Can Ben Shapiro Guess the Founding Father Quote? | Independence Day Special

Summary

Summary of "Can Ben Shapiro Guess the Founding Father Quote? | Independence Day Special"

The Ben Shapiro Show hosted by The Daily Wire presents a special Independence Day episode where Ben Shapiro is quizzed on quotes from the Founding Fathers. This episode delves into the meanings behind these historical quotes, providing insightful analysis on their relevance to contemporary governance and society.

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Introduction to the Independence Day Special

Timestamp: 00:31

Ben Shapiro kicks off the episode by announcing a July 4th special where his producers will challenge him to identify and explicate quotes from the Founding Fathers. He emphasizes the importance of understanding these foundational ideas in the context of modern America.

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Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence Quote

Timestamp: 00:31 Quote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." – Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776

Ben analyzes Jefferson's intent behind declaring these truths as self-evident. He clarifies that Jefferson did not imply that everyone has the same capacities but rather that all individuals possess equal rights before God. Shapiro underscores that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" aligns with Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia, emphasizing a virtuous life over contemporary interpretations of personal pleasures.

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James Madison's Federalist 51 on Checks and Balances

Timestamp: 02:26 Quote: "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary." – James Madison, Federalist 51

Shapiro identifies this quote from James Madison as a fundamental principle advocating for a government system of checks and balances. He explains that Madison recognized the dual nature of humanity—capable of both good and evil—and thus necessitated mechanisms to prevent any single branch from gaining excessive power. This framework ensures that ambition within the government can be regulated by ambition in other branches, maintaining a balance that protects individual freedoms.

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Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"

Timestamp: 02:43 - 03:57 Quote: "Give me liberty or give me death." – Patrick Henry, Virginia Convention, 1775

Ben presents this iconic rallying cry as a decisive call for revolution against British rule. He highlights its enduring legacy in American education and its role in inspiring the fight for independence. Shapiro emphasizes that this statement encapsulates the colonists' readiness to defend their liberty by force if necessary, underscoring its significance in the narrative of American freedom.

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George Washington's Letter to the Hebrew Congregation

Timestamp: 04:20 Quote: "If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail under the just administration of a good government to become a great and a happy people..." – George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island

Ben discusses George Washington's commitment to religious tolerance, particularly towards Jewish Americans. He remarks on the historical significance of Washington's letter as a foundational expression of America's enduring support and respect for religious diversity. Shapiro notes that this principle of toleration for the virtuous is a cornerstone of American values, reflecting the nation's inclusive ethos from its inception.

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Benjamin Franklin's Reflection on the Constitution's Durability

Timestamp: 06:46 Quote: "Nothing is certain except death and taxes." – Benjamin Franklin, Letter to a Friend in France, 1787

Shapiro references Benjamin Franklin's observation on the inherent uncertainties of human institutions versus the inevitabilities of death and taxes. He reflects on the Constitution's remarkable longevity and its ability to govern effectively for over two centuries. However, Franklin's skepticism about the durability of man-made institutions serves as a contemplative nod to the challenges of maintaining a stable government over time.

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Alexander Hamilton's Federalist 70 on Executive Energy

Timestamp: 07:04 Quote: "Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. Decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch would generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more imminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number." – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 70

Ben attributes this quote to Alexander Hamilton, highlighting his advocacy for a strong executive branch. Shapiro explains Hamilton's argument for a single, energetic executive capable of decisive action, contrasting it with the ineffective multi-person executive systems. He notes that while Hamilton supported robust executive power, his views have been co-opted by modern leftists to argue for an "imperial presidency," diverging from Hamilton's original intent of balanced governance through checks and balances.

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John Adams on the Integrity of the Constitution

Timestamp: 08:32 Quote: "A constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever..." – John Adams

Ben recognizes this quote as one of John Adams' profound reflections on the sanctity of the Constitution. He discusses Adams' early advocacy for a government that preserves liberty and resists any attempts to undermine it. Shapiro contrasts Adams' early populist stance with his later desire for a stronger executive branch, illustrating the complexities and evolutions in the Founding Fathers' perspectives.

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Ben Shapiro’s Commentary on Modern Governance

Timestamp: 09:00 - 11:07

Shapiro critiques the current state of the U.S. government, arguing that the Founding Fathers would be appalled by the expansive powers of the modern regulatory state. He asserts that contemporary leftist movements, represented by figures like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fundamentally contradict the original philosophies of the Founders. Shapiro emphasizes that the Founders envisioned a government limited in scope, designed to protect individual liberties rather than exert pervasive control over citizens' lives.

He concludes by lamenting the erosion of the original constitutional principles, advocating for a return to the values that established the United States as a beacon of freedom and justice.

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Conclusion

In this Independence Day special, Ben Shapiro effectively bridges historical wisdom with present-day political discourse. By dissecting quotes from the Founding Fathers, he underscores the enduring relevance of their principles and critiques the deviations from these ideals in contemporary governance. This episode serves as both an educational deep dive into foundational American texts and a passionate call to preserve the constitutional values that define the nation.

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Notable Quotes with Speaker Attribution and Timestamps:

1. Thomas Jefferson (00:31): "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

2. James Madison (02:26): "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition..."

3. Patrick Henry (02:43): "Give me liberty or give me death."

4. George Washington (04:20): "If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored..."

5. Benjamin Franklin (06:46): "Nothing is certain except death and taxes."

6. Alexander Hamilton (07:04): "Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government..."

7. John Adams (08:32): "A constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored..."

This structured and comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode, providing valuable context and analysis for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

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[Ben Shapiro]

Alrighty, folks, in honor of July 4th, my producers will be quizzing me on quotes from the Founding Fathers. We'll see how I do. Can I identify them and explicate these quotes? This video is sponsored by our friends at ExpressVPN. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776. All right, so what does that mean? Well, when he says we hold these truths to be self evident, he does not mean that every person, no matter your background, can simply discover these. What he means is that they do not require outside evidence that these are propositions that are going to have to prove themselves they are self evident, that all men are created equal. He does not mean that all human beings have the same capacity, of course. He means that all men are created with equal rights before God, that they have the same value before their Creator. They're endowed by that Creator God with certain unalienable rights, meaning you can't give them away. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Here, life, liberty and property was the original formulation by the philosopher John Locke. He substitutes pursuit of happiness not because he's a sort of libertarian, believing that the pursuit of happiness means, you know what, what you might think of today, smoking pot and having sex with randos. You said it, not me. The pursuit of happiness was meant to be the pursuit of eudaimonia, the sort of Aristotelian happiness that was virtue effectuated through the act of living. The idea was that you have a right to life, right? People can't kill you, you have a right to liberty. People can't deprive you of your liberty, enslave you. And the pursuit of happiness, meaning that you are supposed to pursue a virtuous life that is going to bring you happiness and no one can encroach upon that. Many of those concepts are then later effectuated through the Constitution of the United States in things like freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

[Thomas Jefferson]

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

[Ben Shapiro]

It may be a reflection on human.

[Thomas Jefferson]

Nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, this is James Madison in Federalist 51. This is one of my favorite quotes from the Federalist Papers. Nerd. What he means is that we need to have a government of checks and balances. What he says is that many people want to get rid of all the checks and balances, because what if he had, like, an amazing, amazing king? The problem, of course, is that human beings are capable of being devilish. And so you actually want to check them. And if human beings were angels, you wouldn't need anyone to govern them in the first place. Right. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Government itself. He says the structure of government is a reflection on the variegated nature of human beings. That we can be both good and bad. And so we ought to have have ambition to counteract ambition. Checks and balances forbid it. Almighty God. I know not what course others may take. But as for me, give me liberty or give me death. That's Patrick Henry at the Virginia Convention, 1775. Patrick Henry ended up being the governor of Virginia. But this was one of the sort of clarion calls toward revolution. This became obviously an incredibly popular phrase in colonial America. School children, if they learned anything today, would know this. But the give me liberty or give me death formulation, which was one of the calls for war, if liberty would not be provided by the British government, it would have to be taken at point of gun.

[Thomas Jefferson]

If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail under the just administration of a good government to become a great and a happy people. May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land Continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants, While everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.

[Ben Shapiro]

This is George Washington's letter to the Jewish congregation, correct? Yep. George Washington's letter to a Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. This is a very, very famous letter in the Jewish community. America has been historically the best country in the history of mankind to Jews. That started from the very beginning. So the basic principle here is religious toleration for those who value virtue. This is sort of seen by Jews in America as the foundation stone, philosophically, of American toler for For Jews in America. Speaker Johnson actually had, I believe, an original copy of this letter that he showed me. Right on. Very cool. Very, very cool. That's cool. We'll get to more of this in a moment. First, unfortunately, in this country, privacy has now become a luxury. To be honest, that's a shame, because privacy is a prerequisite to freedom. Without privacy, there can't be a whole hell of a lot of freedom. Privacy is given to the government. But it's no secret the NSA is, in fact, surveilling you. So are big tech companies. People are buying your information from data brokers. They're watching all the moves you make online. What if I told you there's a way to stop all that? What if I told you there's a way to get back your privacy and freedom? You can do it with a product called ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is an app that sends 100% of your online activity through secure, encrypted servers. That means data brokers can't see anything you do online, and their customers, government agencies, big tech companies, can't access those logs either. I use ExpressVPN all the time. Obviously, I'm on the road right now. That means that I have to use public wifi sometimes. I don't want people checking my data. That's why I use ExpressVPN. With ExpressVPN, none of your online activity is logged. Just, within the last 12 months, ExpressVPN received over 400,000 data requests from tech companies and government agencies. And you know how many of their customers information was shared? 0. Because ExpressVPN has a strict zero logs policy, giving you back your privacy. Plus, ExpressVPN is easy to use. It takes just one click. It works on all your devices. You can have it on up to eight devices all at once. Find out how you can get four months for free by scanning the QR code on screen, clicking the link in the description box below, or by heading on over to expressvpn.com our new constitution is now established. Everything seems to promise it will be durable. But in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes. My health continues much as it has been for some time, except that I grow thinner and weaker so that I cannot expect to hold out much longer. Benjamin Franklin, correct? Yeah, Benjamin Franklin writing a letter to a friend in France a few months before his death. That's a very famous phrase. Nothing is certain but death and taxes. Fascinating that that phrase comes in the context of a discussion about whether the Constitution will prove Durable. The Constitution, as it turns out, has proved pretty durable. And he's talking about it being written in 1787, 1788, 89, and it's still around governing the most powerful country in the history of the world. But he is correct certainly to doubt the durability of any man made institution.

[Thomas Jefferson]

Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. Decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch would generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more imminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number.

[Ben Shapiro]

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 70. I mean, that's very Hamiltonian. So Hamilton of course was accused of essentially being a monarchist, wanting tremendous powers in the executive branch. And when he was stumping for the Constitution, one of the big arguments made for the Constitution was that it was not the Articles of Confederation, which had a very, very weak executive branch. The Constitution made the Executive Branch Article 2 significantly stronger than it had been under the Articles of Confederation. That was something that Hamilton pushed forward. He was arguing here against the idea that there should be a three man executive branch. That you should have essentially a triumvirate in which the executive branch would be governed by three guys who would have to vote in majority for anything. He said, no, no, you need one because you need one guy who's answerable, who is going to be able to act with alacrity without all of those checks and balances, at least in the Executive. You want a legislature and a judiciary to check him, but not within the executive branch. It's a very doge thing that he's saying here also. However, it was later read by people on the left as a sort of precursor of Wilsonian government. The executive is the most important branch. That's not what he's saying there. He's saying one executive compared to three executives is better. But it was used later by people who wanted an imperial presidency to sort of argue that the presidency ought to take the lead.

[John Adams]

Our consolation must be this, my dear, that cities may be rebuilt and a people reduced to poverty may acquire fresh property. But a constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever when the people once surrender their share in the legislature and their right of defending the limitations upon the government and of resisting every encroachment upon them. I can never regain it.

[Ben Shapiro]

This one I'm not sure of.

[John Adams]

It was John Adams.

[Ben Shapiro]

I was going to say it was Adams. I mean, I was going to say. I was going to say it was Adams. Normally I can identify Adams like that. That is typical Adams. That's early Adams. What's fascinating about Adams's life is that he's speaking in the language of this, like, very, very ardent desire for liberty. Of course, later he would become kind of disillusioned with the American people, and he would want much more power in the executive branch. He would want the people to essentially have to work through their elected representatives. Much more so earlier on in his career, he's much more of a populist. As he got older, he became significantly less of a populist. So this is very early Adams. So obviously ambition must counteract ambition is the best quote among these, in my opinion, the Mattison checks and balances description of government. The best quote that's not in here is the John Adams quote in which he talks about how our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people, and it would be insufficient to the cause of any other because any document would be torn asunder by a people who are immoral the way that a WH tears through a fishnet. I think all the founders would be pretty upset with how all of the presidents use executive powers at this point. The Founding Fathers never expected that the federal government would have remotely the kind of power that the federal government currently wields. Remember, the Founding Fathers revolted against a British government over taxes that they believed were in violation of their rights as. As Englishmen. And so you can make the argument that the violation of the rights of the American people by the regulatory state, an unelected branch of government that basically makes policy over every aspect of their lives, is significantly more onerous than anything the British were doing at the time. If you transported the Founding Fathers to America today and they looked at the radical left people like Zoram Hamdani or Alexander Ocasio Cortez, they would not even remotely believe what they were watching. There's not an aspect of what these people say that has any relation whatsoever to the original ideas of the Founding Fathers. Not one single aspect. Not one. It's astonishing that there's a major political movement in this country that is so antithetical to literally everything the Founders possibly could have believed. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Welcome to Ben After Dark, the show where I say all the things I probably shouldn't. Welcome celebrity guests to play games and answer weird questions sent to us by weird people.

[Thomas Jefferson]

I hate hot chicken.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's sarcasm. It's chaos. Not that big of a deal. It's the only show where I can destroy something not because it's wrong, but just because it mildly annoys me. It's everything I've always wanted. Show airs on Friday night, 7:30pm Eastern. I know, not exactly late night. Unless you're Joe Biden, in which case it's three hours past mandatory pudding. Only on Daily Wire, plus only for members. Ben After Dark.