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Kathleen O’Toole and Matthew Spalding: The Making of the American Mind
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- [00:03]
Narrator
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.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Welcome to The Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, bringing you insight into classical education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula and teacher led classrooms. Now your host, Scott Bertram.
- [01:20]
Narrator
Thanks for listening. The Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast is part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio. You also can find more information on topics and ideas discussed on this show at our website, k12hillsdale.edu. Today we hear a conversation between Dr. Kathleen O', Toole, Associate Vice President for K12 Education at Hillsdale College, and Dr. Matthew Spaulding, Vice President of Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College. He's also the author of the recent book the Making of the American the Story of Our Declaration of independence. Here's Dr. O'. Toole.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Well, thank you for joining us and welcome. Professor Spaldic, It's a pleasure to be talking with you.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
It's great to be with you.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
We're here talking about your new book, the Making of the American the Story of Our Declaration of Independence. I see that you've been winning some awards for this book, including ISI's Conservative Book of the Year. Congratulations.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Yeah, thank you, thank you. Now that was unexpected, but very happy about that. The book's getting a lot of good, good responses.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Well, I think it's an invaluable resource. We in the K12 world have a big focus on American history, as you know, and a lot of people who start teaching in K12 schools maybe have studied civics or American history, but they probably haven't spent as much time on the Declaration of Independence as they would like. So I think this is a great opportunity to learn about the importance of the Declaration and learn also about the story of its drafting.
- [03:05]
Dr. Matthew Spaulding
No, which is, I mean, one of the main things I wanted to do with the book. I mean, I've, you know, studied and written about this and taught about it for a long time. At this point, and especially teaching at the college level or in a graduate school, we have a natural tendency to focus on the document and the more the intellectual ideas, all of which are important, mind you. But I wanted to do something different, so I wanted to, you know, informed by that, I wanted to actually tell a story, because I think the Declaration tells its own story. And we oftentimes we know the famous lines in the Declaration, we know maybe a few quotes, but we don't know the whole thing. And I was very much struck by that problem. And then I think that what brings the document alive is the circumstances in which it's written, how it was drafted, the fact that Washington's going to war precisely at the same moment it's being debated. The debates in the Continental Congress, and then all these just amazing stories about the phrases in the document, where they came from, actually tend to actually have stories behind those as well. And then, of course, stories then about what happens, the signers themselves. That's actually a powerful aspect of this. So I don't like the term a living document. But having said that, there is something about making a document come to life and giving it life, which in 1776, it clearly had, because it was the centerpiece of this movement, this rebellion that becomes a war, that becomes a nation. And I wanted to try to. How could I make a contribution that would restore that? Because I think it's important to teach it that way. And so we don't remember it as a document, but as this wonderful, wonderful, beautiful thing.
- [04:59]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Yeah, it happened at a moment in time, and it. Yes, it transcended its moment in time, and it formed the foundation of this new nation. But. And I think everyone recognizes how important it is, but precisely because of that fact, we could sort of forget that it was created by human beings who were doing things, and we can lose sight of the whole scene, the whole context.
- [05:21]
Dr. Matthew Spaulding
No, that's right. I think there's. And I think there's a general. To make a general comment about how we teach civics, which is extremely important. But sometimes I think we might have a tendency to think of civics, or we conclude that civics means just knowing kind of how particular ideas constructed and work and connect to each other, which is all true. But there's something about teaching civics in the moment, in its context, that brings it to life in a certain way. So you actually realize why, say, consent is important or why saying that all men are created Equal actually has real substantive meaning. And then when you realize that here are these individuals literally putting their life on the line for these things. And the Declaration is literally written at a moment in time when they were going to war. The most intense moment they write this Declaration, it really represents not only what they were thinking in the intensity of that moment, but they captured this was. And this is the beautiful thing that Jefferson does. He's the drafter of the Declaration, although it's highly edited, and there's all sorts of other influences, including changes by the Continental Congress. But Jefferson captures that moment, but he captures in a way that partakes in these kind of universal ideas that have been percolating in the colonies for years, if not decades, which is why. So the title of the book, the Making the American Mind, comes from a letter that Jefferson later writes to Henry Lee. Because Henry lee, approaching the 1826 anniversary of the Declaration, writes, Jefferson asks him, well, what were you doing? And he writes back to Henry Lee and said, I was not trying to make up or invent new ideas. I was trying to capture the common sense of it. The Declaration was tended to be an expression of the American mind, which implies that there actually was an American mind that he was expressing. This is not Jefferson. This is not. This is not John Locke in new form, although those are all important influences. But the American mind, and that's a different way of looking at it, I think. Especially when we think that that American mind was thinking through some really hard questions. I mean, there's the sermons, the pamphlets, the debates, all of that just beautifully captured. So the Declaration becomes itself. Even though it's a short, brief document, when you look at it as a whole, it actually captures a lot of American history. Indeed, I would. I've. You know, now that I spent time really working with it, one could actually create a whole curriculum just using the Declaration, all the important steps of colonial history going back to the English Civil Wars. There are specific references throughout the Declaration that, when you put it, you can actually teach all of that history in the document itself.
- [08:10]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
I just spoke to our friend Charles Kessler on this podcast about that very thing, about how rich the language of the Declaration is and how full of meaning, especially those early paragraphs are. And you and he have in common that you.
- [08:28]
Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Yes, he was my teacher and was very important to this. But. But even in the, you know, one of the parts of the Declaration, first of all, when we present the Declaration, especially if we're teaching it, it's important to think, present the whole thing. I mean, it's passed by the Continental Congress. It literally is a piece of legislation. The important, famous phrases are important and famous for good reason. But having said that, it's not the whole document. The whole document is more like a. I describe it as. It's more like a symphony. There are different movements, there are different tones and sound, but it's all in harmony. And it recurs. It kind of comes back to the themes. Right. But you got to look at the whole thing. So, for instance, the largest segment, part of the Declaration, which no one even reads anymore, are the grievances.
- [09:18]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Right.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
It's over a quarter of the document. It's the thing we know they debated the most, they edited the most, and yet we don't read it. But it was crucially important at the time. And if you look at it and study it and figure out what's going on in the grievances, and I spend a whole chapter trying to figure all that out, that's where you see all sorts of interesting references that we don't catch anymore. So, for instance, the Declaration of Family, who says, the king has abdicated his throne here? And that phrase actually comes from the document in 1688 by which Parliament dethroned Charles II in favor of William and Mary because James II had abdicated his rule and pretended legislation. He uses that language that comes from the same English. So there's all these various historical things that you can point to in the various sections of the Declaration. So it really is quite charming. Yeah.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
As you were digging into the history to try to learn the stories behind the language and the act that happened at the time of the Declaration, where did you look? What did you read?
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Well, I mean, part of it. I've been teaching this for a long time. And, you know, the first thing you start off with is just good general history and good biography especially. Take something like a document and turn it into stories, it's really become stories about Washington and Jefferson and Dickens and Adams. There are documents of the Continental Congress. You can go back and read those. Indeed, there are these wonderful books. I think it's called the Letters of the Continental Congress, where all the letters of all the members of that Continental Congress are collected, and so all the references. So there's wonderful stories and things in there. But then just reading history and looking up and trying to track down phrases and this kind of thing to see what we can find. I mean, I'll give you an example. The document opens with a famous reference to the laws of nature and nature's God. Where does that phrase come from. It turns out that Alexander Pope, who is the famous English poet, who was the most prominent poet in the colonies in 1776, and his most famous poem, and most prominent in 1776, was an essay on man. And it turns out in that poem, which he dedicates to Bolingbroke, who's a deist. And the poem tells Bolingbroke to await and see that one can. There's a chain of. Essentially a chain of being, which is an old medieval term about the. The relationship of man to God. And you can you look from nature up to nature's God and see the purpose of man, the end of man, which is a love, the love of man and the love of God. It's actually in his poem. So I. You know, those kinds of things that kind of pulled together because I think it's. I think Jefferson was actually being very honest and forthright. He understood he was a drafter of the document. Matter of fact, he was up. And he was upset, as any drafter would, because the Continental Congress cut it by about, I don't know, a quarter to a third.
- [12:16]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Right.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
And they rearranged sentences and added things and whatnot. He didn't like that. But I always said that he understood he was a drafter, which meant he had to write for his audience. Right. The Continental Congress would assign people to write things. Jefferson Dickinson wrote a number of things, as did others. But really, you know, Jefferson and John Dickinson, who wrote the letters to Pennsylvania Farmer, were the main writers for the Continental Congress. And they drafted a lot of different documents. And of course, this was the most important.
- [12:46]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
There's lots of discussion these days about the roots of the American founding. You know, it was John Locke and the Enlightenment. It was Christianity, it was ancient Greece and Rome. What did you discover as you were writing the book about the extent to which each of those came to play a part?
- [13:07]
Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Yeah, that's always a good. A good question. I found a number of things which. I actually learned a lot of things from putting this book together. And one in particular. First of all, I think the way we read it nowadays tends to overemphasize the role of John Locke. And I say overemphasize it very carefully in the sense that John Locke was very important. There are actually some key phrases in the Declaration that come directly from the Second Treatise on Government, but they didn't absorb the philosophical Locke. There's actually little influence. There's evidence that there really was little influence of the Locke. That's the more problematic intellectual Enlightenment lock. They Say, the political lock, he was influential. So, yeah, that's. That's one aspect of it. But then the other aspect of it is the importance of classical thinking, especially Roman thinking, is much more important than I ever, ever imagined, which is they. Anybody in the colonies that studied law, studied Cicero, anybody in the colonies that got a. What we would call a college degree and studied Latin, read Cicero, they all knew Cicero extensively, and Cicero is where they got the Greeks. So the arguments of, of, you know, law, but nature, natural law, all of that comes in through Cicero. So Cicero, much more important than I thought. And then even broader than that, I think it's, you know, we, you know, the question is what. What was the role of. Of Christianity? I think it's. It goes the wrong way to say it was merely kind of a secular rationalism or deism argument, that there's really no sense in that argument. My example of Alexander Pope, I think, for example, and there are numerous references throughout the document to God. It goes too far to say that it's specifically Christian. But having said that, there's clearly a very strong theology in the Declaration that is not merely. It's not merely rational. It's mostly kind of a rational. What can man know? But of course, there's a natural law argument in the Bible itself. So there's. There's more to it. And I think they all clearly understood that. So the, the broad influence of the Christian tradition and, you know, their, their horizon is really the Christian tradition with a. With a very strong influence of the Hebraic is very important. The, the day after they pass the Declaration of Independence, for instance, they create a kind of Congress, creates a committee made up of Jefferson, Franklin and Adams to design a seal for the United States. We're going to be a country. We've got to have a seal. Well, they came up with, for instance, E Pluribus Unum, which they kept. But they also proposed a seal which would be an analogy. It would be something that someone could see that would be a representation of what the American idea is. And they unanimously proposed that it would be Pharaoh with a crown. So he's clearly George iii, a pharaoh being overwhelmed in the Red Sea and a cloud leading the Jewish people to a new land. And so they really had this conception, this biblical, broad biblical conception of, of a new promised land. So I think the Christian influence, very wide, very deep, very important, but not specifically sectarian in a way, which is part of the beauty of the Declaration is extended. It's about reason and revelation. It's these sources of Truth, intellectual, moral, philosophical truth, and a general revelation, which. And general revelation means revelation. We can understand ourselves as opposed to particular revelation, our special revelation. And Jefferson, who's kind of squirrely when it comes to particularly religious questions, weaves it all together very beautifully, and I really have to give him credit for that. He's a wonderful writer.
- [16:59]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Amazing. Yeah. And the most imaginative of the founders, the most creative, sort of inventive.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Although I always wondered, what would Ben Franklin be like if he had.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
It would have been funnier if he
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
had a cell phone and could tweet.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
He'd probably love it.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Oh, yeah, he would have been master. Master of it. Absolutely.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Oh, that's good. Well, the Declaration ends with its signers pledging to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. And one of the beautiful things I've heard you speak about related to this book is what actually happened to some of the signers as a result of placing their names in pen and ink at the end of the document.
- [17:42]
Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Yeah, I think, again, if you want to take this document, because the Declaration, the Constitution, if you think of the American Revolution or the American Founding, as we call it, running from, say, the end of the French Indian War to, say, the end of Washington's first administration, it kind of goes through these phases, but the two great phases are each dominated by a document, the Declaration of the Constitution. In the middle, we have this thing called a war. But these documents are very important. So if we want to teach American history, we've got to teach these documents. But I really do think that the best way to teach the as documents is to make them come alive with these stories. In the case of the Declaration, it's obviously Jefferson and Adams and all those, but the signers themselves. You read the Declaration at the end, there's this list of names, and we've essentially forgotten all of them. But it's an amazing thing, the beginnings, how I open the story about these signers is I begin with Abraham Lincoln gave a very famous speech in July 10, 1858, in Chicago. And this was near the Fourth of July, toward the end of the speech, which is mostly him engaging Stephen Douglas because he's the candidate for the Senate in Illinois. He quiets the crowd and makes reference to. Wants to make say segment about the Fourth of July. And he reminds everyone that everything we have today was somehow because of what they did then. And then almost in passing, which I, you know, you. I've read before, and you kind of in passing, he refers them as iron men. And that's where I get the reference. They were iron men. And then I, I spent a little time, I had some researchers help me in kind of going through. What did they do? Well, it turns out that almost all of them went and fought for the Revolution and were in the army. Many of them were generals. They commanded regiments. Many of them, their sons fought in the Revolution. You know, one of them was Richard Stockton, was. Was shot by a musketball, imprisoned and was tortured. And they forced him to. You know, he was going, he reneged, but then he threw. You know, they were trying to get him to, to renounce it. And he, he was, it was a. It was a hugely difficult position he was in, to put that way. Witherspoon's son was killed by a cannonball. Little Germantown. Reverend Witherspoon, who was the chaplain of the Continental Congress. And there also is all sorts of stories about how the British actually knew their names because they would know who the members of the Continental Congress were. And they tracked them down, they tried to track them down. And there are all sorts of stories about the signers fleeing in the middle of the night with their families because the British were surrounding their house. During the Battle of Long island, all the signers from New York were hunted by the British. And one of my favorite, I know virtually nothing about this particular signer, but he, Francis Lewis, lived out in what is today present day Queensland. The British sent Calvary to his house, surrounded the house. He wasn't there, but his wife was there, wife, Elizabeth. She refused to surrender. And so a ship, Long island, on, On Long Island Sound, out in the. In the water, a ship of the line opened fire on the house and she eventually surrendered, but she was imprisoned by the British and she was only freed. I think it was a couple years later. It maybe took a year or so. But she was only freed because Washington forced a prisoner exchange for her freedom. He intervened, personally intervened, but then she died very soon thereafter because of her captivity. So it is quite remarkable. There are a number of founders who funded regiments, paid for regiments and funded their own men and that kind of thing. Morris, the famous financier of the Revolution, he spent what we would estimate about, in Today's dollars, about 30, 32, 35 million dollars. He eventually died deeply in debt. He had to go to a debtor's prison. He was so committed. So it really is quite remarkable and it really brings life to that closing line which is, I think, the most beautiful at the very end, where they pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred Honor, which is a parallel to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But now it's our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. You can't pledge your pursuit of happiness. You can pledge your honor, but it comes at the very end. It serves no purpose, but it's an oath and it's quite powerful. One of the things I've done a lot of my own work on George Washington and one of the things I found is that in late May of 1776, he actually has a secret trip. He's already in New York and he goes to Philadelphia to brief the Congress in secret, partially because he's found evidence, literally. He gets copies from a spy of the German treaties with England to hire Hessian mercenaries. So he goes to Congress. There's no record because it's all in secret. But he does write his brother during this time and tells his brother somewhat of what he told the members of Congress. And he says, it's come to the time when we either must conquer and win or we will suffer hanging, et cetera, et cetera. And you're like, okay, that's really strong. But I always wondered, for years, I've always wondered, what does et cetera, et cetera mean?
- [23:17]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
It doesn't sound good.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Well, and then so over this book I went. You go back and read the English laws and findings. Well, they had been previously declared to be traitors by the King and the. In which declared a rebellion. It turns out the, the punishment for traitors is to be hung and then drawn and quartered. That was still the punishment, 1776. So I'm convinced that in the, in May of 1776, which is just weeks before Richard generally introduced the motion for Independence, Washington told them that. So it's, it really is true. They put their lives, they were, they were signing their own death warrant. Right. And you know, so in a day and age, when we think back, especially, you know, young people think back and they think of these guys in tri cornered hats and wore britches and sat around in their, in their, you know, they're nice. We each have a different, different view and it's more exciting to teach it this way. No, they were actually, it was pretty manly and it was pretty powerful what they were doing. And so when you wed together, what they did, their stories with, what they said or the ideas, and you put those things together, then you've got something really interesting.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
You mentioned biography. What's the best biography of Washington that you've read?
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Well, actually, I think what I always recommend is James Flexner, who is one of the great historians. I think he was writing the 50s. He was like a six volume. But then he wrote a separate one volume, an original one volume on Washington, which is still in paperback. That is still probably what I would tell someone to start. Because what you need is just a clear, straight chronology that tells the story. You can go into particulars later. And there are more recent books on Washington that have a lot of other things in them. And what. But I would start out with something. Something like that and go from there.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Yeah. I think history teachers should always be reading biographies because it allows you to paint the picture.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
I think there's no coincidence why we read biographies. Right. You know, the books that aren't biographies, the good ones, if you turn. If you really kind of, they almost become biographies, because that's how. Where you have to go, because that's where the story is. These are human stories. And the best biographies, best historians know that.
- [25:39]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Well, it's the semi quincentennial. And so we're all feeling very patriotic these days. You have some good comments at the beginning of the book about patriotism. You say today patriotism is often misunderstood and criticized as an unthinking allegiance to chauvinistic urges.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Right.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
And you're trying to correct that with this book. And you mentioned Tocqueville.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Right.
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Tell us about American patriotism in Tocqueville's eyes.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Yeah, I mean, part of it is. I want. Well, let me preface it by saying that I was actually in middle school in 1976 for the bicentennial. So I was a young boy and I was living in California, which doesn't have a lot of immediate monuments in history of the Revolutionary War, but I remember all that stuff. So this stuff is important. And so I think sometimes we forget the degree to which education, especially when you're in those early years, grade school and middle school, forms people. And so formation is actually a component of education. And Tocqueville actually talks about this in Democracy America, which is what I found very striking. And you're making reference to there. And I make reference to my book, which he says that, well, there is something instinctive, there is an instinctive patriotism, he calls it, which is to say that where you grew up, your family, your immediate context, you love those things because you love your family, you love your uncle, you love your community or neighborhood. And so there is such thing as an instinctive patriotism, and that's kind of a love of place, and that's very normal. But there's this other patriotism he calls it reflective patriotism, which is, as we grow up, we realize there are other things that are worthy of loving, but they're outside of our immediate context. It might be an uncle or someone farther away or perhaps an ancestor or perhaps things we don't really even know, but we learn about and we come to reflect more about these things and whether they're worthy of love. And that becomes, especially in a republic, a crucial importance of what we call civic education. Civic education is not merely learning the rules and the particulars of the Constitution, but coming to understand that the thing that it creates, a way of life, a way by which we govern ourselves, is actually worthy of a love. And it is a form of love. And I find that very, very powerful and very important. And then you go back and realize the founders talk about this a lot, which is Noel Webster in particular talks about how especially early education, well, it should focus on reading, writing, arithmetic. He goes through and talks about all those things. But in a republic where people govern themselves based on consent of the government, education must have this additional component which is it must form attachments to each other and to the country that creates and allows for self government. And so they were very, they were, they were very much alive to that, that concept and that, that, that kind of need for that kind of patriotism and the epic poetry, if you will. If you think of our, you know, who is our? Homer? What is it? What is our. It actually is the Declaration. It's very clear that Jefferson and the Continental Congress, they wrote this declaration. It's a formal declaration, it's a statement of a Continental Congress. But they knew what they were doing. This was the beginning of a country and this meant something. And this would be something that we remembered, which is why they pledge to each other. It's their sacred honor. And so knowing that they were giving us something to help form this reflective patriotism. And so I think it's important for teachers especially to teach with that in mind. And there's nothing wrong, indeed it would be wrong without must be taught as it was intended to be presented, which is to unite the. These people called Americans, around a set of ideas which are not merely abstractions, but something that is real and very human, but something worth living for and even dying for. And that's what Burke would say is that makes a country lovely. And there's something really powerful. And that's what happened to me. I don't know at what point I fell in love with my country. I started as a young boy, Bicentennial. I Had some great middle school teachers, which were very influential in my own life. I went to college in Claremont and had some wonderful teachers. But at what point did this happen? I don't know. But at some point, it went from instinctive. I love where I grew up. I love my family, I love my community. And it became reflective. And I think education, that's what education should aim to do at some point. We don't know when. Right. It could be grade school, middle school, later. Right. But you want to use these opportunities, and especially this. You know, this year of 2026 is a unique opportunity. This will be something. Think about where those students, those kids, those young people will be 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years from now. They'll remember this. So what are you going to give them to remember?
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Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful, yeah. Loving America, not just because it's ours, but because of the principles it stands on, which are true.
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Dr. Matthew Spaulding
That's right. And I say in the book, and I've always the chrism, America is all the warts of history, and we teach the warts and all right. But that's not what defines us. What's beautiful in America is not its imperfections. We're an imperfect people. We're all imperfect. What defines America are these principles, because that's what we aspire to. And that's really across the board. You think of Frederick Douglass and the promissory note. Excuse me, Martin Luther King, the promissory note, and Frederick Douglass and his read of the Declaration and the Constitution and the Founders themselves and Lincoln. That's how they all understood it. That's how we should teach it. And I think it's in. What I find is that more and more, a lot of people aren't being told that story, and they love that. It's a beautiful story. And telling that story well, putting the seeds in, if you will, that actually is how you get to civic education. You can't. You know, if you want to love something, you must really know it. Augustine said that a long time ago. Right. It's a correct ordering of our loves. Well, the most. The base, the most basic one is, you know, the kind of thing we're talking about here. What are the. The real things that make it at its best, lovely? And I think the Declaration, the history surrounding it, and Jefferson and Adams and the debates and especially Washington and his role in the beginnings of the war. And then you come to see the ideas behind that. You grow and you're pulled into the history. The book actually begins. I have a short quote there from C.S. lewis. And I was actually very influenced by C.S. lewis. He's fabulous. But. But then I read his autobiography called Surprised by Joy. And of course, that's a. It's a wonderful twofold hat tip. It's about his conversion, but also his wife was named Joy. So it's actually quite charming. In it, he talks about how, because, remember, he was a student and an expert in kind of pre Christian pagan mythology. But that's when he says he was first surprised by Joy. Because reading great history, great heroic history, noble history, necessarily elevates one, and it forces you to transcend your immediate circumstances to higher things. And when you transcend to higher things, sometimes it actually gives you a glimpse of eternal things. And that's what C.S. lowe says, is to be surprised by joy. And I think, well taught. The Declaration actually does that because it naturally points to these truths, but beyond the truths, I mean, the laws of nature and nature's God, men are created and they're endowed by their Creator and Supreme Judge of the world and the divine. It points towards these things without necessarily giving you the particular details. We said it's non sectarian, but those elements are all there. So I just think it's actually a wonderful document for teaching not only this immediate moment, this history right now that we should all be learning in civics, but it's a great document for teaching all the broader questions of what a classical education or a great books tradition should be teaching.
- [34:20]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Yeah. Well, it's a wonderful story to know. Important story to know, I think. And I thank you for writing the
- [34:26]
Dr. Matthew Spaulding
book and I thank you for having me and having this conversation, because one of the things, you know, I. I've studied this for a long time as many of our friends and many people at Hillsdale, but I wanted to. How can I contribute to this conversation now? And so, having been influenced by the 1976 and remembering that as a kid, I want to do that for more people as much as I can and help to recover these truths today.
- [34:54]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Beautiful.
- [34:54]
Dr. Matthew Spaulding
Thank you.
- [34:55]
Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
Well, the book is the Making of the American Mind. And it's an invaluable resource for any American, especially a history teacher or a government teacher. Have a great day.
- [35:06]
Narrator
You've been listening to a conversation between Dr. Kathleen O', Toole, Associate Vice President for K12 Education at Hillsdale College, and Dr. Matthew Spaulding, Vice President of Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale in D.C. his recent book, the Making of the American Mind, the Story of Our Declaration of Independence. Thank you for listening to the Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast.