Speaker 1: So our next guest started calling into the radio show,
Speaker 1: and he was practically a child, and we called him
Speaker 1: Tim the Lawyer, and he was a lawyer, and he
Speaker 1: would call in and correct us when we were wrong,
Speaker 1: or helping us out when we didn't understand something like that.
Speaker 1: And he was a fan favorite. And that was many,
Speaker 1: many years ago. And his more grown up name is
Speaker 1: full name is Tim Sandifer. He's actually the vice president
Speaker 1: of legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute. He's an adjunct
Speaker 1: scholar whatever that is, with the Cato Institute. And he
Speaker 1: writes books, including this new book Proclaiming Liberty John Adams,
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence by Timothy Sandefer.
Speaker 1: I hold a signed copy in my hand. I started
Speaker 1: listening to it last week. I got the audio version.
Speaker 2: Tim. Welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having this old, worn out old man on
Speaker 3: your show. Jack.
Speaker 2: How old were you when you started calling in? You
Speaker 2: had to be young.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, well it must have been twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: years ago or something like that, so I was in
Speaker 3: my mid to late twenties.
Speaker 1: Cool, I'm listening to your book. Do you consider listening
Speaker 1: to books counting as reading it.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, definitely, Otherwise I would have to say that
Speaker 3: I'd read half as many books as I actually have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know some people don't count it that way.
Speaker 1: I actually feel like I retain information better hearing it
Speaker 1: than reading it. I know different people's brains are different
Speaker 1: on that, but I started listening.
Speaker 3: To different kinds of books too, you know, long, long
Speaker 3: fiction books like the great classics like Victor Hugo or
Speaker 3: Charles Dickens. I would probably never get through those on paper.
Speaker 3: I much prefer and they were actually written with the
Speaker 3: intention to be read out loud when they were originally
Speaker 3: published in the nineteenth century, so I think there's nothing
Speaker 3: wrong with that. However, if you listen to the audio
Speaker 3: of my book, you're missing out on one hundred pages
Speaker 3: of some of the finest footnotes.
Speaker 1: Not to get distracted, but I'm halfway through Ulysses for
Speaker 1: the second time.
Speaker 2: Oh poor thing. It's awesome. It's my favorite thing I
Speaker 2: ever read.
Speaker 3: Why would you do that to yourself?
Speaker 1: It took my whole life to get to where I
Speaker 1: could read it, though I started it like ten times
Speaker 1: throughout my life and gotten like a chapter in and thought,
Speaker 1: this is the ridiculous and a wasted time. Somehow I
Speaker 1: reached the point by like training my brain through harder
Speaker 1: and harder literature that I now can fully enjoy it.
Speaker 2: And it's the greatest thing ever. Anyway, I don't want
Speaker 2: to get off on that.
Speaker 1: So coming up on July the fourth, it will be
Speaker 1: the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of you know, the
Speaker 1: signing of the Declaration.
Speaker 2: No, not the we signed it on January.
Speaker 1: We voted for it on July second, because I know
Speaker 1: John Adams thought that would be the date that would
Speaker 1: be remembered throughout history. They voted for independence on July
Speaker 1: the second, seventeen seventy six. They signed it on the
Speaker 1: fourth of July. You've got this book out this year,
Speaker 1: in this year where we're all taking a look at
Speaker 1: the founding proclaimed proclaiming liberty.
Speaker 2: What's it all about? Tim?
Speaker 3: I wanted to tell the story of the origins of
Speaker 3: the Declaration of Independence, and that includes a lot includes
Speaker 3: a lot of things that are frequently left out. For example,
Speaker 3: in the seventeenth century in colonial America, there was a
Speaker 3: rebellion against Great Britain that a lot of people don't
Speaker 3: talk about. One hundred years before the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 3: Britain went through or England at the time went through
Speaker 3: a civil war, and that civil war had effects in
Speaker 3: colonial America, and in fact, the King of England created
Speaker 3: a dictatorship in the New England States and put a
Speaker 3: single dictator named Edward Andros in charge of what he
Speaker 3: called the Dominion of New England, who imposed taxes without
Speaker 3: legislative consent and all this sort of thing, and Massachusetts
Speaker 3: settlers rose up and overthrew him, and people don't know
Speaker 3: about that story. I also wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1: I don't know that story, and I've read a lot
Speaker 1: of founding stuff, so that's really interesting.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to talk about what specific things Parliament
Speaker 3: was doing to the Americans that take them off. I
Speaker 3: wanted to go through the declaration claused by clause and
Speaker 3: say what each of these grievances specifically refers to, because
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people don't know when they
Speaker 3: read the declaration what exactly is being discussed. When the
Speaker 3: declaration says like he has refused his assent to laws
Speaker 3: that are wholesome and necessary, what laws were they talk?
Speaker 3: So I go through each of them and talk about
Speaker 3: that and I want to put the whole story in
Speaker 3: a narrative story, and in telling it not like facts
Speaker 3: and dates, but telling like about Jefferson and Adams and
Speaker 3: their friendship and how they grew together through the summer
Speaker 3: of seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 2: So that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I wish I said earlier on if you heard me
Speaker 1: say this, I wish I'd have had you as my
Speaker 1: eighth grade history teacher, or any migrates. It's amazing how
Speaker 1: many teachers, you know, and I you know you're doing
Speaker 1: your best, can take such an exciting story and make
Speaker 1: it so dry. Yeah, because the whole founding story, it's
Speaker 1: really a miracle that it turned out the way it did,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 3: It really is. There are so many moments when things
Speaker 3: could have all gone wrong, and just almost by accident
Speaker 3: or by because you know, the slowness of communications back
Speaker 3: then was a big factor. So for example, you know,
Speaker 3: by the time the British finally got around to sending
Speaker 3: a commission to negotiate with the American colonist, that commission
Speaker 3: did not arrive until ten days after independence had already
Speaker 3: been declared, And so all these little things that could
Speaker 3: have changed the outcome that just didn't. It's really remarkable
Speaker 3: when you go through that list. Yeah, it is unfortunate
Speaker 3: that history teachers sometimes make the story boring, which is
Speaker 3: really remarkable because it's such an exciting story. And I
Speaker 3: was very lucky that my history teachers, for the most part,
Speaker 3: really were good about talking about these things in a
Speaker 3: way that really made you think, well, what I have
Speaker 3: done if I had lived back then? And I think
Speaker 3: that's really the key to understanding and appreciating this history.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's a good way to look at it. Man,
Speaker 1: there's so many different directions I could go with this.
Speaker 1: I know you're such a big fan of the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence. Where does it rank as our founding documents?
Speaker 3: Well, that is one of the arguments I make in
Speaker 3: the book. So if you ask most lawyers today, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: most lawyers would say that the Declaration of Independence really
Speaker 3: isn't a law.
Speaker 2: In fact, Justice.
Speaker 3: Barrett, when she was going through a confirmation hearings, was
Speaker 3: directly asked about this and she said, the Declaration of
Speaker 3: Independence is not law, and that's completely wrong. Of course,
Speaker 3: the Declaration of Independence's law. It's part of our constitutional documents.
Speaker 3: There are four of what they call organic laws of
Speaker 3: the United States. That's the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution,
Speaker 3: the Northwest Ordinance, which organized the territories in the Northwest
Speaker 3: United States, and the Declaration of Independence. And I think
Speaker 3: it's important for lawyers particularly and judges to appreciate that
Speaker 3: the Declaration isn't just a statement of rhetoric. It creates
Speaker 3: a rule about how American government ought to operate, and
Speaker 3: that is to respect the rights of life, liberty, and
Speaker 3: the pursuit of happiness. And the classical liberal political philosophy
Speaker 3: that informed the writing of the Constitution. And unfortunately, lots
Speaker 3: of lawyers and judges today shrug at that, and they
Speaker 3: don't care about those principles, or they don't think that
Speaker 3: they're binding, or they think that they're just matters of opinion.
Speaker 3: It's not a matter of opinion. It is a fact
Speaker 3: of the war. That all men are created equal, that
Speaker 3: they are endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 3: These are not just statements. These are as true as
Speaker 3: the idea that two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule
Speaker 3: of oxygen I mean atom makes a molecule of water
Speaker 3: absolutely a verifiable fact about existence.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get off on why some of
Speaker 1: those scholars or teachers might want to downgrade the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence because they want to because they're neo Marxist
Speaker 1: who want to destroy the country. Won't get off on
Speaker 1: that does. What did the Founders mean by pursuit of happiness?
Speaker 3: Well, they meant a lot of different things, but the
Speaker 3: most important thing that's often neglected today is economic freedom.
Speaker 3: The Founders, by pursuit of happiness, they meant your right
Speaker 3: to put your skills and knowledge to work, to provide
Speaker 3: for yourself and your family, and to build up as
Speaker 3: fortune if you want to, to care for your economic circumstances.
Speaker 3: They understood that a lot of people came to America
Speaker 3: with nothing to their name. A lot of colonists had
Speaker 3: arrived here with nothing, and they had put their skills
Speaker 3: to work and built up businesses to provide for themselves
Speaker 3: and their families or farms or whatever. That's the foremost
Speaker 3: thing that Thomas Jefferson means when he uses that phrase
Speaker 3: pursuit of happiness. A month before the Declaration of in attendance,
Speaker 3: the Virginia Declaration of Rights had been published, the very
Speaker 3: first bill of rights in the world. And it says
Speaker 3: every person has a right to pursue and obtain happiness
Speaker 3: and safety to acquire property for that purpose, and that's
Speaker 3: what they're referring to. Unfortunately, a lot of pseudo scholars say, well,
Speaker 3: the Founders didn't believe in property, that's why they took
Speaker 3: out the word property and said pursuit of happiness instead.
Speaker 2: That's nonsense.
Speaker 3: Of course, the Founders believed in the essential importance of
Speaker 3: property rights. But the pursuit of happiness is how people
Speaker 3: who don't have property acquire it, right, It's freedom of opportunity.
Speaker 3: That's what they meant by pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1: That's I want to talk about that specifically. First, I
Speaker 1: got to tell you about Simply Safe. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with Tim. Simply Safe is it's right there in the name,
Speaker 1: simply Safe. It's simple to set up, it's a home
Speaker 1: protection system. It's a security system. It's simple to order,
Speaker 1: it's simple to set up, and it's simple to use.
Speaker 1: And all those things need to happen for you to
Speaker 1: actually have a security system that you're going to use
Speaker 1: a your home, because I don't know if you've had
Speaker 1: one or seen them before that they're so complicated you
Speaker 1: just never go around to or they always went off
Speaker 1: accidentally because of this or that. Simply Safe it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: You go to the website, you set it up, you
Speaker 1: customize it for your home. You ordered, it gets there fast,
Speaker 1: could take thirty minutes to set up like it did
Speaker 1: for me, the sensors and the cameras and all the
Speaker 1: different sort of stuff. If you need help, they've got
Speaker 1: help available to set the thing up. Be can set
Speaker 1: it up on your own, and then you've got this
Speaker 1: amazing protection that five million people like me use and
Speaker 1: there are no contracts or anything like that. It's not
Speaker 1: that expensive. They earn your business every single day, and
Speaker 1: you'll keep using it like I did. We trust simply
Speaker 1: say our listeners will get fifty percent off a new
Speaker 1: system right now, and you sign up for propression professional
Speaker 1: monitoring and your first month is free, by the way,
Speaker 1: by visiting simply safe dot com slash armstrong. That's half
Speaker 1: off at simply safe dot com slash armstrong. There's no
Speaker 1: safe like simply Safe. The whole pursuit of happiness thing
Speaker 1: and uh equal opportunity? What where were the founders on
Speaker 1: equal outcomes? Which seems to be such you know, a
Speaker 1: big thing in modern America that there are if there
Speaker 1: are people that have more than others, then clearly we've
Speaker 1: got some sort of systemic problem.
Speaker 3: They were very firmly against that idea. You know, it's
Speaker 3: funny that this idea gets floated around today as if
Speaker 3: it's some new modern idea that nobody's ever thought of before.
Speaker 3: But the Founders are very familiar with this idea. Plato
Speaker 3: had written about it thousands of your years before. And
Speaker 3: the Founders Founding fathers sounded disgusting and the and they
Speaker 3: and very dangerous. You know, if you if you redistribute
Speaker 3: property rights because you think that you're going to make
Speaker 3: everybody everybody else's friend, the result is actually going to
Speaker 3: be disaster. Nobody's going to care for their property. People
Speaker 3: are not going to put their efforts, their best efforts
Speaker 3: into their work, and they're going to resort to politics,
Speaker 3: which is to say, coercion instead of negotiation and bargaining
Speaker 3: and exchange. So Jefferson it believed that there were certain
Speaker 3: existing laws about private property at the time that were
Speaker 3: obstructions to economic freedom, and he wanted to get rid
Speaker 3: of those. And so sometimes you'll read things that they
Speaker 3: write about how it's important to create better opportunity for
Speaker 3: the poor and things, but that was how they wanted
Speaker 3: to do it. They wanted to get the roadblocks out
Speaker 3: of the way. But the idea of equal outcomes, they
Speaker 3: were very familiar with it, and they rejected it as
Speaker 3: contrary to the fundamental rights they were fighting for. The
Speaker 3: right to pursue happiness means that if I go out
Speaker 3: and I work hard and I develop a fortune, or
Speaker 3: if my father goes out and works hard leaves me
Speaker 3: a fortune, then I have the right to those things.
Speaker 3: Nobody has the right to take them away. You know.
Speaker 3: The other day, what's their name? That socialist congressman.
Speaker 2: From New York?
Speaker 3: His name, I can never remember.
Speaker 2: Aoc she was saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was like, well, you can't earn a billion dollars,
Speaker 3: and Tim popples to earn a billion dollars with Well,
Speaker 3: I didn't earn my lungs and my liver and my
Speaker 3: heart either, But they belong to me, and you're sure
Speaker 3: as hell better not think that you have a right
Speaker 3: to them because you need them or something. Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Of course, not their mine, because I didn't hurt anybody
Speaker 3: to acquire them, and so that was the view of
Speaker 3: the Founding Fathers. As long as you didn't commit a
Speaker 3: crime or something, then that property is yours and nobody
Speaker 3: has the right to take it from you, and if
Speaker 3: they try to, you're setting the rules up for violent
Speaker 3: civil war.
Speaker 2: The book is Proclaiming Liberty.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about this from Tim
Speaker 1: sand for Tim can you stick around for a while, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I got a question I've been wanting to ask
Speaker 1: you about this, all this kind of stuff and a
Speaker 1: few other things that will fit in with the news
Speaker 1: of the day around this issue and our Founding Fathers.
Speaker 2: All on the way. Stay right here.
Speaker 1: Hey, I downloaded the audio version of Proclaiming Liberty. Maybe
Speaker 1: you want to get the paper version if that's what
Speaker 1: you're into, uh, or you read done Ken Kindle or
Speaker 1: whatever you do. Proclaiming Liberty by our friend Timothy sand
Speaker 1: for John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 1: Tim is joining us today. So, Tim, I was talking
Speaker 1: to a super smart friend of mine years ago and
Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff like we are, and I
Speaker 1: remember we were having the classic conversation of if the
Speaker 1: founders were you know, if you dug them up and
Speaker 1: could re animated Mursa and they were alive today, what
Speaker 1: would they have to say? And his thought was he
Speaker 1: thinks the first thing they would say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it worked.
Speaker 2: What do you think. Yeah, well, that's not a bad answer.
Speaker 3: Jefferson I don't think would have said that. Jefferson was
Speaker 3: confident that it would work, and he believed in uh,
Speaker 3: he had confidence in change. He thought people would go
Speaker 3: wrong and make a lot of mistakes, but that eventually
Speaker 3: they would realize their errors, and that there was really
Speaker 3: no better option than to trust the people of the
Speaker 3: country to run the country themselves, because you can't come
Speaker 3: up with a system that is going to protect the
Speaker 3: people from themselves. That's a futile undertaking. John Adams he
Speaker 3: was a little bit more cynical about things, and he
Speaker 3: was very worried that certain forces would undermine the American
Speaker 3: constitutional system. And you know, it's so impossible to really
Speaker 3: compare their vision with hours because there's been so much
Speaker 3: change that it's like there's a old saying the past
Speaker 3: is another country, and so that's really the way to
Speaker 3: think about it. However, I do think they would be
Speaker 3: The one thing that they feared most of all is
Speaker 3: that Americans would get so rich and so comfortable that
Speaker 3: they would care, oh, where you're going to seek to
Speaker 3: care about the principles that that underlie the system, right,
Speaker 3: And that they would care more about their next fried
Speaker 3: chicken meal than about whether or not Iran gets a
Speaker 3: nuclear weapon. That you know, that sort of thing was
Speaker 3: really concerned them because that's what had destroyed Rome, right,
Speaker 3: and they were afraid that something like that would happen here.
Speaker 1: Well, that seems to ring true. Does it their next
Speaker 1: next Netflix special or whatever? I was watching the President
Speaker 1: meeting with Chi yesterday in Tianaman Square there in front
Speaker 1: of the Great Hall, and they.
Speaker 2: Got giant portrait of Mao up there.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact that the doesn't get more remarked
Speaker 1: upon to me is amazing. If if our experiment doesn't
Speaker 1: continue to work, the whole world could end up like
Speaker 1: communist China so easily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no there's nothing. We have been given, no
Speaker 3: guarantees that the civilizations of Egypt and Rome were not
Speaker 3: also given.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's absolutely amazing, And that's why I think books
Speaker 1: like yours proclaiming liberty are so important. I know, Fourth
Speaker 1: of July is one of your favorite holidays. Are you
Speaker 1: enjoying taking in and all the stuff leading up to it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: My wife and I have this little tradition where we
Speaker 3: spend the July fourth in a different state every year,
Speaker 3: and so this state, we're gonna spend the whole week
Speaker 3: in Charlottesville, in Thomas cools hometown and hang out with
Speaker 3: mister Jefferson himself.
Speaker 2: Jefferson your favorite founding father.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, Jefferson is, with all due respect to my wife,
Speaker 3: my favorite person who has ever lived in history. And
Speaker 3: told I said this in front of her a while back,
Speaker 3: and she smiled and nodded and said me too.
Speaker 2: So wow, well, and that's why you toured together.
Speaker 1: Right of course to me too, I like him better
Speaker 1: than you also, so we're even. That is fantastic. That
Speaker 1: is a funny note and a great way to end.
Speaker 1: That's really great, Tim Sanderfer. The book is proclaiming liberty.
Speaker 1: You can listen to it, you can read it in paper,
Speaker 1: you can read it on kindle, or however you do it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Tim, appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2: Thank you Jack. That is really funny.
Speaker 1: You get two lawyers who are super into personal freedom
Speaker 1: and property rights and all that sort of stuff, and
Speaker 1: they each look at each other's eyes and say, my
Speaker 1: favorite person who's ever lived is Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 2: Me too. That is great.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty