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Speaker 1: Life Audio.

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Speaker 2: You are listening to The Becket Cook Show with your

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Speaker 2: host Beckett Cook. For more information about Beckett and his ministry,

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Speaker 2: visit his website at Beckettcook dot com. To help support

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Speaker 2: the podcast, visit patreon dot com slash the Becket Cook Show.

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Speaker 2: Please consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving a five

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Speaker 2: star rating.

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Speaker 3: Hey, guys, welcome to the show. Today. I have a

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Speaker 3: special guest, John G. West.

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Speaker 1: I know that rhymes, but if we're gonna be talking.

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Speaker 1: He's been on the show before. We talked about his

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Speaker 1: book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, and he has a new book

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Speaker 1: out which we're gonna discuss today called Endowed by our Creator,

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Speaker 1: the Bible Science in the Battle for America's Soul. It's fascinating.

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Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. It's not a long book. It's

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Speaker 1: only a couple hundred pages or less.

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Speaker 3: And John G.

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Speaker 1: West is the Vice president of Discovery Institute and the

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Speaker 1: Distinguished Scholar of American Government and Civic Christian Civic Engagement

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Speaker 1: at Cornerstone University. He formerly chaired the Department of Political

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Speaker 1: Science at Seattle Pacific University, and he holds a PhD

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Speaker 1: in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he's written many books,

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Speaker 1: but first award from our sponsor.

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Speaker 3: Please welcome John G.

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Speaker 4: West Beckett. Thanks for having me again.

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Speaker 1: It's so good to have you back. I love the

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Speaker 1: book endowed by our Creator, the Bible, Science and the

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Speaker 1: Battle for America's soul.

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Speaker 3: First question, which.

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Speaker 1: Is, you know, the boring question, but why this book now?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, of course this year is the two hundred

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Speaker 4: and fiftieth anniversary of America and of the creation of independence.

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Speaker 4: So I wouldn't have expected to have two books in

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Speaker 4: two years. That was not my plan. I don't wish

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Speaker 4: it on anyone. But about last spring, I was on

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Speaker 4: a sort of a week long break with my wife

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Speaker 4: and I was thinking and actually swimming at the time

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Speaker 4: and praying, and it hit me that not only was

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Speaker 4: the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary coming up, but I

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Speaker 4: actually had something to say about it, And so I wondered,

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Speaker 4: could I actually dash off something in six months? And

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Speaker 4: that was kind of daunting of my PhD work actually

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Speaker 4: originally was. I did focus a lot on the American founding,

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Speaker 4: so I actually have done this before. But there was

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Speaker 4: a particular thing I wanted to say that that did

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Speaker 4: require some more research, and that's sort of how I

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Speaker 4: got into it. But really, you know, the two hundred

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Speaker 4: and fiftieth anniversary is a great time, I think for

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Speaker 4: Americas to take stock about where we're at and where

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Speaker 4: we're going.

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Speaker 1: Right, I'm excited about the two hundred and fiftieth And

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Speaker 1: so in the beginning of your book, you say, you

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Speaker 1: quote GK. Chesterton and he says America is the only

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Speaker 1: nation in the world that is founded on a creed,

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Speaker 1: and you say, many Americans are apt to miss the

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Speaker 1: full significance of Chesterton's observation.

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Speaker 3: Can you talk about that for a second.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is especially among some conservatives, is becoming

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Speaker 4: very controversial now, but so for most of human history

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Speaker 4: and even today, say, if you're in Japan, you're likely

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Speaker 4: an ethnic Japanese who have been there for time immorial,

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Speaker 4: and so nations usually have been built around ethnicities, even

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Speaker 4: races and religions. Now, America does have a lot of

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Speaker 4: commonality coming from the original founding, and even today most

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Speaker 4: Americans would culturally identify as Christians, even though that has

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Speaker 4: gone down. Nonetheless, I think Chesterton hit on something that's

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Speaker 4: really absolutely unique about us, which is that we have

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Speaker 4: from the very beginning been what might be called a

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Speaker 4: creedle nation. That we have this create of fundamental beliefs,

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Speaker 4: that the number one thing is if you embrace those beliefs,

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Speaker 4: you can become an American. And that's why I say

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Speaker 4: someone like me on one half of me actually goes

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Speaker 4: back to Puritan dissenters coming over in the sixteen hundreds

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Speaker 4: and founding Hartford, Connecticut. But the other half of me

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Speaker 4: actually had grandparents who came through Ellis Island shortly before

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Speaker 4: World War One from Ukraine. And I think loads of

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Speaker 4: people and both sides loved America. And they both imparted

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Speaker 4: to me a love for America, and that is different

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Speaker 4: in human history. And Chesterton, who you know, great writer

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Speaker 4: from England, after he visited America, that hit him how

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Speaker 4: special that was.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And you say that the Declaration and Capulpsle capsulates these

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Speaker 1: ideas in fifty five words, and I just want to

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Speaker 1: read these words so we can remind the audience what

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Speaker 1: this part of the declaration says. We hold these truth

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Speaker 1: to be self evident, that all men are created equal,

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Speaker 1: that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,

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Speaker 1: that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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Speaker 1: That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,

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Speaker 1: deriving their just powers from the consent of the government.

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Speaker 4: Now, right on, right on.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned that Americans, many Americans are ignorant, ignorant of

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Speaker 1: the meaning of the teachings of the Declaration, or they're

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Speaker 1: ambivalent about them. And I think you say eight and

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Speaker 1: ten Americans still affirm the truth of the Declarations propositions

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Speaker 1: in four and ten Americans except the Declaration's view of

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Speaker 1: the source of our rights. So talk about those numbers.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so tied to this book, and there is actually

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Speaker 4: like a seventy five page survey report that we put

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Speaker 4: out called how Americans view the American Faunidly. But we

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Speaker 4: did a survey, a couple surveys, actually a couple thousand

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Speaker 4: Americans to find out what were their views on the founding,

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Speaker 4: what were their views on the Declaration, and so some

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Speaker 4: of it was really positive, some of it was kind

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Speaker 4: of troubling. And the younger you get, the less people

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Speaker 4: actually know. But overall people will say that they agree

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Speaker 4: with things like all men are created equal, governments are

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Speaker 4: based on consent, and that we have unaligable rights. Very

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Speaker 4: few people can. Actually, many people don't know where the

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Speaker 4: phrase all men are created equal comes from. Many think

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Speaker 4: it's from the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights or

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Speaker 4: somewhere else. Only a fraction of Americans know that it

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Speaker 4: comes from the Declaration. But then, more concerning to me,

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Speaker 4: and this is true of both self identified Christians and

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Speaker 4: non Christians, only about four in ten or about thirty

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Speaker 4: eight percent of Americans say that they think our rights

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Speaker 4: come from God. Now, I don't want to get ahead

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Speaker 4: of myself, but that's a really key thing that distinguishes

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Speaker 4: America from like the French Revolution, from the Russian Revolution,

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Speaker 4: from a lot of other things. And when you have

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Speaker 4: even self identified Christians, most people thinking, well, rights come

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Speaker 4: from government or some people actually a few percentage stay

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Speaker 4: from evolution or from other people, or from social tradition,

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Speaker 4: that our rights don't come from God. That is a

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Speaker 4: real break from what the founders thought.

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Speaker 3: We'll be right back after this short break.

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Speaker 1: I want to just touch on some of these the

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Speaker 1: meaning of some of the Declarations, exalted phrases as you say,

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Speaker 1: and trace their roots in both biblical tradition and natural philosophy.

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Speaker 1: But before I get to that. Let's you say that

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Speaker 1: most people pass over this phrase without thinking much about it,

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Speaker 1: and it's the laws of nature and of Nature's God.

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Speaker 4: Yes, that's really foundational to the whole declaration. And I

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Speaker 4: think most people in the here were laws of nature

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Speaker 4: or less, like the laws of physics or the laws

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Speaker 4: of gravity, something that's not really what the founders are

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Speaker 4: talking about. They were talking about the laws of human nature,

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Speaker 4: basically morality, and they thought that the moral law, the

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Speaker 4: underlying moral law both was provided by God. And even

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Speaker 4: those who were non Christians, like Thomas Jefferson's served more

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Speaker 4: of Adist or Benjamin Franklin, they thought that biblical morality

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Speaker 4: was true because they also thought that the same morality

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Speaker 4: was something that was written on our hearts that you

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Speaker 4: could know through reason and conscience. And they thought that

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Speaker 4: reason and conscience and the Bible said the same thing,

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Speaker 4: and so that provided a common moral ground or moral

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Speaker 4: common ground that everyone that you could actually base your

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Speaker 4: society on. And this had deep roots. You know, sometimes

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Speaker 4: Christians today think, well, well, you know, morality just has

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Speaker 4: to be on the Bible. And I'm a Christian, I

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Speaker 4: believe in biblical morality, but the standard Christian view from

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Speaker 4: the apostle paul On was that God all also wrote

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Speaker 4: these things on our hearts, and this was not a

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Speaker 4: difference between Protestants and Catholics. A Quinnas believed that, so

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Speaker 4: did Luther, so did Calvin. That that God revealed himself

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Speaker 4: definitely through the Bible, but he also revealed himself in

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Speaker 4: other ways through creation. And that's why you know C. S.

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Speaker 4: Lewis could write a book in the nineteen forty is

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Speaker 4: The Abolition of Man, where he catalogs really moral fundamentals

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Speaker 4: across cultures. Like it's really hard to find a major

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Speaker 4: world culture that says lying is great, or treating your

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Speaker 4: parents badly is good, or breaking your promises is wonderful.

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Speaker 4: You don't find that. Yeah, you can find I guess

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Speaker 4: some really depraved people who say that, But most world

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Speaker 4: civilizations say the opposite. There was this common this moral

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Speaker 4: common ground, and the Founders really believed in that, and

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Speaker 4: I sort of, you know, discussed that more because they

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Speaker 4: do it in their own writings. They actually say, you know,

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Speaker 4: the biblical morality that you see in the Bible is

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Speaker 4: also the morality of common sense. It's the mora written

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Speaker 4: on our hearts. And they both point to the same truth.

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Speaker 4: And that's one, sadly, one of the things today that

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Speaker 4: we have lost to a degree, and I think that's

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Speaker 4: one reason why we're in the situation we're in.

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Speaker 1: Yes, okay, well let's look at the first phrase, we

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Speaker 1: hold these truths to be self evident. Now, you say

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Speaker 1: that some Christians don't like the declaration's claim of self

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Speaker 1: evident truths, and Thomas is correct me if I'm wrong,

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Speaker 1: But Thomas Jefferson's original draft said we hold these truths

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Speaker 1: to be sacred and undeniable, and then Benjamin Franklin changed it.

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Speaker 3: Is that correct?

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Speaker 4: No, No, that's not actually correct. That that is what

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Speaker 4: journalists Walter Freeman anyway, that's said. But we actually don't know.

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Speaker 4: No one took credit for that rewrite. There's a difference

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Speaker 4: of opinion among scholars of whose penmanship did the correction,

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Speaker 4: and so we actually don't know. The best we know

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Speaker 4: is that during the UH revision stage it was changed,

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Speaker 4: just like there were a lot of other changes. There's

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Speaker 4: no evidence that anyone thought it was a substance of difference,

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Speaker 4: and there's really no evidence of who made the change.

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Speaker 1: And you say that Christian the evangelical Christian thinker Vishal

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Speaker 1: Mango Waladi Wadi. I can't say his name, Mangoai. He

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Speaker 1: says that definite the declarations change of this wording was

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Speaker 1: the fundamental mistake of the American founding, and it's a

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Speaker 1: mistake that unleashed the horrors of the French Revolution.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and Visual, I love Visual. He's done a lot

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Speaker 4: of great work. He was mentioned by Francis Schaeffer, among others,

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Speaker 4: So he's a I look up to him. I think

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Speaker 4: on this, you know, he's he's wrong, probably largely because

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Speaker 4: he's actually was listening to the wrong people. Because the

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Speaker 4: idea that Benjamin Franklin changed this and that the change

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Speaker 4: from you know, from sacred and undeniable to to saying

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Speaker 4: sell evident, that that was somehow a significant change from

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Speaker 4: biblical revelation to just unassisted human reason that has been

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Speaker 4: propagated by some left wing secularists because they like it,

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Speaker 4: they think that's good. They want to tell that story

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Speaker 4: because they think we'll see Jefferson, which had the same

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Speaker 4: exact views as Benjamin Franklin. But Franklin tried to make

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Speaker 4: clear that this wasn't consistent with the Bible and it

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Speaker 4: was just exalted human reason apart from God. And that's

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Speaker 4: the story they're trying to tell, and I understand why

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Speaker 4: they're trying to tell it. Unfortunately, Vishaal has sort of

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Speaker 4: bought into that for different reasons, and as a Christian

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Speaker 4: he thinks, well, that's awful. Well that would be awful,

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Speaker 4: but it's not true. Really, The meaning was the same

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Speaker 4: whether it's sacred or undeniable or self evident. What they're

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Speaker 4: communicating is that these are fundamental truth We regard these,

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Speaker 4: we hold these as fundamental truths. And they weren't saying

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Speaker 4: when they're saying self evident that the only that means

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Speaker 4: that you know, the Bible doesn't matter, that God doesn't matter.

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Speaker 4: And let's understand, on that drafting committee, along with Franklin

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Speaker 4: and Jefferson, they may have been deast was Roger Sherman,

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Speaker 4: who was a hardcore New England Calvinist. If he thought

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Speaker 4: they were changing that, I mean, he would have protested.

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Speaker 4: So I think they protest too much that they try

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Speaker 4: to find some Vishal actually made the argument with me

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Speaker 4: at a conference and I note this in the book,

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Speaker 4: and I referenced people can watch the YouTube video that

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Speaker 4: Jefferson meant by saying that our rights were sacred and undeniable.

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Speaker 4: He was saying that they're just based in the Bible.

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Speaker 4: And that then, which first of all, is not what

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Speaker 4: Jefferson or any of the Founders believed. They thought the

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Speaker 4: Bible and human reason went together, So they're not separate,

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Speaker 4: they go together and reinforce each other. So that couldn't

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Speaker 4: have been Jefferson's original view with the original wording anyway,

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Speaker 4: because of what we know his views, and it wasn't

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Speaker 4: the view of the devout Christian Founders. They all thought

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Speaker 4: the Deist and the Christian Founders agree that there was

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Speaker 4: this moral common ground between us, and there were these

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Speaker 4: truths that we understand both from the Bible and by

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Speaker 4: looking at nature by what God has written on our hearts,

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Speaker 4: served what Christians traditionally have called general revelation as well

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Speaker 4: as special revelation. So they all, the Founders all agreed

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Speaker 4: on that. So to make this up to this sort

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Speaker 4: of significant thing. And so then where Vishal goes on

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Speaker 4: to say, well, this was the fundamental mistake that led

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Speaker 4: to the horrors of the French Revolution, is because he

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Speaker 4: thinks that by saying there are truths that are self

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Speaker 4: evident and that you can sort of plainly see or

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Speaker 4: hold that we misled the French to believe that reason alone,

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Speaker 4: without the Bible or without the Gospel, can create your

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Speaker 4: heavenly utopian society. Well, for one thing, the French didn't

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Speaker 4: need us to tell them anything on that, because the

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Speaker 4: French had their own philosophy going back to Rousseau and others,

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Speaker 4: that was very well developed. So they weren't really listening

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Speaker 4: to us. But that's also just not true what the

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Speaker 4: founders meant. So I so I you know, and Vishaal

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Speaker 4: is great, but I think he's really wrong on this,

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Speaker 4: and because he's listening to the left wing secularists and

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Speaker 4: too trusting of what they said.

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Speaker 1: In Robespierre or didn't he march into the into Notre

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Speaker 1: Diamond declare at the Temple of Reason.

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Speaker 4: Oh they did all sorts of things.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they.

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Speaker 1: Did all sorts of horrendous things, But yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: that was said.

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Speaker 4: They had the Goddess of Reason in there. They took

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Speaker 4: over another actually church and turned it into a a

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Speaker 4: pantheon of for Voltaire and other non Christian people of

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Speaker 4: great patron saints of the of the Secular Republic. I mean,

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Speaker 4: they tried to replace the Christian calendar with a new

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Speaker 4: calendar that wasn't based on the Christian calendar. They were

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Speaker 4: so anti Christian. I mean, it's just.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so yeah.

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Speaker 1: I always say, you know, seventeen seventy six and seventeen

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Speaker 1: eighty nine, are you know a million miles apart those

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Speaker 1: those two revolutions? Okay, so all them interre created equal.

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Speaker 1: You say that this is the most hotly disputed statement

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Speaker 1: in the Declaration, and it's likely the most misunderstood.

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Speaker 3: Why is it the why? Why is it so?

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Speaker 4: Well? You know, I think for one thing is when

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Speaker 4: most people really think about it, they think of all

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Speaker 4: the ways we're not equal, and so what do you

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Speaker 4: mean we're equal? You know, because people have different levels

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Speaker 4: of wealth. Some people are great mathematicians, other people like C. S. Lewis,

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Speaker 4: basically failed the math part of trying to get into Oxford.

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Speaker 4: I mean, but he was brilliant in other ways. And

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Speaker 4: so we're we could think of all the ways we're

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Speaker 4: different and not equal, and so what do they mean

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Speaker 4: by that that we're equal? And then I also think

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Speaker 4: among some conservatives, they have not they don't like it

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Speaker 4: because they think they equate what the Founders say as

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Speaker 4: as what the left wing says, well, equal means everyone

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Speaker 4: needs to be equal in every way. We need to

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Speaker 4: equalize incomes, we need to take away from some to

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Speaker 4: just make everything flat, and that's of course not what

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Speaker 4: the Founders were saying. But then it gets back to

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Speaker 4: well what did they mean? And we can get into

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Speaker 4: that if.

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Speaker 3: You want, well what did they mean?

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Speaker 4: So it turns out that if you really read through

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Speaker 4: what the Founders wrote.

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Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about seven ways that all

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Speaker 1: humans are equal.

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Speaker 4: But yeah, go ahead, yeah, yeah, you can identify seven

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Speaker 4: different ways that what they themselves said they were talking about.

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Speaker 4: And you know number one is they thought we were

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Speaker 4: all created by the same God, and they didn't think

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Speaker 4: belief in God. We can get into this load too.

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Speaker 4: But they unlike today when many people think, oh, well,

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Speaker 4: you know God is you know, you can believe in

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Speaker 4: God or you cannot, and it's just sort of the

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Speaker 4: subjective belief and feeling. The Founders were part of a

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Speaker 4: couple thousand years of philosophy and natural philosophy, the beginnings

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Speaker 4: of natural science that said that no, the belief of

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Speaker 4: a creator is really an objective truth that reason and

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Speaker 4: nature point to, just like the Bible. And so when

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Speaker 4: they said that we're all by the same God, they

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Speaker 4: thought that was not just a fairy story, that was

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Speaker 4: an objective truth. So we're all created by the same God.

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Speaker 4: Humans as a class, unlike say mosquitoes or rocks, we

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Speaker 4: have reason, we can discuss, we have language, we can

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Speaker 4: talk about that, and and even really every human culture

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Speaker 4: we know about has language of some sort, so that

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Speaker 4: that exercise of reason. We also have morality that we

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Speaker 4: don't follow it, but we can discuss. I mean, again, last,

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Speaker 4: I know that the rooster that lives across the street

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Speaker 4: from my house that bleets out every time of the day,

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Speaker 4: not just in the morning, is not debating with the

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Speaker 4: fellow chickens around him about moral laws. Human beings do

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Speaker 4: do that. So that's that moral capacity. But they also

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Speaker 4: thought James Wilson, a founder who signed both the Declaration

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Speaker 4: of Independence and the Constitution, wrote about how we have

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Speaker 4: immortal souls, so every human has a soul that survives death.

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Speaker 4: Founders believe that. But then and then you know, there's

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Speaker 4: some other things. But then on the other side, one

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Speaker 4: key thing, and this really was a key thing that

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Speaker 4: distinguished us from the French Revolution is they thought humans

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Speaker 4: are sinful, humans are corruptible, So we're equal in good things,

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Speaker 4: but no human is so superior to any others that

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Speaker 4: they can rule over other humans like God rules over

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Speaker 4: us and that so that also means that we have

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Speaker 4: to limit government power. And so they thought we were

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Speaker 4: equally fallible. And the Founders were very strong on that.

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Speaker 4: And when you compare that, say to the French Revolution,

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Speaker 4: the utopianism of it through the general will that they

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Speaker 4: thought that they could perfect society and didn't have a

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Speaker 4: deep appreciation for humans in you know, sinfulness that could

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Speaker 4: have prevented things like Robespierre or ultimately Napoleon taking over

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Speaker 4: at the end when everything fell apart. So those are

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Speaker 4: just some of the ways and it's really easy. They

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Speaker 4: did think about it. And I'm not going to give

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Speaker 4: away all the book, but you know, even some of

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Speaker 4: the children of the Founders said so, Like I talk

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Speaker 4: about this these letters between John Adams and one of

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Speaker 4: his sons where his son asked, what do you mean

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Speaker 4: that all people are equal? This is just obviously false, dad,

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Speaker 4: And John Adams writes back and says, well, no, actually,

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Speaker 4: what all we met was x y Z. And so

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Speaker 4: it's kind of interesting because a lot of people, I

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Speaker 4: think today, they assume when they debate about what the

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Speaker 4: founders meant, that they don't actually go back to what

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Speaker 4: they said. They were really bright, thoughtful people, and they

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Speaker 4: didn't just spout off for no reason. And if you

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Speaker 4: read their writings, not just their public but their private letters,

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Speaker 4: they actually explained it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And going back to the French Revolution, I was

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Speaker 1: just thinking about Rousseau. Rousseau's philosophy was kind of the

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Speaker 1: progenitor to the French Revolution. And when Rousseau's ideas were

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Speaker 1: basically I mean, he basically said man is basically good,

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Speaker 1: and so that and that's the opposite of what our

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Speaker 1: founders said, and so that that's what leads to the

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Speaker 1: completely different outcomes that we see that we saw in

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Speaker 1: those revolutions exactly.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so tell us the story.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so all men are endowed by their creator with

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Speaker 1: certain unalienable rights. Tell a story about Heidi. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how to pronounce her last name, prisbl.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I looked it up. At some point.

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Speaker 1: She was on MSNBC and she said, well, do you

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Speaker 1: know what do you remember what she said.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and then it gets even worse with

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Speaker 4: Tim King sitting United States Senator. Okay, so we can

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Speaker 4: may have, but you know basically that it's you're a

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Speaker 4: Christian nationalist theocrat if you think that rights come from God?

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Speaker 4: And how and and actually fanning the flames of fear

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Speaker 4: that there's still some America to think our rights come

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Speaker 4: from God. But in some ways it's even worse. Tim

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Speaker 4: King sitting United States Senator last year, so after the

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Speaker 4: Heidi political thing, well or Congress was berating some comments

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Speaker 4: that Mark Rubio had made that our rights come from God.

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Speaker 4: And he said, that's what Iran believes, and how dare

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Speaker 4: we believe that? Just and this is the sitting one

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Speaker 4: of the sitting United States senators from Virginia, the same

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Speaker 4: place that Thomas Jefferson came from who wrote the declaration

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Speaker 4: about this. You have the sitting senator from Virginia basically

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Speaker 4: claiming that you are an Iranian theocrat. If you think

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Speaker 4: our rights come from.

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Speaker 1: God, well, according to him, where do our rights come from?

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Speaker 3: Then?

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Speaker 4: That's an interesting question. He did in his colloquis. He

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Speaker 4: didn't really say it, but he did tell how he

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Speaker 4: was a devout Catholic. Well, look, I mean the thing

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Speaker 4: why this is so you know, people might think this

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Speaker 4: is a rhetorical thing, but it really isn't. If you think,

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Speaker 4: I mean, the founder said the rights came from God,

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Speaker 4: and that means that no human being can rightfully take

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Speaker 4: them away. So if rights really are just social convention,

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Speaker 4: then willing neely is just the strongest has the right

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Speaker 4: to do whatever they want. There isn't any But if

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Speaker 4: you think that rights are fundamental and they were given

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Speaker 4: to us by God, then government cannot rightfully violate or

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Speaker 4: take them away. And I actually think you even today

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Speaker 4: in Americans, despite the fact that apparently only four and

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Speaker 4: ten Americans think they come from God, think about the

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Speaker 4: comparison of what happened in most American states during COVID

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Speaker 4: versus what happened in Canada. And there were lots of

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Speaker 4: in my view, things that I talked about in part

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Speaker 4: of the book that happened in America. But if you

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Speaker 4: compare what happened in Canada where they actually jailed pastors,

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Speaker 4: where they did all sorts of things that didn't mostly

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Speaker 4: happen in the United States. And why because Americans are

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Speaker 4: a lot more ornery and they take their rights a

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Speaker 4: lot more seriously. And you know, you think of the

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Speaker 4: slogan during the Revolutionary War, don't tread on me, I mean,

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Speaker 4: or rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. I mean,

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Speaker 4: when you think that your rights are fundamental and they

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Speaker 4: don't come from us, so we don't have the right

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Speaker 4: to either you give them away or or we don't

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Speaker 4: have the right to violate them. That does set a

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Speaker 4: tone for society that that really I think helps protect

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Speaker 4: you against human tyranny.

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Speaker 3: Yes, amen to that.

435
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: Okay, So, and the next phrases among these are life, liberty,

436
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness.

437
00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 3: Now, what what is meant by well.

438
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 1: What is meant by those three words, and especially the

439
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 1: word happy and the pursuit of happiness?

440
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 3: What does that mean? And is that just go ahead,

441
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:39,359
Speaker 3: go ahead?

442
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 4: Well, I said, so life means what? And it's interesting

443
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 4: just to talk about life, because think about what is

444
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:47,239
Speaker 4: the most important thing the government can do. It can

445
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 4: protect human life, protect us from killing each other, protect

446
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 4: us from crime, protect us from foreign invaders. And the

447
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 4: founders really did believe that, and not you don't want

448
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 4: a government actually going against that with secret police actually

449
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:03,680
Speaker 4: arbitrarily take your lives. Interestingly though, especially in the works

450
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,480
Speaker 4: of James Wilson, who I wish more people would read again.

451
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 4: This guy was the probably the most gifted legal theorist

452
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:12,879
Speaker 4: at the time of the founding. His opening law lecture

453
00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 4: that he gave was actually attended by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,

454
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 4: John Adams. He was appointed by George Washington as a

455
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 4: Justice of the Supreme Court, and he signed both the

456
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 4: Declaration and helped draft the Constitution, which is only a

457
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 4: handful people did, so he was a big deal. James

458
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 4: Wilson talks about that since ultimately life comes from God,

459
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 4: that also means we don't actually have the right to

460
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 4: take our own lives. So the right to life. And

461
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:43,560
Speaker 4: I didn't put this in the book because I found

462
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 4: it later. I sort of remembered it, but I didn't

463
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 4: find it. But James Wilson also talked about abortion. Oh,

464
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:52,119
Speaker 4: I didn't part of the right to life. This is

465
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:54,639
Speaker 4: not gonna set now. He didn't understand when that human

466
00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:57,480
Speaker 4: life begins at conception because they scientifically didn't understand that.

467
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:00,240
Speaker 4: But he basically says in the womb, when when when

468
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:03,160
Speaker 4: you're stirring that that is life, and that you can't

469
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:05,679
Speaker 4: take that life. So he would even apply that. So

470
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:08,360
Speaker 4: the pro life people who apply the right to life

471
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 4: today to abortion, James Wilson would have agreed with them.

472
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,520
Speaker 4: So okay, So that's one thing. Liberty and pursuit of

473
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:17,960
Speaker 4: happiness I think really go together. I'll treat them a

474
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:24,880
Speaker 4: little separately. But so liberty is that these capacities for morality,

475
00:26:25,119 --> 00:26:31,720
Speaker 4: for reason, for invention, for creating things comes from God.

476
00:26:32,200 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 4: So that means that no human should be trying to

477
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 4: interfere with that. Now, liberty was not license. So the

478
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:43,400
Speaker 4: founders and I discussed this in the book. Liberty doesn't

479
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:45,680
Speaker 4: mean you have the right to hurt other people, doesn't

480
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:47,800
Speaker 4: mean the right that you need you could do really

481
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 4: morally obnoxious things. But liberty does mean that for example,

482
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,840
Speaker 4: and Thomas Jefferson talked about this, that he wanted a

483
00:26:55,840 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 4: government as frugal as possible that basically let people alone

484
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:02,680
Speaker 4: so that they could benefit from the fruits of their

485
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 4: innocent labors. So, in other words, if if you're going

486
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:07,960
Speaker 4: to be an entrepreneur, if you're going to be a

487
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 4: small businessman or a large businessman for that matter, or

488
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 4: an artist or something you don't want a governments just

489
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 4: confiscating all your earnings. You have a natural right because

490
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 4: God gave you those capacities, and so if you exercise them,

491
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:23,919
Speaker 4: you ought to have the right to enjoy them. So

492
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 4: when they talked about liberty, that's the sort of thing

493
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 4: they were talking about, also, freedom of speech, freedom of religion,

494
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 4: because ultimately they thought wasn't because they were irreligious, they

495
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 4: supporred religious freedom. Some Christians today have this idea that

496
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 4: religious freedom is somehow anti Christian. That's absurd, and in

497
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:45,239
Speaker 4: fact that the strongest supporters of religious freedom during the

498
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 4: founding were devout evangelical Christians because they knew that their

499
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 4: ultimate duty was to God. And so you don't want

500
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 4: government getting in the way of that, because if you have,

501
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:58,920
Speaker 4: you know, government is corruptible too. And so once you say, oh,

502
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 4: the prince or the head of the government gets to

503
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 4: dictate what your religious beliefs are law, and behold, it

504
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 4: probably isn't what you consider a true religious belief. So

505
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,399
Speaker 4: you don't really want to give government that power. So

506
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 4: liberty involved the right to be able to earn your

507
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:14,600
Speaker 4: own way, to benefit from the fruit of your labor,

508
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:18,720
Speaker 4: to express your own beliefs in politics, to worship God,

509
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:22,919
Speaker 4: how your conscience dictated, and that flows into I think

510
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 4: pursuit of happiness. Now a lot of scholars have talked

511
00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 4: about this. I didn't go a lot in the book

512
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:30,679
Speaker 4: on it, but in most of the Founding that the

513
00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 4: big three that you had was life, liberty, and property.

514
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 4: And so it's kind of interesting that Jefferson and the

515
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:40,040
Speaker 4: drafters of this put pursuit of happiness instead. I sort

516
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 4: of like that because pursuit of happiness is broader than property. Now,

517
00:28:44,680 --> 00:28:47,480
Speaker 4: I agree with the Founders that you want widely dispersed

518
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 4: property ownership, because as C. S. Lewis talked about that,

519
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 4: it's the man who has some property, who has some

520
00:28:53,320 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 4: sense of independence, who isn't dependent on the government, who

521
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 4: can say no to the government, and you stand up

522
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 4: for their belief So property is a part of living

523
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 4: the good free life, but it's broader than that. And

524
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 4: I think if you go back to like the Massachusetts

525
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 4: Constitution or the other Founding documents, they did talk a

526
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 4: lot about happiness. And unlike today where you think, oh,

527
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 4: happiness is just whatever gives you your kicks, no, the

528
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 4: Founding generation thought that happiness was tied to virtue and

529
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:25,760
Speaker 4: actually tied to your pursuit of God. So I think

530
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 4: your religious duties are actually part of happiness, your pursuit

531
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:34,840
Speaker 4: of happiness. Now you're not guaranteed worldly happiness here. And

532
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 4: that's interesting is that pursuit of happiness, not that you're

533
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 4: guaranteed you know, say, physical happiness. But I think that

534
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 4: that phrase does encompass the uses of your liberty to

535
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 4: things that you find meaningful, to your family, to your faith,

536
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 4: and that it's tied to virtue.

537
00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I speaking of virtue, you I want to quote.

538
00:29:57,520 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: You mentioned these two quotes in your book and may

539
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 1: you can just comment on them, and they both basically

540
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:07,480
Speaker 1: say similar things from George Washington and ben Benjamin Franklin.

541
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 1: George Washington says, of all the dispositions and habits which

542
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: lead to political prosperity, and prosperity, religion and morality are

543
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 1: indispensable supports. And then Benjamin Franklin says, and this is

544
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: very this is very popular.

545
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 3: People will recognize this.

546
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations

547
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters

548
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: to secure these rights. Governments are instituted. Wait, governments are

549
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent

550
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: of the government.

551
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:50,440
Speaker 4: Yeah. Especially, I think the Franklin is so profound that

552
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 4: because today we're actually sold a bill of goods. That well,

553
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 4: freedom means freedom from all restraint and freedom from moral

554
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 4: restract freedom to do how many spouses either at one

555
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 4: time or add seriatum, that you can have just you know,

556
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 4: use hallucinogenic drugs, use prostage, you name it. Freedom is

557
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 4: freedom of all restraint. But the founder's point was actually

558
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 4: that if you want a genuinely free society where you

559
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 4: can make your living in the way that you want to,

560
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 4: where you can run your family the way you want to,

561
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 4: where you can worship God how you see fit, where

562
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 4: you can have free speech that that actually takes self control.

563
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 4: And let me just do sometimes I talk about this

564
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 4: in the book, but I would do it when I

565
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 4: taught college students would do it sort of thought experiment. Hollywood.

566
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 4: I know you're down there, but but sometimes like to

567
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:45,959
Speaker 4: One of their big examples, iconic examples of of no

568
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 4: freedom is the Americans. The archetypal American small town with

569
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 4: the prudes and the busy bodies from the churches who

570
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 4: are just hyper controlling fundamentalists, and you could just people

571
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 4: can think about the Hollywood movies that actually express that.

572
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 4: Whereas you know, freedom is to be in this hip

573
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 4: urban environment. But let's actually think about this, which is

574
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 4: truly more free. If you're living in a small town

575
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 4: where you actually know your neighbors and you don't lock

576
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:15,959
Speaker 4: your doors because you're not really concerned about your kids

577
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 4: can go wherever they want to play because you're not

578
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:23,320
Speaker 4: concerned about child molesters or other things happening, and that

579
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 4: you try and that people actually when you lose things,

580
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 4: they actually return them, which is more free that or

581
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 4: say you're in an inner city where you have to

582
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 4: triple dead boat lock your door and have twenty four

583
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 4: to seven surveillance, and you need to do where your

584
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 4: kids aren't twenty four to seven because you know there

585
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 4: may be a child molester down the street, there may

586
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 4: be who knows, which is really more free. And if

587
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 4: you understand that difference, you get what actually the conundrum

588
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 4: we're in today and what Franklin was talking about. Only

589
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 4: a virtuous people are capable of freedom because if you're

590
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 4: not self controlled, as he said, as you become more vicious,

591
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 4: you actually need to have masters to control you. And

592
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 4: so it's really the complete opposite of what some of

593
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 4: our culture tells us is that, you know, liberty is

594
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 4: the freedom of all constraints. No, you want to be

595
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 4: self controlled so that you don't have to be controlled

596
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:17,440
Speaker 4: from the top down.

597
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that explanation.

598
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 1: And so, okay, you and you have a chapter called

599
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: a Second American Revolution, and you talk about the Founders

600
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 1: owning slaves, talk about slavery.

601
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 3: How did that?

602
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,800
Speaker 1: How did they reconcile that, the Founders, and then talk

603
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 1: about the how the invention of the cotton gen kind

604
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: of exacerbated the problem.

605
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, So just to without getting into everything else in

606
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 4: the book, just understand. So part of my book is

607
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 4: about the American Founding and then but the rest of

608
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 4: it is, well what happened afterwards, the revolt against the

609
00:33:57,120 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 4: American Founding, largely in the name of science. And then

610
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 4: at the end I tried to point to good things

611
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 4: that are actually pointing back to the Founding. So what

612
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 4: happened with slavery? And it's a good question, you know,

613
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:10,439
Speaker 4: how did the founders reconcile all men are created equal

614
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 4: with slavery. Well, actually they didn't, which is good because

615
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 4: they felt guilty about it. And it's really interesting. Most

616
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 4: people don't really know this story because we have to

617
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 4: have stick figure villains on the left and everyone in

618
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 4: the past has to be a stick villain. But in reality,

619
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:33,239
Speaker 4: after the Declaration of Independence was declared and then the Constitution,

620
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 4: eight nine states, you know, most of them were in

621
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 4: the North or mid Atlantic, A ballis slavery, and they

622
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 4: did so because they saw it. There was a contradiction here.

623
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,839
Speaker 4: In fact, the founders in their private writies wrote, how

624
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 4: can we this is a contradiction. They knew it, and

625
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 4: so it actually put pressure on them and so many

626
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:56,319
Speaker 4: states a ball of slavery. When we extended America through

627
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:59,719
Speaker 4: the Northwest Territory into Ohio, they actually said that that

628
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,200
Speaker 4: terrictory would be forever free of slavery. These were the

629
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:06,759
Speaker 4: same founding generations, and even in the South, who you know.

630
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 4: I do think there's some culpability of people like Jefferson

631
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 4: and Madison who continue to own slaves, but I also

632
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 4: think you need to give them credit because Jefferson was

633
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 4: troubled by it, and you know, a famous passage he

634
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:20,920
Speaker 4: wrote in notes on the state of Virginia is that

635
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 4: he basically trembles for his nation when if he thinks,

636
00:35:24,560 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 4: if God is just, and he was actually writing about slavery,

637
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 4: you know that he knew that this was a blot.

638
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:34,360
Speaker 4: And Jefferson and Madison, to their credit, did actually propose

639
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 4: legislation for Virginia even that after a certain date people

640
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:42,240
Speaker 4: who were born to slaves would be born into freedom,

641
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 4: and so it would have been gradual emancipation. It failed, unfortunately,

642
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 4: and so but the Founding generation, I think some of

643
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 4: them can be criticized for not being diligent enough on that.

644
00:35:52,160 --> 00:35:55,400
Speaker 4: But it still is an amazing story because slavery has existed

645
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 4: for most of human history. It still exists in many

646
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 4: areas of the world today. The truly amazing thing is

647
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 4: that we got rid of it, and that there were

648
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 4: so many people who went against their own self interests

649
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 4: to realize that this was wrong and they actually tried

650
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:11,439
Speaker 4: to do something about it. But why did the things

651
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 4: I just talked about that were in the initial decades

652
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 4: after the Founding where things were moving towards against slavery,

653
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:22,880
Speaker 4: why did that sort of stop in its tracks? And

654
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 4: I think there were two reasons I mean, there are

655
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 4: always lots of reasons people, but I think two big reasons.

656
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 4: One is the cotton gin that made it a lot

657
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:37,799
Speaker 4: more economically prosperous to and lucrative to have large plantations

658
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,799
Speaker 4: that relied on hundreds of slaves, and because you could

659
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 4: process the cotton a lot more and so you can

660
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 4: once you farmed it. So that sort of rejuvenated these

661
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 4: industries that depended on slaves. But then there was also

662
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 4: an intellectual change just within the few decades after the founders.

663
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 4: The founders believed in natural philosophy and what today we'd

664
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 4: call science. They thought it point to a creator, they

665
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 4: thought it pointed to human equality. Well within the early

666
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 4: decades of the nineteenth century, you had people who came

667
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 4: on the scene, both in America and in Europe that

668
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 4: basically said, well, no, science is actually showing that we're

669
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 4: fundamentally unequal and that in every potential way. And in fact,

670
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 4: they argued for a while that there were separate origins,

671
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 4: so that blacks particularly weren't even humans in the way

672
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 4: that were sold in the name of science. And this

673
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:34,920
Speaker 4: was sort of pre Darwin. And then we could talk

674
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 4: about what happened wh darwink Can because he had his

675
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 4: own skin on it. But I think those were the

676
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 4: reasons that sort of stopped in the tracks. Now, the

677
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 4: abolition movement went ahead, but it was more polarizing. At

678
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 4: the time of the founding. Most of the founders, even

679
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:51,880
Speaker 4: those who ended slaves, did not think it was a

680
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 4: good thing. They were embarrassed about it, and most of

681
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 4: them thought it should eventually be gotten rid of which

682
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 4: is why Jefferson and Madison did try to do what

683
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 4: they did. But once the Cottingen manute more lucrative, and

684
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 4: then once the scientist got involved in saying, oh no,

685
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:08,840
Speaker 4: this isn't a tragedy, this is the way nature has it,

686
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 4: so it's dictated by nature, then that changed the debate.

687
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:16,040
Speaker 3: Yeah.

688
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:18,800
Speaker 1: And then, of course, as you mentioned just mentioned, Darwin

689
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: changed the debate dramatically when he published on the Origin

690
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: of Species. When was that eighteen fifty seven, And so

691
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 1: let's talk about Darwin a little bit.

692
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 3: So his.

693
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 1: Ideas about evolution there you let you you get into

694
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 1: like different kind of ways.

695
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 3: His his theory.

696
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:52,840
Speaker 1: Denied many things, and about the declaration and so the

697
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: one of the first things that it denied was the

698
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,760
Speaker 1: denial of human equality, So talk about that denial.

699
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, so many people make a lot. You know that

700
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:06,799
Speaker 4: Darwin himself was not pro slavery, and that's true. I

701
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 4: mentioned in the book. That's because he lived after William Wilberforce,

702
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 4: so basically slavery was already on the out there, so

703
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 4: he was reflecting his own society. The key thing, though,

704
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 4: Darren's intellectual contribution to this conversation was to say, Okay,

705
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:23,719
Speaker 4: there aren't separate origins, so he was better in that

706
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:30,359
Speaker 4: he didn't actually say that blacks were a separate animal group,

707
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 4: I guess, But what he says is, actually we all

708
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 4: go back to ape like creatures, and so some like blacks,

709
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 4: he was very clear on this, are at the stem

710
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 4: of evolution, so they're much closer to our evolutionary ape

711
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 4: like ancestors, and others like whites are at the apex.

712
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:51,359
Speaker 4: We're much further evolved. And he said that that is

713
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 4: what you should expect from natural selection, because if you

714
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 4: think about it, if if we're not created by say,

715
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:59,240
Speaker 4: a benevolent God who actually says, you know, I'm planning

716
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 4: human beings to be created in my image, and the

717
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 4: only reason we have the capacity that we do as

718
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 4: humans is because our ancestors were in an environmental niche

719
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:12,280
Speaker 4: that had some survival needs, and so we were evolved

720
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 4: just for those survival needs. Darwin's point, and the point

721
00:40:15,640 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 4: of his followers, was there's no reason you should expect

722
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 4: that different human groups being subjected to different survival pressures

723
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 4: should be anything like equal in any fundamental sense, because

724
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 4: it's just a happenstance of history based on the survival

725
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 4: needs they had. Of that's the case, that's why they

726
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,240
Speaker 4: have their capabilities, and they could be wildly different than others,

727
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:38,520
Speaker 4: and so off of this the darwinness, it wasn't just Darwin.

728
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 4: It was as followers in Germany, it was as followers

729
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 4: in America argued that blacks were the lowest part, you know,

730
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 4: the lowest part of the latter. In fact, some ernch

731
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:53,080
Speaker 4: Heeckel from Germany was one of Darwin's most devoted scientific

732
00:40:53,080 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 4: followers in Germany came up with a graphic of of

733
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 4: human invovation that makes very clear that the gap between

734
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 4: the lowest human and the highest ape is a lot

735
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 4: smaller than the gap between the highest ape and the

736
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:12,840
Speaker 4: highest human. And of course who was the lowest human

737
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 4: right above a well, it was a black person who

738
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 4: had African features. And so this was actually even Stephen J. Gould,

739
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:24,600
Speaker 4: who was a noted evolutionist you know in in our

740
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 4: lifetimes he's dead now from from Harvard, pointed out that

741
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 4: this was earth shattering. So, you know, Darwin was not

742
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:35,320
Speaker 4: the first scientific racist. But after the Origin of Species

743
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 4: came out, where people bought into this idea that there

744
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 4: are lower stages of evolution and that some humans are

745
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 4: low on the totem pole and that's where they stay,

746
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 4: and that the whites are sort of at the apex.

747
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 4: That became tremendously influential and among the leaders, you know,

748
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:56,720
Speaker 4: not among the leading scientists in America that the founders

749
00:41:56,760 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 4: of the National Academy of Sciences biled at Harvard, Princeton, Yale.

750
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:05,040
Speaker 4: This was the standard consensus of the scientific community thanks

751
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 4: to Darwin, and so that yes, so that's one of

752
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 4: the things. So you actually had people by the latter

753
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 4: part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century saying

754
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 4: that this idea that all men are created equal is false.

755
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 4: It's been disproven by science. Today, we have an influential,

756
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:29,359
Speaker 4: unfortunately secular conservative atheist named Curtis Jarvin who has been

757
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:35,600
Speaker 4: sadly praised in various things by I think our vice

758
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 4: president and other things. I'm not saying our vice president

759
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:42,320
Speaker 4: believes everything Curtis Jarvin says. But Curtis Jarvin, who actually

760
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 4: hates thinks the wrong side won the American Revolution. But

761
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 4: another thing that he believes is that this idea that

762
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 4: all men are created equal has been most obviously refuted

763
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 4: by science. So that idea is still with us. And

764
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 4: some of these sort of alt right or groper rights

765
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 4: who are spewing lots of vile things. If you read

766
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:06,840
Speaker 4: some of their writings, they're actually citing some evolutionary arguments

767
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 4: for racism. So this is sort of still with us

768
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:15,359
Speaker 4: among I think, still the fringe, thankfully. But so that

769
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 4: was one thing, but that wasn't the only thing. I mean,

770
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:20,319
Speaker 4: just quickly, you know, Darwin's idea of evolution is it

771
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 4: wasn't just change over time, It was that it was

772
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 4: not guided. And so he thought that that nature didn't

773
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:30,239
Speaker 4: require a creator. And so the founders thought again objectively,

774
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 4: nature pointed, through its complexity, through its teleology, its purpose,

775
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 4: point to a creator. And Darwin and then his followers

776
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,319
Speaker 4: that no, actually nature points to the opposite that we

777
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 4: don't need a creator. So the Darwinian story, if you will,

778
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 4: fundamentally contradicted the idea that there's an objective, you know, creator,

779
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 4: laws of nature, nature's God, and morality. One of the

780
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 4: things Darwin wrote about in his book The Descent of Man,

781
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 4: which is one of his sequels to On the Origin

782
00:43:56,560 --> 00:44:03,879
Speaker 4: of Species, was that morality develops because also of survival

783
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:06,480
Speaker 4: needs in any given situation, and so you should expect

784
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 4: morality should evolve radically over time, depending on the situation,

785
00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 4: depending on the survival needs. So you know, sometimes caring

786
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:20,359
Speaker 4: for your children might be right thing, sometimes killing them

787
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 4: might be right for in fantaside I mean really really,

788
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 4: Darwin provide a scientific justification for moral relativism. And so

789
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 4: that whole idea of the founder's idea that there was

790
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 4: an objective moral order that we could discern that was

791
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:36,879
Speaker 4: that was always everywhere true. That was also placed under

792
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 4: assault by Darwin and the followers after that, not just Darwin,

793
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 4: but his his, his followers and so so human equality,

794
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:47,319
Speaker 4: you know, there is no creator. Science refutes that there's

795
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 4: a creator. Science refutes human equality, and science refutes the

796
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:53,439
Speaker 4: idea that there's an objective moral law. And then one

797
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:57,319
Speaker 4: other thing that we're still living with today. Well, if

798
00:44:57,360 --> 00:45:01,239
Speaker 4: we're fundamentally unequal according to Darwinian, well, then this whole

799
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:05,240
Speaker 4: idea that the very end of the part you quoted

800
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 4: from the declaration is that because of all this stuff,

801
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 4: you know, governments, just governments are based on consent of

802
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 4: the government. Why, because human beings, although we're different in

803
00:45:16,719 --> 00:45:19,399
Speaker 4: many ways, we still are fundamentally equal. And so that

804
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 4: means that government can't just be by totalitarian government. It

805
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 4: needs to be based on consent. Well, but if human being,

806
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 4: if most human beings are biologically inferior, why do you

807
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 4: have government by consent? And so you actually had the

808
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 4: rise in the latter part of the nineteenth century and

809
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 4: early twentieth century of the idea that, no, we should

810
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:44,960
Speaker 4: be ruled by unelected experts who are exercising scientific expertise

811
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:48,839
Speaker 4: in the bureaucracy, and we don't want them accountable even

812
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 4: to elected officials, because these are superior great minds and

813
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 4: everyone else's inferior. Well, if you want to understand ultimately

814
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 4: the roots of what happened in co Or are lots

815
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:06,440
Speaker 4: of other things of unelected experts, deep state, deep today

816
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 4: it's with this view. And you see among the political

817
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:13,360
Speaker 4: scientists in America, the academic ones, people at like Harvard

818
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:16,160
Speaker 4: Columbia where they talk about one guy John Burgess talked

819
00:46:16,160 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 4: about this new view of the state and where the

820
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:22,400
Speaker 4: state the goal of the state is now the apotheosis

821
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 4: of man apotheosis meaning deification, making goblin. So they pitched

822
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 4: the claim suddenly of the state and government is so

823
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:32,440
Speaker 4: much higher. And they also dissed the idea that there

824
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 4: were natural rights. They actually explicitly said, oh, you know,

825
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 4: the founders did believe that, but that's outdated because of science,

826
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 4: and we don't believe that anymore. So so what we

827
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 4: have today, you know, sometimes think, well it just happens,

828
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:47,200
Speaker 4: Willy Neely. No, there was a logic and rationale, and

829
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:49,719
Speaker 4: the whole discipline of political science bought into this in

830
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,439
Speaker 4: the end of the nineteenth century. And so you sort

831
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 4: of the good biblical aphorism, you you know, reap what

832
00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 4: you sew.

833
00:46:58,040 --> 00:46:59,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, exactly.

834
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 1: And of course Darwin also his ideas were was an

835
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:07,799
Speaker 1: assault on human exceptionalism as well.

836
00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:11,319
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, that's part of really the attack on that

837
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:13,600
Speaker 4: that humans aren't equal, because we should be clear that

838
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:17,440
Speaker 4: part of the case for human equality is human exceptionalism.

839
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 4: In other words, it's not just comparing humans to each other,

840
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:22,839
Speaker 4: it's comparing humans to the rest of creation. I mean,

841
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 4: whatever differences you and I or other people may have,

842
00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:30,240
Speaker 4: they pale in comparison to our differences with the mosquito

843
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 4: or rock. But in the Darwinian sense, they tried to

844
00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 4: maybe not with the rock, but with the mosquito or dogs,

845
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:41,000
Speaker 4: and I love dogs or cats. You know, they tried

846
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 4: to really. I mean, last year I talked about we

847
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 4: have this new book called The Arrogant Ape that a

848
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 4: primatologist who basically tries to say that the idea that

849
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 4: humans are exceptional is just is ludicrous and evil. And

850
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:58,279
Speaker 4: the odd thing is she starts the book off with

851
00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:02,319
Speaker 4: a quote from Shakespeare, completely oblivious to the idea that

852
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:04,960
Speaker 4: if you want to have a good understanding of what

853
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 4: difference humans are from that there are signific differences. Shakespeare

854
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 4: is a great example. And so she excites Shakespeare in

855
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:15,360
Speaker 4: a book that she's arguing that there are really no

856
00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 4: fundamental differences between that humans aren't exceptional.

857
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 3: The blind leading the blind.

858
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: Now, how did Darwin's ideas also affect because I mean it.

859
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,200
Speaker 1: Rousseau's ideas affected this as well. But how did Darwin's

860
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 1: ideas affect crime and punishment?

861
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:34,359
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so again Darwin. And you know, I'm not

862
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 4: trying to see monocausal that it all goes back to Darwin.

863
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:41,719
Speaker 4: But Darwin was part of a larger movement to try

864
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:47,840
Speaker 4: to understand human activity and choices as just really the

865
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 4: result of blind matter and motion and these these blind

866
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 4: biological or hereditary forces that we really have no control

867
00:48:55,480 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 4: overistic determinism, scientific determ terminism, materialistic determinism. So you know,

868
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:04,560
Speaker 4: the abuse excuse. You know, if you commit crime, you

869
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 4: really have no choice because either your heredity or your

870
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 4: environment or your biology just it forces you to do that.

871
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:14,560
Speaker 4: And Donalin didn't write a lot about that. He wrote some,

872
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:17,880
Speaker 4: but in his private notebooks we know he actually worried

873
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:19,600
Speaker 4: about this a little bit that that you know, that

874
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:22,200
Speaker 4: what he was talking about meant that there really was

875
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 4: no human accountability. It's interesting in his private notebooks he

876
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:28,399
Speaker 4: said the one reason why he didn't really worry about

877
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:31,799
Speaker 4: his idea of that determinism would really be awful is

878
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,239
Speaker 4: that he didn't think most ordinary people would believe it.

879
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:37,560
Speaker 4: He thought it was true, but that they wouldn't they

880
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:39,839
Speaker 4: wouldn't believe that we were just determined. But of course

881
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:43,319
Speaker 4: what happens if a society actually does embrace his beliefs. Well,

882
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,160
Speaker 4: we've learned about that. So so, yes, that the whole

883
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:49,879
Speaker 4: idea that criminals are not responsible for anything they do

884
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:54,239
Speaker 4: really does come out of that mindset. And it's hard

885
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:58,719
Speaker 4: to have a free, you know, or just society if

886
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:01,880
Speaker 4: you can't hold people accountable, if you treat people really

887
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 4: like animals who can't make choices.

888
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:11,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, obviously in California that this this

889
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:14,839
Speaker 1: whole the treatment of crime and punishment is very dark.

890
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:16,759
Speaker 1: It's very Darwinian slash Brusilian.

891
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:20,839
Speaker 3: But what about so.

892
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: Obviously Darwin's ideas affected how we understand life and death.

893
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: What is what is this You talk about this in

894
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:34,520
Speaker 1: the book, this phrase embryonic recapitulation.

895
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:35,319
Speaker 3: What does that mean?

896
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:39,920
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, So the idea is that as we go

897
00:50:40,080 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 4: through developing from conception to the baby, that the the

898
00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 4: fetus or the embryo uh goes through the history of

899
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:54,319
Speaker 4: evolution so that they recapitulate, that they replay the history

900
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,920
Speaker 4: of evolution. So that means, you know, the claim of

901
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:03,800
Speaker 4: Darwinian biologists was so if you're early in your embryonic development,

902
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 4: it's like the fish stage. And then and so then

903
00:51:06,719 --> 00:51:08,800
Speaker 4: if you if you kill the baby at that point,

904
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:11,400
Speaker 4: well it's just like killing a fish. And this was

905
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:15,239
Speaker 4: a popularized argument from Ernest Heckle up to people like

906
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:18,919
Speaker 4: in our own Age of the late Christopher Hitchens made

907
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:22,839
Speaker 4: this argument, or or oh, the guy who did the

908
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:30,320
Speaker 4: original Cosmos series, the physicists, Carl Carl Sagan made argument, So,

909
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:32,839
Speaker 4: so this has been and leading geneticists, this has been

910
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:35,759
Speaker 4: junk science. Fortunately, most scientists today do know that this

911
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 4: is junk scize, but it still keeps popping up. But

912
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,480
Speaker 4: the idea was we replayed the history of evolution in

913
00:51:40,520 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 4: the womb so that you can you know, if you

914
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:46,000
Speaker 4: kill the baby in the womb before they're actually born,

915
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 4: well there are actually some other lower animal stage that

916
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 4: they're going through, so therefore it's not important. It was

917
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,480
Speaker 4: really junk science even when it was proposed, and it was,

918
00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:57,279
Speaker 4: but it was tremendously influential, and people made this as

919
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 4: an argument for abortion being okay.

920
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 1: And yes, and I like picking on Darwin because he

921
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:11,399
Speaker 1: really just had such a terrible impact on on our

922
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:15,640
Speaker 1: culture and life. But you talk about I didn't know that.

923
00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:21,000
Speaker 1: I get Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, was recognized as the

924
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:22,440
Speaker 1: founder of eugenics.

925
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 4: Yep.

926
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 3: Well, and by the way, it comes from.

927
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 1: The Greek word, the Greek root word meaning good at

928
00:52:30,960 --> 00:52:31,960
Speaker 1: good in birth.

929
00:52:32,719 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the idea was, let's try to well. Darwin

930
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 4: set out the problem in Descent of Man. He said, look,

931
00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 4: the only way reason we have good capacities, again, it's

932
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:46,720
Speaker 4: not because we were designed that way by a creator,

933
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:50,520
Speaker 4: is because through ruthless natural selection that killed off all

934
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:53,080
Speaker 4: the week and defectives. That's the only way we are

935
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:57,799
Speaker 4: So so death, famine, disease, that's what created humans as

936
00:52:57,800 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 4: the apex. So if that's really true, what about the

937
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 4: modern world where you have things like hospitals where you

938
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:09,120
Speaker 4: try to save the sick, help the poor, the people

939
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 4: that nature would have killed off. And Darwin writes about

940
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:14,960
Speaker 4: this in The Decendive Man. He says, no one who

941
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:19,319
Speaker 4: was attended to the breeding of domestic animals. Basically that's

942
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:21,680
Speaker 4: almost a direct quote. But then he goes on to say, well,

943
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 4: you know, they'll understand that what we're doing with humans

944
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:29,680
Speaker 4: is going to ruin us basically, and so you know,

945
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:34,280
Speaker 4: inoculating people against smallpox, that was another view, helping the poor,

946
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:38,720
Speaker 4: saving the sick. That was going to destroy humans because

947
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:42,359
Speaker 4: we were counteracting the only thing that created us, which

948
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:47,160
Speaker 4: was ruthless natural selection. So if that's your view, you

949
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:50,200
Speaker 4: have two choices. Well, you could go back to the

950
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 4: law of the jungle. But Darwin himself thought, well, you know,

951
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 4: our sense of sympathy won't allow us to do that,

952
00:53:57,280 --> 00:54:00,560
Speaker 4: and so he was ambivalent. And I'd say the genesis

953
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:02,799
Speaker 4: thought that too, So so they said, well, maybe we

954
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:06,280
Speaker 4: can mimic something like natural selection. That's kinder and gentler.

955
00:54:07,239 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 4: And that was eugenics. Let's find ways to stop the unfit,

956
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:15,760
Speaker 4: however you define that to breed, and then let's find

957
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:18,920
Speaker 4: ways to breed a race of Superman and the and

958
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:21,480
Speaker 4: that became the eugenics movement. And the people who regarded

959
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 4: as unfit were largely people who are non white or

960
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 4: poor whites. They were people who may have easily you know,

961
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:37,160
Speaker 4: untreatable can dislike dyslexia. They were I mean, it was just, yeah,

962
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 4: they categories all sorts of people as well, let's stop

963
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:46,239
Speaker 4: them from reproducing. Let's sterilize them by force, or let's

964
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,839
Speaker 4: segregate them into categories. Now America never did what they

965
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 4: did in Germany, but this was the same. These were

966
00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:55,720
Speaker 4: actually the same ideas, which is, in Germany they started

967
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:58,920
Speaker 4: with force sterilization and then they Most people don't know

968
00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 4: that the gas chambers they all used on the Jews

969
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:07,120
Speaker 4: were actually first used in their killing of supposedly mentally

970
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:12,600
Speaker 4: handicapped children as their euthanasia program, and so the and

971
00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 4: again America didn't go that far, fortunately, but we did

972
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:18,920
Speaker 4: sterilize tens of thousands of people against the well, many

973
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 4: of whom today would have been considered perfectly normal. For example,

974
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 4: the case that got to the Supreme Court Carrie Buck.

975
00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 4: She was actually pregnant because she was raped by someone,

976
00:55:29,239 --> 00:55:33,160
Speaker 4: but they then blamed her and they decided that, well,

977
00:55:33,239 --> 00:55:37,400
Speaker 4: she was descended from poor white trash. Basically, therefore she

978
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 4: must be genetically so the doctors, who never even saw

979
00:55:40,160 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 4: her but just looked at her pedigree, determined that she

980
00:55:43,320 --> 00:55:46,759
Speaker 4: must be genetically defective, and so then her tubes need

981
00:55:46,760 --> 00:55:50,680
Speaker 4: to be taught so she can't have kids. In the

982
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 4: nineteen twenties late twenties like nineteen twenty seven and the

983
00:55:55,560 --> 00:56:01,400
Speaker 4: Supreme Court. Good social darminist material us Oliver Wendell Holmes

984
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:05,040
Speaker 4: wrote the opinion that even many people have heard the

985
00:56:05,080 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 4: phrase three generations of imbeciles are enough, by which he

986
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:11,280
Speaker 4: meant that, you know, she came from poor white trash.

987
00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 4: She was poor white trash, and that her baby was

988
00:56:13,120 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 4: poor white trash. The interesting thing is none of that

989
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:21,000
Speaker 4: was true. Her her baby, who grew up was actually

990
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 4: when she went to school, was regarded by her teachers as,

991
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:26,640
Speaker 4: if anything, maybe kind of gifted and smart the baby.

992
00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:30,279
Speaker 4: That the child died from a childhood disease later but

993
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 4: for the time she was in school, was not meant.

994
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:35,000
Speaker 4: And there was no indication that Carrie Buck was really

995
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:37,960
Speaker 4: mentally out of either and in fact, later in life,

996
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:42,200
Speaker 4: I mean she read, she wrote letters, she was in

997
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 4: the church choir, She had a couple of husbands because

998
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 4: she outlived her husband, so she was a faithful wife

999
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:51,240
Speaker 4: and served in the church choir. There was nothing mentally

1000
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:55,920
Speaker 4: effective about her. But these scientists said, because of her pedigree,

1001
00:56:56,360 --> 00:56:59,480
Speaker 4: she must be because of its sort of Darwinian mindset,

1002
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:02,000
Speaker 4: and so she was never able to have to and

1003
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:04,640
Speaker 4: there were lots of cases this. They're just tragic of

1004
00:57:04,760 --> 00:57:08,360
Speaker 4: people who were actually not defective at all, who were

1005
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:13,200
Speaker 4: who were stopped from having kids by force by our

1006
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 4: government in the name of eugenics, of Darwinian eugenics.

1007
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:19,520
Speaker 3: Wow, it's incredible.

1008
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:23,160
Speaker 1: So Okay, the last thing, last thing we'll talk about,

1009
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:25,200
Speaker 1: the last chapter of your book is where do we

1010
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 1: go from here? Leave us with a hopeful note, because

1011
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:31,760
Speaker 1: we've been talking about all the bad stuff. Give us

1012
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:33,480
Speaker 1: something to give us some hope.

1013
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:36,880
Speaker 4: So what I would say is this the penultimate chapter,

1014
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:39,920
Speaker 4: right before that last one, I lay out how modern

1015
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:42,280
Speaker 4: science and what we're learning from it is actually pointing

1016
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 4: back again to the truths of the founders. It's plenty, even.

1017
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 1: Meyer who's been on the show, and you've got to

1018
00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:48,920
Speaker 1: get the god hypothesis and read that.

1019
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 3: But yeah, there is a creator.

1020
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:55,440
Speaker 4: We are exceptional. You know, morality is actually real, and

1021
00:57:55,720 --> 00:57:58,080
Speaker 4: actually there's some really interesting evidence. We don't have time

1022
00:57:58,120 --> 00:57:59,439
Speaker 4: to go into it, which is great because the people

1023
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 4: haven't assent to get the Book of Human Equality. I mean,

1024
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:07,080
Speaker 4: the ideas of significant genetic differences between different racial ethnic

1025
00:58:07,120 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 4: groups is false. The idea that you know, some some

1026
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:17,439
Speaker 4: groups are biologically programmed to violence is false. And there's

1027
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:19,400
Speaker 4: a lot of research on this now, and I cite

1028
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:21,560
Speaker 4: a fair amount of it. And so if you're wanting

1029
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:24,040
Speaker 4: to know how science today is actually pointing back to

1030
00:58:24,120 --> 00:58:27,400
Speaker 4: the truths of our founding, got my book and reach

1031
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:29,320
Speaker 4: out the next to last chapter.

1032
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:31,520
Speaker 1: I love it and we're going to leave it there.

1033
00:58:31,800 --> 00:58:35,120
Speaker 1: The book is endowed by our creator, the Bible, Science

1034
00:58:35,240 --> 00:58:38,040
Speaker 1: and the Battle for America Soul, John g.

1035
00:58:38,280 --> 00:58:40,640
Speaker 3: West. Thank you. When is the book available?

1036
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:43,400
Speaker 4: It's available now, so okay.

1037
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:45,840
Speaker 3: Goody good yeah March twenty six.

1038
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:48,560
Speaker 1: I think, all right, Well, thank you for coming on

1039
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 1: the show, and guys, please go out and get or

1040
00:58:51,520 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 1: not go out, just go online and buy the book.

1041
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: And because as I said the intro, it's fascinating, there's

1042
00:58:58,200 --> 00:59:00,440
Speaker 1: so many things in there that I was I just

1043
00:59:00,600 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 1: was like, why didn't I ever know this?

1044
00:59:03,800 --> 00:59:05,560
Speaker 3: So get the book. Thank you John.

1045
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:07,240
Speaker 1: Gus for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

1046
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:09,160
Speaker 4: Thank you Beckett for a great conversation.

1047
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:14,640
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Beckett

1048
00:59:14,680 --> 00:59:19,920
Speaker 2: Cook Show. Your support makes this content possible. All episodes

1049
00:59:19,960 --> 00:59:23,080
Speaker 2: of The Beckett Cook Show are also available on YouTube.

1050
00:59:23,960 --> 00:59:27,120
Speaker 2: For more information about Beckett and his ministry, visit his

1051
00:59:27,200 --> 00:59:30,480
Speaker 2: website at Beckettcook dot com.

1052
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:32,480
Speaker 1: Thank you to the team at life Audio for their

1053
00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:35,480
Speaker 1: partnership with us. If you go to lifeaudio dot com

1054
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:39,600
Speaker 1: you will find more faith centered podcasts about prayer, Bible study, parenting,

1055
00:59:39,680 --> 00:59:40,000
Speaker 1: and more