The American Book of Fables

Summary

The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Episode: The American Book of Fables
Date: May 15, 2026
Host: Scott Bertram
Featured Guests: Dr. Matt Meehan
(Section on Randy Barnett and his book “Felony: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago” follows, not summarized here as requested.)

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Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Matt Meehan, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Government at Hillsdale in D.C., discussing his new work, The American Book of Fables, created to commemorate the 250th anniversary ("America250") of the nation's founding. The book interlaces nursery rhymes, fables, primary sources, and poems across 13 chapters representing U.S. regions, aiming to capture and cultivate the virtues, wit, and wisdom that define the American experience for readers of all ages. Richly illustrated by John Folley, the book is intended as both an heirloom and a family treasury that can be revisited at each stage of life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Vision and Purpose of The American Book of Fables

• A Book for Generations (02:03–03:10)
  • Conceived for America’s 250th birthday, crafted as an heirloom meant for continual revisiting.
  • "It’s a big fat, beautiful book with all these illustrations in it because I actually want people to be able to grow up with it... you read it again and again like a great book." – Matt Meehan [03:03]
  • Book sections tailored for littles, middles, and bigs (children, teens, adults) blending nursery rhymes, fables, poems, primary sources, and Socratic dialogues.
• Literary Structure Informed by American Geography and History (03:28–04:09)
  • The book’s “engine”: travels through 13 regions, paralleling the 13 original colonies, each chapter thematically tied to a phrase from the Declaration of Independence.
  • "One chapter is just the word 'life', another is 'liberty', and another is 'pursuit of happiness'. Others are the abuses of King George, then the abuses of Parliament." – Matt Meehan [03:43]
• The American Fable Defined (04:09–05:35)
  • Draws on the ancient fable tradition, but infuses them with distinctly American values and settings: self-governance, wit, wisdom, and local folklore.
  • Emphasis on "training up your good mother wit," citing Chaucer: "Without which all other learning is half-lame." – Matt Meehan [05:24]

Celebrating and Grappling with American Character

• The Land and Providence (05:53–08:04)
  • The American landscape is a character—shaping national virtues through encounters with wilderness and beauty.
  • "That's a kind of gratefulness, a thankfulness... when the character of the land is in the book, it's almost like the character of Providence quietly... is this gift." – Matt Meehan [07:01]
  • Book addresses the complexity of settlement and Native American history in a nuanced way.

Literary Imagination as Time Travel

• Forming Character Through Literature (08:28–10:06)
  • Stories act as a “secondary pontoon” helping readers experience and reenact the moral dilemmas and virtues of the past.
  • "It's a joyful moral imagination that is the American optimism that the book tries to bring forward again." – Matt Meehan [09:40]
  • Reference to "mirror neurons": reading about experience can, in some sense, stand in for living it (08:28–09:28).

Inspirations from Research and Travel

• Field Work Enriching the Narrative (10:22–12:41)
  • Meehan shares vivid anecdotes from his research travels, notably the Deering Estate, Everglades, Glacier National Park, and Going to the Sun Road.
  • "I found the Deering Estate... perfect place to have a congress at the beginning of the book. So the manatees, you know, in Congress..." – Matt Meehan [10:45]
  • Manatee character, Hugh, traverses the country, bringing a humorous, allegorical linking thread.

The Role of Illustration

• Collaboration with John Folley (14:04–15:56)
  • Folley’s classical training and live, on-site paintings bring an immersive, multi-media look—pen and ink, watercolor, and 13 double-page oil spreads matching each region/chapter.
  • "John helped me basically create this beautiful kind of motif... the book actually inside is a kind of, is breathtakingly beautiful too." – Matt Meehan [15:38]

Favorite Chapters and Artistic Peaks

• Personal and Artistic High Points (16:02–17:08)
  • Meehan identifies "The Warmth of Yellowstone" (Ch. 11) and "Many Glaciers" (Ch. 13) as standout chapters, both for their art and prose.
  • "Like a good symphony, you hit certain peaks... one big peak at Yellowstone, then one more at the backbone of the Earth." – Matt Meehan [16:45]

A Book to be Read Aloud and Shared

• Building Family and National Memory (17:37–18:48)
  • Meehan describes reading aloud as a deeply unifying, memorable experience, paralleling the function the book serves for the country’s shared memory.
  • "When you read aloud, it's a unifying experience... It's also a kind of a powerful way to bring forward literature, not just in the book, not just in the mind, but into the space of the family." – Matt Meehan [17:41]

Fables vs. Textbooks

• The Distinct Power of Fable (19:11–20:59)
  • Fables offer not only vivid, memorable images but also train “good mother wit”—the ability to discern virtue from vice through complexity, rather than mere statements of fact.
  • "With a fable, there are snakes with forked tongues, there is a big, grumpy buffalo that doesn't quite have it all worked out... there's the complexity of character that fable allows for." – Matt Meehan [19:51]

Patriotism as a Virtue

• Rooting Love of Country in People and Principles (21:04–23:26)
  • Patriotism—properly understood—is both an active, moral love for our forebears and for the principles they lived out.
  • Addresses the debate between principle-based patriotism and heritage-based, advocating “why not both?”
  • "We have to love our fathers and revere them—why are they our fathers? Because they founded a nation with these principles... it's the wit and wisdom of being an American." – Matt Meehan [22:39]

The “Mustard Seed” Effect: Books for Growing Families

• Enduring Impact on Family Life (23:43–24:41)
  • Meehan reflects on families returning to his earlier books as children grow, hoping The American Book of Fables will similarly mature and resonate across generations.
  • "I try with my books... the book is like a little seed and it sprouts and it can grow. And the more you look at it, the more you see the layers and the meaning..." – Matt Meehan [23:57]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Most fables open up with a world of different moral, technical knowledge, like, oh, I can be much smarter about being good. And that’s what a fable can do, is train up that good mother wit.” – Matt Meehan [00:25]
• “Each of them winds up being this commentary on the lines of the Declaration. So one chapter is just the word ‘life’, another is ‘liberty’, and another is ‘pursuit of happiness’.” – Matt Meehan [03:43]
• “Stories allow us to live vicariously through the settlement of the country... It's the virtues that you gather from that, but also the gratitude of recognizing that it's America the beautiful right, given to us by God.” – Matt Meehan [06:51]
• “When you read aloud, it's a unifying experience... It's a greater honor if they let it into the air of their home, like they actually speak these words.” – Matt Meehan [17:41]
• “A constitutional republic dedicated to natural rights is a series of principles. But patriotism doesn't easily map onto a series of ideas. They map onto people. The patria—the fathers and mothers.” – Matt Meehan [21:36]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment Topic | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------------------|------------------| | What is the American Book of Fables? | 02:03–03:10 | | Form and structure of the book (13 colonies/regions, etc.) | 03:28–04:09 | | Defining the American fable | 04:09–05:35 | | American landscape as literary character | 05:53–08:04 | | Can we imaginatively re-enter early America? | 08:28–10:06 | | Real-life travels and inspirations | 10:22–12:41 | | Role, process, and impact of illustration | 14:04–15:56 | | Favorite chapters and artistic peaks | 16:02–17:08 | | Family reading and transmission of memory | 17:37–18:48 | | What fables teach that textbooks can’t | 19:11–20:59 | | Patriotism as a virtue | 21:04–23:26 | | The “mustard seed” effect of enduring family books | 23:43–24:41 |

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Tone & Language

The episode maintains an inspiring, thoughtful, and slightly whimsical tone, deeply rooted in an appreciation for American ideals, tradition, and the generational passing-on of virtue, wisdom, and wit. Dr. Meehan’s language is learned, approachable, and sometimes playful—matching the spirit of his book.

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Conclusion

The American Book of Fables emerges as both a celebration and a pedagogic tool for American virtue, meant for family reading and lifelong enrichment. Meehan’s integration of fable, history, illustration, and lived research crafts an accessible work positioned as a cultural heirloom for a nation at 250.

Transcript

[Narrator]

Foreign.

[Matt Meehan]

From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the

[Randy Barnett]

true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

[Matt Meehan]

Fables are not that simple. There's always a simple part to a fable that a child can get. But most fables open up with a world of different moral, technical knowledge, like, oh, I can be much smarter about being good. And that's what a fable can do, is train up that good mother wit.

[Scott Bertram]

This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast network. That was Dr. Matt Meehan from Hillsdale in D.C. he's back today to talk about his new one, the American Book of Fables. And then stick around. Later on, Randy Barnett is back. We'll talk about his delightful new book, Felony Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. First, we're joined by Dr. Matt Meehan.

[Interviewer/Host]

He's associate dean and associate professor of government at Hillsdale in D.C. also a best selling author. His previous works include Mr. Meehan's mildly amusing Mythical Mammals and the Handsome Little Signet. The new book is bigger than the others. We'll discuss it in a moment. It's called the American Book of Fables. Matt, thanks so much for joining us.

[Matt Meehan]

Thanks for having me, Scott.

[Scott Bertram]

Excited to talk to you about the

[Interviewer/Host]

American Book of Fables.

[Scott Bertram]

I follow you on X. So I saw a lot of the research, the travels across the country that went into the American Book of Fables.

[Interviewer/Host]

You've written two previous books for younger audiences.

[Scott Bertram]

This one is different.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's for young people, it's for teenagers,

[Scott Bertram]

it's for adults as well. What made you want to create this

[Interviewer/Host]

kind of book, something more expansive and very American in its scope?

[Matt Meehan]

I wanted to do the American Book of Fables in honor of the 250th birthday of the country. And that's why it features the Declaration of independence interwoven through 13 regions of the country that hence the travel. But I also wanted it not to just be a flash in the pan for a 250, which is why it's a big hefty kind of hardback, heirloom coffee table style. It's a big fat beautiful book with all these illustrations in it because I actually want people to be able to grow up with it. So you can read it as a child with nursery rhymes for, for littles. There's sections just for littles, right. Although really it's for Everyone. Then there's sections for middles, which are fables and, and stories and poems. And then there's sections for bigs, which have primary sources from the founding and from all across the history of the country and different local history and regions, but also poems, Socratic dialogues. Think like Animal Farm meets Aesop meets Hugh Manatee, this manatee that travels around through the whole country. And it's so, it's, it's designed for the whole family to enjoy, but also for a child to grow up with. And you read it again and again like a great book.

[Interviewer/Host]

I know when developing shows books creative content, some things, sometimes things just click into place. Was there a moment when you said, oh no, that's the format?

[Scott Bertram]

That's exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

I want to approach this in terms of again appealing to sort of a lifelong love of reading an American book of fables.

[Matt Meehan]

When I finally seized upon the engine of traveling from region to region, 13 chapters in honor of the 13 colonies, that's when I realized, ah, now I can actually key all these nursery rhymes, these fables, these stories to local history and national history and tie the whole sort of union together through the Declaration. And so each of them winds up being this commentary on the lines of the Declaration. So one chapter is just the word life, another is liberty, and another is pursuit of happiness. Others are the abuses of King George, then the abuses of Parliament. That's when you go to the desert.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.

[Matt Meehan]

So once I saw that, that's when it was off to the races.

[Interviewer/Host]

So what makes something in your mind truly an American fable that that deserved inclusion in this book?

[Matt Meehan]

I wanted. So the fable tradition is old, very old. It's Book of Proverbs, King Solomon in scripture, it's. It's in Greece, it's in Rome. And the Romans were actually the big fable lists a lot of Aesop collections they realize are from that time. So in one sense there's nothing new in doing fables because it's part of the Western tradition. But an American fable, I think has two characteristics. One, it is about America and our experience, our animals, our history, our lands, our folklore. But it is also about the special virtues and the kind of sort of way virtues take shape in a people who want to be self governing, I. E. Free people. And that's different than different kinds of regimes, monarchies, oligarchies, tribes, nations. So there's a heavy emphasis on wit and wisdom, which is a theme that Ben Franklin put in Poor Richard's Almanac. And we can talk more about it. But it turns out Aristotle says Wit is actually a virtue, but it has to be trained up. In fact, there's a line in the book I quote from Chaucer and it's. But it's a bunch of different poets all matched together. But they're saying the same thing, which is you have to train up your good mother Witness, without which all other learning is half lame.

[Interviewer/Host]

Matt Meehan with us. His new book is the American Book of Fables, which you can order now. The book, as you sort of have outlined, treats America as a character in the book too. Through rivers and mountains and the plains and the deserts. How does that tie into what you're trying to accomplish in the book and

[Scott Bertram]

our celebration of America?

[Matt Meehan]

250 the history of the country is its founding. Obviously it's pre founding. We go to Puritan New England and. And see the frontier of Florida from the very beginnings when the British and the Spanish were sort of at odds. But the entire experience of the settlement of the country is part of what has made our national character and the implementing of that founding the sort of the declaration of those words that touched off all of this motion. I say in the book. And part of that is this incredible encounter that the American people had again and again in different ways with the land. And that did two things. And I think they're important virtues for us to imitate. Even though we're not settling the land anymore, we need to sort of experience it vicariously through the settlement of the country. And those are these Providence, right. Sort of this. This awe and thankfulness that this incredibly fertile, beautiful, rugged, wild, just unbelievably amazing landscape was ours and given to us in a certain sense like it was. You know. Yes, there were Indians. Yes there was a settlement and difficulties. And I cover all that actually and handle it I think very delicately in the book to try to explain the ethics of how we could have done it better, but how we did a lot of good things and we should celebrate those too. But. But that's a kind of gratefulness, a thankfulness. Right. And so when the character of the land is in the book, it's almost like the character of Providence sort of quietly, right. Is this gift of this beautiful land. And then the other one is all of the different virtues of self governance required a shift for yourself on difficult terrain. When you got to cut down forests, you got to damn rivers you got to do. You got to, you know, got to kill a cougar before he kills your cattle. And now obviously there's a whole ecological thing about preserving. And I feature the national parks. There's a whole story about how we, we saved a couple species from extinction. So it's not just about shooting, you know, wild animals, but, but that's part of it. You've got to settle the land. And so it's the virtues that you come, you gather from that. But it's also the gratitude of recognizing that it's America the beautiful right given to us by God.

[Interviewer/Host]

The introduction to the American Book of Fables tells us the book can help us remember our people's way of life or learn it for the first time. Living in modern America with everything that brings, do we still have the ability to put ourselves back 250 years ago and sort of see and experience what those settlers experienced?

[Matt Meehan]

Yeah, I mean in literary study and in neurobiology they talk about mirror neurons, which are actually operative neurons. So if you have an experience, you get neurons that kind of remember that experience so you handle it better next time. Well, if you read a story, you actually get these mirrored versions of that so you can handle similar situations. So I do think literature is a kind of secondary. You have to have experience too, but it's a secondary sort of, you know, pontoon that will prevent your boat from cap. Capsizing is these literary stories. But, but I also, I, I think I, I did a ton of research beforehand on the fabled tradition, but also on the founding imagination. What were they doing? In fact, we've spoken about this before, but that, that, that notion of the founding imagination. Right. It was extremely moral and, and they moralized it like freely, hilariously, relentlessly. And it's actually, people think of that today, I think in the post Freudian sort of 20th century debacle of like morality is this oppressive thing. It's actually an incredibly joyful and freeing thing. And you see it in their imagination scape and how they tell stories. And I tried to sort of represent that kind of, sort of moral ecology of the imagination for the next generations to come. Because I hope this book lasts us another 250 years. Is a kind of stalwart of the sort of. This is a definitely got to have this book in the library because it'll help form your character. And I think it's a joyful moral imagination that, that is the American optimism that the book tries to bring forward. Again.

[Interviewer/Host]

Matt Meehan with us. His new book is the American Book of Famous Fables. If you follow Matt on X, you saw pictures of his travels across the country. You mentioned pontoons. You're in the Everglades. I don't know how many gators you saw and crocodiles.

[Randy Barnett]

Yeah.

[Scott Bertram]

You went all over the place, looking

[Interviewer/Host]

at places, looking at landscapes, experiencing the country. Were there particular incidents, incidences that inspired specific selections in the American Book of Fables?

[Matt Meehan]

Many. For instance, I found this place off the Bay of Biscayne, just east of the Everglades. When I was down there, I was on an NEH grant doing research and won the Innovation Prize Heritage too. And so I was doing all this research and I found the Deering Estate, which is this little quay off of the ocean in front of this beautiful old sort of lodge with palm trees and has a freshwater spring. And the manatees come and drink the fresh water because they're in the salt water most of the time, but they'll drink the fresh water there. And so I'm like, this is the perfect place to have a congress at the beginning of the book. So the manatees, you know, in Congress is the first thing on the Declaration of Defendant Independence as it was published, at least. And so it's about what does it mean to be a social animal? And. And it's also a hurricane because the Declaration was started in a storm. So I found this perfect place, the Deering Estate, for the first Congress of the Manatees to decide what to do about the storm, which sends Hugh on this big trip. The other thing that is Hugh's final stage in his journey before he takes a Long Empire train back from Montana. And it's. It's a joke to get a huge fat 2,000 pound manatee all over the lower 48. And there's lots of different madcap stories in there. The COVID has one with. He's on a Ford F250 in Navajo country. It's a long story, but we ended at the Glacier national park, the backbone of the earth. And it is one of the most awe inspiring, most glorious, most God given. Just close your mouth, you're drooling. You're so gobsmacked by the beauty of the place that I. And there's a beautiful place called Going to the Sun Road. And that idea of going to the sun is a kind of closing theme. It's one of the last poems. It's the. It's a featured in the last story of humanity and a number of the last fables. The mountains there talk to one another and so do the rivers and the lakes. And the. Going to the sun is a kind of double pun. But it's about American optimism and hope. Lowercase and uppercase age. Hope.

[Scott Bertram]

Dr. Matt Meehan is with us from Hillsdale NDC. More talk about the American Book of Fables in a moment. If you're Preparing to celebrate America250, what a great option to have to see the first film from Hillsdale College on the big screen in theaters. It's Revolutionary America. It tells the story of the American founding, of course, the the greatest political achievement in history. You can find theaters and get tickets at hillsdale.edu film. This is your chance to see the true story of America's founding on the big screen in a limited theatrical run 250 years ago, a group of ordinary people did something truly extraordinary. With the anniversary approaching, it's time to remember exactly what they did and, and why it still matters. See Revolutionary America in theaters May 31, June 1 and June 2. Find a theater near you and get your tickets at hillsdale.edu film.f I L M Hillsdale Edu Film. You won't want to miss Revolutionary America. We continue with Dr. Matt Meehan from Hillsdale in D.C. celebrating America 250 in part with the new book the American of Fables.

[Interviewer/Host]

Matt John Folley is back to do the illustrations in the American Book of Fables. And the illustrations are a big part of the experience. From the COVID to many inside. How does your illustrator John Folly help shape the final product, the final book of the American Book of Fables?

[Matt Meehan]

So John and I work on every illustration very closely. We have insane Google Docs, bizarre tech streams. We're going back and forth with reference images and ideas. And he, he's a realist impressionist from the Boston school through the Ecole de Bars. You can trace his lineage all the way back to Florence, Master, apprentice to literally Rayfield's workshop in Florence. The Rayfield, he's a classically trained rock star. And the artwork is his best ever by far. Like, it's, it's truly amazing. He came with me to Glacier national in Yellowstone, and some of the paintings he painted on site that are in the book, he did on site oil and watercolor painting of some of the places we knew we were going to do fables like Old Faithful and different places like that. And so the book is beautiful and we have pen and ink, we have watercolor, and then we have 13 gorgeous oil two page spreads for each 13 of the 13 regions that are covered in the 13 chapters. But we did pen and ink watercolor to oil in this almost kind of the way the Declaration of Independence is. In one sense, it's a scrawled document, but it, it takes on life like we, we Inhabit those principles we live out liberty. We fight a civil war to make sure everybody's free. Like this kind of like something going from a scribble to out to the lived full color experience. John helped me basically create this beautiful kind of motif. And the book actually inside is a kind of interior, is. Is breathtakingly beautiful too. The graphic design which John helped spearhead with Sophia and myself.

[Interviewer/Host]

Is there a particular chapter or section you're really happy with, the way it turned out?

[Matt Meehan]

My favorite. My favorite two are definitely the two where John came with me. And so we have all this additional live painting images. And those are the two that feature just two national parks. It's chapter 11 called the Warmth of Yellowstone, and then chapter 13 called Many Glaciers. And that's. Those two really, I think, are especially beautiful. They're especially kind of artistically, they sing. Even the prose is written in a kind of almost sort of musical rhetorical verse. Others too, but that. That those are, I think, the most. The most sumptuously beautiful. And I kind of, you know, like a good, you know, a good symphony. You hit certain, you know, peaks. And so I. I went for one big peak, which is at the Continental Divide, the high giant warm bulge of the thermals at Yellowstone, and then one more at the backbone of the Earth at this high point of the Continental Divide. So we hit the Continental Divide and it's a big sort of denouement. And then we go to the west coast and then we come back for our kind of last finale. And those, I think, are my favorite.

[Interviewer/Host]

Matt being in with us, his new book, the American Book of Fables. Beautiful book. Available now. You're a dad many times over. Your previous books, too, have had these themes of. Of fatherhood and what it's like raising children. This book, the ability for parents to read with kids young and old. What does it mean for. For families to have that kind of experience, that kind of literary and historical experience together?

[Matt Meehan]

It's the same experience writ small, that I hope that this book does writ large for the country. When you read aloud, it's a unifying experience. It's a shared moment. It's. You share not only the words of the text, but the voice of someone you love. And it's also a kind of a powerful way to bring forward literature, not just in the book, not just in the mind, but into the space of the family and allow it to be there. And I consider it like people are like, I bought your book and I go, thank you. And I actually mean it because it's A great honor that someone's willing to let my words into their home. And it's a greater honor if they let it into the air of their home like they actually speak these words, which is why I try to write very beautifully so that they're beautiful moments. But that's that unified memory of what it says and what it teaches about America and beauty and truth and virtue and the country and the landscape and our history. That's a shared memory, doubly because you share it and because of the thing it is, and that's what I hope the book does for the whole country, is it's actually re gifting the shared memory of our loves of people in principle and liberty, justice and love.

[Interviewer/Host]

Add me in with us. The book is the American Book of Fables. You spend time, when you're not raising children in the world of education now at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, ndc, but also previously teaching and helping to shape young adults as well. What do you think that these stories and fables do that textbooks and lectures can't do?

[Matt Meehan]

It's a great question. Aristotle has this line where he says basically in the de that no one can think without an image. And historical textbooks will give historical images, which are good, but if you use some art, you can actually shape even more economically, even more vivid. You can sort of heighten the beauty and truth beyond history into something that is even more memorable and more sort of delightful. And so that's one thing that a textbook can't do is that heightened ornamented beauty and truth. But the other thing that fables do, right, besides giving a kind of image of good things that help you live well and think clearly, is it also can train your wit in a way that you can't with a textbook. A textbook, what's said there is always true. Whereas when you use a fable, there are snakes with forked tongues. There is a big, you know, big grumpy buffalo that doesn't quite have it all worked out. You know, there's humanity who makes a lot of sense, but then sometimes gets too bossy, right? There's the complexity of character that fable allows for, because fables are not that simple. There's always a simple part to a fable that a child can get. But most fables open up with a world of different sort of, sort of moral, technical knowledge, like, oh, I can be much smarter about being good. And that's what a fable can do, is train up that, like I mentioned earlier, that good mother wit that you. You can see through the apparent virtue of something and find a flaw, or you can see through the apparent viciousness and find a virtue. And that's something that you have to have to be a good American citizen and a good person, I would argue. And you need literature and particularly fable to do that.

[Interviewer/Host]

I want to ask another virtue question, and we've had this conversation previously, but it's a good time to bring it back.

[Scott Bertram]

Patriotism.

[Interviewer/Host]

Is patriotism a virtue? Should we strive to love our country? Should we strive to instill that love and understanding of country in our young people?

[Matt Meehan]

Yeah. So it actually is a moral virtue, like in the tradition, it is something you're supposed to do. It's an active condition of the soul involved in moral choice. And it is that to love and honor and revere. Right. Your forefathers. And we. We begin the book with a dedication and a thanks to our forefathers and our forebears. But the trick is, a constitutional republic that is dedicated to natural rights is a series of principles. But it turns out that patriotism doesn't easily map onto a series of ideas. They map onto people. Right? The patria, the fathers. Right. Or fathers and mothers. And it's not just the Founding fathers. It's all of our ancestors, the people who came before us, who built the roads, who settled Nebraska. Right. Who, like, who, you know, drained the swamps in Louisiana, so fertillable land. All the cool things that people have sacrificed. All those guys who died building the Brooklyn Bridge. That's part of patria. Right. And so what I try to do is merge each chapter, merges the principles of the Declaration in our Constitution, which we should care about with the thing that's frankly, easier to love and is the preservative of that. If you. This is why the left, forgive me for a minute for getting a little political, they always attack the Founding Fathers as gross or the previous generations as gross and bad. Why? Because the principles. It's hard to love the principles if you don't know if you hate the prod or the producer of the principle. Right? So. So you have to wrap these two things up. And I think, frankly, the dialogue today is, no, we're a credo nation, principles only, or no, it's the heritage Americans or the roots of this that, you know, I feel like the little girl in the meme, like, macaroni. Like, why not both? You know, macaroni and cheese. You know, it's like, it's both. And patriotism is a virtue that I think is a way forward. Because you ask, oh, these are. We have to love our fathers and revere them. Why are there our fathers? Because they founded a nation with these principles, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So this is the kind of sort of double thinking, the wit and what wisdom of what it is to be an American. And the book tries to help us with that.

[Interviewer/Host]

Matt Meehan and the American Book of Fables. You've done this a time or two before with prior books, and I wonder what you've learned or perhaps even just what you love about the way that kids and families engage with the stories that you're telling.

[Matt Meehan]

So like I said earlier, I, I kind of want these family books so people can grow up with the book. That is the thing I love is, I mean, me and mammals was 2018, I think. So we're, you know, it's been out for a while.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.

[Matt Meehan]

And you get these older kids who are like, oh, I read your book. I read it again and again, you know, sort of families that have sort of gotten to know it. I try with my books to like, the book is like a little seed and it sprouts and it can grow. And the more you look at it, the more you see the layers and the meaning. And, and so I actually, it's one of my favorite things and my hope is that I'm long dead before this one grows to full height because this is a big book. It might be a little mustard seed of a book, but hopefully it grows very big. But I, I, I love watching families grow with my book and then their older kids or they're, you know, tell you like, oh, I know what that one's about. You're like, oh, awesome. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. Keep reading, you know.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. Matt Meehan is associate dean and associate professor of government at Hillsdale in D.C. and his new book with beautiful illustrations by John Folly and the wonderful words by Matt Meehan is the American Book of Fables. Matt Meehan, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.

[Matt Meehan]

My pleasure.

[Scott Bertram]

Up next, Randy Barnett is with us. Well known constitutional scholar, but we talk about his new memoir about tales of true crime and corruption in Chicago. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.

[Jeremiah Regan]

Hello. This is Jeremiah Regan, executive director of online learning here at Hillsdale College. And I have some great news. We've brought Hillsdale's incredibly popular free online courses to the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. And our next series is the American From Liberalism to Despotism, a course taught by Associate professor of politics Kevin Slack and Hillsdale President Larry P. Arn. After listening to all 11 episodes, you'll have a deeper understanding of what has happened to America in the past 60 years and what we can do about it today. The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, hosted by Online Learning Marketing Director Juan Davalos and me, expands Hillsdale's mission to provide all who wish to learn the education necessary to increase happiness and to preserve the civil and religious liberties of America. We want you to be a part of it at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. Subscribe now to the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast to hear new episodes every week with additional commentary and insights from our team. Go to Podcast Hillsdale. Edu to learn more. That's Podcast Hillsdale.

[Narrator]

Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being and we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale Edu or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your audio.

[Scott Bertram]

Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to check out more Hillsdale College audio at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. Older editions of this show, plus the Larry Arn Show, Imprimis and the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. Find them wherever you get your audio. We're joined by Randy Barnett. He is a Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He directs the Georgetown center for the Constitution. Also prolific author, great originalist. He's been on the program before. His brand new book is called Felony Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. Randy, thanks so much for joining us.

[Randy Barnett]

Always here to talk to you, Scott.

[Scott Bertram]

This is a treat. We talk to you about A Life for Liberty, the Making of an American Originalist. And inside that book, the memoir is this mention of your time working in Chicago as a ADA and other roles. And I didn't know that about your past. And now you've got an entire book with stories from this really interesting time. Why an entire separate book from the memoir even about your time in Chicago?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, the memoir, as you will recall, is very, very long. Maybe a little too long, but I had my reasons. However, adding this material in would have made it impossibly long. And so the way to get the memoir out the door was to take these chapters out of the memoir. And then by doing that, I was actually able to blow them up and add a lot more detail, add a lot more cases, add backgrounds on the individuals I was dealing with, the lawyers I was working with, add more information about what happened after the cases than I even knew about. And also draw lessons throughout the book spontaneously, so to speak, as we tell stories, as I tell stories, lessons about the criminal justice system, lessons about lawyering and all. All of that would have been impossible within the framework of a lifetime memoir that really traces my path to being a constitutional law professor.

[Scott Bertram]

Why'd you want to be a prosecutor? How did that end up being where you ended up?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, it's pretty simple. I'm a child of TV and the TV show came on when I was 10 years old called the Defenders, starring EG Marshall and Robert Reed as a father son criminal defense team in New York, filmed on location in New York. It was inspiring. It was gritty. And one of the things, in hindsight, I realized for why that was the show that made me want to be a lawyer and not Perry Mason, which was on every Sunday night, is that Perry Mason was about solving murders and the Defenders was about practicing law. And ultimately it was about justice with it making the criminal justice system work. And that actually, now that I've gone back and rewatched episodes of the Defenders, that included cooperation by the prosecutors and judges as well as the father son legal defense team, the Prestons. And so that's what got me into it. And then whether I was going to be a defense lawyer or prosecutor, that sort of was an open question until I got into law school. And for various reasons I opted for the prosecution side. But I could have been a public defender. I would have been happy to be maybe, if the Cook County Public Defender's office wasn't as political as it was, and my future there would have been much more up in doubt. As opposed to the prosecutor's office, which at the time I went in, there was a Republican held office in which promotion was based on merit.

[Scott Bertram]

Felony Review is the new book from Randy Barnett you mentioned. You draw some lessons learned, some things perhaps in reviewing material early in the book, you point out that one of the benefits of the rule of law, which requires that like cases be treated alike, is that any deviation from the norm is a signal, a potential signal of something improper. How did that help you in your early days?

[Randy Barnett]

Right. Well, it was a lesson that I drew from the first case that got fixed out from under me in auto theft, preliminary hearing, a big chop shop case involving taking stolen cars, chopping them down for parts, which was a kind of murder one type case if you're working auto theft. And we had a case come up where it was a preliminary hearing and the judge had a standing rule, no motions to dismiss at preliminary hearing. And as we are as the defense attorney is cross examining the arresting officer and the arresting officer is admitting to circumstances that sound an awful lot like an illegal search, we object beyond the scope of preliminary hearing because we're not supposed to do that here. And then the judge overrules that objection and we went, oh my, now that's a complete deviation from his standing practice. And so then we knew when the case was thrown out that not only was the cop on the take, but the judge was on the take too. And in felony review, I'm able to name names of all the people who were on the take because they ultimately ended up facing justice themselves.

[Scott Bertram]

Yes, Operation Greylord, a well known sting in the Chicago area. I want to come back to that in a little bit. That first judge that we meet, we meet a lot of judges in this book and they're all such rich characters. Judge John J. Devine. Dollars Devine, the nickname for him because he is on the take in fixing some of these cases. He's not the only one, though. And this happens to you not infrequently through your career. What is it like as a prosecutor working with a deck known to be stacked against you?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, in fairness to the Cook county judicial judiciary, this was primarily done at the misdemeanor level and the traffic court level, because that's where you could do high volume of small dollar corruptions, make a lot of money, but not raise a lot of political heat. By the time you get to the felony trial courts, things were on the level. And those judges had their strengths and their weaknesses, but being on the take was not one of them. With one exception, which I do talk about in the book, but only one, and he didn't actually fix a case out from under me. But later on we discovered he'd fixed some other cases, but he was the only circuit court judge in the history of the circuit court to be convicted of throwing a murder case for money. So that was very unusual.

[Scott Bertram]

Scott talking with Randy Barnett, his brand new book, Felony Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. There's a really interesting part in here where you answer the question, why do criminals confess to the police? Why don't they shut up? Why aren't they silent? Why do people feel like they want to or have to? Why do they confess to police?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, first of all, let's talk about the felony review unit, because that's where I got the opportunity to examine so many defendants or people who are accused and get confessions. The felony review unit is a specialized unit in Chicago that was set up as a result of an arrangement between the Chicago Police Department, which a unit of the municipality of the city of Chicago and the Cook county state's attorney's office, who works for Cook County. They have no corporate relationship with each other, but they enter an agreement that say that no felony charges could be brought by a Chicago police officer without approval of a Cook county states attorney. And that meant you needed a full time unit of state's attorneys available to go to district police stations, interview witnesses, talk to the cops, try to get statements or confessions from accused if possible. And the felony review was set up to be this 247 unit. I was on it for nine months. You work on all day shift for three days, and then you get three days off and you work an all night shift. You have your own squad car. Your offices are in the police station, not in. You don't go to court. It's fascinating. It is the core of felony review, the book, in addition to my trial experience. And so that's the reason why I was interviewing a whole lot of people in the police stations. Prosecutors never get to talk to the accused because by the time the prosecutor sees them, they're represented by counsel. Right, but if you're in the police stations on felony review, you do get to talk to them. And so I took a lot of confessions, and I was able to draw some generalizations from the confessions I took.

[Scott Bertram]

What's the most prominent one? I mean, what is the most likely reason, most common reason, that a criminal's gonna confess to the police?

[Randy Barnett]

That's very easy. They don't know they're confessing. They're trying to talk themselves out of a crime. And by trying to talk themselves out of a crime, they're actually talking themselves into a crime. So let me give you an example. If somebody says, yeah, my brother and I did go and try to rip off the former cellmate drug dealer of my brother, but it was my brother who stabbed him to death, not me. Well, that was. They're trying to get themselves both brothers, by the way, in that case, both Robert King and George King each made a statement like that against the other one. And I had to Try both of them separately because of that. But in each case, they were basically confessing to felony murder. It didn't matter which one of them stabbed. I, I'm not 100% sure I know which one of them stabbed Gregory Perkins to death, but it didn't matter. Legally, they confessed.

[Scott Bertram]

Randy, in our first conversation, or our conversation about a life for liberty, I think we brought up this question about how as a prosecutor, you would deal with these low level drug cases that could result in jail time for the accused when that's not something that you necessarily believed in. And there's a portion in felony review when you talk about you're about to prosecute a death penalty case when at the time you were anti death penalty. How did you juggle those, you know, those conflicts and what ended up happening in that case?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, there weren't that many conflicts. Happily, the drug conflict was resolved by the fact that I worked the misdemeanor drug court, and my boss at the time, the Cook County State's Attorney, had a very liberal policy on personal possession, so you could get diversion. So I never sent anybody to jail for drugs. And then when it came to this one case, this death penalty case, it ultimately pled out. And so I never really had to do what I was probably going to do, which was try the case. But it was an interesting phenomenon. It also goes to my contrary nature. When I was in college, I was for the death penalty. When I was a prosecutor, I was against it. And now that I'm a law professor in liberal law, Professor Lan, I'm for it again.

[Scott Bertram]

Randy, one of my, I think it's my favorite part of felony review is, is the twist in the end, and we've already alluded to this Operation Greylord probe, which resulted in a number of high profile judges and others in Chicago

[Interviewer/Host]

being put behind bars.

[Scott Bertram]

And there's a wonderful twist that you can't see coming. I'll leave it to readers to find out for themselves. Okay. But also in the book, you have a story about witnessing voter fraud in Chicago, which is very hard for me to believe that happens there, but you say it does. And one of the lessons you draw here is that requiring matching signatures is the most important way to combat voter fraud. Why does that work?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, we were on election patrol, and I thought election patrol was just a waste of time. What was I ever going to do on election patrol? The only thing that we could do when we showed up at a polling place as state's attorneys was to stand behind the judges who were supposed to be Democratic and Republican judges, but they were all Democratic judges because there are no Republicans in Chicago. And so. And what they're supposed to do is somebody goes to fill out a card to vote, he signs the card, it goes up to the desk, and then he shows them the card. And then they compare the signature in the card with the signature in the voter registration binder. And if they match, they give him a ballot. And I'm looking down, watching the signature comparison, and there's absolutely no comparison. This person, I'm looking down, there's no comparison between the card and the binder. They're just completely different. Then I look up and I see I'm looking at a kid, I'm looking at a teenager, older teenager, who probably isn't old enough to vote anyway. And so I'm stuck. I got to do something about it. And then the book talks about how hard it was to get anybody to do something about it. There's a Chicago Police Department, Chicago police officer there assigned. He wouldn't do anything about it. And I was being escorted by a Cook county sheriff's policeman, and he wouldn't do anything about it. So the book talks about how I was ultimately able to get somebody to do something about it. And ultimately the kid was given supervision down the line when it was adjudicated. But it was a very interesting example of how voter flood is done without voter id, without voter verification. And it's an old story.

[Scott Bertram]

Randy Barnett with us, his book Felony Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago, available now. Rich characters throughout the book, you are not shy about explaining things you did wrong from forgetting to read someone. Miranda writes at one point, your first cross examination didn't go all that well, but you still got the conviction. You had a conviction overturned because of the way you presented your closing argument. Would you be willing to identify in your mind the biggest mistake you made while working in Chicago?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, I think it's the last one. And that is, it was during closing argument I accused the defense lawyers of engaging in cheap lawyers tricks, which they had done. But in fact, the Capella court thought that was improper closing argument and the conviction was reversed. They ultimately defended, ultimately pled guilty upon, you know, remand after conviction. But that was the biggest mistake I made. And it was, you know, it. I didn't know there. But here's the problem. Here's the thing. It wasn't only my fault. The defense objected to my saying that. And if the, if the judge had sustained the objection, I would have stopped. But the judge overruled the objection and I kept going. So there were two people in the court that made that mistake. One day it was me and the cop of that court, which is the judge. If all the judge had to do was say, objection sustained, and we both would have been saved.

[Interviewer/Host]

That reversal you worked with and under a few names that became very prominent

[Scott Bertram]

and important in Chicago, both Democrats. Richard M. Daley, the son of Richard J. Daly, who was then mayor of Chicago after serving in the prosecutor's office. And then Dick Devine, who then became. I forget the exact title, but what. Chief prosecutor, state's attorney in Cook county years after the fact. Both guys pretty partisan. Democrats. You are not. What was it like working underneath and with them?

[Randy Barnett]

I worked for Bernie Carey, the Republican former FBI agent reform state's attorney, someone who actually helped initiate Operation Greylord for three years. And we really prided ourselves on being a professional outfit and nonpartisan professional. You know, most of the people I work with were Democrats, had been hired by Ed Hanrahan prior to Kerry coming in. And then when Rich Daly won after I was there for three years, the next day after the election, it was like a morgue. It was like a wake at the office because we just felt like all of our professionalism was going to go down the drain and we were going to be just another corrupt Chicago institution. Or maybe as political as the public defender's office was. But that's not what happened. It turns out that Richard Daley, Dick, you know, Richie Daley, the son of the mayor, who had his eyes set on being mayor himself, decided that the way to. For a political future is to be an effective prosecutor. And so, much to my surprise and other people's surprise, all the supervisors normally have to resign. They resigned. And the people that he promoted from within were the good people. There was a few partisan people, partisan Democrat type people who he didn't promote. And so, at least for the time I was there, he ran the office wonderfully. And before I left, before I resigned, I took a leave of absence to go to University of Chicago Law School before I could get a teaching job. But after I formally resigned, or as I formally resigned, I made an appointment to go meet with him in the Daily center just to thank him for being a standup prosecutor when I worked for him, because he was Randy Barnett with us.

[Interviewer/Host]

Felony Review is the new book. I know you a little bit, and

[Scott Bertram]

I know you keep things. You've sent me emails where you have pictures and items from the past. And I have to imagine that all those things and some of them pop up as figures in the book,

[Randy Barnett]

are

[Scott Bertram]

a big help when it comes to remembering details, filling in blanks, and again, making these stories and characters come to life in this book about crime and corruption in Chicago. Did you intentionally do. Did you say, I need to keep all this stuff? I got to take copious notes? Was that intentional back then?

[Randy Barnett]

I'm a pack rat, and I'm very sentimental, and I just can't part with things I have a sentimental attachment to. And that was the thing. But I thought something that totally nobody has really asked me about but you're sort of alluding to is one of the practices I decided to do when I started in the felony trial court was I ordered up and kept a copy of the mugshot of every defendant I tried a jury trial of. And so I actually have a complete collection of Chicago Police Department mug shots for every jury trial. And all those mugshots are in the book.

[Scott Bertram]

They are. They are in the book. I want to close Randy with a question about the postscript, which is a bit of fun. These letters that you wrote to Grant Tinker at NBC about Hill Street Blues. Steven Bochko, who is the creator of LA Law in the 1980s, and you know, the title is better than TV. What are the biggest things that TV writers get wrong when they try to. To create these prosecutors and these characters in their shows?

[Randy Barnett]

Yeah, well, the biggest thing is that they, they. They consider prosecutors to be adversaries to the police, and we are not. We tend to work with the police. We're part of law enforcement ourselves, although Law and Order gets that part right. But I would think the biggest thing that bothers me is just the way people talk to each other. On tv, they give speeches. On Law and Order, they give speeches all the time. The way people talk is a lot more like the Wire. The Wire is the closest thing we have to what it's really like. And it's a cop show, not a lawyer show.

[Scott Bertram]

Right.

[Randy Barnett]

And so. And the prosecutor is an intimate part of the Wire. And that's what we were. We work with law enforcement, and we're not the same as they are. And in some respects, on Felony, we're there to check them, but we're also there to help them. And I think that's the biggest thing they get wrong.

[Scott Bertram]

Randy Barnett is Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law center, also directs the Georgetown center for the Constitution. Fantastic, engrossing new book, Felony Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. Randy, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.

[Randy Barnett]

It was my pleasure. And there are more stories than the ones we talked about.

[Scott Bertram]

Indeed there are. And they're all. They're mostly fun. They're mostly fun. Randy, thanks so much.

[Randy Barnett]

Take care.

[Scott Bertram]

That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Matt Meehan, his new book, the American Book of Fables, and Randy Barnett with Felony Review. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast podcast. Find it at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.