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History As It Happens
On Virtue
00:41:30
The minds of America's 18th-century founders concentrated on what was necessary to sustain a new republic after breaking with monarchy. The republic required civic virtue and disinterestedness on the part of its public officials. Republican virtue was...
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- [00:01]
Advertiser
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- [01:03]
Martin DeCaro
Vote history as it happens. February 18, 2025 on virtue after all.
- [01:12]
Donald Trump
We have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. You watch. It's going to be so good, it's going to be so much fun. It'll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning.
- [01:26]
Joseph Ellis
In particular, he is pardoning some 1500 January 6th rioters who have been convict.
- [01:32]
Donald Trump
So this is January 6th and these are the hostages.
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Advertiser
I think it sends a very discouraging.
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Martin DeCaro
Message suggested that they may or may.
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Joseph Ellis
Not follow exactly what federal judges say.
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Donald Trump
Highest intellect and psychologically superior people.
- [01:48]
Martin DeCaro
Federal judges slammed the brakes on his frenzied effort to slash the federal workforce and spending.
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Advertiser
This morning, another sweeping action by President Trump as he remakes the mayor.
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Joseph Ellis
Eric Adams went down to Mar? A Lago on January 16th and 17th.
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Martin DeCaro
And that's where they struck their corrupt bargain. It's not even three weeks since President.
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Joseph Ellis
Trump's inauguration and we've seen a blizzard.
- [02:09]
Martin DeCaro
Of executive orders and a total reshaping.
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Joseph Ellis
Of the way things are being done.
- [02:14]
Donald Trump
In order to make America great and glorious again. I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.
- [02:22]
Martin DeCaro
The importance of civic virtue preoccupied the minds of our 18th century founders. The new republic, free from monarchy, would need new adhesives to bind state and Society. Today, nearly 250 years after independence, the American President says he who saves his country does not violate any law. No one's sure where that quote comes from, but it is often attributed to Napoleon, an emperor virtue where art thou in 21st century America. That's next with Joseph Ellis. As we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:57]
Joseph Ellis
To the extent that we're going to reform the government and change public opinion towards what government means, we have to go through a Trumpian threat. But we have to go through that and find out what that looks like. And while I'm not confident, my best bet is that the Trump agenda is going to startle and alienate a significant portion of the American electorate.
- [03:24]
Martin DeCaro
It's been said that President Donald Trump's fire hose of executive orders, an outrageous lie since returning to the White House four weeks ago, has little to do with what he campaigned on. He ran on lowering prices and deporting immigrants, this argument goes, not eviscerating the federal bureaucracy by firing thousands of workers and freezing aid or not renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America while threatening to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal. The people entrusted him with another four years in the White House so he could fix the economy. To which I respond, then you aren't paying attention. Trump 2.0 is adhering to the Project 2025 blueprint to destroy the administrative state. Trump did as promised, pardon the violent thugs who attacked the Capitol on January 6th. His unforgivable attempt to steal the 2020 election, his bottomless corruption and disregard for our laws and norms on full display the past four weeks were advertised. They should not come as any surprise. So I'm not gonna go over each and every development here. This is not a news podcast per se, and I take it you have been paying attention. So you're up to date on what the administration's been doing. In my weekly newsletter, I will share links to essays and articles that attempt to make sense of what's happening. Rather than obsessing over any single headline, we'll take a broad perspective. For instance, in his newsletter Notes from the Middle Ground, Damon Lenker writes, donald Trump aims to personalize, rationalize the presidency by embracing a transactional, clientelistic approach to governing that rewards friends and harms enemies. A great many things we're seeing from the administration, linker says, from the obsession with tariffs to the Justice Department's moves to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, makes sense when viewed against the backdrop of Trump's commitment to governing, like a mob boss who bestows tribute on compliant clients and inflicts harsh punishment on those who dare to defy his will. Likewise, Stephen Levitsky and Lu Kon Way in Foreign affairs argue authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead, they say, is not fascist or single party dictatorship, but competitive authoritarianism, a system in which parties compete in elections, but the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Again, I'll share these and other pieces in my weekly newsletter. You can sign up@historyasithappens.com it is free to subscribe. As we all together try to comprehend the ramifications of Trump 2.0. What we're contending with here is what our founders feared in charismatic demagogues. It is why they constructed a government system with three co equal branches. They also believed the new republic required virtue, disinterestedness, an elitist idea in the 18th century, but one that still has something to teach us. Joseph Ellis is an eminent scholar of the American founding, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Founding Brothers among many fine books. Joseph Ellis, welcome back, my friend Martin.
- [06:34]
Joseph Ellis
It'S always good to be with you and again, it's really my privilege.
- [06:38]
Martin DeCaro
You know, the last time I had you on, you were talking about a book that you had written that was gonna come out in the fall after the election. Give us an update on your latest book.
- [06:46]
Joseph Ellis
Yeah, I'm indefatigable, I guess. I keep working away and scribbling away and Knop at Random House will be coming out with the next Ellis product in September and it's called Our Great Contradiction, the tragic side of the American Founding, that is, while we win independence. And we're going to be celebrating that in a big way this coming it's already started 250th anniversary and there's significant achievements of that generation, no question. But there are two outstanding failures and both are tragedies. One is the failure to end slavery, or more realistically put it on the road to extinction in the south and making the Civil War virtually inevitable. And the second is a failure to reach a just accommodation with the Native Americans. Those are tragedies according to the agenda of the revolutionary generation. They both violate the values we claim to believe in. You know, we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal. I worked on it for two, three years and it's coming out this September. And I'm sure they'll send me around a little bit, though they don't do book tours quite the same way they used to.
- [07:59]
Martin DeCaro
Well, maybe you'll be back down here at Mount Vernon and I can run into you again there. Yeah, well, you know, I don't really know how the publishing industry works, so I know that Your book was supposed to come out last year, so I'm happy it's coming out in a few months.
- [08:10]
Joseph Ellis
They didn't want it to come out during the election season.
- [08:13]
Martin DeCaro
Why? Were people thinking about something else? On that note. On that note, I was gonna start off with a question about virtue in the 18th century. Because of what's going on today. We are a government people in the current Trump administration, led by people who are being celebrated for their aggression, cruelty, lawlessness, people who have no ethics, who don't seem to be aware that you have to be an ethical person when you're in government. But before I get to those big historical questions, there's an article in the New York Times today that says scholars say Trump's actions have created a constitutional crisis. What are your thoughts on that? Are we in a constitutional crisis already?
- [08:55]
Joseph Ellis
Yes, in the sense that the Trump agenda, which is very, very much following the agenda of Project 2025, which he said he didn't when he was campaigning, that he didn't. He hadn't even read.
- [09:10]
Donald Trump
I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not. This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas, I guess some good, some bad.
- [09:18]
Joseph Ellis
Is an attempt to establish executive power at a level that violates the core values of the American founding. It's almost as if in the year that we celebrate the 250th anniversary, the man who's president wants to be George III. The power comes to him, and it doesn't flow upward from the people to him. It comes down from God to him. The current Trump presidency is on the agenda to eliminate all parts of the government that might get in the way of executive power and imposing an agenda that in many instances is illegal and in some cases, unconstitutional. And so in some ways, the one blockage thus far has stopped, that has delayed or made it difficult for him to do everything he wants is the courts. And the courts have been finding several of his projects unconstitutional. I think the extent to which that'll hold is up for grabs. And the sad thing is that the Republican Party has given itself to the Trump agenda. The kind of votes that you'd expect out of the Congress in order to hold on to its power to control the purse especially, will not necessarily be there. We are going to discover that many of the laws and the actions of the Trump administration will be extremely unpopular.
- [10:41]
Martin DeCaro
So when it comes to defining a constitutional crisis, it's not easy. So you mentioned one thing about Trump and the Executive orders, which are raising questions about separation of powers. So I was gonna bring up two examples from the Nixon period. We'll start with impoundment. So there's a 1974 piece of legislation. The Impoundment Control act provides the President may propose rescission of specific funds, but it must be approved by the House of Representatives and Senate within 45 days. So this means that when Congress appropriates money, the executive just can't hold on to it or cancel it. But if a President is willing to ignore the law or ignore a court order, how do you enforce it? I think that's when we will get to a real constitutional crisis.
- [11:31]
Joseph Ellis
I agree. What's accelerated this trend is the decision by the Supreme Court made a year and a half, two years ago, essentially recognized that the President cannot be punished.
- [11:43]
Martin DeCaro
Or taken before the law criminally liable.
- [11:46]
Joseph Ellis
It makes the President above the law.
- [11:49]
Martin DeCaro
That was last summer. You were on the show to discuss that. A number of historians wrote an amicus or amicus brief saying there is nothing in the Constitution that says a former president, let alone a sitting President, is above the law or cannot be held criminally liable for official acts.
- [12:04]
Joseph Ellis
Not only is there nothing in the Constitution that says that there are several things in the Constitution and in the debates in Philadelphia when they were discussing executive power, that says that any act by the President that is imperial or akin to George iii, George III is the great ghost at the banquet throughout the Constitutional Convention is that, that's illegal. The fact that many of the Supreme Court justice claimed to be originalists is even more insulting because if, if they really were, they'd know that the decision they made granted power to the executive branch that none of the founders would have found acceptable.
- [12:45]
Martin DeCaro
Apologies to any of my conservative listeners who subscribe to originalism. There is a, an originalism that scholars like you practice, documents based originalism. And then there's this political originalism which was invented to bring about Republican or conservative policy outcomes. You know something else from Nixon, I mentioned the Empowerment act, but you know, Watergate was Watergate a constitutional crisis? Well, Nixon stonewalled and he lied, but he eventually did go along with the investigation. When the Supreme Court ruled he had to hand over the tapes, he did right. And say had it come to a full impeachment vote in the House and a conviction in the Senate, Nixon probably would have left the White House. I mean, he left before that, but had he stayed in the White House and said, you know what, you're gonna have to physically remove me because I'm not going along with this injustice or whatever. You know, my point here is what happens when a president simply refuses to go along with the rule of law, court orders, et cetera.
- [13:41]
Joseph Ellis
What happened really was that the Republicans, especially Goldwater at the time, were the ones that went to Nixon and told him that he had to go. And that's what made the crucial difference. And the Republicans Republican Party is no longer shaped like that. I know you wouldn't get the same consequence. So that there's the convergence of forces here. The Supreme Court giving Trump power that no president before has ever claimed, and a Republican Party that is no longer the party of Lincoln and that has changed its character and has regarded Trump as the man around whom they are going to rally. We're in a historically unprecedented situation. There is a man in the White House who conceives himself naturally. Conceives. By saying naturally, I mean that Trump is what psychiatrists have described as a malignant narcissist, meaning he cannot understand that there's any source of authority outside himself. In other words, he comes to that posture of monarch or dictator or whatever you want to call it. Naturally. It's the way he thinks. I mean, maybe you could say he thinks more like he's a Mafia don or whatever, but he thinks he's above the law.
- [14:59]
Martin DeCaro
I think Mafia boss is a good comparison. A major historian of 20th century Europe who lives in the United Kingdom emailed me earlier this week to bring up that comparison. It's not really an ideological thing with Trump, this slash and burn way that he's approaching governance in a second term. It is more, well, in the eyes of this scholar who emailed me a Mafia boss. You know, who knows? Maybe in a couple weeks he'll run out of steam. You know, you can only go so far with executive orders. At some point, you have to deal with Congress and the courts. These cases will come up. I mean, who knows? But I do want to ask you one more thing before we get to the virtue in the 18th century. Joseph Ellis. And that is again, about the courts. Many, many presidents have been bothered by court rulings. They don't want to have to go along with certain court rulings. But they did. Somewhere along the line, someone made up a story that Andrew Jackson once said, well, if that's what the Supreme Court says, it can go ahead and try to enfor. I don't think he actually ever said that.
- [15:53]
Joseph Ellis
Yes, he did. Yes, he did.
- [15:54]
Martin DeCaro
Oh, he did, all right.
- [15:55]
Joseph Ellis
The specific issue at stake in that was the decision for Indian removal. Remove the Indians west of The Mississippi John Marshall was head. Was head the court. And Marshall was a protege of Washington. And Washington was very much of the view that Native Americans were independent nations themselves. And Marshall made that rule and said that the federal government could not order them to move without their consent. And that's where Jackson then said, the Chief justice has made him his decision. Now let us see him enforce it. While on the one hand, what's the name of the current vice president? He got it right. He went to Yale Law School.
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Martin DeCaro
J.D. james.
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Joseph Ellis
He doesn't tell you the context there. The context is, this is how we get Indian Removal. It's a policy which is an embarrassment to us all. Many of the originalists are themselves people who are willing to use the originalist posture when it suits their political convictions, but to forget it when it doesn't. And if you really go to the core of originalism and it says, we believe that the values that were held by most Americans in the 18th century, in the 1780s, are the ones that should still dictate, well, wait a minute. Does that mean slavery? Does that mean women can't vote? Does that mean that you have to have a property qualification to vote? Because that was the rule in 1787. 88 still. And Jefferson is the one who had made the strongest statement against that point of view, saying in 1816 that the idea that the future would be held hostage to the values of his generation was akin to believing that you could wear the same sweater when you were an old man that you wore as a child. He believed in what he called the living Constitution. We are in a politically challenging, threatening moment in American history. And it does seem ironic to me that the capacity to sustain our identity as the oldest enduring republic since the Roman Empire is being threatened at the same time that we're celebrating the American independence.
- [18:04]
Martin DeCaro
So let's return then to that era in the 18th century of American independence, the era that you reside in metaphorically. Joseph Ellis.
- [18:13]
Joseph Ellis
I do. When I say I live back there, all that means is that I've spent 40 years reading all the papers, or not all of them, most of the papers of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, et cetera. I'm trying to recover that past on its own terms, which means that I don't think any of these people were mythological characters.
- [18:33]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, we're not here to idealize. Right. But ideas are important. And the fact that the founding generation, not just the politicians, thinkers, intellectuals, philosophers, were so preoccupied and consumed with notions of virtue in a republic. You talked about how we're fraying right now. Well, in the 18th century, if you're going to move on from monarchy, society needed new adhesives. That's a word I see pop up a lot in these discussions from the 18th century. How is society going to adhere? What are going to keep mental bonded together so that a republic can endure? Because republics. I'm reading now from Gordon Wood's book here. I have your books over here too, Joseph, but the radicalism.
- [19:20]
Joseph Ellis
Gordon's almost always right too.
- [19:22]
Martin DeCaro
The radicalism of the American Revolution. Precisely because republics required civic virtue and disinterestedness among their citizens. They were very fragile polities, extremely liable to corruption. You know, under a monarchy you just had to behave, you had to obey. Without a monarchy, we needed new adhesives. So what did this mean, civic virtue in the late 18th century? And why were the thinkers of that period so preoccupied with it?
- [19:49]
Joseph Ellis
The founders didn't talk about creating democracy, they talked about creating a republic. Republic, res publica, things of the public. And the thing that made republics vulnerable and short lived is that all republics, however, lived on top of a democratic or popular foundation. Democracy meant mob rule or ruled by people who don't know anything or improperly informed. And therefore if you have a republic, you have to have elected officials who are capable of, of grasping the long term public interest of the United States at that moment and not making a decision based on their own political self interest. Remember, this is before political parties come into existence too. The best example is John Adams as president who refuses to go to war with France and loses the election because of that in 1800 he loses his death to Jefferson and he said it's the proudest moment in my political career that I lost this election because I did the right thing. And that is the clear example of the word that you're focusing on today. Virtue.
- [21:11]
Martin DeCaro
Virtue.
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Joseph Ellis
All the people who are voting for all of these unqualified candidates that Trump is putting up, who are Republicans and who know in most instances that they're unqualified, are behaving without virtue because they are saying, I better do this or otherwise Trump's going to primary me. They're putting their own political career ahead of the larger interest of the public. You can say it seems unrealistic to expect them to do that, but that's exactly what the revolutionary generation was saying. This notion of virtue, most people would say you can't expect that of modern generation political leaders, but that one of the reasons that the founders created a six year term for senators was it said that made it more likely that they would be able to act virtuously because they wouldn't be up for election in the same way the members of the House were.
- [22:06]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, we should note that this idea was elitist. It was a politics of deference. This was not populism. And we can also get into just how long these ideas endured because the founding generation was pretty unhappy with the generation that followed who were pursuing self interest in government. And that's right, that's right. So we'll get to that. Maybe at the end here, citing Gordon Wood again. Liberty was realized in the minds of the 18th century thinkers when the citizens were virtuous, that is willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community, including serving in public office without pecuniary rewards. This virtue could be found only in a republic of equal, active and independent citizens. To be completely virtuous citizens, men, never women, because it was assumed they were never independent, had to be free from dependence and from the petty interests of the marketplace disinterestedness. Wood goes on to cite David Hume here, who said there is such a thing as private virtue, but then there's also public virtue, that is to sacrifice private desires and interests for the public interest. As you said, res publica.
- [23:17]
Joseph Ellis
Right.
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Martin DeCaro
Joseph, what was the difference between classical virtue and the more modern virtue of the 18th century for a new republic? I mean, these ideas were bandied about in those days.
- [23:31]
Joseph Ellis
They were. I think that what shaped the 18th century term was the fact that in order to declare your independence of Great Britain and risk a war with the most powerful nation in the world, you had to take a huge risk. How did Jefferson put it? Our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. You had to be willing to bet your life on that commitment when you committed to the independent cause. They had to go through a great crisis and they carried the values that crisis forced upon them into the post war years. It's closely associated with honor, but it's a belief that they are the few. They are the ones who have the responsibility to hold the public interest in front of them at all times and not to allow their own individual and selfish interests to intercede. And that's why they weren't happy with the next generation, which was the Jackson generation, which was the more democratic popular belief generation. And in that sense, they created the institutions that are still in place at a moment in American history that is truly distinctive. And I do think that go back to where we started. I mean, I think our education system is failing this. I taught for 45 years at some really good institutions. West Point, Mount Holyoke Amherst, Williams. The people coming out now, well, they just don't know much American history. The voting electorate is perhaps the most uneducated electorate in the Western world. Only a third of them have college degrees. Only 10% of them could pass the lie detector test currently required of all immigrants for citizenship. If you have no foundation, you're vulnerable to all kinds of misinformation. Finally, if you had somehow gathered the great leading founders, you know, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, all of them up in heaven, and you said, hey, we want you to look down and we've had this thing called the Internet, you know what they'd say? Good luck.
- [25:40]
Martin DeCaro
I thought they would say, where can I sign up for Facebook?
- [25:42]
Joseph Ellis
No, Franklin would say that just as a joke. But what I'm trying to say is civics.
- [25:49]
Martin DeCaro
Civics.
- [25:50]
Joseph Ellis
In the three years that Donald Trump was not president, the legal system failed us. The educational system failed us. The press failed us in some respects, too.
- [26:00]
Martin DeCaro
I mean, and the Supreme Court failed us, as I mentioned, Supreme Court failed.
- [26:03]
Joseph Ellis
Us in a big way. The current members of the court believe that they're above the law and therefore the President should be, too. And those are thoughts that are fatal to the values of republican government as we've come to know it. The ball is still in the air, the arrow is still in the air, or whatever. We want the metaphor. Historians are really good at predicting the past. We're almost omniscient, but we're not any better than most anybody else at predicting the future.
- [26:30]
Martin DeCaro
Your comment, though, raises. Well, it's a modern term, the social compact. So many people today, they don't feel maybe they have a stake in this or they deride our government. They detest the government. They don't want it to work. So they're behind what Elon Musk is doing right now, just basically going in helter skelter, despite claims to the contrary, and slashing entire sections of agencies and budgets, et cetera. But in an 18th century sense, maybe they wouldn't use the term social compact. They would say the distinct cements of society. So there was this question, right? Without a monarchy and in a new republic, how are people going to be attached not only to one another, but also to the state? And I was reviewing your book on Washington, His Excellency, as well as Founding brothers. I was reviewing your chapters about Washington, George Washington's Farewell address. He was concerned, yeah, he was concerned about this right nationalism, that Americans maybe didn't have loyalty to the state. The idea of nationalism was not a powerful force.
- [27:38]
Joseph Ellis
Right. When independence is Declared, remember, the vote on independence was this term that these colonies are and have every right to be independent states. The vote on independence wasn't a vote for the creation of an American nation. The form of government that was created immediately after the the war was called the Articles of Confederation.
- [28:04]
Martin DeCaro
That's right.
- [28:04]
Joseph Ellis
That's what it's called. That is exactly the framework that the southern states in 1861 will demand and go to war about. So there's two foundings. One's when we declare independence and then one when we declare nationhood. That's in the Constitution. But they're separate. The first sentence of the most famous speech in American history is historically incorrect. Abraham Lincoln. Fourscore and seven years ago in 76, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation. No, they didn't. That didn't happen then. What we're celebrating in the 250th is winning the war for independence. It's not the creation of the first nation.
- [28:49]
Martin DeCaro
Well, when you say nation, you mean a nation state with a strong central government. And when I hear nation in this context, I think of Americans as a people, a nation of people. Not necessarily talking about the boundaries of a state on a map, but Americans did see themselves as a nation. That's more of a modern way of maybe looking at it.
- [29:09]
Joseph Ellis
In the 18th century, during the war and afterwards, most of the people could not think nationally. They thought locally. Most Americans had never gone further than a three hour horse ride from where they lived. And therefore, when they said they wanted to be represented in government, they thought the representative should be a neighbor who shared their values and the notion that they would be represented by some government, faraway government, hey, that's just like being under parliament. Political loyalties were local. And that's what Washington was facing and was warning against or seen had to be overcome. He thought that the thing that would bring us together is the land to the west, that the future of America was the occupation of everything west of the Alleghenies. And that that would be a common cause that would bring us all together or would help bring us all together.
- [30:04]
Martin DeCaro
They were also concerned about large republics. Right? I mean, there have been small republics, but such a large continental republic. They were worried that for some reason.
- [30:13]
Joseph Ellis
That wouldn't be able to hold it together. And I think that what we were saying earlier about the current situation, there are two or three or four generations that have grown up in America without any obligation to citizenship. When I was in college, I knew I was going to have to go in the army. I would like to see US institute mandatory national service. It won't have to be military. It could be environmental, it could be civic, you know, whatever. I also think the war in Vietnam destroyed the faith in America of a generation. So did Watergate, and more recently, more.
- [30:50]
Martin DeCaro
Recently, the Iraq and Afghanistan situations, the 08 crash, everything.
- [30:55]
Joseph Ellis
Yeah, that was a misguided war, too. Three or four generations of Americans who've grown up watching us commit to wars overseas that turn out to be misguided and unwinnable. Only 50% of them vote. It's not that they vote for crazy candidates, it's they don't vote at all. In the most recent election, only 51% of the electorate voted. In the previous election, one that Biden won, 72% voted. That was the difference in the election.
- [31:26]
Martin DeCaro
Joseph, the very first time you were on this podcast and you've been very generous with your time over the years, very first time you were on was early 2021. We discussed conspiracy theories in the early Republic in the context of the QAnon wackos. We have some of them in Congress right now. So there were conspiracy theories then. But can a republic today endure when millions of its people traffic in outrageous lies and conspiracy theories? I'll give you an example. The other day, Elon Musk appeared in the Oval Office to answer questions from reporters. And Donald Trump was sitting there behind the Resolute desk. And a journalist asked Musk if he would apologize or correct the lie that he spread on his platform about the US spending $50 million for condoms for Gaza. And the reporter pointed out that money actually went to contraceptives for Africa. There's a Gaza in Mozambique. Who knew, but it's for HIV prevention. And not only did Musk not apologize, he danced around the issue and then said, you know, we shouldn't be spending that money even for Mozambique. As if this man has any expertise in public health policy. Right.
- [32:39]
Journalist
Mr. Musk, you said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza. But after fact check this, apparently Gaza in Mozambique and the program was to protect them against hiv. So can you correct the statements? It wasn't sent to Hamas. Actually, it was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms were sent there. And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say?
- [33:11]
Elon Musk
Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's going to bat a thousand. I mean, any, you know, we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes. So, you know, if the. I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms anywhere. Frankly, I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about. And that is really an enormous number of condoms if you think about it. But, you know, if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like, okay, that's not as bad. But still, you know, why are we doing that?
- [33:44]
Martin DeCaro
He just recklessly spreads lies to millions of people in an instant. I don't know what to do about that problem.
- [33:50]
Joseph Ellis
What's happened on the Internet, and certainly he is an example of it. Truth itself has become transactional, that there is no standard, and that when Trump has press conferences, he tells so many lies that you can't keep up with them. And the press hasn't done a good job of responding.
- [34:10]
Martin DeCaro
So how long did these ideas of civic virtue, public virtue and disinterestedness, how long did they last? Doesn't seem very long.
- [34:21]
Joseph Ellis
From 1776 to 1820. In other words, it's got a kind of natural lifespan as the founding generation dies off and, you know, Washington died in 1799. Adams and Jefferson hang on until 1826. Franklin has gone. It's almost unique to the revolutionary generation again, because they are the ones who had to make the decision to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. They're the ones who took all the risks. It's like they were playing a game of poker and they were all in before they even looked at their cards. That generation is special.
- [35:00]
Martin DeCaro
You know, the fact that their ideas somewhat fell out of fashion in a generation isn't such a bad thing. I'll share some Gordon Wood with you here. From the conclusion of his book, he writes, a new generation of democratic Americans was no longer interested in the revolutionaries dream of building a classical republic of elitist virtue out of the inherited materials of the old world. America, they said, would find its greatness not by emulating the states of classical antiquity, not by copying the fiscal military powers of modern Europe, and not by producing a few notable geniuses and great souled men. Instead, it would discover its greatness by creating a prosperous, free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and their pecuniary pursuits of happiness. Common people with their common interests in making money, in getting ahead. So, you know, there's an irony there, but that's not what we're seeing. That's not what we're seeing today.
- [35:53]
Joseph Ellis
He's making In a different way. The point I'm making that the revolutionary generation is truly distinctive and following generation is going to move in another direction. The way Gordon phrases it is not the way I would phrase it. I respect him. He's very well read historian. The very values he's identifying are the ones that Tocqueville identifies too in Democracy in America. And he says that those values, that the United States is the crystal ball for the rest of the world. He's thinking mostly of France. What he thinks says that, but rest of Europe, that we've discovered this thing called democracy. But he ends democracy in America with the following sentence. I'm full of apprehension and hope. I'm worried about what this kind of society is going to do. And we've arrived now in the Trump administration in one of the dangers of this kind of society, which is dependent on popular opinion and at a time in which education is bad, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
- [37:03]
Martin DeCaro
Wood writes here, by the early 19th century, many of the Founding Fathers had come to share something of Alexander Hamilton's poignant conclusion. This American world was not made for me. They found it difficult to accept the democratic fact that their fate now rested on the opinions and votes of small souled and largely unreflective ordinary people. I mean, talk about 18th century elitism and the politics of deference.
- [37:28]
Joseph Ellis
Hamilton said that the people. The people, sir, is a great beast. Ironically, the duel between Hamilton and Burr, which is the first chapter in this book I wrote called Founding Brothers, is between two people who both see in the other a dangerous person incapable of virtue. They want to kill the other person because they argue that Burr will be a dictator and Hamilton will do something similar like to that. So they're both arguing virtue as a goal and seeing the lack of it in the other.
- [38:02]
Martin DeCaro
I'm glad you brought that up because we did discuss the 1790s on this podcast once. That was a crazy time. You know, for all the talk of virtue and put party affiliation, party passions, partisan passions aside, they were at each other's throats, accusing one another of being the ones who would destroy the Republican and betray the promise of the American Revolution. You know, I brought all this stuff up about how the founding generation viewed what came after them because I didn't want to idealize the past. But it's only to. To just show or demonstrate to our listeners how much our founders and the thinkers of that whole Enlightenment period, really Enlightenment thinkers, how much they were preoccupied with these ideas that we need ethical, virtuous, solid people in positions of power and positions of government. Because we see what happens when we don't follow their, we'll call it advice or their vision. When this happens, it breeds cynicism, mistrust, or is it distrust? Mistrust. It makes people apathetic and not want to participate in government. And it opens the door for someone like Donald Trump who says, you know what, this whole system is rotten. It's been screwing you over and this is how we're gonna handle it.
- [39:19]
Joseph Ellis
I'm afraid there's truth there and I can't disagree with what you just said. The other, perhaps, way to put it is that to the extent that we're going to reform the government, change public opinion towards what government means, we have to go through a Trumpian threat. We have to go through that and find out what that looks like. And while I'm not confident, my best bet is that the Trump agenda is going to startle and alienate a significant portion of the American electorate.
- [39:52]
Martin DeCaro
You must be. I'll let you explain how you feel, but you must be disturbed, unsettled to see the 250th anniversary of the Declaration coming up with someone in office who is going to probably disfigure or defile the memory and make it about him.
- [40:09]
Joseph Ellis
You're right. You know, I'm getting up there. I mean, I have my Biden esque moments and I have problems with names sometimes. And when I'm in front of an audience and I can't remember a name, I look up and I say, does anybody else in the audience have this problem? They all raise their hands. I've got. I stay alive as a historian by spending six to seven hours a day sitting at my desk and pretending to write and, and reading the papers that of the founders, etc. Etc. All the time. So I'm kept alive by my profession. I'm. Although I'm not teaching anymore and by the work that necessitates now I walk the dogs, I exercise. I do other things too. But as long as I have my marbles and that, I'm going to keep trying and that's what keeps me young.
- [41:02]
Martin DeCaro
You don't read the news online. I know that for a fact.
- [41:06]
Joseph Ellis
That's true. He's the most technologically incompetent person you've ever interviewed. Not. Perhaps I am. I don't want to make that into a virtue, but to some extent it is a virtue.
- [41:18]
Martin DeCaro
No, I agree. In the age of Trump, to spend all your time online and scrolling or doom scrolling and reading about politics all the time. That's never healthy in any era of history.
- [41:29]
Joseph Ellis
I would eventually commit suicide. I think I write my books in longhand. I convinced myself that there's a connection between the movement of the wrist and the movement of the mind. And so I've created a little universe for myself that I continue to occupy up here in Vermont. And I'm happy.
- [41:50]
Martin DeCaro
Joseph Ellis, an honor to have you here on the podcast, and we look forward to your next book this fall. On the next episode of History As It Happens, the next three episodes, a three part series on the Russo Ukrainian War. We're coming up on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is History As It Happens. New episodes every every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter, which is free, comes out every Friday. Sign up@historyasithappens.com.