Ode to Our Founding Fathers

Shannon discusses how literate our Founding Fathers were in homage to our country's celebration of 250 years!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello folks, welcome back to the latest edition of the Bookworm Mom. Today we're going to do something a little different because we just celebrated our 250th anniversary as a nation.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Yay! And it was glorious.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

I made a point to say, oh wow, 250 years, you're so young. And you know, I saw there was a tavern in the UK that pointed out the tavern itself had been there for, I don't know, 1300 years or something. Um, I did note that Ron DeSantis responded back and said, yes, and if it weren't for us, your tavern signs would now be in German. Anyway, I thought that was pretty good. Um, and of course, by now you will have all heard that the United States is no longer in the World Cup. We were defeated by the small country of Belgium.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Boo again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Yes, in uh in the the the world of soccer or football, whatever you want to call it. However, uh scuttle butt on the street is not so fast, Belgium. Uh California is going to need an additional week to finish counting the goals.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I like that one. It's going to have a different outcome here shortly. There we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Um but no, uh, so seriously, in in honor of our nation's 250 years of existence, I thought let's take a stroll down memory lane and take a look at some of the reading that our founding fathers enjoyed, and some of the documents that they read, some of the books and the authors that helped to actually form the documents and the founding documents that led to our nation.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Um, you know, the intellectual bedrock upon which the United States was founded, I guess, you know. Um, and they had very extensive aneclectic reading habits. They weren't, you know, they didn't read simple stuff. I I think back to what was it, the 2008 campaign when Sarah Palin was the um the vice presidential GOP candidate, and uh I I think it was Katie Kirk asked her the question, what do you read? And she said all of it.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

I don't think that was a true statement, but it probably would have been true had they interviewed some of our founding fathers and said, What do you read? Because they would have said all of it. We everything we can get our hands on, we read it. Um I mean, they had a profound engagement with classical antiquity, enlightenment philosophy, historical accounts, legal treaties, literary works, everything you can think of, those all provided, you know, what became the critical framework for what was then and even now revolutionary ideas on Republican governance. They had revolutionary ideas on individual liberty, natural rights, uh, the structure of a new nation. These were things that that were so outside of the box to use a colloquial term, um it was it was unheard of at that point in time. And so this rich intellectual tapestry vividly reflects the seminal documents, or it's vividly reflected rather than the seminal documents like the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and even the Federalist Papers. Now there's a common thread that kind of runs across many of these visionary leaders, uh, and that's their deep immersion in the foundational texts. Uh some of the works that they frequently referenced included ancient classics like Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Plutarch, Um, Live, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plato, and Caesar. Um, these guys, I mean, passes anything that we currently see. Uh folks, since we went live on the air, I was speaking with Rick, my producer, and I was kind of laughing and saying, we had some legendary giants, you know, intellectual giants founded our nation. And currently the members that we have serving in the U.S. Constitution, excuse me, the U.S. Congress, they're middle midgets. They're really, really, they're not well read, they're not well educated, um, and they don't represent the American people well. Um I I I think right now there was a lady, I won I won't throw the name out there to embarrass her further, but she was espousing her views of why the Save America Act, the voting act, cannot pass because you know, we basically want you to prove that you're a citizen of the United States. And her logic is that when women get married, their name changes. If they say, Well, you don't have to change your name, folks, but if you wish to change your name, you can. And so she has concluded that because women get married and change their name, that their new married name would not reflect the same name on their birth certificate. And so therefore they couldn't, they wouldn't be able to vote. And I I I can't do the mental gymnastics to make that make sense because I'm thinking she cannot be that dense. Surely not. That she's joking. It's it it much reminds me of our congressman from Georgia, Mr. I will throw his name out there, uh Hank Johnson, uh, who during a BRAC meeting, a base realignment and closure meeting, said he was concerned about moving a battalion of Marines to Guam because it would uh you know destabilize the island and it might, you know, tip size, temporary and tapsize uh the island. And um that these these folks are are our leaders. They're our leaders, folks. So we have problems. They need to read. Um, so not only did they read the ancient classics, our founding fathers, but they also read things uh with the Enlightenment and the modern thinkers, philosophical contributions like John Locke. You know, he wrote the two treaties of government, which good gracious, that profoundly influenced the ideas on natural rights and popular sovereignty. Uh, and then you got a guy by the name of Baron de Montesquieu who wrote the spirit of the laws. That was instrumental in shaping the concept of separated powers, which we need to use more. We don't. Uh that was particularly impactful. Uh, some additional influential minds included David Hume, Yumiro Dev Uh Day Vital. Uh he wrote the Law of Nations, and that provided critical insights for international relations as well as natural law. We also have some scholarly analysis of some of the citations of founding era writings that we know uh consistently highlight how important all of these Enlightenment figures were to the creation of our nation. Absolutely.

unknown 6:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Yeah, they they had uh, I mean, let's let's think Thomas Jefferson. I mean, Thomas Jefferson was uh a phenomena. I mean, this guy's incredible. First of all, he spoke English, he spoke French, Italian, uh, Latin, he could read in Greek and Spanish, and he also had some knowledge of German and Anglo-Saxon, which is just another fancy term for old English. Um so he was very well read, and he actually is the the cornerstone, the bo the reason why we have a Library of Congress is because he donated his books to start it. Um he had thousands and thousands of volumes uh and numerous books in different languages. He had preferences like, you know, uh again, Herodotus, uh Caesar, Tatius, Plagiarch, Livia, uh Gibbons, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, uh philosophy had Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Hume, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, and literature, Homer's Epics, Iliad and the Odyssey. Which I don't even think they have kids read anymore in the schools, honestly. That was a required reading when I was in high school. I don't know that it is anymore. It seems like that may have slid or slid away uh Shakespeare. I'm not even sure they read Shakespeare, to be honest. Um you got Milton's Paradise Lost, uh The Misanthrop, Cervantes, Don Quixote. I mean, God, how do you not read that? That's that's just a great read. Swift's Gulf's Travels. Um there's just so many things uh that he read that really show why this guy was the perfect pick to write the breakup letter. Um and then George Washington. Now you think, well, this is that's a military guy. He probably didn't read that much. No, he read. Now he he can't match Thomas Jefferson.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Well, I just to break for a second, I saw um this last weekend uh the matinee of young Washington.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

I've got to go see it, I haven't seen it yet. Don't spoil it. I don't have an answer.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

I'm not gonna spoil it, but one uh a couple things did address his uh thirst for knowledge and wanting books. And um and they showed that several times. And as a matter of fact, one of them just did not get past me where he uh he was being given some books, and one of them was uh the book on Cincinnatus. Yes. And which is plays into his life, his career, and to the naming of Cincinnati. So yeah, it was it was it was marvelous.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah, he um he read uh Humphrey Bland's Treatise of Military Discipline, Julius Caesar's Commentaries, and Quintus Curtius' History of Alexander the Great. Um he also had Tobias Simolette's The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, Vital's The Law of Nation, Lord Cain's Treatise and novels like Don Quixote. Um you know, he he he as you said, he loved books. They all did. And it's funny because you if you if you read into the history of what they read and how they read, what victorious readers they were, you find out they often exchanged books with one another. I had like an ongoing book club, hey, I just read this, you need to read this. Um John Adams, another brilliant mind, deeply scholarly figure, uh integrated classical scholarship into his extensive writing and his political thought. I would I wished for anything that we could have saved all of the letters, but a lot of the letters he wrote back and forth to his wife were they burned themselves. Um of his favorite readings included uh classics, Cicero was a particular favorite, that name keeps popping up. Um Lord Cains, again, another one, elements of criticism for his political legal text. Uh he had um reading like um some of the foundational legal and political theory. Uh he even liked The Beauty and the Beast. I mean, who can't who can't like that? Um so it wasn't just like the dry things that we think, oh god, who would want painful Iliad, and Odyssey is an example, but you know, there were some good things in as well. Then we have good old Benjamin Franklin. Um he was a self-educated polymath uh through diligent late-night reading of his own. He taught he was a self-taught man, really, uh during his apprenticeship, and he cultivated an intellectual breadth that influenced his groundbreaking contributions. Some of those influences included uh Chinese Natural History, which was a landmark text for him, alongside a broad range of scientific and philosophical works. He also liked plays, uh Sir Richard Steele, which reflected kind of his diverse interest, and his intellectual journey underscores a practical approach to self-improvement through continuous learning. So, folks up there in Congress and the Senate, continuous learning, continuous learning, lifelong, be a lifelong learner, and you need to read. Um, you know, I I go Nancy Pelosi, we have to pass the bill to find out what's in the bill. No, Nancy, sit down and read the bill. Um, don't have your pages read the bill, you read the bill and then determine whether or not it is appropriate for it to move forward. Um James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, two uh additional foundational figures who were just giants, they were key architects of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers. Um they had a strong grounding, again, in classical and enlightenment thought. You know, Madison engaged extensively with the classics before his university studies, which included Virgil, of Horace, Justinian Caesar, Plato, the ones you would always pick, uh, Hamilton was steeped in Cicero and Virgil. Um he actually read them in Latin alongside a rigorous study of Enlightenment philosophers. Now, beyond these specific authors and genres, they also drew significantly from the Bible, you know, the Christian Bible. Um, they got these principles of English common law and the myriad of contemporary political pamphlets that circulated during the era, Thomas Paine's, Common Sense, etc. etc. These were these were the things that that form the basis of how they decided to create our government. And I can't help but think that when we have members of Congress and the Senate elected, that they need to have like a short, maybe it shouldn't even be so short, four-month course on the history of our founding, you know, let's let's have them read these texts, let's have them review some of this information so they can understand the underpinnings of our government. And folks, if you haven't read any of these books, if you've never heard of any of these books, you know, spend a little time, go online, do a little search, find the books, read them. Um you know, you can even a lot of them you can get audio books. So if you don't want to read them, they can be read to you. But if you don't understand the historical documents and the and the literature that underpins the decisions that our founding fathers made when they created the government and the way in which they created it, then you're kind of lost. And that that maybe explains why we have such a movement among the younger people to have negative thoughts or negative views towards being an American, towards our nation having achieved 250 years. Um we have accomplished more great things in that short 250 years than many, many other nations who have been around for two, three, four, five times as long. Um I can't help but think I mean look at China. Okay, let's let's take China the example here. Over a thousand years, two thousand years, and they just in the last fifty years became first world. I mean, they well, actually not not even the last fifty years, the last twenty years of first world because for a long time they were they were still second world if you were third world. They were around forever. So why did they not come up with all the things that the United States citizens came up with? Why did they not have all the advancements? Why didn't they invent electricity? Um, you know, things like that. So I think it does have a lot to do with the ability to achieve understanding of other things, and that comes through reading and learning and that self-lifelong goal of never giving in to well, I've learned enough, I've read enough, I don't need any more information.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Um be a lifelong learner, folks.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Read.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

It's important. In order for our nation to hit its next milestone, which would be 275 for you know for those who are kind of tracking. They they typically do these things every 25 years. So um so trip, you were around for for 200 as I as I was. I was just a a young little girl. I was only six years of age. Uh so do you remember the 200th anniversary of the United States?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

I do, I do very, very vividly. And um I have to say, I thought that when we had the 200th in um in 76 that we were going to be we could not we could not top it. The celebration was so incredible until until this year uh on the J and I was just aghast. I just just like incredible throughout the country uh all the different celebrations. Even though they tried to come up with different reasons, oh record heat and all this other stuff to try to stop the celebrations, it didn't work. Uh the the celebrations went on and they were fantastic. Plus, we got to share it with the world because uh the world was here for FIFA. And um, and so they couldn't even internationally they could not uh how do I put this, put a spin on on the celebration because there are too many eyewitnesses uh for them to to you know uh beat out on on social media.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

So um in fact, yeah, I saw multiple accounts of citizens from various countries across Europe saying, Wow, we've been lied to by the media. Yeah, the United States is not this ugly, racist monster, you know, it it's not unsafe here. And you know, one guy said it gosh it's safer here than anywhere I've been in my home country. I think he was from Germany, and he said you can't walk through the parks there without being harassed. And he said, Here, no one's trying to take my phone or tell me not to be recording, and yeah, you know, numerous, numerous other nationalities saying very similar things. And I'm happy to hear that. I'm so glad that they had a good time um at the World Cup and that there were so many people who witnessed who were witnessed to the 250th uh anniversary. I know Jevan Fleet, who we had on not that long ago, to talk about her book. Um, she is a naturalized citizen and escaped communist mouse, communist China, yeah. Uh, and has been just a voice crying out in the dark saying, Hey guys, wake up. There's something happening here, and I I recognize it. She actually made her way from Virginia up to DC because she said, I didn't want to go because it's so hot, she said, but I also didn't want to miss it because this is such a historic event, 250 years. So she made it out, did uh a couple of videos and um and wanted to be a part of that. I wish I could have made it up there.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah, that's what a great story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I saw stories of uh there was a guy who was in the Marines. Um I excuse me for not remembering his name, but he was a uh Marine and uh from another country, but he was eligible to to serve in the military, got his citizenship on July 4th, the 250th year anniversary. So that's pretty special. So you're right, it was uh a pretty spectacular. I mean, we've uh you know, Trump loves to have those records, so I think he's the greatest fabric display in the history of the world. And 150,000 munitions or something.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

The other thing that was amazing were the uh World War II veterans getting to see that celebration at their own memorial.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Yes. One was as old as 107, 1500, 107, 104, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

And they were sharp as attack.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yes, yes. One guy sang, I don't know if you got to hear him sing. He's he sang the song guy.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Whoops.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Um they were dropped outs.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Yeah, just repeat the song that he sang because you dropped out.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

And he sang God Bless America, and it was it was pretty phenomenal. So really good stuff. But um but yeah, so that's uh that's kind of the the wrap-up of this week's episode. Again, we don't have a particular single book. I just want to talk about how important reading was to our founding fathers and to the founding of our nation. So it is great.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

I mean, this this was a great and timely episode, and uh and also a great reminder to people go out and get to see that uh uh young Washington.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yes, I'm gonna go check it out.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this has been another fantastic episode of the Bookworm Mom. So if you'd like to check out more episodes, go to Libertycrackmedia.com and uh check out all the podcasts that we have. And enjoy your time.