Speaker 1: History is not about the past, or it's not just
Speaker 1: about the past. History is about us here and now,
Speaker 1: this room, the electricity in this room, the social relations
Speaker 1: we have with each other. Why some people are poor,
Speaker 1: why some people are rich, why some people have all
Speaker 1: the advantages, why some people don't. All of that is
Speaker 1: determined by history. The science of happiness, Appreciating modern painting,
Speaker 1: dilemmas of modern medicine, Abraham Lincoln at the Civil War,
Speaker 1: The artistic genius of Nicole Angelin. When intuition fed American
Speaker 1: The psychology of One Day University. The most acclaimed and
Speaker 1: popular professors from top colleges. They're best lectures, fascinating conversations. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn. So history is not just
Speaker 1: about the past. History is about now. And the more
Speaker 1: we understand history in that sense, the more it can
Speaker 1: actually work for us. History isn't just supposed to be
Speaker 1: a fun story. History is Edward T. O'Donnell and my
Speaker 1: title of my lectures, turning Points in American newspeople think
Speaker 1: about the the fight over the Confederate flag. You know,
Speaker 1: that's just not some abstract fight. That's a real issue
Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with what's going on
Speaker 1: right now in the United States. So often history is
Speaker 1: thought of as as dates and great leaders, usually men.
Speaker 1: You approach it a different way, Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that you can't get past dates. You have to
Speaker 1: know where you are in time and all in certain
Speaker 1: people like Andrew Carnegie, or Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
Speaker 1: They're all very very important people. But history probably understood,
Speaker 1: you know, it encompasses all of society, and so I
Speaker 1: always say that the people that make history are often
Speaker 1: great leaders, but it's also often legions of nameless, faceless
Speaker 1: people that want to push for change. So millions of
Speaker 1: enslaved people saying we do not want to be slaves anymore,
Speaker 1: millions of workers who say we don't want to work
Speaker 1: sixteen hours a day, millions of women who want the
Speaker 1: right to vote. They you know, we don't know most
Speaker 1: of their names, but they're the ones who organize and
Speaker 1: move history in a different direction. Some of your turning points,
Speaker 1: are they huge events that we all know? Are? Are
Speaker 1: they sometimes a little bit obscure? And then you explain
Speaker 1: why they're so important? Yeah, Well, I try to peg
Speaker 1: them to events. Often I'll start with the Declaration of independence,
Speaker 1: which is not an unknown event obviously. But what I
Speaker 1: do is, I would say it's incumbent upon me to
Speaker 1: make this tell you more than what you know. Not
Speaker 1: just that the Declaration Independence gains us our independence and
Speaker 1: it's this sacred document, but what does it actually means?
Speaker 1: We delve into that. People are often unaware exactly what
Speaker 1: the document actually was. But the declaration is essentially a
Speaker 1: declaration of war. And the first part that we love,
Speaker 1: you know, the declaration that you know defines all these
Speaker 1: great values that was sort of considered fluff. The key
Speaker 1: part was the last two thirds where we said we
Speaker 1: are breaking away from a great Britain for these reasons.
Speaker 1: He has, he has, he has. The king has done
Speaker 1: all these terrible things to us. He sent troops, he's
Speaker 1: tax us to death, he's dissolved our legislatures. He has,
Speaker 1: he has, he has. That's the key part that we
Speaker 1: need to explain to the world. But Jefferson does put
Speaker 1: that flowery philosophical treatise at the beginning, and that, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, we'll have legs. It's not this great declaration
Speaker 1: of human rights, but it becomes that and it has
Speaker 1: power decades and now centuries beyond its original creation and
Speaker 1: that so we delve into how this, you know, the
Speaker 1: how a document like that can have a life that nobody,
Speaker 1: including Jefferson himself, could have ever expected. Yeah, talk about that,
Speaker 1: because some of that declaration is a litany of somewhat
Speaker 1: grumpy complaints against the boss, right, George the third of England.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting. When the declaration was was issued
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy six, the more important part was the
Speaker 1: back end, the two thirds, where it just says he
Speaker 1: has tax us into starvation, he has sent armies to
Speaker 1: plunder us. Today it's just the opposite. Nobody can really remember,
Speaker 1: other than historians, the back two thirds about he has,
Speaker 1: he has, he has, and they focus primarily on, you know,
Speaker 1: we hold these truths to be self evident and all
Speaker 1: of those beautiful statements of human rights, of universal truths
Speaker 1: and so forth. What fires you up, what keeps you going?
Speaker 1: Why do you do this? Well? I think it has
Speaker 1: to do with the idea that I mean, I find
Speaker 1: history fascinating and interesting in and of itself, but I
Speaker 1: think history also has a way of helping us understand
Speaker 1: the world that we live in. If we look around
Speaker 1: us and think about what do we value in this country.
Speaker 1: We value our democracy, we value our democratic institutions. We
Speaker 1: value certain ideas about human rights and equal protection before
Speaker 1: the law and all that. You know, there's a long
Speaker 1: on list. That's just the beginning. And I always point
Speaker 1: out that these things, it's really history tells us these
Speaker 1: things did not fall from the sky. These things are
Speaker 1: not you know, chiseled on a gold tablet somewhere way
Speaker 1: back when. These are things that are the product of struggle.
Speaker 1: Every generation of Americans said to make their democracy and
Speaker 1: the republic what it is. So these you can't take
Speaker 1: these things for granted, And that prompts one to appreciate
Speaker 1: that struggle, but also to look around and say, what
Speaker 1: are the what are the compelling struggles right now? So
Speaker 1: unless us we're aware of our past, we can't build
Speaker 1: a better present. Right the past tells us that democracy
Speaker 1: requires work, requires attention, requires struggle. And if we get
Speaker 1: lulled into thinking that it's a kind of a wind
Speaker 1: up machine that was designed in the seventeen seventies and
Speaker 1: seventeen eighties and then just turned on and that we
Speaker 1: just live in this democracy, that is a dangerous not
Speaker 1: on it's false, but a really dangerous idea about how
Speaker 1: democracy works. Are there any surprising moments in these lectures
Speaker 1: that you've given for one day university? Absolutely? And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of what I'm doing is reminding people
Speaker 1: of stuff they've learned in the past, just sort of
Speaker 1: familiarizing them with things, and then also showing things they
Speaker 1: may not have gotten when they first encountered this history.
Speaker 1: That say, the Declaration of Independence, to see how powerful
Speaker 1: it is, way beyond seventeen seventy six that it has.
Speaker 1: This it's a document invoked over and over again by
Speaker 1: various groups. Here's Elizabeth Katy Stantond. She forms convenes the
Speaker 1: Women's Rights Convention eighteen forty eight Seneca Falls, New York.
Speaker 1: You know, takes the Declaration of Independence kind of heretical
Speaker 1: and rewrites it as a feminist manifesto and writes right
Speaker 1: at the very beginning that all men and women are
Speaker 1: created equal. And then of course labor parties take it
Speaker 1: and use it. You can buy a book of a
Speaker 1: hundred Declarations of Independence that are all rewritten in this manner.
Speaker 1: So this is the Workingmen's Party and Da da da dada,
Speaker 1: for the full benefit of their labor right. They change
Speaker 1: the words where they need the words changed. Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: and it's famous. I have a dream speech. And of course,
Speaker 1: how many of you've ever read the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 1: of Vietnam written by guy named Ho Chi Minh. It
Speaker 1: starts with these words all men are created equal, They
Speaker 1: are endowed by their creator with certain I mean this
Speaker 1: is a document that has global significance. You make a
Speaker 1: controversial argument that the cause of the Civil War was
Speaker 1: not states rights, it was slavery. Right, that's not controversial.
Speaker 1: It's controversy among people who don't really understand the thing.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that in a paternalistic way. If
Speaker 1: you took at was in American historians who studied the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and said what's the cause of the Civil War?
Speaker 1: Nine of them would say slavery was the cause of
Speaker 1: the Civil War. This when people say states rights, it
Speaker 1: drives historians crazy because we've been teaching this for decades now.
Speaker 1: It's in all of the books we write, it's in
Speaker 1: all the lectures we give, it's in all the presentations.
Speaker 1: It's about slavery, or if you want to get particularly
Speaker 1: say it is about states rights. It's about a single
Speaker 1: states right to own people as property. That's what it's
Speaker 1: fundamentally about. If I was a doctor and I was
Speaker 1: talking to a one day university or group and I said,
Speaker 1: you all know what to do when you get the
Speaker 1: flu right, and I turned to the audience and everybody
Speaker 1: says bleeding. You know, we've cut and bleed people. That's
Speaker 1: what that's that's that's the solution to it's It's the
Speaker 1: equivalent where I say to people, you know what the
Speaker 1: cause of the Civil War was, and they say states rights.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, that's oversimplified. And it's also a self
Speaker 1: serving story that we know. The reason that is a
Speaker 1: popular idea is that it was made popular after the
Speaker 1: Civil War by people who wanted to change the meaning
Speaker 1: of the Civil War and change what it was all about.
Speaker 1: So it's not as an accident that people say it.
Speaker 1: It's actually in a successful job done by people in
Speaker 1: the decades after the Civil War to changed the narrative.
Speaker 1: Another thing which is far from obvious and fascinating in
Speaker 1: your lecture is when you talk about America's attitude towards
Speaker 1: the military, which has changed hugely um or even in
Speaker 1: recent decades. Yeah, I think that's there is another good
Speaker 1: example of the surprises when you tell people. So you know,
Speaker 1: up until the nineteen fifties, it was absolutely understood that
Speaker 1: we had to have a tiny military. The Founding Fathers
Speaker 1: did not believe in a strong military. What did the
Speaker 1: Founding fathers believe in? Almost no military? Because they understood
Speaker 1: things very clearly. They said, looking at world history, how
Speaker 1: do you get a Caesar? Later on, how do you
Speaker 1: get a Napoleon? Their generals they have an army. And
Speaker 1: when you have a huge army, you have a huge
Speaker 1: base of power that is going to be abused. So
Speaker 1: in our Republican playbook, we always said small, small, small military,
Speaker 1: build it up, tear it down, build it up, tear
Speaker 1: it down, build it up. World War Two we begin
Speaker 1: tearing it down, the biggest war ever. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five years after the war, the Korean War begins,
Speaker 1: we re engage and we never stop. That's when we
Speaker 1: get two million soldiers and six hundred ships. That's that's
Speaker 1: only seven years ago. That's a new thing. And they
Speaker 1: looked back to Roman history that they had clear, vivid
Speaker 1: examples in their minds of that's what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And think about when George Washington, his his ideal that
Speaker 1: he followed was of Cincinnatis the citizen soldier. He was
Speaker 1: put down his plow, go off and fight a war,
Speaker 1: and immediately leave back to civilian life. And then he
Speaker 1: gets called into the presidency and he serves two terms
Speaker 1: and he says, I'm out of here because we can't have,
Speaker 1: you know, perpetual government by one person, particularly one person
Speaker 1: with the military background. What is the single biggest misconception
Speaker 1: that people have about American history or about a moment
Speaker 1: in American history which in their view is completely different
Speaker 1: from the reality. This is a big, big question. So
Speaker 1: I think probably the notion that the founders created something
Speaker 1: that was perfect and that it we just need to
Speaker 1: figure out what they had in mind. And that's a
Speaker 1: really comforting idea. Originalism is a really comforting, wonderful idea,
Speaker 1: but it's it's divorced from reality. The founders themselves always
Speaker 1: used My favorite expression in studying history, in American history
Speaker 1: is they always said this republican experiment. They say this
Speaker 1: over and over again. When you read the speeches of Jefferson,
Speaker 1: of Madison, of Lincoln, they keep saying this Republican experiment
Speaker 1: will rise or fall on the basis of this. You know,
Speaker 1: they invoke this idea, and but what do they mean
Speaker 1: by experiment? They mean it wasn't perfect. It was a
Speaker 1: It was a thing that's set in motion by brilliant
Speaker 1: but fallible people, knowing that it was not perfect and
Speaker 1: that it would have to be adjusted, and that it
Speaker 1: would move through time. You know, the founders could never
Speaker 1: conceive of the Industrial revolution, just to give you one example,
Speaker 1: and so that there's an understanding that through time we
Speaker 1: are going to have to make adjustments, have to figure
Speaker 1: out what is it? What does free speech mean in
Speaker 1: a in an era of mass media, which simply didn't
Speaker 1: exist in the in the founding period? What does the
Speaker 1: Second Amendment mean in an era of mass production of
Speaker 1: firearms and much more powerful firearms? What does you know?
Speaker 1: Freedom of assembly? What do all these things mean? Uh?
Speaker 1: In our you know, in the future. So the idea
Speaker 1: that the Founder has created something that was perfect and
Speaker 1: unchangeable and that all we need to do is figure
Speaker 1: out what that is. That's a great fallacy. When you're
Speaker 1: up on that stage firing people up, what's your favorite
Speaker 1: turning point to tell? Ah, that's a good question. The
Speaker 1: one that gets I think people scratching their head the most.
Speaker 1: Just when I talk about what I call the reformulation
Speaker 1: in the in the late nineteenth century, we see all
Speaker 1: the tremendous benefits of the Industrial Revolution, but we don't
Speaker 1: have any institutions and any ways of dealing with all
Speaker 1: the downside of it and all the turmoil that this
Speaker 1: is creating. So it's creating a lot of gold and
Speaker 1: a lot of wealth, and a lot of new technology,
Speaker 1: but it's also creating mass poverty and huge strikes and
Speaker 1: all kinds of problems and great concerns about the you know,
Speaker 1: the fate of the republic. And the founders didn't didn't
Speaker 1: give us a plan for it because they couldn't have
Speaker 1: even imagined you know, us steel. They couldn't have imagined
Speaker 1: John D. Rockefeller and these in this kind of world
Speaker 1: that they're building, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin. All their traditional notion
Speaker 1: of the way the politics worked was that power is
Speaker 1: the great threat to liberty. So that's why power is
Speaker 1: inherently evil. People possess it, they'll abuse it. The biggest
Speaker 1: power in the world in seventeen eighty is the state.
Speaker 1: Any government is always big so we as self conscious
Speaker 1: Republican citizens, will keep our state, our our governments small.
Speaker 1: That's why Jefferson says, the government that governs least governs best.
Speaker 1: That's the idea, right, it's a it's a it's not
Speaker 1: about low taxes. I mean, it is about that to
Speaker 1: some of you, But it's about power. Power is inherently dangerous,
Speaker 1: So we need to keep governments small so that we
Speaker 1: don't have tyranny. Well, in the progressive notion around nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: people are beginning to rethink this because where is the power?
Speaker 1: Power is still the number one threat to Republican government,
Speaker 1: So that part's true, But where is the power? The
Speaker 1: President United States? Is this big compared to John D. Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: And Rockefeller is not an elected official. Rockefeller is separate
Speaker 1: from democracy, separate from our Republican institutions. And so that's
Speaker 1: the essence of it saying power is a problem and
Speaker 1: we need to reign in that power to save liberty. Right, So,
Speaker 1: the state, which we've used to fear is actually now,
Speaker 1: you know, the lesser of two evils. We need to
Speaker 1: build up the state, build up the government to give
Speaker 1: it some powers to protect us, to protect against abuse,
Speaker 1: to protect and also to work on benefiting the common good.
Speaker 1: And so people in the progressive era, but as people
Speaker 1: in the Gilded Age, and these are labor leaders, these
Speaker 1: are intellectuals, these are politicians, and they're coming out from
Speaker 1: many different angles. But by the early twentieth century, there's
Speaker 1: an emerging consensus that the founders didn't give us ways
Speaker 1: of dealing this or specific ways, but they gave us
Speaker 1: the tools. They gave us our democracy, they gave us
Speaker 1: an amendment process, they gave us ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: what is most important. And the progressive air sees this
Speaker 1: great advance of policies that greatly enhanced the common good,
Speaker 1: greatly enhanced the well being of the average citizen. And
Speaker 1: they don't undo, they don't destroy industrial capitalism. They don't
Speaker 1: nationalize our steel industry, but they just rein it in
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, put up some guardrails so
Speaker 1: that the capitalist engine can roar and do all the
Speaker 1: things that does for us, but with some boundaries in
Speaker 1: some ways, which so that workers in a steel mill
Speaker 1: work eight to ten hours, not sixteen hours. They work
Speaker 1: and they earn a reasonable wage that means they can
Speaker 1: feed their family and not going to get rich. So
Speaker 1: there's ways in which we can do this while keeping
Speaker 1: the benefits of that kind of an economy, but also
Speaker 1: creating systems and creating institutions and practices that benefit the whole.
Speaker 1: We're living in a time of great change now, much
Speaker 1: of which has been brought about by the revolution in technology.
Speaker 1: I know your lecture is called the five turning Points,
Speaker 1: but do you feel there's a sixth unfolding right now? Well,
Speaker 1: when I do the five turning points, a fifth one
Speaker 1: is the invention of the person computer, the dawn of
Speaker 1: the digital age. So I do emphasize this idea that
Speaker 1: we are living in a dramatic turning point moment and
Speaker 1: we can't exactly figure out what it is, but it's
Speaker 1: clear by any measure the unleashing of digital technology beginning
Speaker 1: with the personal computer in the seventies, and what's that
Speaker 1: opened up, and how it's dramatically transformed our world in
Speaker 1: ways it's almost impossible to enumerate them. Your cell phones
Speaker 1: and computer, your your refrigerator is now a computer, your
Speaker 1: car has a computer. I mean it's hard to even imagine,
Speaker 1: hard to even see what that definition is. And so
Speaker 1: this digital revolution, not just the computer but then when
Speaker 1: you think about expensively out into the whole universe of
Speaker 1: digital technology, the Internet and all of that, when you
Speaker 1: start stitching all that together, this is a true revolution.
Speaker 1: Computer technology changes absolutely everything because it's in everything. It
Speaker 1: changes communications. If you have a children or grandchildren, you
Speaker 1: have a fourteen year old, how often does a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old talk on the phone. They don't talk on
Speaker 1: the phone. They think of talking on the phone as
Speaker 1: like writing on with a piece of chalk on a slate.
Speaker 1: They think. They literally will tell you it's weird. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say, Well, what are you going to
Speaker 1: meet up with Julie? I don't know. She hasn't answered
Speaker 1: my text. Well, you know, there's another button on that phone.
Speaker 1: You can just like push it and and Julie's voice
Speaker 1: will come out of the end of that thing, and um,
Speaker 1: you could say, speak to her, and then she can
Speaker 1: speak back to you. In like fourteen seconds, we can
Speaker 1: solve this whole thing. So it's changed the way we
Speaker 1: relate to each other. And and also hard to know
Speaker 1: what the impact is going to be fifty years from now,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna look back and say about it exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you and this is true of most
Speaker 1: breakthrough technologies. When the telegraph was was created back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties and then spread nationally, people said, this
Speaker 1: is great. We can get we can get crop prices
Speaker 1: and a little bit of news back and forth and
Speaker 1: low and behold it. You know, it dramatically transforms our
Speaker 1: economy and our way of understanding each other. It shrinks
Speaker 1: the country in our conception of ourselves. We can find
Speaker 1: out about outbreak of cholera in New Orleans in a
Speaker 1: in a matter of minute, and we can eventually send
Speaker 1: signals under the water of the Atlantic Ocean when we
Speaker 1: get a you know, a telegraph cable across there in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties. So it has, I mean one a
Speaker 1: great example of just to give you all human history,
Speaker 1: up to the invention of the telegraph, the fastest way
Speaker 1: to deliver a message was a galloping horse. That's true
Speaker 1: in the days of Alexander, it's two in the days
Speaker 1: of George Washington and everything in between. And then the
Speaker 1: along comes the telegraph and you can send something instantly,
Speaker 1: you know, through time. And if you think about the
Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve, we were trying to get stay
Speaker 1: out of war in eighteen twelve and finally decided that
Speaker 1: British depredations against our shipping meant we need to declare
Speaker 1: war against them, So we send a declaration of war
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic Ocean to them. They have already dispatched
Speaker 1: a ship with a list of concessions that they're going
Speaker 1: to make about scaling back their problem. So these two
Speaker 1: ships pass each other, one saying we're going to back off.
Speaker 1: You don't need to declare war. The other ship has
Speaker 1: already literally already sailed as far as that goes, saying
Speaker 1: we've declared war. Yeah, And at the back end of
Speaker 1: the War of eighteen twelve, the same thing happens. Dandrew
Speaker 1: Jackson wins the Battle of New Orleans after the war
Speaker 1: or is literally over, but he hasn't been notified that
Speaker 1: it's over. So it's an interesting thing to see how
Speaker 1: technology has impacts and implications way beyond what we think
Speaker 1: it's going to be useful for. So what do you
Speaker 1: think people get from a live lecture that they don't
Speaker 1: get perhaps by watching a video or reading a book
Speaker 1: or looking at a website. Well, I mean, certainly there's
Speaker 1: something about the live presentation that's different from others where
Speaker 1: they can just even how you use pauses, how you
Speaker 1: you leave people hanging, or you have ways of double
Speaker 1: reversing on something like if I'm talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties and the coming of the Civil War,
Speaker 1: and I say, you know what States writes the cause
Speaker 1: of the Civil War, and I've always causes a bit
Speaker 1: of a you know, ruffle in the crowd, and I say,
Speaker 1: don't answer that, because you're not gonna upset me. And
Speaker 1: ultimately we point out that, you know, the Fugitive Slave
Speaker 1: Act of eighteen fifty was the single greatest invocation of
Speaker 1: federal power over state power to enforced slavery, to uphold
Speaker 1: and protect slavery, and saying, so Southerners, you know, like
Speaker 1: states rights, but they only liked it some of the time.
Speaker 1: They liked federal power a lot of the time when
Speaker 1: it served their interests. So ways you can kind of
Speaker 1: you know, you always you literally see people almost scratching
Speaker 1: their head, you know, when they when they say, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I hadn't I hadn't thought of that. You know,
Speaker 1: what do you hope that people will take away as
Speaker 1: a result of being at your lecture? A lot of
Speaker 1: things I think the operative thing is that history isn't
Speaker 1: just some interesting stuff from the past, interesting people, interesting events,
Speaker 1: properly understood and properly taught. You know, the power of
Speaker 1: history gives us insights into how we can understand our
Speaker 1: own problems in our own world. History doesn't give us
Speaker 1: lessons per se or a script to follow, but it
Speaker 1: does tell us how we got to where we are.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that famous quotation by James Baldwin that
Speaker 1: you know, history isn't merely about the past. It's actually
Speaker 1: the great force of history is that it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's with us now. We all carry history with us,
Speaker 1: and so with that insight, history is incredibly beneficial. It
Speaker 1: is interesting, it's fun to read about battles and read
Speaker 1: about famous people, but it's also has to have that
Speaker 1: that element that speaks to us now. There are many people,
Speaker 1: and I know a few of them, who think we're screwed,
Speaker 1: who think that America is really in a rough point
Speaker 1: of its history right now. One of the lessons I
Speaker 1: took away from your lecture was there have been many
Speaker 1: other perilous moments when people may have felt in similar
Speaker 1: ways to today. Well, I agree. In one of my
Speaker 1: little maxims is that history keeps you sane because everybody
Speaker 1: in all kinds of different areas is always thinking, oh that,
Speaker 1: you know, we're losing our republican soul. Where you know
Speaker 1: kids today and you know, and they're really upset about
Speaker 1: all the things that are happening in their in their society,
Speaker 1: and it's really beneficial to understand to no history, because
Speaker 1: history tells you that people in nineteen seventy thought the
Speaker 1: country was absolutely collapsing. People in the three absolutely convinced
Speaker 1: that the country was collapsing before their very eyes. And
Speaker 1: that was during the depression, during the Great Depression. And
Speaker 1: people in eighteen sixty two said, not only none, as
Speaker 1: the country metaphorically falling apart, it is literally falling apart
Speaker 1: in a civil war that is going to destroy the
Speaker 1: lives of almost a uh, you know, a million people
Speaker 1: and untold millions in wealth and so forth. But Americans
Speaker 1: have found ways to, whether you know, push through those
Speaker 1: problems and devise solutions to them or or things that
Speaker 1: ameliorate those problems. So history keeps you saying, because you
Speaker 1: realize right that times are tough, but I have no choice.
Speaker 1: I'm living in this era. My children are they going
Speaker 1: to live in this era, my grandchildren gonna live in
Speaker 1: this country. I need to we need to find ways
Speaker 1: to ameliorate and or remedy the problems that that plague us,
Speaker 1: just like people have done in the past against great odds.
Speaker 1: Edward O'Donnell, thanks very much. All right, thank you, it's
Speaker 1: my pleasure. Thanks for listening. Sign up on our website
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