The Eric Metaxas Show - C. Bradley Thompson

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Bradley Thompson illuminates "America's Revolutionary Mind" showing the combination of moral principles and political wisdom that guided a free people in the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence.

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I tell all my relatives to take it. relief factor.com. The following interview that Eric did with C. Bradley Thompson about America's revolutionary mind was recorded pre-quarantine and joy. They say it takes a big man to admit he's wrong, but I say it takes an even bigger man to admit he's never wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you that bigger man, Eric Mattaxas. Yes, folks, I'm huge.

I'm Eric Mattaxas, is the Eric Mattaxas shows the show about everything, which is to say about a whole lot of things. But one of the things that seems to creep back over and over again is history, American history, and how faith and freedom are combined, how the government works, how are government supposed to work, how are country supposed to work, how freedom is supposed to work. It's something about which I've written a book. But I have the pleasure in this hour of speaking with C. Bradley Thompson, who has written a new book called America's Revolutionary Mind,

A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it. See, Bradley Thompson is a professor in the department of Pauly Sye at Clemson University. He's the executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, and he's with me now. Professor Thompson, welcome. Thank you very much, Eric. Great to be with you. The title of your book really grabbed me, because this is a big thing for me. I'm not an academic, but it's something that has...

capture my attention in the last few years, particularly, the idea of a moral history of the American Revolution, it seems to me that people have, in my lifetime, shrunk from that kind of a conversation, and we have forgotten the moral history of how freedom rose 240-something-something years ago. So what prepared you to write this book? Is this something that's been on your mind for a long time, or is this something that is more recent for you? Well, it was actually a bit of both. So three years ago, I was actually writing a different book on American constitutionalism. And I was writing one of the central chapters on the idea of natural rights. And I read a very bad book by Harvard professor on the Declaration of Independence. And I was so offended by this book that I

decided on the spot that I was going to have to write my own book on the Declaration of Independence. But because I was engaged in this other project, I told myself that I had exactly one year to write a book on the Declaration of Independence. So on July 1st of 2017, I started writing this book on the Declaration and finished it exactly on June 30th. the following year. I'm very impressed on a number of levels. That's, writers are usually not, you know, usually things kind of balloon into something beyond what we began, or at least beyond the vision that we originally had. But when you say you read an article about the Declaration of Independence by Harvard professor and that it was particularly bad, I'm sure not uniquely

bad because there are so many people who misunderstand our founding. What was it in particular that struck you about that book that made you want to write this specifically? I would say two things. First, it was an egalitarian interpretation of the Declaration. So it essentially turned the Declaration into a manifesto of the Democratic Party. And secondly, and I think maybe even more importantly, I found the tone of the book to be actually deeply offensive. It was meant to be written for blue-collar workers, but it was so utterly condescending to its audience. So as an example, you know the opening line of the Declaration begins when in the course of human events.

The author then takes five pages to compare the opening phrase of the Declaration to the meandering of the Mississippi River. Isn't that just sloppy? that's just that's actually that's strange but it's it just strikes me as just there's a level of sloppiness there I mean was there's I suppose there may have been a point but it doesn't sound like there was I don't think there was and it compares literally the Declaration of Independence to a divorce proceeding and then goes on to give compare the declaration and the American separation to teenage girls and boys breaking up with each other. I mean, it was just an

utterly absurd book. And I have to tell you, I found it particularly offensive because I love this country in a very peculiar or particular kind of way. I'm actually not an American citizen. I was born and raised in

Canada, and when I was a young boy, I read a book called the How and Why Wonder Book of the American Revolution. And at that moment, I realized that I was an American born in the wrong country. And I've had a lifetime love affair with this country, with the revolution, and more particularly with the Declaration of Independence. And so I thought it was my responsibility to the country that I love to set the record straight. Well, that's so beautiful. I guess it was Lincoln who said when he was talking about

the founders and the founding generation, he says, I always forget the phrase, but he says there was something, I'm not going to remember, I have to look it up, but that he recognized as a young man, that there was something in that generation and in our founding that was really unprecedentedly beautiful and noble. It was not the kind of thing. It was not just something that people do. It wasn't a divorce proceeding. It was a, it was, it was an assertion maybe in the course of a divorce proceeding of something, I would say, eternal or something pointing toward the eternal, something really beautiful. And it does strike me that we have lost that, that we're not teaching that in the schools anymore. When you refer to this book that you read as a kid, it's hard to get your hands on books like that these days. So I suppose your life is a response to that book. It is. And, you know, the second sentence of the declaration begins, we hold these truths to be self-evident, which I think are the most beautiful words, the most important words ever written in American history. And of course, that has to be seen in contrast to the world in which we live today. It's now said that we live in a post-truth society. And there are now magazine covers that say, ask, is truth dead? But this is not how America. American revolutionaries understood the idea of truth. For them, truth was something that was

absolute, certain, permanent, and universal. And then the Declaration, of course, lays out four of these self-evident truths, which are America's founding principles. And what are the four truths just before we keep going here? Well, they could be summed up, I think, in one word each. Equality, rights, consent, and revolution. Equality, rights, consent. in revolution. So the subtitle of your book, America's Revolutionary Mind, A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it. What do you mean by that a moral history? Right. So you and your audience know that there have been scores, if not hundreds of books written on the American Revolution. Right. There are social, political, diplomatic, religious, military histories of the American Revolution. But there had never been a moral history. history written of the American Revolution. And I first came up with this idea of a moral history

when I read a famous letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, where Adam says that the real cause of the revolution was in the minds of the people. And then he goes on to say that it was a moral revolution. And so I long pondered what that statement meant. And then I combined it with a statement written years later by Thomas Payne, who said of the American Revolution that Americans see with new eyes, hear with new ears, and think new thoughts. And so I combined these two ideas, these quotations from Adams and Payne, put them together and started to think that, no, maybe the real cause of the American Revolution was, not political, social, constitutional, but rather was a moral cause. And if you think about

what ignited the American Revolution, which was the Stamp Act in 1765, that was a moral response to a tax passed by the British Parliament. The British regarded the Stamp Act to be legal and therefore constitutional. Hang on right there. Folks, I'm talking to see Bradley Thompson. in the new book, America's Revolutionary Mind. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to see Bradley Thompson, a professor at Clemson University. The new book is called America's Revolutionary Mind, a moral history of the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it.

You just quoted Adams and Thomas Payne, one of whom's a Christian, the other whom's an atheist. So it's interesting that you're saying that they both approach things from a moral point of view. So Tom Payne, how was it that he, having no faith ostensibly, is talking about something from a moral point of view? What do you mean by that? Pain specifically was referring to the doctrine of natural rights. And this, in fact, is also the same principle that Adams is referring to. And during the 1760s, during the years of the so-called imperial crisis, the Americans began to search for,

new moral principles. They initially reacted against the Stamp Act in British legislation on the grounds that it violated the so-called rights of Englishmen. But the rights of Englishmen, of course, are rights that are peculiar to a certain people at a certain place at a certain time. The Americans, though, started to look for principles that were grounded on a more permanent sort of rock-solid foundation. And they looked to nature for, for, for that foundation. And so they began this search during the 1760s into the 1770s looking for this absolute certain permanent universal moral foundation, which they found in the doctrine of the laws and rights of nature. And pain, and there were other American revolutionaries who were,

let's just say, less religious than others, who also sought for a moral foundation in nature. It's interesting, though, because when they talk about nature's God, I mean, obviously you have people across the spectrum in the founding generation, and there does seem to be some good compromising going on. In other words, they're not all insisting on a particular view, but they're trying to figure out, as you say, how can we come together? What are our moral principles?

And so you're saying natural law is where they seem to come out. Now, where did they get that from? Who were their antecedents philosophically, politically? Yeah. So I would just slightly revise what you said. So I don't think actually that they used a natural law teaching, which is, I think, a uniquely, specifically unique Catholic teaching. They were more influenced by the,

great philosophers of the Enlightenment. In particular, Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum, Isaac Newton in the Principia Mathematica, and John Locke in his essay concerning human understanding and the second treatise. And so they looked to nature. In the same way that Newton had discovered scientific laws of nature, America's revolutionary founders looked for moral laws. laws and rights of nature. That's fascinating. I mean, it's fascinating, too, because you have to put it in the context of, of that time. I mean, it's amazing to me to think that, I mean, it happens time and time again, but you have scientists who force everyone who's not a scientist, nonetheless,

to kind of buy into a paradigm. So obviously Darwin gets people thinking about social Darwinism. And so you're talking about a time when, you know, you have these giants, particularly Newton, discovering laws that no one had ever discovered before. It's hard for us to believe. There was a time before people understood gravity or those kinds of things. And so somehow that pushed people to think that there is an underlying structure in the cosmos. Now, folks like Payne obviously didn't talk about who had put it there or whether anyone had put it there. They just were kind of assuming it, I guess.

Yeah. So I would say that all of the... America's revolutionary founders turned to nature as the source, or at least as the intermediate source for the moral laws and rights of nature. And then some might have said it stops there, but the vast majority would have said that the source of these moral laws and rights of nature would have been in the Supreme Creator. Yeah, it's an amazing thing. Now, for folks who know nothing about John Locke, sum up, if you would, just what his philosophy was that bear on what we're discussing?

Well, I would say there are two primary things. So in his great work on the essay concerning human understanding, Locke attempted to establish what he called a demonstrative science of ethics, an ethics that he said would be as certain as mathematics. And that idea, I think, deeply influenced some of America's leading revolutionary founders, John Adams in particular, when he was a student at Harvard University, bought into this idea that you can establish a system of ethics by observing the nature of reality. But without question, though, the book which most influenced America's founding fathers was Locke's

Second Treatise of Government, which I think it's fair to say that the Declaration of Independence is actually a pre-see of Locke's second treatise. So the four pillars of the Declaration of Independence, the four moral political pillars, equality, rights, consent, and revolution really just come straight out of the second treatise. And so what was it about these men in that time that thought that history was ripe for self-government along these lines? I mean, it's an interesting thing because those of us, you know, who live in our time, which most of my listeners do, We don't even think that there was a time before anyone could conceive of this. There was a time when the idea of liberty simply didn't exist in the way that we think of it today.

So did they – I mean, it seems like you're suggesting that they had a sense of history, that because of Newton, because of Bacon, that the Enlightenment somehow was leading us to this. But they, I guess, folks like Payne, obviously, didn't think of a god of history. Where was he, where were they getting this sense from? Or maybe they weren't. I don't know. Well, first, I think it's true to say that they were great students of history. So they understood the history of freedom and tyranny in the ancient world, in the medieval world, and in the early modern world. And so in 1765, John Adams wrote a dissertation on the campaign.

canon and feudal law. And in that essay, Adams demonstrates that feudal and post-feudal Europe had been dominated by these two systems of law, which had led to tyranny. And the Puritans who came to New England in the 17th century left to Europe to escape the canon and feudal law. And, of course, once they got to America, they set up self-bushableness. governing institutions. And then one of the great, I think, still untold stories of American history is actually the further development of freedom and liberty in America, because these Englishmen came to the colonies, to Britain's American colonies, as the inheritors of a certain English tradition of freedom. But once they got to America, and once, as long as there was always a

frontier in America. There was always a place to go for individuals to escape oppressive government. American institutions always had a kind of, we might call it a freedom backstop, which encouraged the development of self-governing free political institution. That's interesting, a freedom backstop. In other words, that if they didn't like something, they could just go west. Precisely. Right. Yeah. That is very, very interesting. Okay, so where does, I mentioned in the break, you know, George Whitfield, obviously the revival that happens in the middle of the 18th century. In your estimation, what role does that play in preparing the American colonists for self-government? Or maybe you don't think that it does?

That's a debatable question. And I think some religious historians of colonial America think that it does. I'm less convinced of that argument. I think the primary influence, in addition to there always being a frontier in America, was the fact that Great Britain during the 18th century had a laissez-faire policy towards the colonies, a hands-off. They call it the policy of salutary neglect. And as a result, the colonies literally grew up in the act.

atmosphere of freedom, right? Great Britain kept a very, very long arm away from the colleagues. In other words, they kind of had to govern themselves a little bit. Oh, absolutely. They had to govern themselves. And they got used to it. And that's the issue. They got used to it. And it was only in 1763, 64 at the end of the so-called seven years war. Yeah. When Great Britain tried to reimpose its authority in the colonies that the colonists invoked what they called the spirit of liberty. Hang on one second.

I hate to interrupt. This is good stuff, folks. I'm talking to see Bradley Thompson. The book is America's revolutionary mind. Don't go away. Heroes and role models have always been tremendously important to me. In my new book, Seven More Men, I tell the uplifting and inspiring stories of Martin Luther, George Whitfield, William Booth, George Washington Carver,

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I'm talking to see Bradley Thompson, who is the author of a brand new book America's revolutionary mind, a moral history of the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it. So when you say a moral history, for you, that's morality as divorced, at least explicitly, or it's divorced from explicit faith or religion. In other words, you're talking about the founders who are coming from an Enlightenment worldview, and they believe that somehow nature gives us these ideas. They don't, you know, maybe they can quibble about how that happens. But I just find that very interesting that somebody who, like Payne, was an atheist,

nonetheless saw things in moral terms. Oh, without question. I mean, I think it's true of that entire generation, whether they were religious or not, that they believed in the idea of moral truth, truth that was absolute, permanent and universal. And the only question was what was the source of that morality. Right, right. Well, that's, I mean, that's what I always find interesting because my question to the founders would be, and I guess if you can help me see what they might have thought. But if you say that, you know, these are the rules in nature, just as Newton, you know, a hundred years earlier, discovers the laws of gravity and he's able to, you know, create calculus so that we can see with math what these inescapable laws are, these physical laws, they're making a leap, it seems to me, to say that there are similar moral laws. I mean, I personally see those moral laws, and I can see how you can look at ethics in the same way, just as you mentioned.

But it's interesting that they would assume that those would be, I don't know, salutary laws, that those law – because what if those laws are more long Darwinian ideas? Let's say somebody says, look, the law of nature, red and tooth and claw is that the survival of the fittest that might overwrite, might makes right, the idea that power is the ultimate. arbiter of, you know, who gets to tell the story of history or who, that's all that there is. How do you go, if you're somebody like Tom Payne, how do you go to morality and right and wrong? In other words, that's what I've never been able to really understand. And it seems to me crucial, obviously, in understanding this generation. Well, I think the best way to understand it is to look at how they determined these moral laws and rights of nature.

And the first thing to say, of course, is that they studied nature. And what we mean by that in particular is human nature. So they observed the ways in which individuals act, the way they interact with each other. In particular, they looked at the human passions. So in other words, it's through a process first of extrospection. You look out at the world and the way individuals relate to one another. Secondly, there's introspection. You turn inward on yourself and you examine your own ideas and your own passions and desires.

And then finally, you look at history and you examine how human beings have acted and behaved toward each other over the course of millennia. And from this process, you can induce certain rules of behavior that are clearly saluted. for for human prosperity and human flourishing. And I think that was essentially in kind of summation, the process by which they determined these moral laws and rights of nature. I'm always fascinated too about how, you know, not just the way history progresses, but how it's perceived, that there's some people that believe in the idea of history that somehow history's progressing. And when you talk about the age of man or that, you know, that there was this kind of, I guess I see it a little bit as utopianist strain that they think we have arrived at this new time. And

it's unclear why one should have arrived or, you know, if there's no God of history, how it is that history moves. And, you know, there's a thousand ways to look at it. But it does seem to me that they were self-aware, that they understood that there's the dawning of something that has never existed before? I think that's right, although I would say there was a spectrum of views amongst America's founding fathers in this regard. So I would say Thomas Jefferson, for instance, had the most optimistic view of history, that history was actually moving in a certain direction toward greater freedom.

John Adams, I would say, had a more pessimistic view of this, right? Adams understood that, yes, humankind is acquiring knowledge over time. We know more, for instance, about the operation of the universe than we knew several hundred centuries before. But that knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that we are moving toward a predetermined end of history. Yeah, that's, interesting. And also, you know, depending on one's views of human nature, you can, you can know more. but then you can use that for ill just as well as for good. So it is interesting because I think sometimes, you know, the knock on the Enlightenment thinkers sometimes is that they, you can, you can idolize knowledge or you can act as though knowledge is always good. And you forget, I mean, you know, the biblical view would be that because mankind has fallen, people will use knowledge, new knowledge, you know, for selfish ends just as much as for unselfish.

ends so it's complicated. What do you think it is? Actually, we're going to have to go to a break here. So, folks, I'm talking to C. Bradley Thompson. The new book, brand new book, is America's revolutionary mind, a moral history, the American Revolution, the Declaration that defined it, will be right back. Hey there, folks. This Eric McIntaxe show. I'm talking about a new book, America's revolutionary mind, a moral history of the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it. See, Bradley's a Rickman. Thompson is the author. I should ask you, we were, you know, we're talking about how, in part, there was this flourishing of liberty and self-government before 1776 because the British kind of

let us alone mostly. What did you call it? Salutary neglect. Salutary neglect. That we were able to do our own thing. It's interesting to me that, you know, John Winthrop and the Massachusetts it's Bay Colony, they had a sense of themselves as not just self-governing, but obviously they had a very religious view. And he talks about, you know, the shining city on a hill. And we as Americans, particularly conservative Americans, often mention that, that we are not meant just to be here for ourselves, but that we're meant to be a beacon of freedom for others around the world who don't have freedom. Does that idea play into your view that we're

supposed to be sharing our freedom or promoting our freedom around the world? That it's not meant just for us, that it is universal. It's a universal idea. Well, it was a universal idea such that it brought a young man to this country, namely me. So the United States, and I grew up literally just across the border, across the Niagara River in Ontario, Canada. And so for me, I could almost see the United States from where I lived. And it was a little Sarah Palin and everybody. And it was, it was for me, a kind of city upon a hill. Yeah. And so it is, it is a beacon. And but that beacon, I think, is connected with certain ideas. It's, it is a beacon. The city on a hill, the light shone from America, is the light projected by certain ideas.

And those ideas are best summarized in the Declaration of Independence. Now, I guess I would argue that, you know, when you talk about coming from Canada, that's not the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, it's not Venezuela, it's not even Mexico. I mean, that the Canada in which you grew up was a country that most of us would think of as free. But so what is then the difference between not to get two? parochial. But, you know, when you think of Canada and you think of the United States, what would be the difference in this day and age? Because I think there are a lot of countries like Canada and parts of Western Europe that they have taken on a lot of these ideas, not quite

to the extent that we have them in America. But what do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, I think Canada is and always has been a relatively free country. But it does have a very different kind of tradition of freedom. Canada was through the early part of the 20th century, deeply influenced, we might say, by a kind of English Tory notion of freedom. But as I was growing up as a teenager in the 1970s, we had Pierre Trudeau as our prime minister who was injecting socialist policies into Canada. And I would like to think that I, like American revolutionaries, had this heightened spirit of liberty. And so I saw the direction that Trudeau was taking Canada during the 1970s, and I wanted no part of it. And America was always that place of freedom for me.

Well, it does strike me that, you know, you hear about abrogations of free speech, of religious liberty in Western European countries, and I guess I sort of lump Canada in there, that are shocking to the American mind, that you think, my goodness, even if you have views that are, you know, out of the norm, nonetheless, you have the freedom in this country to believe them, to live them out, to teach them to your kids. And that there's something scary and chilling when you read about what is happening in these so-called free Western democracies, because on that score, they don't seem to have the kind of fire of freedom that you see in a lot of America. Maybe that's never been there.

No, I think that's absolutely true. And, I mean, Canadians are a very interesting kind of people. On the one hand, you know, I would say, as I certainly as I was growing up, I would say most Canadians have had a deep and profound respect for the United States. but by the time I was in high school and then in college, so this is during the 1970s and early 1980s, what I observed was a profound turn in Canada away from the United States and indeed the development of a kind of profound anti-Americanism. So for me, the turning point was I was driving in Toronto one day

and I was driving around the University of Toronto student ghetto area and I saw U.S. flags hanging from student dormitories with large black exes through them. And for me, that was a turning point. And that was the moment I said, I'm out. Isn't it amazing? I mean, that in places like Hong Kong, they get it that America is a beacon for something good. America has never been perfect and never will be. But they get it in Tenement Square three decades ago.

they got it. The Statue of Liberty was something that they recreated to, I mean, I really think that for the oppressed around the world, America has always been that. It absolutely has been that. And you contrast that with the attitudes of American university professors. Berkeley or Harvard, you know, and most other American universities, there is a deep and profound anti-Americanism. And, which is, as someone who loves this country very much, it's very hard to observe. Well, and again, it's not that it's so much that they're anti-American, but it's what that represents, the idea that they're really cultural Marxists, that there's this war that never goes away. And it's the war between freedom and tyranny. The only question is, you know, what brand

of freedom and what brand of tyranny? Yeah. Although I would say cultural Marxists. is a form of anti-Americanism. And you see that most specifically now in the New York Times, a 1619 project. Isn't that the strangest thing? What an amazing thing. It is. And it's a form of fake news doing fake history. Yeah. We're going to go to a break. Final segment coming up. See Bradley Thompson is my guest. The new book is America's revolutionary mind, a moral history of the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to C. Bradley Thompson, the author of America's revolutionary mind. We're talking about a lot of things. We just touched on this idea of the anti-Americanism inherent in, you know, these woke students around the country. And where do you see that going? Are you hopeful that we're in a moment where that, you know, with Bernie Sanders and others having pushed the whole Democratic Party dramatically in that direction?

It seems to me that there's a, I feel a sense of hope that people are going to see these things for what they are. It's like we finally got some fruit. Let's look at the fruit. I wish it were so. Yeah. I have a different analysis. Sure, sure. I do think things will get worse before they get better.

Yeah. The good news, however, is that what can't go on forever won't. And there are signs around the United States of people and what I'm doing at Clemson with the Clemson Institute for the study of capitalism. starting new programs. We have something called the Lyceum Scholars Program, which uses a great book's approach to studying the history of liberty, capitalism, the American founding, and the principles of moral character. And that kind of program is, I think, the antidote that's necessary to counter what's happening everywhere else on our college campuses. There are not many professors who self-identify as conservative. I'm always impressed that Victor Davis-Hanson is doing his

thing in California. I'm thrilled that you are where you are. But it is interesting how the Academy has been taken over by, again, to cut to the chase, cultural Marxists effectively. It is amazing and it's amazing how quickly it happened. There was a time, I would say, beginning in the late, in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, that it looked like the cultural left was retrenching and going back into their holes. But they have reemerged in the last decade and come back with greater force than they ever had before. And that's, I think, deeply problematic for the future of higher education. Oh, there's no – I don't really see a future for higher education, frankly, because I think that once parents figure out what their kids are learning at places like Harvard and Yale, you realize this is a waste of time. And, you know, I was at Yale in the 80s. And this was already going on in the early 80s there.

I mean, this is not really a new thing. It's just becoming more and more evident. But I do think you kind of run out of rope eventually. I mean, if the students are all insane with these ideas, there's a brilliant novel out called Campus Land, I recommend very highly. It's just, it's almost funny to think how in a really enclosed kind of system, you can get away with that. But then once you go out into the real world and have to get a job or something like that, unless you're living in a Marxist utopia, you're going to have to deal with reality at some point. Right. What's really interesting about the current cultural Marxist ideology is that it's eerily similar to the ideology of pro-slavery southerners during the antebellum period. So in the very same way that America's college professors would reject the four self-evident truths of the Declaration, precisely because they are true, it turns out that the first critics of the Declaration of Independence

were pro-slavery southerners during the antebellum period who rejected the four core ideas or principles of the Declaration of Independence. They rejected the idea of truth, and they rejected the idea of equality and the idea of rights. And what's really most fascinating, as I argue in the epilogue to my book titled Has America Lost Its American Mind, is that some of the leading pro-slavery thinkers were actually pre-Marxian Marxists, by which I mean. Their criticism of capitalism was identical to Marxist, and furthermore, they self-identified as socialists and communists. That is amazing. I'm sorry we have to end the conversation, but a great place to And C. Bradley Thompson, congratulations on the new book, America's Revolutionary Mind.

Right. Thank you.