America’s Revolutionary Mind with C. Bradley Thompson | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 so i used the declaration as this kind of ideological roadmap to go back in time and and and discover those moral principles as they developed by american patriots not just in the 15 years before 1776 but really in in the 50 60 years uh before the revolution even began

0:22 [Music] [Applause] hi this is tony williams a senior fellow with the bill of rights institute and welcome to another episode of scholar talks today it is my great privilege and honor to have see bradley thompson join us and he’s going to discuss his new book america’s revolutionary

0:44 mind a moral history of the american revolution and the declaration that defined it our guiding question today for this conversation is really going to focus on the question of the the political and moral principles uh that of the declaration of independence that shape the american mind and

1:05 character and that’s one of the reasons why i love this book so much is that it really does address some of those really key foundational principles that were the the cornerstone of the american regime uh and of the the american character really uh and uh really those principles are

1:26 are still important today and uh you know of still still of great uh relevance so our way of introduction brad thompson is a political science professor at clemson university where one of my own children goes actually and the executive director of the clemson institute for the study of capitalism

1:46 he is the author and editor of several excellent books including a book that i just found to be absolutely magnificent john adams and the spirit of liberty brad thank you very much for joining us hi tony it’s great to be with you and your audience today great thank you well let’s dive right in and

2:07 so my first question is going to be you describe the the really profound influence of the scientific revolution and of the enlightenment natural law thinking on the founders so how do these movements shape revolutionary thinking about human nature about natural rights and and really

2:27 about the purposes of government itself sure well i i date the enlightenment um to the 17th century um and in particular i think there are three thinkers associated with the 17th century english enlightenment as opposed to the 18th century french enlightenment which i think uh moved in very different

2:48 directions and had very different consequences that culminated in the terror of the french revolution but on the anglo-american side i’d say the three great thinkers of the 17th century enlightenment were francis bacom bacon and his work novum organum and then uh sir isaac newton’s principia

3:09 mathematica and then finally uh two books by john locke his essay concerning human understanding and then the more famous second treatise of government and i think in a nutshell what is most important about the work of the english enlightenment thinkers is that they attempted to establish

3:30 certainly bacon and newton they attempted to establish what we would call scientific laws of nature they try to look at the universe the world in which we live in and and from it to discover that the laws of nature that govern um that govern all entities

3:53 within nature and their action and and their motion and of course they did most famously in newton’s uh three three most famous laws of nature but the really important and interesting connection i think to the american revolution is that it was john locke both in his

4:14 essay concerning human understanding and the second treatise who attempted to discover certain moral laws of nature and so the question right is how do you how do you go from scientific laws of nature that that govern uh matter in motion uh in the universe to discovering how

4:36 whether there are laws of nature that apply to huma to humans and to human action and i think locke was the first real thinker to really grapple with that question and and you know even though he didn’t quite get there he did claim that there are moral laws of nature that

4:57 can be discovered by by observing uh both nature and human nature and in addition to there being laws of nature there are also moral rights of nature uh and and so it was it was that that um that uh system of ideas that was transported to the american

5:18 colonies beginning let’s say approximately in the 1720s certainly in the 1730s and america’s founding fathers like john adams or thomas jefferson for instance were amongst the first generation of young americans uh in the 1750s and the 1760s who began reading bacon newton

5:41 and locke when they were college students adams at harvard and thomas jefferson at the college of william and mary and you can clearly see for instance in john adams’s diary diary is a young man when he was a student at harvard that he was not that he was reading these texts but also then trying to apply them to his life

6:01 um uh as a 21 year old uh and he’s trying to discover these laws of nature and here’s the important point about the idea of a moral or a moral law or right of nature is that they have to be absolute certain permanent and universal right not laws that are

6:23 or rights that are associated with particular peoples at particular time but laws and rights that are universal and timeless right very good and and that’s a really important point and and really related to my next question so how does the declaration of independence reflect that natural law thinking and really what you just

6:46 described as a moral interpretation of the founding sure so if you just take the first paragraph of the declaration of independence which uh it famously begins um when and i’ve got my handy copy of of the declaration here when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to

7:06 dissolve the political bands which which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s god entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation so right there in the first paragraph of

7:28 the declaration jefferson and really the entire founding generation is appealing to the idea that there are laws of nature again and moral laws of nature against which we can judge the actions of government and in this case it’s

7:48 obviously it’s the actions of of king george iii and the british parliament who have passed a series of laws uh between uh 1764 beginning with the sugar act and then the stamp act the following year going all the way through the towns and tea and coercive acts right the american american patriots are

8:11 judging those laws against the absolute permanent standard of these moral laws of nature and then of course in the second paragraph the declaration famously appeals to uh man’s inalienable rights um they’re not described as natural rights but that was that would

8:33 have been the typical formulation uh during the late uh 17th and in throughout the entire 18th century so they’re appealing in other words tony the standard that they are appealing to is nature it’s not men it’s not the governments of men it’s nature because nature is held to be

8:56 uh absolute right uh and and one of the another reason why i love your books so much among among the many is that you you describe the the declaration as as sort of a syllogism as a logical argument one idea flows from the next and and and as you as you’re talking and

9:17 your book does that as well and so from these natural laws from these moral laws about human nature and about government why does the declaration assert that these truths are then self-evident uh and and what are some examples okay so the second paragraph

9:39 famously begins we hold these truths to be self-evident and i devoted an entire chapter in the book to this notion of self-evident truth which is a very philosophically complex subject self-evident uh means that um

10:03 that in in any proposition uh it it has to be perceptually immediately self uh evident to the viewer so examples would be up is not down black is not white in is not out right something has to be immediately self-evident now the challenge of course uh but i

10:26 think the more important point is is not focusing so much on self-evident it’s focusing on the idea of truth so i mean and i think it’s important for us in the 21st century to understand the difference between how we understand the concept truth and how america’s founding fathers did right today in 21st century america

10:48 it’s said often that we live in a post-truth society right or that true all truth is relative no not so for america’s founding fathers they believed in truth with a capital t truth is absolute certain permanent and universal so they begin with with that assumption and then the declaration lays out

11:11 what it calls four self-evident truths uh and though the four self-evident truths laid out in the declaration can be each summed up in one word equality rights consent and revolution now here’s the hard part it seems pretty

11:32 clear that the third and fourth self-evident truths namely consent and revolution they’re they’re not self-evident by the traditional definition of what constitutes self-evident they are we might call them complex self-evident truths that one comes to

11:54 based on uh prior truths and the prior truths so there is a logical order to the presentation of these four self-evident truths it begins with equality what is equality well as understood by america’s founding fathers equality means not sameness as we understand it in the 21st century where all

12:14 men and women are the same no they understood that there is actually a radical inequality of human beings relative to all different kinds of things we can measure speed strength beauty intelligence etc etc so the founding fathers on the one hand recognized uh the existence of inequality so what

12:35 do they mean by equality what they meant by equality is what what i call species equality or qualitative equality which is to say that all all human beings share two common characteristics namely reason and free will which distinguishes them from all other beings from horses and dogs

12:57 for instance and by virtue of sharing those those qualities they have uh the they have that they are uh self-owning and self-governing by virtue of having reason and free will thomas jefferson once famously wrote that because sir isaac newton um was superior to all

13:19 other men it doesn’t make him the natural master of all other uh human beings right so equality effectively can be summed up in in in this term it means self-ownership that’s what it that’s the moral meaning of equality and then the second self-evident truth which is

13:39 rights is a logical consequence of that right if individuals are inherently self-owning this means that they must be self-governing and what does it mean for an individual to be self-governing well particularly based on this view of human nature which says that men that their means of survival are

14:01 reason and freedom what man needs most of all in order to to live and to live well is freedom and more particularly the freedom to think so what is it the rights do rights are an extension of the concept of equality because all individual it takes the

14:21 individual as the primary unit of moral and political value and it says that in order to live and live well individuals need freedom which means uh but that freedom needs to be protected and so what are rights rights are kind rights are kind of moral principle that sanctions of an individual’s

14:43 freedom of action in a social context and so you can view rights using the following two analogies on the one hand a right a natural right or a right of nature is a license it’s a license to act but it’s also at the same time not only a license it’s a fence it’s a

15:05 fence protecting us from other individuals so when viewed as when viewing rights is both a license and defense it sets up a system that creates maximal freedom for all individuals in a social context uh and so so you can see how equality

15:28 leads to rights and then rights lead naturally to the principle of consent because of each individual is self-owning and self-governing if there is to be a government then each individual must consent to uh to create this government or to its continued existence

15:50 based on the principle of self governance and self ownership and then finally uh but that the third self-evident truth namely consent it’s a very complex it’s a very complex truth it’s not self-evident right so so if i could just share with you in your audience let me remind all of us

16:11 what the third self-evident truth says it says that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed now that’s a deeply profoundly complex statement um but it can be viewed as self-evident if you understand the

16:32 previous two truths right so um and then finally the revolution truth which says that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it’s the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and then to build new governments right so all four of these so-called self-evident truths

16:53 they build one on the other and so the name so the self-evidency of these four truths then uh is is it it’s a it’s a kind of truth that is uh that is i mean i think equality and possibly rights natural rights are

17:14 self-evident consent and revolution are not self-evident but they they’re they’re what i call complex self-evident truths they build off of the true self-evident uh truths namely equality and rights that’s really interesting brad uh and i you know i think that the one thing that that people

17:35 automatically raise and and you certainly don’t shy away from in your book uh is you know addressing the problem of slavery uh as it relates to the denial of equality and natural rights and consent so uh you know what what are we to do about this problem in the founding so there’s no question that that slavery

17:57 is the existence of slavery was the great contradiction of the american founding and it’s it’s uh it’s a legitimate charge to suggest as as british tories did that the americans were hypocrites uh the americans uh yelped the loudest

18:17 um for liberty at the same time that they were holding slaves so the question for us now in the 21st century is how do we account for that were they simply hypocrites um this was without question the hardest chapter of the of the book to write it it required uh i think a real degree

18:37 of of uh sensitivity to try and understand how american revolutionaries understood both the institution of slavery and the fact that some of them were slave holders now the first thing to say of course is that not all of america’s founding fathers were slave holders right a significant number of them were

18:57 not slave holders and then there was another group of people who had for a very short time um been like benjamin franklin for instance and john jay who had been slave slaveholders uh but they they only well i shouldn’t say they only own one slave but they they their the form of slavery that they

19:18 practice was very different and then they eventually freed their slaves and became the leaders of the anti-slavery movement and then there was uh slave owners like george washington who eventually freed their slaves the real hard question though is what about people like patrick henry and thomas jefferson who both own slaves um and did not free

19:38 them and who were some of the most articulate eloquent and vocal proponents of of of liberty how do we square that circle so i think the first thing to say is that all of america’s founding fathers including people like thomas jefferson believed that slavery

19:59 was a necessary evil the emphasis has to first be on the word evil right they regard and jefferson unquestionably regarded slavery as as immoral and as a violation of the rights of the slaves what about the necessary part the necessary part that’s that’s the the

20:19 harder nut to crack i think and so for some of america’s uh revolutionary founders like most importantly thomas jefferson the issue that they struggled with the most was what i call the post-emancipation problem which is to say okay

20:40 we let’s wave our magic wand and free all the slaves today and then the question is then what right and that was that was a true social political economic question that none of america’s founding fathers were able to think their way through

21:03 their greatest concern with some justification is that if you freed the slaves immediately there would be a race war and as thomas jefferson said justice would be on the side of the slaves however the their own self-preservation um required that they not do that

21:26 so it was it was a dilemma they actually thought that slavery would eventually die a natural death and that they didn’t they wouldn’t have to solve the problem immediately in 1776. the last thing i want to say is this the single most important document in world history to end

21:49 slavery over the long dure is the declaration of independence the principles enunciated particularly the equality and rights principles provided the principles and the motivation to end slavery and that is exactly what happened in the united states because immediately after uh the declaration of

22:11 independence was published every single state in the north over the course of the next 30 years began the process of abolishing slavery and then at the national level level uh the continental congress uh passed the northwest ordinance which forbade the extension of slavery into the northwest territory

22:32 the slave trade was to end in 1808 so it was clear that the goal all was all pointing towards emancipation over the course of time and and the motivation for that was in the principles of the declaration of independence

22:52 okay very interesting thank you uh and so why are the the principles of the declaration this this revolutionary way of thinking uh about rights and government why is that still important and why is that still relevant today why should we care well america is

23:15 and always has been the first truly revolutionary nation it’s built i think into the dna of the american people to always be suspicious about the potential rise of tyranny so what the revolution i think does

23:36 and more particularly what the declaration of independence does is it provides a moral standard by as it did in 1776 and that and it can and it can and does i believe still provide a moral standard by which we can judge and should judge the actions of

23:58 our government today no matter who is in power it doesn’t matter whether it’s republican or democrat the fact of the matter is tyranny is always possible right and tyranny is always possible uh to paraphrase uh lord acton precisely because power corrupts

24:19 and absolute power corrupts absolutely and so people have to have a standard and they have to be inspired to be able to resist government when it does infringe on the rights of its citizens and then worse case becomes tyrannical over the people right uh last question i’m really

24:41 fascinated about the origins of this book and in the introduction you talk about uh the really seminal works of bernard baylin and gordon wood and you know we’ve all read those books right and and many others but but your book really purports to do something different right it’s a moral history you call it of of the declaration

25:02 and really of the founding and the american revolution so can you just tell us a little bit about a little bit about the origins of this book and and why you think it’s important to call it a moral history sure so um there have the american revolution is the most written about subject in american history with the possible

25:23 exception of the civil war there have been hundreds of uh hundreds and hundreds of books written on the american revolution thousands of articles and all of these books i mean there have been social economic political constitutional diplomatic religious even environmental

25:43 histories of the american revolution but as far as i can tell there’s never been a moral history of the american revolution and very early in the process of writing this book i came to realize following john adams that that’s exactly what the what the american revolution was namely a moral revolution so john adams once famous famously said

26:06 uh well he famously asked the question what what was the revolution and he said that the revolution was not the war for independence the true revolution he said took place in the minds and hearts of the american people in in the 15 years

26:27 before a shot was ever fired at lexington or concord that means then and he also goes in different letters he talks about it as a moral revolution so that what he’s saying here is that you know in the decade and a half before 1776 there was a moral revolution in the

26:48 minds and hearts of the american people and when i read that that line it just dawned on me all of a sudden gee you know this is a new way to think about the revolution as a moral revolution and nobody’s ever written about it before as a moral revolution so that’s really what inspired me um

27:11 uh to to engage uh or set off on on this journey of exploration trying to discover what those moral principles were that american revolutionaries developed in the 15 years before 1776 and what i do is i use the declaration of

27:31 independence as a kind of ideological road map because the declaration is of course it is the culmination it is a summing up of those moral principles which can be summed up in the four self-evident truths of the declaration so i used the declaration as this kind of ideological roadmap to go back in time and and

27:54 and discover those moral principles as they developed by american patriots not just in the 15 years before 1776 but really in in in the 50 60 years uh before the revolution even began great brad thompson thank you so much for joining us today

28:15 uh the book is america’s revolutionary mind a really important uh new book and just a fantastic the seminal book on on the declaration of independence and and really of the founding uh thank you so much for sharing it with us today tony thank you well uh thank you for joining us to all the viewers as well and if you like this video please be

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