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- [00:02]
A
Guess what day it is? It's French Friday. It's French fry day. So grab your fries and say hooray. David French is here to play on French Friday. It's French fry day.
- [00:17]
B
Hey everyone, welcome back. It's French Friday. It's actually Black French Friday, although it's not a reference to you, it's reference to Black Friday, which is da da, da da. So, okay, yeah, it's Black French Friday. It's the day after Thanksgiving. To timestamp this, David French and I are recording this Friday before. What is the date today? The 21st.
- [00:39]
A
Yes, today is the 21st. It is the 21st. So maybe we should say French Black Friday. French Black Friday.
- [00:46]
B
But then you don't get the French fry pun, whatever.
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A
And that's the core of the song.
- [00:53]
B
We are recording this a little bit early because of the holiday. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And for that reason it's a little tough these days to do timely issues a week out because of the speed with which the news moves. Heaven knows what people are talking about around their Thanksgiving tables and on Black Friday. So we're going to do something a little bit different, David. Instead of talking about something timely, we're going to talk about something historic. Ken Burns just came out with this new documentary on PBS about the American Revolution. I know you've not seen it yet, although you are familiar with the American Revolution. Are you a fan of Ken Burns generally, his documentaries?
- [01:29]
A
Absolutely. I mean, the Civil War documentary is in the pantheon, you know, it's absolutely in the pantheon. So, yeah, I, I have always enjoyed his documentaries. I mean, it's hard to, it's, it's hard to match the sensation that the Civil War documentary was. And I don't know that we'll ever replicate that. You know, that was a different time. It was a different. Before the explosion of social media and everything and our short intention spans. But it was, it was the only documentary in my life that has really that I would say captured the public imagination for a sustained period of time. He's just a master of the craft, is.
- [02:10]
B
I've enjoyed that one, obviously, but even the more subtle topics like the national parks. Yeah, I learned so much and it's so beautifully done. And I mean, he did one on Prohibition, which was amazing. I think he did one on Theodore Roosevelt, if I recall. There's a bunch of them that I've watched that I've just really, really, really enjoyed. And I, I have watched baseball.
- [02:30]
A
The baseball series.
- [02:31]
B
Yeah, I, I've watched this whole series on the Revolutionary War. And I mean, I, I was a history major as an undergrad. I love this stuff. I've read about it, I've read biographies. It isn't like I learned something dramatically new, but to see it stitched together and told so well and accessibly I was very, very happy about. But what I want to do today is I want to see what lessons we should be drawing both from the Revolution and just the founding generation and how those things apply to where we are today as a country, in our politics, in our divisions. Obviously a broad topic, but I want to start with one that I thought Ken Burns brought out really well in the documentary, and that is, I think a lot of people assume that the revolution was sparked purely by no taxation without representation, the abuses of Parliament and the king, and forsaking the colonists and their interests and things like that. And that's all true. But one of the facets that a lot of people don't know about or have overlooked is the degree to which interest in the frontier was a massive factor here. And Ken Burns documentary talks about how during the French and Indian War, or the Seven Years War, depending on who's titling it, colonists, including George Washington, fought with the British against the French and against Native Americans, won that war. And part of their motivation was they were looking west, going, there's a lot of land out there, though, occupied by Native Americans that they nonetheless wanted and saw their fortunes tied to. And yet after the war, Great Britain said, yeah, you colonists, you're not allowed to go over the Appalachian Mountains because we need to solidify our treaties with the Native American Americans and we don't need these aggravations and we don't need to be sending more troops over there to protect colonists. So please just stay out of this Western territory. And they were so upset about this. I don't know what you've read or studied on that topic, but how does that factor into your understanding of the Revolution?
- [04:33]
A
Well, I, I, I, I'm glad you started with the French and Indian War, Seven Years War, that, because I don't think you can understand the Revolution without understanding that on multiple fronts. And this is one of them. So it's absolutely the case that you began to see this. And I'm going to recommend a book for folks. It's called the Crucible of War. It's about the French and Indian War. It covers the French and Indian aspect of the war. It also covers the European aspects of the war, which were very significant. Many people would say that this was sort of a Proto World War that the Seven Years War was a. Was fought on the European continent and the North American continent on the way. On the oceans across the globe. So there's a couple of things that really emerge there and. But the primary thing that emerges is that already you could see that these were two distinct cultures and two distinct peoples. And that has huge ramifications. So. And a very vivid way of seeing this is watch a movie. I'm going to recommend a movie called Last of the Mohicans.
- [05:37]
B
Oh yeah, Daniel Day Lewis.
- [05:39]
A
Yeah, Daniel Day Lewis. It's phenomenal. I love that movie so much.
- [05:43]
B
Great soundtrack.
- [05:44]
A
But you've. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. So you, you see there that the Crown and the colonists don't exactly see this as one team, one fight. The colonists are very stubbornly independent and individualistic. They have their own interests and their own desires and their own war aims. Here the Crown is very much of the view that there's no distinction between the mother country and the colonists. You do what we say and you are to you, our strategic interests override your colonial interests, period. And so this created real tension. And throughout the war you had this push pulled, give and take, where you had the British regulars subject to Crown discipline, subject to. Who are subject to sort of operating the Crown and according to the Crown strategy. And then you had the colonial militia and the colonial forces that were brought in as well. And a lot of times they just didn't match. They just. And the match wasn't just strategic. This is super important. It was also cultural. Already you could see that the culture of the colonies was so different from the culture in England and that this was not a sustainable. This was not a sustainable marriage under the terms as they existed in the mid 18th century.
- [07:10]
B
Yeah, I mean, for sure there's definitely. And you can understand why, I mean, the colonies were far more pluralistic culture because people were coming from all over the place. They were in a frontier, even on the east coast for many, many generations where they had to survive, forms people to think and live differently. More individualism. But there's also this perspective.
- [07:31]
A
These were not the rule followers who went to the colonies. Exactly. Yeah.
- [07:35]
B
Right. They were risk takers and entrepreneurs and.
- [07:39]
A
That was just dissidents.
- [07:40]
B
Dissidents. Right. That was built into the culture from the get go. But I think the other factor in all this, I mean, I read an interview with Ken Burns recently where he said, you know, there's a reason why they called themselves the Continental Congress and the Continental army, not the East Coast Army. Right. Because they had aspirations they understood that what laid west was this vast continent of opportunity and a potential future empire and untold wealth that these lands could produce. So there was this. I think we underplay the economic interests of the Patriots, that even, even some of the poorest people fighting in the Continental army understood that. And they were promised, you'll get 10 acres of land out west once we win this war. Like they realized, I have more fortune ahead of me westward of the Appalachian Mountains than I do in loyalty to the Crown. So I think we just want to romanticize this. Oh, it's all people fighting for their freedom and no taxate, no taxation without representation and oppression. Da, da, da, da. And a lot of it was, hey, you're limiting my financial interests and all the potential that lies west of these mountains. And we want to throw off those. Those fetters from the Crown so we can go pursue those dreams, right?
- [08:56]
A
You know that when I say there's competing interests here, I mean this on a full spectrum. There's competing economic interests, there's competing strategic interests. There's the moment you start to see yourself as a separate people. Your economic interests are not going to align as well as your political and legal philosophy. So that's what I say. You know, this wasn't just a philosophical dispute, right? I think you're exactly right about that, Scott. This was a dispute between what was becoming two distinct peoples with two distinct conceptions of self interest, right. And two distinctly. And different, Distinctly different political philosophies. Now, they borrowed from each other, you know, that the colonists were borrowing from the English Bill of Rights, right? They're coming from John Locke. You know, they've got a lot of English philosophy in them. And then you combine that with sort of that colonial and expansionist sort of self reliance, independence, ambition. Ambition's a part of this. Then you can begin to see how these were increasingly like two ships passing in the night. And that's on all fronts. So I think it's important to highlight the economic.
- [10:08]
B
Okay, I want to make a translate here. I want to make a transition into applying this to where we are today as a country. But the big picture, as I took it, is obviously the colonists had interests that were very specific to their location and the westward expansion of those colonies. Whereas the crown and the government in London was looking at a global empire. And they. They were saying, hey, you British colonists in the new world, in North America, you should have the same interests we do in this global empire. And they're like, we don't care what's going on down in Barbados, we don't care about Jamaica, we don't care about India, we care about what's west of the Appalachians. And those sets of interests did not align and creates all kinds of problems. Okay, fast forward 21st century United States. Are we naive about the aligning of our interests as a country today? Are there factions, groups that simply don't view themselves as bound to the whole anymore? And therefore we're in a fiction not unlike the Crown and Parliament was 250 years ago.
- [11:13]
A
You know, here. That's a very interesting question. I think of it less as do. Are we not feeling bound to the whole as versus competing interests of wanting to dominate the whole? So in other words, it's less that you have a subset, say like you have a group of people in California who no longer feel a part of the other 49 states. Although there are, you know, there is a California independence movement. It's always back, you know, percolating, just like there's a Texas corresponding Cascadia and some others. But as a general matter right now what you have is a California. Let's say you have that the, the folks in California are folks in Texas who may have great disagreements with people outside of their state, but their response is that they are. It's less that they feel alienated from the hole, it's more that they feel like they should be running the whole. And so they're less in the colonist position than they are in the George III position, if that makes sense. So they're in the position. So our factions are more like Parliament and the Crown. In other words, we want to be the ones who are setting and dictating for the entirety of the continental entity.
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B
Okay.
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A
Whereas. So that, that's the distinction that I would see.
- [12:33]
B
But you're also the guy that wrote a whole book on the, the, the threat of civil war and disunion. As we continue to see the sorting of Americans and red states become redder, blue states become bluer, do we risk not just a fight over who's controlling the federal government, but we do run a risk of actual separation, of a national divorce of sorts.
- [12:57]
A
Totally. I think that's the second evolutionary step. So essentially what you have is a situation where I want to run this whole thing that I, you know, my vision for the country. So pre Civil War you have sort of these, these competing visions of like what is the United States going to be? Is it going to be a place where slavery just keeps expanding, expanding, expanding and that concept for that to happen, the slave Power of the south would have to essentially control the whole. To. To allow that to happen and to limit the slave power of the south, the Union, the. The abolitionists in the Republican party had to control the whole. And it was as soon as the south realized that they were hopeless, it was the election of Lincoln that realized that it was hopeless to control the whole. And the Republican party actually had that capacity, in that emerging capacity to begin to gain the power to dictate terms to the South. It's that when you get hopeless at the controlling the whole is when you often then say, well, then I can control where I am and I should be able to control where I am. So I think you're talking about evolutionary steps in the process.
- [14:09]
B
Okay, let's move on to another element that I thought the documentary brought out really well. And history validates this. And it's the idea that Washington and even the Congress came to the realization that they didn't really have to beat the British. They just had to outlast. They had to outlast the British. They had to make the expense and cost of the war intolerable back in England so that they would essentially give up. And I think it's interesting that the focus of the battle, focus of the war for England changes over time. They come to a conclusion. After winning New York, which was a huge prize, and Philadelphia, the British eventually realize these northern colonies, these middle colonies and the New England colonies, they're not that wealthy. They don't make us that much money. The real money for us is in the southern slave economies and all the tobacco and cotton that's coming out of those colonies. So let's just focus our attention on trying to basically forget the northern ones. They're going to be gone. Let's just hang on to the real cash cow in the South. So then they focus their energies in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and eventually they come to the realization of, we're probably gonna lose this whole stinking thing. But the real money is down in the Caribbean. It's in Jamaica, it's in Barbados. It's in those colonies that we're really making. So let's contain the spread of this cancer. Let's just let the colonies go in North America, but let's hang on to everything else. And they just make both an economic and I don't know if you'd make it a moral or philosophical decision, but they decide, this is not the wealthiest part of our empire. Let it go. And we celebrate it as, look at, we defeated the greatest empire in the world, and aren't we fantastic? But it meant that on the colonial side, the real strategy was just perseverance. How much can we suffer and tolerate, and can we outlast the resources of the empire and its willingness to do it? So that raises a question for me. Where is that value today? This. This idea of the value of perseverance? And is that still part of our American culture? Or do you think we've gone soft? Have we gone squish? Have we become snowflakes? Have we lost that grit that was really there at the beginning?
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A
Well, you know, we've been at the receiving end of that perseverance approach when you're talking about, say, Vietnam or you're talking about Afghanistan, et cetera.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Where the understanding and the realization is that, oh, we cannot defeat, you know, from the. From the North Vietnamese to the Taliban, we cannot defeat the US Military in open combat, but we can exist. We can. We can be a constant thorn in your side. We can never be. We can't be fully defeated. We know you can't. We can't defeat you affirmatively, but we can never be fully defeated. And that begins to create a. Over time, that creates this cost benefit analysis and in which the greater power often say it's just not worth it anymore. And that is a victory. I mean, that is. That is a strategy. It's a proven strategy for smaller, less powerful entities who have, for example, geographic advantages or other kinds of advantages that prevent the larger power from, you know, so in the North Vietnam, we never invaded North Vietnam. They had that sanctuary. The Taliban had sanctuaries all through. In parts of Pakistan. We never could fully grapple with the enemy. And so they were able to persist. So that's a great question on the reverse side. And I really do have mixed feelings about this guy because I do think in many ways, we as a culture have demonstrated, and even up to the relatively recent past, an enormous amount of grit and determination even across our differences. And I think the Cold War is a tremendous example of that. I mean, we had, you know, we had decade after decade after decade of extreme vigilance, extreme readiness, bipartisan commitment to. To containment at the very least. And so that's a lot of grit. And. And by the way, the Soviet Union didn't necessarily expect us to show all of that grit because in previous iterations of American power, we had surged forward during a conflict and then immediately gone back and sort of retreated into our shores, World War I being a prime example. And so. And in fact, there was a lot of debate after World War II, internally. I mean, one of the reasons why Eisenhower ran for president as a Republican was to make sure that the Republicans were brought on side for the NATO mission. Yeah, I was, I talked to Susan Eisenhower about this, that he was very concerned about creating that consensus for NATO and he, and when he saw reemerging Republican isolationism, he wanted to do something about it. So we do.
- [19:04]
B
I'm reading that new biography by the way, about Eisenhower that just came out called the Light of Battle about D day and the emergence of the United States post World War II. I'm only about a third of the way into the book. It's so good, so, so good.
- [19:16]
A
Oh, great recommendation. I'm going to check that out.
- [19:18]
B
Yeah, definitely check it out. Sorry, go ahead.
- [19:21]
A
But so in the relatively recent past we do have that, but here's the threat to it. Right now we have factions in American politics, very, very powerful factions who despise the concept of things like the post war consensus. They despise the idea of the consensus to begin with. They view that as establishment. They view that as inherently suspect. And so you do have, I think, some illiberal wings and extreme wings who would literally just lurch us completely back and forth into two, totally into really competing, incompatible strategic paradigms if they were able to have their way, gain control of the parties. And you know, then of course have that natural give and take you have in two party system. So that's one of the reasons why I think it's very important to have and to try to forge consensus values. Because in the absence of consensus values, there's no grit, there's no determination.
- [20:27]
B
Well, okay, speaking of consensus values, I mean, historians debate how much of the colonies was really patriots, right? How many joined the resistance to the empire. And shorthand is a lot of people say about a third of the country was patriots and sided with independence. About a third were loyalists who sided with the crown. And at least a third were just keeping their heads down trying to survive because it was in many regards a sort of civil war because it was subjects of the King killing other subjects of the king. And there wasn't great consensus in unity around whether or not this was the right course of action. And a lot of the people who did. Again, Ken Burns does such a good job of this in the documentary. He shows how different people look at the situation and make a choice out of self interest. So there were a lot of enslaved Africans who decide we're going to side with the British because the British said if you fight for US will give you your freedom. That's in their self interest. They did that. There were a lot of.
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A
Why on earth would any enslaved person fight for the institution that it. Enslaved? I mean, exactly. Exactly.
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B
Right. And then there were a lot of poor colonists who said, well, I'm being promised a wage and some land if I join the Continental Army. All right? It's better than what I'm doing now. I might die, but I could, you know, better myself and my family if I enlist. So they did that. There's a lot of self interest at play here, but there was not a united set of beliefs that fueled this whole thing from New Hampshire all the way down to South Carolina. So what does that mean for us today? I don't know if it's possible to get enough consensus in America today to really build that perseverance and the grit you're talking about. But is it enough to get 35, 40% of Americans to align around something in order to make it happen?
- [22:25]
A
Well, it's always been enough to get a committed minority. Committed minorities tend to tend to, over time, be indispensable to any movement. It's the committed minority that ultimately wins over sort of that. Because in any human society, you've got a very similar dynamic, which is it's always only a minority of people who are really super engaged in the events of the day. One of the things that was very chilling to me was talking to a person who was. Had been doing a lot of peacemaking efforts, engaging in a lot of peacemaking efforts in the Balkans. And she said something really chilling to me. She said again and again when she would talk to residents of Bosnia and Sarajevo, and remember, if you're sky and I's age, you can remember vividly the massacres in Sarajevo and the vicious violence in the Balkans. And she said something really interesting. There were people who were just living their lives and did not realize everything was spiraling out of control until literally there was a militia checkpoint at the end of their road.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And they're like, how did this happen? So most people just live their lives. They keep. They keep their heads down. It's always committed minorities that spearhead revolutionary movements or ideological movements or even political movements. But their test of their staying power is their ability to bring alongside ultimately, and that is sort of everyone else. And I've heard that same 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 division. And the really interesting question, sky, which I don't think any one of us can answer definitively, and it's something Sarah and I have been talking about now, across parts of two different episodes of Advisory Opinions, knowing what you know about yourself, would you be a, have been a patriot or a Tory?
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B
Yeah.
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A
And why. And that's, that's actually a hard question.
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B
It is a hard question. And you can't help, especially when you're watching this documentary, to ask yourself the same question.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I, I think I would probably lean Tory.
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A
Oh, I, I think for me, just knowing sort of my fundamental disposition, I would have absolutely leaned Tory to begin with. Several. I'm a, you know, I'm a patriotic person. I have a high value on loyalty, you know, especially in military contexts. I'm, I believe in hierarchy. And so all of that would point you strongly Tory. But at the same time I have this very anti bully disposition.
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B
Yes, this is the dilemma.
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A
Yeah, this is the dilemma. And I think it actually kind of mirrors the way the journey that a lot of the colonists were on. Because if, you know, it did not start out as an independence movement.
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B
Right.
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A
It started out as a movement for reform. How can we live together better? And then it turned into an independence movement only after the crown got really punitive.
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B
Right.
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A
And, and I, when I was teaching the founding two semesters ago, I was teaching, I teach a class called the Philosophies of the American Founding. I said, this is a textbook example of how heavy handed responses can take manageable disputes totally and then turn them into outright war.
- [25:43]
B
Totally. Yeah, I, I totally resonate with what you're saying. When I think about my general posture of order, submitting to authorities. Take a Romans 13 approach if you want, you know, all right, yeah, we need to submit to the authority under which we live and are governed by. But then as you see those abuses mount up and the overreaction of the crown to what are relatively small slights, you go, wait a minute, they're abusing their power and authority. Then I don't know, maybe I would have been swayed to go more the patriot direction. But again, going back to the documentary, and I keep recommending it, but one of the things that brought out so well is you had very intelligent people obviously on the side of the independence. John Adams and Patrick Henry and George Washington and Jefferson and all Benjamin Franklin, intelligent, thoughtful, educated people making the case for the grievances against the crown and the unfairness of what they were doing and you know, nature's God and human rights and all these great things. Wonderful. But then what the documentary shows so clearly is as this movement starts snowballing and it gets further and further away from these high ideals it becomes a mob. And you see that a little bit with the Boston Tea Party. And then it just goes on from there where you see the horrific things that people do to Tories and to their neighbors and the pillaging, literal rape, horrific violence that are done against their countrymen. And it's just clear that these people, they're not reading John Locke, they're not reading, they're not reading Thomas Paine. They're just caught up in the rabble of the whole thing going, oh, we're overthrowing authorities in power and they just scour the countryside and destroy their neighbors. And it made me realize that even things that are done with well intentioned, smart goals quickly can spin out of control. And no message for today. And there was violence on the Tory side as well, and the British soldiers. Horrific, horrific things as well. So regardless of which side you thought had the moral high ground, eventually they all deteriorate into just awful chaos.
- [27:58]
A
Well, one of the things that's very vivid in the Museum of the American Revolution which I visited, this is just the nerd that I am. Sky. I had a speaking engagement in Philly this summer, had a free afternoon and just I'd never been to the Museum of American Revolution. Let me go to it. Fantastic. Loved it. But it's very vivid about these mob attacks in the pre revolutionary period. And again, go back to what we were talking about earlier. Like if you had an anti bullying impulse and you like law and order, the idea of the Tea Party or the tarring and feathering, which is not a funny thing. Tarring and feathering is a awful experience to put a human being through and to see that happening. You know, look, there's a book by Stacy Schiff about Sam Adams. You know, the guy who has the beer right. Dude was, had problems. I mean, you know, there, there were, there were issues. And so, you know, it's funny the stories we tell ourselves, like we were on the side of the angels. And look, I love the principles in the pre, you know, in the opening of the Declaration of Independence. I love the principles articulated by John Locke. I think the English Bill of Rights was a wonderful precursor of the, our Bill of Rights. I mean you can go through it. There's a lot there that is good, that is, we should be proud of, but also, but also we should also be humble because our founding was not, was absolutely not this just unalloyed march of the righteous right against the unrighteous. And you know, another book that I would urge people to read is called Valiant Ambition and it's about how the separate arcs of George Washington and Benedict Arnold.
- [29:50]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [29:51]
A
And how fortunate we are as a country that sort of the George Washington wing of the revolution was the one that prevailed because there was a lot of internal tension amongst the revolutionaries as to who's going to run this thing, who's going to be running the place when it's all over, etc. Etc. And some of the people who were revolutionaries were vicious, brutish, horrible people. And thanks be to God that that faction did not ultimately end up sort of ruling America and running America afterwards. Thank. Thank the Lord that the first president was a George Washington. It could have been conceivable, had some different things happened earlier in the revolution, that Benedict Arnold, a man of Benedict Arnold's character, could have been the main revolutionary leader.
- [30:40]
B
And I mean, and his character is interesting because he was a very successful general, showed an enormous amount of bravery on the battlefield, was injured terribly multiple times.
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A
Arguably a better battlefield commander than Washington.
- [30:53]
B
Yes. And yet throughout his career was. Was tainted by accusations of immorality and scandal and all kinds. And it, it gave you a glimpse into what he would eventually do in betraying his country. Which takes me to another topic I really wanted to touch on, which is George Washington. And not just Washington, but one of the historians in the documentary talked about how he's hesitant to buy into the. The great man theory of history, that history is pushed along by individuals of exceptional power, character, effort, whatever, who catapult history. And Washington often fits into. Yet it's hard to imagine the American Revolution and the founding generation accomplishing what it did apart from someone like George Washington. And there were others. I mean, we had Franklin's diplomacy with France, Jefferson's philosophy and eloquence with his pen. Adams and Madison and their legal framing of things. Hamilton and his establishment of a bureaucracy and a banking system, that was super important. But Washington and his character has his fingerprints all over this thing. From his ability to command a ragtag army that has no sense of unity because they come from all these colonies of unity.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then enormous hardship, many of whom are ready to abandon the cause, and he repeatedly draws them back in and keeps that thing going. And then his willingness to literally lay down his sword to give up his command to the Continental Congress rather than assert himself as a monarch or take over some kind of. When the country actually wanted him to, they. We needed a leader. And he said, nope, I'm going back to my farm, thank you.
- [32:39]
A
We take that for granted, like, oh, well, of course, that's what you do if you're creating a small r Republican nation. But give me a break. Show me the examples in history of the revolutionary military commander. There's not many. There's not many who then says, hey, we won the revolution, you'll see me at my farm later. Right?
- [32:59]
B
Right.
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A
That's not the norm. And so one of the things here's the way I would put because we off I have, I've long had this back and forth in my mind about the great man theory of history and I'm much more pro than I used to be. Not I'm not pro, I'm not pro of the extreme version of it, but I'm much more pro of it than it used to be. In part because you can feel in many ways it's truth by the app when you, when there is an absence. So in other words, if you took multiple periods of American history where we've had contentious times, difficult times, when we have not had a high quality leadership class, terrible things happen. You know, think about the difference between Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Right. You know, think how consequential that John Wilkes Booth bullet was. Think how consequential or the difference between Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill or the difference between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. And honestly, the Washington example I think is as salient as the Lincoln example or the Churchill example.
- [34:12]
B
Yeah, I agree with you. And yet so here's my counterfactual maybe, yeah, okay. Washington with his character and his humility, his inspiring example, all the things great. But by himself it wasn't enough because you also had to have a generation of people around Washington who see his virtue and character and go, yes, we want him, we're going to put him in charge of the Constitutional Convention and we're going to universally elect him with all the electors to the presidency. And I think we're at a place right now in American history and culture where I know those kinds of women and men still exist, those very virtuous self sacrificing people exist. And yet I fear we are in a generation that doesn't value them enough to actually put them in places of authority and say so there's a virtue of a people that sees a Washington and elevates him. And there is a lack of virtue, frankly, in a people that sees a Donald Trump and says, well, we want to elevate him. And that's what concerns me.
- [35:26]
A
Well, that's why I don't ascribe to the extreme version, the great man theory of history that just a human being can walk into sort of any place and, like, exert their will. And I don't think that. I don't think that even an extreme great man historian would go that far. Right. They. People come out of cultures, they come out of places, they come out of times. And. And, you know, I think that the underlying conditions of the culture can often inhibit a truly good to great man from coming forward and man or woman from coming forward. And a diseased culture can create the opposite.
- [36:02]
B
Exactly.
- [36:03]
A
And I think that's one of the things that we have seen today in the United States of America is that the flaws in our culture are, in many of them, are being manifested in a person who is both symptom and cause of our troubles.
- [36:19]
B
Right.
- [36:20]
A
And we also have a culture that's so flawed that as of right now, there has not been enough consensus that the answer to that is character versus power. And I do think we have some cultural conditions that are actually inhibiting the rise of a quote, unquote, great man or woman. And maybe, and my own theory is that we actually have to go through more pain, that the pain we're enduring, if we can survive it. If we can survive it, is a precondition, a precondition to a cultural kind of renewal that enables. That can enable a visionary leader to actually find purchase.
- [37:01]
B
Okay, I agree with you. I totally agree with you. I hope we don't have to go through more pain. You may be. You may be correct. There was. This brings to mind. Gallup just came out with this poll today showing that a vast majority of Americans agree on central democratic values. Things like politicians need to compromise with one another. 80% agree with that. Political violence is completely unacceptable. 83% agree with that. Multiculturalism, the diversity of this country, is a strength rather than a liability. 84% of Americans agree with that. It goes on and on and on. There's all these things that show we're not as divided as our politics would seem to reveal. And so that leads me to the question, of course, I would love our culture to be more virtuous and more focused on character rather than just raw power. But is part of the problem not just a decline of virtue and character in the American culture and people, but that we've created a political system that doesn't actually select for that? Is there something systemic we need to change about the way we are selecting our leaders so that we can actually get some of these virtuous people into the places that most of us would want them to be? Are our systems and politics broken? Not Just our character as a people, I think.
- [38:25]
A
Yes. So one of the interesting things, this is a very consistent finding in polling is that a majority of Americans are not nearly as divided as we think.
- [38:33]
B
Right.
- [38:34]
A
I mean, this has been going on for years and years. My favorite example of this is the more uncommon studies that show the existence of this exhausted majority. You know, that can be up to 66, 70% of Americans. Others, they also have a series of studies on things like perception gaps. Do you think how, how much, how extreme do you think your opponents are? And again and again, Americans overestimate how extreme their opponents are. So they, but guess who, guess who is, guess who are the class of people who are most angry? It's the people who most participate in politics. Right. So the partisan person is exactly as divisive often as you might imagine. And it's the people are not participating. You know, so if you're going to say, imagine Instead of a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 dynamic, you have a 1/6, 1/6, 2/3 dynamic. But sadly, the 1/6 on either end are 90% of the people who participate in politics.
- [39:39]
B
Right. But okay, that gets to the systemic or structural problem I'm talking about. So a lot of, a lot of states have closed primaries where the political parties, you can only vote in a primary if you're a registered partisan as a Republican or as a Democrat. And I heard Chuck Todd talking about this recently on his show, and he argues that this, this amounts, he thinks it's unconstitutional and it amounts to a form of poll tax which, where the government is funding these primary elections. But then the parties, which are private entities, are limiting who can actually participate in them. And he says if we had open primaries where every citizen can vote in any primary, regardless. I mean, as a candidate, you're welcome to put an R or a D next to your name if that party wants to endorse you. But we should have open primaries. So it's not just that 1/6 on the far right and that 1/6 on the far left that's participating in choosing our candidates. So that when we then get to general elections, more of us feel like, oh, these are actually not terrible choices. And we're not just holding our nose and picking whichever candidate we think is least likely to destroy the country. But I think a lot of Americans, when they've gone to the polls on general election day, look at their options and going, really, this is the best we've got. Are you kidding? But it's because those candidates were selected by the extreme partisans rather than what majority of Americans actually want.
- [41:01]
A
Yes. So I'm a person who wants either more or less democracy. And let me explain. Okay, so the current system, here's what we have, the current dynamic, and I'll use two numbers to really help illustrate this. 17 million and 77 million. 17 million is the number of people who voted for Donald Trump in the primary, the Republican primary, in 2024. 77. And I'm going by memory, I might be off a million here or there, but 17 million is the number we voted from in the primary. 77 million is the number who voted for him for president. 77, 78, something like that. So that he got the votes of 60 million more people in the general than voted for him in the primary. And it's that 60 million gap is a bunch of those people, not all of them, because some of them voted for Trump's competitors in the primary and then came home, but a majority did not participate in the primary process. And they're the Americans who say, why do we have these two candidates?
- [42:02]
B
Right.
- [42:02]
A
And so the answer in that circumstance is, what's stopping you from voting in the primary? You need to have. We need to have more primary participation so that you're not seeing that candidates have just fallen in your lap, that you're participating. And a lot of the open, a.
- [42:18]
B
Lot of them are not voting in a primary because it's already been decided before that ever gets to their state.
- [42:23]
A
Right. Well, that's why I like some of the open primary ideas. I also like ranked choice voting as ideas, which is, I believe, a more democratic kind of. But also, let me channel Jonah Goldberg, my, you know, dispatch, dear friend, dispatch colleague, all of that. Another option, bring back the smoke filled.
- [42:44]
B
Room, which I'm sympathetic to that, too.
- [42:49]
A
Mm. Because you had party institutions who were then looking to elect people that were going to best embody. I mean, select, not elect, select people are going to best embody their conception of what they believed would win a national election.
- [43:06]
B
Right.
- [43:07]
A
And, and, and, and taking a more holistic approach to the selection of a candidate. So I'm in this weird position where I'm fine with more democracy, I'd be fine with more party control, but I do think where we are now, which is activist control, a very small minority of activist control is really hurting our politics.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah, I 100% agree with you. You gotta look at the current system and ask, who's benefiting from this? And it's not the American people. It's not your average voter, it's not the party elites, the Smoke filled room, folks. It's the party activists class.
- [43:44]
A
Yes.
- [43:45]
B
Those who are most polarized in their thinking in the democratic world, they refer to them as the groups. The groups, the groups, the people who have their agenda. And on the Republican side, it's kind of the MAGA crazies that are the ones who are actually selecting the candidates. And the problem with the whole thing is you can't reform the system. Maybe I'm naive here, but I think there's only two real ways to reform the system. One is to get the parties themselves to change it, who control the mechanics of how they select their candidates. Or to echo what Chuck Todd was saying, do you need the Supreme Court at some point to intervene to get a case all the way up to the Supreme Court to say, hey, this way we're doing it? Do you think it's unconstitutional? Do you think there's any argument there? Or when you have government funded and managed elections, but you're not allowing all eligible citizens to actually vote in these.
- [44:38]
A
Primaries, I don't think that's unconstitutional. I, I think that I, I think it's a very interesting policy question as to whether taxpayers should fund a private, and in essence a private organization selection process. But I do think that taxpayers have the ability to fund a private organization's election process, But I do not. I, I, so I, I would disagree with Chuck on the constitutionality, but don't people, I tend to agree on wisdom.
- [45:11]
B
Isn't it an argument, though that you're not giving equal access to the ballot because unless you are a Democrat or unless you're a Republican, you can't get on the ballot in these primaries?
- [45:21]
A
But I don't have a right of equal access to the ballot in a Democratic or Republican primary. So the, the government funds private organizations all the time who, who engage in sometimes quasi public functions such as, you know, you know, the government funds relief agencies and relief organizations that have very particular rules about how they're governed and who can join, et cetera, et cetera. So government funding of private organizations is not an unusual thing. It is just the, the question that I have is the wisdom of it, not the constitutionality. All right.
- [45:58]
B
But it does go beyond funding because it's not like the government's just cutting a check to these parties to run their own primaries. The government is itself running these elections. The polling stations, the poll workers, the, all of that is done by the government. So.
- [46:12]
A
And volunteer, lots of volunteers. Yeah, but it's, it's a mixed, it's.
- [46:15]
B
A hybrid Secretary of State is the one who's valid, you know, certifying these things. It's thoroughly managed by the government, and yet.
- [46:22]
A
Right, right.
- [46:23]
B
There's a significant chunk of Americans who are not. Who are excluded from participating in it.
- [46:27]
A
Yeah.
- [46:28]
B
Anyway, we can make that.
- [46:29]
A
Okay.
- [46:30]
B
One other thing on the revolutionary stuff, and then we'll wrap up with some fun stuff. Another piece of this that is often overlooked that I again thought the documentary did a good job on. We talked about the effect the revolution had on the enslaved and the hypocrisy that was at the heart of a lot, because the slave rhetoric was used all the time by the founders, saying, we're not going to be slaves to the crown, we're not going to be slaves to Britain. And yet, obviously, they were participating in the enslavement of their fellow Americans in a significant way. But the other thing that came out really strongly was the Native American role in all this. I mentioned at the beginning the hunger and desire to take those western lands. They were already occupied by people. And some of the horrors that occurred, Even General Washington ordering the six nations communities in northern New York being decimated because they were already planning ahead, that once the war is over, we want to clear the western lands of these Native Americans so that we can more easily take them over. It's a dark part of American history that we just don't talk enough about. And it clouded even some of the more noble aspects of the revolution.
- [47:44]
A
Clouds George Washington. He's a slave owner. Right, Right, Madison. Slave owner. I mean, they, you know, Madison, our author of the Bill of Rights, author of, you know, the two greatest federalist papers, 10 and 51. I mean, slave owner. So, yes, this is a complicated history without question. And I think it's very important for us to see it in full so we can fully say what a high character thing that George Washington stepped down after two terms rather than pursuing a lifetime power that he could have pursued. What an admirable thing that George Washington handed his sword back to the Continental Congress after the Revolutionary War. What an admirable way in which he conducted himself as president. And also right. And we have to be able to contain these two truths at the same time. And the reason why is. It's a humbling thing. It's a humbling thing. And it. It reminds us that of the humanity and the. In the flaws of our own founders, we were not. This was not Jesus and the apostles. Right. Coming and creating a new nation. This is not. That is not what happened. Right. This was a group of people, many of them of extraordinary character, but many of them with massive consequential blind spots that harmed people for generations. And you can still love your country knowing this, but it means that part of loving your country is knowing the truth of your country and working towards greater justice. That more perfect union, you know, and I think Lincoln was, you know, that's why Lincoln to me is such an indispensable figure. You know, he talks about new birth of freedom because he fully recognized the flaws that came before. He fully recognized that he wasn't just trying to restore a union, a super flawed union that existed before the Civil War. He had to renew and reimagine the union. And I think that our task, every generation isn't to just quote unquote preserve what came before, but it's also to move towards that more perfect union. That's an ongoing obligation. But if you're sitting here thinking, well, you know, we peaked in 1776 or whatever, no, no, no, no.
- [50:07]
B
I heard Al Franken years ago talk about the different kinds of patriotism and he's a comedian and he's a comic writer, so he had a funny way of saying this, but essentially his argument was some people love America the way a five year old loves their mom. And the attitude is if you say anything negative about America, if you point out any of her flaws or shortcomings, I'm just going to hate you. I'm going to, I can't tolerate that. It's just a very simplistic devotion and love. And he said what we need is to love our mom the way we love our mom as an adult. Where there's a deep appreciation, there's respect, there's honor, all of that. But there's also an ability to discern. She's imperfect. Right. She has flaws. I see that and I still love her. But I now, with the wisdom and perspective of an adult, can see her shortcomings and failures and flaws. And it's a more holistic. In fact, I would argue it's a more authentic kind of love because it loves the true person, not the artificial image of the person.
- [51:12]
A
You know, it reminds me of the difference between love and infatuation.
- [51:15]
B
Right, Exactly. Yeah. And I think there's some people in our country who react whenever you point out some of the hypocrisies of the founding or some of the blind spots of the founders and these things, they just don't want to hear it because, you know, there's no greater country than America, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there are Those who are honest enough to point out all the blessings of this country and our. In our heritage, while acknowledging the horrors and injustices that also happened and taking it all as just a healthier, more mature way of approaching things, which then launches you, like Lincoln and others, into, okay, what is the new birth of freedom we need for today? What are the things we need to repent of today? What are the things that we need to do to extend these ideals that we still believe in today?
- [52:01]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think that's so right, because, you know, I was just thinking as you were talking about a dispute we had at Williamson County, Tennessee public schools a couple years ago, where the local Moms for Liberty group wanted to ban the book Ruby Bridges Goes to School for from the elementary school curriculum. And I was shocked that they did that because it's the book by Ruby Bridges about the true story of her courage as a young child in, you know, desegregating school, Louisiana public schools and. And. And viewed through one prism. This is an American hero story.
- [52:43]
B
Yeah.
- [52:44]
A
Can you imagine the courage it took as a kid to do that? Holy smokes. This person is an American hero.
- [52:53]
B
Okay, and what was their justification for wanting it banned?
- [52:56]
A
Well, that's the flip side. Well, there are other Americans who were not heroes in that. And there were the twisted faces, angry faces of the white citizens who showed up to protest her, et cetera. And the objection was that the book just portrayed white people too badly. And the question I had is, did they portray the white people in the south at that time accurately? Right, that's the question. Right. And so it would be about, like, teaching someone objecting to a history of the Revolutionary War because it contained Benedict Arnold, who was an American who betrayed the country. But we can't learn that. We can't learn that there were bad Americans. But nobody says that about Benedict Arnold. Why are we protecting segregationists? Why are we protecting the delicate feelings of the descendants of segregationists?
- [53:49]
B
But doesn't that betray the fact that these Is it Moms for Liberty? Doesn't it betray the fact that they're acknowledging they identify more with their whiteness than they do with their American ness?
- [54:03]
A
You know, that's a great point, because.
- [54:05]
B
When you read that story, as an American, I can go. I can feel multiple things. One, horror over the segregation and racism that marked this country in the past, pride over a fellow American as brave as Ruby Bridges and those who helped her to overcome this evil and segregate the school, and an inspiration, a sense of, okay, how do I take this heritage and move forward as an American and carry this. But if I identify myself primarily as white, not as American, but as white, I'm going to look at that story and go, oh, that makes my group look bad.
- [54:42]
A
That's exactly the problem. I'm a descendant of Confederates on both sides of my family. So on my dad's side of the family and on my mom's side of the family, I don't know that there's someone who's listening from my family can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know that there's any Union history. I don't know that I can look back and say that any Frenches were Union soldiers. Hopefully I'm wrong about that. But so how do I view this history? Do I view Robert E. Lee as my representative or do I view Frederick Douglass as my hero even though my descendants were great? The answer's obvious. Frederick Douglass is a person as an American I take pride in, even though I'm born from and descended from a line of people. Because as you're saying in my core identity, look, Christian is absolutely above American, but American is an aspect of my identity. And honestly, you know, my whiteness is not an aspect of my identity. There is no judo Greek, no slave, no free, no male. I mean, and so as far as my identity, my identity, the hero here is a Frederick Douglass or the hero here is a George Thomas, the Virginian who rejected, rejected did not go down the path of Lee and Stonewall Jackson. And look, I'll be honest guy, this has been the, an evolutionary process for me. I was born in South Alabama, I was raised in Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Kentucky I think it was. Except for a brief period with a wonderful teacher in eighth grade, I don't think I heard any version of history other than the Lost cause narrative until later in college. Right. And, and so I had a lot of unlearning to do in my life, to be honest. And it's been a process to unlearn a lot of the things that I was taught from child. Now I get not my parents, not but, but just the culture, the institutions around me. And so, you know, this is the part of a process and I often feel bad sometimes when I'm a 56 year old man talking with emphasis about things that a 22 year old version of me would not necessarily been all on board with because I was earlier in a particular process. And so, you know, a lot of what I talk about when, especially when I talk about race in America is the end result of a of a long and painful sanctification process, to be honest. And something I wrote in my A piece during the height of the George Floyd, which is it took a lot of things smacking me in the face sky before I could really begin to sort of see more clearly the world around me. And, and I. I think one of the values of education over experience is if you're wise enough to absorb education, you can often avoid the pain of the experience, if that makes sense, in other words. Yeah, and so that's one of the reasons why I'm quite zealous in my education aspect of my job, because I don't want people to have to go through the pain of the experiences that I went through that helped get me to the point where I am now.
- [58:10]
B
Amen on that. Okay, before we wrap up, because this is a Black Friday edition of French Friday and the holidays are upon us, I wanted to briefly give us a chance to do a little bit of nerding and give our recommendations for holiday movies. Do you have your go to must watch during the holiday movies? What do you tell people like this? This is it. You have to do this. Otherwise the holidays are not complete.
- [58:37]
A
You know, it's not many, to be honest. You know, when the kids were much younger, we would watch Elf. Elf every New Year's Eve. I mean, not New Year's Eve, Christmas Eve. We would watch Elf as sort of traditional as they were kids. And then they've kind of sort of aged out of it, or maybe not so much aged out of it because it's just, you know, I'm 56 and will ferrell just destroys me every time. Yeah, we've kind of moved to a different Will Ferrell movie, which is spirited. Spirited.
- [59:05]
B
That's the, the, the Christmas Carol version.
- [59:08]
A
Right, The Christmas Carol version. Musical with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. And it, it's got a great heart to it. Just like the whole, you know, the whole Christmas Carol narrative does. It's got twists to the narrative and it's just a blast. So we really enjoy that. And yeah, to be honest, outside of that sky, we don't. We're not a movie centric holiday family to, you know.
- [59:35]
B
Oh, that surprises me a little bit given the degree to which you like movies. When I was growing up, this is a Thanksgiving movie more than anything, but kind of kicks off the holiday season. We used to watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
- [59:49]
A
Oh, that's so great. Everything.
- [59:51]
B
Have you seen the documentary about John Candy that came out recently?
- [59:54]
A
No. I've heard it's heartbreaking it is heartbreaking.
- [59:56]
B
But it's, it's also endearing. It's, it's, there's something nice discovering that he was as kind a person as you hoped he would be, learning about these Hollywood figures and they're monsters behind the scenes or whatever that doesn't seem.
- [60:11]
A
Yeah, the old don't meet your heroes, right? Yeah, exactly.
- [60:14]
B
Planes, Trains on Automobiles is one of my absolute favorites. And then our family watched Elf Alton when my kids were little and we took them to the musical one time. They had it here in Chicago. The Elf. The Musical. Not as good. Just not as good.
- [60:27]
A
You got it.
- [60:28]
B
You got to have Will Ferrell and James Caan and all that crew in the, in the thing. The other one. I get, I get criticized for this in the office here, but I think I love Die Hard. Die Hard is like, oh, I have to watch Die Hard during the Christmas season.
- [60:42]
A
I love it. I have seen it countless times in the great debate. It is a Christmas movie. No question about it. It's just not a family. Christian family is. Well, and also the disposition of your kids, like Naomi, my youngest, does not love watching violent movies. And, and so she's not down with this. We, we showed it to her. We started watching and we're like, naomi, this is a cr. She. And she's watching it and she's going, I don't like this. This is not, you know, what's Christmas about that? There's a Christmas tree, but it's just like gun battles, right? I'm like, exactly.
- [61:18]
B
Hey, he writes ho, ho, ho on a sweater.
- [61:21]
A
It's true. That's true. But yeah, I have seen that countless times.
- [61:25]
B
Have you seen the, the Die Hard Advent calendar?
- [61:31]
A
No. Look it up.
- [61:32]
B
So it's, it's a, it's a model of the Nakatomi center building and Hans Gruber's at the top of it. And each day he goes down one floor until he hits the bottom, and that's when it's Christmas Day.
- [61:47]
A
Oh, that's so funny. I love that. Yeah, look it up.
- [61:50]
B
It's great. Okay, thank you guys all for joining us for this Black Friday edition of French Friday. Hope you enjoyed our little march down through history and the American Revolution. And let us know in your comments, just what are your go to. Must watch holiday movies. I understand your daughter. I have two daughters and they and my wife always watch all these romantic comedies or feel good holiday movies. And my son and I will go watch Die Hard and some of the more action packed stuff. But let us know what your favorite holiday movies are. Share them in the comments and we will be back next week with another Skypod and next month with another French Friday. Happy holidays everybody. French Friday is a production of Holy Post Media featuring David French and me, Sky Giottani Music and theme song by Phil Vischer. This show is made possible by Holy Post patrons. To find out how you can become a Holy Post patron and to find more common good Christian content, go to holypost.com.