The Ricochet Podcast - The Making of the American Mind

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

America has a big anniversary coming up. And you know it's set to be grand when people give it a name like "semiquincentenial." To help us prepare for the big 250th, Matthew Spalding, Dean of Hillsdale College's School of Government in DC, joins to discuss his just-published book: The Making of the American Mind. He and the gang get into the story of how a group of iron men came to declare war with and independence from the greatest empire on earth. They delve into the many attacks against the Declaration and the founding that are coming in from all angles these days. Remember, these self-evident truths are not obvious, so order your copy today!Plus, Señor Lileks wonders what we're supposed to call this escalating series of adventures near Venezuela; the Honorable Hayward weighs in on the stunningly titled Trump v. Slaughter SCOTUS case and Justice KBJ's startling comments; and, lastly, Captain Cooke has a bone to pick with Europe! - Sound from the open this week: The EU fines X and Trump talks Europe with Politico

Did you know, employers can gift up to 1,500 euro tax-free to employees in a tax year? Many of Ireland's largest employers choose MeToU, a guaranteed Irish-owned multi-store gift card, accepted in over 8,000 retailers nationwide, including pennies, Brown Thomas, lifestyle sports, Harvey Norman, Tesco, Smith's toys, Applegreen and many more. With no ordering fees on purchase and easy activation, MeToU gift cards are the safe and secure choice. Find us online at me to you.i, me to you, supporting Irish retail. Employers, with CleverCards, you can instantly send up to €1,500 tax-free, to every employee.

CleverCards, digital mastercards are delivered instantly via email, stored securely in Apple or Google Pay on your smartphone, and accepted worldwide, in-store or online. No late deliveries are lost cards. That's why over 15,000 businesses already use CleverCards. Ireland's highest-rated provider on TrustPilot. Order today from CleverCards.com. CleverCards, reward anyone, anywhere, anytime, instantly.

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Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. It's the Rickusay podcast. I'm James Lylex. We've got Charles C.W. Cook, Stephen Hayward, and our guest today is Matthew Spalling, author of The Making of the American Mind, the story of our Declaration of Independence. Yes, let's have ourselves a podcast. Today, the commission has issued a fine of 120 million euro to X for breaching the Digital Services Act.

I hate what's happened to London, and I hate what's happened. happen to Paris. I hate when I see it. They want to be so politically correct. I think they don't know what to do. The Europe doesn't know what to do. Welcome, everybody, the ricochet podcast number 768. I'm James Lillick, and I'm looking at the spot of my Zoom where Charles C.W. Cook would be, but he's late. Ha! We'll just talk about him in his absence. That would be me and Stephen Hayward. Stephen, hello. Welcome. Where are you? I'm in Los Angeles today running around for holiday nonsense. Holiday nonsense, the best kind Listening to the songs

The other day I heard One of those songs I don't like We Need a Little Christmas I really don't like that song But at the same time I thought You know, we do And in my head I sang along to it And then they played the Charlie Brown skating thing

And I was completely unmanned And had to leave the store It's a fraud season for many It's a joyous season It's a great time But there are issues to discuss Stephen was talking before the show He said we could talk about Trump versus Slaughter

And I thought What's he slaughtering now? Is it this, is it a, are we talking a Venezuelan oil tanker boarding situation? Are we talking the slaughtering of regulations? Are we talking what you know what you're talking about, so tell us.

Well, every once in a while, you will get a Supreme Court case that's just superbly named, and this is one of them. You know, our pal John, you like to point out that whenever there's a case that's Nixon versus somebody, the rule is Nixon loses just because, right? So this one's fun with slaughter.

It's a case about the president's removal power? Can he fire? People have been appointed to, say, four-year terms to one of the independent agencies that now dominate our government. And, you know, we're talking about overturning a 90-year-old precedent called Humphrey's executor. But I thought it was interesting about it. I'll skip all the legal issues. And Charlie can, I'll be that for Charlie, who I see has not joined us. There was a very interesting moment in the oral argument that I thought was very revealing. And it's when Katanji Brown Jackson said, but wait a minute, don't we, want to have all these experts and all these important agencies sealed off from, you know,

political pressure. And in other words, she's saying, don't we want government that proceeds without the control of the president and without the consent of the government? I mean, it was an amazing distillation of progressive dogma from 100 years ago. That, to be frank, you know, I've been making the criticism of this for years, but I wasn't sure whether it was still believed by progressives. Because, by the way, that argument she made, that's not a legal argument. That's the political argument. And they really do. believe that deeply. I found that quite revealing

and in a certain way, refreshing because it really does make clear that we have very different views of governance in this country, quite beyond the legal issues involved. As somebody else pointed out on the X, similar to that, is she or somebody else was saying, do we really want

to take this power away and give it to the executive? And somebody pointed out, well, take it away from whom, exactly. Yes. Charles, welcome. you're joining us from Florida. What say you about the slaughter situation? Well, I agree with Steve.

That was a remarkable moment. That is, of course, as C.S. Lewis might have said, the one thing you cannot say. Correct. Because that is not at stake in the case, which is a legal case. And she is, or at least she's supposed to be a judge. Yes, but the emanations of the penumbra here are enormous. And she is, as Stephen says, exhibiting the mindset that there is this sealed-off group of neutral, unemotional, egg-headed technocrats who are able to coolly assess the truth of things and proceed from that point.

Now, the fact that they may always reach a liberal conclusion is just proof that the rational mind that naturally falls upon the liberal solution, right? and to give it to the president, well, who knows what he's going to? Lord, yeah. So, where does this end up, then, do you think? Well, there's two sides to this argument. I think only one of them is correct. The side of the argument that we would make that I think will prevail is that the Constitution allocates powers to three branches and not to any fourth branch, and therefore you cannot create an agency that is independent

the counter argument again not endorsing it just reiterating it which is made by the smartest non-originalist judge Elena Kagan who is a very smart person although I think wrong on most things is in effect we have a prescriptive constitution we've been doing this for a very long time and that is now how our government works so to reverse it or to repudiate it would be practically impossible. And that argument often prevails. I don't think it should, but it does often prevail. And even in the early days, was accepted by some of the framers of the Constitution. For example, after a while, James Madison, who had

argued over and over again that the National Bank was not constitutional, said, all right, fine, we've done this enough. It's become magically constitutional. Again, I don't agree with that, but that's the argument that has been put forward in a sense you're going to get i think in the decision a hybrid most of that argument will be rejected we will go back to a system in which the president is able to fire anybody who is under the executive branch i think they will carve out the federal reserve just because the consequences of not doing so would be so deleterious to the market that they will be scared of getting in the way i don't think that's a principled position I don't think it's a legally coherent position.

I do think it's what they're going to do. Well, speaking of things contentious and non-voted upon and questionable and the rest of it. The last week we were talking about Venezuela and how we would sort of prefer that there were actually laws passed, statements made people on agreement, this is what we're going to do. This is a situation in which we find ourselves. But no, and we have another week of escalation. Now, they boarded a Venezuelan oil tanker called The Skipper. I think the Gilligan was allowed to proceed unimpeded. And there have been sanctions against the Maduro Inner Circle

and six shipping companies in their oil sector and the rest of it. What I find interesting about this is that last night, NPR was on in our house. Radio just sort of was on and it was an NPR. They went to the Nobel Peace Prize winner first for a reaction. to this. And I was struck by that, really, for NPR. They went right to somebody who said

yes, Maduro is a criminal. Maduro was letting in the Iranians. Maduro is trafficking with the worst sort of people. He's oppressing his people and he needs to be done away with more or less. Well, is that exactly what's going on here? Regime change, as much as we hate the words,

as much as supposedly that's an old neo-con phrase that we have repudiated entirely. It seems to me that that's what's going on, and if so, is that a bad thing in the end? Yeah, so, by the way, you may have missed the story just out this morning, I think best recorded in the Wall Street Journal that extracting the lady whose name, I forget, the Nobel Prize winner, who remember dedicated her Nobel Prize to Trump.

Right. So, but apparently, you're getting her out of Venezuela involved, among other clandestine things, her being lost in the ocean for several hours until our special forces could find her and rescue on the high season. I know, it's extraordinary. The movie version is going to be fabulous. So, and she's all for this. The point is, is that whether you want to use the phrase regime change and bring up those

associations from, you know, 20 years ago, what I am hearing from well-placed people is we have a plan in place. There are people in place. There's going to be no need for an American occupation for extended period of boots on the ground or maybe none at all. And so there's high confidence that you can actually change the. push out the regime that's there now and replace it very quickly with something competent and effective. I mean, we'll see about that. The second thing is, yeah, the oil tankers, that's

striking the jugular of Maduro's economic power. They're just turning up the screws on and very hard. The third thing is, you know, I did mention here a couple of times before that I have regarded Venezuela as an actual de facto enemy of the United States for quite a while now, just but being in tight with the Iranians and helping Hamas and terrorists and also the Chinese that are mixed up with. I have heard some, I'll call them rumors for now, that there may be even bigger things to put here than just, by the, you know, the fentanyl story, which I think Charles mentioned last week or the week before, it does entirely make sense because most of the fentanyl's coming,

you know, from Mexico and other places and not really from Venezuela. they're shipping cocaine or whatever, and that's the long way to get. So the sort of the official story that we're attacking those drug boats is maybe cover for bigger things afoot, which is that the Venezuelan involvement within the United States may be more serious and substantial than we think. Not that we're about to get invaded by the Venezuelan army, but I'll stop there because what I'm hearing are rumors that I'm not yet ready to repeat on the air. Good.

Well, you can say it. We'll record it later, and then you can just play. it when you turned out to be right. Charles, we may have a problem in that if you put in somebody who's a little bit more friendly to the United States, somebody else gets plugged in, don't you have to sort of de-shavesification of the entire government? Because one assumes that it's full of apparatchniks and people who are just hanging on to get a buck, but there may be some true believers in the Chavez Maduro Mystique and ideas. Yes, I will say somebody who was alive when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq. I am now reflexively

skeptical of the claim that it will be easy. This one won't be tough. We'll be able to do it swiftly without the need for much money to be spent or boots to be glued to the ground. I'm not convinced about that. I don't know enough about the way that Venezuela works to know whether you would need a profound demoduroification, hopefully not. I will repeat, though, something I've said before, which is that I am astonished to hear this coming from the people who love to call everyone else neocon, warmonger, nation builder interventionists. I am taking crazy pearls here.

I'm sitting here as the skeptic. I am unfairly. accused of being an interventionist, but I'm very much not one, purely because I think that American strength is a good thing and that we do need to project power. And now we're on the verge of another regime change. I don't know how we got him. Did you know, employers can gift up to 1500 euro tax-free to employees in a tax year. Many of Ireland's largest employers choose me to you, a guaranteed Irish-owned multi-store gift card, accepted in over 8,000 retailers nationwide, including pennies,

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MeTo You gift cards are the safe and secure choice. Find us online at me2.I.E., Me2U, Supporting Irish Retail. We'll get back to that when it does or does not happen. Right now, it just seems to be on the very periphery, like an ocular floater in the American vision. Let's go to our guest. Why not? Matthew Spalding.

Matthew is the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government at Hillsdale College and the Dean of the Van Endel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C. He was the executive editor of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution. He wrote the best-selling, We Still Hold These Truths, and is the author of a new book, The Making of the American Mind, story of our Declaration of Independence. Matthew, welcome. Well, that guy sounds impressive. I'd like to meet.

Yeah, well, okay, we'll introduce you. We can hook you up. We have something of an anniversary coming up, and as somebody who lived through the bicentennial and all of the kitsch and the wonderfulness and the sort of spark that America needed in the 70s at the time, I'm curious to see how this next one will seem. Now, we can expect, of course, big ceremony. I'm sure that Trump will have quite the performance. We'll maybe have floats going down, huge, huge with the Y. Um, your book, the making of the American mind, it opens with a story of an Independence Day celebration that was attended by, uh, that, the Tocqueville guy, that, that early chronicler of the American experience. And it leads to a disquisition on love of country, something that has been under fire for a long time. I mean, I mean, I remember growing up and being told patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, which is a misapprehension of that quote, but never mind that to be proud of America is actually misplaced because we are the font. of evil and perfidy in the world from 1619 on.

The world would be better without us. What's there to be proud of? So tell us exactly about the nature of modern patriotism and how Americans, how Americans are, you know, should be addressing this semi-decimal quintennial some thing. It's, you know, that. No, no, it's quite a mess. And you're absolutely right. It's patrons is oftentimes denigrated.

And that's a problem. I'm beginning with a different premise. And the book I wanted to write was actually something quite different. So on the one hand, it largely addresses broadly, if you think. It's a response to 1619 on the left in many ways Patrick Deneen and those guys on the right. But instead of kind of big fights with them, I wanted to actually just write the history and make a wonderful narrative of how we got the declaration and then kind of do an old-fashioned kind of. commentary of the document and kind of see we can figure out let it tell its own story try to understand them but but you're right i begin this the book with the section on falling in love

with your country again and part of that is and i i use this great story from tokeville he was at a july fourth celebration in albany in the 1830s when he was in america collecting um doing his studies which ultimately among other things led to democracy in America, and he was in a Fourth of July parade, and he was just smitten by the whole thing. I think he didn't know what to make of it, and he and his colleague, Bumarkei, write these letters home describing what happened, and they were just overwhelmed by it. And then the democracy in America talks about instinctive patriotism, which we associate with where you're born and your state and your heritage, and perhaps your parents fought in a war,

or uncle fought in the war, or what it might be. and then you learned that your grandfather was in a war, these things that kind of tie you together, your local parade. But then he goes on to talk about reflective patriotism and defends this notion that no, citizens need to know something about the source of their rights and liberties and their constitutional order, if you will. And so there is actually a reflective patriotism that I'm aiming at.

It's just not merely the, it's ours, although it is. It's more that there's something about it that we need to know. And I also make much of Augustine's discussion of this, not patriotism in particular, but he makes the point that you can't love something unless you know it. And what he means by this, you know it in its being, its essence. I thought you're going to use Augustine to characterize the left, which is make me patriotic, but not yet. But not yet, exactly.

Well, that's giving them too much credit because that means at some point they will be patriotic. Yeah, Matt, that's your old pal Steve. Although I should mention the listeners that Matt and I know each other a long time. We tend to call each other by our last names for some reason. I'm always Hayward and I'm always saying spalling, right? I don't know how we fell into that. But, well, first of all, congratulations on the book. I do have, I got, I have your new book on Kindle.

I've got a far back of your one for about 15 years ago. We still hold these truths. This one is much prettier. It is much prettier. And it's a different book. I mean, there's some overlap, of course, but it's a different book. And I think you just said something interesting I want to follow up on. You said, you set out to write a different book than what you've done here.

And I'll talk about a couple of differences to jump out and maybe between the two books. But what were you originally thinking of doing? And why did you end up doing it this way? And I can be more specific if you want. Well, I mean, part of it is, as you know, Steve, since you're an old man now. As you grow and think more and read more, you change and how you look at things. And so you're looking back at things differently. And this anniversary makes me think I was in middle school in 1976, and I remember some of that.

And there was something instinctive about, I was a patriot. I loved my country. But it really wasn't until I started really seriously studying it, which, as you know, of course, is when I went to Claremont with Charles Kessler, and then he told me to take classes with Harry Jaffa, that I began to become more reflective and about its meaning. And I would probably say the other thing, the other kind of keen difference here is one of my I already pointed to, which is I actually wanted to write a book for a lot of people to read and enjoy and learn from, not intended to pick fights, although there are fights there

to be drawn out, but not to pick them on its face because that would become the story. The other thing is, you know, all these decades later, you know, it's much more of a teaching book in a way. I think the document itself well understood and thought through and written about in a way that's appropriate for its, the magnitude of its, of itself is much more appropriate. And I think the last thing I would say is I'm deep. struck by and the thing about the long time as we approach this anniversary. What is it that our country needs right now? What do we need as a people? And I think the historical things are important. History points us towards things. But I don't know if you if I picked up on it, but actually my first quote in the, I think it's in the prologue is a reference to C.S. Lewis.

Right. And there is actually something about the declaration that draws us towards things that are more transcendent and even beyond that eternal, which in a time of deep subjectivism and onto nihilism, that's a good thing, in my opinion. Right. Well, I mean, you know, it's always fun to start at the end where they pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor before the Supreme Judge of the world. All right. Well, look, so I do remember the I sent deal in 1976. I'm a little older than you, as you, as you annoyingly pointed out. And the big spectacle. It is self-evident as the declaration. Right. The big spectacle in 76 was the tall ship sailing up the Hudson, you were the big rigging and all the best of that. And I got to reflecting a while ago that if we had President Harris today, the Bicentennial would surely feature slave ships sailing up the Hudson, right? That's the whole. whole temper of the left these days. In 76, you may have missed this, but at the time I remember, Rick, because I was just starting college, there was a left-wing attempt to attack

the bicentennial. It was called the People's Bicentennial Commission. It was Jeremy Rifkin, the bunch of left-wingers. They went around the college campuses. They published pamphlets. They tried to make trouble. They wrote a few op-eds. It didn't get much purchase beyond the pages of the nation. Now, needless to say, you know, you already hear somebody, James made reference the 1619 project. There's this whole institutional. a weight behind attacking the Declaration and the founding. So, by the way, I wouldn't put slave ships past Maramondami. Who knows? We'll see.

Right. Let me just ask you the question that you often hear from people. So, by the, I want to do two questions. One is the main attack from the left and then the main attack from the right. And you may reference to one figure, but I'm going to have another way of putting that question to you. But the question from the left usually comes in the form of, yeah, Thomas, Jefferson and all men are created equal, but he owns slaves, and maybe even had an affair with one, Sally Hemmings, right?

So how can he respect this person, which they always seem to make, although this is a blindly new insider criticism, even though Samuel Johnson made it, right? So what's your answer to that kind of objection? Well, I would answer on a couple of levels. What is a general level just to put out there before I answer more specifically is, you know, note the extent to which the book, I don't downplay Jefferson. Jefferson, Jefferson is an extremely important figure having been the main author. He's a wonderful writer and way with words.

But I do strongly emphasize that this is not merely an invention of Jefferson's mind. It's an expression of the American mind, which he himself said. So the Continental Congress and all the other players become very important. The other thing I emphasize is that it is a law, it's a legal document. It's passed by the Continental Congress. It's a piece of legislation. and we have to understand it as such, which say there's prudential judgments involved. Now, beyond that, I think the judge himself is actually quite hypocritical in a way

in terms of his own personal life, in this case, as in other cases, shall we say. But the key thing here is not the particulars in many ways. I mean, the slavery group was dropped for good reason. It was a terribly written passage. But the more important thing is not that people, who owned slaves wrote the declaration, and thus they're a bunch of hypocrites. The important thing is a bunch of people, many of whom owned slaves, many of whom did not, there were also great abolitionists at the Continental Congress.

What's the miracle here is that they wrote a document beginning with the claim of self-evident truth, and the first truth they declared to be self-evident is that all made it create equal. I mean, it's the statement. It's the principle that's laid down there, and they all knew what that meant. you really can't find a defense of slavery in the way that they want to see there. And it's clearly patently obvious that the Declaration is not passed to preserve slavery. I mean, two weeks before the Declaration, the Continental Congress abolished the slave trade. So that's just not the case.

The abolitionists very quickly saw the Declaration as their political document to turn to. you know, Washington himself very clearly was affected over the course of the revolution by the language of the revolution and ends up freeing his own slaves in his will on his wife's death. So it's this moment in what they did do that's the important thing. And I think it's, you know, yes, we note the barbarism of slavery. They say this as if we all are defenders of slavery. But look, the defensive slavery doesn't come up until, you know, after the eventually the cotton gin, which is later, but also the anti-bellum South. You can't find that among the founders.

Yeah. Well, let me turn then quickly, and then before I hand off to Charlie and James, to then ask you a question about the conservative critique, which has curdled into an attack on the founding. So, you know, it used to be Russell Kirk would say, I don't really like the declarations to French. And then you mentioned, you referenced Patrick Deneen and other people who, it's this part of the post-liberalism. And they don't like, least on the left didn't like John Locke.

Now it's part of people on the right. But there's a particular form now that concerns me, some of which I've heard from your colleagues on the faculty at Hillsdale, but I've also seen myself and my own travels to other campuses. And it's a lot of young people these days, the people I think who, some of whom are part of what we are now calling Roypers. And what they're saying is, well, they actually have contempt for the founding. What they say is they're almost historicist or presentists, right?

They will say, you know, the founding may have been good in the 1780s and all the to that. But those founding principles, you conservatives like, have proven insufficiently robust to keep us from the revolution of walkery, which is now a 100-year-old story, right? Back to the progressives. You actually, I should, listeners, you said something with me 20 years ago that stuck in my head. I'll just mention it here. You said, I hope you remember this because you're right. You said, to get back to the American founding property understood, we have to fight our way back through the progressives and progressivism. I think that really caught on, but sorry, I'm brambling too much.

Let me crystallize it this way. I've heard from your colleagues, you know, RJ and, you know, Carl and other people, Hillsdale of students who talk this way. And I've heard RJ say, and Arjay frustrated what I'm talking about, who's one of the great scholars of the American founding and criticizers of progressivism, say this shocks them. And by the way, I think it's buried in your book, especially the final chapter on Ironman, a partial answer to this but

decode that for me is this this is a surprise I never expected I'd see this from young conservative students and yet here we are well part of that is it's the human condition right we're always we always tend to be drawn by our politics to the moment and I think there actually is a way in which the criticisms on the left

and right are very similar perhaps motivated by different reasons and they're both forms of what you like you've already referred to it as presentism which is we're talking about fighting a current debate and to fight the current debate we go back and use history as we as we choose to use it so the the left says america is systemically is racist today therefore it must have been systemically racist from the beginning so they go back and reread history to make their point on the right uh and this actually is where the i think the the the griper argument and the the dean argument unintentionally by by patrick

he's actually a friend. He makes many ways the same point. They are so disgusted by modern liberalism that they read history backwards to find the answer. And the easy answer, which I think Patrick makes the same point, is it, well, it must have been the founding from the beginning.

It was baked in the cake. And I think that's just incorrect as a historical matter, but also the great failure it points to me and this is less Patrick and more, I think, a lot of these young guys who are kind of, oh, those are a bunch of be-wigged old guys. I'm not interested in that stuff anymore. Is they really have lost that sense of moral righteousness or the power of moral arguments to motivate politics for high, noble, and just reasons?

And you can't build a politics here and now in the practical sense of coalitions or whatnot, unless you're united for some common moral purpose. And I would argue that that argument, that moral purpose, is contained for America in the Declaration. And I fear that they're kind of losing touch with that. Part of that is I think they have been influenced by especially the intellectual aspects of modern progressivism and the breakdown of moral truth and the rise of subjectives and that kind of, that is effect of the right. just as much to the left, perhaps less so. But there's a certain willfulness, willfulness in that young attitude

to kind of ignore the past and move into the future. Whereas, you know, I think the real question here is, which is why I really emphasize the ideas and the principles, is your practical politics still have to be informed by the thing that holds us together, which is a common understanding about questions of justice. and what are those? What are we trying to conserve here?

We can't just jettison that because if we do, there really is no difference except in terms of policy distinctions here and there, but there's really broadly no difference between the left and the right. Employers, with Clever cards, you can instantly send up to €1,500 tax-free, to every employee. Clever cards, digital master cards,

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Terms and conditions apply. Hi, Matthew, it's Charles Cook here. Good to see you. I have a question about the future, I suppose. Calvin Coolidge gave a famous address on July 4th where he essentially sets up two opposing philosophies. On the one hand, he says the Declaration of Independence is final. It makes a host of assertions.

And if those are true, then they're true. And if they're not, then you're going back to all the other ideologies. Right, right. You have a book. We still hold these truths. Your last book. That still word is interesting, given the Declaration of Independence uses the term self-evident. And yet we're here on this podcast talking about.

this, we're worried about it. We're discussing attacks from the right and attacks from the left. I wonder, is this a constant struggle? Is Coolidge right? Are we always going to have to fight for the ideas in the decoration? Are they not, in fact, self-evident? Are they an aspiration to which we are always going to have to strive? Because we talk about it as if it's obvious, and I believe everything written in the Declaration. In fact, you can't see it, but I have it up on my wall. But most of the world either has backslid or never got there. So to what extent did the founders themselves see this as something that we would just always have to check ourselves

because it wasn't our natural state of affairs? That's a great question. How many hours do we have to discuss it? but um well the the first thing i would i would point out is um self-evident doesn't mean obvious okay uh i mean and and so it's actually self-evident has it has itself its own pedigree right i mean the the most famous uh the most classic use of it was thomas aquinus in the in his suma it's when you come to know something um it becomes it becomes evident to you in a way that is self-evident.

It's contained in itself. So if you know what man is, you know that man is rational, for instance. These things are evident. You gotta think about it. It's not obvious. So that's part of it is, it's not, you know,

I think part of it is, the founders never understood this to be kind of merely a rational proposition in the modern sense that it sometimes criticized, which is, well, if you just line up all the, the algorithm correctly, we'll have our answer.

One of the things I emphasize a lot is that we have to understand the founding, which means the declaration for that matter, but as a political event, a political document, they were statesmen, they weren't rationalist political philosophers. Locke's very important, but for instance, there's a certain way in which I kind of push back against the assumption that they're merely locking rationalists. Locking politically, but that doesn't necessarily mean they accepted everything he said about other things as well, which is that's kind of my response to or my comment on Patrick's argument. But to go to your, but you're generally, you're correct. This is always going to be a

question, right? This is why America is an experiment. It always will be an experiment. And it depends upon how we understand these terms, the terms of the consensus. Now, when I, when I said in my first book, we still hold these truths. I actually think that's still true. I think we're having, a great debates in the intelligentsia, if you will, in the left and the right. But, you know, one thing President Trump has kind of connected in a very, perhaps not as intentional as way we might think about it approach. But he's got a native sense that there's a majority, there's a consensus out there among the American people who think this is still a damn good country.

Indeed, they think it's, they want it to be a great country. There's something to that that he kind of picked up on. And I think that, you know, there are vast amounts to the American people, including people who fall into the purposes are what we might call the old left, right? The old Democrats, if you will, who still think this is a good country, and it has something to do with the Declaration. And it is aspirational. I mean, Lincoln's understanding of these questions is very powerful, right?

It's something to which we aspire and always approach. however imperfectly. And so it's that, it's that understanding of America we want to, want to capture. I do worry that, and you see this on the left and the right, that somehow this becomes a too much of a political question. And I do worry that the left almost wants to make it such that, well, if you fly your flag, you're a maga and you're a bad person. Right.

That makes me, that makes me nervous. I think there is a consensus out there to be captured. I think it's a great question, which I'll be agnostic on, I suppose, whether the, I think, you know, President Trump has done a lot of things to criticize the right things to be criticized and break things down and kind of blow up the old, the old coalitions that were the moderate administrative state. The question is, now what? How do we rebuild that consensus? Well, my argument, is it's the only way to do it in America is not by appealing to some European tradition or not by these new crazy ideas or not by becoming post-liberal which okay now what um we have that we have the answers right here which is restoring our

constitutional order but it needs to be morally and intellectually grounded in the declaration because that's the answer to the the real cultural problem which is on the left and the right which is this kind of moral subjectivism and emptiness that is all over the place um and so yeah now Now the practical question then becomes, which is what you guys are so great at is in our modern environment and culture, how do you capture the young mind especially, but the general mind to think about these things in a way that has some sort of influence and a fact. And that's why, that's actually precisely why I decided not to do an intellectual back and forth between 1619 and Nick Fuentes and, you know, Patrick Deneen, all that kind of stuff. because that's not what the American people are interested. That's not what they're going to read.

I'm interested in influencing them where I think the consensus actually lies. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Well, one of the ways you can get the kids to understand it, take the Constitution, boil it down to a 30-second TikTok and then say stitch incoming, which will be all the amendments. But yes, the words, the archaic nature of it sometimes may not fall

like warm rain on the years of the youth, particularly some of the concepts, laws of nature, nature's God, and the rest of it. And also the grievances. I mean, it's like we're told that the Magna Carta is an important foundational document. Then you read it and, you know, it's lines like, the king shall not and his varlets take the 12 stones that line between the geese. You know, okay, we get the point. But there are grievances in the Declaration of Independence, and maybe it's key to study them. Tell us about some of those and why actually they matter.

No, you're absolutely right. And the largest section of the declaration is the grievances section. We know the famous parts, the beginning, all men are credit equal, our lives are fortunate as our secret honor at the end, but the biggest part of the grievances. So if you look at the declaration as a legal document, which it was, right, here's what we're going to prove. We're going to prove the king's guilty of tyranny, and we're going to go independent. and at the end they make that conclusion therefore we conclude the evidence legal evidence the courtroom

evidence the prosecution's evidence are the grievances and there are 27 of them and they seem to be all over the place and you read them now which is why we never read them we have no idea half the time what they're talking about so you know I tried to make some rhyme or reason of that and I put them into three categories based on the phrase of the declaration abuses and usurpations So the first part is about the abuses of the king. He's abused his authority as king. The second part is about what Parliament has done, and those are usurpations. The king has, with Parliament, usurp the power of the colonial legislatures.

They've taken away our legislative power. And then the third part is about how the king has issued declared war on the Americans, hiring Hessians and capturing them on ships of war and making them work. be in the Royal Navy. He's become barbaric. So there's a pattern to them. I know Steve's favorite. My favorite is always, he's nodding his head, I think,

about how the king has sent hither officers to eat out our swarms of officers to eat out our substance. Yep. Which is great. And it's the only one that has a biblical tone to it, but it's one of my favorite. But I would say I would point to a couple. I don't have the numbers here memorized, and I know Steve's looking. can maybe you can look them up for me but there are two places where it refers to you know the king has has worked has has cooperated with others which means parliament they don't identify parliament

by name and their pretended their pretended legislation and then towards the end it says the king has abdicated government here um okay the historical note those are references to the parliament's dealing with James the second, which is the last time England dethroned a king in the glorious revolution because he was doing things they didn't like, his pretended legislation, and then he fled when William and Mary were invading. When William was invading, James fled, and they say he abdicated government here. So it's, it has the details in it, if you're reading it in 1776. It actually has a very interesting particular narrative to tell. And indeed, we know that the part of the declaration that the King's government, the Kings

ministers were all upset about and responded to in their unofficial response from Linde was all about the grievances, right? That's the legal case that he's become a tyrant. Do we have outtakes? Do we have outtakes? Because I'd love to know that there were, you know, No button. We're not going to put in one about how the king has sent his dogs to attack you all you're in the prison being much cost of. Do we have the ones that didn't make the cut? We don't.

There were no notes taken during the two days in which the Continental Congress edited the document. So we don't know what was on the cutting room floor, although we do know that the grievance section was the most edited in close detail. Well, we do have the one, Matt. You already mentioned. There was Jefferson's draft attacking the king. for fastening on us the unnatural and barbaric institution of slavery, which that one we have. But we only know that because we have Jefferson's draft, and then we know it was gone by the

right. But yeah, just for the record there, that's, it was, if you read the declaration, it's, it's really the poorest written section of the declaration. It's kind of, you know, backwards and hard to read and a run-on phrase. And so on the one hand, it criticizes the king for bringing slaves. slavery to America, but on the other hand, it criticized the king for freeing slaves in the

war, and it was very confusing. So I think a large segment of his, it didn't make the cut rhetorically. And of course, we also know that South Carolina and Georgia wouldn't vote for the declaration. We actually didn't know that because of Adam's

letters and whatnot. But we also know just from the editing, when you look at, when you go from the draft to the final document, we know that the kind of Congress edited and they actually edited extremely well it's probably the as far as I know the best example of historical

of a legislative body editing a document and they clearly made Jefferson's document a much better document right they turned around a lot of the phrases they added two references to to God at the end they clarified some things

they made his best lines the end of a paragraph rather than stuck in the middle so they you know Jefferson should be very happy that they made his draft sing in a way that sometimes he doesn't sing. Right. Well, let me close us out by making an observation that, well, put it this way. This book is very different from your last one in this sense. I mean, some of the same ideas are there. And, you know, you and I, we study political theory, and we teach the ideas in class, and that's important. But one thing that especially about your last chapter, but some others, is you tell a story here not just of the ideas, but of the people involved.

And especially at the last chapter, Iron Man, that's the Lincoln's phrase from 1858, I think that it's one of the ones that our students don't know about and that we don't teach about as well as we ought to is, you know what, George Washington, that guy was badass, right? And you know, and you mentioned a number of stories, especially in the last chapter about not just the ideas these guys had, but the sacrifice, the bravery, the courage, the magnanimity towards the other, and the risk. that a lot of them were facing execution. And the point is that that's an aspect of it that I think can appeal to everybody, but especially to the younger people we were talking about who have doubts

about the founding. These are people who can be admire, not just for their ideas, but for their character. So by the way, your title is what, the making of the American mind, it could be, set titles get long, the American mind and character. Right. No, you're absolutely right. I mean,

you know, I open that chapter with a reference to a letter that Washington wrote to his brother when he's saying we will all be hanged et cetera et cetera and I always wanted for years what is et cetera et cetera mean is just hanging and and then I realized that they and Washington would have known this and he was that he would have told the continental Congress no no the punishment for treason is to be hung drawn and quartered so this was really serious stuff the other I want to do a narrative here is, you know, again, we don't quite realize this, and the youngans don't realize this.

You know, we tend to write books that are all history and narrative and they don't have ideas, or people like us, Steve, who study this stuff, write books about ideas, and we skip the history. Yeah. But this is an occasion when those things are so deeply intertwined. Setting site what signage did afterwards, there's a narrative here in the events leading up

towards the debate on July 2nd and July 4th, 1776, are almost exactly coincident with a series of events of Washington in the field, preparing to be invaded, the British sending ships to New York Harbor, the ships appear on New York Harbor. He sees the ships, and he knows about the ships on July 2nd. They're starting to land just after the declaration. So you kind of see these things happening. The story is very different.

The declaration, this great philosophical document with these deep theological and philosophical, morings is written in the midst of warfare in which these guys are literally signing a death warrant because they're going to war with the country the most powerful country in the world it's absolutely insane unless you understand that they're doing it for some higher purpose which leads me to this is not some kind of narrow Hobbesian document document here right you don't you don't dedicate your sacred honor on top of everything else not just my life, my fortune, but my sacred

honor for a Hobsian cause. This is a high cause. I think the penalty actually was hung, drawn, quartered, and shot because then when people would say, wait a minute, shot is the last one, I survived the first three. They were putting their lives in honor in the line. And you had

options. You could also be disemboweled. Yeah, there's that too. But that's part of being drawn from what I understand. Anyway, these are the cheerier elements we can talk about at a later date as well with Matthew because we hope to have you on again as we go of this year to discuss this book, to discuss your other, to discuss Hilldale.

Lots to talk about. Matthew Spauley. The book is The Making of the American Mind, the story of our Declaration of Independence. Thanks for showing up, and if we don't talk to you soon. Have a good sepsichwina decimit. 250th. That's the one.

In Europe, of course, 250 years is nothing but a mere blink, and they looked down upon us because we are such a new nation. And Charles, has written a wonderful piece for National Review about, well, as somebody put it once, there's nothing like the views of an Englishman

who's now living in America, clapping back at continental Europe. And indeed, it was a thing of beauty. And it works with Trump's declaration this week that he fears for the future of European civilization. Now, what Trump and the other critics of Europe have been portrayed as is a bunch of no-nothing Philistines who care nothing for art,

who want only suburban development, who hate Europe because it's older and smarter and does things better, et cetera, when that's not really it at all. The people who love Europe, as I do, are dismayed by the changes in what's coming. The people who love Britain, as I do, are crestfallen to see how things are going.

And Charles, you've crystallized this view and you've got a lot of flak for it, but you also got a lot of applause. So tell us about this piece you wrote and why we should all run off and read it again. Well, I just got fed up, to be honest with you. It started because the European Union announced that they would be fining Twitter, which is an obvious attempted extortion, yet another attempted extortion,

from a continent that doesn't produce very much. And then all of the people who were responsible for this decision took to Twitter to be rude about the United States. And this makes me crazy, James. Now, as I said, I don't have a particular thrill when I criticize Europe. I'm from Britain, and I love spending time in France and Italy. But they don't get to lecture us. They're a backwater relative to us.

They're a museum. This is a nice museum. I like going there sitting outside and drinking wine and eating food. But their conception of the United States is so wrong. And it's one of the reasons they never improve anything. If you go back to certainly the post-bellum Jim Crow South, but even early colonial America, you will find people noticing that if they can convince poor white people that,

while their situation may not be great, at least they're not black, then they can prevent them from allying with poor black people and overthrowing bad governance. And I see some similarities, albeit in a different context, between that and the way that Europeans have created in their minds a completely false impression of the United States, such that whatever happens in Europe,

i.e. anemic, economic growth, a total lack of innovation, poor living standards, No air conditioning or heating, which is a real problem, by the way. It kills 100,000 people there a year. Democratic deficit in the EU. Whatever happens there, whatever their problems are, they can just say, well, at least we're not American. You'd be better off being American. You put any European country into the United States, God forbid.

And the people there would have a lower living standard than they do in Mississippi or West Virginia. They don't do anything. They don't make anything. So yeah, I like Europe, I like a lot of Europeans, I like going there. But I'm so tired of hearing them lecture us. And they have a completely false conception of America where no one can read or write, we're all fat idiots who don't know anything, where only billionaires get to you at the health service,

where you can't go to pizza restaurant without being shot by a gang. It's really annoying. And last thing, when Europeans come over here, And they do. And sometimes they come over at my invitation and stay with me. They are shocked. They are shocked by how nice it is. And you can see them looking around.

And eventually they'll say, so is this, is this normal? Yeah, it's North Florida. It's not Fifth Avenue. It's North Florida. So you just live like this. Yes, we live like this. It's also, it's not, we're in Publix, not, you know, the Sultan of Burundi's private grocery store. I don't know if there is a Sultan of Burundi.

it's so annoying. It's so annoying. And so I just got fed up with it and I let it all out. Well, you know, Charles, if we want to really upset, then we should revive that wonderful statement of Margaret Thatcher's from 30 some years ago where she said something along the lines of all of all the disasters in the modern world have come from the European continent. And all the solutions have come from the Anglo-American world. I think we should just repeat that again. That's really what Trump's national security strategy says in two sentences. indeed thatcherism you know if you want to find a place where people will get together and be nostalgic about thatcherism the conditions that led up to with the failures of the successes

of ricochet is your place to go and you're thinking yeah well there's lots of place where people talk like that and talk about that but ricochet is different and I'm saying this only because a you know I'm closing it up and be you think nothing more consequential is to come and you're wrong because it's this ricochet just isn't a place where we go and talk about art and politics and sports, books, and literature, and all manner of things. It's also a place where a very unique community has formed. The member feed, and yes, you have to pony up a couple of pennies to get there, but it's what makes the whole experience worthwhile because only members can comment, only members can write

that weeds out all the people who are just there to cause trouble, mostly. And a community, as I said, has arisen over the years. We found this out in the last couple of weeks, two, three weeks. It's been, Dr. Bostiat, who was one of those people that if I were a moderator and ricochet, I would ban this guy because, A, he's really good. B, he's always amazing to read. And C, he's a doctor, okay? It's like, I can do my best at writing, but I also, you know, it's not like I can go somewhere and fix somebody. He's a doctor.

Well, he's found himself in a situation where he can't do the fixing. his daughter came sick with a flu and it's a heartbreaking story of what has happened to this woman and the way in which he describes it and the way in which the community came together and the way in which the prayers went up and the way that he updated us recently with something that fills your heart with hope for people you never met but yet you know them you do And we wish him all the best, especially in this difficult holiday season. And we know that everybody in Rikoshae is going to be pulling for him and his daughter. And we know that you listen to the podcast and you haven't joined yet.

You ought to because it's a place where even if it's your first day there, in an odd way you'll feel is if you've just come home. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure, and we'll speak next week. I'm James Loggs in Minneapolis, Stephen Hayward. I believe in California. Charles C.W. Cook in Florida, who's now working on Rickachachie 3.4.5. whatever. It's been great fun, gentlemen. Bye-bye. Bye.