← GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics
GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics
GoodFellows LIVE: The US Constitution and A Republic - If You Can Keep It | Hoover Institution
01:18:05
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- [00:00]
Neil Ferguson
Foreign.
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Host
Today we're doing something a little different for Goodfellows. We're going to talk a little about current events.
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John Cochran
What?
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Host
We're going to talk about past events as well. Specifically the founding of the Republic, and we're going to focus on the United States Constitution. So, gentlemen, let me first throw a little constitutional trivia at you. So the Constitution. How long do we think the Constitution. Not the amendments, but the Constitution itself. How many words do you think it is, Neil? You're asking me 5,000?
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John Cochran
2,000?
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Host
5,000? 10,000? 20,000? How many?
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Neil Ferguson
Including the amendments or excluding the amendments?
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Host
Excluding.
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Neil Ferguson
Excluding the amendments. 2000.
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Host
4500. I was off Declaration of Independence.
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Neil Ferguson
You see, we don't prep for this. We don't prep for this show at all.
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HR McMaster
No.
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Host
How many times has it been amended?
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Neil Ferguson
Come on, you know that.
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Host
Come on, guys. 57.
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Neil Ferguson
You don't know. I'm just a simple immigrant. These guys are the ones you should know.
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HR McMaster
No, he had to do this for his citizenship examination.
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Neil Ferguson
Yeah, I know. That was a while ago now.
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HR McMaster
27.
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Host
27. 27 wasn't on the test.
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Neil Ferguson
Including the ones repealed. You've just failed the citizenship test.
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HR McMaster
Yes. Including the Most. Yes.
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Host
Right. H.R. mcMaxad of Philadelphia. You might be disturbed to know that Pennsylvania is misspelled on the Constitution. They left an N out. No respect for Philadelphia.
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Neil Ferguson
Does that mean it doesn't apply to Pennsylvania?
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HR McMaster
And Pennsylvania was named after William Penn, you know, so they. P, E, N, N. So, yeah, he's right on top of City hall right there. And really had a big impact on the culture of Pennsylvania, which was very religiously tolerant because of the Quaker origins of the state, as Maryland was because of the Catholic origins of the state. Each of the. Each of the states have a different character associated with it based on what part of England. Excuse me, really? The Britain. Britain associated with the settlers who first came there. And there's a great book by David Hackett Fisher, a fantastic historian called Albion Seed. And if you read this book, you can still see kind of the vestiges of that influence from Britain.
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Neil Ferguson
Thank you.
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HR McMaster
And how it affected.
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Neil Ferguson
Because the Scots played a disproportionate role. I just want to make that clear. The English played some part, but it was essentially a Scottish project.
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Host
All right. John Cochran, 55 members of the Constitutional Convention, 34 of them were actually lawyers or had studied the law. Maybe Shakespeare is wrong. Don't always kill all the lawyers.
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John Cochran
Good lawyers are important to have. And we live in a society of rule of law. Let's hope it's a good one.
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Host
Then finally, the Constitution. The United States Constitution does not grant socioeconomic rights. There's no guarantee of health care. There is no guarantee of income.
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John Cochran
There's.
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Host
This is in contrast to constitutions in Europe and Latin America, where governments grant what they call positive liberties. And I want to discuss this as we get further into it. But, Neil, I'd like you to read the preamble of the Constitution.
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Neil Ferguson
Well, I'll never go anywhere without that.
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Host
Yes, exactly.
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Neil Ferguson
In case I get asked difficult questions, I'm going to read the preamble.
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Host
Yes.
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Neil Ferguson
I hope you're ready. In an inappropriate accent. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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Host
Question for the panel. What is revolutionary about this?
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HR McMaster
Well, I mean, what is really revolutionary about the revolution that includes the Declaration of Independence all the way through the Constitution and the Founding was the fundamental idea that sovereignty lies with the people rather than with the king or even a parliament. And of course, this has its roots back to classical republicanism from ancient Greece and Rome, but also the ideals of the Enlightenment expressed by Locke, who was reflecting in many ways that republican ideal and the focus, the liberal focus on individual rights. And so, of course, it wasn't a perfect founding of the Constitution of the country, as we know, but what it did is it founded the country and I think on principles, on values that ultimately made, for example, the criminal institution of slavery untenable. And I think allowed us, the Constitution did. And these ideals that were captured in the Declaration and in the Constitution allowed us to continue this experiment toward a more perfect union.
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Neil Ferguson
Can I jump in here?
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John Cochran
Yeah, we gotta let us disagree here
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Neil Ferguson
because, I mean, it was not a novel idea to found a republic. People had done that multiple times from the ancient period through the medieval period. In the mid 17th century, they tried a republic in England. So it wasn't novel to say we're going to have a republic. That wasn't new. What was new was that it survived because most republics in the ancient medieval and early modern world had failed. The one in England turned into a dictatorship extraordinarily quickly. And the founders were remarkable because they really tried to learn from history. The project was a republic, if we can keep it, that would last 250 years, not 25 years or 2.5 years. And if you look at all the other Republican experiments before and subsequently. The striking thing is the durability of this one, the fact that it's the same constitution, amended, but the same constitution, unlike all the republics in Central and South America, which would go through constitutions the way I go through shirts, changing it on a fairly regular basis. So that's the really striking thing about this. And why. Why is this republic so durable? The answer is that they had a brilliant scheme called the separation of powers. And this was very much a product of Enlightenment thinking. It owed a debt to Montesquieu, it owed a debt to the great thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. The project was to make sure that the republic didn't do what republics nearly always did. Either tip over into anarchy because it's too democratic, or tip over into tyranny because you gave too much power to the executive. So the genius of this thing, this extraordinary constitution, is the application of the principle of the separation of powers to make sure that there is a bit of democracy that's there in the House of Representatives, but there's a bit of monarchy. The president has some of the power, some of the attributes of a monarch. There's a bit of aristocracy, that's the Senate. But the idea is that these things will balance each other out so that it can't tip over into a tyranny or into an altogether majoritarian democracy. That's the novel thing, and we don't talk nearly enough about that. It's quite unique. When the French did a republic, not long after, they did it completely differently, and it failed disastrously and produced the terror and then the tyranny of Napoleon. That's what's novel.
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John Cochran
I just want to add to that, in some sense, it's not revolutionary. The same people who ran the country, continue running the country, just end up without the king hanging around to bother us. You said will of the people. It's a very constrained will of the people. They were really afraid of democracy because they saw what happened. If it's one man, one vote, one time, 51%, we shove it down your throats. Suddenly that falls apart. It's a very limited republic. This is a. A machinery. The Constitution isn't the visionary document, it's the machinery document. And it's that machinery that has kept going so beautifully to limit government. You brought up rights quickly. Rights as they understood them. They all start with, congress shall pass no law. These are rights of us against the government. Now that word got completely destroyed and turned into the right to free stuff from your fellow citizens. But that's not what they meant by. By rights at all. And what I find really amazing, two things about it. First, they wrote this thing in a time of crisis. The Articles of Confederation were not working. The country was sort of falling apart. And you'd think, we got a crisis to solve, guys. And here they are thinking about this beautiful structure and all the possible ways things could go wrong and how we're gonna pick a president when 99 parts of 100 fall apart. And they got that right. Just amazing that in the time of crisis they thought to take this so seriously. The last important thing I want to point out is we venerate the words a little too much. I think there's a tendency to take the Constitution now as sort of a Bible, words written by God, to be taken absolutely literally, including the commas. But what's really important is that the spirit of that Constitution has remained with the American people. Liberia and Argentina have almost the same Constitution. They don't have the same answers because the spirit got lost. And we saw many times in American history. I think we'll discuss some still to this day, where the spirit of the Constitution gets lost and forgotten. But then in America, that is now part of our cultural fabric, which is why it stays potent, not just the words.
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HR McMaster
I'll just say one of the great gifts that we had is who the founders were and what they had read and what they had, what they had used as the basis for their education. It goes back to the liberal ideals in the Enlightenment, Locke, Hume. But it goes even further back to the classical period and the influence of Cicero and Cincinnatus and the Roman and Greek ideals of democracy. And they fused together. This combination of republicanism, which is really checks on power divided, government divided, divided even further, which is to our advantage, I think, between the federal authorities and the federal system, federal authorities and state and state authorities. That was a further division than a further division, even into bicameral legislatures, other checks on power, but also balanced with the liberal ideals, the Lockean ideals of individual rights. And as Gordon Wood, the fantastic historian of the Founding has concluded, that the American Revolution was radical for the reasons that John points out. It was not just because of the way they structured the Constitution, but the mores, as Tocqueville would write about, that become the elements of our culture. So it was socially, it was culturally and also radical from a political perspective as well.
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Host
Altogether, let's look at the Constitutions from your respective academic wheelhouses. And hr, I want to start with you. The words provide for the common defense. Now, the founding fathers were Suspicious of large standing armies. HR Was this a result of measures like the Quartering Acts, which actually put British troops into colonist households, or was there something larger at stake here? Were the Founding Fathers just afraid of foreign entailments?
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HR McMaster
Well, it has a lot to do with the English Civil War and the specter of Cromwell, the man on horseback who could extinguish liberty. And then they exported, you know, the British, exported all the Roundheads to the United States, you know, thanks a lot. And so we had this Puritanism, but it had a lot to do with the English Civil War and then the recognition that they had to really ensure that there wasn't any kind of a power, any power that could extinguish freedom and liberty. So there was a deep suspicion of standing armies. You know, for example, the Constitution directs that we will sustain, build and sustain a navy, but will raise an army when we need. Also has a lot to do with tradition associated with the American experience from the colonial times through the founding, which was the reliance on militias who could be called out. But of course, when really you had the practical demand of having to fight for independence against the most powerful country on earth empire, that you needed a standing army, a more professional force. And we developed during the Revolution an appreciation for how complementary a standing force was when employed with the militia. Look at the Battle of Cowpens, you know, for example, and the ways that they played complementary roles even in battle. But that debate continued all through the Founding and Hamilton's authorship of, of many of the Federalist Papers, I think, make the best argument for the need for a standing army. But what we have inherited, I think, in terms of our traditions, in terms of our recognition in the military and among civilian leaders, I hope maybe not as much these days that we need a really bold line in place between the military and partisan politics. The worst thing that could happen is if the military regarded itself as a check on executive power. Cause guess what? Hey, nobody elects generals, nobody elects admirals. And so if sovereignty lies with the people, suggesting that the military should have a role like that actually undermines the Constitution, undermines the sovereignty of the people.
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Neil Ferguson
Neil. So the interesting thing to me, as somebody who grew up in Britain, is the extent to which the American Revolution had continuities. This was in many ways the second Civil War. It had many of the same issues at stake as had been at stake in the British isles in the 1640s. There's a wonderful book by J.C.D. clark, the Language of Liberty, that shows the extent to which there was a Sort of reenactment of many of the debates that had already occurred more than a century before. There's continuity in the sense that the institutions of. Of representation were established in the British colonies, in the representative assemblies in the different colonies. The traditions of common law were also carried over. And I tried to show in my book, Empire, the paradox of the Revolution, because the colonists were actually the best off people in the world at the point at which they rebelled. They had far lower taxation than their counterparts back in the motherland. And so the question of why they revolted is actually quite a hard one. The typical way it's taught in American schools, or it used to be, is that there were terrible oppressions weighing down the colonial population. It's completely untrue. It's completely.
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HR McMaster
I mean, you know, completely. Consider the source. Consider the source on this one.
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Neil Ferguson
Just.
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HR McMaster
They were called intolerable acts for a reason.
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Neil Ferguson
I mean, allow me to finish. HR Contain your Philadelphia enthusiasm.
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HR McMaster
I'm the agitator. That's my role. I'm the agitator.
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Neil Ferguson
The list of complaints against King George that follows the noble opening of the Declaration is actually quite laughable because, in fact, the colonists got a fantastic deal. They had tax cuts. Duties were reduced. So what was the issue? It wasn't burdensome to be in the American colonies. It was burdensome to be paying for the British Empire back in Britain. The issue was one of principle, not one of taxation. And the principle was the fact that taxes were decided. Even tax cuts were decided in London, in Parliament there. And what the colonists objected to was the fact that they had no say. And that, I think, is a really important point that gets us to something we've touched on. Liberty is the objective of the American Revolution. It's the sacred objective of the Constitution. It's not, we want lower taxes. It's not something material, because their material deal was great. It's a principle. No taxation without representation. That's what the revolution was about. And final thing I'll say is remember that 20%, a fifth of the colonists, rejected the Revolution. The Loyalists were not prepared to break their oath to the king. And so it was a civil war in many ways, including Ben Franklin within the Franklin family. His son was a loyalist, and he was, of course, one of the governor of New Jersey. Founding fathers. So this is the kind of more nuanced account of the revolution that I think we need to understand. And can I just add a footnote on slavery. Slavery would have lasted less time if the colonies had remained within the British Empire because Britain moved to abolish the slave trade and slavery well before the United States. So the key point here to remember is the institutionalization of slavery in the terms of the Constitution gave it a longer lifespan than it would have had under British rule. I'm not about to sing. You'll be back from the musical album.
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HR McMaster
Might as well. You might as well.
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Neil Ferguson
But I'm just saying it's not as simple as they told you in high school.
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Host
Now, John, I want to get you to second job. But, Neil, are you saying that there should not have been a revolution in 1776?
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Neil Ferguson
Well, if you look at Canada, you can see that if you didn't have a revolution, the outcome wasn't radically different. That's an important point to bear in mind. I mean, if Canada was a totally different place when you crossed the border, it was like, whoa, if it was Haiti. But it's not. It's actually impossible to distinguish Canada from the United States. Don't tell the Canadians I said that. But it's essentially the same socioeconomic outcome, more or less, but it's a different geopolitical outcome. Because what's interesting is. And Adam Smith understood this. Can I just do a quick shout out for Adam Smith, Scotsman, the great author of the wealth of Nations? It's not coincidental that the wealth of nations appears before the Declaration of Independence the same year, just a few months before. Smith writes about the grievances of the colonists, talks about why they are right to complain about the way they're treated by London. Smith imagined some kind of arrangement where there would be decentralization, some kind of federal outcome. He was hoping there was a way of solving the situation. But. But like many Scots, he was sympathetic, very sympathetic to the cause of the patriots, as they often called themselves. And I think that's one reason that there isn't such a furious effort to defeat the Revolution as there was against the French Revolution. Remember, the War of Independence is an order of magnitude smaller as a conflict than the wars against revolutionary France, because basically, if you were Edmund Burke, the great Irish parliamentarian, the American Revolution wasn't something you were really against. You kind of got the argument for representation, taxation. You got that?
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Host
Okay, French Revolution.
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HR McMaster
We got to get to John.
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Host
We got to get to get to John. And we also had the question, more
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HR McMaster
cash per capita in the Revolution than in any other.
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John Cochran
Let me get in on this one.
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HR McMaster
So from the American perspective, it wasn't
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Neil Ferguson
just like, we'll get to John, but the stance of the French Revolution is a tiny thing, and the United King. The Great Britain does not deploy a huge force against the American Revolution because there isn't huge, huge opposition to it in London.
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John Cochran
That's the reality on this point. Perhaps the fault here was the King was so pigheaded because there was substantial body of opinion in the UK that wanted to work a deal with the Americans. And most Americans started this thing wanting their rights as Englishmen, just a little representation of taxes. And in fact we do owe a great debt. It wasn't that revolutionary. We are just the perfection of what started with the Magna Carta and then developed with the Parliament and constitutional limitation on monarchy. And you know, we finally figured out the last best one after the King screwed it up. But this could have ended much differently with all of those people in Britain who wanted to make a deal rather than the King who we still don't like.
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Neil Ferguson
I don't think the King is the villain of the peace, by the way,
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John Cochran
or those in the Parliament who said,
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Neil Ferguson
yeah, I mean there was parliamentary opposition to any kind of concessions to the patriots and that was really what drove the crisis.
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John Cochran
But you wanted to move on to something else.
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Host
Bill, I do want to move on.
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HR McMaster
Can I just say quickly, this was also, it was a, it was a radical revolution because it was a social revolution as well.
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Host
Right?
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HR McMaster
The colonists, they were second class. They were part of, they weren't part of the British.
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Neil Ferguson
This is woke history. I don't, don't agree with that.
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HR McMaster
Absolutely true.
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Neil Ferguson
This is not a radical revolution. French Revolution was a radical revolution. That's why it ends in the tell
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HR McMaster
having the benefit of seeing the French Revolution as well. Tocqueville writes about this extensively in Democracy in America and he talks about the striking differences between culture in America and culture in Europe, including the continent and Britain. So I think what the revolution did is it unleashed this idea that you can be a self made person. Now, of course, a large portion of the population was left behind, the enslaved population. And what had happened is this contradiction between the ideals communicated in the Declaration and in the Constitution. Really, we're going to contradict the institution of slavery, but we fought our most destructive war in our history to emancipate 6 million of our fellow Americans. So hey, I just think we can't undervalue how radical the revolution was. Not just from a political perspective or from independence itself, but from a social and cultural perspective.
- [22:48]
Neil Ferguson
I'm not gonna let you get away with this because I think this is a misunderstanding. This was not a radical revolution in the way that the French Revolution was one where the Ideas of Rousseau came to the fore. David Hume was one of the heroes of the founding fathers. Hume was no radical, he was a total. Now what is going on in the 1770s is an argument rather different from the one allow me to finish, dear colleague, a rather different one from the Gordon Wood argument. The argument that's being made in Massachusetts is the pretensions of the government in London to increase the power of the monarch at the expense of our local liberties. That's the thing that's revolutionary. We want to uphold the liberties that we have, the representative assemblies that we have. So I don't think once you portray the American Revolution as radical. You used that word earlier and I'm skeptical. I think it a strongly conservative element to it. And it was the government in London that was seen as pushing the envelope to increase its authority at the expense of the colonists. Now we would say that at Hoover, but I think we should recognize the concern conservative element in the so called revolution. Secondly, religion. Tocqueville observes that one of the reasons democracy works in America and doesn't work in France is the extraordinary power of associational and religious life at the local level. And the thing that Tocqueville says over and over again is wow, these Americans do things at the local level and they do it themselves and then knit together by Christian faith that those things are terribly important and they get left out of many modern accounts of the American Revolution.
- [24:31]
Host
Question, do we let Neil have another scotch?
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HR McMaster
Give him.
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Neil Ferguson
Nearly finished the first one.
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Host
Finished the first one.
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HR McMaster
But it's Hume and Montesquieu and the idea of civic duty. I mean, it really is, it is a radically different form of governance and it's radically different in terms of what people's expectations are of their government. But yeah, there's a huge economic dimension to this.
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Host
I want to talk about it.
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John Cochran
Centralized authority is not going to work with the population density. You've got the colonies.
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Host
All right, John Neal mentioned Adam Scott. Let's talk economics. Adam Scott. Let's take Adam Smith. Adam Smith. I'm sorry, Adam Smith.
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Neil Ferguson
Scottish Adam Smith.
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Host
Adam Scott's a bad actor.
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Neil Ferguson
Adam Smithish. Adam Scott.
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Host
So let's take the grumpy economists and let's parachute them into the middle of the Constitution. Good luck explaining Illinois to them. Good luck explaining MIT to them and so on and so forth. But John, you look at the Constitution, you look at economic concepts here. Interstate commerce clause, uniform currency, protection of contracts and property rights. What more could they have done?
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John Cochran
Oh, lots more. But I don't think we should expect Them to have figured out how to counter the administrative state, for example.
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Host
They're just laying a foundation, right?
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John Cochran
They're laying a foundation. You've got to remember how poor America was compared to now. They set out a constitution to defend their political liberty and to stop tyranny from happening. And some general welfare would be nice. They had no idea that we would grow as we have to such unbelievable prosperity. Now some of that, you know, the industrial revolution did happen over that rainy island over there because they had many of the ingredients, property rights, rule of law, the things that made for prosperity. But that this arrangement of political freedom would lead to such enormous economic prosperity is not something that really it was designed to do. It was a happy circumstance. That political freedom also gives you, economic freedom gives you great prosperity. There are things that I think we'll get to later that looking back, we wish they could have done better, but maybe they would say, well, that's why we have the amendment power. And why did you guys screw this up so much? And it's up to you to fix it. If you don't like, if you didn't think we could foresee the administrative state, up to you to fix it. So that is kind of the miracle of it. Now they did put. The things they put in are, let's just say how great it is. The most basic is property rights. They thought about life, liberty and property, the pursuit of happiness. And maybe it would be nice if they had done that as a manager of one of the city of Palo Alto's historic homes temporarily. I sort of wish we had a more classic sense of property.
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Neil Ferguson
Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it though?
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John Cochran
No.
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Neil Ferguson
I mean, you can see why Jeff Eastman went to the for the pursuit of happiness. I mean, as an advertising slogan, I'll criticize later. Life, liberty and property rights movement. It's not going to work.
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John Cochran
A common currency, a free trade area. So one of the most important things is you are not going to have tariffs, states to other states. So we had this enormous free trade area, common currency and a tradition of rule of law that then got better. And look at the amazing prosperity it led to. And I'm almost whining to wish that they had done things better so we could be richer still and they dealt
- [27:54]
Neil Ferguson
with the problem of the state's debts. I mean, Hamilton is a key figure in that respect because let's face it, fighting the war, though it wasn't a huge war, did leave tremendous trail of fiscal and monetary disaster. We forget that they had to fix both Those problems. I'm sorry, it's not a big war. I'll send you the. The data. I'll send you the reading that you need to do.
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HR McMaster
Oh. Oh, my gosh.
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John Cochran
No, the financial aspect.
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Neil Ferguson
I mean, obviously you needed the French to come in to win it. That's worth adding. But, you know, apart from.
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HR McMaster
That's true. That's actually true.
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Neil Ferguson
That is true.
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HR McMaster
It's actually true.
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Neil Ferguson
No, no French.
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HR McMaster
But the French would. The French would not have come in if it wasn't for the Battle of Saratoga.
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Neil Ferguson
Yeah, no, that's true, too.
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HR McMaster
So, you know, and we can agree on that. And I believe that. I believe that the British military, you know, the British Navy underestimated. They did the colonials quite a bit.
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Neil Ferguson
They did. Washington was a really good general.
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HR McMaster
He was.
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John Cochran
Well, he knew how to not lose.
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HR McMaster
Yeah, well. And he. Well, he was determined. Like, he lost. He lost in New York. Nobody was terrible. His determination learned how to not lose.
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John Cochran
He didn't win any battles.
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Neil Ferguson
But the point here for you, Princeton and Trenton, you come out of this war and it is a hot mess of monetary and fiscal confusion and fixing that was crucial to the takeoff. The US economy does not immediately take off. It's actually a really lean time when the war is over. But then you get these foundations that Hamilton saw so clearly. If you could create an integrated market, if you could have a federal system of debt. He also wanted a federal bank. That came much later in the end. But that's important stuff. And it's not as glamorous as the pursuit of happiness, but it does help the economy grow well.
- [29:36]
HR McMaster
And I'll say, for the Revolution, French financial assistance was just as important as the army and naval assistance.
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Neil Ferguson
It ended up blowing up the French monarchy. So there was an unintended consequence there
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Host
now, six years of goodfellows. We've gone through a lot of change in society. We have gone through Covid. We've gone through presidencies, as the video showed, but we also have gone through cancel culture, which maybe. I don't know if it's still with us or not, but, Neil, there's a question.
- [30:03]
HR McMaster
I have not canceled yet. I don't know why. I mean, I feel left out.
- [30:07]
Host
Have some more scotch. We'll work on that.
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Neil Ferguson
Didn't the president cancel you at one point?
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HR McMaster
I guess so, yeah.
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Host
But, Neil.
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HR McMaster
So did President Biden. I got canceled by both. President.
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Host
Neil, this leads to the question of the First Amendment and how durable is the First Amendment these days?
- [30:21]
Neil Ferguson
It's a tremendously important part of our constitutional Legacy. And I don't think I fully appreciated how important the First Amendment was until I saw the drastic erosion of free speech in the country where I grew up, which has been one of the most shocking features of the last six years. There can be policemen turning up on people's doorsteps because of things that they put on on social media. It's just an outrageous thing to never underestimate the value of the fact that we have the First Amendment. It's a glorious and wonderful thing, because liberty is meaningless if you don't have free speech, not to mention the other fundamental freedoms, the right of assembly. These things are crucial. That's why I say the American Revolution is about liberty, and it's about the definition, defense of liberty against a potentially or actually intrusive central government. Now, there have been threats to freedom of speech, and you just touched on one. Cancel culture. Where did that come from? Why did we get into a world where enormous technology companies seem to be cooperating with the federal government to shut down discussion on subjects that were considered controversial? I think that's the kind of thing, if Tocqueville had a time machine and he could turn up in the 2000 and twenties, and he wandered around and he saw the kinds of things that went on in modern America, he would say, well, at what point did the French conquer the United States and take control of it? Because this is no longer the country that I toured and was impressed by. We've lost a lot of that decentralization that Tocqueville thought was so crucial. We've got a centrally powerful federal government, just like the French did in Tocqueville's day. But that wasn't a feature of the United States in its original design. And the very fact that we can have, on campuses of all places, on university campuses, shutting down of free expression, to me, that's just a shocking betrayal of the American tradition. I think we've passed the peak of that odious trend, but I wouldn't underestimate its ability to make a comeback. So I'm a First Amendment fundamentalist. You can say just about anything, but not about my mother or my wife, but just about anything. It's fine. There are some good rules about what you can't say. You can't threaten to kill an individual, but you can really say an incredibly offensive thing to me, like some of the insane things that gets said these days on the Internet about Winston Churchill. I'm wearing my Winston Churchill bow tie tonight. You can say those things in this country. That's okay. And it might offend me, but that is part of a free society and my offense is something I can just about handle. So these are really important foundations of our free republic and they're one of the reasons I became an American citizen. I did that in 2018. I'm very, very glad I did it because I see a much brighter future for a constitutionally ordered republic where freedoms are explicitly guaranteed than any European country where it's essentially up to the state how much freedom you have.
- [33:44]
John Cochran
Let me remind you Neil, the First Amendment is a limitation on the government and only on limitation like Congress shall pass no law. I may get the exact thing right. So the government may not silence your speech. Whereas much of countless heliculture was bad behavior on the part of people and universities and other institutions. Now there. I think what's important is that this First Amendment freedom of speech pervades our culture so that we feel like it's an awful thing for universities to do, to fire people for what they've said and so forth. That's where its vitality is, but not the actual written part of the First Amendment. It also is a good testament for the importance of, of a written constitution. Britain has an unwritten constitution and we sometimes debate whether that's good enough. Well, unwritten ones get forgotten more than written ones. And it is interesting. Of course it's an amendment. It wasn't in the original Constitution. Why not? Because the framers of the Constitution said well we don't read that because all rights that we don't say are the governments. Everybody understands those retain with the people. Everyone said well yes, that's of kind, kind of nice, but why don't we write a couple of these down and just to make sure in fact, because the last on the Bill of Rights is my favorite. Unfortunately the concept of right has been so devalued that it doesn't hold in for all the others. But writing those amendments was a close run thing and it's a darn good thing we did. And perhaps King George and, and Parliament then should have written down a couple of their traditions and tried to make them more durable.
- [35:23]
HR McMaster
Well, I'll just say that you still see kind of the tensions that existed at the time of the founding between republicanism and liberalism and how they were reconciled in the form of the Constitution. So if you think of republicanism as kind of the separation of powers, the measures that are taking place in the design of the government and the separation of powers to prevent tyrannical rule. On the liberalism side, the Lockean liberalism You have kind of the guarantee of the individual rights. Those were melded together and the First Amendment was a huge part of that. You still see, I think the radicalism of the American Revolution never gives up in the differences between maybe the way America and Britain today, the UK Today, view international law. For example, Americans are more skeptical of international law, as maybe some in the UK Government today would define it, because we see kind of giving up our sovereignty to some sort of international body cuts against the very radical idea of the revolution, for example. This also has a lot to do with America's deep skepticism of international organizations. It has a lot to do with, in some parts of the Republican Party today and sort of the movement that gave rise to President Trump and others within his movement is this deep skepticism of the European Union, because they see the European Union as a folly by European citizens who gave up their sovereignty to a faceless body of bureaucrats who are not accountable to them. So I think, I think you can see the uniqueness of the American Revolution still playing out today in the way that we view sovereignty and the way we jealously guard it. Guard it, I would say more jealously than those citizens in other democratic countries.
- [37:19]
Neil Ferguson
But isn't there an irony, HR Isn't there an irony that the United States starts out as the republic that fights against the empire and then imperceptibly, inevitably, over time, it becomes the empire? I mean, that seems to me to have been the trajectory certainly of the last hundred years. And it's a very uncomfortable thing for Americans to be in the position of being the empire. It's like that joke, are we the baddies? I mean, are we the empire? Are we the redcoats? Because in truth, the way that the United States exercises power is, is largely seen in the rest of the world as just a new version of the English speaking empire.
- [38:02]
HR McMaster
Let's examine this for a minute. First of all, I mean, I don't
- [38:06]
Neil Ferguson
think the United States, we disagree more on.
- [38:08]
HR McMaster
I just don't think the United States is an empire by the definition of empire, because we have not created servile relationships with countries against their will and we have not been extractive. Are the relationships that we have internationally in the form of alliances and partnerships are mutually beneficial and as President Trump would probably argue, more beneficial to the other members of the alliance than they are even to us. And if you examine kind of, you know, the growth of what some historians, I never thought you'd buy into the new left interpretation of history, but, you know, the way that they'll describe the growth of American power is this new imperialism? Well, would the world be better off or worse off if the United States didn't enter World War I, World War II? Would you rather live north or south of the 38th parallel? What if you even fast forward to the 1990s? If you're a Bosnian Muslim, where would you be today without a Mercury?
- [39:04]
Neil Ferguson
But a British imperialist made exactly the same arguments about British power in the 19th century. Where would you rather be? In British India?
- [39:11]
John Cochran
I thought you'd rather like the British Empire.
- [39:13]
Neil Ferguson
I'm just saying you don't need to be a leftist to recognize an empire when you see one. I'm not against empire. You should relax. It's okay. Wrote a book on it in the world. Deal with it. Everybody thinks you're an empire. You are. It's okay. We dealt with it. Get over it.
- [39:34]
HR McMaster
So you're trying to challenge.
- [39:35]
Neil Ferguson
I mean, what do you think you're doing in the Strait of Cairo, by the way? I mean, what exactly is it that's going on now? Is that the Republic?
- [39:44]
HR McMaster
Oh, Neil's lost it. I think you've lost it.
- [39:47]
Neil Ferguson
Okay, so I'm just here and.
- [39:50]
Host
Allow me to try to hijack this conversation.
- [39:52]
Neil Ferguson
Let's come clean. If the United States has morphed from Republic into empire, that's not too surprising. That's what the Founding Fathers anticipated. Adam Smith says this will be a great empire. Alexander Hamilton, someone you admire, saw that there would be an enormous empire that would emerge from the United States. It's okay.
- [40:12]
John Cochran
It was a good.
- [40:13]
HR McMaster
He's going to get a courtesy appointment to the History Department. Here, here. So you're fitting right in.
- [40:17]
Neil Ferguson
This is a conservative argument. You don't understand. The deaf thinks it's bad. I think it's.
- [40:23]
Host
Hello, John.
- [40:24]
John Cochran
Hey, Mel.
- [40:25]
HR McMaster
How you doing over there? Nigel Baker's book. You know, I'm not unsupervised at argument. That's a separate issue. But let's. Okay. All right. There's John Go.
- [40:33]
Neil Ferguson
As they say, let's take this offline.
- [40:36]
HR McMaster
Or Stevie Kakowitz said, I got an argument with George Schultz one time, which is a terrible thing to do, right? To get out of an argument because he was mad that the Trump administration got out of the INF treaty, you know, and, you know, because I was associated with President Trump, he, like, blamed me for everything President Trump would do. And so we're in this argument. I'm like, hey, it wasn't a treaty anyway. The Russians weren't adhering to it. And then Secretary Shultz is getting madder and madder. And then Cochin's in the room and he goes, hey, why don't you guys take it outside?
- [41:05]
Host
Hello, John.
- [41:05]
HR McMaster
Okay, John, go ahead.
- [41:07]
Host
So I want to avoid the trap of what would the founders think if they were alive today? Because let's face it, they'd be lost walking around the Stanford campus. It's not the fur old Harvard of the 1770s, nor William and Mary. It's a different world. But let's talk about one concept in the Constitution which seems to have gone badly off the rails. That's balance of power. The Constitution has wonderful checks and balances in it. Every state gets the same number of senators as an electoral college and not a popular vote. But what do we have right now in our federal government? Well, we have wars that are driven by presidents. Congress doesn't vote on wars. Presidents take us into combat. We have presidents as long as they have a pen and a phone, issuing executive orders. I don't know what Congress does for the life of me, every day. And then we have judges legislating from the bench. What happened, John?
- [41:55]
John Cochran
Congress fell apart. I mean, I think the standard thing we all say is the constitutional order. They imagined Congress would be supreme right. And Congress seems to have delegated a lot of its authorities. And pretty much the repair everybody sees is bring Congress back. But nobody quite knows how to bring Congress back. And maybe we don't want to get too deep into exactly why. But, yes, the executive has grown into most of the things we didn't like about King George. And the courts have filled in the gaps. I'm kind of a fan of our current Supreme Court, but it is, for example, we are at a stage now with immigration, the question of birthright citizenship,
- [42:39]
Host
which we'll get to.
- [42:40]
John Cochran
Oh, can I do it now? Because. Great example.
- [42:43]
Host
As a. Go ahead.
- [42:44]
John Cochran
Okay.
- [42:45]
Host
You've been patient.
- [42:48]
John Cochran
So 150 years ago, there was this amendment passed with the slaves are going to be free citizens. And you can't argue about that. We haven't really talked about it for 100 years, but life moves on. And if you change planes at o' Hare and happen to have a baby, is that baby going to be an American citizen or not? Interesting question. Congress cleaned a lot of the question up in the 1950s about what American citizens abroad, when did their children get together? This is long. It's very worth reading. It has nothing to do with birthright, but it has 15 cases. It's the thing legislatures do.
- [43:21]
Host
Here we are.
- [43:21]
John Cochran
The birthright question comes up, and we are Once again, there's this one phrase subject to the jurisdiction and we're parsing that phrase written 150 years ago. This is a terrible way to make sausage because it is a sausage. There's 150 cases. And who exactly does this is what Congress is supposed to do. Now, I hope that the current court will not fall into the temptation of previous courts of coming up with, well, here's our 15 part test of exactly who is and who isn't a citizenship. I hope they punt the whole thing and say, yeah, whatever, Trump, you want to do fine. When Biden comes in and wants to make anybody who sneezes the word American a citizen. I'm sorry, Gavin Newsom comes in, fine. You know, it's within constitutional bounds. Congress, why didn't you pass some laws and get this straight? So that's just an example of, I think, where we all wish Congress would wake up and take its part in our constitutional order.
- [44:15]
Host
How do we rebalance things? Also refrain, I hear as well, you need a president to win 489 electoral votes and carry 45 states. But Franklin Roosevelt did that. And Franklin Roosevelt didn't necessarily have balance of power when he was president. So how do we rebalance things?
- [44:29]
HR McMaster
I think recognize the great gift that we have that sovereignty does still lie with the people. And if you look at the Federalist Papers and the discussions of really the concerns about the abuse of power, the concerns about, about the government not being responsive to the citizens, they felt that because it was a republic that represented a broad range of interests, that within our federal system the people could exercise that sovereignty through the vote especially, but also demanding more from the leaders we do elect. I think we do have a say in how we're governed and we can demand that Congress get its act together and based on who you elected that office. But that what you ask them to do once they are elected.
- [45:15]
Neil Ferguson
Well, there's a way of thinking about this which I think is important. The tendency in a lot of debate in the media is to say this is all about President Trump and his assertion of power. And I think that's a misreading. I think the project of an imperial presidency goes all the way to Franklin Roosevelt. And President Trump is by no means the first president in recent times to seek to expand the power of the executive.
- [45:43]
HR McMaster
That was the dramatic break it was under Roosevelt.
- [45:45]
Neil Ferguson
Yes. And I think that is a different issue from the issue of Congress receding from its responsibilities. My old friend Kristen Muth has a wonderful article on the rise of the Administrative state, in which he shows that from the 1970s onwards, Congress. Congress tended to punt difficult issues to the executive branch, which led to a proliferation of agencies, dozens upon dozens, until there are almost countless of federal agencies essentially having difficult jobs passed to them by Congress that wouldn't take responsibility. That, I think, is a more pernicious trend than the ambitions of presidents, because presidents will always want to assert, or at least regularly want to assert, the power of the executive. But if Congress punts on its responsibility as the most important of the branches of government, then we do have a problem. And I come back to my point. The danger for the Republic is always to degenerate into empire. It can do it in two ways, and they're related to one another. It gets involved more and more in wars on the periphery, and the legislature at home becomes less and less willing to take responsibility. That's the Roman story. And from the very outset, from the very founding, it was a worry of Americans that we would go the same way. Now, as long as we're worrying about it, I think we're in a good place and we do worry about it, but I think we worry about the wrong things. We worry all the time about the President's personality. We should worry much more about the degeneration of Congress and the failure of our elected representatives to assert their constitutional powers. That's, I think, what we have to fix.
- [47:28]
John Cochran
I'm going to. We can't just blame Congress. We have to vote, blame the voters who elect Congress. And it is true that among us, among us Citizens, people, it's not just Congress. People also don't care about their state legislature and they don't care about their local. Everything is projected onto the president and national issues.
- [47:49]
Neil Ferguson
John, I disagree. The voters turn out far more than they did. If you think back to the low turnout era of the 70s, they turn out far more. But they're presented with terrible choices. And that is the problem of our system. Let me give you one illustration of this. If you are, as I was, a newcomer to this country and you became a citizen, you're very surprised to discover that there are three parties that you can register to be. You can be Republican, a Democrat, or Independent. You say to yourself, Let me finish. You say to yourself, okay, I want to be an independent. Hey, tell me, where does the Independent Party hold its social events? Where can I go meet some fellow independents? The Independent Party doesn't exist. And this is the way that voters are played. They're given two options when they really want three. This is a genius Move by the duopoly of established parties to run the system. Think how few counties, never mind states, how few counties are actually contested in an election. A trivial number because everything else is sewn up by the two party machines. It's not the voters who are to blame, is these political machines that run the country. That's what needs to be addressed.
- [49:02]
HR McMaster
And John, will you comment on this? I mean I want to plug our colleague Mo Fiorina's book on this topic. He just has a new edition out. He calls it like the phenomenon of sorting and it leaves these independents outside the two tents of the Republican Democrats.
- [49:16]
John Cochran
That is where. So I think let's call for a time of hope. The pinnacle of political philosophy seems to have been 1792 and they understood that the answer was in the gears, the rules of the game. Why do we have for example such polarized primaries? Well, one good theory is we have too much democracy at the primary level. The old white men in smoke filled rooms would have never picked these jokers because they want to win the general election. In primaries you all see what happens. The extremes of the parties take over. Well, that is the sort of thing that's a little detail in the rules. So I think, I hope the next generation thinks hard and as well as our ancestors did. There is hope in fixing the rules of the game. Another little one. Why do we have so little federalism? Well, we've sent all our money for Washington who sends it back as block grants to the states. All the fight takes place in Washington. If states had to raise their own money to do their own spending, we might put a lot more attention on our state and local governments, which would be a healthy thing. I do think there's hope in rules of the game and not just the one thing both Adam Smith and our Constitution did not emphasize was we need to put better people in power. They understood people are imperfect and venal and self interested and need to be constrained by a good set of rules of the game. And that's why I keep pushing back on Neil's view that it's lack of responsibility of the people in power.
- [50:44]
Host
Final note here before we move on. You hear the word unconstitutional thrown around a lot. So simple question. What we're doing in Iran, what we're doing in the Middle east, is it or is it not constitutional?
- [50:56]
Neil Ferguson
Well, given we stopped doing declarations of war, when did we do stop doing that? In the 1960s, Gulf of Tonkin, Then every war since Vietnam has been unconstitutional,
- [51:06]
HR McMaster
which seems like early 19th century with Jefferson's Actions against the Barbary pirates. So, you know, the President does have a great deal of authority under Article 2 of the Constitution. Congress can exercise a check on that executive authority through their power of the purse, but they've chose not to do that. Obviously in the current configuration, every time there is the use of force under Article 2 authority, there's a legal review and so forth. And then ultimately, you know, the check on American, the President's power comes from the people themselves. So, I mean, you know, I don't know if we want to talk about the current case or not, but I think that that's well within the President's Article 2 authorities. Because unlike Neil, who assumed I get an appointment, I think to Smith College, you don't understand the department.
- [51:52]
Neil Ferguson
You're the lefty. You're the one who thinks the American Revolution was radical. I'm just trying to get David Hume into the conversation so that Tory perspective is represented.
- [52:02]
HR McMaster
We do tend toward this kind of strategic narcissism to define the world only relation to us, and to think that the outcome depends on what we do or choose not to do. Hey, others have agency in this case, and I would say in this case, the Iranian regime, the theocratic dictatorship there, has been waging a, you know, a 47 year long war against us. So the President didn't decide to go to war. We were already at war for 47 years with the Islamic Republic of Iran. And what precipitated this decision by Israel and the US to go after Iran were a number of recent, relatively recent developments. The lighting of the ring of fire around Israel with the objective, in my view, to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews, which has been the objective of the Islamic Republic since its founding. They set that ring of fire around Israel and they lit it on October 7th. Then they attacked Israel directly in April and October of 2024. Big mistake for them, I think, because they had been having their way by being able to use proxies under the strategy of expending every Arab life if necessary to accomplish their objectives of kicking the United States out of the region as the first step in isolating Israel and meeting their objectives. So, you know, and then the most approximate cause was the building up of this massive missile drone strike complex which they undertook since last summer after the, after the 12 day campaign by the IDF and Operation Midnight Hammer. They were increasing their missile depth by orders of magnitude, building more and more shahed drones and essentially creating a conventional curtain behind which they could rekindle their nuclear program, develop an intercontinental ballistic Missile. And so where you have this argument, hey, was it imminent? And is this justified under Article 2, which is not a stipulation under Article 2 that it be imminent. But I would say what is imminent to you? I mean, would you rather wait for the Islamic Republic, who calls us the Great Satan, you know, and chants death to America? You know, I think they really want to do that. Do you want to wait for them to have the capabilities that could threaten the United States directly? I don't think so.
- [54:14]
Host
But Neil and John. But Neil and John, we're in this gray area now. Is this what the founders envisioned? Or is just a reality that 250 years after they wrote this document, this is the world we live in now? And America is not a modest republic. It's a world power?
- [54:27]
Neil Ferguson
Well, HR mentioned the Barbary pirates, actually, quite a good analogy. I agree with everything you said there about the rationale for the war. But it is a deeply shocking thing that apparently the US Navy cannot force open the Strait of Hormuz. That apparently the new regime in Iran, which is a Revolutionary Guard dictatorship with a relatively small military capability because we degraded so much of it, can close the Strait of Hormuz. And it appears that we are unable to do anything about that. That is a shocking thing. If that is the reality which it appears to be, then we have a problem.
- [55:03]
HR McMaster
Just say quickly on the military part of this, we can't open the Strait of Humans.
- [55:06]
John Cochran
Yeah, we're unwilling.
- [55:07]
HR McMaster
The question is, what risk do we want to take? What do we want to invest in it? I believe we can open it, but, you know, we can talk more about the details about that, how you do it. But if we are an empire, we have not. The campaign has not gone to that phase yet.
- [55:21]
John Cochran
The fact of Iran and Ukraine is there has never in history been an empire, if you wish to call it such, that has such overwhelming military advantage over our enemies. It is simply our choice.
- [55:32]
Neil Ferguson
I don't think that's true anymore, John. I think you're deluding yourself, because I think the technology of asymmetrical warfare, the advent of drones, $3,000 Shahids, has changed the nature of power.
- [55:45]
John Cochran
We think.
- [55:46]
Neil Ferguson
Think we are hyper puissance. The French used this phrase in the 90s, hyper power. And we still act like we are a hyper power. But here's the bad news. We keep discovering, and we discovered it in Iraq too, and we're discovering again in the Strait of Hormuz that very small amounts of firepower can disrupt our extraordinarily powerful military and apparently, if not checkmate it, then at least put it into check so that the President hasn't made it.
- [56:15]
HR McMaster
Or check. Ok, wait, hr,
- [56:19]
Host
can I speak?
- [56:21]
Neil Ferguson
But hr, if you were back in the white, if you were back in the White House. Hr, let me just ask you a question. If you were back in the White House, would you say to the President, oh yeah, you should definitely go to Islamabad and offer the release of the frozen assets and take sanctions off. You wouldn't be advising that. You would be saying, we cannot possibly allow the Iranian regime to control the Strait of Hormuz. It is a vital choke point in the global economy. What are we waiting for? Why has the President not deployed special forces to the Strait? Why are we not escorting the carriers, escorting the tankers through as we did in the 1980s? Why are we waiting? Why are we talking, talking with these people? Answer me that.
- [57:08]
HR McMaster
You're talking about presidential decision making.
- [57:10]
Neil Ferguson
I am.
- [57:11]
HR McMaster
His own calculation.
- [57:11]
Neil Ferguson
You advise the President, would you advise him now to play it this way?
- [57:15]
HR McMaster
No, I would not. But this is, you know, we're in the eye of a storm.
- [57:18]
John Cochran
Constitutional question.
- [57:19]
Host
There's a third good fellow here.
- [57:22]
HR McMaster
John, just before. I'm so, so sorry. But here's just one quick point. The idea, this notion that Iran is in a position of relative strength is ridiculous in my view, based on what the campaign achieved and the fact that we have not even tried really to open the Strait at this point. You're right about the asymmetrical. Why not?
- [57:42]
Neil Ferguson
Why not?
- [57:42]
HR McMaster
But what I'm saying is, as historian Comrade Crane has said, hey, there are two ways to fight, fundamentally, asymmetrically and stupidly. What we have done over many years is we have accepted what we saw as Iran's asymmetric advantages and never applied ours. Not until the Israeli 12 day campaign and our direct strikes under Operation Midnight Hammer. And the campaign you've seen now, Iran was conditioned to believe they could get away with it, that they had the ability to escalate on their own terms, asymmetrically, with impunity. This campaign is ending that. It's not an initiation of a war. I think it is the first phase of a campaign to end a 47 year long war. And we can talk more about that. John, I'm so sorry.
- [58:25]
Host
We're doing a show in two weeks. We'll pick up Iran. John, one last thought on constitutionality, then we're going to do a lightning round.
- [58:31]
John Cochran
Well, okay. You asked is this a constitutional war? And I think that's. The constitution was written in 1790. 2. And in a world where it took six months to get a ship across the ocean. So are they going to foresee this situation? No. But there's a War Powers Act. There's all sorts of. This is how constitutions need to evolve and be amended. The question you didn't ask is, and I'm going to answer it anyway, when you should have asked, is, is the Department of Commerce constitutional? Because that's the other big change. As I look, we have tremendous social and political freedom relative to our economic freedom. Let's bring back a founding father and ask about Wickard v. Filburn. Those of you don't know this is the famous case in which a man grew wheat on his own farm to bake bread for his own family and was told, you can't do that because he didn't have federal marketing order to bake said bread. And that case survived at the Supreme Court. That's the foundation for our federal. For the administrative state that runs our economy. We have a federal regulation on how tips are shared between front staff and back staff at restaurants. Can you imagine any of the founding fathers here? Here's where I think they would run home and say, we got to stop these guys from doing it. And then they would think twice and say, no, it's up to their job to write an amendment and set the ship straight again. So there are other areas where, you know, the Constitution is in question, but it is up to us to keep it alive and to, you know, amend it and fix it and abide by it as. As we see the need to do.
- [60:11]
Neil Ferguson
It's unamendable. It's impossible to amend. Politically impossible? No, it's not politically impossible. You can't do it because we have 50, 50 political system where you simply aren't going to be able to amend the Constitution. That's the reality. We've lost that power.
- [60:26]
John Cochran
We have had many amendments to the Constitution.
- [60:28]
Neil Ferguson
No, we can't do it anymore. We can't do it anymore.
- [60:30]
John Cochran
We've got a few too many. The sign that it isn't too hard to amend is that we passed Prohibition and then had to say, whoops, sorry, we didn't mean that.
- [60:37]
Neil Ferguson
I'll raise glass to that.
- [60:38]
Host
Yes, you're running low. All right, onto the lightning round, gentlemen. First item on the lightning round. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5. Deal. Do you know it? Do you want to read it?
- [60:52]
Neil Ferguson
I don't have it on me, but I do know what you're alluding to.
- [60:55]
Host
What am I alluding to?
- [60:56]
Neil Ferguson
A militia?
- [60:58]
Host
No, what no person except a natural born citizen or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States. Audience poll Should Neil Ferguson be allowed to run for President?
- [61:16]
HR McMaster
Not anymore. Not after. Not after that. Not after saying that the revolution was like a little skirmish.
- [61:22]
Neil Ferguson
I mean, come on, do you want to join my administration or don't?
- [61:26]
HR McMaster
He'll back on that during a citizenship exam, I guess.
- [61:28]
John Cochran
You know, he has a knighthood, he's subservient to a foreign king.
- [61:34]
Neil Ferguson
King's no foreign.
- [61:35]
HR McMaster
He'd be a great president in my view.
- [61:37]
Host
Do we agree this is an outdated notion? This is in the Constitution. Why we feared that our American president would be a flunky of a European.
- [61:44]
Neil Ferguson
I mean there are enough native born lunatics who want this job. Don't open the floodgates and allow all the foreign born lunatics to. I think it's a very good idea to have some kind of cutoff. Removes temptation.
- [62:01]
Host
All right, the aforementioned second Amendment. Quote, A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. HR what the heck is a well regulated militia?
- [62:15]
HR McMaster
Well, it's really what we had in the colonies to defend settlements from the very beginning. It's what we relied on, you know, at the outset of the, of the revolution, during the siege of Boston in 1775. Then it was there was a recognition that you needed to raise regiments of Continental for the Continental army to bolster that militia. And what we've had since that, the founding of Our nation, since 1775 before the Declaration of Independence was this combination of professional forces under federal control and, and militias. This is why you have the National Guard today. I think it works. I think that our small professional, all volunteer force is unique to our era based on the demands that we have for our defense and really the development of technology over time that has dramatically shrunk the great moats of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and really has convinced us obviously that our security depends in large measure on forward deployed capable US joint forces, professional forces that operate as part of alliances to deter conflict and then to respond to threats that emerge abroad under the recognition that once those threats reach our shores, they can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost. So you know, I think what we have today has our roots. It goes back to the revolution and it still works. It's been modified obviously continuously since that time, but the overall construct is I think is beneficial to our security. Obviously, the restrictions on who can regulate that militia and the power of the states gives governors a significant capability in terms of ability to respond to natural disasters and so forth. So I think it works.
- [63:55]
John Cochran
So now we fight about the part after the comma.
- [63:59]
Host
All right, John Cochran.
- [64:01]
John Cochran
Wait, are we going to chime in?
- [64:03]
Host
If you want to.
- [64:03]
John Cochran
That's half of the whole thing. Which was the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, which has in today discussion nothing to do with the militia. And so we go around parsing that comma. Maybe they meant a semicolon, maybe they meant an EM dash, who knows? Because Neil wants to come in on why the right to bear arms is not a great thing. But it was very important that our English and Scottish forebears did not have the right to bear arms. And that was a lot of why they were subjugated to various lordships for. For thousands of years. And that's a reason why that was put in the Constitution. And if we don't like it, we can amend that. Why that is not going to change is because most Americans say, yeah, I want the right to bear arms and I'm going to keep it.
- [64:51]
Neil Ferguson
Yeah, I actually feel that way. And you saw me shooting at that woodpecker. So I'd be kind of hypocritical to be against this right.
- [65:00]
John Cochran
The EPA in the new Republic of
- [65:03]
Neil Ferguson
Palo Alto, in Montana, that doesn't happen.
- [65:06]
John Cochran
You would have to call the Palo Alto Humane Society, who would come and look and have a registered bird expert come and diagnose the bird.
- [65:14]
Neil Ferguson
But this is the beauty of federalism. The beauty of federalism, and this goes right back to the origins of Goodfellas, is that obviously, in a pandemic, California was gonna be a complete disaster of regulation and absurdity. So I just moved to Montana. And that is the beauty of this country, that no matter how crazy state A is, let's say state blue, there is always state red. And I get to Montana, and one of the first things that happened was my neighbors discovered I didn't have any firearms, didn't have any guns. It was like, Neil, you need guns. And it actually came to a head during the. The violence that occurred in certain cities after the murder or death of George Floyd. And they came to me and they said, neil, gotta get guns.
- [66:06]
HR McMaster
I was like.
- [66:07]
Neil Ferguson
I was imagining rioters sweeping through the streets of Big Sky. And it didn't seem that likely a contingency, but I got the guns. Cause it was like social. I thought I Gotta. I can't. So I got the guns. And a gun is a wonderful thing. Out of curiosity, it's a wonderful. I'm just gonna say right now, like cowboy boots. Cowboy guns are part of what makes America great. So I'm all in on the Second Amendment and most of the bad things that happen are people who hold guns illegally. It's not the people who legally hold guns who commit the crime. This whole thing is a kind of liberal delusion.
- [66:41]
John Cochran
Federalism is wonderful, but that is one of the things that is under attack. I mean, part of being a conservative is we think that everything is going to fall apart. And the rights of states to do things differently from the massive federal government is something that's slipping slowly. And you know, if not the guns, what's going to come next is billionaires who get taxed here can't leave to somewhere else. That's, you know, that's the.
- [67:05]
Neil Ferguson
I think they already did.
- [67:08]
HR McMaster
What does HR if I could plug like we have a great program here on state and local government under Josh Rowell. It's fantastic. And we've been talking about our institutions and confidence in those. And the Hoover program on revitalizing American institutions is really great and very all of this discussion is in keeping with the fundamental mission of the Hoover Institution of ideas that advance freedom. So I mean, we could have it in a better place. And we're named after Herbert Hoover who saw it as part of his mission to jealously guard liberty and individual rights.
- [67:40]
Host
The end of the commercial break. Five minutes to go. Let's end it on a light note. Name a favorite founding father or name a favorite founding father you'd like to speak regarding your professional interests. So, John Cochran, who's your favorite founding father?
- [67:54]
John Cochran
Well, I have many favorites for all sorts of reasons. Madison, who largely wrote the Constitution. Washington, great Ben Franklin, man about town. I have to speak up for Alexander Hamilton, the great visionary of our financial system. Neil spoke about this early on. You know, when you go back, you think, would I have had the wisdom to do what they did and I doubt myself to have had the wisdom of Alexander Hamilton, who got the federal government to assume the state debts even though some had paid and some hadn't paid to assume them at face value, even though some had been bought by speculators and to pay them off and to understand that government debt, properly managed, could be a good and great thing for the country to borrow in in bad times and that our reputation for paying off that debt was worth a tremendous amount. And the fact that we paid off so much of that Revolutionary War debt is what allowed America to borrow from English capital markets and develop so quickly later. Let us hope that the spirit of Alexander Hamilton and the sanctity of repaying your debts remains in today's Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Congress.
- [69:05]
HR McMaster
I just want to point out, too, Alexander Hamilton would never have made it in Britain because he would have been socially undesirable. Good.
- [69:13]
Neil Ferguson
Well, he was half Scottish,
- [69:18]
Host
so that
- [69:18]
Neil Ferguson
would have given him an advantage. Yeah. Hamilton is the one founding father who, if he came in the time machine to America 2026, wouldn't be surprised at all. He would be the only one unsurprised to see a vast industrial superpower, because that was his vision. Hamilton's vision was take what the British have done and come up with something even better. That's what's impressive. But he's not my hero. James Madison became my hero, and he became my hero in an odd way, because I had to write a constitution. I had to write a constitution for our new university, the University of Austin. My understanding was that the reason all the established universities had gone batshit crazy, to use a technical term, was the governance problem. They had a chronic governance problem. So I thought, this new university needs a constitution, and I modeled it on the Constitution of the United States. And when I started trying to write a constitution, then I began to understand just how huge a contribution Madison had made, because it was the hardest thing ever done. And that's why Madison became my hero. No musical yet, but you never know.
- [70:37]
Host
It took Madison about 100 days to write his. How long did it take you?
- [70:40]
Neil Ferguson
Well, it took many, many weeks, indeed months. And it went back and forth, and there must have been at least 24 different versions. And that was just for a small startup college. So once you've undertaken that exercise, you realize what an incredible achievement it was to mastermind writing the ultimate political operating system. I mean, here we are not far from Silicon Valley. Think of the Constitution as the operating system of the United States. And it is a work of genius. It is the single most brilliant political document ever written. And we are all the beneficiaries of Madison's genius, right?
- [71:24]
Host
We have Hamilton, we have Madison. HR Who. Who is your founding father? Who's your daddy?
- [71:28]
HR McMaster
Okay, well, first of all, let me just count on comment on Hamilton. Love Hamilton. He was also a great military officer. You know, he was an assistant to Washington, but, you know, was always bugging Washington. Hey, let me command. Let me, let me command. And he led, you know, one of the most important aspects of the offensive at Yorktown. Very courageous guy, as well as an intellect and a visionary. And Madison, I think a lot of what we're talking about is like faction cancel culture and everything. I mean, if you read Federalist 10, which Madison wrote, it's like he was talking about today in terms of what the appropriate remedies are. My founder, my buddy David Cain is here. I grew up with. Our mothers were both great educators. And your mom is a great educator. My mom passed away. They were dear friends as well, and they imbued us with the spirit of Philadelphia, where we grew up. And of course, I've got to say Benjamin Franklin, for a number of reasons, based on what he did for us at the founding, from a diplomatic perspective, from an intellectual perspective, but also his sense of civic duty. When Benjamin Franklin saw an issue at the local level, he's like, oh, let's found a fire department, let's found a library. You know, let's. I mean. And so I think that's what's great about America is that sense of civic duty and because of the liberty that we enjoy, that we can make a difference in our communities. And this is why I'm optimistic and remain optimistic about our country. You mentioned also, like, who I would identify with professionally. I mean, you can't beat George Washington, honestly, you know, I mean, how he taught himself, like Franklin also was an autodidact.
- [73:09]
Host
Would he have been a good tank commander?
- [73:12]
HR McMaster
He would have loved to have a tank around, you know, because Knox, who was his chief of artillery, another great founder and did incredible feats in sort of growing the Continental army's artillery arm. So, yeah, I mean, you know, what you always want to do is you don't want a fair fight ever. Right? I mean, you know, if you don't want to barely win in battle, you want to always overmatch your enemy. And Washington, he had all sorts of problems from the beginning. Right? I mean, we talked a lot about the tension between the Continental army, standing army and militias that played out all during the revolution. That's why we only did one year enlistments. And so Washington was begging the Continental Congress, writing to John Hancock, hey, we have to have longer enlistments. He never got what he wanted. He was poorly supported logistically. Did he complain about it? Yeah, a little bit in his letters. But you know what he understood what his role was. He never challenged civil authority in the speech that he gives at Newburgh. You know, when the army's thinking about, you know, revolt, some veterans are because they didn't receive their Payments. He gives this dramatic speech, you know, and he takes off his eyeglasses and says, my eyes have grown weary in the service of my country. And tells them, hey, this is our duty. Our civic duty now is to. To go back into our communities and not engage in any kind of rebellious activity. He set the example that put this bold line again between our military and partisan politics. And I would say, from a commander's perspective, what distinguishes the best military commanders in history, I think, are those who can see opportunities where others only see difficulties. Put yourself in his shoes at Valley Forge. Would you have conducted an offensive operation of across a partially frozen Delaware river on New Year's Eve that resulted in an overwhelming victory at Trenton and Princeton, and then, along with the Battle of Saratoga, turned the tide of the war. So he understood the importance of seizing the initiative and gaining an advantage. And he understood that in war there's a power bigger than numbers. Right? And so I think he was a fantastic commander and a fantastic founding father and of course, a fantastic first President of the United States. As he stepped away, his farewell address, I think, still remains an example of civic duty. And, you know, I think every president should read that farewell address and say, hey, let me try to live up to the example of Washington.
- [75:41]
Host
I will take Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and Adams, by the way. You will not find them on the Constitution because they were overseas at the time of it. You'll find Washington and Madison on it. However, I choose Jefferson because I admire his writing. He writes a declaration. He's 33 years old, and as you guys can appreciate, being very talented writers, he is edited to death, and he likes to be edited, but he tolerates it. He puts up with it. But I choose Jefferson for a very selfish reason. My mother and father attended the University of Virginia, fell in love there. If he doesn't do that in 1819, I'm probably not here today. So, yay, Thomas Jefferson.
- [76:16]
HR McMaster
Hey, can I make a plug here quickly? First of all, for Jefferson, yes. But, hey, I mean, the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, fantastic museum. There's a display that they're just getting together maybe. I think it's up now, which has all the edited versions of the Declaration that you can view and see those edits. These documents largely come from the American Philosophical Society, which is a fantastic organization that all of the founders kind of used to send their papers there and they solicited their papers. They have the most fantastic kind of document collection associated with. With the Revolution and the Founding going through the Constitution. So visit my hometown. You know, root for the Eagles, the Phillies, I hope. Somebody needs to tell the Phillies. Spring training's over, man.
- [77:01]
Neil Ferguson
While we're plugging things, a plug for our colleague Misha Oslund's book, National Treasure on the Declaration. We spent a lot of time talking about the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence is a truly extraordinary and important document. And it's the 250th anniversary of that that we're celebrating this year. So Misha's book is. He's going to be a guest on Goodfellows. You heard it here first. Tune in.
- [77:26]
Host
And I'm not plugging anything. I'm signing us off the witching hours here. Gentlemen, thank you for a most spirited, somewhat alcohol fueled conversation. Always. I thank our audience for attending to here. On behalf of the Goodfellow, Sir Neil Ferguson, HR McMaster, John Cochran, thanks for watching. We'll see you soon. Until next time, take care. Thank you so much.
- [77:46]
John Cochran
This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.