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Foreign.
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From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored.
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This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour,
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bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
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So they'll keep voting in the people that are bringing us this squalor because they don't blame the policies. And that's a basic divide that is very hard to overcome.
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This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Heather MacDonald, author of When Race Trumps Merit, how the Pursuit of Equity, Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and Threatens Lives, now in a revised paperback with a new preface by Heather. We'll go in depth with her today. Also later on in today's show, Richard Samuelson joins us From Hillsdale in D.C. we'll talk about common sense and remember the ladies as we walk up to America 251st. Happy to be joined now by Heather McDonald. She is Thomas W. Smith, Thomas Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor at City Journal, and the author of When Race Trumps how the Pursuit of Equity, Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and Threatens Lives. It is now available in an updated paperback edition with a new preface by Heather MacDonald. Heather, thanks so much for joining us.
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Thank you for having me, Scott. I greatly appreciate it.
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We talked about the book upon its release, which I can't believe was finished three years ago. But I looked at the numbers and that's true. Much has happened since then. We could not have necessarily counted on or anticipated President Trump being reelected to a second term in the White House. And part of what you say in the preface now is that we've seen President Trump attempting as much as possible through the administration to dismantle the racial equity infrastructure that had been created. So how far have we come in these past 14, 15 months or so?
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Well, I can't fault Trump on what he's trying to do. The question is, are any of these changes going to stick? As you recall, Trump was just a whirlwind on day one when he was sworn in, issuing executive orders by the dozens practically. And a very large number of those were focused on this preposterous infrastructure that we've created in government based on the lie that America is a systemically racist country still, and that we need to engineer racial proportionality in meritocratic, high standards institutions like medical schools, law schools, law firms, corporations in order to overcome this systemic bias. And so you had Democratic administrations dating back decades basically forcing public and private sector entities to discard high standards in favor of race. And sadly, if you do that, you are guaranteeing that you're going to get people in your institution who are not competitively qualified. So Trump set out saying, you know, we're going to get rid of racial programs within the federal government. I'm going to stop federal agencies from hiring on the basis of race and sex rather than on the basis of how much that bureaucrat knows about his field. I'm going to stop requiring that federal contractors, private firms that have contracts with the federal government, engage in these extremely burdensome demographic surveys of their workforce, itemizing a ever larger number of racial and identity based groups that are now claiming aspiring to victim status. And so private firms had to create these massive EEOC bureaucracies that sucked up funding and time. And in April, he did what I think is the most significant executive order, which is to try to extirpate this very dangerous concept called disparate impact liability from the federal regulations. So this was all great. And of course, he tried to actually give teeth to the 2023 Supreme Court case called SFFA v. Harvard that purported to ban, on a constitutional basis, private, excuse me, public colleges from using race and admissions to eviscerate high standards. But colleges were sort of trying to lie low and ignore the ruling. And frankly, the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts gave them a huge loophole to continue using race. So Trump came in and tried to say, no, we really mean this. You're going to have to give us your admissions data that will allow us to determine if you're still using racial preferences. This was all good, but I am ambivalent or torn between whether it's really going to make a permanent difference. Because a lot of these, the most extreme and committed organizations and bureaucracies that are committed to basically the idea that white males are the biggest threat to humanity, they're still there, they're still dug in. And I would say if we don't get another Republican administration to follow up on this second Trump term, I think we're going to backslide very quickly.
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Heather, I want to return to April 23, 2025. This is the date when President Trump has this order to federal agencies to stop employing disparate impact theory. This was a big part of when raised Trump's merit, this discussion about disparate impact theory. Explain for us briefly once again what that meant and what real changes we might see or have seen since the change by President Trump's administration.
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Well, in a nutshell, disparate impact Theory substitutes phantom racism for actual discrimination because it became very difficult to find sufficient examples of real virulent discrimination by mainstream institutions against qualified black individuals. But you had to keep the anti racism juggernaut going. And so disparate impact theory was developed in order to do so. The original civil rights acts that were passed in the 1960s at the height of the sort of active civil rights era, banned employers from deliberately and intentionally discriminating against qualified black applicants. So if you had, you know, if you were a business seeking a lawyer and a black lawyer showed up, who was the most qualified, you could no longer say, I'm not going to hire you because you're black, or you couldn't not hire him because he was black without explicitly saying so. And the federal government said, that's just not. That sort of deliberate discrimination is not compatible with our understanding of equal protection and civil rights in this country. So the civil rights laws banned intentional discrimination. Well, like five years later, seven years later, most employers had stopped doing that. They were not trying to exclude qualified blacks. The problem. And yet you still saw workplaces that didn't have 13% black representation if they had any kind of selective test for admission. So, for example, fire departments may not have been 13% black firefighters because those departments administered a very basic elementary test of reading and math skills to firefighter applicants on the assumption that if you're going to be a firefighter, you need to be able to read an instruction manual on how to use this or that fire retardant. You had to understand how to, you know, read about chemicals. And so they would issue, they would administer these tests. And what happened was black applicants would disproportionately fail because they didn't have an even elementary level of reading skills. And so the workplaces remained insufficiently diverse from the perspective of government bureaucrats and the civil rights establishment. And so what the court, the supreme court came up with, and this idea had been batted around in law schools for a while, was the idea that even if an employer did not intend to discriminate against blacks, all he wanted was to have the most qualified applicants, and he'd be happy if his entire workplace was black. And if he administered some kind of test or had a certain expectation of reading skills, of writing skills, of math skills, if that test had a negative impact disproportionately on blacks, that that test was itself racist. And so you had all sorts of institutions throwing out perfectly constitutional, perfectly colorblind tests based on what is called disparate impact. And that was what started A very serious decline in meritocratic standards in medical schools, in law schools, in flight training, you name it. Any. The sad fact of the matter is, Scott, because the academic skills gap is so wide and it has been intractable, you cannot administer a meritocratic test without having a disparate impact on blacks. You can either have diversity in the workplace or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both.
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Heather McDonald is with us. Her book is When Race Trumps Merits. How the Pursuit of Equity, Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and THR Threatens Lives. Heather, you mentioned how it shows up in science and medicine. That's a part of When Race Trump's Merit. Just recently as we have this conversation, the Department of Justice concluded an investigation into UCLA's medical school, which I think we talked about the first time we chatted three years ago. So the investigation's taken a while, but it found the school's admissions process unlawfully discriminates based on race. Their process has been focused on racial demographic demographics at the expense of merit and excellence. We talk about real world impact of these policies on everyday Americans. What this means is UCLA is not admitting the best of the brightest of the people who are gonna be the best doctors, but they're more concerned about the racial demographics of the potential doctors that are in their programs that eventually affects the health and wellbeing of all of us down the road.
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It's just outrageous. Scott. Anybody who has a white male, straight white male son or grandson has either discovered this or will discover it. That that straight white male is going to be the last admitted to selective colleges, to selective graduate schools, to professional schools, and to law firms, government, science positions, you name it. And students experience this daily. I was at an event last night and a very left wing mother had to admit that although her son had very good MCAT scores, he was right in deciding that he would never be admitted to medical school. And so he went to Palantir instead. Now, that's hardly the end of the world, but now, nevertheless, we have lost potentially a groundbreaking medical scientist. And this is happening all over. And what's going on is the medical schools have had completely different tracks of admission, MCAT scores and grade point averages. MCATs are the medical college admissions test. They're the standardized, colorblind, neutral, objective tests of the types of skills that you need to succeed in medical school. They're the medical counterparts of the SATs. In many places. If the MCAT scores and grade point averages in college, that would be automatically disqualifying if presented by a white or Asian applicant to medical school are an automatic admit if presented by a black or Hispanic student. So you've got almost non overlapping bell curves of who's getting admitted to medical school. And so what happens is, and this is true for any institution that practices racial preferences when these less qualified, under qualified blacks are admitted to medical school. And let me just put in a little aside here, opponents of racial preferences like myself are not saying that blacks should not go to college. We're not saying that blacks should not go to law school. We're not saying that blacks should not go to medical school. All we are saying is they should go to school on the same basis as everybody else admitted to schools for which they are competitively qualified, not catapulted outside of their comfort zone, outside of their skills zone, into schools for which they're not qualified. So if you're a black student and you'd be qualified to go to Boston College, it is not doing you a service to be admitted to Harvard Medical School where the students there are the absolute top of the of the academic skills curve to the extent they're admitted when not kept out to make places for racial preference beneficiaries. So the black students are admitted into schools that they're not ready for, they do very poorly, they're at the bottom of their class. And the pressure is then on to lower standards further. And that has gone on with the first stage of the medical licensing test which got rid of grades and went to pass fail in the hope of passing through more blacks into the hospital residencies of their choice in their second year of medical training. And the pressure is on to do similar things to part two of the medical licensing exam. And sorry guys, skill matters, intelligence matters, capacity matters. These things cannot be fudged. You cannot play around with seeking the best possible candidate and lowering standards and think things are all going to come out okay. They won't.
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Heather McDonald is with us. We'll talk more about when race Trumps merit. The new paperback version available now. But now is an opportunity to make plans for May 31, June 1 or June 2, that is when Revolutionary America is in theaters. The very first big screen production from Hillsdale College. You know, our founding generation risked everything for the freedom our children enjoy today with 250 years on the line, make sure that they know the story. Introducing the first documentary about the American Revolution that you can trust from Hillsdale College. Go to Hillsdale Edu film F I to find a theater near you and get your tickets for Revolutionary America. It's in theaters for a limited run. May 31, June 1, June 2, make your plans now. Hillsdale. Edu FILM Good for the whole family. Hillsdale. Edu Film we continue with Heather MacDonald, author of When Race Trump's Merit. That book now available in paperback with a new preface by Heather MacDonald. Heather, on this subject of educating doctors, is there an argument or is there any evidence that by enrolling and accepting doctors who might be slightly lower achieving in their career, it's still a net benefit because those doctors could serve areas that otherwise would not have any access to medical care whatsoever? Is there any evidence that that is taking place?
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When the first case was decided called Bakke versus The Regents of University of California and this was in fact a medical student, a white Jewish guy who applied to the medical school at the University of California at Davis and had competitive qualifications and he was not admitted because at that point the University of Davis, University of California at Davis had an explicit set aside program for say 100 blacks to come into the medical school who had the usual very low scores. And Bakke sued all the way up to the Supreme Court. This was a public university, so it was obligated to abide by the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the laws. The opinion that was the plurality opinion was written by Justice Lewis Powell. And he considered various rationales that maybe justified would justify racial preferences under what's called in constitutional law a strict scrutiny test, which is of a high level of review. You have to have a very strong reason to use race as a category as a government entity. And he considered among the rationales compensatory justice. Blacks have been screwed in the past, so we need to have to, you know, help them now. He said that doesn't do it, not a good enough rationale. And he considered the argument, well, blacks will be more likely to go out and work in the so called community. They'll be more likely to do health clinics that are not so elite and in places where they're insufficient number of doctors. And Powell said, then there's no evidence that that's the case. And he's right, there's still no evidence of that. So, you know, I can imagine a viewer thinking, well, but maybe there's a balance there. So you have maybe not as quite as competent doctors, but if they're filling needed gaps in the medical system, maybe it's worth it. But I just want to say that rationale doesn't apply either.
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Heather McDonald with us, her book When Race Trumps Merit, speaking of colleges and universities, once you get there, you previously have dealt with DEI programs all over campus on many colleges and universities across the country. The president, the administration have instructed colleges and universities to stop those programs. And it appears based on evidence and hidden cameras, that many places are simply renaming departments, trying to do their best to keep those programs intact while staying under the radar of the federal government. So do you think they're going to get away with that, to simply try to wait out the Trump administration?
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Yes, I do. Let's just state that this is a bureaucracy based on an outright lie, and that's bad regardless of its consequences. It's bad if a university embraces untruth because it's supposed to be dedicated to the truth. The DEI bureaucracy in colleges across the country is based on the fiction that colleges remain hotbeds of discrimination and that to be a female or a so called underrepresented minority on campus, which means basically blacks, Hispanics and a minute number of American Indians, that to be one of those unfortunates is to be subject to unsafety and you need allies to survive. This is all preposterous. There's no more welcoming environment in human history than a college campus to the groups that are now deemed marginalized and victimized. So these bureaucracies, it's just sucking up tuition dollars, it's making the colleges get more and more expensive, and it teaches students to think of themselves as victims. It is dedicated to that proposition and it uses these bureaucrats, the vice provost of diversity and belonging. They use every opportunity to tell students why they should think of themselves as victims rather than as the most fortunate people on earth in human history.
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Heather, on the issue of crime, you wrote a piece at City Journal a couple of weeks ago, rude, but right on crime, referring to Donald Trump and crackdown in Washington, D.C. we've seen murder rates plummet in D.C. we've seen some public transit agencies across the country actually enforce the law and go after fare evaders. And crime has fallen, vandalism has fallen in those particular locations. And yet we still sort of see this couched as some sort of racial animus if you want to enforce the law, and racial animus if you want to keep some of our larger cities safe. Will the evidence that we see in some areas, including right there in Washington, D.C. change the minds of anyone who's, who's looking at that, at that topic?
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I've sort of given up on changing minds, Scott, and I'm sure the left says that about us as well. I'm acutely conscious on a minute by minute, by basis that both sides have similar rhetorical techniques that they use against the other, and both sides are equally capable of violating neutral principles. That having been said, I can hold two contradictory ideas in my mind at once. I believe that. And yet I also do believe that I have the facts and I'm not deluded. But nevertheless, I have to admit that the left thinks we're totally out of touch with reality. I would just make one little emendation to what you said. Yes, things are looking better in Washington D.C. after Trump in August of last year bracingly sent in the National Guard and said, we're not going to take this any longer. You know, this is not acceptable. There's a very high crime rate here. Disorder is out of control. We want to be a livable, beautiful city and we're not going to excuse this any longer. That was a great, great moment, he called it. It was the second Liberation Day. After the tariffs, this was a more important one in my view. But recently it's summer is approaching and we're getting the youth flash mob season coming upon us where you have large groups of children raised predominantly by single mothers. They are overwhelmingly black that gather in urban centers, having announced a sort of a mobbing event on social media and they, they rampage, they raise hell. And there was one recently in Washington D.C. in the Navy Yards area. So I would say we need more National Guards. But crime is another area where you have disparate impact theory at work, just as it's true. And again, let me also say I'm speaking about averages here. I am not speaking about any individual, white, Hispanic or black person. There are thousands of blacks who are over performing whites and Asians in academic skills. There's thousands of blacks who are far more law abiding than white and Asian gang bangers and thugs. But the averages, the data do not lie. And it is the case that black crime rates, on average, taken the group as a whole, I'm not talking about any given individual, are so much higher than other groups in society that if you apply the laws against turnstile jumping, against robbery, against aggravated assault, you will have a disparate impact on black criminals. Not because the laws are racist, but because the crime rate is so high. And so the criminal justice system under progressive leadership has said, well, if we enforce laws against shoplifting or turnstile jumping, we will be putting a disproportionate number of black juveniles in jail maybe. Although if they're juveniles there, they get a free pass immediately. But even if we apply these laws against people that already have 10 crimes in their background, we will have a disparate impact on black criminals. Therefore, we'll stop enforcing the law because it has a disparate impact that's been going on. And that's a more difficult thing for Trump to get at because these are generally local, state and local decisions and the federal government has limited authority over those decisions.
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So let me actually probably end there, which is since the last time we've talked, New York now has a socialist mayor. Chicago essentially has a socialist mayor. Seattle has a socialist mayor. It seems some of our big cities are leaning into democratic socialists or just flat out socialists in office. What kind of levers do they then have at the local level, at the city level, in some of our biggest cities in the country to try to, in their parlance, restore equity in those areas?
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They have a lot of leverage. There's a long standing battle in New York City over what are called test schools. These are specialized high schools that are public, they're free, that use academic skills tests to admit students. This is fairly rare, although they exist like Virginia has one, San Francisco, Seattle, and they've been the crown jewel of the public education school. In New York City, the most famous one is called Stuyvesant High School, and it's down in the lower Manhattan. And at this point it is so overwhelmingly Asian. Whites are underrepresented. Asians are way overrepresented based on their population in New York City. Why? Because they're whooping everybody's ass. The parents are riding their children with extraordinary attention to study, to not run the streets at night, to do their homework, to learn to pay attention to their teacher, to respect their teacher. And it's paying off. And these schools, because they are, have very few black and Hispanic students, have been under pressure for decades from the various race hustling advocacy groups to get rid of the exams and do admit by race and monda me the left wing mayor of New York, Zorami, has been ambiguous about that. It's not clear which way he's going to go, but he, and it is fortunately controlled by the state legislature, nevertheless, he's feeling the political momentum. And I could imagine that that effort to reward academic merit will be torn down. They can bring pressure on progressive prosecutors not to further enforce the law. And God knows they can certainly screw up with economic situation. So it's really astounding. You know, I was in New York City in the Giuliani mayoralty and it was an extraordinarily exciting moment. He took on the welfare industrial complex, he took on the criminal industrial complex. He restored high standards. He brought accountability to government. It's all gone. New York looks filthier than ever. There's more danger than ever from mentally ill vagrants that are allowed to roam the streets without being committed for mental illness. So you and I, people like us, scratch our heads and say, how do people keep voting in these left wingers? And the reason I have come up with is like, when it comes to street vagrancy, otherwise known as homelessness, which is a complete misnomer, the left thinks that so called homelessness is a fact of nature. It's created by unfair economic conditions, not by public policy choices. I see street vagrancy as completely a policy choice. People have decided that we want the vagrants on the streets. We're going to get rid of the means to get them off, which is moving people along for vagrancy and committing people involuntarily if they're psychotic. The left thinks it's just a matter of we're not funding enough social services so they'll keep voting in the people that are bringing us this squalor because they don't blame the policies. And that's a basic divide that is very hard to overcome.
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Heather Macdonald is Thomas W. Smith Fellow at Manhattan Institute, also contributing editor at City Journal, and the author of the recent book When Race Trumps the Pursuit of Equity, Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and Threatens Lives, now available in paperback with a new preface from Heather MacDonald. Heather, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale hour. Up next, Dr. Richard Samuelson from Hillsdale indeed. We'll talk about common sense and also remember the ladies letters between John and Abigail Adams. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Hello.
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This is Jeremiah Regan, executive director of Hillsdale College Online Learning, and I am the executive producer and one of the screenwriters of Revolutionary America, Hillsdale College's new documentary about the founding, showing in theaters only May 31 through June 2. To find a theater near you or to buy tickets in advance, go to hillsdale. Edu Film. That's Hillsdale. Edu Film. Witness the founding of our nation described in vivid detail and with sharp accuracy by Hillsdale professors and guests, including narrator Tom Selleck. Take your friends and your family. Go see Revolutionary America. In theaters only May 31 through June 2. Buy tickets at hillsdale. Edu Film.
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On the new episode of the Larry
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Arn Show, Hillsdale College President Larry Arns
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sits down with senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale College and editor in chief at the Federalist Molly Hemingway for a one on one conversation.
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You only have a self governing republic if you can trust the outcome of elections. Who's eligible to vote? How do you make sure that the people who are on your list of being eligible to vote are the voters themselves? What do you do to clean up a list? What are you doing to make sure people aren't registered in multiple jurisdictions? What are you doing to ensure the integrity of control of the ballots? Is there custody of the ballots from the moment they're printed to the moment they're counted and beyond?
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Listen to this exclusive interview with Molly
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Hemingway right now only available on the Larry Arn Show.
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Find it on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast hillsdale.
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Edu or wherever you get your audio and subscribe to receive new episodes delivered
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right to your device.
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That's Podcast Hillsdale.
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Eduardo. Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to find more Hillsdale College audio on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. Older episodes of this program plus the Larry Arn show, the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast and more podcast hillsdale.edu. we're joined by Dr. Richard Samuelson. He is associate professor of government at Hillsdale in D.C. Dr. Samuelson, thanks for joining us.
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Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here.
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Good to have you back as we continue our discussion and walk up to July 4th of 1776 as we approach now America 250. We've had a couple of conversations in the past. You can find that in the archives. Today we're going to talk about two things, common sense and remember the ladies. Before we do that, Dr. Samuelson, tell us a little bit, perhaps set the scene. What's happening, say from the beginning of 1776 up until around April or so where our discussion takes us today?
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Well just go back a little before. Remember when the second Congress met, they sent the people wanting reconciliation, sent the olive branch petition to the king. It arrived hopefully the same time. The king said, nope, I'm not interested. You guys are out of my protection. And there's a struggle in Congress in the last part of 75. But what do we do about that, including in December people were coming to giants. What we do if we have bills or not from the king, just say from the colony of blah blah, blah, he said. But they had to think about that. And in late December of 76, the king said basically American trade in American on the colonial ships is forfeit to the king. And so the king is gradually pushing them and pushing them. And that's the context in which Paine's common sense takes place. There is a turn. All along the colonists have been saying, well, we want the good patriot King to protect us, but from Parliament and what's happening now, they realize, they're starting to realize the King is part of the problem. And when you get the Declaration in July, it's always, he hath, he hath, he hath. Because the King was the only legal connection they had to Britain, they did not believe they were subject to Parliament's authority, perhaps on the high seas, but not as soon as you got inside the colony. And so that's the context in which you get common sense. And it hit like a firecracker. In the start of 76, Paine drops common sense or publishes common sense anonymously. And it spreads because he the first, in a high profile way to take it to the King to say, the problem is the King is not looking out for your interests. The King is not working for you. He's working for someone else, perhaps himself, perhaps Britain, but not for the colonists.
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So at that time, as common sense hits with the force of a firecracker, as you say, is it generally a population that they feel perhaps independence is inevitable? Are colonists still hoping for reconciliation? And where does common sense enter that mix?
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They're still hoping for reconciliation. Among many people, John Adams thought and others thought, once the sword is drawn, throw away the scabbard that is after Lexington conquered in the spring of 75, it just not happening. But most people weren't thinking that way. We think we've had, we've worked out these things before, we'll settle it again. And it takes time for people to realize the King is not going to be there to save us. We're going to have to go our own way. And people who've always lived under the King in a British world and they love being British because to be British was to be connected to the freest people in the world and the people who kept defeating the French. That's always good if you're British, of course. And so it was a big deal to repudiate their identity as British and their king. So Paine, with his brilliant rhetoric, remember, he had only showed up in, I think late 74 from England, and he wound up writing and he really had developed a terrific pen and he writes common sense that says the problem is the King. And the problem isn't just the King. The problem is monarchy. So it's not just that you're staying connected to Britain, it is that it is absurd to have a king and is absurd for an island to rule a continent which addresses the second element, the imperial dimension. So people are still. They're ambiguous. They're getting frustrated with the king, but all they've known is being British and being British is connected to the liberties they want to preserve.
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Dr. Richard Samuelson with us talking about common sense. We'll discuss, remember the Ladies and the Adams in just a few minutes. In Common Sense, Paine's using biblical imagery, using moral language constantly. How important was that? How important was religion to the revolutionary argument?
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Well, this is a very. This is a Bible reading people and fairly religious people, mostly Protestant, more dissenting Protestant than establishment Protestant. And so the image is really hit. John Adams actually asked Paine about that. He said, yeah, I use that because it appealed to the people and the sermons. By the way, if you track the parts of the Old Testament that we use in the sermon, you're turning to the parts that Paine quotes where Samuel says, don't go for a king, Israel. That's not what God wants from you. Right. And that's mean. It's a punishment. You don't want to be like every other nation that has a king. They'll just take stuff from you.
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Right.
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And so Paine uses that very effectively in that Bible reading culture and Bible listening culture, by the way, still in oral culture, to take the argument that it's absurd to have a king. Right? And so he's hitting the right force, the right way at the right time. People are trying to figure out what to do. And he's saying, God, we don't want, you know, the problem is the king. And you're starting to have this. This turn against the king and the turn against Britain. And remember, in their constitutional ideas, their only connection with Britain was the king. They were not subject to Parliament's jurisdiction. And they kept hoping the king would step in and stop it. And they're starting to realize that the king will not. And Payne helped move public opinion to the recognition that the king was not going to be there for them. And his turn to biblical imagery and biblical language was part of his appeal. He was using language that was familiar to the colonists to get them to think through this on moral and biblical terms that would appeal to them.
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Let's step back for a minute just to give a little context. Look, common sense spreads through the holidays. And these days you think, well, you pick it up at the corner store or it's online. It's very easy to access that sort of thing. How literally physically does Common sense spread among the people back in 1776 in a few ways.
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It was published and There's a new second edition in July. I think it's February 14th as a date of Paine's introduction already. And you have 80, 100,000 copies in a population of what, 3 million ish? And that's half the population's under 16. And it's excerpted in newspapers and there are what, 20, 25 newspapers. And often this is an oral culture. So you'll hang out in the tavern or the pub and people will read aloud extracts from common sense and then they'll discuss it and talk about it. Maybe asked to repeat the founding in the. On the stage. This is age where the popular. Where the people in the early 19th century, they demand encores. Do that scene again. So I can imagine they would say, read that passage against the king again, where you call him the royal brute, right? Or what he calls the. The. The William the Conqueror, a French bastard and an armed banditti, you know, is the ancestor of your king. This is the guy you revere, right? And so it spread both through print and through sharing in before hearths and fireplaces and in taverns and maybe as people are traveling on stages, those who did. So it's just. It's everywhere insofar as something could be everywhere at the time.
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Dr. Richard Samuelson with us talking about common sense as we walk up to America 250 was. Was Paine admired by the founders? Did they like the work that he was trying to accomplish? Was he. Was he too much for some? Was he dangerous, unsettling for others?
- [43:10]
B
Well, it depends who you ask, right? The John Adams said he has a better hand at tearing down the. Building up his theory of government. And he does have the idea of essentially we get together and we create a new government. He kind of almost has a. It's a religious ceremony. You take the king, you take the new law, you immolate it, and that's. Yeah, you put a crown on the law is king. But he does. He's not much for checks and balances when you get into his actual political theory. And of course, any time to get the French Revolution, his rights of man would be controversial here. There'd be different opinions about how sound his theory would be. And so it depends who you ask just how much. But one other thing to look at in Common Sense. He makes a radical distinction between society and government. And he thinks society is when we come together naturally to pursue our goods. And government exists because of our wickedness. People misbehave. And because of that, we all got to suffer and have a government. And the purpose of government is security, maybe safety and maybe freedom. But what does the Declaration say? Safety and happiness. You know, happiness in the Recitalian sense, that is a life well lived, fully realized, whereas pain puts that in society outside of government. Maybe there's more room in the mainstream American political thought for the old notion that man is political by nature, hence the citizens engagement in politics is a good. It's not just a necessary evil. And in Paine's account, it looks more like a necessary evil. So there's some lines of distinction there. But Paine, of course did yeoman's service there and of course his great crisis essay right before the Deliquer campaign. These are the times that try men's souls. He did invaluable service to the public in moving public opinion against the King and for independence.
- [44:59]
C
You mentioned this earlier in the conversation, but Paine, in common sense is attacking the monarchy itself and not just King George. How radical did that idea of attacking not one person, King George perhaps, but the monarchy itself. How radical Was that in 1776?
- [45:18]
B
It was a change. It was something they're working with. What's interesting is British nationality, of course is bound up with the King to be a British subject. You're born in the King's soil, you essentially belong to the King. You can't cease being his subject without his explicit consent. Hence sign the Declaration was a bold act of defiance because it's all the evidence they need in your treason trial. And so Paine is attacking that whole concept. It's bound up your identity as a Britain. I love my King, I'm attached to my King. It's how you're raised. And so he's not just attacking that, attacking the root of monarchy. And he mocks it, he says it's unbiblical, he says it's absurd. And he's attacked. But it hit because it was time, it was timely, it wouldn't have had a year earlier. Maybe people were ready to think. They're thinking through this and think what happens in, well, spring, early summer of 76. They've all long been fighting for the rights of Englishmen or the rights of Britons. The problem is they can no longer enjoy them so long as they are English or British. And what I do in the blackboard, I write, write some Englishmen. I cross out the word English. They become the rights of men. And so you're moving the move against monarchy and not just against George iii. Is very much in line with that move once in order to enjoy the rights of Englishmen, you have to stop being English. You also have to move against not just the king, but against monarchy itself, or at least that's what they do. And Paine was invaluable that he hit the right people at the right time, the right way to make that argument against monarchy.
- [46:54]
C
So many conversations happening in this walk up to July of 1776. And we transition to another conversation between a husband and wife in March of 1776. This letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams where she says this phrase, remember the ladies set up this moment for us. Dr. Samuelson, where are Abigail Adams and John Adams when this famous letter exchange happens?
- [47:20]
B
John's in congress. He's the leading advocate of independence. He's probably the first man in congress on I don't know how many committees and in charge of most of them, but incredibly busy. And Abigail Caplace, he doesn't write enough, but he shows up against the letter. It's 3-31-76. Now, note this is about two weeks after Boston was evacuated. 3-17-76 is when the British were forced out of Boston by the movement of cannon from captured Fort Ticonderoga with engineering of Henry Knox, who had been just a bookseller who studied military engineering. They used ledges in the winter to get these cannon across the state.
- [47:59]
C
Right.
- [48:00]
B
It's before I90. And they mounted them on Dorchester Heights and the British had to bug out. And that was a big deal. So now things look a little different. They're trying to figure where are they going next. But he's saying, and Abdul begins by saying, I wish you'd ever write a letter to me as half as long as I write you. And we don't know where the fleet's gone. But she begins with that. But then she says, I have sometimes been ready to think the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in the breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow creatures of theirs. And she's talking about Virginia and slavery. She's thinking more largely about the implications of liberty. And it's interesting she turns from there in this letter, though we facilitate ourselves for Boston being free. Well, I have longed to hear that you declared independency by which the new code of laws by which you will inevitably you need to create when necessary to make I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them. Your ancestors do not put such unlimited power into the hands of their husbands. Remember, all men will be tyrants if they could. So those two parts of the letter are very much connected. This notion that the tyranny of slavery and the tyranny of men over woman, in which there is a quantity. Remember, this is the world of coverture. Women do not have a separate identity from their fathers when their children, from their husbands when they're married. And of course, it's also the right of a husband to beat his wife. Abigail's pushing back against that and probably to a certain degree for the notion that she can hold property herself now that she's running the farm. Say, why can't I legally manage the property as a reality? And so she's thinking about what to whom, how does equality apply? It applies to women, too. And she quotes. She says, all men would be tyrants if they could, Quoting John Adams, her husband, back to himself. So woman. The wives always do to us, right? So she's very much thinking, how far do these rights go? Once you open up the question of liberty, it applies to new situations. And as you move from the rights of Englishmen to the rights of men, what would truly be a free country? What's it going to look like as you're thinking about founding a new country that's no longer simply British?
- [50:21]
C
Now, John's response to this is playful and somewhat dismissive at the same time. How should we, well, I guess tell our listeners how he responds, and then how should we read his tone?
- [50:32]
B
He says, he calls her tone saucy. Now, your saucy letter, he says, well, we knew as we were going along, new people would rise up and demand liberty. But now a new tribe has arisen, the most dangerous of them all. And he says, you know very well that you run everything. You're really in charge. You kind of give us the illusion of being in power. He plays the henpecked husband, right, and there's some truth to that. Suppose in their marriage, but not entirely right, the law allowed it to be, and she. He planned. And she's being saucy. He knows that, but she's also being serious, and she's a little frustrated that he didn't take her point more seriously. But if you read John Adams writings for the rest of his life, every now and then he'll say, yeah, there's a serious question here about the rights of men and the rights of women. In what senses are men and women different? Therefore, law should be somewhat different. And in what senses are there they're equal, and therefore the law should be same. Say, perhaps the right to vote. Adams Thinks, no, he thinks the family is a natural unit, but he understands one of his grandchildren just dismisses it and laughs it off, says, no, no, this is a serious question, we have to engage it. So on the fly in 76 he says, well, he kind of dismisses it, but long term, he knows is a very serious question to raise as you move towards independence and towards equality. As we understood and outlined the declaration, the question of the equality of men and women as human or equally human adult, that's going to be raised and that's there. So note both slavery, equality of black white and the question of equality of men and women is all on the table in the spring of 1776. Those ideas are already logically identified as coming out of the ideas that are part of the movement towards independence as you move against monarchy and for the rights of men. This is man, to use a shorthand in the Genesis 1 sense, God created. This is in English at least male and female. He created them. God created man. In Genesis 2 there's a DA man and then Eve woman. So it's a sense that man is male and female. We're equal in some senses and different in some other ways. And John and Abigail, they definitely raised that. And of course John is a leading figure in Congress and Abigail is pushing him to think about some of the more deeper implications of this move towards independence. She's a pretty serious thinker herself.
- [53:00]
C
She is. Is she expressing concerns and questions that many women of this time in 1776 are perhaps asking privately or sharing amongst themselves? Or is this a woman that is clearly ahead of her time?
- [53:17]
B
Well, a certain number of women are. She's friendly with Mercy, Otis, Warren, the Warrens, the Adams are close friends until. Well, until there's some conflicts about future politics, but not, not that many. It's hard to tell because we don't have the written records for women as much as do men. But women, remember, are very involved in the movement because to degree that they were responsible for the boycott or as one joked in class the girl cut of goods in the 1760s, they were the ones not buying British goods when we stopped from in order to protest the Stamp act or the in terrible acts or the Townsend Acts. And so they were involved in the movement. They're seeing themselves get involved in politics. But one thing to keep in mind is throughout history when men go to war, women assume duties on the home front. And some don't like the change when they get back. But in the American Revolutionary era, you have the idea of equality which gives you an argument for why you should keep some of the changes that have been made as opposed to simply, well, we temporary war happened, yes, we have to step up, but we can go back to the way things used to be. And so that is one of the key elements of the story of the American Revolution. The question not of to what degree how does the principle of the equality of men, equality of humans apply in your new codes of law? And remember, John Adams had written partly in response to Paine and others pamphlet thoughts on Government, coming out in 4.76, how should we create a new government for a state, calling your state not officially states yet. And he says we need checks and balances. We need separation of power. And he says we were living a time when the greatest logger was of antiquity which to have lived. So he's thinking about we're making a whole regime like Lycurgus and Solon of the ancient world. And so Abigail's pushing him. You know, think about this more deeply, John.
- [55:12]
C
Dr. Richard Samuelson talking with us as we walk up to America 250 common sense and remember the ladies. He is associate professor of government at Hillsdale in D.C. and the next time we talk, we'll discuss the May 15 resolution and the Lee resolution as we inch closer to July 4th. Dr. Samuelson, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [55:35]
B
Thank you very much.
- [55:36]
C
It's been great to that will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Heather McDonald, author of When Race Trumps Merit, and Dr. Richard Samuelson from Hillsdale in D.C. remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews, like with Heather McDonald, or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at Podcast Hillsdale, Eduardo, or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertrath, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.