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[00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:02]
B
Guaranteed Human thinking about selling your car. Get a real offer worth real money from CarMax. Then take seven days to think it over. That's it. No haggling, no hassles, no pressure. Get all the details and a real offer today@carmax.com Want to drive CarMax? At Ross, you'll find everything your kids need when they go back to school. From fashion to school supplies to dorm room decor, Ross has it all. Because it isn't just the first day of school for them. It's new year, a new look and endless possibilities. When they walk back through those school doors, they're a different kid than the one who walked out months ago. Ready for anything? Back to school starts at Ross. Find your nearest Ross@rossstores.com
[00:50]
C
this is always fun when Tim Sandifer joins us. Tim is the Vice President for Legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, the author of a number of fabulous books, including notably the Permission Society, which was inspired by conversations on the Armstrong and Getty show. It says that right there in the book. Mostly this show inspires eye rolls, but indeed it inspired a terrific book. But Tim's latest book, which I have been absolutely loving, I've mentioned it 30 times, is proclaiming John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. Tim joins us now. Mr. Sandifer, how are you, sir?
[01:25]
A
Oh, it's a little chaotic right now actually. We're having the closet renovated and so every stitch of clothing that I own is in a giant pile in the midd of my office where I and I'm sitting on top of it right now to talk to you.
[01:38]
C
Oh wow, fabulous.
[01:39]
A
I'm hoping it's good for the acoustics because it absorbs sound waves.
[01:43]
C
You know, it should be actually. Yeah. Judy and I just did a never ending remodel and it's absolutely chaotic, but it reminds you of how adaptable human beings are. Speaking of which. So I have sincerely been loving proclaiming liberty. I look so forward to reading it every time I get a chance. It and you can describe it better than me, but it describes the period leading up to the Declaration of Independence and why all those gripes are in the list. Thomas Jefferson in the committee wrote and it goes into a fair amount of detail and I've been thinking about how to express this best. Even those of us who got a decent grounding in why the colonists broke free of England got it with a very broad brush.
[02:26]
A
Yeah.
[02:27]
C
And never mind the kids these days that get taught the polar opposite of the truth. The bizarre. 16, 19 notion that the revolution was to preserve slavery. But I've got to admit that even, and I felt I had a pretty good foundation in this, I'd missed some absolutely fundamental twists of history that led to the Revolution. For instance, the concept of parliamentary supremacy and what an enormous issue that was leading up. Can you help people understand what that issue was?
[03:00]
A
Well, you and me both, because I was in the same situation. I learned a ton working on this book. One of them was this issue. So the dispute between London and the American colonies was primarily over the power of Parliament, not the King, for Most of the 12 years that led up to the Declaration of Independence. And this is actually the book that I recommend on this for those who really want to get deeper into it, is a four volume history of the legal disputes at the heart of the revolution by a guy named John Philip Reed, who is a hero of mine. I don't know how anybody could have done the kind of scholarship he did in the days before the Internet. It's amazing. But the dispute was really over whether Parliament had authority to govern the American colonies at all. The Americans said no. They said, we owe allegiance to the King, he's the executive branch of our government. But when it comes to the legislative branch, our laws are made at our local legislatures, that is, you know, the Virginia House of Burgesses or the Massachusetts House of Representatives or what have you. And Parliament has no power over us. And one reason they said that was because the colonial charters that allowed the American colonies to start had been issued by the King. Right. That's why Virginia is named after Queen Elizabeth and why Jamestown is named after King James, because these places were created on the king's say so. And so then here comes Parliament saying in the 1760s they say, hey, it turns out that after 150 years, we actually are the ones who govern you and not the King.
[04:33]
C
And then, Tim, I think that, that, that for the entirety of this time the local legislatures had been passing the laws, they had been passing the taxes, they'd even been paying the, the King's officials, the British officials who came over because look, we're self governing, we'll, we'll, we'll take on your officials, they'll help run the place here, the executive branch. But we make all the fiscal decisions. And that had been the reality.
[04:57]
A
Yeah. And, and when, when Parliament wanted money from the Americans, they would, they would send a request to the local legislature and said, would you please adopt the tax and send us what you can afford. And London had even refunded money to the Americans for providing too much that they couldn't afford. So by the 1760s, the Americans were accustomed to a century and a half of this, of being given that kind. Their autonomy was being respected. And then all of a sudden, Parliament announces in 1764 with the sugar act. And then a year later, in 1765, it passes the Stamp act and those two laws, Parliament says. It turns out actually Parliament has supreme absolute power over the entire empire. We can even change the constitution if we want to. The king is subordinate to us. We control everything.
[05:47]
C
And there are no human rights except, as we say, there are.
[05:50]
A
That's right. All the traditional rights of Englishmen exist only at our whim, and we could repeal them if we wanted to. And in fact, there was one legal writer at the time who said, there is no such thing as an unconstitutional law, because if Parliament passes it, that automatically makes it constitutional. And the Americans are horrified by this. Now, the reason the British do it, it's not because they're crazy. The reason they do it, they have good reasons. And that is, in Britain, the fear had always been that the king was too powerful. The civil wars that they had had there had all been because the King was this, you know, independent entity separate from Parliament. And that had been the fight. And Parliament had won that battle. And Parliament saw itself as protecting people against the king. Right? And so now here come the American colonies, and they're saying, well, it turns out we don't owe allegiance to Parliament. We owe our allegiance only to the King. Well, that's really scary back in London, because they say, that's just why we fought the civil wars, right? So you have these two totally incompatible notions of the British Constitution, the unwritten British constitution, that the Americans think that there's these principles of constitutionality that restrain the Parliament. And on the other hand, you have Parliament saying, no, we have absolute supreme authority. And those two incompatible ideas of the Constitution, they're as incompatible as the pro and anti slavery views of the U.S. constitution a century later. And so inevitably, they're gonna come into conflict, which finally, after a dozen years of argument and negotiation, the Americans give up and say, fine, we're just our own country. We're not gonna deal with you anymore.
[07:24]
C
Right? And I think it's worth noting that instead of like we did in 1789, sitting down and writing a constitution, Parliament just said, the Constitution's anything we say it is. And it can change at any moment. We let you know that would have been if they'd gone with the, you know, let's write A constitution that would have been a nice middle ground. I was also so interested and angered by your description of, forgive me if I get some of the terminology wrong, but the admiralty courts and the various ways that Parliament sought to enforce its will and how horrifically unfair all of that was to all of the defendants in these matters.
[08:04]
A
Oh, I'm so glad that you're, that you're angry and outraged because I always hope, hoping to write the book, I
[08:09]
C
had to grab my musket man. I'm not kidding.
[08:11]
A
Yeah, that's what I wanted to convey because I've seen so many times I've had to hear people say, well, it was just a little fight over a three penny tax on tea. What was the big deal? The Americans complained and said that they were being oppressed and they weren't really. And all this sort of stuff. Yes, they absolutely were. British colonial rule, absolutely. It was oppressive. Absolutely. King George was a tyrant, but it wasn't just him. He was going along with Parliament and that's why he was a tyrant. So of course it was outrageous. It was much than the tax on the t. The admiralty courts you're talking about. This is how Parliament was enforcing its restrictions on American trade. Not just taxes, but prohibitions on people doing business in order to enrich people back in London by eliminating economic competition. And some of these things were crazy. Like the Hat act that made it illegal for an American to make hats out of furs trapped on their own land. You had to send the fur to London to be made into a hat instead of. And then sent back to you. That's just crazy.
[09:11]
C
And you couldn't send the fur anywhere else either. It had to be London.
[09:15]
A
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And if you did send your goods to any other country, they had to go through England so that your ship would be essentially double taxed in England on its, on its route to your ultimate destination. So to enforce these, the Parliament creates these admiralty courts. And the Admiralty courts are called that because they originated with the Navy. That's what they were originally designed for, but now Parliament expands them to control everything, basically. And in an Admiralty court, you have no right to a jury. You are not presumed innocent. You have to prove your innocence. You have no right to counsel. You have all these restrictions on the so called traditional rights of Englishmen. Right. And the punishment is forfeiture. Right. So you have. So the Parliament will come in and prosecute you. You have to prove your innocence. And if you fail to do that, they're gonna take your stuff and Sell it and profit themselves off of it. And even if you do win your case, you still cannot recover damages for being wrongly accused. If a judge thinks that, well, there was probable cause to think that you were guilty. Now if all of this sounds familiar to you, that's because we are doing the same thing today through civil asset forfeiture laws every day in this country. Presuming people guilty, seizing their assets, putting them through trials with no jury where they have no presumption of innocence, stealing their property and allowing the government to sell it and profit from it. It's going on every in this country. And it is outrageous that we are committing the same wrongs today that our ancestors thought was worth, was worth overthrowing British rule for.
[10:45]
C
Yeah, it's absolutely unholy. That's a topic for another day. But the final thing I want to say about the, you know, the, the awful system of injustice that we're describing is often the trials would be held hundreds of miles away from where the infraction allegedly incurred, or even worse, across the ocean in England. And if I had any witnesses, I had to bring them across the ocean, take weeks at my own expense. And then even in the best of circumstances, I'm financially ruined. I mean, system of justice.
[11:16]
A
And that's assuming that you survive this. Right? Cause you know, going on a ship across the Atlantic Ocean and back is not just time consuming, but extremely dangerous. You could be shipwrecked, you could catch tuberculosis or any number of diseases. I mean, it's crazy. And one of the so called intolerable acts that Parliament passes just before independence. The Americans call it the Murder Act. This is a law that says that if a British customs official kills an American while enforcing his duties, he can't be tried in American courts. He has to be tried in London instead. Which means that the accused, I mean the victim, rather the survivors and all the witnesses have to go to London. And of course you're going to be tried in front of a biased British jury anyway. So it's really a system that is very much loaded dice against the Americans and it's all to profit a small handful of people who run Parliament.
[12:08]
C
Tim the lawyer. Sandifer. Tim Sandifer, the vice President for Legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute is with us. We're talking about his fabulous book proclaiming John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. Tim, thanks for hanging around.
[12:20]
A
Yeah, no problem.
[12:22]
C
So I think you talked to Jack about this while I was on vacation, but it's absolutely worth touching on again, at least briefly, the question of The Founding Fathers, and I mean, maybe most particularly Thomas Jefferson and slavery and the notion being pushed in virtually all of our government schools these days, I think that the Founding Fathers were hypocrites and just pretended that all men are created equal didn't conflict with slavery, and just kind of shuffled their feet and pretended that conflict wasn't there. How untrue is that characterization?
[12:59]
A
Oh, it's utterly insane. The idea that the American Founding Fathers did not believe that all men are created equal really meant all men. That's a lie. And the only piece of evidence that has ever been brought forward for this is the fact that the American Founders did not eliminate slavery immediately in July of 1776. But there's all sorts of reasons to explain why that happened. And, you know, for one thing, they had no idea and no power to do that. They had no idea how to accomplish it and no power to do it. If the American Continental Congress had tried to abolish slavery on July 4, 1776, it would have failed to do so. It would all have accomplishment. Would it be to destroy the Continental Congress? It would not have eliminated slavery. But that's the only piece of evidence that has ever been brought forward to show that the American Founding Fathers did not believe all men to mean all men. Now, that's a separate question from whether they were hypocrites. If they were, the question of whether they were hypocrites for not eliminating slavery, that is, I think, a little bit more complicated. And I think we're not trying harder, frankly. Yeah. But I think we need to begin by asking ourselves what we would do in a situation like that. And one way to do that is to imagine that there was some enormous evil in the world today and how we would deal with that evil. There are a lot of people who think that the consumption of animal meat is a horrifying evil, that animals have rights, and that eating meat is a cruel and inhumane and disgusting practice. Now, they live in a world where just about everybody's eating meat. So what should they do about that? Now, there are some people who go full vegan about that, and, you know, that's fine if that's their choice, but for the most part, I think what most people do is, yeah, they feel bad about, you know, things like factory farming or the mistreatment of animals or something like that, but they go ahead and they eat meat and they use leather and they just live in a world where that's the case. Are they hypocrites for that? Well, I guess maybe it depends on what your standards are. But I think if you're living in a world with a colossal evil all around you and you failed to, like, end it overnight, I don't know if that really makes you a hypocrite. I think it just means that you live in a complicated world with a lot of political barriers to accomplishing justice. And there were a lot of political barriers to accomplishing justice in 1776. All the states had. Well, almost all the states had slavery to some extent, but they were being. Slavery was being abolished. There was a movement on foot to eliminate slavery, and the states were getting rid of slavery. And it was all going in one direction at that time. And the American founding fathers were very candid about how evil slavery was. Jefferson says, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and his justice cannot sleep forever. There is no part of a just God that can side with whites in a fight between blacks and whites. I mean, that's amazingly candid. He's publishing this in a book. I don't know of any similar example of a revolutionary movement where the founders say, we believe in X, and we recognize that our entire economy is basically based on the opposite of X, and we pledge ourselves to getting rid of x, but we just don't know how to do it right now. I mean, that's amazing. And to ignore that progress, I think, just requires ideological blindness and dishonesty.
[16:16]
C
Yeah. Tim, I know you're a moral man, not a religious one, but whether your morals come from the Bible or elsewhere, I think virtually every philosophy that's ever taken hold recognizes that if you go, say, several hundred years down the road of the wrong thing untangling, it's gonna be a bitch.
[16:35]
A
Yeah, right. And you're talking about a world where it had never been before. There was no precedent for a society eliminating slavery without starting a race war. Every time that it had been tried, it ended up killing lots and lots of people. So now we're gonna not only abolish slavery, but live in a multiracial democracy for which there was no precedent at all. It's not surprising that this was unimaginable to people like Jefferson and Adams who were reading this history and saying, well, anytime people tried to abolish slavery in the past, it's led to race war. So how are we gonna avoid that? I mean, of course, it was a new idea to them. Of course they failed to just snap their fingers and end slavery overnight. Nobody could have done that.
[17:13]
C
Right. Excellent point. We've barely got a minute left, Tim. What when you were writing the book, did you hope the main takeaway would be for folks reading it?
[17:22]
A
I wanted people mostly to take away the idea that the Revolution was fought for a for just reasons. The Americans were right to do what they did. The the principles that all men are created equal with inalienable rights are true and the political causes of the revolution were legitimate. What Britain was doing to the American colonies really was wrong and really was oppressive and Americans should be proud of that history and should cherish it. And understanding it is the first step toward cherishing it. Not just a bunch of flag waving pronouncements every July 4th, but really understanding why we fought the Revolution and why the dream of the Declaration deserves to survive and prevail in today's world.
[18:01]
C
Tim Sandifer, the Goldwater Institute the book is Proclaiming Liberty, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and I love it. Tim, great to talk to you as always. Let's stay in touch.
[18:10]
A
Absolutely. Thanks.
[18:11]
C
All right, thank you, amigo Armstrong and Getty.
[18:15]
D
This is Tony Ayo from the Real Report with Tony Ayo and Uncle Murder. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent, streaming, even extra Sosa at your favorite burrito spot. But with Boost Mobile, you don't have to play the Willis Go up soon game. Boost Mobile offers offers an unlimited talk, text and data plan at a price that'll never go up. It's the same price you'll pay for Life Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up. Only at boost mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan.
[18:46]
E
This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem. Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all in one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, E Commerce, hr. Fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's odoo.com.

Summary6 min read

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: “Incompatible Ideas. Tim Sandefur Talks to A&G”
Date: August 11, 2026
Featured Guest: Tim Sandefur (Vice President for Legal Affairs, Goldwater Institute)
Topic: The American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and Historical Narratives

Episode Overview

In this episode, Armstrong & Getty are joined by Tim Sandefur, legal scholar and author of Proclaiming Liberty: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence. The conversation explores the historical context and ideological tensions that led to the American Revolution, challenging modern misconceptions about the Founders’ motivations—particularly regarding slavery—and illuminating the profound issues of law, justice, and constitutional authority at the birth of the nation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: What Led to Independence?

[00:49–05:47]

Armstrong introduces Tim Sandefur, noting his acclaimed work drawing from the show’s own conversations.
Sandefur sets the historical context: For most of the 12 years before the Declaration, the dispute was not with the King but with Parliament over who had the authority to govern the colonies.
The colonies operated for over 150 years with virtual autonomy, making their own laws and taxes via local legislatures, with Parliament respecting this arrangement.
The sudden assertion of "parliamentary supremacy" in the 1760s—through measures like the Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765)—shocked colonists. Parliament declared it had supreme authority, could alter the constitution, and even subordinate the King.

“The Americans think that there’s these principles of constitutionality that restrain the Parliament. And on the other hand… Parliament [says], no, we have absolute supreme authority. And those two incompatible ideas of the Constitution…are as incompatible as the pro- and anti-slavery views of the U.S. constitution a century later.”
— Tim Sandefur [06:25]

Notable Moment:

Sandefur credits historian John Phillip Reid’s scholarship for deepening his own understanding.

2. Admiralty Courts & Economic Oppression

[07:23–12:07]

Armstrong expresses outrage at Britain’s “horrifically unfair” enforcement of trade and tax laws via Admiralty courts, and Sandefur confirms this system denied colonists basic rights.
Parliament imposed protectionist laws (e.g., the Hat Act), restricting manufacturing and forcing raw materials to be sent through London.
Admiralty courts stripped away jury trials and presumed defendants guilty until they proved innocence, with property forfeited to the Crown.
Even when defendants prevailed, they could not recover losses from wrongful prosecution.

“British colonial rule, absolutely…was oppressive. Absolutely King George was a tyrant, but it wasn’t just him. He was going along with Parliament and that’s why he was a tyrant.”
— Tim Sandefur [08:11]
Sandefur draws a strong parallel to today's civil asset forfeiture laws in the U.S., arguing these practices embody the same abuses the Founders rebelled against.

“It is outrageous that we are committing the same wrongs today that our ancestors thought was worth overthrowing British rule for.”
— Tim Sandefur [10:37]

Notable Quote:

Armstrong: “I had to grab my musket, man. I’m not kidding.” [08:08]

3. The Myths Around Slavery and the Founders

[12:21–16:15]

Armstrong raises the modern narrative that Founders were hypocrites regarding slavery, suggesting schools claim they simply “pretended” equality didn’t conflict with slavery.
Sandefur absolutely rejects this, calling such characterizations “utterly insane” and “a lie.” He acknowledges the practical and political barriers to abolishing slavery outright in 1776.
He argues that failing to end a deeply entrenched evil overnight in no way diminishes the ideal or the movement’s sincerity.

“If you’re living in a world with a colossal evil all around you and you failed to, like, end it overnight, I don’t know if that really makes you a hypocrite. I think it just means that you live in a complicated world with a lot of political barriers to accomplishing justice.”
— Tim Sandefur [13:59]
Sandefur points to documented efforts among the Founders to abolish slavery (“it was all going in one direction at that time”) and forcefully highlights candid anti-slavery statements from Jefferson.

“Jefferson says, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and his justice cannot sleep forever. There is no part of a just God that can side with whites in a fight between blacks and whites. I mean, that’s amazingly candid.”
— Tim Sandefur [15:15]

4. A New Experiment & Its Struggles

[16:15–17:12]

Armstrong and Sandefur discuss how the American experiment—eliminating slavery and building a multiracial democracy—had no precedent, making practical progress exceedingly difficult.
The expectation of instant abolition was unrealistic, given the complexity and historical record of abolition attempts leading to violence and social breakdown elsewhere.

“It’s not surprising that this was unimaginable to people like Jefferson and Adams who were reading this history and saying, well, anytime people tried to abolish slavery in the past, it’s led to race war. So how are we gonna avoid that? I mean, of course, it was a new idea to them.”
— Tim Sandefur [16:42]

5. Main Takeaway: The Revolution’s Enduring Significance

[17:12–18:01]

Asked what readers should take from his book, Sandefur emphasizes the justice of the American cause and the reality of British oppression.

“I wanted people mostly to take away the idea that the Revolution was fought for just reasons. The Americans were right to do what they did. The principles that all men are created equal with inalienable rights are true and the political causes of the revolution were legitimate.”
— Tim Sandefur [17:22]
He urges Americans to understand and cherish—not just celebrate—the deeper meaning of their founding.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On learning about the roots of the revolution:
“I recommend…a four-volume history of the legal disputes at the heart of the revolution by a guy named John Philip Reed, who is a hero of mine.”
— Tim Sandefur [03:17]
On British economic oppression:
“The Hat Act that made it illegal for an American to make hats out of furs trapped on their own land…just crazy.”
— Tim Sandefur [09:03]
On the legacy of legal abuses:
“We are doing the same thing today through civil asset forfeiture laws every day in this country.”
— Tim Sandefur [10:26]
On the narrative about Founders and slavery:
“It’s utterly insane. The idea that the American Founding Fathers did not believe that all men are created equal really meant all men. That’s a lie.”
— Tim Sandefur [12:59]
On facing moral complexity:
“[If] you failed to…end it overnight, I don’t know if that really makes you a hypocrite…I think it just means that you live in a complicated world with a lot of political barriers to accomplishing justice.”
— Tim Sandefur [13:59]

Important Timestamps

00:49 Introductions; Tim Sandefur joins the show
02:25 Setting the historical context—Parliament vs. King
03:00–05:47 Colonial autonomy & Parliament’s sudden assertion of supremacy
07:23–12:07 Economic oppression, Admiralty courts, erosion of rights
12:21–17:12 Addressing “hypocrisy” of Founders and the slavery debate
17:12–18:01 Sandefur’s main hope for readers: pride in just foundations

Tone & Style

The conversation is lively, candid, and intellectually substantial, mixing humor (“I had to grab my musket man. I’m not kidding.”) with a deep seriousness about historical truth and justice. Sandefur’s tone is passionate and precise, while Armstrong & Getty punctuate the discussion with plainspoken clarity and enthusiasm.

Summary

This episode offers a forceful corrective to simplistic and cynical narratives about the American founding. Through Sandefur’s historical insight, listeners are invited to see the Revolution as the product of deeply principled resistance to real oppression, with all the moral complexity and political challenge that entailed. The discussion provides a valuable primer on the meaning and legacy of the Declaration of Independence, urging a richer, more honest engagement with the nation’s origins.

Loading summary

Transcript35 lines

[00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:02]
B
Guaranteed Human thinking about selling your car. Get a real offer worth real money from CarMax. Then take seven days to think it over. That's it. No haggling, no hassles, no pressure. Get all the details and a real offer today@carmax.com Want to drive CarMax? At Ross, you'll find everything your kids need when they go back to school. From fashion to school supplies to dorm room decor, Ross has it all. Because it isn't just the first day of school for them. It's new year, a new look and endless possibilities. When they walk back through those school doors, they're a different kid than the one who walked out months ago. Ready for anything? Back to school starts at Ross. Find your nearest Ross@rossstores.com
[00:50]
C
this is always fun when Tim Sandifer joins us. Tim is the Vice President for Legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, the author of a number of fabulous books, including notably the Permission Society, which was inspired by conversations on the Armstrong and Getty show. It says that right there in the book. Mostly this show inspires eye rolls, but indeed it inspired a terrific book. But Tim's latest book, which I have been absolutely loving, I've mentioned it 30 times, is proclaiming John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. Tim joins us now. Mr. Sandifer, how are you, sir?
[01:25]
A
Oh, it's a little chaotic right now actually. We're having the closet renovated and so every stitch of clothing that I own is in a giant pile in the midd of my office where I and I'm sitting on top of it right now to talk to you.
[01:38]
C
Oh wow, fabulous.
[01:39]
A
I'm hoping it's good for the acoustics because it absorbs sound waves.
[01:43]
C
You know, it should be actually. Yeah. Judy and I just did a never ending remodel and it's absolutely chaotic, but it reminds you of how adaptable human beings are. Speaking of which. So I have sincerely been loving proclaiming liberty. I look so forward to reading it every time I get a chance. It and you can describe it better than me, but it describes the period leading up to the Declaration of Independence and why all those gripes are in the list. Thomas Jefferson in the committee wrote and it goes into a fair amount of detail and I've been thinking about how to express this best. Even those of us who got a decent grounding in why the colonists broke free of England got it with a very broad brush.
[02:26]
A
Yeah.
[02:27]
C
And never mind the kids these days that get taught the polar opposite of the truth. The bizarre. 16, 19 notion that the revolution was to preserve slavery. But I've got to admit that even, and I felt I had a pretty good foundation in this, I'd missed some absolutely fundamental twists of history that led to the Revolution. For instance, the concept of parliamentary supremacy and what an enormous issue that was leading up. Can you help people understand what that issue was?
[03:00]
A
Well, you and me both, because I was in the same situation. I learned a ton working on this book. One of them was this issue. So the dispute between London and the American colonies was primarily over the power of Parliament, not the King, for Most of the 12 years that led up to the Declaration of Independence. And this is actually the book that I recommend on this for those who really want to get deeper into it, is a four volume history of the legal disputes at the heart of the revolution by a guy named John Philip Reed, who is a hero of mine. I don't know how anybody could have done the kind of scholarship he did in the days before the Internet. It's amazing. But the dispute was really over whether Parliament had authority to govern the American colonies at all. The Americans said no. They said, we owe allegiance to the King, he's the executive branch of our government. But when it comes to the legislative branch, our laws are made at our local legislatures, that is, you know, the Virginia House of Burgesses or the Massachusetts House of Representatives or what have you. And Parliament has no power over us. And one reason they said that was because the colonial charters that allowed the American colonies to start had been issued by the King. Right. That's why Virginia is named after Queen Elizabeth and why Jamestown is named after King James, because these places were created on the king's say so. And so then here comes Parliament saying in the 1760s they say, hey, it turns out that after 150 years, we actually are the ones who govern you and not the King.
[04:33]
C
And then, Tim, I think that, that, that for the entirety of this time the local legislatures had been passing the laws, they had been passing the taxes, they'd even been paying the, the King's officials, the British officials who came over because look, we're self governing, we'll, we'll, we'll take on your officials, they'll help run the place here, the executive branch. But we make all the fiscal decisions. And that had been the reality.
[04:57]
A
Yeah. And, and when, when Parliament wanted money from the Americans, they would, they would send a request to the local legislature and said, would you please adopt the tax and send us what you can afford. And London had even refunded money to the Americans for providing too much that they couldn't afford. So by the 1760s, the Americans were accustomed to a century and a half of this, of being given that kind. Their autonomy was being respected. And then all of a sudden, Parliament announces in 1764 with the sugar act. And then a year later, in 1765, it passes the Stamp act and those two laws, Parliament says. It turns out actually Parliament has supreme absolute power over the entire empire. We can even change the constitution if we want to. The king is subordinate to us. We control everything.
[05:47]
C
And there are no human rights except, as we say, there are.
[05:50]
A
That's right. All the traditional rights of Englishmen exist only at our whim, and we could repeal them if we wanted to. And in fact, there was one legal writer at the time who said, there is no such thing as an unconstitutional law, because if Parliament passes it, that automatically makes it constitutional. And the Americans are horrified by this. Now, the reason the British do it, it's not because they're crazy. The reason they do it, they have good reasons. And that is, in Britain, the fear had always been that the king was too powerful. The civil wars that they had had there had all been because the King was this, you know, independent entity separate from Parliament. And that had been the fight. And Parliament had won that battle. And Parliament saw itself as protecting people against the king. Right? And so now here come the American colonies, and they're saying, well, it turns out we don't owe allegiance to Parliament. We owe our allegiance only to the King. Well, that's really scary back in London, because they say, that's just why we fought the civil wars, right? So you have these two totally incompatible notions of the British Constitution, the unwritten British constitution, that the Americans think that there's these principles of constitutionality that restrain the Parliament. And on the other hand, you have Parliament saying, no, we have absolute supreme authority. And those two incompatible ideas of the Constitution, they're as incompatible as the pro and anti slavery views of the U.S. constitution a century later. And so inevitably, they're gonna come into conflict, which finally, after a dozen years of argument and negotiation, the Americans give up and say, fine, we're just our own country. We're not gonna deal with you anymore.
[07:24]
C
Right? And I think it's worth noting that instead of like we did in 1789, sitting down and writing a constitution, Parliament just said, the Constitution's anything we say it is. And it can change at any moment. We let you know that would have been if they'd gone with the, you know, let's write A constitution that would have been a nice middle ground. I was also so interested and angered by your description of, forgive me if I get some of the terminology wrong, but the admiralty courts and the various ways that Parliament sought to enforce its will and how horrifically unfair all of that was to all of the defendants in these matters.
[08:04]
A
Oh, I'm so glad that you're, that you're angry and outraged because I always hope, hoping to write the book, I
[08:09]
C
had to grab my musket man. I'm not kidding.
[08:11]
A
Yeah, that's what I wanted to convey because I've seen so many times I've had to hear people say, well, it was just a little fight over a three penny tax on tea. What was the big deal? The Americans complained and said that they were being oppressed and they weren't really. And all this sort of stuff. Yes, they absolutely were. British colonial rule, absolutely. It was oppressive. Absolutely. King George was a tyrant, but it wasn't just him. He was going along with Parliament and that's why he was a tyrant. So of course it was outrageous. It was much than the tax on the t. The admiralty courts you're talking about. This is how Parliament was enforcing its restrictions on American trade. Not just taxes, but prohibitions on people doing business in order to enrich people back in London by eliminating economic competition. And some of these things were crazy. Like the Hat act that made it illegal for an American to make hats out of furs trapped on their own land. You had to send the fur to London to be made into a hat instead of. And then sent back to you. That's just crazy.
[09:11]
C
And you couldn't send the fur anywhere else either. It had to be London.
[09:15]
A
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And if you did send your goods to any other country, they had to go through England so that your ship would be essentially double taxed in England on its, on its route to your ultimate destination. So to enforce these, the Parliament creates these admiralty courts. And the Admiralty courts are called that because they originated with the Navy. That's what they were originally designed for, but now Parliament expands them to control everything, basically. And in an Admiralty court, you have no right to a jury. You are not presumed innocent. You have to prove your innocence. You have no right to counsel. You have all these restrictions on the so called traditional rights of Englishmen. Right. And the punishment is forfeiture. Right. So you have. So the Parliament will come in and prosecute you. You have to prove your innocence. And if you fail to do that, they're gonna take your stuff and Sell it and profit themselves off of it. And even if you do win your case, you still cannot recover damages for being wrongly accused. If a judge thinks that, well, there was probable cause to think that you were guilty. Now if all of this sounds familiar to you, that's because we are doing the same thing today through civil asset forfeiture laws every day in this country. Presuming people guilty, seizing their assets, putting them through trials with no jury where they have no presumption of innocence, stealing their property and allowing the government to sell it and profit from it. It's going on every in this country. And it is outrageous that we are committing the same wrongs today that our ancestors thought was worth, was worth overthrowing British rule for.
[10:45]
C
Yeah, it's absolutely unholy. That's a topic for another day. But the final thing I want to say about the, you know, the, the awful system of injustice that we're describing is often the trials would be held hundreds of miles away from where the infraction allegedly incurred, or even worse, across the ocean in England. And if I had any witnesses, I had to bring them across the ocean, take weeks at my own expense. And then even in the best of circumstances, I'm financially ruined. I mean, system of justice.
[11:16]
A
And that's assuming that you survive this. Right? Cause you know, going on a ship across the Atlantic Ocean and back is not just time consuming, but extremely dangerous. You could be shipwrecked, you could catch tuberculosis or any number of diseases. I mean, it's crazy. And one of the so called intolerable acts that Parliament passes just before independence. The Americans call it the Murder Act. This is a law that says that if a British customs official kills an American while enforcing his duties, he can't be tried in American courts. He has to be tried in London instead. Which means that the accused, I mean the victim, rather the survivors and all the witnesses have to go to London. And of course you're going to be tried in front of a biased British jury anyway. So it's really a system that is very much loaded dice against the Americans and it's all to profit a small handful of people who run Parliament.
[12:08]
C
Tim the lawyer. Sandifer. Tim Sandifer, the vice President for Legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute is with us. We're talking about his fabulous book proclaiming John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. Tim, thanks for hanging around.
[12:20]
A
Yeah, no problem.
[12:22]
C
So I think you talked to Jack about this while I was on vacation, but it's absolutely worth touching on again, at least briefly, the question of The Founding Fathers, and I mean, maybe most particularly Thomas Jefferson and slavery and the notion being pushed in virtually all of our government schools these days, I think that the Founding Fathers were hypocrites and just pretended that all men are created equal didn't conflict with slavery, and just kind of shuffled their feet and pretended that conflict wasn't there. How untrue is that characterization?
[12:59]
A
Oh, it's utterly insane. The idea that the American Founding Fathers did not believe that all men are created equal really meant all men. That's a lie. And the only piece of evidence that has ever been brought forward for this is the fact that the American Founders did not eliminate slavery immediately in July of 1776. But there's all sorts of reasons to explain why that happened. And, you know, for one thing, they had no idea and no power to do that. They had no idea how to accomplish it and no power to do it. If the American Continental Congress had tried to abolish slavery on July 4, 1776, it would have failed to do so. It would all have accomplishment. Would it be to destroy the Continental Congress? It would not have eliminated slavery. But that's the only piece of evidence that has ever been brought forward to show that the American Founding Fathers did not believe all men to mean all men. Now, that's a separate question from whether they were hypocrites. If they were, the question of whether they were hypocrites for not eliminating slavery, that is, I think, a little bit more complicated. And I think we're not trying harder, frankly. Yeah. But I think we need to begin by asking ourselves what we would do in a situation like that. And one way to do that is to imagine that there was some enormous evil in the world today and how we would deal with that evil. There are a lot of people who think that the consumption of animal meat is a horrifying evil, that animals have rights, and that eating meat is a cruel and inhumane and disgusting practice. Now, they live in a world where just about everybody's eating meat. So what should they do about that? Now, there are some people who go full vegan about that, and, you know, that's fine if that's their choice, but for the most part, I think what most people do is, yeah, they feel bad about, you know, things like factory farming or the mistreatment of animals or something like that, but they go ahead and they eat meat and they use leather and they just live in a world where that's the case. Are they hypocrites for that? Well, I guess maybe it depends on what your standards are. But I think if you're living in a world with a colossal evil all around you and you failed to, like, end it overnight, I don't know if that really makes you a hypocrite. I think it just means that you live in a complicated world with a lot of political barriers to accomplishing justice. And there were a lot of political barriers to accomplishing justice in 1776. All the states had. Well, almost all the states had slavery to some extent, but they were being. Slavery was being abolished. There was a movement on foot to eliminate slavery, and the states were getting rid of slavery. And it was all going in one direction at that time. And the American founding fathers were very candid about how evil slavery was. Jefferson says, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and his justice cannot sleep forever. There is no part of a just God that can side with whites in a fight between blacks and whites. I mean, that's amazingly candid. He's publishing this in a book. I don't know of any similar example of a revolutionary movement where the founders say, we believe in X, and we recognize that our entire economy is basically based on the opposite of X, and we pledge ourselves to getting rid of x, but we just don't know how to do it right now. I mean, that's amazing. And to ignore that progress, I think, just requires ideological blindness and dishonesty.
[16:16]
C
Yeah. Tim, I know you're a moral man, not a religious one, but whether your morals come from the Bible or elsewhere, I think virtually every philosophy that's ever taken hold recognizes that if you go, say, several hundred years down the road of the wrong thing untangling, it's gonna be a bitch.
[16:35]
A
Yeah, right. And you're talking about a world where it had never been before. There was no precedent for a society eliminating slavery without starting a race war. Every time that it had been tried, it ended up killing lots and lots of people. So now we're gonna not only abolish slavery, but live in a multiracial democracy for which there was no precedent at all. It's not surprising that this was unimaginable to people like Jefferson and Adams who were reading this history and saying, well, anytime people tried to abolish slavery in the past, it's led to race war. So how are we gonna avoid that? I mean, of course, it was a new idea to them. Of course they failed to just snap their fingers and end slavery overnight. Nobody could have done that.
[17:13]
C
Right. Excellent point. We've barely got a minute left, Tim. What when you were writing the book, did you hope the main takeaway would be for folks reading it?
[17:22]
A
I wanted people mostly to take away the idea that the Revolution was fought for a for just reasons. The Americans were right to do what they did. The the principles that all men are created equal with inalienable rights are true and the political causes of the revolution were legitimate. What Britain was doing to the American colonies really was wrong and really was oppressive and Americans should be proud of that history and should cherish it. And understanding it is the first step toward cherishing it. Not just a bunch of flag waving pronouncements every July 4th, but really understanding why we fought the Revolution and why the dream of the Declaration deserves to survive and prevail in today's world.
[18:01]
C
Tim Sandifer, the Goldwater Institute the book is Proclaiming Liberty, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and I love it. Tim, great to talk to you as always. Let's stay in touch.
[18:10]
A
Absolutely. Thanks.
[18:11]
C
All right, thank you, amigo Armstrong and Getty.
[18:15]
D
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[18:46]
E
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