1776, Part 3: How Anglo-Saxons and Celts Remade the World in 1776

Episode Topic: How Anglo-Saxons and Celts Remade the World in 1776 

Brad Birzer '90, Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and Professor of History at Hillsdale College, reveals the confluence of ideas in 1776 between America and Scotland. Explore the intersection of rights and traditions as found in the Declaration of Independence and in the works of Adam Smith to synthesize the enduring legacies of 1776 into a necessary historical grounding for the modern citizen.

Featured Speakers:

• Brad Birzer '90, Hillsdale College

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/4aa44e.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled 1776: The Ideas that Made the Modern World. 

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Transcript

Welcome

1 0:13

Welcome back to 1776, the ideas that made the Modern World. Before we continue, I'd like to start with a prayer. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with them. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Name the Father, son, holy Spirit. Amen. Welcome, brave souls who brave the weather. Thank you for coming out tonight. just as a reminder, my name is James Sison. I'm a professor of business ethics here in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, and I'm the co-teacher of this course, along with my colleague, professor Philip Munoz, who is somewhere in the, there he is. There's Professor Munoz. We are honored tonight to have a distinguished guest speaker with us, Bradley j Berger. Is the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and professor of History at Hillsdale College at in Hillsdale, Michigan. Professor Za received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1990. He lived in Zam Hall. He went on to receive his PhD in history from the most recent university in the state of Indiana to win a national championship in football, Indiana University in 1999. Let's not hold that against him. He's the author of many books, including the award-winning Russell Kirk, American Conservative American, Cicero, the Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Sanctifying the World, the Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson. His work has been favorably reviewed in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, many other places. This year, he has not one but two books forthcoming. The first one coming out in May is called The Declaration of Independence, 1776, and all that particularly appropriate for this evening's lecture. And his second one, which is arriving in November, is called Tolkien and the Inklings Men of the West. Now, on a more personal note, professor er and his wife Deidre, who is also an academic and is also present, joins us this evening. They have seven children, and as he reports, apparently five dog, five cats, and one dog. on an even more personal note, Brad and I were roommates here, together at the University of Notre Dame as undergraduates. and so that's his official picture. This is how I met him, what he looked like when I met him. And you can see there he is studying something very carefully. And there are books in the background. I promised him I would not, show you the picture. That's a little more embarrassing. So I'm definitely not going to show this picture of us when we were studying abroad in, in Austria. professor Zers talk tonight is entitled How Anglo-Saxons and The Celts Remade the World in 1776, Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith. Please join me in welcoming Professor Bradley. Er

Speaker 2 3:19

my,

Common Law Anglo Saxon Roots

Conservative and Radical Revolution

Jefferson on Declaration Purpose

All Men Created Equal

Speaker 3 3:22

well, good evening everyone. that I was not expecting that. And, uh, that was, I'm glad that's not up there. I, I don't look like that anymore for what it's worth. age, age has attacked me, but yes, that was 20-year-old me many, many, many years ago. And I will say this, I don't wanna embarrass Dr. Sison too much. I'm incredibly proud of everything he's done, but I, to hear him say the Hail Mary. I knew him when he was a Reprobate Lutheran. So th th this is, uh, this is great. So he, he's evolved in the right direction, which is great. an absolutely huge thanks to everybody here. Thanks for coming out tonight. That's, uh, amazing. Given everything that's going on with the weather. Uh, I would like to thank Jim, and I'd like to thank Philip and Lauren and Anna for organizing all of this. You guys already got a glimpse of my wife, Deidre. She very kindly drove me, today, I, I actually drive, but she did drive me today, which was great. So tonight I want to talk quite a bit about Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith, and I was really intrigued when Jim and Philip invited me to come do this, because as Jim said, I do have this project that I've been working on for the last two years on the declaration. And it is meant, uh, it's an academic book, but it's also very patriotic. I consider myself very patriotic. It looks at what happened with the declaration, how it was formed, how we move towards independence, and I wanna make some claims about it tonight. Not just with Thomas Jefferson and just with Adam Smith, but actually talking about what the declaration means in terms of human dignity and a universal understanding of what that dignity is and what that dignity means. And so my discussion looking at the kind of Anglo-Saxon roots and the Celtic roots of Western civilization in 1776 is really just a secretive way by which I can actually talk about the declaration and move around it. But I do wanna break this down and try and talk why or understand what was going on. In 1776 and what made it so unusual in the history of the world? One of the things I like telling my students, and I, I get the privilege every two years of teaching the course on the American founding, is that America is at once deeply, deeply conservative, and in that way, think about what we did as an American people. Immediately when we declared our independence, we adopted the common law as our law. Common law is Anglo-Saxon law going back to pre-Christian days in among the Anglo-Saxon Germans. And it's something that probably most of us in this room take for granted, but we should never, ever take for granted the common law. From the common law, we get things like being innocent until proven guilty. We have a trial by jury if we're arrested. The government does not have the right to our body. We have the right to habeas corpus. We don't have to be put under cruel and unusual punishment. All of those things that we get from the common law are actually older than Christianity. They derive deep in our Anglo-Saxon roots. And I say that as somebody, I just, um, I took a 23 and Me test not too long ago. I have zero Anglo-Saxon blood in me. I have zero Celtic blood in me. So I'm not trying to promote a kind of ethnic identity here. In fact, uh, if you're interested at all, my 23 and me proved that I was 98.7% Southern German and I was 1% Turkish. I don't know where that guy came from, but I'm interested. So again, I'm not speaking here from any kind of ethnic pride. I do think from a cultural pride, we need to understand that what we've inherited from the Anglo-Saxons is stunning in terms of our law, because we do have all of these restrictions on what the government can do to us, and we see all of those common laws played out in the list of 28 grievances. In the Declaration of Independence, will we find one grievance after another. They're all violations of the common law in every case. They're a violation of the common law, and that's also true when we look at our anger overall with parliament as well as with the king. Well, one person that I do wanna talk about tonight is Thomas Jefferson, and of course he's a problematic character because we know that he is the author of the Declaration of Independence and therefore the author of The Language of Human Dignity. But he also was a slave holder. And that, that's hard. That's hard to reconcile those things. How do we understand this great founder, this man whose mind is really the mind of America? How do we reconcile that with everything that's negative with his slave holding? But we'll hold off on that for a little bit. I wanna talk about the good of Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was deeply interested in our Anglo-Saxon roots. So much so, and I have to describe this in some detail. So much so that when Thomas Jefferson was asked by John Adams to design a seal for the United States, right? S-E-A-L-A seal for the United States, Jefferson did this, according to John Adams notes. Mr. Jefferson proposed that on one side of the seal we would see the children of Israel in the wilderness led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. On the other side of the seal, we would have hang and hor. Now lemme just see a show of hands. How many people in here know who Heist and Za are? Yeah, a couple of you, but not many. It's a rare, weird kind of recommendation on Jefferson's part. But let me continue with what John Adams said. The Saxon Chiefs from whom we claim the honor of being descended and whose political principles and form of government, we have assumed now. That's amazing. Who are these guys? Heist and Issa? Well, we don't know much about'em. In fact, what we really know about them is far more mythic than it is historical. By legend, and again, it's almost completely by legend, were the two Anglo-Saxon warriors who led the expedition from Saxony, from what's now German, across the Atlantic into or across the streets into England, and then invaded Celtic England and that. That's amazing to think about that because we're dating ourselves back to about four 50 AD at that point, to think about these characters, he and Hoa. Here's what Jefferson said about this, a bit of a long quote, but I think it's really good to get an estimation of what he was trying to do. Jefferson wrote a piece, he was only 31. He wrote a piece secretly in 1774 that was then taken by a number of people who liked it and published it against Jefferson's will, and with his name. They published it as what was called a summary view. And it's good for us that these people did this even though Jefferson was quite angry about it. It's good for us because this is how Jefferson gained his reputation in America, and it's why he was asked to draft the de declaration two years later. But in this summary view, this is what Jefferson says. He says to remind him the king, that our ancestors before their immigration to America were the free inhabitants of the British dominions in Europe and possessed a right which nature has given to all men of departing from their country, in which chance not choice has placed them. And of going in quest of new habitations and of their establishing new societies under such laws and regulations as to them shall seem most likely to promote public happiness. That their Saxon ancestors had under this universal law in like manner left their native wilds and woods in the north of Europe had possessed themselves of the island of Britain, then less charged with inhabitants and had established there. That system of laws, which has so long been the glory and protection of that country, and again, there's a mythic element to this, but I also want us to take this seriously when Jefferson says we have inherited the Anglo-Saxon law. That really matters. That means that every one of us, when we go into a court of law, we are engaging in a form of law that has been there by tradition for well over 2000 years. We don't even know who created a trial by jury. So let me jump back a moment to what I said a few minutes ago. And that is when I teach the founding, I get to teach my students that America is incredibly conservative and it's conservative because it conserves those ancient traditions of Anglo-Saxon law. And I think every one of us in this room doesn't matter who we are. White, male, black, female, doesn't matter. Gentile Jew, we have all benefited mightily from being under Anglo-Saxon law. It's one of the greatest contributions to civilization that we've ever seen. But on the other side of this, there's also a deep, deep radicalism in the American Revolution. Lemme give you an example of how radical the American Revolution could be. In 1649, Maryland tried an experiment. It was an incredible experiment. It was an experiment in complete religious toleration. Any denomination of Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, anybody could live according to their own understanding of God or even their lack of understanding of God in Maryland as of 1649. But Maryland did something that I think we would all bristle about because how did they allow for complete religious toleration, which is great. They turned around and said, well, we're gonna have to put immense restrictions on free speech, so nobody in public can ever talk about God in any derogatory manner. Nobody can ever talk about Mary or the Apostles in any derogatory manner, and you may never, under any circumstances in public label another person by their religion. Those are all serious restrictions. But then we get to something like the American founding and what happens, we have not only complete freedom of speech, but we have complete freedom of religion. It's incredible, absolutely incredible, and that is a slow process to get to that. But that's where we see the real radicalism of the American Revolution, and I'll keep talking about that as well as we think about this. So again, here's Jefferson. In 1774, nor was ever any claim of superiority or dependence asserted over them by that mother country from which they had migrated. Now, remember the myth heist and HOA had left Saxony and they had come over to England. They didn't care what the king back in Saxony said. Do you guys all see the parallel? It's exactly the same. When the Americans come over from England to American soil, they don't care what King George says. Why would they, their ancestors have already proven that they can live according to their own lights, and that's amazing. But there we see that with Jefferson. So let me say this before I move on from Jefferson for a moment. We know that in America, during the American founding, and it, it's, it's one of the most astounding things about the American founding. There were only in America, in the 13 colonies, roughly 5,000 different titles of books. That was it. There were more than 5,000 books, of course, but only 5,000 different titles. And there were only a few public libraries. There were only nine colleges in America. So what this means, and of course think about these people, and I can say this at Notre Dame, and we can all understand this because it's not quite who we're, but think about Americans. Americans without question in 1776 are the most Protestant Protestants anywhere in the world. These are people who had left England in the middle of their reformation a hundred years after the Reformation in Germany. It's still going on in England. There's a civil war in the 1640s in England, and when the Puritans come to New England, they're doing everything they can to escape from the Anglicans. And when the Anglicans come to Virginia, they're doing everything they can to escape from the Puritans right there In colonial settlement, we see already the seeds of the American Civil War, these two opposing forces that absolutely hate each other. But regardless, we can say this about Americans being Protestant. One of the great advantages of a Protestant people, they're almost completely literate. We had the highest rates of literacy among white Americans during the revolution of any place in the world. 5,000 books, 5,000 different titles. A population that's probably 90 to 95% literate, which is unbelievable. And they read everything they can get their hands on. One of the most, most important books in America was a five volume set of TAUs who wrote the gya, the ancient history of the German peoples. And this five volume set was owned by almost every family who had a collection of books in America. And they loved it. They thought deeply about what these Anglo-Saxons were and what our inheritance was. So let me just mention this about Tacitus. Tacitus is also very mythical. We don't know if what he writes is factual or not. We know that he's very much writing against the Roman Empire and he's presenting the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons as a morally superior people to the Roman Imperials. But it is really interesting when we look at what he says about the Germans, he says three things that matter for the American colonists. Number one, they always had an elective king. Just like we have an elective president, they always had an elective king, and that king was always counterbalanced by his witan. What we would now translate as Parliament or Congress. So all the way back into Pagan, pagan ancient times, we already see a kind of thriving monarchical, republicanism or democracy, a very primitive democracy. Number two, and this could make us uneasy in 2026 as well, but they have the common law, and in particular, they had very, very strict criminal laws. I won't go into some of those because they're especially right after dinner. A little upsetting, but they're interesting nonetheless. But number three, and we can agree to understand that this is a traditional morality, whether we exactly agree with it or not, marriage was absolutely the norm among the Germans, not among the Romans, of course, where you could have a fair after a fair, after a fair, it was completely den among the Germans. And not only that, about the greatest sin you could commit among the Germanic tribes was to have an abortion. It's really interesting. So we can imagine they have this very, very traditional morality. Okay, one last thing that I'm gonna switch to Adam Smith for a moment. I don't know how familiar you are with this because it's not something that we often talk about any longer. But remember, the Declaration of Independence is passed on July 4th, 1776. It sees print in book form on July 6th. That's the first time it appears in book form in public, where you could go to your local bookseller or newsman and buy it. But what's fascinating is that there was a 20 page introduction to the Declaration of Independence written by somebody under the pseudonym of Dophilus. We don't know who Dophilus was. Probably a guy a, a radical Pennsylvanian by the name of George Bryan. That's our best guess, but we don't know. But what Dophilus does is he gives an entire history of Anglo-Saxon England. He starts with Hangs and Hoa, and he concludes by stating that the passage of the Declaration of Independence is the most recent moment in Anglo-Saxon history. It's incredible to think about how that lineage works out. So keep that in mind and we'll come back to that in just a moment. Well, let's turn to this other great figure. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson, one of the twin pillars of Atlantis on this side of the Atlantic. Adam Smith, the great Scottish economist and moral philosopher on the other side of the Atlantic. I know that you'll be spending a lot of time talking about Adam Smith during the semester, and you have as one of your two professors, the single foremost expert on Smith in the world. And so you're gonna get a lot of that. And who am I to talk about Adam Smith in front of my friend Jim Addison? That would be a little bit of hubristic. There would be a little bit of hubris on my part to do too much. But let me say this about Smith before I go on to the declaration. Smith gives us something that is called common sense philosophy. Nothing to do with modern politics or what's going on in the Republican party right now, even though they use that terminology. But we get this sense of common sense and this idea that there is sympathy in the way that we identify one to another. Adam Smith is deeply interested in the idea that when we encounter another person, we see within them a mirror of ourselves and we sympathize with them. We sympathize with their greatness. We sympathize with their struggles. We sympathize in all of this. Lemme say this about Smith because I think it's really important. Smith is deeply influenced by the ancients as well, just as Jefferson is. Jefferson is deeply influenced by TAUs. Smith is deeply influenced by the stoics, great figures of the pagan world, incredible figures, people like Zeno and Cle. Anthony's later, Virgil Cicero, who never called himself a stoic, but was very stoic. Marcus Aurelius, epic TEUs. Long lineage of great stoic philosophers. At Notre Dame, I think this really matters when we think about stoicism. Stoicism as a philosophy develops around 3 22 BC in Athens, and it's created by a guy named Zeno in his second command, Clea Anthonys, and when they create stoicism, they adopt a God because they're trying to basically take Plato and Aristotle and make not quite a religion. It would be like if you guys went down to your Barnes and Noble and went to the self-help section. That's the kind of thing they're trying to create. Not quite a religion, but something shadowing a religion. But when they adopt their God, they adopt a term that dates back to five 10 BC to a philosopher named Enteritis. Who said that if we are to understand the beginning of all things, what holds the God to the human being, it would be the logos. Amazing. We're gonna see St. John adopt the same term around 100 ad a long tradition there, going from hair colitis to the stoics all the way into the Christians. So here's Smith. Such was the philosophy of the stoics, A philosophy which affords the nobles lessons of Magna amenity. It is the best school of heroes and patriots, and to the greater part of whose precepts, there can be no other objection except that honorable one that they teach us to aim at perfection altogether, especially within the reach of human nature. Okay. Here's what I wanna state about this. Think about what we have with Thomas Jefferson and then think about what we have with Adam Smith. They could be wrong about this, I don't think they are. But look at what they both tried to do. They are both trying to give us a universal understanding of the human person, not black, not white, not male, not female, not Gentile, not Jew, the human person. Who are we? In a less sexist time, we would've said, what is man? What is the human person? What is that? What do we find? I'm gonna turn back to Jefferson for a moment and I wanna read to you a letter that he wrote just 14 months before he died. Of course he doesn't know his death date. Amazingly enough, he and John Adams both die within a few hours of each other on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Amazingly enough, they die July 4th, 1826 again within a few hours of each other. This, this is one of those, everybody who's ever taken history knows this little factoid that they died on the same day, on the 50th anniversary. What we don't understand, and what I think we need to reclaim is an image of what that meant for the American population at the time when those two men died on the 50th anniversary of the signing. Almost every American, remember, Catholics don't really come to America until the 1830s. That's when we start seeing large Catholic migrations, especially in the 1840s about equal Lutheran and Catholic coming in the 1840s. Up to this point. We only have a few Irish families in Maryland, and so Catholicism, you know, we're talking about less than a 10th percent of the US population. Still deeply, deeply Protestant. But when that happens, America is absolutely convinced that God is smiling upon her. They see that moment of the twin deaths, of the two authors of the Declaration as absolute assurance. Think about Calvinism. Think about covenantal theology. They see this as absolute assurance that God is smiling upon us. That's when the declaration takes off. The declaration since 1826, has always had a very high reputation in America, but it didn't mean much for the first 50 years. It was that moment which was seen as providential that mattered. So here's Thomas Jefferson asked by Robert e Lee's father, Henry Lee. What was the object of the declaration? This is May of 18, 25, 14 months before Jefferson dies. With respect to our rights and the acts of the British government contravening those rights. There was but one opinion on this side of the Atlantic. All American wigs, we now say Patriots. They called themselves wigs. We say loyalists for those who opposed them, but they said Tories. So just keep that in mind. All wigs thought alike on this subject. When forced therefore to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles or new arguments. Never before thought of not merely to say things which had never been said before, but to place before mankind notice. Notice the universal language there to place before mankind. The common sense of the subject in terms so plain and firm as to command their ascent and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we were compelled to take neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing. It was intended to be an expression of the American mind and to give to that expression, the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. Now that's stunning. And what this means brilliantly for us is that when we as Americans look back to the Declaration of Independence, it's not just a reflection of the mind of Jefferson. If so, it's a really fallible document, but as a reflection for the whole American character. That's something very, very different. And there is a truly universal quality in what is going on there. All of its authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation in letters and printed essays in books of public, right. These are the ideas of Aristotle, Cicero, walk, and Sydney. Okay, let's pause for a moment. What does that mean? Jefferson is not claiming originality. He is claiming that these are the ideas of Aristotle, Cicero Locke in Sydney. Alright, let's look back at the American population. Something that's gonna be jarring to every one of us. Remember, these are a Protestant people. They're very, very literate, extremely literate, more so than anyone in the history of the world up to that point. But we haven't talked about their education yet. And this is where it gets mind boggling for a moment. Every single school child who went to school, maybe only in what we would now call first or second grade, or even third grade, every single school child without exception in the American colonies. All they did and their school day could go anywhere from eight to 12 hours depending on what the school master's mood was that day. It was very much up to the local school master. All they did was drill in Greek and Latin. They did not learn reading, writing, or arithmetic. They learned Greek and Latin and that's astounding to think about that. And then imagine there are nine colleges in America, only nine, the Ivy Leagues and William and Mary. Those are the nine colleges. And every one of those colleges had the same entrance requirements. We get frustrated with the SAT, we get frustrated with the A CT or with the classical learning test. Right? We know what a burden that is, but. 17, fifties, sixties, seventies, leading up to the American Revolution College was ages 14 to 17, not 18 to 22, but 14 to 17, and it was only male. And I'm very proud to say that my college Hillsdale was the very first college in America to offer women a liberal arts degree. Very proud of that. But you didn't have that anywhere else. Certainly not in the 18th century, but in the 18th century, to get into a college, here's your entrance requirement. You had to be able to translate three of Cicero's orations from Latin into Greek. You had to be able to translate the first three books of the Gospel of St. John from Greek into Latin. And you had to translate the first 1500 lines of Virgil's, Anita, from Latin to English. You also had to have, as they said, an impeccable moral character. Well, if you're 14 and you're fluent in Greek and Latin, chances are pretty good. You haven't gotten into a lot of trouble. But let's think about that for a moment. Every one of our founding fathers had that kind of education, and let me just extend it to crazy levels. Think about the Battle of Yorktown. The great culminating battle of the American Revolution battle were two thirds of the forces were French. One third were Americans. Well, Americans didn't learn French, and the French didn't learn English. All of the battlefield orders were in Latin. It's incredible. Absolutely incredible. So when Jefferson tells us these are the ideas of Aristotle, Cicero, Sydney, and Locke, we can take him very, very seriously about that. That was America at that time. Something that we've almost entirely lost. So I wanna turn to Cicero for a moment because Cicero is everywhere in the American founding, and he is all over Adam Smith. I would say that if we had to break it down, Cicero may have been the greatest ancient figure to inspire. 1776. Cicero is beloved by the American colonists, and no more so than by Jefferson and John Adams, but others as well. I wanna read to you something that I find fascinating from Cicero, and a document that would've been well known in its time. This is from one of his more obscure dialogues called On the laws, very intentionally mimicking Plato's the laws. And in fact, everything Cicero does is mimicking Plato, but giving it a very Roman character. I don't know how much you guys know about Cicero. Let me just say this. Cicero's like Socrates, he's a martyr, right? Socrates dies for Athens. Cicero is beheaded and be handed by Mark Antony because he was a Republican small R Republican and Mark Anthony had him taken out as his estate, and amazingly enough, and again, very mythic. We know that when the head and the hands were brought back to Mark Anthony, mark Antony gave a speech to the Senate. The Senate was about 600 members large. C was the greatest of the senators. Mark Anthony nailed his head and his hands to the, to the foreman, the podium in the Senate and gave his speech. And according to plu tar, take this for whatever it's worth. But according to plu tar, nobody could actually see Mark Anthony. What they saw was the head of Cicero. And in front of that, a vision in which Mark Anthony was r in hell. I dunno what to make of that, but I love it no matter what. Here's Cicero on this. I listen to this language and I'm gonna end with the declaration here in a moment. Marcus writes a dialogue. Marcus, this is Cicero. You don't have long to wait. I'll explain myself. This is the relevance this animal provide. Perceptive, versatile, sharp. Capable of memory and filled with reason and judgment. I will call him a human being. He was endowed by the one supreme God with a grand status at the time of his creation. He alone among all types and varieties of animate creatures, has a share in reason and thought, which all others lack. What is there, not just in humans, but in all heaven and earth, more divine than reason, what we would call logos? What is it? When it is matured and come to perfection? We properly call it wisdom. And therefore, since there is nothing better than reason, and it is to be found both in humans and in the God reason, forms the first bond between humans and God. And those who share reason also share right reason. And since that is law, we humans must be considered to be closely allied to Gods by law. Furthermore, those who share law also share the procedures of justice. And those who have these things in common must be considered members of the same state, all the more so if they obey the same commands and the same authorities. Moreover, those who do obey the celestial order, the divine mind and the all powerful God will they live in one city called the Cosmo, the city of the God, and of all humans. Now think about that image, the Cosmo. Notice what kind of restrictions there are on it. None. Every person of goodwill endowed with reason. Lives with the God. This is where Saint Augustine gets the city of God. It is very much a play on Cicero's, Cosmo, and this was the stoic dream, the dream that we would have a country across time of all good women and men. It's not black, it's not white, it's not male, it's not female, it's not Gentile, it's not Jew. It's human. Absolutely human in every way. So let's look at the declaration. Something you guys have all heard since childhood, but it is the 250th anniversary, so let's hear it again. It's gorgeous. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Now just think about that for a moment. I don't have to prove it. It's self-evident. I'm human. You're human. We know in our heart of hearts this is true. We know that I don't have to go beyond it. It's self-evident that all men are created equal. Alright, let's pause. There's no asterisk there. It doesn't say except for Jews or Catholics or Lutherans or Muslims from Somalia. Doesn't say any of that. It says All men are created equal. That is utterly, utterly profound. And I wanna say two things at this point. As we think about this in Western civilization, it doesn't matter who we are in this room. Every one of us has benefited from two things. Every one of us, every single one of us. We have benefited from Christianity. Christianity is the single greatest force in the history of the world that has led to equality and the dignity of the human person. It has its problems, it has its faults. It's led to problems here and there. It's led to reformations and revolutions. I'm not saying it's perfect, but if we look at the traject trajectory of Christianity, it has done far more good than it's not. But the second thing, and I don't put this at the level of scripture, but I'll put it very, very high. It's the Declaration of Independence. Here is everything we were promised in Christianity, in political form. All men are created equal. As Martin Luther King said so brilliantly, not everything changed overnight. July 5th, 1776 was not perfect. There was still discrimination, there was still inequality. But Martin Luther King says there was a promissory note and we all do it at some point. This absolutely has to become real, and I will say this, as someone who has spent my career teaching American history, I think without exaggeration, we can say that almost all of American history has been the realization of that sentence. It has been the realization of giving dignity and equality to all people. Has it been perfect? No slavery. The Jim Crow laws, the black codes. All of the progressive era restrictions on Catholics and blacks and Jews, we have seen just crazy discrimination. But in the end, this remains true. Now, how do we reconcile that Thomas Jefferson is a slaveholder, but he can say this? Well, let's think about that for a moment. There is a paragraph in the Declaration of Independence that Congress excised. It's a long, beautiful paragraph about the meaning of tyranny, and in it, Jefferson says, we blame the king and parliament from preventing us from stopping this trade. That was a cuss word in the 18th century. You can imagine what that means to stop this trade and to prevent men. From being taken from their homeland against their will. So when Jefferson tells us all men are created equal, he is not excluding Africans. He means all men. We have the textual evidence right there that's incredible and I'm reminded what a, not someone that we would love as a president. He was kind of a crazy guy. But Calvin Coolidge, he was president in 1926 on the hundred 50th anniversary of the declaration, and he says this, he says, once we have said all men are created equal, that's final. There's no more debate. We've just made the ultimate claim. All men are created equal. And when we say they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. That's final. There is no more argument to be had. You have made all the claims you need to make now make it real. That's it. And so Calvin Coolidge tells us in his own quirky way, there is a finality that is exceedingly restful with the declaration because we have been taught that thing. And that's where I would argue, whatever our failings as Americans, and again, we can list them, slavery, our treatment of the American Indians, abuse of this person or that person, our imperialism, whatever it may be, may we still gave to the world. These sentences, which don't just change us, they change every human who has ever lived and every human who ever will live. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights never can be taken away. They cannot be alienated from us. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Alright, now this is where the founding gets really radical that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. And to institute new governments laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety. Their happiness. I'm gonna come back to happiness and conclude here in just a moment, but keep that in mind. Notice that's twice we've talked about happiness, but then when a long train of abuses and ER patience pursuing invariably the same object events is a design to reduce them under absolute despotism. It's their right, it's their duty to throw off such government. So radical. I mean, can you imagine if you tweeted those sentences out right now on X, you'd probably end up with an FBI file? Almost certainly. That's incredible and that's where we see in the American Revolution. We are both very, very traditional and very conservative, and at the same time, we are deeply radical. Two final points. Happiness. Jefferson tells us we have the right to life, liberty and happiness. Jefferson, the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson takes this from the ethics of Aristotle, and if you remember in the ethics book, 10, Aristotle tells us, why do we pursue our happiness? Because we believe in excellence, and it's one of the few times that Aristotle gets really metaphysical. When we pursue excellence, we're pursuing God. It's gorgeous again to think about that dignity of the human person. Alright, well let me end with this. One of my favorite quotes is depressing, but one of my favorite quotes from Cicero, this is from his dialogue on the Republic, and this is what he says. Now, he wrote this about 46 BC as the Roman Republic was floundering. I would challenge each of us in this room to wonder if it could be equally true in 2026 AD before our time, the customs of our ancestors produced excellent men and eminent men preserved our ancient customs and the institutions of our forefathers. But though the Republic, when it came to us was like a beautiful painting, its colors were already fading with age. Our own time not only had neglected to freshen it by renewing the original colors, it had not even taken the trouble to preserve its configuration and therefore its frame and its outlines what is now left of the ancient customs on which the Republic of Rome. Once founded so firm, they have been, as we see, so completely buried and oblivion that they are no longer practiced, but they're virtually unknown. And what shall I say of our men for the loss of our customs is due to our lack of men and for this great evil, we must not only give an account, but we must defend ourselves as if we personally were accused of murder. Ford is through our own faults and never by any accident that we retain the name Republic, but we have long since lost its essence. Thank you everyone.

1 52:18

We don't really wanna talk about. Oh, we don't. I'm sorry. No, uh, we have some time for some questions, so if you have some questions, uh, please raise your hand. We'll get you a microphone. And maybe I'll ask, professor Munoz might help me with the microphones. Can I please raise, just raise your hand. We'll get you a microphone.

Speaker 2 52:33

Thank you very much for your talk. I was wondering how much do you think, Jefferson's use of the Anglo-Saxons is a kind of pious fiction or pious myth making? Oh, yeah. Over the, like, deprivations of the Normans. Because when I think of the common law, most of the common law comes from the Norman period, right? The term common law is the law common to the king's courts. So I just wondered how much do you think the use of this on the seal, much like the, maybe the people of the, like the Israelites, is a way of describing a fiction because it's politically useful, right? Rather than a real

Speaker 3 53:06

great, thank you. yes. It's amazing to go back and look at that. And one of the things I always try to tell my students. Is that the history that the founding fathers believed in is really not correct at all, but they believed it. It wasn't a lie for them. They truly believed it. And so 10 66 in their mind was horrible, absolutely horrible, right? With William, the bastard coming in overturning Anglo-Saxon, England, they see it as just a complete abomination for what was going on and the way that they trace it. And again, their history's not good. again, they believe it. It's just not good. It's more myth than history. But the way they present it, it starts with heuston za, it then goes forward to King Alfred, and they love King Alfred. Now, especially, you remember Alfred had had translated classical text, BEUs and so forth. They love Alfred, but they love Alfred, especially because he was the first king to take the common law and to translate it into written form. And when, you know, very importantly when Alfred does that, he says, my job as King is never to make law. It's only to pass judgment on the law that I've inherited. And so that, again, it's very mythic in what they're doing. The founders read that as absolutely essential to their understanding of what law is. And one of the things we don't often talk about in American history, we all know that the American Revolution was a tax revolt. What we don't often think of is that the American Revolution was also very much an attempt to protect common law courts against admiralty courts. And that idea, well, what had happened in America, we, we had all, all 13 colonies had been common law. So inheriting that ancient tradition. There was a, a movement during the French and Indian War, the Great War for Empire, what we call the French and Indian War. There was a movement to take naval law and to establish it on land because the judges have a lot more power in naval law to they than they do in common law. And the real beginning of the American Revolution is James Otis. This is February of 1761. He shows up at an admiralty court. We don't know if he was sober or not. He may what very well have been drinking quite a bit. But he shows up in this admiralty court and he gives a three. He interrupts it and he gives a three hour oration in defense of common law against admiralty. And uh, the two people in the court who are watching this are very young. John Adams and Sam Adams. And John Adams writes afterwards in 1776, he writes that. Son Liberty was born in f in in February of 1761 and reached maturity on July 4th, 1776. So anyway, I'm, I'm not sure I'm answering your question specifically, but they definitely had a very mythic view of what that was. But also, remember, and this would be very controversial in 2026, notice what Jefferson's doing. He's basically saying it's perfectly okay for the Anglo-Saxon people to take the land from the Indians because they're establishing something better. That's controversial. Right. And I, I would think we could probably have a pretty serious discussion about that, but that that's part of their, their justification. But I would also, I would, I would caution this a little bit about that too. You know, the other great text is the EA and you know, everybody reads the EA in America. And even if you didn't read it, you would know of it. It was a part of the culture. Remember in the AEA when AIS shows up on the Tiber, when he shows up at Rome, the Latins are all there. And so he still has to conquer them. And so this is one reason George Washington was always called the American aas because the same story of the AEA is playing out on the American soil as well.

Speaker 4 57:21

Thank you very much for being here. My name is Max Kiel. I'm a sophomore. Stu Bear. Thank you. Uh, can you help us understand the obsession with Greek and Latin in the early colonies? my understanding is that these are a lot of very poor farmers. Mostly,

Speaker 3 57:35

yeah.

Speaker 4 57:35

just trying to like subsist, to spend all of their educational allowance, not learning how to, I dunno, count bushels, but to translate something old and dead. What's up with that?

Bible and Protestant Roots

Speaker 3 57:49

Sure. Um, part of it is just, it's part of Western civilization, right? Really up until the late 19th century, all education was liberal education. You know, the, the idea that, for example, in here we are in the business school, you know, business was considered training or vocation as opposed to education. So we say liberal education now, but in the 19th century, if we just said education, it automatically meant liberal education. So it's always about the great books, especially in the English speaking world. But one area, and I'm not agreeing with that, I'm just telling you. Right. So very glad to be here in the business school. but they, they would've seen it as a very different kind of thing then. but, but the way that I think we need to think about this as well is that, and this was very much a part of Protestantism, you know, everywhere the Calvinists went, they always, they, they had three things. They always had the Geneva Bible. They always had Calvin's Institutes and they always had Cicero and Plato everywhere they went. So a lot of it has to do with Americans, with their Protestantism and the way that they saw that. But, you know, you look back at the, you know, John Calvin, his first book was on stoic poetry. You know, Martin Luther's second command. Philip Maleen was very, I mean, even his name Maleen, he takes a Greek name. He is very rooted in the Western tradition. So there, there's a, a long line going all the way from Haitis to Socrates to Cicero, to Augustine, to Aquinas, to the reformers of Protestantism up, up to Edmund Burke and beyond, where you've got just classical education being only education. So, but here's a second part to that, and I, I should have made this more explicit in my talk, but one of the reasons that you would be classically educated. So that you could speak to every other person in the same way that up until 1962, all Catholic masses were in Latin. It's universal language. And so that was part of it as well. It was just expected that if you and I, you French or you German and me English, we would be able to converse in Latin with one another if necessary. Or even in Greek. Greek doesn't really reenter the Western tradition until after the Crusades. Uh, it's pretty much lost throughout the early Middle Ages, but, but it does make a, it roars back with the, with the Renaissance absolutely. Wars back to it. So, but I do, and I, I would say this, this is why I told you guys, it's kind of jarring and a little depressing. The founder's world is very different from ours. You know, what, what they believed in the fact that they were so fluent in Latin and Greek. That's just, that's loss for most of us at this point. I can't do it at all, even though I study it. You, you don't want to hear my Latin nor my Greek, so certainly not Hebrew. I, it's, yeah. Does that, does that kind of answer you? Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 5 1:00:51

Hi. my name is David Murphy. I'm also a sophomore. I'm studying political. Good, good. Irish

Speaker 3 1:00:55

name

Speaker 5 1:00:56

about as Irish as it gets. I'm actually a junior, so got named after my dad. So almost double Irish. But, um, that's beside the point. So my question is, obviously the founders took a lot of inspiration from thinkers like Aristotle, Plato Classics, but you also mentioned that they took inspiration from, Protestantism, Christianity, and so I'm curious maybe were there any specific parts of, or are there any specific parts of the Bible that they took particular inspiration from when crafting their political philosophy and, right. If so, which ones?

Speaker 3 1:01:34

Yeah. Thank you for that. you know, and again, I mean, I, I'm speaking as a pretty serious Roman Catholic cradle. It's just who I'm, we have seven kids. I mean, you guys are, we're pretty Catholic. so, but I, I, so I say this with some hesitation, but I do think it's really important that, to be honest about America, we are a very Protestant country and it, it'll change. But in our beginnings, when we look at the founding, it is a truly Protestant moment. And we know there's a, there's a great book by a guy named JCD Clark, who's a, Oxbridge trained, but ended up of all places at the University of Kansas. But in his book, he's got a book called The Language of Liberty. He talks a lot about how specifically Protestant we are to the point where if you took England in 1775, only about 10% of the population would be radical Protestants. In America it was roughly 75%. So you we're not even the same culture at that point in the American Revolution. But yeah, there are certain things they take very seriously in the Bible. There are other things I think they ignore, which I think is a fault to Protestantism. but you know, there are certain things and if you've ever met a Protestant who really knows their Bible, they know certain things extremely well. And one of them, they know Isaiah, they know Daniel. They know very much the whole dialogue in Second Samuel between, I'm sorry, in First Samuel, between God and Samuel, when Samuel says the people, when a king and God's like, they don't want a king. You don't want a king. Kings are terrible and they get one anyway. You know, Americans have that memorized. And especially the idea of not having a king, they take God's side on that, uh, in all kinds of ways. But the one text that absolutely perplexed them was Romans 13. We have to take governments as endowed by God with authority, right? That's something that they go back and forth about, how can we do this? Can we really rebel? Where we're not really rebelling, we're really establishing England as it should be. That, and that's where you've got that incredible tension between what is deeply conservative and what is deeply radical at the same time. But again, and, and thanks David for your question. I just, I, I, I think to be honest, we just have to admit that as Catholics, we really didn't get here until late and we've had a huge influence, but not on the first 200 years of American history. We're just not there except for Charles Carroll of Carrollton and John Carroll. but otherwise, you know, and they're the exceptions that prove the rule very much so. Does that, does that answer you, David? Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you.

Speaker 6 1:04:23

Professor, thank you. My name is Jeremy and I'm a freshman. I just wanted to ask you not to get too much into sort of race, but you mentioned how 10 66 was the worst thing to possibly happen in the founder's minds. Can, was that just, how did that play out in terms of their opinion of the French, they view the Frankish monarchy as some sort of abomination, and how did that play into how they thought the mythos of Anglo-Saxon, England played out?

Speaker 3 1:04:48

It's also, I'll give you a weird, this may be really weird, but it'll make sense. And you guys heard, I've got a book coming out on Tolkien. It's the Shire four four America, Anglo-Saxon England was the Shire. Very little government. Everybody's happy. We're all wealthy. We all trade with one another. We've got a great law system. That's how they think about it. And when William the bastard conquers, he imposes foreign law upon them. He's still Catholic. Of course everybody's Catholic, but he's still opposing them. And that, that's why someone like Harold of Hastings who's defeated in 10 66, he becomes a great martyr for the Americans. And you know, it's not Harold's a common name because people love Harold of Hastings. So the way they present it, and again, this is far more myth than it is reality, but the way they present it is that all of English history from 10 66 all the way up to 1776 is the struggle between Anglo-Saxon goodness and Norman Malice. That's how they think of it. So every time they get a bad king, well he's just a Norman. He's just like William the bastard, right? So if you guys dunno, it's kind of fun to say, bastards, I don't get to do that very often. So it's legitimate now. so, so that's, that's what they're, they're going for, right? And the way they see it, but again, don't, don't put a strict historical view on them. Make it a mythical view that they believe is strictly historical, I think is a better way of thinking about it.

1 1:06:30

Maybe I will take the privilege. I ask you one final question. Professor Za, you wrote a biography called the American Cicero and that was about Carol of Carolon. Yes, correct. he was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. If I recall from your book, our, was the Professor Berger who wrote that book. Considering the Catholic character of him and his influence to be greater in the American founding than you're describing it now?

Closing Thanks

Speaker 3 1:06:57

No, that, that's a great question. professor o Jim, what's your roommates? There's no professor. What is this? Come on, professor. no, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't disagree with myself. That's almost 20 years ago now, but I wouldn't disagree with myself then. the, the thing that was interesting to me about Carol, so it's a long, I'll try to make this as short as possible. Maryland makes it illegal to be Catholic, starting in 1780, uh, in 1689. There's a coup in Maryland. And a group of radical Protestants come in, they make it illegal to be Catholic. You can't be a Catholic and be in law. You can't be a Catholic and be in, you can be in business, but you're double taxed. You can't be in politics. You cannot raise a child in a Catholic fashion, or that child will be taken away and given to a Protestant family in England to be raised totally separate from you. You cannot marry as Catholics, you cannot have mass. It's all illegal and it lasts all the way up. And so what's fascinating about Charles Carroll, his mom and dad madly in love with each other, they can't marry, they don't have a sacramental marriage. There's just common law as a marriage and they can't raise their child. So what they do, they send Charles Carroll and they send Jackie, his cousin, who will later become John Carroll, the first George Bishop in America. They send them to France for 17 years. And Carol, both Carols, they not only get their ba, they actually get MAs in philosophy, and then they go on and study civil law and then they go on and study common law. And so when Charles Carroll comes back, he's still illegal to be Catholic in Maryland, but when he comes back, he's the most educated guy Marilyn's ever seen. And he starts raising himself very high within that society. And this is something if, if any of you are interested in studying the founding, nobody has studied this since 1918, so we're well over a hundred years since anyone has studied this. But there's this incredible moment between 1774 and 1776 where committees take over government. In America, all the legitimate governments are, they're gone. Nobody trusts them anymore. So you have a legislature, but nobody pays attention. You have a governor, nobody pays attention. And they're literally groups of men who, and they're always men who come together and they say, we're now the government. And they actually become the government in almost all colonies. And so for two years you have that. That's how Carol arose. He became the government, even though he had been illegal in 1773 by 1774, he's pretty much in charge. And they just undo all those anti-Catholic laws and just kind of swept under the rug and forgotten. So really, it's an amazing story. Absolutely amazing.

1 1:09:54

Ladies and gentlemen, let's thank Professor Bradley.

Speaker 3 1:09:56

Thank you guys.

1:09:57

Thank you.