The Eric Metaxas Show - #166 - Ned Ryun

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with Ned Ryun about his documentary The Thread of Liberty and the fragile history of America’s experiment in self-government. They examine the Christian foundations of liberty, the Founders’ understanding of human nature, the rise of progressivism, and how the administrative state transferred power from citizens to unelected bureaucrats. Ryun also explains why Trump must break the state to drain the swamp and restore the constitutional republic.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/

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Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Hey there, folks. Welcome on the program. There are just a handful of people, unfortunately, to whom I look for encouragement. The good news is there is a handful of people that exists to whom I look for encouragement. One of those people, sadly, it's just one today. But one of those people happily is Ned Ryan. Ned, welcome back. Yeah, Craig to be with you, Eric, and I appreciate those kind words. Well, your stuff is so great. I mean, I follow you on X and, you know, follow you generally speaking. And you've been just one of the heroes bravely, you know, helping us figure out what we've been living through over the years and fight back against the darkness. So you've made a film. Yes.

That's the main thing I want to talk to you about because the subject of the film leads to every other conversation. But tell us about the film. The title is The Thread of Liberty. Yep. Threat of liberty keeping our republic. Eric, we were kind of on parallel tracks, apparently, for the 250th anniversary. You were writing a book. I wanted to do a documentary to celebrate the greatness of who we are as a self-governing republic, first ever rights-based government.

where the people are sovereign in the history of the world. So we wanted to tell the story with the threat of liberty, not only the founding, but some of the inspiration, some of the things that make a republic great. And we use Alexis de Tocqueville as a backdrop, is obviously his great work, democracy in America. He came to this country in the 1830s and made some really interesting observations.

One, he's the young French nobleman. He's coming over, kind of surprised the American Republic is doing as well as it is. actually was coming to study the prison systems, actually ended up spending nine months and traveling 7,000 miles because he was so fascinated with the American Republic. But he made some observations.

One, he thought religion and liberty would be opponents in this country and found out they're actually intertwined. He made the other observation that he realized America's first political institution was religion and then looked at some of the things that he thought would be great challenges to the Republic, obviously the issue of slavery,

but also when the feudalions, sure. He talked about one of the great threats to American liberty might be soft despotism in which there would be a government that would basically give us everything. And so he had the great observations of the strengths of the Republic, the threats that faced it. And then at the end, he talks about the need for instinctive patriotism. He actually makes the observation at that time. Instinctive patriotism was being instilled in the young people. And I think that's one of the reasons we wanted to do the film is a renewal of instinctive patriotism, which means an inborn love of country. And so we tell the story of the threat of liberty of just these different

inflection points in which this experiment could have failed. But every generation at that moment held faster the threat of liberty to make sure they pass it on to the next generation. And I think we're in another inflection point in this country. Well, this is the problem and the joy. You and I agree violently on all this stuff. I mean, first of all, when you talk about, about, now my book, of course, goes, it's just the story of the revolution, so it ends in 1783. But your film, The Thread of Liberty, it does the Revolution great justice, but then it goes on. And you mentioned Tocqueville. And Tocqueville, it's interesting when you mentioned his sense that there's this threat of soft despotism, the deep state. Today we call it the deep state, the bureaucratic leads, the unelected bureaucratic,

state. I think the French term he uses is Blanc, or I could just be making that up. I don't know. Point is, you can sort of smell this, right? You can see which it can go wrong. But what fascinates me, whenever I'm doing podcasts talking about my book Revolution, one of the first things I say is that the reason it's called Revolution and not the American Revolution is because our revolution is the only one that worked. Our revolution is the revolution. There's no other revolution. So when people mentioned the French Revolution. The French Revolution was at odds with God. They killed the king and queen, but then they killed the priests and the nuns. They were sort of anti-God, anti-clerical. Our revolution, of course, and Tocqueville sees this. He's surprised by this 50 years later.

Somehow, the strength of Christian faith in America is a bulwark to American liberty. And he's shocked by this. He's mystified by it. And again, I mean, if you ever, you know, the idea of what we might call evangelicalism, this dissident Christianity, not a structure like the Catholic Church, the French Church, something else entirely. I mean, I wish I could talk to Tocqueville at the time as he's observing this, because it must have been truly amazing to him to see how this works in America. It was, I think it was a startling realization for him when he realized, again,

America's first political institution is religion in that, republics are fragile things. You've studied, I've studied, they're fragile things. They can go sideways in a hurry. How do republics stay strong? Well, it's based off a virtuous people, a people that can govern himself or herself individually before we presume to govern others.

And the idea of virtue is something the founders felt strong, our founders felt very strongly in. And John Adams and George Washington, And we discussed this at the end of the documentary, the idea of a virtuous citizenry. And where does virtue come from in the minds of our founders? Well, it comes from religion. And you and I both know having studied history, Eric, at that time in the 1700s and 1800s, the dominant faith system in America was what we would consider traditional Christianity.

Whether it's the Baptist, whether it's the Methodist, the Anglicans, the Catholics in Maryland. There is a belief in a Trinitarian, you know, theology of Christianity. at the time. And so when John Adams and George Washington are talking about virtue coming from religion and that our Constitution is wholly unfit for any people that are not moral and religious, they're talking about Christianity because they believed that you had to have a basis for the virtue that made a republic strong. And the other point I want to make before I move on from this is this. We juxtapose the American Republic against the Roman Republic. And the Roman Republic had a mosque my arm, the ways and traditions of the ancestors. But at the end of the day, it was not a strong enough virtuous system to maintain the republic because there was no enforcement mechanism.

And the point that we really kind of allude to, and I actually mentioned a little bit, the reason that our idea of religion and virtue coming from that is the understood enforcement mechanisms of eternal rewards and punishments. And the Roman Republic did not have that. The Roman Republic, Marius and Sulla and Caesar, understood at a certain point it's just really a gentleman's agreement. There was no enforcement mechanism because wrongs, gods and religion were not strong enough to enforce. Just they decided the gentleman don't agree anymore. So I think this is an important thing that we have to go back to that you have to understand for there to be virtue. There has to be religion, but there has to be an enforcement mechanism where people have to understand. there will be rewards and punishments for our behavior in this life that we will have to face our creator in the next life.

So let's think about how we're living in this life. Well, it's funny. I mean, there's so much here. First of all, you can see why somebody like Karl Marx would call religion the opiate of the masses. Like, oh, yeah, there's a boogeyman in the sky who's going to punish you if you don't behave. What a bunch of baloney. The other view is, yes, God is real. most people know that

and there is such a thing as justice and if you take that seriously you will want to govern yourself you will want to you will want to govern yourself in such a way that whether you get away with crimes or not in this world or sins in this world

there is eternal justice now again there are folks that don't believe that but those of us who know that that's real know that there's something beautiful about that to know that there is justice and that I answer to God. I don't have to worry about what the laws are because God tells me not to steal, not to cheat, not to lie.

And what a beautiful thing. I don't need the government to be the one to tell me that. And all of the founders understood, if you have enough people who believe that, it'll be fine. They'll govern themselves. If you don't, it won't be fine and you're going to need big government. So this is the American experiment. Well, this is one of the things that John Adams addressed.

It was in 1790s, a letter, I can't remember who the letter was too, but our Constitution is wholly unfit for an immoral. And it's only fit for moral and religious people. But before that, in that quote, and I wish we did it more, quoted it more, he talks about the fact that it doesn't matter the amount of laws or the Constitution. If a people are immoral, the Constitution will be, they will go through the Constitution like a whale through a net. And again, we have to understand for us to be truly free in this world, in society, We have to govern ourselves as individuals with the belief that someday we will face our creator. And it does lead to greater freedom. And that's one of the observations again, Tocqueville and the founders made and understood

that if you have the virtuous people governing themselves, we won't need as much government. We won't need as many laws, which, oh, by the way, it doesn't matter the amount of laws or the size of government if you have an immoral people doing whatever they want to. at a certain point you're going to devolve in a chaos. And, you know, so this is one of the things where we're trying to show the foundations where our founders got a lot of their ideas. Of course, they studied history. They studied why republics failed.

They went through the graveyard of history. And then they really kind of put together, they understood human nature very well, Eric. They nailed it. I mean, this is, I tell people all the time, if you want to understand the difference between progressivism and conservatism, it really comes down to how do you think, view human nature and how do you, what do you view the role of government? And with progressives, they think human nature in this world is perfectible. They can somehow perfect human nature in a fallen world. They think that the role of government is the giver of rights and is through the

state that we will achieve progress. A conservative looks at human nature and realizes we're imperfect human beings in an imperfect world, capable of great good, incapable of sustained good, should never be trusted with consolidated power. So we have a realistic view of human nature. And we realize the role of government is to secure those natural rights that God gave to us. That is the sole purpose of government. It's not to give them. It's not to take them away. And so you're really seeing kind of two belief systems. And let's face it, Eric, whether people choose to admit it or not, we're all religious people. We all have a faith system. You are seeing a conflict between two very different belief systems on human nature and the role of government. I'm talking about this wherever I go. This is why it's

funny. And I haven't said it here, but I wanted to say it. And I will say it. on X that, you know, if you've read my book, then you want more. You've got to see this film, folks. I appreciate that. There's no, but I mean it. I mean it because I watch the film. So if you've read my book and you want more of this stuff, you've got to watch the thread of Liberty, which is free.

You can see it on YouTube. My watch. It's fantastic. Or if you haven't read my book, watch this film first. This will lay the attention for everything I say in my book. Because, I mean, and at the end of the end of the book. the day, to use the cliche, when we talk about these two systems, we call it progressivism. We call it conservative.

This is the story between good and evil. The Bible says that God is God, that he is real. The Marxists, the utopianists, the progressives, they say there is no God and mankind is perfectable. And so you have these two views, one that says we're fallen, that we need God. in our lives. The other one says, that's nonsense. There is no God. We are perfectable. But in history, we see the record. We have 250 years at least. We can look at the history. How did the French revolution go? How did those utopianist longings unmoored from a biblical view of things? How did it go? And it ends in a bloodbath where they trade king and queen for a dictator, emperor. How did the

American Revolution go? Well, they trade the king for looking to God. the king, to a reprisal of the Sinai covenant. We're going to look to God and we can govern ourselves that way. There's only two ways, really, ultimately, that you can go. And we've seen the track record. So when people talk about America as another, you know, empire that you think, no, no, no, there's never been a nation that has done what we have done. We actually looked to the God of the Bible.

The Roman Republic did not look to the God of the Bible. this is this is something new in history and to the extent that we drift away from looking to the God of the Bible, we drift away from liberty. It's it's a kind of a simple equation. This is the one thing that I want to point out. And I've been quoting Ken Burns and some of my other interviews and I'm going to invoke him here. And he's not exactly a conservative, by the way. But he makes the point that the most important event in world history since the birth of Christ was the American Revolution and the founding of the American Republic. This is a singular moment in history.

And we've had our share of faults. And we make this point. We talk about slavery for about 10 or 15 minutes in the documentary. But Togeville also makes the observation. We have a great ability to repair our faults in this American Republic because we understand. And the founders knew this. They understood that they realized the declaration's promises and they understood the constitution's compromises. They thought the declaration's promises would eventually overcome those compromises.

it took a bloody civil war to to overcome them. But the idea that we want to, that I want to communicate to people is we should be proud of this country. We have an incredible legacy. It is a singular moment in history. There has never been anything like it. When our founders built the American Republic, declared independence and founded that republic, they didn't view it as just for themselves. They viewed it as the cause of all mankind. that they would show the world that a people could be sovereign, that you could have a rights-based republic and that it could succeed. Because as students of history, Eric, and you know this, they knew the history of republics is that they eventually failed. So they're going up against

the weight of history, and yet they felt they could somehow accomplish this and solve that conundrum. How do you have imperfect human beings with these rights given by a creator? Don't trust them with too much power at the same time, protect and secure those natural inherent rights as the people are sovereign. It's the most exquisite political document when you look at the Constitution and understand all of the problems of history that were in many ways solved in that moment. And we should have, it's an incredible moment and we should be proud of it. 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.

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please call Chapter at 571-421-1-2-5-3. That's Chapter at 571-4-21-125. Talk to a real person and get the honest answers you deserve. Well, it's interesting you referenced Ken Burns because what I find funny, and this is to me, you know, the problem with liberals in a way is that here he is, he's wise enough to see that, to see, you know, to say that not since the birth of Christ. I mean, I don't quite say that in my book, but it's the same thing. You see that all of the men of the revolution understood this is a singularity in history. There has never been the ability since the same thing. the Sinai covenant 3,000 years earlier with the Israelites, there's never been a moment where a nation could look directly to God and say, because of that, we can govern ourselves. And we succeeded. It happened. It's an amazing moment in the history of the world, which is why my books tell the revolution, because it is the revolution. It's not one of many. It is the revolution.

It's the only one that did this. And all of the folks involved had a view of providential dispensation. They really believe that the Reformation happened, that God allowed this to happen. God allowed the American continent to be discovered by Europeans just in time. So then the Reformation happens. The dissidents who want to worship the God of the Bible, who following the Reformation, they come over here, they establish Christian communities. All of this they saw as God's hand in history. And it had never happened before.

And here it is. And it's a magical moment. And when you read Thomas Payne's common sense, he uses this kind of utopianist language that for him later becomes unmoored and drifts into the utopious lunacy of the French Revolution. But you realize that utopianist language, if it's grounded in a biblical worldview, it works because it's circumscribed by the view that mankind has fallen and so on and so forth. What I just wanted to say was that it's funny to me that Ken Burns, he gets a few things right, but then he is,

tortured, he's crippled by this liberal thing that we can't celebrate too much. Because if we celebrate too much, that's like, you know, white nationalism or Christian nationalism. We have to focus on our faults and we have to wring our hands. And by the time, you know, I forced myself to watch the 12-hour documentary. It's like watching a remake of Rocky where you walk out of the theater and go, you know, I don't really know who was the hero there. It's kind of hilarious. because if you don't know that, if you don't know that the triumph of America coming into being is one of the most inspirational stories

in the history of mankind, you've missed something. But I don't know if it's because his backers or PBS, whatever, but he had to rive and, you know, get into that kind of stuff and talk about the sad Native Americans that sided with the British, just like lamenting, oh, the people that sided with the Nazis and they lost everything. And, you know, you think, this is hilarious. but you're quite right.

He does get that right, and I'm glad you reminded me of it. We are, I don't think it's hyperbole to say that the Free American Republic in many ways is the pinnacle of Western civilization. I mean, the founders were in that flow of history. They'd done their studies. They were very familiar with all the ancient republics

and all the ancient writers. They were also very familiar with John Locke and Cato's letters, Trenchard and Gordon. They were familiar with Algern and Sydney. and you make a point, and again, these people wrote about the higher transcendent law, they wrote about the only true legitimate reason for government is to secure the national inherent rights by the consent of the governed. But you hit on something that I want to highlight.

I'm a student of history. I'm a student of American history and politics. But I was still struck by the fact as I'm producing this film, there's so many different points that this could have failed. And that's why, again, we call it. at the threat of liberty, again in those moments people held onto that threat of liberty to pass it to the next generation. And it was, it took a tremendous amount of courage and political will to do it. Just the whole series of miracles along the way, and we discussed the constitutional

convention, how it should not have succeeded. There were so many different challenges, so many different self-interest walking into that room. So you think at the beginning, there's no way this is going to succeed. If you are betting, you know, betting odds, maybe 10, 15% percent chance this might work. four months later they walk out with the most exquisite political documents truly a miracle and you made a point i want to highlight this could only happen at a certain time and a certain place and a certain moment in history when you had this collection of intellectual giants in the right place and by that i mean the new world not the old to build this republic that so many had written about so many had thought about so many had wished for but couldn't pull it off and then all

a sudden the American founders at that right moment in time and the right place with the right all their abilities pull together something that really was in many ways the pinnacle of all of this thinking and all of this writing and all of this philosophizing. And, you know, again, we've had our faults, but think about the impact that the American Republic has had over the last quarter millennia as a force for good, for economic freedom, for human dignity, all of these things. And so I tell people we should view our country as the way we view our family. We are aware of the flaws. And yet we love them deeply. We are deeply proud of them and we embrace it. And that's how we should view the country. We're not blind to our faults. We understand it. Faults have been

repaired. There will be more faults in the future to repair, by the way. But we are deeply proud and deeply in love with our family and with our country. Well, it's kind of funny. I, again, you know, saying a lot of stuff that I say wherever I go because we're on the same page here. The idea of focusing on our faults, there is a deep sickness. And this is on the liberal side, a deep sickness. And it would be no different than having a 10 year old girl. It's a birthday party. And you say, listen, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get your friends and relatives. And we're going to criticize you and tell you what you've been doing wrong. We're not here to celebrate you. We're here to shame you for all the stuff you've done wrong. Oh, yeah. You know,

you've changed in some ways, but I don't want to forget what you did before you changed. Let's remind you over. There's something so sick about that. And the left doesn't know how to celebrate. The left doesn't know how to say, we abolished slavery. 700,000 white boys died to actually abolish slavery. We don't still have slavery. We stand against it.

We have an inability to do. The left has an inability to do that. And to celebrate who we are, there's something healthy about. that. So I think there's a 50th year. This is the moment to do that. There are a couple things that I think obviously need to be celebrated. They're dealing, the founders are dealing with issues that have been going on for millennia. Religious wars, slavery. And they solved the religious wars aspect, by the way. They were like, we're not going to have a state religion, although we feel religion is obviously deeply

important to virtue, which is important to a republic. And they wrestled with the issue of slavery. and we did solve that. Like, there have been major issues that nobody else had solved for millennia that we solved. It took us time in some areas, but we solved them. And so is one of those things, too,

that I want to highlight that somehow progressives can't get their head around. If it's not perfect, again, the problem with progressivism, it looks for perfection in an imperfect world. You're never going to be satisfied. You're always going to be, you know, I do think there's a certain amount of mental illness

that comes with it because you're seeking something that you'll never find in this world. But a point I want to make is this, and just having observant, my dad's life. The path to success is paid with failure. It happens. You learn from your failures. You pick yourself up and go, I'm not going to do that again. I'm going to learn my lessons. And I feel like that's us as a country writ large. Where we've had our failures, we've learned for them. We pick ourselves up and going, we're headed that way. We're going to keep moving forward.

And I think that's something progressives just will, we've always refused to accept. Failure is a part of human nature at the same time. It's what you do with the failure moving forward. Well, they seem to really revel in focusing on the negative and on the criticism. It's deeply sick. Let's be clear. It's sick. At least the mental illness. Well, no, it is. I mean, it's related. There's something deeply sick about it. I mean, it really is no different than if your wife or your kid or whatever. Every time they see you, they remind you of the worst thing you ever did. and you go, yeah, but don't you remember 18 years ago, like I changed my opinion and I've repented and I've been healed from that. And I have spoken about that and like, yeah, but don't forget what you did.

I want you to remember. There's something sick about that. And to do that. There's no redemption. No, they don't believe in redemption. And they want to really be redemption. We're stuck in 1619. That's the real founding.

Again, it's so, it's sick. It's godless. It's neolithic. It's hopeless. Yeah, that's the depressing part to me about progressivism and why I do think it leads to a sense of hopelessness and mental illness. There is no redemption arc. There's no redemption story. You cannot really truly be redeemed because you're looking for perfection and imperfect world.

But, you know, the thing that I've been thinking about with this, too, you know, going back to the instinctive patriotism, I'm concerned for the younger generations. like one of the things that I've noticed and have firmly concluded that most of the 20th and 21st century in our school systems was a lot of progressive propaganda. Younger generations that have not been taught the true history.

You cannot love what you do not know. So we have to encourage our younger generations to know it before they can love it, again going back to instinctive patriotism, but you're never going to defend what you despise. And I think a lot of our younger generation, that's why you're seeing the rise of socialism and all these things among the younger generations.

They've been taught to despise in our indoctrination centers, the founders, the founders' worldview, everything about the republic. And the thing that I've also noticed, you refer to the French Revolution multiple times. The thing that concerns me about today's American left

is it reminds me very much of the Jacobins. They wanted to destroy everything to usher in a new order. And the difference, and there's more than this, but the difference with the American Revolution, I call it the restoration, is they wanted to restore what had been. They wanted to restore their natural God-given rights.

They wanted to restore all of these things that they believed they had a right to. They were not interested in destroying everything that was to build a new order. They were trying to restore what had already been their right as Englishmen. Whereas the French Jacobins, and I think the American left today, they want to annihilate everything to usher in their new order. and it's a troubling thing because you pointed out, and it always ends this way, it ends up in a very ugly place, authoritarian bloodshed, all of that, because they can never achieve what they're seeking to find in this world.

Well, Askinus calls it, he talks about, you know, there's the spirit of 1776, and then there's the spirit of 1789. And the 1789 is a nihilistic, ultimately demonic, negative spirit. that wants to destroy. It's a spirit of destruction that pretends that on the other side of the destruction, there's something beautiful. But over and over and over in history, you see it over and over. You can't avoid it. If you're honest, it never ends in what it promises. It always ends in bloodbath and chaos. We think of the Bolshevik revolution. We think of the Chinese Marxist revolution. It always ends in the subjugation of people, not in their,

empowerment, not in freeing the government themselves, never, because without God, you can't govern yourself. But they say, but this time it'll work, this time it'll work, this time. This time, this time. And of course, it can't work. It's like it's a math problem. You're not going to get that answer if you don't know. It just doesn't, you can't, you can't get liberty without God. And so the founders understood this. And it really is, what you said about how we have to have this instinctive patriotism. I mean, it is absolutely why I wrote my book Revolution, because I said, if you don't know these stories, you can't celebrate this. You're going to hear all this negative stuff. But my book, as I said, ends in 1783. The beauty of your film, and I want people to see it,

it's the thread of liberty, folks. It's free. You go on YouTube. But I love how you go past the founding into the 19th century, into the progressive movement. Talk about progressive movement, because that's an area that I haven't known nearly as much about as I ought to. And it was really a great refresher course to see what happened during that movement in the early part of the 20th century. So thread ofliberty.com is where people can go to watch and it'll take them to the YouTube. They'll watch it for free. Threadofliberty.com. But right, those different inflection points. And the last inflection point that we really address is the rise of the administrative state.

And, you know, progress is a lot of people have wanted to kind of the, oh, was the, in the progressive movement, great, they wanted better food quality and suffrage. Great, no arguments there. What people don't understand about the progressive movement is their entire loathing and how much they despise the founders, the Constitution as originally intended. They hated the separation of powers. They hated everything about the founding because they thought the founders had gotten it wrong.

And so I write about this in American Leviathan, my previous book, that really was a slow-moving regime change against our republic, the rise of the progress. in the administrative state because it was an entirely different philosophy on human nature, as we talked about earlier, but also progressives thought the separation of powers is slowing down progress. We need to consolidate all of these, the legislative, the judicial, the executive, into a massive administrative state, massive bureaucracy for an unelected, educated elite to actually govern society. Well, first of all, our founders were terrified of consolidated power because eventually it leads to authoritarian behavior,

but they also didn't trust human interests. They didn't trust themselves. This is the one thing I think we need to, you know, needs to be discussed more. The men sitting in the room in Philadelphia in 1787 knew they were going to be the next presidents and vice presidents and members of the Senate, House, judiciary.

They could have created a system that benefited their narrow interest. They did the exact opposite because they didn't trust themselves because they understood human nature. Progresses rejected all of that and said, They got it all wrong. And we're going to put together this massive administrative state because they believed that history was going to end. They were going to go climbing, climbing, climbing to the apotheosis of mankind.

Again, the semi-deification of mankind in this world through the vehicle of the enlightened state, the administrative state, to reach the end of history, to have utopia on Earth. You cannot think of anything that is more antithetical to our founding when it comes to the role of government. how you view human nature. And so the problem being, Eric, is that the progressives have been largely successful in making their ideas become reality. And this is the one thing, the tension in D.C. today,

tension starting with Donald Trump, but a lot of tension that we see today, is because you have two very different competing governing philosophies at work in D.C. Administrative state and Constitutional Republic, at some point, one of them is going to have to give way, and I hope for our sake and for the future of our kids and grandkids, it's the republic that wins out.

But the problem, and Paul Ray from Hillsdale makes this point in the documentary, the problem is it's become habit. And habits are very hard to break. And so we have to decide, do we have the will to break very bad habits that have been 100 plus years in the making? Yeah, it's extraordinary to think about this. And again, this is why I think in our 250th year, what I call our super centennial, this glorious moment to look back and to understand who we are.

How do we get liberty? How do you get liberty? How do you lose liberty? What are the basics? If you don't understand that, it goes away. It's been going away. And we need to recalibrate. We need a, you know, a correction in the system.

And I think the thing that's so great, not only about your book and I hope about my documentary, Bill McLeigh, also of Hillsdale, and the documentary makes this point. How do you renew a republic? Well, you go back to the founding, to the founding principles, and you renew the knowledge of what they were thinking and how they were putting things together. That's how you renew a republic throughout the course of its history. And so we have to encourage people to go, read books,

look at the documentary, understand what they were thinking, and renew those founding principles, to renew the republic in the 21st century. Not going to be easy. This is the one point I want to make too. I think sometimes we get so enraptured with our ideas and the philosophy and it's going to be hard work. Like there's a lot of political will and political courage

that is going to be required. But again, every moment in these inflection points that we discussed in the documentary, that current generation went deep within and found within themselves that courage and that will to say, we are going to continue. We feel an obligation to the experiment, but it wasn't easy. You think about Washington, you think about all these different moments where they could have easily quit, and they found it within themselves.

And so I think I want people to understand, first of all, we have something to protect, we have something that we should be good stewards of. It's not going to be easy. There are a lot of people that are very bought into the current status quo in D.C. in this country writ large, it's going to be a dog fight. But you have to know what you believe if you're going to be willing to fight for it. And I think, you know, to encourage people, and again, this is why I, I've been jokingly referring in my book as mandatory beach reading. This is mandatory, folks, going to be on the test. And I say this film, I'm not just saying that because Net is on here. I've been saying this.

When you understand this stuff, watch the thread of Liberty, read my book, because when you understand this, you get a different view. You begin to understand, yes, yes, it's going to be hard. but guess what? It'll be way harder if you don't do the right thing. It's kind of like, yeah, it's going to be hard to exercise. You know, it's hard to give up smoking. It's hard to, yeah, these are hard things, but it's way harder not to do that. And you need to know that up front.

And I also say that, you know, George Washington in 1776, if you'd said to him, we know how it's going to turn out, you're going to win, he would still say, well, men are going to suffer and die while we're in the, in the process. of winning, we have to keep fighting. Men will suffer and die. 20% of the men will die of disease at Valley Forge. This is not going to be easy, but it's the right thing. And this is what we have to get in our heads. Is it the right thing or not? This self-sacrifice that we have to make, it's the right thing. Not to do it is to work, is to be complicit with evil, with the forces of evil. And that's where we are. And in some ways, selfish.

The decisions we make today, obviously, and I think I've stated in the obvious, are going to impact the world our children and our grandchildren live in. And so the question is, how do we intend to confront what we have today and say, we're going to rise to the occasion? Because we have an obligation to those that came before us. And again, tremendous sacrifices that were made by generations before to continue this experiment. What is this generation going to do to continue the experiment for future generations? And it all depends on what we decide to do in this moment. as we hopefully rise to the occasion, say, hey, we want representative government back, we want the republic restored, we need to break the state.

All these things, they're not going to be easy. But at the same time, I think it's the obligation to the experiment and for future generations that I hope leads people to go, yeah, I'm going to make that sacrifice. I'm going to make that commitment. Well, I really think we have an extraordinary moment right now. We are an extraordinary moment. I thank God for President Trump. I thank God for God, because if, you.

If President Trump dodged a bullet, we dodged a bullet. America dodged a bullet. We should be dead. Just as George Washington should have had everything ended at the end of August, 1776, it should have been over, done, no America. But God intervenes. Over and over we see God intervening. I think we're in one of those moments right now.

And even when I look in your film, you talk about reconstruction. You talk about after the civil war, it doesn't. go so well. It does not. Lincoln speaks of a new birth of freedom, but I think that he's speaking prophetically that we are now on the new

birth of freedom, but the hell that they went through. Talk about that for a moment in the reconstruction. Yeah, no, so, well, Lincoln, of course, goes to Gettysburg to speak at the opening of the cemetery in November of 1863. And he talks about that new birth of freedom, but he goes back to, again, as Bill

McLeigh said, you go back to the founding to renew those principles to renew the republic in the moment, that a country, that a nation of by and for the people should not perish from this earth, that this whole idea that on this continent, our founders put forth this proposition that all men are created equal. So he talks about this rebirth of freedom. We went, the Civil Wars over 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments

really continue, you know, us repairing our faults. And then we hit the era of reconstruction. And again, the dirty nature of politics is that sometimes compromise gets in the way of doing the right thing. And it's the compromise in the 1870s to keep the Republicans in the White House in return for pulling federal troops out of the South that ends reconstruction and in its place comes Jim Crow and puts us back decades on the path to really setting things right. And we make the point in that moment, even though we feel like there was a moment where the thread was

held very loosely, it is renewed, you know, in the 1950s and the 1950s, in the 1950s, 1960s to fulfill that obligation to liberty to the idea, the proposition that all men are created equal. But, you know, we make the point at the end of the Civil War, the industrial revolution, all these things, there was a great exhaustion in this nation. And Republican citizenship, and lowercase Republican citizenship requires a lot of an individual. And at that point, people were exhausted and into that vacuum, not only did we allow, you know, Jim Crow to rise. Out of that came the progressive movement. Because a lot of people, that time thought, you know what, it might be easier for someone else to manage our lives for us.

It'll make life easier. It goes back to the soft despotism that Tockville spoke of. Well, the only problem again, when you have a massive administrative state, when you have other people making decisions for you, when you all of a sudden start to think, well, the state gives me my rights. The problem being with a state that gives you your rights and provides everything for you is also big enough to take away your rights and take away everything from you. And now there's a certain trajectory that a managerial massive bureaucracy always ends up at. It goes down this path. Everybody's like, isn't this great?

And then all of a sudden, this educated elite goes that dirty little peasants aren't listening to us. You better submit or else. And I kind of think we're at that stage. And so this is one of the things where I love that Trump has reduced the size of government to the small suspense since the 1960s. But we're just starting. And I say this. I say this all the time in my speeches. Yeah.

Eric, he talks about draining the swamp. Well, the foundation of the swamp is the state. You break the state. You drain the swamp. You can restore the republic. But we have to break the state for those other things to take place. Well, I mean, I often think of even, you know, as recently as 9-11, which, you know, to you and me, it is not so long ago. Sadly no.

I remember George W. Bush talking about, you know, your job is to go back. shopping and we have a professional army class. Like you don't need to, it's not like those other wars where your boys need to sacrifice. It's just we've got professionals to take care of it. Something happened, and this is over time, but I just remember that moment where I thought, wait a minute, you know, if there's a war worth fighting, we all need to be willing to go fight. Otherwise, maybe we shouldn't be fighting it. What is happening here? And it's where the state just becomes this bloated thing that is other. We the people are supposed to be the government. Once it's there the government, the government is taking care of the war,

the government is taking. You say, that is an abrogation of the founding vision. How have we drifted to that point? And you, in your film, the threat of liberty, you talk about that, because it's a, we need to know that story. And I certainly don't tell that story in my book. That's in this film, The Threat of Liberty. The Threat of Liberty.com is the website. Just a other minute or so left. Go ahead, Ned. The other thing I would say is my previous documentary was American Leviathan based off the book that really discusses the administrative state. So watch the threat of threat of liberty.com and then watch American Leviathan. It's also on YouTube for free.

But you know, you talk about people being separated from their government. That was the whole point of the progressive movement. Right. That's the only separation of powers they actually believed in was separating out the accountability of the people to those actually doing the governing, which was the elected bureaucracy. And again, it tends to become, first of all, you're separated from your government. There's no redress for grievances. There's a whole host of a lot of different issues. Our elected officials unconstitutionally sub-delegating their legislative authority to the bureaucrats.

And it's one of those things where the people have to understand what's going on. Our elected representatives actually have to step up to the plate and legislate again. So there's a whole host of things that have to be done to restore the republic. But watch the documentary, Threat oflibert.com, watch American Leviathan. and, you know, be inspired, but also understand we've got a lot of challenges, but I believe that we are up to the challenge. And I would say, too, in closing that, you know, I say this all the time when I'm referring to my book, folks, we have a responsibility to know these things.

The reason we're in this mess is because previous generations used to know this stuff. If you went to anybody in 1960, put a microphone in their face, they knew everything that's in my book about the American Revolution. we have a responsibility to know all of this stuff, what you Ned cover in your film, The Threat of Liberty, we need to know this. This is not extra credit. This is not for history buffs.

If you're an American, you're on the hook for this material. This is on the test, and the test is your life. This is it. So we're out of time, but I just want to say, this is all mandatory, folks. Take the time. Eat your oatmeal, okay? Do this.

And by the way, it's the, most delicious oatmeal you've ever eaten. This is a great thing so. The thread of liberty.com is the website. Seriously. It's what was wonderful. Uh, I have not yet seen American Leviathan. Shame on me. I've seen clips of it, but I need to watch American Leviathan. Um, I've already read my book so I can check that off, but other people have not. Ladies and gentlemen, this is important. You have a job to do. Uh, Ned Ryan, thank you for all you do. Uh, thank you for this on the thread of liberty. and we'll talk to you again soon.

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