Episode 54 - The Impetus Behind America's Declaration of Independence

In this episode we delve into an inspiring and fascinating thesis put forward by political historian Eli Merritt in his book “Disunion Among Ourselves” that the primary impetus in crafting and fighting for the American Declaration of Independence was to forge a lasting unity between the thirteen colonies. Although they were riven by deep division, distrust, prejudice and polarization, the delegates at the Continental Congress consciously and repeatedly chose to compromise and even sacrifice their own colony’s interest for the sake of the larger common good. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude not only for building an American nation on a strong foundation of unity but also for showing us the paths we can take to extricate ourselves from the current quagmires of national, regional and international polarization that pervade our world.

Transcript

Sovaida 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Reimagining Our World. It's nice to be back again. As we celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence, it's worth reflecting on some little-understood truths underpinning the history of this country. These are truths that are not widely known, and in fact, they've been obscured by the dust of history. I firmly believe that by clearing the dust off of some of these truths and exposing them to the light of day, we will find ourselves firstly infused with hope and the belief that we can emerge out of this very difficult period in which we find ourselves, a period of deep polarization and a period of hopelessness, of distrust, distrust of government, distrust of institutions, distrust of each other, and so on. And the second thing that we will find, is that we already have a viable roadmap for how to get out of the mire in which we find ourselves. So in some sense, we have created breadcrumbs along the way. We've done this before. We've managed to extricate ourselves from a similar quagmire in the past, and we can certainly do it again. So the conversation today, the thing that I would like to explore with you, is an amazing idea that I was exposed to just a few months ago when I went to listen to a talk by a gentleman by the name of Eli Merritt, who is a political historian and who has recently written a book called Disunion Among Ourselves. I'll put it here for you to see. The big idea that his book talks about that I was surprised by but excited about and wanted to share with you is that contrary to the common belief that the American colonies, the 13 original colonies, formed a heterogeneous society which basically made it easy for them to unite, the truth is that from the very beginning, our country was riven by deep polarization and prejudices of all kinds. We'll talk a little bit about these in a minute. There were lots of regional centrifugal forces that were pulling us apart. There was entrenched distrust. And the threat of fragmentation was present right from the beginning and definitely right through the entire nine years of the American Revolution leading to independence. What is really interesting is that in the face of this deep polarization, despite it, what our Founding Fathers consciously chose to do was to repeatedly make compromises and sacrifices for the common good. They came to this realization over and over and over again that what was important was unity, and that in order to maintain unity, they needed to be willing to make sacrifices and compromises. Why? In order to forge an unbreakable bond and create a perpetual union. They didn't want a temporary union that was going to fall apart in a few years or a few decades. They knew that for that to happen, it needed to be rooted in, grounded in unity. So unity was the watchword. I find that idea really fascinating. I have never heard of this idea before. We certainly were not taught it in history. But Merritt has gone and dug into the records and done his own research, and on the basis of the historical evidence, this is the big idea that he's presented, and I find it extremely compelling. And it is heartening and instructive and empowering and elevating. And so, since we're willing to swallow so many ideas that have the opposite effect, why not try something that actually could get us somewhere positive? Let's take a look at some of the underpinnings of this idea. There were many fears when the representatives of these 13 colonies came together in 1774. One of the fears was that deep prejudices and differences and the distrust and polarization that existed would eventually tear this country apart or tear the colonies apart. When you read the works of people like John Adams, you see that the differences were many and varied. There was a difference in language, there was a difference in culture, in religion, in forms of government, in ideas, in views, in economy, in maritime rights and land rights. I mean, you name it, there were very wide differences and really gulfs between the various viewpoints. The various parts of the country or the 13 colonies deeply distrusted each other. They were jealous of each other. They were very polarized. And to top it all off, they each really cherished their own commercial and land freedoms and their own independence. So you've got 13 colonies, each cherishing their independence. Now, one of the things I'd love for you to tuck in the back of your minds as we have today's conversation is, think of the world as though it were a series of colonies, all these different imagined, uh, the countries of the world as states, and imagine the arguments that we make about why we can't come together in unity because we're so different and because we mistrust each other and because we are varied in our economies and our languages and our viewpoints. Religions, same thing. So let's see what happened here. What can we learn from the American experience? What is interesting is that this fear that we were going to basically be blown apart because of these differences was so deep that most of the folks in the colonies believed that a revolution for independence was just not on. It was going to be a bad thing, because they were convinced that it would lead to three republics, not one: northern, middle, and southern. So northern states, particularly northeastern states, the middle states like Pennsylvania, and the southern states. So this deep fear of fragmentation led to a second fear that if we were to reach for independence, that the regional and sectional differences would inexorably lead us into a civil war, and this would be a terribly, terribly bad thing It was because of these fears that independence was to be avoided at all costs, that the 50-odd delegates representing the 13 colonies who gathered together in Philadelphia in the First Continental Congress, that we've all heard about, in 1774, were not seeking ways to gain independence, but rather looking for strategies to repeal four oppressive acts that the mother country, Great Britain, had, in their view, unfairly imposed on them. So the fears of civil war: there were lots of reasons why these fears were understandable because there were lots of potential triggers for a civil war. Disputed state boundaries, where do my boundaries end and where do yours begin? Again, same as in the international arena, right? Ukraine and Russia, as an example. The fear that land and property would be grabbed from the wealthy and put into the hands of those who did not have land. Arguments over commerce. There was massive undivided war debt. There was the question of taxation. Do you tax? How do you tax the various colonies? The right of soil, as they called it. There was a lot of unsettled western territory stretching from the top of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. Who was going to have the right over those lands? We'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Should new states be allowed to be formed, like Vermont, that wanted to be established as its own independent territory. There was a fear of the ramifications of slavery and what would happen if the slaves made common cause with those who wanted to free them and, basically, undermine the economy of the Southern states. There was religious diversity and religious divisiveness, and it was extremely toxic. We're now starting to feel some of it today with hints of the rise of Christian nationalism in this country. But it was a very entrenched problem in those days. Huge diversity in cultures, educations, manners, ways of being and interests, different mindsets, and huge clash of economic interests. Now, the third fear was that if we entered into a civil war, that would in turn invite external threats by essentially making foreign powers think, "Oh, the Americans are weak now. Now's the time to come in." Either through invitation, because each of the three republics that they feared would be created would reach out to different European powers and say, "Hey, will you come support us?" And we would then be drawn into essentially an international war. So that was a really deep fear. And another fear was that at the very least, if we entered into a civil war, external powers like France, Spain, and Russia would see that we were weak, and they would be very tempted to come and try to colonize us. And so we would end up trading one colonizer, namely the Great Britain, for potentially a different colonizer. There was also a fear that from the north, we would have the Canadians and the American Indians engage in incursions and come and take over bits and pieces of the land. So as you can see, there was a lot of fear in the air. And then a fourth deep fear was that slaves would make common cause with those who would liberate them. So they would make common cause with the northerners who believed in liberating slaves and this would not redound to the benefit of the South. At the time, there were about 430,000, African American souls held in bondage in the southern states. And then there was the, a whole 'nother problem that ending slavery, they believed, would itself lead to disunion because of the differing economic interests. There were other fears. We're not going to get into all of them in detail, but one interesting one is that people in the South thought that people in the North had these newfangled ideas of governance, this idea of pure democracy, and they were not so keen on it. They believed that government should be a balanced business, balanced between equal parts monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. It was a meld, and they didn't like this idea of pure democracy. They were very suspicious of it. So it's an interesting thing, with the benefit of hindsight, to see the kinds of fears that people had and what actually came to pass. It's instructive because we, too, have our fears today. We fear all these things that may happen in the future, and we stop ourselves sometimes from acting when if we were to take action that is principled and well-intentioned, we may find ourselves very surprised. Another fear was that northerners were religious bigots. That's how the southerners viewed the northerners: as religious bigots who were intent on imposing their religion on the rest of the country. Isn't that interesting This is not a, a new challenge that we have, and we're starting to have this challenge again today with the rise of Christian nationalism on the right. Now given all these fears, and that independence was not at all a given, especially since so many states really didn't want independence, 'cause they were sure it would lead to all this cascade of problems, civil war, international war, colonization, slaves being freed and upsetting the apple cart, and so on and so forth. Religious bigotry and democracy being imposed on us. Given all these fears, the fact that we arrived at a Declaration of Independence, that we fought for it and we forged it, and this country united around it, was really a hard-won compromise, and this is a, a point that Eli Merritt makes in his book. I love the way he puts it. He says it was more in the nature of a shotgun wedding, rather than something that we just all went towards with joy and with a certain amount of inevitability. Now, one of the things I wanted to highlight is that there were two prevalent and competing views of independence at this time. One group of people said, "Hey, we're not mature enough, essentially, and we need another 40 to 50 years before we should gain independence. So let's take the 40 to 50 years to get ready, get prepared, grow up, emerge from collective adolescence." The other view said, "No. Gosh, if not now, then when? The time is now." This view was represented by John Adams, who said, "Look, we need to look reality in the face. Yes, we have dissimilarities. Yes, we have lots of differences. But now's the time to figure out how to transcend them, how to harmonize the tensions." And he thought that waiting and thinking that Great Britain would come to her senses and sue for peace was the stuff of wishful thinking and actual cowardice. The other view, I just want to read to you what somebody who had this view, a Mr. Dickinson, has to say. Basically, as he's looking at this idea of independence, he says, "It presents to me an ocean perpetually tempestuous, without bottom and without shore." He's not melodramatic. "If there are in it any islands or spots of terra firma, they are too distant and too small to be discovered by my weak sight. I cannot perceive a speck where a dove might pick up any green leaf." So it's on this basis, this fear, this, "Oh my God! We're entering into this shoreless ocean that's tempestuous. Please, no, let's not go for independence!" that he concludes we need 40 to 50 years to wait. Why do I highlight this? Because this is a lesson for us today. It's something for us to be aware of. There are those of us who believe that we should take an incremental approach towards reforms, whether it's reforms at the national level, whether it's reforms in global governance. And then there are others of us who believe that it's time to rip the Band-Aid off, that humanity needs to take the next inevitable step towards its collective maturity by forming a system of global governance that is fit for purpose for humanity in its age of maturity. That we are interconnected. That we are basically one human race. That many of our challenges are collective in nature. And therefore that we need collective solutions to be crafted by collective decision-making institutions. That we need a world legislature that can pass binding laws. We look at the unending wars in Iran right now, Iran and the United States, at Ukraine and Russia, in the DRC, in many parts of the world, in Sudan, and we recognize that we need a system of collective security that is an internationally agreed-upon system based on internationally agreed-upon principles and rules, and that is applied methodically, and that is capable of enforcement. So we are facing the same set of issues, but we're now at a different point in our growth. We're facing the issues in America as Americans. What kind of country do we want to be? What sort of mindset do we want to have about our oneness, and therefore the need to do whatever it takes to forge unity, including making necessary compromises and sacrifices? And then for the international community, what sort of world do we want to live in? And what is it going to take? And do we have the courage to do what it takes to get there? And so we can learn a lot from what the early Americans did Okay, we talked about the fact that the founding fathers consciously and mindfully chose to make decisions based on compromise and sacrifice of their own, their states' or colonies' interests in the interests of the larger whole. Let's look at some concrete examples. What are we talking about? Okay, so the first compromise was based on a recognition that if we didn't get the Southern colonies on board, Virginia at the time was the largest Southern state. It was the flagship state. It was powerful, had influence. It was wealthy. And the founders recognized that they needed to get Virginia first on side, and then she would then bring the other Southern colonies. So what did they do? They did several things. They placed the reins of the Continental Congress in the hands of a Virginian. His name was Peyton Randolph. He's given the president's chair. That wasn't enough. Another thing was that they gave the role of commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, the army that is fighting the British to get them out, to dislodge them from these colonies, they give it to George Washington. Now, we've all come to believe that George Washington was the best man for the job. Well, it turns out, and I only learnt this from reading this book that he was not the best man for the job. There were Northerners who were far better qualified than he. However, there was a recognition that it was just not going to fly with the Southerners to appoint a Northerner because of the deep distrust. And so the North was willing to give up and make this big sacrifice. You know you've got the best people for the job, but now you're saying, "Okay, we'll go for the lesser person," in order to maintain unity and in order to bind Virginia and the Southern colonies to the cause of resistance against Great Britain and uniting dissimilar colonies into a safe, unified whole. How do we know this? We know this from all the notes and diaries kept by John Adams, who clearly says all these things were done with that one goal: preserving unity. It was also the reason why it was Virginia, not Massachusetts, that first pressed for a motion of independence on the floor of the Continental Congress. Also, it was the reason why it was Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian, who authored the Declaration of Independence. Do you see all the compromises very mindfully and consciously made in the name of and for the cause of unity? Second compromise: we had to choose a voting procedure. And really the big question was, are we going to vote based on popular representation? In other words, are we going to deem that every person is an American and everybody's vote counts equally? Or are we a confederation of 13 equal nation states? And the temporary rule that was accepted was that of one colony, one vote. Again, it was a compromise because we needed to do it to keep some of the colonies on side, on board, not to walk away and secede before this thing had ever actually gotten off the ground. So, again, what's fascinating here is now look at these two principles. There's a principle of progressive evolution in accordance with capacity to tolerate it. This is what we see with this compromise on voting procedure, right? That, okay, we need to go slowly and bring people along. And yet we saw before that in terms of should we forge ahead for independence or not the question is to wait 40 to 50 years, in other words, go slowly and incrementally, or to bite the bullet and strike while the iron is hot. And both are true. What therefore we need to hone, the skill we need to hone is that of discernment, to distinguish between those instances when we need to take a leap of faith, like seeking independence, and instances when we need to move in incremental steps. That is part of wisdom. Those are skills that really our leaders need to have. And as we seek to elect leaders, those are qualities that we need to be looking for, these intangible things. Not just looking at policy platforms, but do these people have the wisdom to make the right decision? Do they have good judgment The third compromise had to do with resolving the conflict over embargo of goods that were to be exported. One of the ideas that the Continental Congress had was to halt all importation of goods from Great Britain, and also halt all exportation of goods from the colonies to Great Britain. So in other words, to put a squeeze on Great Britain and put pressure on her economically. Like what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz right now, right? Economic pressure, not letting ships in and out of the strait, and the whole world is straining under the economic suffering. So these are ideas that people have always had. This idea elicited vehement objections by Virginia, because Virginia relied on a single crop for exportation, and that was tobacco. It was her main source of income, and the same was true for the colonies of Maryland and North Carolina. So, this is raised, and the Congress says, "Yeah, you're right. We need to take this into consideration." This conversation and this decision really riles up the South Carolinians, who say, "Wait a minute. We depend as much on exportation of rice and indigo for our survival as Virginia does on tobacco." So their delegates walked out of the room. They also resented the fact that northern exports like flour and fish would continue to be exported, and so the northern economies would remain healthy. And remember, there was this deep distrust and dislike of the North and suspicion of them, and there was a deeply entrenched belief that ultimately the North wanted to take over and dominate the Southern and Middle states. So the compromise that was hatched when the members of the Continental Congress realized, "Oh boy. We can't afford to have South Carolina walk out and destroy this union that we want to forge," they decided to delay the non-exportation. But here's the interesting thing they did. They saved face by masking the true reason. They didn't let it get out from the meeting, from the Continental Congress, that this was the reason why they delayed, because South Carolina's delegates had walked out and it was threatening to abandon this project of unification. What's amazing to me is there were no leaks, right? In this day and age, if something like that had happened, there would've been leaks, and we would all have found out, and the media would've have gotten it out. But the wisdom involved in keeping this quiet in order to continue to forge unity. The fourth compromise, we've already covered this, appointing George Washington to be the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. We've already talked about the fear of dominance by New England, and so they were not willing to let a New Englander, who would've been the most fit person for the job, take this role. Again, the goal was to maintain unity and keep the southern states in. Fifth compromise had to do with trans-Appalachian lands, lands that went from the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. Virginia had been given hundreds and thousands of square miles of this land by royal charter. She chose to cede, to give away, two hundred and sixty thousand square miles of land, an area roughly the size of the thirteen original seaboard colonies, to the Treasury, to the Continental Treasury. Why? Because Maryland had refused to sign the Articles of Confederation, saying, "Nope. Not going to do this. We're not going to enter into union where Virginia is going to dominate. She's going to be so large. She's going to be so strong." And so they had refused to sign on. And Virginia realizes the union is at severe risk, so in order to maintain unity and avoid the breaking up into confederacies, they decide to cede all of this land. That was an amazing act of sacrifice and compromise. Another compromise. At some point, many in the Congress just wanted to go ahead and fight the war against Great Britain and declare independence and get on with the revolution. But many in the middle colonies really wanted to make another effort to petition the King of England and ask to negotiate a peace. This was a last-ditch effort to avoid war. And the Congress, in order to keep the middle colonies happy, said, "Okay, we will, send this petition to the king," which the king rejected. But again, they were willing to do that to hold off on the inclination to immediately enter into a revolutionary war, in order to maintain unity. Seventh compromise. Eventually, the peace commission that was sent to sue for peace with Britain was expanded from three to five representatives to ensure that the southerners were included. Now, there is an eighth compromise that is also really important. The founders started to realize that it was very important to maintain sectional balances, regional balances, not only for short-term unity, but in some sense more importantly for a unity that would last. It started with the recognition that there were two sets of rights. In the Northeast, what those states really wanted from Britain were fishing and drying rights at the island of Newfoundland in the Northeast. And for the southern states like Virginia, they really wanted the boundaries to be delineated at the Mississippi, and they wanted free navigation along the Mississippi River so they could move their goods down all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. So you had these two sets, at least, of sectional rights. And the founders over time start to realize that sectional fairness is foundational. James Madison, when he's negotiating for peace with Great Britain, realizes this foundational principle of fairness. Now, we're talking about principled approaches, right? To building institutions, to building countries. We talked about the idea of sacrificing everything for the common good. That is really a recognition of the principle of oneness. And then you've got the principle of equality and fairness. This idea of sectional balances is really, really important. John Adams talks about it. John Jay talks about it. He was one of the representatives in these conversations to sue for peace. And so even though there was a fear among some members of the Congress that insisting on these rights would alienate France and Spain, whom we needed to keep on side to fight against Britain, because they supplied our arms and munitions. Sort of like Europeans supporting arms and munitions for Ukraine today, same sort of thing. And the banks generating subsidies and loans were also Spanish and French ones. And yet, despite these fears, there was this recognition, "But gee, we can't just give up these regional interests because then it'll be lopsided, and then our union will fail over time." So it gets to the point where even when Virginia says, "Okay, I'm willing to forego my rights to navigation on the Mississippi," the other states who are in the North say, "Oh, this is actually a bad idea because Virginia has already sacrificed so much by giving away the trans-Appalachian lands. If we now accept this offer, she's going to be resentful over time, and it is not going to bode well for the Union." Again, look at the wisdom and the ability to think long-term that these leaders had. It wasn't just a question of getting a win today, of getting a deal done. It was a question of, well, what are the long-term ramifications of accepting a colony saying, "Okay, I'll give up my right again. I will sacrifice even more." So they refused to sacrifice, and they chose to go into the negotiations with Great Britain insisting on both sets of rights, fishing and drying rights for the Northeast, and boundary rights and navigation rights in the Mississippi for the South. And John Jay There's a really interesting quote from him. He says, "There's a tide in human affairs which waits for nobody, and political mariners ought to watch and profit it and avail themselves of its advantages." So first of all, he recognized it was time. It was time to sue for peace, and it was time to push for the advantage and ask for the maximum interests. All right. Now, from all of this conversation, what the colonies actually learned in the end, I think can be summarized in two major lessons. They recognized that they had common interests and were therefore better off acting in unity and in their collective interests rather than in going it alone. I just want to draw a parallel here. We had some prior episodes earlier on in this series of Reimagining Our World where we talked about the establishment of the European Union with that first organization, the European Coal and Steel Community. It too was based on the recognition amongst the six founding nation countries that their common interests in having equitable access to coal and steel to rebuild their economies after the Second World War were supreme, and that they were better off ceding their interests, pooling their interests in coal and steel into the hands of a supranational organization called the High Commission of the European Coal and Steel Community, rather than trying to go it alone. And it was incredibly successful. We're starting to see this principle and pattern, a successful one, repeated over and over. It merits us really paying attention. There were comments at the time being made that demonstrated that people were, again, aware. This fellow Henry Lauren says, "The body politic is sick, sick indeed." We could be saying the same today, right? In 2026. And another, Philip Schuyler, says, "The political ship is exposed to the danger of becoming a wreck through the incompetency of the pilots." Again, something that we hear today also. But they ultimately recognized, and this was the second big lesson, that the good of the whole of all thirteen colonies must take precedence over, must be prioritized over the good of the part. And that, in fact, the good of the part could only be guaranteed by ensuring the good of the whole. This is the idea of the recognition of the oneness of countries, nations, peoples, human beings. We are all members of one human body. If we want the liver or the kidneys or the heart to be healthy, then the main way to guarantee their health is to ensure that the body as a whole is systemically healthy. You cannot have a body ridden with cancer and then have a healthy heart and liver and kidneys. It doesn't work. So this recognition of the principle of the oneness of humanity and this principle of the recognition of our interconnectedness and interdependence into a single organism is absolutely key. It is really a principle of social organization, and it is a spiritual principle. It's a principle that governs life. Again, there was recognition by some of the leaders like Cornell of Rhode Island, who says, "Oh, the union's going to dissolve because too many states are turning all their views to their own advantage without consulting the common good." But you see, they were catching themselves, and that is the main thing. And it is because of this recognition that you've got a leader like Benjamin Franklin, who basically ends up crafting the first set of the Articles of Confederation to create what he called a perpetual union. So he's instilling the seed of, we want a union, not a temporary one, a perpetual one. And in it, he put provisions that would act as a bulwark against American disunion and civil wars. Provisions like: you are not allowed to secede. Once you sign on to these Articles of Confederation, you can't say, "Oh, I don't like the system anymore. I'm walking out." So the threat of secession is gone. There will be no splitting into confederacies. There won't be groupings. This coalition of states versus another coalition. You know, the North of the United States splitting off from the South. It was banned and prohibited. There was also a provision that if we have differences between us, we resolve them through legal means, not through separatist or military means. We don't go to war with each other, and we don't sulk and separate. And there was another provision that states were forbidden to keep standing arms, right? All these very mindfully crafted provisions that are inserted into the founding documents of this country to ensure union because people, the leaders, were seeing the end in the beginning. They understood human nature, and they knew what needed to be done to avoid descent into disunion. We need to replicate this at the global level. I just want to put a marker out there, and you can go back through past episodes to hear the ideas and views that I've shared about how we go about setting a new system of global governance with a global legislature, a global enforcement mechanism, an executive, a standing force, all founded on the basis of principles, a principled approach. What does that look like? This is episode fifty-four of this series, so there is a lot of material there for those of you who may be interested The last point that I want to take this opportunity to make is that I was struck by the quality of leadership that we had when this country was formed, and was further struck by the fact that it doesn't take all leaders. It really takes a few fit leaders to act as a leaven for unity. That they are essential for creating perpetual peace and unity. And I want to highlight, to give you an example. George Washington was one of those amazing leaders. He was not only the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, but he then was also made our first president. When he left the political scene, he wrote a farewell letter. He said that he was writing it as his legacy, as a means of ensuring the political happiness and the social happiness of America. Here are three top pieces of advice he gave, and think of how they apply today Number one, he says there must be lodged somewhere a supreme power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the confederated republic. There had to be some form of central government. Couldn't just have 13 colonies each doing whatever they pleased. He says, "Without this, the union cannot be of long duration." Again, let's think of it in the back of our minds as we think about the world. If we want a peaceful world, a united world, what is it going to take? There has to be lodged somewhere a supreme power to regulate and govern the general concerns. General concerns like climate change, like nuclear proliferation or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, guarding against pandemics. These are matters of general concern, and these are just examples. There are many more. The second exhortation from him was... I get goosebumps with this one. The need for brotherly love and affection. We don't talk about love in our political parlance anymore, but he did. This strong man, this very manly man, he talked about the need for brotherly love and affection. He says, and I'm going to quote him, that Americans from the 13 states must, quote, "Entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another," close quotes, and that they must possess, quote, "Charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind." Not to get riled up, not to be reactive, but to have a pacific temper of mind, and to be humble, and to be charitable. Give the other the benefit of the doubt. The third exhortation was to forget prejudices and to sacrifice individual advantage to the interests of the whole. Again, I want to quote so that you know I'm not making this up. He calls for, quote, "The prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the people of the United States, which will induce them to forget their local prejudices." So he recognizes they exist. He's not blind to them. He doesn't pretend they're not there. "To forget their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions..." We're back to concessions, compromises, sacrifices. "...which are requisite to the general prosperity and, in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the community." Imagine if we were to follow these three exhortations, his legacy today. This would be a very different country, and if the world were to take it on board, it would truly become the kind of world we deserve and we all want to live in. Other leaders like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin also demonstrated, and many, many others, these qualities of leadership, of wisdom, of discernment, of courage, of moral courage, of rectitude of conduct. We've already looked at Benjamin Franklin's crafting mindfully of the Articles of Confederation. I think that's the end of what I want to share with you today. I hope you found this interesting. I have found these ideas, and these historical facts extraordinarily compelling, and it gives me such hope that if we followed this roadmap, and we can at any moment make a choice to turn things around and to start doing what our Founding Fathers did, even though they too found themselves in exactly the same conditions that we find ourselves in today. So they didn't start off with an advantage. Probably the greatest advantage they had was that the Founding Fathers themselves were exceedingly wise. But we get to elect fit leaders, so it's on us. The onus is on us to recognize, to raise our own consciousness, and to start making better and better and better choices. I thank you for your attention. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I look forward to seeing you next time. Oh, and one last thing. Remember that all of these episodes are now available as audio podcasts, as well, on your favorite podcast platform. So you can still watch or listen to them on the CPGG YouTube channel or on Facebook Live, although Facebook takes them down after a month or so. But if you want to be able to view or hear these episodes, you can always find them on the YouTube channel, the CPGG Center for Peace and Global Governance channel, or on your favorite podcast platform like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you. Bye-bye for now. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.