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- [00:07]
Scott Bertram
From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
- [00:25]
Dr. Colin Brown
Yeah, so I think Franklin is legacy is twofold. On the one hand, his writings and his life serve as kind of a model and an inspiration not only for us today, but also he was an inspiration to the other founding fathers.
- [00:42]
Scott Bertram
This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast network. That was Dr. Colin Brown, a recent graduate of of Hillsdale College's Graduate School of Statesmanship. We talk with him a bit later on in today's program about his dissertation research into Benjamin Franklin, revolutionary statesman. First, we're joined by Andrew Clavin, award winning writer, screenwriter, media commentator. You might know him as the host of the popular podcast on DailyWire.com, the Andrew Clavin show, and a whole lot more. His new book is the Kingdom of Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. Andrew, thanks so much for joining us.
- [01:26]
Andrew Clavin
Yeah, it's good to be here, Scott. Thanks.
- [01:27]
Scott Bertram
I appreciate your time. You take time in, I believe, the introduction to give us a better idea of your definition of evil as it plays a role throughout the kingdom of Cain. Let's start there. What's Andrew Clavin's definition of evil?
- [01:44]
Andrew Clavin
Well, I call evil the absence of love. Because what I believe is that our actual selves, our created selves are created for love. We're created for connection, we're created for society, were created for compassion, and that the absence of that is actually an add on. We frequently act as if good were the add on. So we talk about the good of a fireman or the good of a doctor or good of a soldier. But all of those people are people who fight evil. If there were no evil, those people wouldn't be necessary. And yet I believe that even beneath that evil, that seems like the primary fact of life. I think love is actually the primary fact of life. And it's the fact that we live in a fallen world is the fact that we're separated from it. So I see, I see evil as the lack of that love and the expression, the ultimate expression of that lack is murder, because it's essentially taking another inner life, an entire inner world and inner experience, and snuffing it out.
- [02:44]
Scott Bertram
Kingdom of Cain, the beginning, first two thirds or so I guess, deal with three murders that inspire art. Not just a piece of art, but different pieces of art. And those pieces of art inspire other pieces of art. Tell us briefly about these three murders that play such a key role in the Kingdom of Kane.
- [03:04]
Andrew Clavin
Yeah, in a way, it's kind of three and a half murders because one murder actually leads into another later on. But the first murder is a murder committed by a kind of dandyish thug named Pierre Lasonaire in 1830s France. And he just killed a con man and his aged mother for what he thought was a lot of money, but turned out to be just a couple of francs. And he was so personable and so presented himself so well that he became the hit of Paris. Everybody in Paris would visit him in his prison cell before he was guillotined. And the elite of Paris would come in and talk to him. And they just, they wrote books about him, poems about him, movies about him. His hand was mummified and preserved. And this inspired Dostoevsky, the great Russian Christian novelist, to write his book, ultimately Crime and Punishment, one of the greatest novels about murder in history. And that actually encapsulated the theories of Nietzsche before Nietzsche actually started writing. And Nietzsche then started writing and saying that God was dead and therefore strong men had to invent a new morality. And this in turn inspired two killers in America in 1920, in the 1920s, Leopold and Loeb. And that was one of the. What was called the crime of the century. It was one of the biggest murders in history. It got more press than anything else. And Leopold and Loeb then went on to inspire. I don't know, it's got to be over a dozen films, TV shows, novels, because they were two guys who basically they were actually young, young men and they were lovers. And they decided that they were the Nietzschean Superman who had been predicted would come and they were going to prove their superiority to lesser men by committing a murder. Just the murderer in Crime and Punishment does. And. And so they just kidnapped this little boy at random almost, and. And killed him. And were of course, supermen that they were. They were ran immediately caught by the Chicago police and arrested and, and sent to prison. But this became a. A famous play named Rope. Alfred Hitchcock made that into a movie. And it's just been done again and again. These. The idea of two people killing because they think they're superior to other people. So that's, that's one of the murders. It's actually one and a half murder. The other is. The second one is Ed Gein. And Ed Gein was a famous murderer of 1950s America in Wisconsin, rural Wisconsin, who killed women and also dug up their bodies and then dressed in their flesh because he wanted to be a woman. He wanted. He thought that would change his body into being a female. This inspired first the novel and then the movie Psycho, which is considered one of the greatest American movies of all time. And it also inspired the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And ultimately the whole slasher genre was based on these. These murders by Ed Gein. And the themes of that murder kept coming up again and again. And finally it inspired Silence of the Lambs, which is actually based on the Ed Gein murders as well. And finally I deal with the last murder I deal with is the first murder, which is Cain's killing of Abel. And, you know, this, in fact, is the underpinning of many, many novels and movies, but because it's so many of them, I couldn't deal with that. So what I deal with is the themes of Cain and Abel as they recur throughout the Bible, even up into and including the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And in each of these stories, what I'm trying to get at is the way that artists take darkness and evil and turn it into beauty. And through beauty, revelation, and not just a connection to God, but a way of sort of maintaining joy, which is one of the things we are told to do in the Bible, to rejoice even as we're surrounded by darkness and evil in this broken world. And that's kind of the theme of the book.
- [07:07]
Scott Bertram
Andrew Clavin with us, his book the Kingdom of Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. I had a number of thoughts as I read through that section of the book. Let's see what we can talk about. These silly, stupid, in a way, slasher films that you reference. Halloween, which is actually a good one from John Carpenter. Texas Chainsaw A Massacre. There is just the awfulness of death, of course, but played for laughs in these movies, in places. And in many of these, there is this latent morality going on, whether it be in Halloween, as you mentioned, the family structure that sort of leads to problems. Or in something as simplistic as Friday the 13th, where the kids who are smoking, the kids who are having sex, they're the ones who die first. Those wholesome rule followers end up surviving in the end. What does that tell us about how we deal with tragedy?
- [08:02]
Andrew Clavin
Well, it's really fascinating. As Nietzsche predicted, God had sort of gone out of the Western world and to replace him, people started to theorize, intellectuals started to theorize that the source of God was within us. In other words, God was not something outside ourselves. We must have essentially made him up. So Freud would say that he was our fathers, that we projected onto the heavens and all this. And as that happens, then you start to sort of seize control, control of your own being. You're not a created being anymore. You are a self created. And part of that self creation is choosing what sex you are, as we see people do today. If all we are is meat, then all you have to do is change the shape of that meat. And you've essentially changed your inner nature. And that is what Ed Gein was trying to do. And that was what was so inspiring to Alfred Hitchcock and Thomas Harris, who wrote Silence of the Lambs, and to all of these murders. And so what you see in these slasher films is you see two things at once. You see people losing the essentials of human life. Gender, family, motherhood. One of the things about Halloween, if you watch it closely, it's really about a suburb where the mothers have disappeared from the kitchen windows. When I was a boy, if I went out and got in trouble, my mother knew about it by the time I got home because there was this kind of telephone line of moms, you know, looking out their kitchen windows. And they would see me in trouble and they'd call my mom and. And that's gone from Halloween. The whole social structure has gone. And the other thing you see developing at the same time in these movies as they go along is the role of the psychiatrist. So the psychiatrist is a guy who now has replaced the priest. He's going to, you know, define everything for you. If you look at Psycho, Psycho ends with a psychiatrist coming on and explaining everything. And the people who made the movie actually called it the Head Shrinker. Explains it all scene. And he comes in, he's authoritative. He says, this is what happened. This is why this guy was a killer. This is why he changed sexes. And there it is. Then you get to Halloween, and the psychiatrist turns up and this guy is killing people. And the psychiatrist has been treating him and he says, I don't know, I. I can't do anything about this guy. He's evil. He's just evil. You know, he actually reverts to the old idea that there's something inside us that's spiritual and he can't touch it, he can't reach it. And by the time he gets the Silence of the Lambs, the psychiatrist is the source of the evil. So it's as if the arts are telling us that when we lost our faith, when we started to decide that we could find God within ourselves. When we started to decide that we could define the moral world and the physical world from within ourselves, we actually were on a path to evil. We thought the psychiatrist was healing us. We thought he was the expert, but in fact, he was Hannibal Lecter. He turned us into meat. And that's what Hannibal Lecter does. He eats the people that he kills. He just turns them into the most material thing they can be. And so if you trace that murder through the arts, you actually learn a lot about Ed Gein. Not just about Ed Gein, but about the current transgender, what it's trying to do and why it's so violent when it's opposed.
- [11:02]
Scott Bertram
We will continue in just a moment with Andrew Clavin talking more about his brand new book, the Kingdom of Cain. While we have a moment, I want to make sure you know about another great Hillsdale College podcast network show. It's the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. Our great Hillsdale College online courses now available in audio form. And most recently, we are rolling out the new course, Understanding capitalism, taught by Dr. Charles Steele, a friend of mine and a friend of yours. You've heard him often here on the radio Free Hillsdale Hour. This course will help you articulate what capitalism is, what it requires, why it leads to prosperity and human flourishing, and how to preserve it against encroaching bureaucratic regulations and calls for socialism. You can start now on understanding capitalism in your car, while you work, while you're gardening, mowing the lawn, anywhere it's convenient for you. The Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast can be there. Check it out@podcast.hillsdale.edu and start understanding capitalism today. Podcast, hillsdale.edu, or wherever you get your audio. Ed Gein murders and more specifically, the Silence of the Lambs film. I think you get this a little bit. In the Kingdom of Cain. We have Lecter, we have Buffalo Bill. Two killers. Two killers without a conscience. Are we, as we watch Silence of the Lambs, which, by the way, is just an incredible piece of art, are we supposed to believe that one of those two men is more evil than the other?
- [12:46]
Andrew Clavin
I think that certainly in the book, and I think in the movie, too, I actually like the book better than the movie, but I think that in both of them, Hannibal Lecter is in charge. He is the man who pulls the strings. He understands not just himself, but others, and he uses his powers as a psychiatrist to manipulate them. Buffalo Bill, who is the Ed Gein character in this, is kind of an idiot. He's kind of Carried away. But the thing that he has learned from Hannibal Lecter and world, the culture that he lives in, is that people are just meat. And if he can change the shape of his body, he will change his gender. And that's why he. He kills the women in order to make an outfit, a female outfit out of them. And in the book, I think it's. I think it's in the movie too. He's hunted down by this very beautiful detective. And when they confront each other, Buffalo Bill's last words to her is, how does it feel to be so beautiful? He envies her. So he's a guy who's kind of carried away by his emotions, by his madness, by his lust and his desire to be something that he's not. But Hannibal Lecter is in charge. You know, he outsmarts everybody. And he is almost the character that we almost identify with in the story. So I think he is. I think he has to be. It's a close run thing, but I think we have to declare him more evil because he has more control over himself.
- [14:11]
Scott Bertram
Andrew Clavin with us. The book the Kingdom of Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. True crime is so popular in today's society culture, particularly in the podcast realm and on cable tv. And my wife loves it, and she watches. And Andrew, I must tell you, when she does, if I have any minute portrait of interest in what's happening on the screen, you know what I do? I Google the guy's name and I find out in four seconds the way this thing ends. And I don't have to sit there for two hours to find out what happened.
- [14:45]
Andrew Clavin
But people don't spoil sport.
- [14:47]
Scott Bertram
Yeah, but people don't do that. Does it say something about us that we need, we feel compelled not just to know, but to watch it unfold in some way?
- [14:58]
Andrew Clavin
Well, yes, I think, yes, stories are very powerful things because the truth, the actual reality, is kind of amorphous. It's kind of one big thing. You know, everything is actually one big thing. And what stories do is they break down our psychology and reality into characters who move around and act out certain truths about the world. And, you know, that's how therapy works. You find out different parts of yourself and you, you know, put them off against each other. And so following that story is an experience that leads you to resolution. If it's done well, it takes you to a new place. People think that especially, I'm afraid to say that many critics, Christians and conservatives think that a story is supposed to be a kind of sugar Pill around a little object lesson. You know, the story makes it fun, but really, we're teaching you a lesson. That's not how stories work at all. You know, some of them have little lessons in them, but the really great stories are just an experience. They are something that you go through, just like you might go through climbing a mountain, or you might go through suffering, or you might go through grief, or you might go through joy. A story is something you go through, and when you come out the other end, you are a little changed because something has been added to your soul that wasn't there there before. And so I think that working your way through a murder story is a way of working through something in yourself that you recognize as evil but that you don't want to actually possess, Right? So you do it in the same. You know, stories are safe. Nobody's really dying. Nobody's really getting killed. And a lot of people, strangely enough, I. I think a lot of people feel guilty for enjoying a story about murder. There are stories about murder that are evil in themselves because they kind of romanticize it and encourage it and make it thrilling, sexually thrilling. But think that a really great story about murder is as revelatory as anything else, if not more, because it takes you into evil and it shows you something about yourself and your. And ultimately, I believe it shows you something about your relationship to God. And I think that that's kind of what the book. My book is trying to get at is what do these murders tell us about our relationship to God and what happens when we lose him and how maybe we can find him again?
- [17:05]
Scott Bertram
Andrew Claving, with us, the book the Kingdom of Cain. Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. As I read the chapter, the section on Cain and Abel, I could not help but think about music. I'm a huge music fan, and if we look back through the history of rock and roll. Andrew Clavin, we see brothers fighting and creating great art. The Kinks, ccr, the Black Crows, and Oasis of more recent vintage. Even the Bee Gees, the Beach Boys, to an extent. Is there something we know about siblings? Is there something we know about brothers that explains both. Why they can come together to create such timeless works of beauty, but also create such volatile relationships within this structure?
- [17:53]
Andrew Clavin
Yeah, I think. Well, absolutely. I mean, almost. In every myth, when they talk about the hero's journey, it frequently begins with some kind of challenge at the beginning of the journey. And one of those challenges is what's called the brother battle, which. Where two brothers have to fight it out before they can move on either alone, one of them alone, or together. And obviously, Cain and Abel are the ultimate brother battle. And not only are the. The ultimate brother battle, they're actually the pattern of history as it unfolds. In the Old Testament, all the Jewish patriarchs are brothers. The older one, the younger one usually overcomes the older one. And. And so it's kind of a theory. Cain and Abel story writ backwards. And it happens again and again. And in the end of the Bible, you find Jesus Christ appearing as the second Adam. So many people have thought that that too is a brother battle, where the first Adam fails, the older brother again fails, and the younger brother then succeeds in finding his way back to the paradise the older brother lost. I think, look, a brother relationship and I have three brothers. I have three brothers, and a brother relationship is like nothing else on earth. There is no one until you find your wife or your spouse. There is no one with whom you have as physical a relationship. You fight, you touch each other. You know, you. You wrestle around in ways that you just simply do not do with your friends later on and with other people in your life. You know, there's a. Something like an absolute physical connection, a shared household, a shared parentage. And ultimately, there's a sort of otherness to your brother that is also yourself. And that is kind of the ultimate story of any hero has to go and confront the other who is himself, but not himself. And I think the brothers kind of represent that. And I think in the Cain and Abel story, it's very easy to read the Cain and Abel story as two parts of a single person, one killing the other. And what I do with the Cain and Abel story and the other murders, I go through all the works of art that have been inspired by them, or many of the works of art that have been inspired by them. With Cain and Abel, I just go through the Bible and talk about the different themes that brother battles represent, including the theme of being separated from God or rejecting God, whereas somebody else accepts God. The envy that you feel when somebody else has a relationship with God and you, you do not. And it really is amazing how much is contained in that story in. In the novel by John Steinbeck, east of Eden, which is based on Cain and Abel, somebody says in those. I think it's like 16 verses or something. He says in that 16 verses of the entire history of mankind. And I think that's absolutely right.
- [20:48]
Scott Bertram
Andrew Clavin's book is the Kingdom of Cain. The last third or so of the book is more personal Reflections and real reactions to things we've talked about in the first 2/3 of the book. I was most taken by your description of engaging with beauty in a three dimensional setting through virtual reality. How did that experience affect the way that you were able to appreciate and interact with this beauty around us?
- [21:22]
Andrew Clavin
Well, first of all, I'm really glad you like that. I think it's one of the best things I ever wrote. So I gave myself the day off. Well done, son. Take a day off. You know, I think that beauty. You know, there's a thing called theodicy which I'm sure you've heard of, which is the study of how, of evil and how there can be a God when a good God, when the world is so full of evil. And this is a question that almost every unbeliever asks. And frequently believers in times of crisis asks us, how can these terrible, terrible things when there's a good God? And I believe that beauty is actually very deeply involved with the answer to that question. And I think that there are many people who have said, no matter how good God is, He cannot make it up. No matter how wonderful heaven is, he cannot make up to us the death of a child or the suffering of a child or the kinds of suffering that people go through. It is not worth it to believe in God. Even if God is there, he's not worth dealing with. And I believe that that is kind of overstating our perceptions. I don't think we actually see even a thread of the entire fabric that God is weaving. And one of the things you find in my three dimensional museum is, is Michelangelo's Pieta. His, the most beautiful sculpture ever made. In my opinion. It's just an unbelievably beautiful sculpture of Mary holding the dead Christ in her arms. And, and it's so beautiful that it takes a long time before you think to yourself, well, wait a minute. This is actually a depiction of the greatest suffering any human being can endure. The, the death of a child, a mother with a dead child. What could be worse in life than that, that level of suffering? It's also the worst thing that's ever happened on earth, namely the killing of God by the human race as a sacrifice for their own sins. And yet, yet Michelangelo, a man, took this moment of absolute disaster and turned it into beauty. And the question that my book asks is if, if people can take these horrible things and turn them into beauty, what can God not make of this world that we're in, this world of so much evil? Out of the fabric of eternity. And I think that that's what I see in beauty everywhere. I believe that beauty is an absolute. I don't think that there is beauty has a purpose. I don't think it's to make us attracted to women who are healthy so we can make healthy children. I think all of that is absolute nonsense. I remember reading an entire book on how we evolved our sense of beauty and getting to the end and thinking that was one of the biggest wastes of time of my life. Because beauty is an essential. It is like good and like truth. It actually is there for and of and in itself. And so for me, the connection with beauty through the arts, through nature, through love of other people, has been the key that, that keeps me from growing dark myself as I observe the world. Honestly, one of the things that I was really afraid of when I found that I was becoming a Christian was that I would lose my sense of realism, that I would become like the people who make this kind of pablum Christian art where everything is happy, everything ends well. And if you pray, you always get your wishes, and if you do something wrong, you're punished immediately and repent. Everything's great. I, I, I can't watch those things. I can't read those books. And I was afraid that I would become that kind of artist. And instead, instead something really remarkable has happened which is that my view of the world has gotten darker because my moral sense has gotten finer. But, but my heart has gotten more joyful. And so I've tried to trace in the book, in the second half or last third of the book, I try to chase the trace, trace in the book how that happened. Why is it that my heart remains joyful even as my view of the world grows more realistic and therefore more, more dark? And the things I talk about, as I talk about ritual, you know, that that teaches the body how to see the sacred in everything. The arts, which teach you how to find beauty in the natural world, and, and things like therapy, which actually clear away the brutal traumas we suffer in our past and make it clearer to us how we can connect with God in a fresh, new and unpolluted way. And so that's basically what I'm looking for in those last three essays or chapters, is the creative things that we do that keep us as a source of, not only a source of light, but a being of light in this world that is oftentimes so dark and evil.
- [26:08]
Scott Bertram
The book is the Kingdom of finding God in the literature of Darkness. Andrew Clavin, the author You've read him for many years and listened to over@dailywire.com to the Andrew Clavin Show, a fascinating and entertaining new book, the Kingdom of Cain. Andrew Clavin, thanks so much for joining us.
- [26:25]
Andrew Clavin
Thanks a lot, Scott. It's been a pleasure.
- [26:26]
Scott Bertram
Up next, Dr. Colin Brown joins us. We'll discuss his dissertation research into Benjamin Franklin revolution, visionary statesman. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On the new episode of the Larry Arn Show, Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arn sits down with pastor, professor and author Kevin DeYoung for a one on one conversation. They saw that you might say reason and revelation coming together in the American founding and that they didn't have to be it and that there was this groundwork. And it's interesting you talk about in the Hillsdale founding documents because Witherspoon gives a famous sermon in May 1776 leading to the independence and he says that very thing, civil liberty and religious liberty have always stood or fallen together. Listen to this exclusive interview with Kevin DeYoung right now, only available on the Larry Arn Show. Find it on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu also at Apple Podcasts Spotify and YouTube and subscribe to receive new episodes delivered right to your device. That's podcast hillsdale.edu.
- [28:02]
Dr. Colin Brown
Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss top topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale.edu or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your audio.
- [28:53]
Scott Bertram
Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. We welcome our new affiliates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, am 1250 the answer also at 92.5 FM. Thank you for tuning in to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. We are joined by Dr. Colin Brown. He has just finished his PhD at Hillsdale College's Graduate School of Statesmanship and is a postdoctoral associate at the Declaration of Independence center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Brown, thanks so much for joining us.
- [29:27]
Dr. Colin Brown
I'm glad to be on Scott talking.
- [29:29]
Scott Bertram
Today about your research, your dissertation for us Here at Hillsdale College from the Graduate School of Statesmanship on Benjamin Franklin, Revolutionary statesman. Now, there has been a lot written and thought about Benjamin Franklin. How did you come to the decision to focus on him for your dissertation? What new information or insight were you hoping to discover?
- [29:52]
Dr. Colin Brown
Well, I originally did not intend to write a dissertation on Franklin. When I was thinking about it, my interest at the time was imperialism and the birth of the nation state and early modernity. Right. I had taken a class with Dr. Kevin Slack on American colonial thought during my coursework at Hillsdale and during that class ended up writing a paper on Franklin and the British Empire. And so as I was thinking about the dissertation, I was like, oh well, I'll do Franklin. I've already written something on him. He's interesting, he's American. But as I was working on it, initially the project was more foreign policy focused. But as I was working on it, I came to see that what I was more interested in was Franklin navigating the complexities of life within an ill defined imperial and colonial regime. There's the British Constitution which is not written. It's more precedent and tradition. And while Pennsylvania had a written constitution, it was since its founding undergoing some change. There was some struggles between the two major factions in Pennsylvania. And so the Pennsylvanian regime became more and more democratic over the years. And as Franklin's navigating that and trying to bring about in my opinion, a more democratic or republican form of government through reform in Pennsylvania, that really is what interested me.
- [31:30]
Scott Bertram
So you describe Franklin as a revolutionary and a republican. What do you mean by that?
- [31:36]
Dr. Colin Brown
By revolutionary? I mean he obviously he did participate in the American Revolution. My dissertation though does not go up to 1776. I actually ended up it around 1760. So in my mind revolutionary means he was more of a revolutionary in his thought than yet in his deed. Although the dissertation does show that he does track towards a more revolutionary style of politics over the as time goes on. But he wanted to go back to or essentially refound Pennsylvania and then the colonies as a whole and maybe even the British Empire eventually on first principles. So he wanted to bring back the governments that he lived in, back to first principles, back to a more a form of government that he believed more consistent with human nature and human flourishing. And for him that form of government was republican. So political equality. He was a proponent of natural rights and sought to secure a form of government that was consistent with man's natural rights as well as his. In the British tradition, writes as Englishmen and so a strong legislature that was made up of elected representatives was key for his view of government.
- [32:57]
Scott Bertram
Who were the Whigs and what were their goals around this time?
- [33:01]
Dr. Colin Brown
So the Whigs were one of the two major factions within British politics. They're mostly the Whigs and the Tories, mostly associated with the Glorious Revolution. At the end of the 17th century, the Whigs were considered victorious. There was a new settlement following the Glorious Revolution. Eventually they would become parliamentarians, is probably the best way to describe them. By the time of the Revolution, the more moderate Whigs believed in a kind of form of parliamentary supremacy, the king in Parliament and the legislative as being the supreme power within the British Empire. Now, there were there within the Whigs, you could say there were kind of two versions or two kinds. There are the moderate Whigs and then the more radical Whigs, who tended to follow the ideas of John Locke, Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who were the two writers behind Cato's letters. This more republican, social compact version of Whig thought was what kind of constituted the more radical Whigs and most Americans in the colonies, they were either Tories or more radical Whigs. All of the revolutionaries tended to be more of this radical Whig sort.
- [34:20]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Dr. Colin Brown about his research into Benjamin Franklin, his dissertation on Benjamin Franklin, Revolutionary Statesman. So what were Franklin's politics? What camp or what faction did he belong to?
- [34:33]
Dr. Colin Brown
That's a great question, and it's one that scholars debate all the time, whether you're a historian or a political theorist like myself or a literary historian. Franklin himself tried to stay above factional politics, right? He wanted to present himself as kind of an independent, probably is the best way to describe it, and as a neutral observer. But he was also a very political man, even before he entered the Pennsylvania Assembly. So with his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, he often commented on and published pieces commenting on the political issues of the day. And these, his opinions and the kind of trajectory or general orientation of his newspaper tended to support what scholars call the Quaker popular party army. These were the Pennsylvanians who believed in a strong legislature, a strong assembly. They wanted it to be a unicameral legislature. So rather than have the legislative power divided between an upper and lower house, the popular party in Pennsylvania thought that the elected representatives ought to have the majority, if not all, of the legislative power. And Franklin tended to side with them. He did have friends among the other faction, the proprietary faction, who sided with the proprietors of Pennsylvania, the Penn family and their associates. And so Franklin navigated the two factions, but on a matter of principle. He ended up 99 out of 10 or 99 out of 100 times, siding with the popular party.
- [36:19]
Scott Bertram
What did Franklin see as sort of the foundation of society?
- [36:24]
Dr. Colin Brown
There are really two foundations, I think the first is human nature and man's sociable inclinations. So he believed that man was a social creature by nature. In a journal from, he's probably in his early to mid-20s at this point, he's on a ship and he comes to the conclusion that you could have all the knowledge and wisdom in the world, but if you didn't have anyone to share it with, your life was poor for it. So he thought man was inherently inclined to live with others like him, with, with fellow men. Now that not only served as the basis of society, but it also tended to be the basis of conflict. And a lot of the conflict arose from both man's kind of selfish or self interested inclinations. So Franklin has an essay where he says man is both, both benevolent and selfish. He has parts of him that orient him towards society and then parts of him that orient him towards viewing his own interests. But the other foundation that kind of arose out of this was human opinion. And Franklin thought that human opinion tended to be the basis of all political dominion, whether or not it was explicit. All government was based upon some kind of consent, usually tacit consent. But he was very concerned about governments ascertaining and maintaining the good opinion of the governed. Based upon this view, he came to the opinion that something like social compact theory, which makes consent explicit, was the best political program, for lack of a better word, by which to orient one's society. Because that way opinions are acknowledged by the governors and there are means by which opinion can consistently be acknowledged and change the government if necessary.
- [38:31]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Dr. Colin Brown about his research into Benjamin Franklin, revolutionary statesman, how did Franklin's views, or did Franklin's views change as the crisis in the American political or in the American colonies developed? Develop?
- [38:43]
Dr. Colin Brown
Yeah, I, I think, you know, if you look at it just from a cursory glance or it may seem like Franklin's views change, that's a big question within the scholarship as well. You know, you have this a lot of historians, Gordon Wood, for instance, that characterize Franklin as an imperialist and a royalist during the 1750s and 1760s. And then suddenly at the, you know, at the earliest, you know, 1769, if not a little bit later, in the early 1770s, Franklin becomes this American revolutionary and anti monarchist and everything, and republican. So for historians, the question is, how did he change? In my view, I don't think Franklin's views changed. In principle, his principles remained the same. What changed was Franklin's estimation of what could be done practically in the 1750s. He was more concerned with Pennsylvania politics, a little bit about colonial politics, and these are all wrapped up in the imperial politics of Britain. But Franklin believed that the best way to handle the crises before him was through Reformation reform the governments under which you live. Rather than seek revolution in the 60s as the Imperial crisis, the Stamp act crisis and the like, as those come to the fore and start to worsen, Franklin at this time is still believing that there's ways of bringing the colonies and Great Britain together. Right. We can come to compromises that would best achieve principled aims for the empire as a whole. But as those crises worsen and Franklin realizes that neither side is going to back down, and in particular the British, their views of the American colonists are worsening and they're choosing tyrannical means of dealing with the colonists, Franklin comes to see that revolution is the only legitimate and practical way of maintaining freedom in America.
- [40:51]
Scott Bertram
Now, you mentioned earlier your research ends around 1760 or so. However, if we look forward just a little bit, are there big arcs or ideas we should know about how Franklin perhaps evolves or moves toward the Continental Congress and toward the revolution?
- [41:10]
Dr. Colin Brown
Yeah, certainly. I would actually say you can see, and this is my dissertation, that you can see the revolutionary Franklin in the 1750s. That's what I would argue. But when the political crises between the colonies and Britain start to erupt in the early 1760s, one key event is going to be the Stamp act crisis and how Franklin is navigating that. Towards the end of the 1760s, there are a number of laws that are being, or acts that are being passed by Parliament that Franklin is trying to either ameliorate or get repealed. During this period, he's navigating British parliamentary politics over in London and all their complexities. There is then the. The cockpit episode towards this is on the eve of the revolution where Franklin has to endure scathing criticism from the British government. He's there in person and he's silent throughout the entire thing. And by that point, Franklin comes to the opinion that there, you know, the break is inevitable. The British won't see reason and certainly are not willing to act with justice. And so soon after the. The cockpit episode, he heads back to the colonies. By the time he gets into the colonies, Franklin is already kind of the most famous American, not only for his work on behalf of the various colonies, he was an agent, a Colonial agent for not only Pennsylvania, but Massachusetts and a few others by this point. But he's also been. He's. He's become famous for his scientific studies, for his discovery of electricity and all that was involved with that, some of his inventions and, and such. And he's. He's a fairly old man, so by the time he gets back, he's kind of the sage of Philadelphia is a way of describing him. And he's certainly natural person that the other revolutionaries would. Would look to and want to get involved in the Continental Congress.
- [43:17]
Scott Bertram
What's the Albany Plan, and what was Franklin's role in that?
- [43:21]
Dr. Colin Brown
So the Albany Plan was one of the early, although not the earliest, one of the early plans to unite the different colonies in North America under one, at the very least, one military head. The colonies were very divided at this time. They each had their own governments. They were also very jealous of one another. And around 1754, you have the beginnings of the French and Indian War. The Albany Plan was initiated as a means of uniting at least the military might of the colonies under one central head, thereby to be able to employ colonial military might on the frontier wherever it was needed. Franklin used the Albany Plan. He's considered the primary author of the initial drafts. There's some debate, but Franklin wrote up four different versions of his idea for the Albany Plan before he actually before the Albany Congress convened and drafted what would become the official Albany Plan. So Franklin's the primary author of it. He used the Albany Plan as a means, in my opinion, of trying to bring about some reforms to the British Empire. So not only did he want the colonies to be united for the sake of security and defense, but he also wanted to. He envisioned through the Albany Plan, a means of achieving a more republican or liberal structure and relationship between the colonies and the empire as a whole. The Albany Plan, unfortunately, was unsuccessful. It didn't. A lot of colonial legislatures thought it emphasized the. The powers of the Crown a little too much for their liking. And then the British government and the imperial administrators thought that the plan was a little too democratic to their liking. And so, unfortunately, Franklin's political efforts up to the revolution tend to be kind of like a study and failure. He attempts to reform his colonial and imperial regimes throughout the decades, is not successful, and then leads to revolution. And the Albany Plan is one of those unfortunate failures.
- [45:43]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Colin Brown, on Benjamin Franklin, revolutionary statesman, as we conclude here. How would you summarize your work? How would you summarize Franklin's legacy as a statesman?
- [45:55]
Dr. Colin Brown
Yeah, so I think Franklin's legacy is twofold. On the one hand, his writings and his life serve as kind of a model and an inspiration not only for us today, but also he was an inspiration to the other Founding Fathers. He was one of the oldest. He was kind of the founder of the Founding Fathers. In a sense. His writings from the 1750s get picked up in the 1760s and inspire a number of revolutionaries in political thought and their political thinking. James Madison, for instance, comments that some of these writings from the 1750s served or within them provide the germ or the seed of all that followed with the Revolution. So on the one sense I think Franklin captures and embodies is what John Adams says. John Adams says that the. The real revolution did not happen in 1776. The real revolution happened in the hearts and minds of Americans 15 years beforehand, right in the 1760s or so. I would say that Franklin was already priming his fellow Pennsylvanians and then the rest of Americans about 10 years before that.
- [47:10]
Andrew Clavin
That.
- [47:11]
Dr. Colin Brown
And so Franklin initiated, in some sense, that revolution in hearts and minds that would then take off in the 1770s with the actual Revolutionary War. But also his second legacy, I think, is Franklin helps to provide a model of how one might think about one's own regime and how to navigate it if you're living in a regime that is not consistent with liberty. Franklin, I think Franklin would provide a model of statesmanship that seeks to not necessarily jump to revolution right away. Certainly his principles were revolutionary for his time, but his deeds were reasonable and moderate. And so he thought that reform was necessary. And he thought that you ought to reform your regime up to the point that. That it's no longer capable of being reformed. And so, you know, to sum it up, I think, you know, the second aspect of Franklin's legacy, and now I'm going to use a phrase from St. Thomas More, but it's don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. And Franklin was very much concerned with achieving the good in the here and the now. He's also, you know, he's kind of the founder of the American mind. But that would, you know, be a much broader, larger discussion there.
- [48:29]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Colin Brown, recently finishing his PhD head, Hillsdale College's Graduate School of Statesmanship, now a postdoctoral associate at the Declaration of Independence center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. His dissertation on Benjamin Franklin, revolutionary statesman. Dr. Brown, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [48:52]
Dr. Colin Brown
Thanks for having me, Scott.
- [48:53]
Scott Bertram
That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Andrew Clavin, his new book the Kingdom of Cain, and Dr. Colin Brown talking about Benjamin Franklin. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.