How Stories Will Quietly Rebuild the American Character | Matthew Mehan

Summary

Podcast Summary: American Thought Leaders — "How Stories Will Quietly Rebuild the American Character" with Matthew Mehan
Released: July 4, 2026
Host: Jan Jekielek
Guest: Matthew Mehan, Hillsdale College Professor and Author of The American Book of Fables

---

Overview

In this July 4th special, Jan Jekielek welcomes Matthew Mehan, author of The American Book of Fables and associate dean at Hillsdale College, to discuss the profound role stories play in shaping and quietly restoring American character. At a moment of national division and the nation’s 250th anniversary, Mehan advocates for reconnecting Americans—young and old—to shared memories, natural wonders, moral virtues, and the foundational ideals that have unified diverse generations. Through poetry, fables, and art, Mehan’s book seeks to revive the moral imagination and foster civic friendship.

---

Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. Rediscovering American Virtues and Shared Memory

• Hospitality, Friendliness, Optimism:
  Mehan emphasizes these as defining traits of the American spirit—central both to his book and to America’s lived reality, often missed in media or modern storytelling.

  “The American sense of hospitality, the American sense of friendliness, and the American sense of optimism. Those are three things that I try to push very hard throughout the book as a kind of celebration of our past, our founding, our history, but also our present.” — Mehan (00:00, 02:04)

• The Power of Shared Memory:
  A shared, cherished history is vital for national unity. Mehan observes that forgetting this memory—whether through propaganda or cultural amnesia—poses serious risks.

  “It's a shared memory that is what actually unites a people. They have a shared memory that they love of themselves and their history. And if you lose it, you're in real trouble.” — Mehan (00:59, 07:43)

2. Contrasting Narratives: Propaganda vs. Lived American Experience

• False Media Narratives:
  Both guest and host discuss the disconnect between the dark, negative portrayals of America (at home and abroad) and the more optimistic, vibrant reality experienced by visitors and citizens.

  “What people have heard outside of America about America… is a very different story and almost a kind of nihilistic story.” — Jekielek (03:06)

• Cultural Self-Image and Art:
  Mehan criticizes contemporary American arts (referencing Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad) for not reflecting the nation’s virtues, suggesting these stories fuel cynicism and a "strange false impression."

  “Our arts have not been very aligned with our character, our faith, our virtues, our way of life, our love of equality... We haven’t done a lot of sincere, straightforward, kind of Capra-esque love of country, love of family, love of the good.” — Mehan (03:26)

3. Patriotism as a Virtue

• Gratitude and Duty:
  Patriotism stems from gratitude, which in turn is essential for the continuation of self-sacrifice, generational duty, and civic engagement.

  “If we don't have that attitude of gratitude, you actually don't have the motive force to continue to be another link in that chain of generous sacrifice and service to others, because gratitude is actually the motive force of all duty.” — Mehan (05:31)

• Imitation and American Exceptionalism:
  Sincere patriotism not only strengthens America but also inspires others globally to imitate its virtues.

  “If we’re not patriotic, then others can't imitate us. They can't see our way of life and imitate it. So our patriotism is actually the strength of others.” — Mehan (07:43)

4. Moral Imagination, Civics, and the Role of Fables

• Reviving Civility and Civic Virtue:
  America’s founders and early educators emphasized the social virtues—civility, politeness, candor—along with independence and justice.

  “People need moral technology, if you will... It’s a theme throughout the book that starts in the very first lines about wit and wisdom. That’s a hard thing to learn.” — Mehan (11:33)

• Why Fables?
  Fables distill complex moral scenarios and dilemmas into approachable narratives, offering a non-didactic invitation to reflect, discuss, and unite around core principles.

  “It's a handshake, not a wagging finger… The whole purpose of a book like this is to start a dialogue with people who disagree and give them a set of... unifying threads for everyone.” — Mehan (19:35)

5. Navigating Deep Disagreement and Civic Friendship

• Against “Mantra” Culture:
  Mehan contrasts the book’s approach to current societal pressures for totalizing ideological agreement and gatekeeping. Instead, he advocates building layered, flexible trust and policy from civic friendship upward.

  “How do you maintain friendship over time with people who don’t fully ascribe to everything? That’s a trick... Civic friendship is friendship. It’s the beginning of deeper friendship, but it’s friendship.” — Mehan (22:51)

6. Subtlety and Story: Quiet Revolution

• Ambitious, Yet Gentle Approach:
  Mehan embraces a “quiet” yet comprehensive project—400+ pages encompassing poetry, art, and lessons—that aims to reconstruct America's moral foundations.

  “It's very subtle, like water through the mountains… But I do think it’s also extremely ambitious. It’s designed to basically move the American imagination back towards these deep truths...” — Mehan (25:05)

7. The “King Sussy Scraffa” Fable & Moral Complexity

• Read-Aloud Segment:
  Mehan reads the fable of the lying raccoon and the truth-telling opossum—an allegory about wit, sincerity, and the dangers of both flattery and bluntness in public life.

  [Full fable and discussion at 27:53 – 35:13]

• Moral Wit and American Citizenship:
  There’s a necessary balance between innocence and cleverness (“wise as serpents, innocent as doves”). Being only bluntly truthful or only clever isn’t sufficient—American citizenship requires adroit moral intelligence.

  “How do you be innocent as the opossum?... But how do you be shrewd and wise like that raccoon, but without becoming a liar and a flatterer? That trick is the trick of fables and moral technology.” — Mehan (32:05)

8. Structure and Audience of The American Book of Fables

• Littles, Middles, and Bigs:
  The book is designed for all ages. Each chapter offers content for children (nursery rhymes, fables), older children and teens (primary source documents, Socratic dialogue), and adults, fostering family-learning and lifelong engagement.

  “I wanted Littles, Middles and Bigs one so the family could enjoy different sections and kids didn't feel left out, but also that you could grow up with the book.” — Mehan (37:20)

• Hugh the Manatee — Allegorical Guide:
  Hugh, a punning, wise manatee explores America, meeting different animal “characters” who reflect aspects of American character and moral nature.

  “Hugh Manatee is a walking talking dad joke... it was a kind of fun, kind of allegorical image, but also a delightful, humorous way of kind of kicking off a discovery of our own human nature.” — Mehan (39:33)

9. The Role of Art

• Collaboration with John Folley:
  The book features lavish paintings by artist John Folley, blending artistic tradition with American landscapes and animal fables to visually reinforce the book’s themes.

  “We didn't like that they weren't making things beautiful... We would actually go to used bookstores to buy old children's books for our families... Let's make our own big beautiful books.” — Mehan (44:53)

10. Gratitude, Nature, and Practice

• American Landscapes as Inspiration:
  The book journeys through national parks and natural wonders, offering accessible points of unity (“Who disagrees that Yosemite is beautiful?”).

• Roadside Markers — Practicing Civics:
  Mehan’s practical advice for cultivating patriotism: families should stop at historical roadside markers to connect with local stories, sacrifices, and civic memory.

  “It sounds funny, almost trite. But in the end, I think it's actually an extremely important thing to do, and that is basically to stop at the roadside markers.” — Mehan (54:58) [Example of the Two Sleepers marker – 55:00-57:19]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Patriotism and Gratitude:

  “Patriotism is of the utmost importance... If you are ungrateful and you don't see that you've been given anything, you feel no duty to give back to others.” — Mehan (05:31)

• On the Art of Friendship:

  “If we get better at being friends, we're going to get better at actually having... not mantras, not gatekeeping, but sort of, don't we all agree to this? Right? And that's what the Declaration of Independence is in a certain sense is this sort of aspirational document.” — Mehan (22:51)

• On the Role of Art and Subtlety:

  “It's very subtle, like water through the mountains. Right. It doesn't crash, it doesn't bang... But I do think it's also extremely ambitious.” — Mehan (25:05)

• On the American Fable Tradition:

  “The whole purpose of a book like this is to start a dialogue with people who disagree... you start to gather, right, a kind of collection of unifying threads for everyone.” — Mehan (19:35)

• On Nature's God:

  “The term also comes... from Greek Athens, where Antigone faces up to a tyrant and says…there are things deeper than politics in human nature. And it's the laws of Zeus in heaven and the laws under the earth, nature, right, to sort of up from the soil the very way we are.…” — Mehan (16:16-18:39)

• On Gratitude for Beauty:

  “These were wonder wounding waterfalls. Like, I just, I was like, oh, like, so beautiful. It just made you just say thank you. And I don't even care if you... might not believe in God... [but] something in you is going to say thank you to somebody or something.” — Mehan (49:08)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–02:04 — Describing American virtues: hospitality, friendliness, optimism
• 03:06–03:26 — Dark portrayals of America vs. lived reality
• 05:31–06:55 — Patriotism as a duty rooted in gratitude
• 11:33–13:06 — Civic virtue, civility, and the role of fables
• 19:35–21:57 — Fables as unifying threads across disagreement
• 22:34–24:36 — Friendship vs. ideology; the art of civic friendship
• 25:05–26:34 — “Quiet,” ambitious restoration of American identity
• 27:53–35:13 — Reading and unpacking “King Sussy Scraffa”
• 37:20–39:18 — Book structure for all ages: Littles, Middles, Bigs
• 39:33–44:27 — “Hugh the Manatee” and allegorical animal encounters
• 44:53–48:37 — Art and illustration in The American Book of Fables
• 54:58–57:19 — Practical habit: stopping at roadside historical markers
• 58:08–62:07 — Reading “American Mourning” poem and reflection on hope

---

Tone and Style

The conversation is thoughtful, erudite, and inviting. Mehan blends scholarly depth with warmth and humor (as in his use of “Hugh Manatee”). Jekielek participates as a curious, engaged interlocutor, sometimes playfully referencing his own journey to American citizenship.

---

Concluding Insights

Matthew Mehan’s project, as explored in this episode, offers a quiet but ambitious blueprint for national renewal—one fable, painting, and roadside marker at a time. Rebuilding the American character is a patient, generational task, grounded in shared stories, gratitude, and the art of friendship. Through literature and family engagement, Mehan asserts that the “language” of civics, virtue, and beauty can, and must, be restored—not with strident rhetoric, but “like water through the mountains.”

Transcript

[A]

The American sense of hospitality, the American sense of friendliness, and the American sense of optimism. Those are three things that I try to push very hard throughout the book as a kind of celebration of our past, our founding, our history, but also our present.

[B]

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of America's founding, I sit down with Hillsdale professor Matt Meehan, author of the American Book of Faith.

[A]

It's designed to basically move the American imagination back towards these deep truths of our civilization.

[B]

He brings together a beautiful collection of stories, poetry, and original artwork that deeply captured my imagination as I read it. The book took me on a journey from coast to coast in America, encountering some of America's picturesque landscapes and natural beauty while showcasing the virtues and enduring ideals that have shaped the American story.

[A]

It's a shared memory that is what actually unites a people. They have a shared memory that they love of themselves and their history. And if you lose it, you're in real trouble.

[B]

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jania Kelik. Matt Meehan. Such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

[A]

Thanks for having me on. This is wonderful.

[B]

So perhaps one and a half million people have come to America for the World cup recently, and some of them are experiencing it for the first time. And there's almost a meme has come out of these types of reactions. My goodness, I had no idea this was what America is about. I've been lied about America, lied to about America. Decades of anti American propaganda obliterated in one summer is one of them. So, you know, aside from marveling at American food establishments like BUC EE's and so forth, they're actually discovering something about the American disposition, something about the American spirit, and something that I think features deeply in your new book. Why don't you tell me?

[A]

Yeah. The American sense of hospitality, the American sense of friendliness, and the American sense of optimism. Those are three things that I try to push very hard throughout the book as a kind of celebration of our past, our founding, our history, but also our present, and to be sort of restored and strengthened. I love the fact that we are the first country since the Roman Republic that has our word for stranger is a positive word. So howdy, stranger. That the stranger is a friendly word in this country. And I do think that seeing yourself as others see you is a huge gift. And that's what we're getting from the World Cup. Even though I suspect some people put the World cup here as a way to try to dilute our 250th anniversary with a kind of more international cosmopolitanism. But I think it's insofar as anyone intended that it's totally backfired because it's been actually a very stirring patriotic moment.

[B]

It has been. And at the same time it does highlight that what people have heard outside of America about America certainly recently or in recent decades, is a very different story and almost a kind of nihilistic story. At least that's what the word that comes to my mind.

[A]

It is. There is a lot of anti American propaganda. I agree with that. But we've also presented ourselves in a pretty dark way through our arts. Our arts have not been very aligned with our character, our faith, our virtues, our way of life, our love of equality. Think of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, which Breaking Bad is artistically excellent, but it is, you know, 40 plus hours of dark, horrible sort of meth underworld, drug dealing, the Wire, the fascination with antiheroes. We haven't done a lot of sincere, straightforward, kind of Capra esque love of country, love of family, love of the good. We don't do a lot of that art anymore. And so I can understand why people would have a kind of strange false impression from how we've put ourselves forward. I remember during nine, 11 years ago when people said, oh, America's a paper tiger. It's like, well, if you just watch, you know, sort of the sitcoms, you might think we're sort of a vapid graphic group of silly people. But you need to go to like church on Sundays or Friday night Lights, football in Texas. Right. Or a fourth of July parade, get a flavor for the real sort of what doesn't get on camera very often. And the American Book of Fables, that's what we do. I traveled the country, I went all over and I read through the history of the country to sort of get that, the local flavor, but also sort of the deep settlers flavor, the settler's spirit of the American character.

[B]

Before I dive into that, I have to mention this. You know, on the flight back from London, I just came back from London, I watched Casablanca. The shocking thing is perhaps that I'd never seen Casablanca before. My wife demanded it when she, when she learned this. And of course I fell in love with it. And, and you know, patriotism is a virtue in Casablanca. American patriotism is a virtue in Casablanca.

[A]

Yeah, this is something I've been speaking on for years actually as associate dean here at Hillsdale in D.C. we also have the Kirby center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship. And so this has always Been a focus for me. Patriotism is a really important virtue for a number of reasons. One, it's just. Just people have sacrificed. They have built the country. They have given their lives. They have dedicated themselves to acts of heroism and suffering so that we could have the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our independence from Britain, all of that, plus the settlement of the country, all of that kind of thing is just. Just. But it's also good for us. It's good to do in itself, but it's also good for us. Why? Because if we do not have an attitude of gratitude. Not to be all rhymey, but I am a children's poet as well. If we don't have that attitude of gratitude, you actually don't have the motive force to continue to be another link in that chain of generous sacrifice and service to others, because gratitude is actually the motive force of all duty. It is. There's not another. There's. It's. It's a fundamental part of the natural law of human beings, that if you are ungrateful and you don't see that you've been given anything, you feel no duty to give back to others. So patriotism is of the utmost importance.

[B]

You know, not that I want to make this interview an analysis of Casablanca, but isn't this what happens? You know, you have Rick who's, you know, basically being neutral. He's been kind of demoralized somehow, and anything goes, and it's fine. And at some point, things look very dark, but he gets motivated and he finds that gratitude finally. Right. And then you're trying to help Americans remember with this book, one of the things you're trying to remember, the amazing things, the amazing realities, the founders, the geography, all of it. And. But there's something that has to happen to make that leap if you're not there already.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, part of it is imitation. Right. He sees the patriotism of others, and he sees love of country or countries themselves, that which you love threatened. Right. Sort of the occupation. So I do think that getting an outside view can be very helpful. But I also think it's important to think of America is if we're not patriotic, then others can't imitate us. They can't see our way of life and imitate it. So our patriotism is actually the strength of others. That's a lesson I take from Casablancas. Sort of what you see, the love of country and others actually causes you to. Wait a minute. They love their country, so I should love mine. In America's case, I think I am An American exceptionalist. I think we have a. An amazing story. There's so much to be thankful for. It's just an embarrassment of riches we've been given from the previous generations and from a provident God with this beautiful land. But yeah, I think that there is a. You're right, there's a switch that can flip and I think a 250, the semi quincentennial is a kind of key moment to try to flip that switch in a lot of people. That's why I really wanted to sort of pile on to the festivities with a big book. Because this is a kind of moment when everyone's sort of thinking back, how should I love my country? What is my country? There's a sort of reflection that anniversaries like this always beget. And that's what I really wanted to insert a kind of narrative history. And like you said, it's a shared memory that is what actually unites a people. They have a shared memory that they love of themselves and their history. Even if it's adoptive. Like if you're an immigrant, you adopt the history, right? It's your story now because you inherit the law, the beauty, the place, the people, the sentiments, right? But that's a shared memory of the past and if you lose it, you're in real trouble

[B]

if you're an American. Thought leaders regular, you know, we spend a lot of time digging into the powerful forces trying to reshape America and the Western world. Everything from censorship and central banking to the growing economic pressure coming from Beijing. I'm not a financial advisor, but in uncertain times like these, owning something real, something you can hold, can provide stability and peace of mind. I myself am someone who likes to invest in gold because it's something that basically holds long term value in a way that very few other things do. That's through inflation, through geopolitical tension and even periods when confidence institutions is breaking down. And when it comes to gold, it's actually a really excellent time to buy it. In my view. A trusted source for me for buying gold is American Hartford Gold. They have an A rating with a Better Business Bureau and thousands of five star reviews. Gold and silver can be delivered straight to your door or stored securely in a tax advantaged gold ira. If you're planning long term, as I tend to do, and right now when you call and tell them I sent you, you can get up to $20,000 in free silver with your first qualifying purchase. Call 855-862-3377 or text American to 65532. Once again, that's 855-86-23377. Or text American to 65532. Or you can also click the link in the description below. It's like the culture has forgotten the language of how all this works. Like we, this is, this, these are things that we used to learn about. I guess we would call it civics. Right. I don't think even a lot of people know what that word means today.

[A]

Civility, right? Civics, the civil life, politics and politeness. These are words that are co located for a reason, Right. It's like, how do you work well with others? Right. The social virtues, as Cicero would put it. It's civics, but it's also, in a certain sense, it's almost a teaching about the humane, about what is it to be human? And I do think this is one of the reasons why I gravitated towards fables as a genre. People need moral technology, if you will. I know it's a sort of novel phrase, but, you know, tell the truth, be good. You know, there's some simple lessons, but at the same time it's like, well, but how? In what way? What's the smart way to do that? How do I deploy these things that kind of like moral wisdom, that adroitness. It's a theme throughout the book that starts in the very first lines about wit and wisdom. That's a hard thing to learn. And the American people, and frankly, I'd say American educators from the colonial period forward spent a great deal of effort to try to help people to have these virtues of civility, politeness, civic life, but not just those, but also independence, rule of law, justice, truth telling, candor. But I, in one sense, you can have a kind of dark age version of these morals, and you have to have a much more adept technologically advanced moral vocabulary and, and moral praxis. And that's what fables and stories can do.

[B]

Well, and you also describe patriotism as a virtue. And I wonder, and this has been written about somewhat after World War II, you know, looking at the horror that it begat, you know, you had, you know, Japan, Germany, Italy. It seems like people thought to themselves, maybe this patriotism is the problem.

[A]

Right, Yeah. I mean, so I teach both political theory, literature, rhetoric, history, a lot of different things.

[B]

Studied Shakespeare extensively.

[A]

I did, yeah. But I also teach Goethe, the sort of Germany's national poet. And I have a particular read on Goethe. And I take him as a kind of antithetical or anti. A nemesis of mine in that he is a national poet that gave a national character of what he referred to as Straban struggling, that you have to just struggle against all and that that's what Germany was, right. So there are ways that people can tell a lie or tell a new novel tale and bond love of country to some completely foreign ideological plan. And I think Straban is not far from Kampf. Right struggle, Right. And I do think that that sort of German romanticism of sort of always like just new challenge, but not necessarily concerned with human nature and with sort of resting in a certain sense on the Sabbath under the divine nature and nature's God, which is just an incredible bulwark we have in the Declaration and in our own habits and life ways as a country which we could lose. Different countries had bad poets who co located false ideologies with love of country. And so it's kind of like the serpent wrapped inside the fruit tree, right? That, that love of country is good. But if you introduce ideological sort of evils, moral evils, and wind them round love of country, you can use patriotism and hijack it. But that doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. You actually have to then do the work of purifying those sentiments of the heart, which is the poet's job. That's something that America is, I think left off as a duty for a while. And it's one I take very seriously.

[B]

What is nature's God?

[A]

Nature's God is a phrase from the Declaration of Independence. But that's not what you were asking. But it's important. Nature, Nature's God. This famous formulation, it's an account of the fact that we have causation, that and we have solid spiritual causation. That is to say there is divine mind that organizes the universe and that the universe is organized with natures, that these things are made. Now there's a debate in, you know, the sort of the academy right now in a 250 scholars are saying, ah, Nature, Nature's God. And the Declaration was an expression of a deist account of the foundings attitude towards religion and toward the divine.

[B]

What does that mean, Deist?

[A]

You've heard the sort of. The stock version is a kind of clockmaker God that yeah, there's some kind of divine agency, but it's not in any way providentially connected. It's not deeply sort of shaping the nations. It has nothing to do with anything close to divine revelation or the Christian religion or the Trinity or God as love, sort of, you know, sort of in him we live and move and have our being, none of those sorts of much more sort of transcendent and eminent God views. It's a distant sort of set something in motion. So it's a kind of desiccated last gasp of a kind of pagan philosophical account. Although the pagans would have thought deism was ridiculous, 99% of them would have rejected it out of hand as irrational. That phrase is generic nature's God. It doesn't say Jesus Christ or it doesn't say, you know, Adonai or it doesn't say anything that's specific. It just says nature's God. But that is a kind of concession to the fact that there's a lot of different ways that people prefer to refer to God. Right? And there's not full agreement. But that doesn't mean we therefore are upholding a Deist God. It's. We're basically trying to use a general term. But the term also comes, it's as deep as Antigone, Sophocles, Antigone from Greek Athens, from democratic Athens, where Antigone faces up to a tyrant and says, right, how dare you Creon, not let me bury my brother even though, yes, he betrayed the city. There are things deeper than politics in human nature. And it's the laws of Zeus in heaven and the laws under the earth, nature, right, to sort of up from the soil the very way we are. And the divine Zeus, the shining one divine mind. So it's a very ancient version of sort of. Yes, it's a title that can be used by pagans, it can be used by Christians, but when the Americans used it, they use it as a general agreement about, right, a divine creator God that was basically a trinitarian kind of loosely agreed to Christian understanding of religion, but, but decorously open handed so that others can engage who might disagree. But that's very different than saying we are putting forward a Deist God because just in a few lines later even the deist advocates have to admit that there's a discussion of a creator, right? And there's much more talk of a provident God foreseeing things and sort of being much more engaged. So it's a complex phrase because it's a politically negotiated document, but it has a deep and robust history and an active provident and even a creator God by the end.

[B]

So you very explicitly wrote the American Book of Fables as a, I'll simplify it here, I think, but you know, a collection of stories and fables and myths that can be uniting for Americans to kind of build that, I think, use the term moral imagination. What about for those people that, let's say, don't know what to believe about these types of questions that you just discussed?

[A]

So, in one sense, the book, and this is what I love about literature, the book is just what it is. It's clever tales, it's beautiful stories, it's images. And, yes, it juxtaposes lines of the Declaration of Independence alongside nursery rhymes, fables, stories. And even the ones that seem to be more sort of decisive in character, they're still songs and poems that can be sort of just enjoyed or set aside if you don't believe in what it's saying. But it's more of a kind of sort of suggestion. It's a handshake, not a wagging finger or a clenched fist. And that's what I love about art, is it's come, you know, come and come and go as you please. Some. I don't think anyone is going to have a problem with the book in general. They're going to love lots of it because it's generally natural truths about living together, about justice, about friendship, about honesty, about, you know, overcoming discomfort. Like, how do you deal with discomfort, with courage? Right. Like, there's all kinds of basic human truths in the fabled tradition and in these stories. And it's also just. There's primary sources, so there's just history. There's all these wonderful things. So part of me says the whole. The whole purpose of a book like this is to start a dialogue with people who disagree and give them a sort of set of. Do you all agree to this? No. How about this one? Yes. This? No. How about this? Yes. But you start to gather, right, a kind of collection of unifying threads for everyone. And then the other thing that I do throughout the book is it's 13 regions we travel in 13 chapters, and there's a major focus on the national parks and the natural wonders of our country. And I get to sort of sing the beauty of this country. We have a whole chapter in Yellowstone and Glacier National Park. We go to the Everglades, Biscayne Bay, Sequoia national park, all these things. And I think that is one where it's like, who disagrees that Yosemite is beautiful? Like, those are things we all agree on. And I know that's a very low baseline, but in a time when there is so many sharp disagreements, the book gives everybody a handhold to unify in some way as a starting point for a longer conversation.

[B]

I really like how you describe it as meet a kind of a collection of threads, and some of which will make sense to some people and others will make sense to others. We kind of live in a society where we're expected to wholly believe mantras of sorts. Does that make sense? Like, that's. I'm thinking of that in juxtaposition to your phrasing. Like we. We have to agree. We sort of. Oh, yeah, I can agree here. Here. I'm not sure I'm going to keep an open mind as opposed to. Here's the statement. You need to take it, and if you don't, you're the enemy.

[A]

Sort of this. In this house, we believe. Right. It's sort of almost kind of like a talisman. Like if you don't, don't come in, you know, sort of. Yeah, well, that.

[B]

Well, that's. That certainly is, you know, certain ideologies prominent in US society right now think like that.

[A]

There's nothing wrong with thinking that there are things that everyone ought to believe. The question is, how do you maintain friendship over time with people who don't fully ascribe to everything? That's a trick. And that's. That's one of the things I put in the in throughout is how do you practice the art of friendship? Civic friendship is friendship. Right. It's the beginning of deeper friendship, but it's friendship. This is something from Cicero that I'm always banging on about to my students. He's like, you're barber and you are friends. It's like, well, it's a friendship of utility, says Aristotle. Yeah, yeah. But if you read Aristotle carefully, he says what Cicero says, which is, it's also friendship. Right. Insofar as it's anything, it is friendship. So you need to build on it. And there's an art to building and strengthening friendship. But at the end of friendship is common policy, shared sentiment. So if we get better at being friends, we're going to get better at actually having. Not mantras, not gatekeeping, but sort of, don't we all agree to this? Right? And that's what the Declaration of Independence is in a certain sense is this sort of aspirational document. Everyone agreed to it. It was read out loud every July 4th and at other times for many, for hundreds of years. It's still. We just read it out loud at a wonderful event here with all of our alumni as a kind of throwback to yesteryear, hopefully, as a new tradition For Hillsdale in D.C. there is the Declaration. There are these principles that we really want every American to hold. But how do you get them to hold it? That is a kind of deeper part of what it is to be an American and to be a wise and prudent civic friend to others.

[B]

I was recently in London at the ARC conference and you know, one of the interviews that was done with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, well titled summary. The west is throwing away what made it great. Feels to me like you're trying to bring all these ideas that made America great to the fore in a. I think, maybe a quiet way.

[A]

In one sense, it's this. It's very subtle, like water through the mountains. Right. It's sort of. It doesn't. It doesn't crash, it doesn't bang. There's not a lot of fire or fanfare. It's just here's some stories, right? Here's some beautiful images, here's these beautiful paintings and fables and nursery rhymes. But I do think it's also extremely ambitious. Like, this is not a small work. It's 400 pages. It's designed to basically move the American imagination back towards these deep truths of our civilization and how we actually have a healthy, prosperous, powerful, humane, just protected and protecting society. Like all of those kinds of aspects, that takes a lot and it's been drained out of us. And I think, for instance, people talk about how Homer created the Hellenic world. He basically gave them a unifying language, slash culture and sentiments. Heroes. He. He shaped up their godhead. Now I, I'm a modern. Like, I don't. Those are bad things to do, I think. Right. So that's not my, not my goal. I'm not going to be like the old poets that make up religions. Like, that's not okay. But I do still feel a burden to try to unite the country with language, story and that shared memory. And that's a hard thing to do. Like it. Actually, I'm not to toot my own horn, but it takes training, a lot of it.

[B]

It is very ambitious. Yeah.

[A]

It's brain. And granted, this will probably fail. I'm not Homer, right. But. But it'll do some of this work and it'll lay the groundwork for others to still do more of that work. Because that is some of the quiet work we've left off and, and we've left to people who want to see the dissolution of America and the dissolution of our western republican, democratic, natural rights way of life. This, this sort of great basket that carries the eggs of human happiness and, you know, the Christian religion and all, all these wonderful Things that can be protected inside that nest. It's been picked apart and ignored. And. And I think, yes, our laws, yes. Our economics, yes. Our politics, all sorts of. Yes, Medical ethics, which I know you've done a great deal with. But we also have to help the human heart. And that's what the poets do.

[B]

Well, I want to talk about King Sussy Skrafa, the Lord of the boars. And I got kind of captured, or the story captured my imagination. But I also wonder if it might be missing something. So I'm going to.

[A]

Please.

[B]

Actually, why don't you read it?

[A]

Sure. Yeah. Will do. The Raccoon, the Opossum and the Kingdom of the Boars Greatly adapted from Aesop in the time of America's founding, we praised less the creatures whose mouths were full of falsehoods and lies, and more greatly honored the truth tellers among us. But in other times and places, the liar is praised for his clever lies and the truth teller is thought to be ugly and burdensome. As we can see from this fable, a raccoon and opossum went through the Smoky Mountains together. The raccoon loved to lie, and the opossum always told the truth. One day on their travels, they strayed into the kingdom of the Great Boars. The king of the boars had them captured and brought before his throne and made of kudzu vines that covered an old stump on the hillside. He declared himself King Sussy Scraffa, Lord of the Boars, and he demanded of the lying raccoon what he thought of his court and royal guard of snorting boars, of his crown of emerald ash, borer beetles and spongy moth wings, and of his carpeted throne of weedy kudzu. At the foot of Crooked Ridge on Old Hess Creek, the raccoon wiggled his fingers with excitement and praised the boar as the fairest king and nay, an emperor that he had ever seen. The lying raccoon, from behind his masked eyes brought out so many witty inventions of extravagant praise for King Sussy's glorious court, his regal crown and his imperious throne that the Boers all began to blush with pleasure. King Sussiscraffa named him then and there to be his great steward and head of all his household, effective immediately, and all to the approving snorts of that court of boars. When the king turned to the opossum to ask the same question, the opossum thought to himself, if lying had gotten such rewards for the raccoon, how much more would the truth bring him. Adulation and gifts for one truth is worth more than all the lies that have ever been told. And then the opossum answered him truthfully. Dear King Scraffa, you are a boar and a pig, an animal feared and disliked by all in these Smoky Mountains, except perhaps for your meat and the sport of driving you from these ridges, hollows, and gaps. Your court is no different. Your crown is an abomination, and your throne is a pile of weeds not fit to be burnt. The king then commanded that the opossum be gored to death on the tusks of his personal guard. The poor opossum played dead, but it did not help him. Such was the anger of those boars.

[B]

So it struck me. I love this story. And it struck me that there's the kind of a third animal that might be missing from the story. I don't know if it's missing from the story. Maybe it's not the purpose of the story, but the third animal would be perhaps an advisor to the Boar King, and who would be able to tell the truths in a way that the king might be able to accept some of them, indeed. Like, these people, have been very important in history. Right. So, anyway, I'm curious. Why is that person missing from the story? Or perhaps I'm missing the truth. Well, I don't think I'm missing the truth.

[A]

No. So part of the power of persuasion is to allow someone to arrive at the truth themselves. So the process you're describing is precisely the one that I want to create in a reader, where they killed the opossum. Like, that can't be the right way to play it. But obviously I don't want to be like this lying raccoon. He's disgusting. And these boars are gross, by the way. Sponge moths, emerald ash, borer beetles, kudzu, and the boar themselves. Those are all invasive species in the Smoky Mountains that the rangers fight to keep out because they're actually, like, killing the. The natural things. And I actually have a picture of chestnuts that are a native species that have been deeply hurt by. I think it's a Chinese fungus, I think came and wiped them all out.

[B]

Well, and so that adds a lot of meaning to why the crown is an abomination, for example. Right.

[A]

And it obviously has a kind of nod to the American candor, because there is actually something about a republic where we don't have to flatter quite so much. Or at least we think we don't. Right. And we shouldn't flatter, but we think we can Be less careful with the truth because we no longer have some king who can just kill us. We have free of speech, we have natural rights. But nevertheless this is not, this is not great, this is not a great way to be. And in fact I have an image of a kind of curious image. In fact it's too long for this interview, but I can give a whole hour long lecture just on this initial scutch in here. It's an image of the Declaration and the Constitution and sort of the American way of life commemorate a commemorative image. But it's just before I have a line from John Adams, a line from George Washington, and then a line from Matthew 10:16 from the gospel of Matthew. And John says we must. John Adams says we must use all our wit, vigilance and virtue to avoid being deceived, wheedled, threatened or bribed out of our freedom. Right? Because there's clever people that will mess with us and subject us again to tyranny. Let us look and then what George Washington says, let us look to our national character and to things beyond the present period. No mourn ever dawn more favorable than ours did. And no day was ever more clouded than the present. Wisdom and good examples are necessary at this time. Right? So we have to be witty, says John Adams. We also have to be good and wise. Wit and wisdom. Ben Franklin said that that was the goal of an American citizenry was to both marry wit and wisdom. Which is a line from Shakespeare, the marriage of wit and wisdom. And I think all of that comes from a line that Shakespeare, Franklin and the founders were all basically gathering up from and meditating upon, which is from Matthew 10:16, when Christ says, behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Well, how do you be innocent as the opossum? Who knows lying is evil and wrong. But how do you be shrewd and wise like that raccoon, but without becoming a liar and a flatterer and a disgusting fiend? That trick is the trick of fables and moral technology. That is the adroit, witty, wise American citizen who doesn't get taken advantage of, who can stand up for his rights, who can shift for himself. It's a very important kind of virtue. Aristotle calls it a virtue wittiness or wit. He calls it well bred insolence. We say today it's how do you take a liberty? Right. Well, taking a liberty, we, we mean it sort of like forgive me if I take a liberty and you do something Slightly out of sort of character or a little rude. Well, but it actually means you're clever enough to see an opportunity to not let someone sort of concentrate. Power boss you around. Right. Subject you. Right. It's actually a really important part of American citizenship and our republican way of life. And so that is a kind of. It's there in absence, but it's in presence in all kinds of other fables throughout. But I wanted to sort of cause a striking, arresting sort of. Whoa, we're missing something here. It's like. Yes, keep reading.

[B]

Well, it worked very good. You called this a scutcheon. It's a word I'm not familiar with. What is that?

[A]

It's like basically an old, fancy medieval term for a shield or a coat. Coat of arms, a crest. This is technically. It's. It's a. It's a. It's a. Comes from. It's ancient Greek, Roman and Renaissance. It's called a caduceus. And it's. It's got a lot of images that have to do with Greece and Rome and Christianity. Matthew 10:16among them, but also the liberal arts. The exterior border of this image is actually the prow design on the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides. And so the Constitution is basically that frame that. That's protecting the Declaration and our principles and way of life. So it's. I like to use kind of curious and arresting images. Most people won't notice all of them, but it gives it a kind of texture and a liveliness. And then those who have a kind of deeper curiosity, the book has many layers for them to explore.

[B]

I know there's a checklist at the back for people that want to find all the hidden little.

[A]

Yeah. And that's just in the images. That's just in the images. And it doesn't come close to all of the sort of embedded, different sort of cultural material. I try to write like the great poets used to write, where you. You actually weave in all kinds of primary sources sort of blended in.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you for doing this.

[A]

You're welcome. Thank you.

[B]

I mean, it's. For me, as someone who's kind of on the. On the path to becoming an American, this is a very use.

[A]

That was my hope. I actually hope the State Department takes it up. I hope the State Department puts. Gives this as a gift to other embassies, like here. You want to learn about our national character, not just read a kind of rote history or memorize a declaration. This is the warp and woof. The principles mixed with the praxis of the American people.

[B]

You provide stories for Littles, Middles and Bigs. Explain that. I.

[A]

So I literally, in each section of the book, there's a part of the Declaration that takes up a region of the country. And then we break up sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, sometimes word by word, the Declaration. And for each of those subsections of each chapter, there's nursery rhymes for Littles and little poems. And I literally have an acorn sim seal that says four Littles. And then in the next section there are fables, some of them adapted from Aesop, like the one I just read, but greatly adapted and changed for my purposes, and then some. I've written out a whole cloth from myself and from using US History and various things and. And always US animals and regional animals from that region. And that's for middles. And I have a little sapling seal. And then I have primary sources, more advanced poetry, Socratic dialogues, think Animal Farm meets Socratic dialogue, sort of. And these much more elaborate stories with Hugh Manatee, which kids can read or be read to, but sometimes it might go a little over their head and parents need to kind of edit. But it's sort of pulling the. Inviting the whole family to engage the book. And I wanted Littles, Middles and Bigs one so the family could enjoy different sections and kids didn't feel left out, but also that you could grow up with the book. So you can actually take the book through your whole life and enjoy it at deeper and deeper levels and read more and more of it. But a bright. Like, I have a very bright sixth grade son and he is now 275 pages through. And he confessed to skipping one part of One Letter of Washington because it got a little boring. And you're like, that's great. That's exactly what I want. But you can read. A middle schooler can read the whole thing, but it's challenging. But the whole family can enjoy parts of it together. And it has a very high upper register. It's a kind of. It aspires to be a classic, if you want to use a term of art.

[B]

And it's a road trip book. It is. And so you have a manatee named Hugh. Yes, that's on the road through America. Tell me the genesis of Hugh the Manatee.

[A]

So Hugh Manatee is a walking talking dad joke, right? Sort of. And. But it's also part of the American experience. The Declaration dependence makes normative claims about human nature. This is what we're all entitled to, these unalienable natural rights Right. This is what we have. So if that's the case, then I thought it was good to take up that old ciceronean Republican term, humanitas. What is human nature? How ought we to be treated? Which is. That's the base, sort of the base. The basis of natural rights thinking is, what is a human being? What is our human nature? How do we treat each other most humanely? So, Hugh, the manatee was a kind of fun, kind of allegorical image, but also a delightful, humorous way of kind of kicking off a discovery of our own human nature, but also seeing how it interacts with the land, the history and the people, and the principles and the Declaration. So, Hugh, the book begins in the Everglades, in the mangroves, during a hurricane's about to hit. And they have a congress of manatees. They get together at a real place called Deering Estate, and they decide what to do, Right? And there's lots of bad ideas, but there's a few good ones and maybe some crazy ones. One of them is, well, if this huge storm, if the pelicans are right, and this is the. The mother of all hurricanes, we might all be wiped out. So we should send someone off to try to get help for cleanup if we survive, but also to go and teach the tough and gentle ways of the. Of the manatee, of humanity in case we don't survive. Right. Which is kind of like the immigration from Europe. People coming here to try to start over and live out religious liberty and sort of reconstitute natural rights and proper treatment, you know, fleeing from different forms of oppression and tyranny. That's always been kind of the story, but it also is a kind of nod to the Declaration. They passed the Declaration in Congress as the Brits were disembarking for the largest amphibious assault in the history of mankind prior to D Day. Right. So this is a major storm that they. They make these decisions. So in Congress, Hugh leaves, and each region of the country he journeys to, he meets new animals. And each of them teach different kinds of lessons. They have different kinds of character, but one of the things they are is they're all different aspects of our human nature. So each of them is a kind of part, a constitutive part of humanity, of human nature. And so it's a kind of fun, allegorical way to kind of teach people very indirectly about their own nature and what we are. And then if we know what we are, we know how to live well with what we are. So, for instance, he meets Cuddy, the Cuddly porcupine in New England and Cuddy is kind of an image of the affective part of our soul, the passions, the sort of like the huggy bear, animal, mammalian side of us. We all want a hug and a warm, hot soup and a comfy bed, right? And we're effective. We like to, you know, hug and kiss and be friends and slap each other on the back, right? We want to be close to each other. And he always wants a hug. And Hugh, oh, okay, I'm going to hug the porcupine. And that becomes a kind of image of the effective side of us because our passions can also prick us. They can be painful if they get out of order, right? If we don't treat them right and we don't discipline them so they can prick us like the quills of a porcupine. But also the effective side of us is that we're social animals and we have to have friends. But our friends are always fallen. Our friends are always prickly, right? And so hugging the porcupine becomes this sort of image of, no, this is the right thing to do. This is the humane. This is humanity. We have friends. They cause us pain, but that's okay. We keep hugging them anyway. And we get closer and closer to one another in friendship and grow together. So that's just one of the characters, and there are many others. One of my favorites is Nikola the beaver. They meet in the Southwest in the Canyonlands. And he's sort of the technological powers of man, right? Techne. The sort of our intellectual power to make tools and build. And like a beaver, he's constantly building dams, whether or not he ought to, which is sort of a kind of like even the technological impulse needs to be properly governed and made ethical, which I know you appreciate very much. And so there's a kind of morality play with Nikola, who's very useful. He's the one who gets the COVID road trip. He's the one who gets the Ford F250 hotwired and started because he's good with machines, right? So it's a little madcap. But he's also an image of how you have to moralize technology. You can't just build and build and build dams. You have to decide when a dam ought to be built, where it ought to be built. You have to consider the human good, humanity. So it's a very wound up being a wonderful engine to both explore the country, introduce all kinds of beautiful national parks, new wildlife, and tell the settlement of this country, almost the history of the country.

[B]

Chapter by chapter, as you were speaking about the porcupine, I was thinking back to this amazing painting of the porcupine communing with the bison. But tell me a bit about the paintings. I mean, they're beautiful. There's of course, the COVID with the F150 or F250.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But the art is quite spectacular.

[A]

Yes. So John Folly is my dear, and now I think we can almost say old friend. He and I used to teach together at a boys prep school here in Washington D.C. the Heights School. And we didn't like the way the children's book world was going. We didn't. We didn't like that they weren't making things beautiful. They weren't making things literarily rich. They were getting uglier crasser, more facile. And it didn't have that quality that we, we really loved. We would actually go to used bookstores to buy old children's books for our families. But at a certain point I kind of got sick of it. Like, this is actually sad that we're going to used bookstores. Like, let's make our own big beautiful books. So John and I started and we spent a year doing political cartoons. A couple of them got into some newspapers. One of them actually stopped a really bad treaty in the Senate because it got passed around to the Senate staff. And it was kind of like, oh, we don't want to do that. But every week we do one on the news just to practice getting my sort of my wit and wisdom, my like, my opinions, my ideas into his paintbrush, into his, well, at that point, pen and ink. And it actually was hard to do and it was, it was incredibly useful for us because then when we switched to our first children's books, we. We had a vast sort of ocean of experience to work with as to what would get what out of John and how to make sure we understood. So it actually wound up being a kind of practice of the art of friendship to get all these beautiful illustrations.

[B]

But wait, is that how the. That coat of arms was created at the beginning of the book?

[A]

Correct, Right, yeah, precisely so. But John's a realist impressionist trained by Paul Ingbrtson, who can trace his master apprentice line through the Boston school to the occult apart in Paris all the way back, I kid you not, to Rayfield's workshop in Florence. So he is a classically trained realist impressionist who has something bold, has it in the blood. So, oh yeah, old and new, he's. He's amazing. And he does a Lot with light. So he creates heft in his. And we, you know, I won an NEH grant and part of, you know, that was doing research, but also run an innovation prize from Heritage and we funded these 13 gorgeous, huge 3 foot by 5 foot oil paintings. We also did 40 watercolors. Like.

[B]

Tell me about, tell me about this, this painting of the. I haven't read this part of the book. I don't know what's. Why the porcupine is communing with the bison.

[A]

So on the Great Plains, in the section that's just on the word liberty, Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When they go to the Great Plains, humanity is on a prairie schooner, he's on a wagon and he's with his, his band of merry animals. And they come across a wounded buffalo who'd broken his leg in a gopher hole or a prairie dog hole. And there's a prairie fire coming and they have this conversation. They're trying to rescue him, trying to find a way to help him. They think they do, they almost do, but then things go wrong and they have to leave him to escape the flames. And as far as they knew, spoiler alert, he, he may have been lost in the fire. And Cudi, who's particularly affective and love, love, loving and quick to bond and love with people, is very sad about that. And, and it turns out that he was in fact rescued. And they, they reunite with Paul, who, as you know, that name Paul means small and he's anything but. They reunite with him and convince him to sort of go on the journey with them. And this is Cudi seeing him from afar. He leaps off a stagecoach that they're traveling in, in Yellowstone and, and runs up to, to greet him. And so it's a kind of reunification.

[B]

It's a beautiful, beautiful painting.

[A]

Yeah. John and I went to Yellowstone and went to this mountain, this little hilltop really, and to paint. So a lot of the, the paintings, particularly in Glacier national and Yellowstone, were on location paintings that, that John got to do while we were out there.

[B]

You, we have to find the ways to, so we can become inspired. And the American nature is, you know, second to none for this sort of thing.

[A]

When I went to Glacier national for research with John, I kept the phrase from Shakespeare's Hamlet kept coming to me. Hamlet says, the wonder wounding stars. And these weren't stars. These were gorgeous glacial mountains and waterfalls. But they were wonder wounding waterfalls. Like, I just, I was like, oh, like, so beautiful. It just made you just say thank you. And I don't Even care if you, if you, you might not believe in God, you might be a dyed in the wool atheist. Something in you is going to say thank you to somebody or something. Right? And I'm not an atheist, so I knew I was saying thank you to. But that's, that is, I think the universal response to that kind of beauty is gratitude, which like I said before, we desperately need.

[B]

Tell me about the Carpenter and the roses.

[A]

It's a gentle, quiet fable. It sits nestled in the very middle of the book and it's actually a kind of reinforcement of a motif that is throughout the Book of Roses which garnish every page number in the book and on the title pages of each chapter. The rose and the lattice. It's actually an image of republican self government that comes out of the early modern period. And it's. The rose in the lattice is a kind of image of American republicanism, rightly understood.

[B]

And it's a hard, smaller republicanism.

[A]

Correct? Exactly. Like how to have a rule of law republic, particularly one where the people are sovereign, a man to woman, a rancher. They build a ranch that overlooks a beautiful view of the Grand Canyon. And then they decide they want to plant roses on the sides of the ranch house. So they get cuttings from the Shady lady, which is a real rose bush that grows in Tombstone, Arizona. It's a, it's a, it's a. One of the oldest and biggest rose bushes in the country. And they, they plant it there. They grow up, but they keep falling and getting trampled by the animals and, and just sort of falling into a morass. So he takes his father's carpenter tools, nails and wood and basically builds a lattice. And he and his wife weave the rose bushes, the rose roses up into this and then it really takes off and it grows up over the roof and they have a beautiful rose covered house with aromatic, you know, sort of rose perfume. Every night as they sit after a hard day's work looking out over this beautiful view of the Grand Canyon, the image that is in this, that is Republican is the idea that the people in a republic, the res publica, to use the old Latin, the public, the publica, they are natural, people are natural. They're naturally families. They naturally make homes. They naturally start to shift for themselves, make businesses and take care of animals and property, that's natural. But the laws of the country that protect them, and if the laws really care about their nature and their natural rights, they will be cleverly arranged such that they prop them up. And so at the end of this process, when they build it, they're, they're sitting there bathing in the glorious sun, these roses and it's. They say to the carpenter, we told you it was not in our nature to grow so tall. To which the carpenter replied, perhaps it was in your nature to grow so tall with the help of a carpenter. Right. Sort of the idea of like well, people aren't naturally self governing. They need a king. They need to be told what to do. It's like. Or they can self govern if they have good laws that help prop them up and strengthen them as a people. Right. It's a sort of difference between a simple minded version of what our nature is and a more complex version of understanding our nature which is we're artful and political creatures that can artfully make laws. And thus it is in our nature to self govern if we do it with the right laws and attend to our human nature. So it's kind of, it's pretty nerdy stuff but it's also just a beautiful story that teaches you about that, that location and those roses. But there's also a pun in there too which I think is part of the Christian depth of the American Republic, which is not, it's not overtly Christian in that it is overtly Christian. The people were. But the public way of our laws, nature's God that we discussed earlier. That is in a certain sense a kind of gentle, open handed way, an invitation. And so the idea of that you can it perhaps it's in your nature to grow so tall with the help of a carpenter. That's a reference to the framers of the Constitution, the Founding fathers and the Republican government. It's also a quiet and gentle sort of invitation to the carpenter which is Christ. Like we actually need religion, we need grace, we need help to really grow to our full potential. And I think that kind of encapsulates the kind of gentle way that America is secular but also Christian in its way or at least religious.

[B]

As a kind of, I guess, advice. Aside from of course I'll recommend people that are become. This has captured their imagination. Absolutely. Get this book. It's beautiful and wonderful and it's teaching me a lot as I go through. It's going to take me a while before I finish reading the whole thing. As we are in the 250th anniversary of this great nation, what would be one practical habit that parents and children can implement basically to cultivate that

[A]

I

[B]

guess the basics, the civics.

[A]

So I actually, I actually recommend one inside the book which I seems appropriate to represent now in Interview. I. It sounds small, it sounds funny, almost trite. But in the end, I think it's actually an extremely important thing to do, and that is basically to stop at the roadside markers. In fact, I have one. It's an excerpt called Two Sleepers. And it's basically a roadside marker that I stopped at with my family, my first time ever vacationing in Vermont with them. And I came across 1781 near this spot by a blockhouse guarding Hazen Road, which was one of the military roads they set up during the Revolutionary War to be able to bring armies quickly along the frontier because the English had actually set Indian raiding parties to scalp and kill the women and children while their husbands were away in the army, which is very wicked. Two Scouts, Constant Bliss and Moses Sleeper, classic old Puritan New England names, were killed by Indians and buried where they fell. Lest we forget the pioneers. This memorial was erected in 1940.

[B]

41.

[A]

Just a small little sort of here, kids. And we stopped, we got out and we looked at this in red and you could see their minds going like. So people were just waiting at night on the road in case Indians came in order to try to defend the country and the frontier so that they could fight the war for independence. Like, yeah. And then they go. And people in 1941 that long after built a memorial. And by the way, it was well kept with little American flags and flowers that the locals were clearly still adorning every year. He's like, yeah, isn't this beautiful? This is how you love and cherish the sacrifices of your ancestors in patriotism. So stopping at the roadside markers in America has done a great job. There are many of them all over the country. That's a great window in. It opens people up out of their screens, out of their small little universe of their desires as a child. It's an incredible engine for fostering patriotism and a love of history.

[B]

You're just reminding me of a. It wasn't technically a marker. It was a signpost in. When I was on a motorbike many years ago in Oregon. Or is it in Washington state? I think you may know where this is, but there was a sign that said Stonehenge. So there's a full scale replica of what Stonehenge would have looked like when it was created. I believe it's in Washington State that I discovered clearly, I have to go to Stonehenge as there's a sign.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Anyhow. And it actually does have some. I'm not going to Go into it. But it does have some actually quite profound meaning and why it was put in there and so forth. Let's talk about some more profound meaning. The American Morning. Please read that for me as we finish up.

[A]

Yes, it's a short poem, only 20 lines. It's the benedictory poem at the very end of everything in all the stories, all the fables about when the founders in the Declaration pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. But it's five beat line, 20 lines long, 250. And each line until the end, each line is a kind of encapsulated part of our history in lots of little subtle ways. But also the title, American Mourning is a kind of Whither wilt thou go? Like which way, Western man? Which way, America do you hear? American Mourning like sorrow and sadness at what has lost or what has passed or how we don't get to be on the frontier or we didn't get to fight World War II, or we're not as heroic or whatever.

[B]

Or we're in decline.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I hear a lot.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Or do you say American Morning? No, we reorient ourselves, pun intended. To the east, to the rising sun, and be a hopeful people and re cultivate the entire country again, which is what we're actually called to. That's obvious. That's our forefathers went west. And I actually have a joke. Go west, young manatee. But then by the end, he gets to California and it's like, you need to go east. You have to re cultivate this entire country and then Europe. Right. And then we have to face the east like we've got. We've got a lot of work to do to face the east. Go east. Right. There's a triple pun there, but. So it's a kind of invitation to a new American optimism to roll up our sleeves and get after it. American Morning if we could till the earth as our fathers did and look on loam that providence long hid and drink from gin Clear rivers overflowing through meadow traces full of bison lowing if we could step beyond that blackest tillage and wander into hunting ground and village and smoke the peace pipe Trading well for furs and find a spring before we die of thirst if we could make a track without a rest and end at peaceful waters in the west and build the dams and raise the towers up and from them ring the bells for all to sup if we could dredge the harbor and port the air and send our ships abroad to make things Fair and rise beyond the curvature of earth. And in one spirit step both wax and wayne man's worth. If we could do what our fathers did before then what on earth would we be grateful for? The sun now shines on us to play our part as wholly as we orient our heart. So this is a watercolor of Grizzly 399. And that's that fable or short story for bigs in Yellowstone or in. This is in Jackson Hole. Grizzly 399 and Backpacker 2020. It's kind of about COVID but also about magnanimity. And like, even when there's difficulties, you have to not count the costs. She's actually a folk hero. She had quadruplets, triplets, triplets, twins. She's the most successful grizzly mom out there. And so I wanted to commemorate her. And there's a lot of things like that throughout. This takes place at Glacier National. There's Theodore the moose. Teddy is a kind of nod to Teddy Roosevelt. The national parks. And I learned while I was out there, you know, moose can go down like eight feet into the water, they'll swim. And a major part of their diet is actually eating water plants deep below. This is humanity that. He has reading glasses, Hugh, often one of his.

[B]

He's very educated.

[A]

Yes. He can produce sort of primary sources and read from them.

[B]

Yeah, I know. And we don't know where the book came from. One knows not where.

[A]

He's sort of a magic, magical power. But he's actually has a debate with Virgil the Black there, named after Virgil the poet, about how are we going to tell tales in America. Are we going to talk about nads and nymphs and. And, you know, sort of gods and fakery? Or are we going to do something more historical, more natural, more moral, which is kind of the American way. We don't think. We know our founding. We don't have, you know, kings talking to nymphs and. And, you know. Right, right. This is.

[B]

Oh, the king snake, of course.

[A]

Yes. The king.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Who eats other snakes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Sort of an image of tyranny. The hunter of men from the Bible. Right. And this is actually a visual quote from a famous 1776 painting of the Philadelphia skyline with Christ Church and Independence Hall. And this is the. The two rattlesnakes, a kind of Gadsden flag reference. But also the. That Matthew 10:16 Be wise as serpents, innocent as the dove. Right. That you don't fall for the trees.

[B]

I, I've. I actually read this one. This guy here, the kingsnakes demanding that they stay and be the. Be their subjects. They're like, I think you're going to move on.

[A]

Yeah, we're going to go to Philadelphia. The Independence Hall.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. What.

[A]

What's going on here? Monster, right. Some jackrabbits and kit foxes. This is a kind of Aesop's fable about a king who, who judges all cases. But he sleeps very often in. In his cave and occasionally he eats a baby rabbit and if no one's watching. Right. And eventually they start going to these clever foxes who are kind of like lawyers. And it's a kind of notion of sort of when a king is absent and like George doesn't actually do his job, everyone will start to be seek the governance of someone else. In this case the law. Right. The lawyers. And so it's a sort of the slow transition, benign neglect under the kings of England towards republican rule of law in America.

[B]

Fascinating.

[A]

This is a famous story from. From Utah. The. The seagulls and the Mormon crickets. This is Sam Sammy the Eagle, who's actually a famous eagle that sits in the. The House of Representatives of Wisconsin. The regiment of Wisconsin soldiers brought a live eagle into battle with them during the Civil War. And afterwards they. It was the mascot of the. The Congress and then they stuffed it and so it's this kind of rep.

[B]

It's a reference over the Great Lakes.

[A]

Yeah. It's heading to the Apostle Islands of Wisconsin where it meets Mishinama, king of fishes. A kind of nod to Longfellow.

[B]

There's a whole fable also very, very high up.

[A]

Yes. And then shark and the dolphins. Yeah. This one takes place out. It's references of beautiful historic lighthouse off the Florida Keys. And it's a famous esops fable about the wolf and the bulls. And I change it to the bull shark and the four spotted dolphins. And then this is one of my favorites, the cave fish. They're actually called. They're. They're called well, angels because in the lead mine, in the lead mine country of southern Missouri, you wanted these in your well because they were. They're in the groundwater. Right.

[B]

If they're in your well, that means that you can drink the water.

[A]

There's no lead poisoning. So these were actually a guarantee of your safety. So if you're like, oh, I don't want to fish in my wells, like think again. You might want to keep it down. Yeah, wonderful. Yeah. John did a wonderful job with all of these.

[B]

Well, Matt Meehan, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.

[A]

Thank you very much. John.

[B]

Thank you all for joining Matt Meehan and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janje Kelly.