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You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamedforhillsdale.com and enroll today. That's unashamedforhillsdale dot com to experience the genesis story alongside the ROBERT. To celebrate 250 years of freedom, Hillsdale College's Matthew Spalding along with professors From Hillsdale in D.C. sit down with Larry O' Connor of WMAL to discuss the truths that make this country great. This is Hillsdale on the Hill.
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Live from your Nation's capital, Washington, D.C. it's O' Connor and Company. Good morning. Larry O' Connor here. And every Tuesday when we're lucky, we're joined by the great Dr. Matthew Spalding. He, of course, of Hillsdale College, most specifically the Van Andel Graduate School of Government right here in the nation's capital where people can get a part time MA in government degree. It's for young professionals. You should check it out and get more information because you'll be a lot smarter at the end of the day anytime you get to be touched by the geniuses at Hillsdale College. Dr. Spalding, thanks for joining us. As always.
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C
It's great to be with you, Larry, as always.
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B
Well, and it's exciting coming off of Memorial Day yesterday. And that means now we're officially in summer and we're heading toward July 4th. This is, it's great that we're, you know, really in the middle of this 250th celebration that we started in July last stretch here.
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C
Things would be Building towards July 4th. This is period.
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B
But before we go there, I want to look in the rearview mirror a little bit because the rededicate 250 event that happened in Washington, Hillsdale, had quite a presence there. Before we get into that in general, this rededicate ceremony, tell me about it from your perspective about why this was important and what it was all about.
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C
Yeah, no, it was, it was, well, first of all, for historical reasons, there's a certain importance to it. So the date May 17th actually is the day that the Continental Congress in 1776 issued a proclamation of prayer and thanksgiving. And you know this. So it recalls actual historical events in an important way. That at the time of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress understood the nation to be looking towards, dedicated to understanding the influence of talking about divine providence, all the things in the Declaration of Independence. And so this was in the series of events to commemorate the 205th anniversary. One of the things that they wanted to do, which is how do we go about rededicating the nation? And it was all these other, you know, lots of different preachers and speakers, including Meir Soloveitchik, the great Jewish rabbi from the oldest congregation in the country, Robert Barron with the word on fire. One of the. Really the kind of the chief radio and audio Catholic of the day.
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Big fan of Bishop Barron. Big fan of Bishop Barron.
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And so it was kind of surrounded to do that. And then there are also some historical pieces. Our president, Dr. Arne, spoke about Lincoln, the second inaugural, which is a great aspect of that because of the divide of the Civil War and all of us reading the same Bible. And of course, our choir performed. Biggest choir that was there. I think it really over stole the show. I have to say. Our choir is very talented, so they did a great job.
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B
Yeah, no, the Hillsdale choir is great. And listen, I've seen the new chapel on the campus of Hillsdale when I. When I got to go to Michigan to visit Hillsdale on the main campus. Yeah. And boy, that choir must sound glorious in that beautiful chapel on campus. So very cool. And. And you're right. You know, what's interesting is we hear so much about separation of church and God and God has no place in the public dialogue of our, of our president or our elected officials in Washington. I'm glad that Dr. Arne focused on Lincoln's second inaugural because let's face it, he was standing just, you know, what, a hundred yards away from where that inaugural was delivered. And it is replete with, I mean, it sounds like it was, you know, written by one of the prophets in the Old Testament. It is so incredibly biblical. And oh, by the way, if you go to the other end of the Mall, it's actually enshrined in the Lincoln Memorial.
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C
Yes. No. One of the problems we have today, and this goes back to our more contemporary reason why this event was particularly important, is we've lost this context today. It's either all or nothing. And the Declaration actually gives a beautiful answer to this. But I mean, we look back and so many of our modern society are uncomfortable with any religious sense that they want to see nothing. They read it completely out of the record. They're all a bunch of Deistic rationalists. On the other hand, I think it goes too far to say that it was particular. It wasn't say Congregationalist or Presbyterian or Catholic or Jewish or whatever. It was non denominational, non specific. The Declaration is not technically formally biblical and even in a general sense, yet there's a very strong theological argument. And so yes, there's a formal separation of church and state in the sense that the churches don't make the laws and the laws don't tell churches what to believe. But there's not a separation between religion and politics, broadly understood religion. Religious faith is an important aspect of how we live our lives and how we act as self governing citizens. And there's no reason why that shouldn't be reflected, not reflected in our laws formally. It's not mandated have to go to church. We don't have an establishment in the old sense of the term that there is no establishment in the First Amendment. We believe in religious liberty. That was a major objective of the American founding overall. But having said that, we've for a long time just erased the role of religious faith in our public life. And this was a moment to recall that it was extremely important throughout our history, the founding itself. Lincoln, you mentioned the abolitionist move was very religious. The Civil rights movement was very religious. I mean, come on. And so it's like we erase something and now we are surprised somehow and people are upset that somehow we're recalling this. I just don't see it.
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B
Speaking with Dr. Matthew Spalding, Hillsdale College's Washington D.C. campus. And you're right, it's the rewriting of the history, it's erasure of the history. But maybe there's also some ignorance of history going on here, Dr. Spaldy, because, well, Speaker Mike Johnson was invoking the Lord Almighty and asking for his blessing upon our nation. You know, God shed his grace on us and all that stuff and he sort of paraphrased a certain part of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. And then the next day Katie Tur on MSNB's Ms. Now excuse me, she had a panel and she cited this in particular. I want you to listen real fast. What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive
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from government, they come from you, our
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Creator and Heavenly Father.
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B
Is this him putting God over the Declaration of independence? So, Dr. Spalding, I'm just wondering if you could recommend a course perhaps at Hillsdale for Katie Tur to take.
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C
You know, sometimes these commentators are just so honest and they just say what they think and they really shouldn't. It's a combination. I think it's a combination of ignorance. They've not really studied this stuff in a very cursory way, for that matter. Or it's willful ignorance, in a sense. They want to try to put something that's there or take something away that is there. I don't know. But, I mean, look, the Declaration of Independence is not, on the one hand, just kind of secular rationalism. It's not, on the other hand, specifically Christian. There's no debate about that. But there's a powerful theology in the Declaration that can be ignored. You can't read it without it. And God appears several times. The Deity appears several times, Creator, the laws of nature, and nature's God, this kind of God created this order of things. And then all men are created equal. And then in a short document, they repeat a word which never happens, which is, say, and they are endowed by their Creator just to double down with certain animal rights. And it turns out that God is the God of the supreme Judge of the world and the God of Divine Providence. So it's hard to kind of read that out of the equation. But to the particular point here, this is crucially important. The whole American Revolution, the whole American Revolution is fought on a rejection of the notion that our rights come from who governs us. And in 1776, it was the King of England, and then it was a supreme parliamentary supremacy. And the whole rejection of that is that, no, no, no, no, no, that's not where our rights come from. We don't care who the King is. We don't care who Parliament is. Our rights come from somewhere else. And where do they look? They look back in nature, which you can understand in a classical sense. The Greeks and the Romans talked about this, or in the Christian sense, of the tradition of God having created nature. Either way, you can go either way with that if you want. The laws of nature and of nature's God. It doesn't come from government. And there's no debate about that. I know of no one in the American Revolution who argued that our rights come from government. That was exactly where the battle was.
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B
Well, and you focus on this quite a bit in your book the Making of the American Mind, because it was such a fundamental issue, because they acknowledged and understood that if the king or some other government, a secular government, if they can grant you rights, that means they have the power to take those rights away. Absolutely. Fundamental foundational principle.
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C
It also goes back to this religious question, right? What are the most important rights you wish to protect from government taking away from you? Well, it turns out one of the most important, if not the highest and most important, is religious liberty. And the notion that we believe that rights come from God is to say they don't come from, they come from a higher source. And one of those rights you have is the right to worship freely according to your own conscience. So this army just makes absolutely no sense because if the government giveth, the government can taketh away and you name it, that's the problem. But of course, that's what people think today. So it's kind of this, we call it presentism among, in scholarship, one of these fancy dancy scholarly words, but you look backwards to find what you want to see. And you want government be the one that grant rights because government can then take away property rights on the one hand, or grant gender rights on the other hand. That's nonsense. If your rights aren't grounded in something fundamental, then they really aren't rights at all. They're merely what this particular government gives to you.
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B
For now, Dr. Spalding, what was happening now 250 years ago, we're getting close to July 4th. Have they voted to form this committee to write the Declaration?
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C
Well, so again, one of the things we tried to make before to understand is that the Declaration didn't just pop out of Jefferson's head and out of nowhere, there's an intense political heated debate going on. In the spring of 77, it really starts heating up. Once you start getting into May and then into June of 1776, you've got actually a divided Congress. They don't know what to do. They're arguing intensely. John Adams and John Dixon famously debate over the question of independence. And things start moving. Washington is informed that there are Hessians coming, the British are coming literally down from Halifax. And so on June 7th. So I'm kind of looking ahead a little bit in our calendar here, but just setting us up, this Virginia instructs its delegates to introduce a motion for independence. This coming right after George Washington had visited Philadelphia and spent some time with his good buddy from Virginia, Richard Henry Lee, arguing that we need a declaration. So it's introduced on June 7th.
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B
Okay, so that's coming. That's basically 250 years ago next week or a week and after. And by the way, Lee, Richard Henry Lee, you hear his name a lot, but, but that last name, Lee, boy, there's a lot of Lee's in Virginia, aren't there?
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C
If you remember the great musical here, Ali, There, Ali, everywhere, Everywhere, Ali Ali.
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B
Yes. So you have to remind me about a musical. Dr. Spalding.
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C
And then very soon after, they create. They create the committee. And so Jefferson, it will be chosen the drafter. But it's Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert Livingston of New York. And it comes down pretty quickly. So it turns out that Roger Sherman is a really great guy. He supports independence from Connecticut, but he can't write to save himself. Livingston of New York, he's actually not bought into this independence thing yet. So he's probably not the right guy to choose it. Ben Franklin is gout. He's not that active, but he's. He's on board. But. So it's John Adams versus R. Thomas Jefferson. Adams famously tells a story that. They then sit down, the two of them, and Adam says, look, everyone hates me. They know my opinions. I'm driving for independence. I'm the workhorse. I'm fighting every day in Congress. I could never. They would never trust anything I wrote. Plus, you're from Virginia, I'm from Massachusetts. That's an important distinction geographically to tie the callings together. And you have a much better writing talent than I do. Jefferson comes to the. To the Continental Congress with a writing talent.
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B
Can I just pause there? Was that the humility for Adams? He wasn't known for his humility, but for him to actually say that and say, you're made.
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C
He wasn't a bad writer after all. But Jefferson. And if I've mentioned this before, but Jefferson was actually originally not a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was a late adult. He's an alternate. And it's only because his uncle was called back to Virginia that they send Jefferson at the last minute. But he had written an essay that was actually quite aggressive, quite good, well done. And so he came in with this reputation, but other than that, he was not known in the Continental Congress. So Adam saw that. That's good. He can write well, but he doesn't have enemies and friends.
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B
He's no baggage.
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C
No baggage. Exactly. No baggage. So he's assigned to draft the Declaration. And then they meet and debate and argue. The committee, the committee is going to amend it themselves and go through drafts. There's a. There's a final draft that Jefferson writes in his hand. They eventually will turn that into the Continental Congress in June, late June. June 28th.
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B
All right, so we'll get to that in a couple of weeks. We have a couple more conversations together, Dr. Spalding. But in this final minute, I'm just curious, because right now in Washington, When Congress forms a committee to solve a problem, oftentimes that's just them kicking it down can down the road, right? They just, oh, let's just form a committee, because they know nothing will come of it. Was that part of what was going on here that they were like, all right, we're done debating, let's form a committee.
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C
Well, they introduced the motion. The motion is to declare independence, but also create an art create confederation. So there's another committee that creates the Artists Confederation. And then the third thing was to establish an alliance. So they set up the mechanism that then leads to the French alliance. So these are serious committees and they're drafting this declaration very seriously in case they need it. But remember, at this point in late May, June of 1776, the Congress is too divided. They cannot vote. They chose not to vote. The reason that they don't vote until have a debate until July 1, then vote on July 2, is they're so divided, they can't come to a conclusion. So they put it off during the month of June. They argue the whole month and sit back and get instructions, and it has to come back then later.
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B
That is a perfect dramatic cliffhanger for our next conversation two weeks from now and see where we are at that point as we get the initial draft of the declaration. Thank you, Dr. Spalding. Always great to talk with you. Larry, thanks for joining us.
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Thanks for listening to Hillsdale on the Hill presented by Hillsdale College. To learn more about the Van Andel Graduate School of Government and Hillsdale's work in our Nation's capital, visit D.C. hillsdale. Edu. That's D.C. hillsdale. Eduardo.