaning of America? Because it is beautiful, and we don't deserve it. I don't deserve it. None of us deserves it. It's a gift, but what are we going to do with that gift? That's kind of the question.

Amen. Well, we're going to perfect it. We're going to make it better. We're going to do what we can, where we are, with what we have. And what we have is extraordinary if we don't throw it away. So, you know, we can let this country go off into that socialist night. We can be like the French revolutionaries if we choose. We can certainly do what the wokesters would have us do,

which is just basically an American version of the Chinese culture, Revolution, where we destroy all of our history and all of our heritage and, frankly, all of our old people and many of our young. Or we can actually keep coming back to these principles and telling this story. Well, let me interrupt here just to pivot for a moment. I don't know how long ago it was. Let's see. Today is, yeah, it was about two weeks ago that we had this. event on the mall to rededicate the nation to God.

And I have to say that I know that when the folks who put that together picked May 17th, they did not know that that was the day that Congress appointed precisely 250 years before as a day of fasting and prayer in 1776. the folks, you know, at the White House who said, you know, yeah, we're going to do this thing, rededicate the nation to God. They didn't know that May 17th was a sacred historic day, 250 years. And I think sometimes you see God's hand, and it's hard for me not to see God's hand in that. I had the privilege of being part of the festivities that day, talking that day.

But this is something that the secularists really get troubled. They really don't understand. I mean, I want to be gracious and to say that I know that they don't understand that our rights actually come from God and what most of these secularists love about America, they're not clear on maybe why they love their freedoms or they don't understand that.

So it's incumbent on us to explain it and to say, listen, if you can find a way to get the liberties that we have had in this nation where you could get to call the president every name in the book, if you think that you could get that, you think they have that in China, they believe your rights,

your liberties come from the state. They don't believe in liberties. And you can't do that over there. And you can't do that in all these other countries. And I guess it just made me realize that these things are not negotiable, that if you do not understand this stuff, you lose liberties.

And so the rededicate ceremony a couple of weeks ago, it was a sacred act. It was a solemn thing to officially say we're turning the nation, we're rededicating ourselves to God because we know that apart from that, you're busted. You can't use French Enlightenment principles

to get the great liberties that we've had here. And I think that there are a lot of people that they seem very threatened by that. They don't seem to understand it. I mean, that's to my mind really clearly. They simply don't understand how it works. And they somehow seem to think that you can reject God totally and still have liberty. Yeah, they absolutely want to live off the inheritance of Christian civilization without having to deal with the Christian part.

And you see this again and again. we've seen it with United States senators on the left, actually decrying the idea that rights are God-given, one in particular saying that that's what the Ayatollah believes. Well, the Ayatollah doesn't believe that. The gay Ayatollah absolutely does not believe that you have any rights at all. And that's just, it's just absurd. So, you know, why do we care that rights are God-given? Well, first of all, because we believe in God.

But even if we did not, even if we were deists or whatever, it wouldn't really matter because the whole point from a practical implementation standpoint that sets us apart from the French Revolution, the Chinese, the Russian, the rest, is that there is a higher power from which those rights derive that the state doesn't get to overrule. So I have a freedom of speech. I have a freedom to worship as I choose. I have a freedom to elect people who worship the way I would like. So, you know, New York elected Mamdani. Okay, they're going to have all kinds of Muslim stuff. Let's see how that works out. I guarantee you, Donald Trump's event on the mall is going to work out better. And the whole point here is that we have these liberties because God has designed the world. that way for a theological reason, which is the fall of man. Because men are sinful, if you let them accumulate power in a single person or a single group of people, they will use it as a club to beat everybody else into submission. And the Founding Fathers coming out of the Great Awakening

understood that piece in a way that the French revolutionaries coming out of the Enlightenment did not. And as a result of that, they diffused power broadly and enshrined rights into the system of government that were very clearly demarked as not invented here, came from God. You don't get to change them. You don't get to take them away. And that's the difference between America and the whole rest of the world. And if you don't believe it, look at the speech police in Great Britain. Oh, we've got the idea of a lot of these things. We're coming back with Rod Martin. Don't go away.

I just decided I want to write a book on the American Revolution. Because this is extremely important. Unless Americans know our story, we cannot possibly continue to keep the Republic. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to Rod D. Martin, not to be confused with all those other Rod Martins. I don't know any other Rod Martins. But if I did, it's the D. that just tells me that this is the Rod Martin, Rod D. Martin.

So, Rod, you and I are talking about all kinds of stuff. You just mentioned how, I mean, you know, one of the reasons that I'd be happy to decouple from NATO, they don't have free speech. They don't believe in any of the stuff that we kind of assume all the Western democracies all believe that they don't. They are utterly secular. I mean, in fact, the European Union, their whole charter, whatever that is, they don't even mentioned God or Christendom, that's what Europe was. It was called Christendom. They,

they believe somehow that they could have some kind of a secular foundation. And we are now seeing that if you say the wrong thing in Germany or in Europe, sorry, or in England, they can put you in prison. It's, it's insane. It's a level of madness. But again, it just kind of proves everything we're talking about. Well, they can and they do because socialism believes the opposite of everything we just talked about. Socialism believes that power derives from the party and not from the people, and the people are subject to the party. And we see that illustrated more plainly in Great Britain than perhaps anything in our recent lifetimes. In Great Britain, Kier-Starmers' socialists take power just a couple years ago and immediately start arresting grandmothers for posting

memes. They actually have jailed 10 times as many people for so-called speech violations in the United Kingdom in the last two years, 10 times as many as Vladimir Putin has jailed in Russia for the same kind of stuff. It's absolutely staggering. And I was reading a report out of Russia just yesterday where they're talking about, you know, the tightrope Putin is why. And because there are all these military bloggers in Russia that he has to appease as he deals with the Ukrainian situation. It's like, that is not the picture we have of Russia. And yet, I'm not saying anything good about Russia here. Of course, Russia's terrible.

I'm saying that Kier-Starmer would make Britain worse to the degree that he could. and the only hope for that country is probably Nigel Farage. But the truth is they don't have a written constitution. They don't have the Bill of Rights that we have. There is an English Bill of Rights, but ours is certainly an improvement, and it is not enshrined in law in the way that is necessary. And this is true throughout the Anglosphere. You see it in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, everywhere you look,

countries that were the high point of human freedom outside the United States have become tyrannical toward the exact people who believe in their founding principles. And it's just horrifying. Well, it's kind of funny because in the course of writing my book on the Revolution, you know, having to look at what was going on in England at the time and thinking about what some of the revolutionary figures here were writing, there was a liberty movement in England. It was to some extent headed up by a guy named John Wilkes,

and these were radicals who were opposing the king. And many of the Americans who were fighting for liberty here, this is before we go to war, they really believe that this is something that is happening in England and here, and we might prevail in both places. And we now know that we did prevail here by declaring independence and winning that war, but they over there did not.

They never won the liberties that, you know, people like John Wilkes and others as they pushed back, they fail. I mean, it was tremendously corrupt. That's one of the things that I uncovered in writing the story of the revolution is that the British parliamentary system that the whole, I should say, the politics over there was very corrupt. The king is kind of paying people off so they'll vote his way. And it's actually sad that they did not get what, you know, some of them were hoping. but I would say ultimately it's because they didn't have, the Great Awakening didn't affect them the way it did here, the way it did us here. That's exactly right. And of course, any of them got it who wanted to badly enough just by crossing the pond and joining their colonial brothers. We built something amazing here and we built it on the idea that anybody is welcome who believes in the American idea.

that's why border security matters. We're not trying to keep people out. We're just asking them to come through the door instead of climb in the window. And we want to be able to screen people for, I don't know, why Democrats wouldn't care about this, but we want to make sure they aren't infected with COVID. We want to make sure they aren't terrorists. We want to make sure of things like that. But this is the country with the most generous immigration system in the world for a reason.

if you believe in the idea of America, America believes in you. Well, we'll be right back with Rod Martin. Welcome back, folks. As I've said, and I will never stop saying, this is the day that my book comes out on the American Revolution. If you haven't yet ordered a copy, I don't know what you're waiting for. You really do need to do that. I'm so excited about what's in it.

Rod, I was talking to you about that I discovered in the course of the research of the book, what was going on in England at the time. And it's so fascinating that there was a hope over there that they might get the kinds of liberties that we were talking about over here. And I think John Adams and others were thinking maybe in the future,

maybe America can lead the way and that Great Britain would eventually get this. And I wonder 250 years later if that's possible, if people like Tommy Robinson and others can lead the way so that those who believe in this stuff, who've seen how bad it gets without this stuff, would be willing to, you know, take a page out of our book. I don't know. Well, to some degree, it's always dependent on elections. There's no getting around that.

We certainly had a very different situation in America under Obama and Biden than we do. under Trump or Reagan. So there's no question that some of this is election dependent, but the bigger issue, the greater brilliance of the American founding was this idea of a written constitution that nailed down the fundamentals. And the English don't have it. They don't have any equivalent to the First Amendment or our Bill of Rights as we know it. And that's ironic since the idea of a Bill of Rights literally came from the English Bill of Rights,

but it is what it is. So we have to encourage our English friends to recover the inheritance that we both share of liberty and to put it in stone in a way that has never been true in Great Britain. They have never, ever taken the tack. that we see in the Declaration of Independence, that says that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator

with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And in saying so, they're saying, no one can abridge them, no one can take them away. And the same applies to the Bill of Rights. So they need to adopt that approach. The founders were very hopeful that the whole world would take note and that it would imitate us, and in many ways it has,

but we all have a long way to go. Well, that's what's so interesting to me is that, you know, if it weren't for Magna Carta and if it weren't for the glorious revolution, if it weren't for Englishmen like John Locke, we in America never would have known how to do what we did. it's only by God's grace that that we kind of you know I guess launched off of that stuff and they didn't and that's what's so bizarre is that we kind of you know as we're and again I tell the story in my book but it's like we keep going back to them and reminding them like hey these are your ideas we all agree on these ideas don't you see this and clearly they didn't care that's what's fascinating

is that William Pitt got it Edmund Burke got it some others got it uh Isaac Barry, a few members of parliament really got this, but not enough got it. They really didn't care. They had become decadent and out of touch. And they just didn't care about these ideas that they had supposedly resolved in the previous century. And so we kind of took the ball and ran with it. And they just, they got stuck and they're still stuck. And they're worse than stuck right now. When you read Burke, you see very clearly how very much similar the structure. of the English government in the 1780s was to that which the founders gave us in the Constitution. The similarities were striking. And yet what struck me when I read Burke the first time

was the degree to which the Americans had perfected those ideas and transcended the aristocracy that they could not throw off in Great Britain. There's still all this hereditary right and class stratification in the 1780s that the Americans disposed of and the English really couldn't without a much more violent upheaval

perhaps than certainly the American Revolution, possibly the French. So I think they were held back by a thousand years of history. And we, being new, in a new land, largely empty, could take it to its logical conclusion and perfect. it. Beautifully put. We're out of time. Folks, uh, don't forget, we're doing our campaign with CSI. If you haven't jumped in, this is it. This is your last chance. This is the week. Uh, we want everybody participate. Go to Ericcomptaxus.com. You can free a slave. No kidding. This is an honor

that we get to do that. Ericmtax.com. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Check it out.