ADAMS: Again, we're glad to have you on this episode with us on The State of Education. Our guest is Paul Skousen and we've been having a conversation about big topics like founding documents and some of the ideology and philosophy that our nation was built around. Then we kind of jumped into, “what about where are we now?”
Let's pick up on that conversation. Before we get down a little closer to the ground, let's go back just a little bit because we talked about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights. In the break, we were chatting a bit—nobody else heard us, but let's just say this—we were chatting a bit and some of those—there's a crossover here. Talk to us a little bit more about that.
SKOUSEN: The Bill of Rights: shall I address that for just a second?
ADAMS: Please do. Yep.
SKOUSEN: When you pick up the Federalist papers and you're working your way through. When you get towards the end, number 84, Alexander Hamilton totally shocked me when he said there's a reason the founders did not put a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. But everybody else panicked and demanded there be one.
The reason they did not is because the Constitution was a document of permissions. Article one, section eight, lists twenty powers that we give Congress. Twenty. That's it. That's all they can do, that's all they're supposed to do. When the Bill of Rights came along it flipped the constitution to a document of restrictions. So instead of: you're permitted twenty things, you're restricted on these twenty things. If it's not on that list, you must be allowed to do it.
The Supreme Court came through in the Butler case. 1936-33 that discussion started. And they said, “Congress can decide what's good for the welfare of the country and tax the people for whatever they want.” So people say, “How dare you touch the bill of rights? That's sacred. You can't touch that.”
Well, that's what Alexander Hamilton was trying to explain. We never gave the government power to interfere with gun ownership. We never gave them power to regulate the press or to regulate—really, we never gave that power. But when we came out and said, “You may not do these things, those restrictions were not all encompassing.”
The government has been using that to interpret. It says, “Well, we can't regulate guns away, but we're going to tell you how big the magazine is and we're going to tell you about the kind of ammo.” No. You watch: pretty soon the lead bullets are going to be bad for the environment, so those will be abolished. So they go around the corner.
Here in my state—we don't want pornography here. So our legislature passed a law, it says no internet pornography. It gets blocked. And guess what? We got sued. Over what? The violation of the First Amendment used against us to say someone's freedoms of press and—well, commerce is in there—but speech…you're violating their First Amendment rights.
So Hamilton—I was stunned because I love the Bill of Rights maybe more than anybody. And I'm being told it was a mistake. And you know what? He was right. We gave the government power by saying, “You can't use it.” If we stuck with the twenty powers, all you can do is a militia, bankruptcy laws, copyrights, patents and weights and measures—and go down the list. Army, Navy, militia. That's all they could do. There's no mention of national parks in there. There's no mention of social security. There's no mention of national welfare. Those issues all came out of the States or out of the good hearts of the people.
In a way, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot, according to Alexander Hamilton. That's something to chew on. I'm not saying abolish the Bill of Rights. It’s too late for that. It's about all we've got left. But had our nation's history been based on permissions instead of restrictions, we would have a much different nation.
ADAMS: Yeah, very true. But there again, that's why it's important for people to know these documents and understand the tensions between them. I'd say “tensions” in a positive way, like you have the tension of a spring to hold the screen door shut, to keep the flies out. Those kinds of tensions are healthy things that were built into these foundational concepts, so that it kept that healthy balance.
And really preserved liberty. Preserved liberty. That is at the very foundation of what our whole American experience and experiment was about and, and ought to be today.
As we were—just before we went into break, we were talking about different organizations. You mentioned Moms for Liberty…and actually we were at that conference. That's where we met. It was a great conference, a lot of great things going on there. It's a great organization and it's thrilling to see many different organizations forming that are grassroots, populace-based. Because yeah, what happens is, when the common people disengage, everything gets in trouble. The whole nation gets in trouble.
Noah Webster Educational Foundation is all about trying to resource the grassroots, the common people, so that they are informed and equipped, so that they can think, so that they can engage where they are in order to bring about the kinds of things that are needed and healthy for their local communities and for society as a whole.
Of course, our primary focus is education. How do we reclaim education in a way that—the goal is not to blow it up. The goal is to tweak it, to make it better and to fix the leaks where we're just, frankly, losing it. So let's talk a little bit more about this, because people who are listening today—a lot of people care about these things. But a lot of times it's like, “What do I do? Where do I start? How can I be engaged?”
So, from your perspective—what I'd like to hear from you—what are some of the things that you feel would be most beneficial for people? I mean, you've got experience as a writer, as a professor. You have experience in politics, in government, in the CIA, at the White House…you got vast experience. What can the average American do that would be a meaningful engagement for this country?
SKOUSEN: Boy. Here's my advice to my own family. When my older married kids ask that question, “What can we do?” The very first step is, we've got to read these founding documents. The second step is to find others who are so engaged. It's a sad thing to fill your head full of all this beautiful information and then die. What did that achieve? You got to share it.
So we reach out to others at church. That just happened to me last Sunday. Somebody cornered me after a meeting and was asking questions. We built a bond and a friendship and we can share our frustrations. We can't accomplish very much just standing alone. The more we are able to gather informed people at an evening in our—invite a family over for dinner, or invite people over for a fireside chat, and share some of these things. The more we can do that, we break out of our isolation.
Now, I have some great friends that are Chinese-American. They are more passionate about our country than most Americans are. It just shocks me. They say, “We left communism. Why are you embracing it? What's your problem?” Their problem is, they isolate themselves as a Chinese-American culture. They need to break out of that. And it's hard.
But that's where I think we all begin. We begin around the dinner table and then we begin at our social gatherings. We've got to include other people and say, “Hey, I read this great book. Have you read it?” “Well, I don't have time for a book.” “Well, let me tell you about it.” That ripple effect needs a beginning place. Each and every one of us, I think, has a divine mandate to be that beginning place.
It may only go out small, it may go out large. Look at Moms for Liberty. They started with just two or three moms, and look: they have a nationwide organization in two years where presidential candidates came to talk.
To me, that's where the rubber meets the road. We want to skip over that part and we want to say, “But I wanna change our school board!” Well, don't miss the beginning part. We've got to know what we're talking about. Read the documents. The Constitution takes half an hour. Declaration of Independence, ten minutes. You can whip those out during the Super Bowl advertisement—who watches that anymore anyway?
ADAMS: Exactly. What I'm hearing you say—and I agree fully with you—get informed, develop community because you can't do anything effectively by yourself.
SKOUSEN: Right.
ADAMS: Influence is about relationships with others. You're not going to change anything of significance if you're just trying to do it yourself. I think, in the day and age in which we live, you hear this statement all the time, “never talk religion or politics in public.”
Quite frankly, my view is so different from that. Because to me, religion and politics are the two biggest issues that affect all of us. They affect all of us. By avoiding those topics, we actually do ourselves and our whole society a disservice.
SKOUSEN: Right.
ADAMS: I think the real critical thing is: it's how we engage in those conversations. If we are know-it-alls, if we are hostile in our approach, we're not going to build community. We're not going to influence anybody, we're going to drive everybody away.
But if we are learners, if we will listen, if we will debate—not just to win a debate, but to actually expound on the conversation and think for ourselves and help others to think. The truth always comes to the top.
The old farm boy in me knows this. You milk the cow and you set that milk aside for a little while and the cream automatically comes to the top. It just does, okay? That's the way to the truth, is you have a conversation, you engage in a respectful way, you set it aside, and then you just keep nurturing those relationships. The truth always comes to the top.
I can discover truth. The people I'm engaging with can discover truth. I can learn from them, they can learn from me. But together we build community and community is so often what's lacking these days. It's crazy, I mean—most communities you go into, you don't see kids out playing anymore. It used to be, kids were outside playing—all the neighborhood kids were playing—until it got dark. You rarely see that anymore. Why is it? Because we've all become isolationists. Kids are all on their own personal little device.
I mean, even in families you see that. You go out to eat and what do you see? Everybody's sitting at the table four, five, six, eight, ten people strong. Half of them are sitting there on their device.
SKOUSEN: Right.
ADAMS: It's like, okay, this is a broken society. There's no more community being formed. I think, like you said, equipping ourselves with real knowledge and then engaging in building communities. Would you like to expand on that? Your thinking?
SKOUSEN: Well, a couple of thoughts. This one is not a real happy thought. Periodically, one of my students—and I've been teaching…any teacher here in your audience knows this. Once in a while someone takes their own life. One little gal who left…her note, she talked about how no one would ever acknowledge her. And that just broke my heart.
I called on her in class. I thought I acknowledged her. But the lesson that drove home to me is I need to be saying hello to strangers or at least not in my head I'm never going to be accused of not acknowledging you. “You're here on the earth. I see you and you're not alone.”
The other thought that I just wanted to add was: religion and politics. I sit back and I think, well, what are those two things? Well, they're forms of organization. One is founded on the gospel—well, for us—the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are a lot of other, faith based systems which are important and necessary. But it's a form of organization and community, as you were saying.
In my own mind, I have never really separated politics from religion. It's the same thing. The correct organization is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It just is. It's the very best and that's what the United States was founded on. It was founded on the basic fundamentals of that. Now, other religions incorporate that. You've heard these—there's the five major things they all believe. Benjamin Franklin said it: there's a creator, we’re his children, we live by a moral code, there's a life hereafter, we're held accountable. Every major religion follows those five things.
That's a form of ordering and organizing ourselves. Of course, at church, those who have a different political viewpoint, they don't agree with what I just said. But from the top level, that really is the community and we build our relationships on that.
So those are kind of two esoteric, you know, far-out-there ideas. Suicide, and that these things are divisionary. We should be able to share opposing partisan political viewpoints and not get on each other's throats.
Often we get our own eyes opened up to things we didn't know. If we don't say, “You're wrong,” but instead say, “Where did you get that? I need to go look at that more,” then we both benefit. The person says “I communicated,” and I, as the other, I may learn something new.
ADAMS: Yeah, maybe they just say, “I just made that up.” And I say, “Okay, so I got a primary source!”
SKOUSEN: True! Wow.
ADAMS: No, that you're absolutely right. Everybody needs to be heard and noticed and known and that's how we build communities.
All right. So we're kind of going around a lot of big things, but let's kind of hone in now and kind of wrap this up. We're talking to parents here. Many parents, educators, some politicians. We believe that parents should always have the primary place in education. It's their children and they should have a primary say in what happens with their children, what they learn, they need to know what's going on. They shouldn't be held out at arm's length or kept in the dark. They should be able to consent to everything that happens to their child.
There are educators. The educational system—I'm talking now, public education—every form has some form of a system, but the education system over periods of time has become kind of its own thing and has become really self-absorbed, if I may put it that way. It's ultimately about power.
Parents become an intrusion into that. Too many times it's about advancing our agenda into the next generation. It also can often tie into the organization and then the funding of political things. All of these things tie very—if you study it, they just all hook together in the educational “system.” And let me clarify: it's that organized system.
But at the end of the day, the system is not the solution, it's liberty and truth that are important. When you have individual liberty that is actually held in check with truth and with the social structure—which these foundational documents pull together and give us understanding of—that builds community.
Now we have something that becomes cohesive and healthy and we can build our lives in, build our families in, and everybody has a place where they can grow, where they are safe. That's where we all want to go and want to be.
So, practical engagement as an individual. Yes, it's learning. Know the important foundations. It could be our founding documents; that’s a fantastic place to start. It might be: what does your state constitution have to say about education? What does it have to say about the role and powers of your elected school board people? That's so important, right?
We do training for school board candidates on these things—candidates and members. These kinds of things. But it's not just—the common people need to know these things as well. There are so many areas here that we can educate. These are some of the things that the Noah Webster Educational Foundation is trying to make available to the public. That's why we do podcasts. That's why we do blogs. That's why we do professional development training in all of these areas.
As an observer today, and as a participant and observer of what we're doing as an organization, but also a participant in this conversation…what, what advice would you give to people as—because you, you're hearing me talk and we don't know each other that well. You're kind of learning about our organization, how we think and so forth. But this whole civil conversation, you bring your perspective back and wrap it up for our audience.
SKOUSEN: If there's a good spirit, Melvin, in the work you're doing. I'm grateful to you for inviting me to this new circle.
Our culture has evolved in a strange way. When you and I were younger, we didn't have to pay attention to the schools. That has changed and it will really help for your viewers and listeners to acknowledge that it has changed. We do now need to be involved.
I see this great nation—its fundamental principles remain, they're just being ignored and now they're being smothered. It's not a majority doing this. They've got the biggest microphone. We, the majority, are here. And we, the majority, need to realize that we can reach out and work on this together. What you're doing to prepare people to move out is, I think, a beautiful concept and I'm so grateful for that.
My general perspective is: the answers are all here. The founding fathers were no dummies. They knew our nation, because of its affluency, would one day get to a point where these values would be forgotten. And different things knock us down. War knocks us down, disease knocks us down. The pandemic did. It puts people back on their knees where we need to remember the sources of our powers.
Those elements, tied to education, are how we're going to do it. I say to my family, my married kids, my friends and neighbors: you now need to no longer trust what your kids are getting. There are great teachers out there, but they're forced by law to teach certain things, certain ways, and a new culture is developing. You can't ignore that anymore.
Find out what the kids are hearing, reteach them truth at home, and inspire them with true stories. You can't do it out of a vacuum. You yourself need to pick those books up and say, “Did you hear about the four bullets that were shot through George Washington's hat and three in his coat and he wasn't hit, his horse wasn't hit. Did you know that he called that a miracle from God? Have you heard that story?”
We need to fill ourselves up with those so that we can help inspire our children that the best source is Mom and Dad. The best safe place is Mom and Dad. Surrounding that is understanding the principles that come out of the three documents we've been talking about.
I think this is a God-blessed nation. I think many are inspired to put their oar in the water and do the best they can to help. That's what I'm trying to do. I think that's what you are certainly trying to do. That needs to be supported financially, and through participation. I would encourage everyone to realize we're at a tipping point and it's gonna be pretty ugly if we are tipped over and we need to rebuild. Better to try and salvage things as we can.
ADAMS: So well said.
All right. So in closing—that was a great closing—but I want everybody to know where they can access the resources that you provide.
SKOUSEN: Okay. The books themselves are all on Amazon right now. We've got a few other outlets, but that's probably the easiest and the quickest [way] to get ahold of those. Yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Our family has a little bookstore, but Amazon's the best.
ADAMS: Okay. We'll put a list of some of those things on the program notes here. So if people want to know, “Hey, what, what's the stuff that he's got here?” Well, you can go look in the program notes. Anyway.
Thank you so much, Paul for joining us today.
SKOUSEN: Thank you, Melvin. My pure delight. I'm grateful to have met you. Thank you.