Walter McDougall & the invention of American exceptionalism

Center for Civil Society's YouTube Channel

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on Givers, doers and Thinkers.
I speak to PulitzerPrize-winning historian Walter
McDougall about the comingsemi-quincentennial, about the
myth of American exceptionalism,the sources of American civil
religion, why the creation ofthe United States is the central
event of the last 400 years andabout the surprising word that

(00:20):
best describes the Americancharacter.
Let's go Welcome to Givers,doers and Thinkers a podcast on

(00:42):
philanthropy and civil society.
I'm Jeremy Beer and it's greatto have you with us.
Today is March 28, 2025, and Iam so pleased to have as our
guest Dr Walter McDougall.
Dr McDougall is one ofAmerica's most eminent
historians.
He's a perfect person for us tospeak with as we, at least

(01:04):
loosely, tie our discussionsthis season to the American
semi-quincentennial, ie America250.
Dr McDougall is professor ofhistory and Alloy Anson
professor of internationalrelations at the University of
Pennsylvania, and he lives, if Iam not mistaken, in Bryn Mawr,
pennsylvania.

(01:25):
His books include the Heavensand the Earth, a Political
History of the Space Age, whichwon a little thing called the
Pulitzer Prize, and many othersas well.
I will point out especially Letthe Sea Make a Noise, a History
of the North Pacific fromMagellan to MacArthur.
Freedom Just Around the Corner.
A New American History1585-1828.
That is the book over my leftshoulder here.

(01:46):
Throes of Democracy, theAmerican Civil War, era
1829-1877.
Promised Land, crusader State,the American Encounter with the
World Since 1776.
And the Tragedy of US ForeignPolicy.
He has a book coming out nextmonth, in April, so it will
already be out by the timeyou're listening to this, from

(02:09):
Encounter Books called Gems ofAmerican History, the Lecturer's
Art, and some months after thathis book the Mighty Continent,
a Candid History of ModernEurope, will be published.
All of Dr McDougall's books areexceptionally readable and
exceptionally wise, so if youaren't familiar with them, I

(02:29):
urge you to buy one or two orthree while you listen to this
podcast.
It can be done.
How are you, dr McDougall?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Wonderful.
Thank you very much for havingme on your program.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Thank you so much for doing this.
Really appreciate getting someof your time, especially as, I
say, we're sort of very looselyfocusing our discussions on the
American semi-quincentennial,which, am I right, doesn't seem
to be the energy around America250, as there was in 1976,
around the 200th birthday of thenation.

(03:02):
Is that correct?
First of all, we don't know yet.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, a lot will depend on the popularity of
President Trump in 2026.
A lot of Americans half thecountry really might get turned
off on the celebration if Trumpdoes not manage it in an elegant

(03:26):
way.
But also I would say that 1976was a very dark year in American
history.
The Vietnam War had just beenlost, president Nixon had just
resigned the presidency afterthe Watergate scandal and the

(03:47):
genial Gerald Ford had come intothe White House.
I think he was a very decentman and did as well as he could
during his short term aspresident.
But the country was in aterrible recession.
The oil embargo had recentlybeen imposed and the Arabs had

(04:11):
jacked the price of oil.
When they began exporting oilagain, they jacked the price up
fivefold, fivefold.
And you may recall, there weregas lines, cars lined up around
the block just hoping to buy agallon of gas, and we were
suffering from the combinationwhich economists previously had

(04:32):
thought impossible, which wasinflation and recession at the
same time, even though Ford, inhis distinguished and kind of

(05:13):
down-home, middle-western way,presided over the anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence.
But the mood of the country wasvery grim.
So I would think that the 2026celebration ought to be more
exciting and more unified.
However, just as in the 1970s,the American people have become
hopelessly divided politically,and so it's hard to imagine any
kind of common ground in whichall Americans, whatever their

(05:33):
political stance could, couldrally together and salute the
flag with pride and honor, theheritage of the founding fathers
, which ought to be trulyhonored.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, well, that gets me to my first question.
Then we'll go backwards fromhere.
The very first sentence of yourbook Freedom Just Around the
Corner again that's the bookover my left shoulder here is
the creation of the UnitedStates of America is the central
event of the last 400 years,and you mean that in a global
context.

(06:07):
That's a remarkable claim.
Is that one you wrestled with,or is that just obvious to you?

Speaker 2 (06:13):
I don't know where my inspiration comes from, other
than Providence, and when I readbooks that I wrote 20 or 30 or
40 years ago, nowadays I marvelWow, did I write that?
That's really a good phrase,that's really a good paragraph.

(06:34):
And I can't remember how I wasinspired to write the stuff that
I did.
Write the stuff that I did.
But in the case of the US beingthe most central event, what I
had in mind was this Imagineyourself a time traveler from,

(06:55):
let's say, 16th century Europe,the age of exploration, and you
come forward in time to the 21stcentury.
And you come forward in time tothe 21st century and you kind of
do what the French call a tourd'horizon, a tour of the horizon
, and look at all the continentsand civilizations around the

(07:16):
world.
Most of them would be ratherfamiliar to you.
You've got China.
You have Japan, india, theMuslim Middle East, the rival
kingdoms and empires of earlymodern Europe.
You have Hispanic South America, the only continent, except for

(07:38):
Australia, that would appearutterly novel to you, that you
would have no clue about.
Where did this continent comefrom?
Is North America.
The peopling and thedevelopment of the North
American continent is simplyastounding.

(08:26):
No-transcript, extremely humbleand extremely grateful.
It's no wonder to me thatAmerican colonists no-transcript

(09:08):
Now.
And, of course, if you read thespeeches of the founding
fathers and the presidents, fromWashington all the way down to
Abraham Lincoln, you will findtheir inaugural addresses, in
particular, dripping withlanguage of humility,

(09:32):
thanksgiving and a recognitionof an overriding providence that
seems to be looking out forAmericans, and this is true not
only for Presbyterians andEpiscopalians and Baptists and
other Protestant Americans.
It was true for Jefferson andBenjamin Franklin, who were

(09:56):
deists.
It was true for Washington, whowas a Freemason.
Andrew Jackson was anotherFreemason.
When he campaigned, hepretended to be a devout
Presbyterian, but Andy Jacksonwas not a real churchgoer and he
in fact placed his quote faithunquote, in Freemasonry, as did

(10:16):
many other of the Americanfounders.
Well, that might lead you to ask, mcdougallougall, are you
suggesting that the there's a?
There's a great deal of contentand legitimacy to the, to the
phrase american exceptionalism?
No, absolutely not.

(10:38):
I have, uh, I've researched, uh, the history of American
exceptionalism and I've also, Ialso have benefited from the,
from the, from the research, thebooks written by a Hillsdale
College professor named RichardGamble, and, and I have

(11:00):
discovered, without any,absolutely any doubt whatsoever,
that american exceptionalism asa phrase didn't even exist
until the 20th century and itdidn't become a kind of
prominent uh motto, uh for, uhfor for the united states until
the cold war so it has nothingto do with the founding period

(11:23):
at all in terms of how they sawthemselves nothing at all to do
with it.
yeah, uh, yes, america wascertainly exceptional in its
geographical location and in itsuh climate and its natural
resources.
But to to say that america andalexis de tocqueville, the, the
french, uh, the french politicalphilosopher who visited the
United States in the 1830s, didrefer to the exceptionalism of

(11:48):
American geography and climateand natural resources, but he
didn't consider that theAmerican people were exceptional
.
Not at all.
Curiously, the two people whocoined, who first used the

(12:11):
phrase American exceptionalism,were the Pope in the 1890s.
Really, yep, there were manyCatholic immigrants who had come
to the United States, and, andthe pope at the time.
I forgot which one it was.

(12:32):
I think it was Leo XIII, maybearound that time.
Yes, that's right, thank you.
Leo XIII issued a I don't knowwhat you want to call it.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, I think itichrist may be here.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
It wasn't the papal bull, but it was a statement of
theological policy on the partof the Vatican Damning what he
called American exceptionalism,Because many of these Catholic
immigrants had come over to theStates, they had assimilated in
the Protestant capitalistsociety of America and their

(13:09):
Catholic faith and or practiceobservance had lapsed.
And the Pope was warning reallyhe was warning future Catholic
immigrants and the parents ofchildren who came to America to

(13:32):
be sure that their children wereraised and the hedonism and the
antinomianism of the largerAmerican culture.

(13:52):
The second person who actuallyfirst used the term American
exceptionalism was a man namedJay Lovestone.
Ever heard of him?

Speaker 1 (14:03):
No, I've never heard of Jay Lovestone.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Jay Lovestone was the leader of the American
Communist Party in the 1920s andearly 30s, before Earl Browder.
Yeah, and Jay Lovestone had toexplain to the commenter, and
particularly to his boss, josephStalin, why the American

(14:31):
Communist Party didn't make moreprogress in agitating and
propagandizing the Americanworking class.
You had huge factories, steelmills and automobile firms in
places like Pittsburgh andCleveland and Chicago, but the
Communist Party didn't getanywhere.

(14:51):
The American working classseemed to have been totally
assimilated into the capitalistculture, and so Lovestone
referred to this as Americanexceptionalism, and he used it
to explain why the communistrevolution would take much

(15:15):
longer to develop in the UnitedStates than it was developing in
Europe, now that Americanexceptionalism usage continued
until the early 30s.
Now we're in the GreatDepression.
Now the Communist Partyimagines that it will have a new
opportunity to proselytizeamong the American working class

(15:38):
, and Stalin meanwhileexplicitly denounced the love
stone theory about Americanexceptionalism I think around
1932 or so and said that theGreat Depression had destroyed

(16:00):
forever the credibility ofso-called American
exceptionalism destroyed foreverthe credibility of so-called
American exceptionalism.
It wasn't until the early ColdWar that scholars and statesmen,
beginning with Harry Truman andDwight Eisenhower, began to

(16:23):
turn American exceptionalisminto a positive feature of
American culture and to trumpetit forth as a justification for
what?
For the American Cold Wareffort.
The United States was nowundertaking all kinds of global

(16:45):
commitments, like the TrumanDoctrine and the Marshall Plan.
The American Congress and theAmerican people had to be
persuaded not to return to thetraditional unilateralist
foreign policy that had beenpursued all the way back to
George Washington and to engagein what Thomas Jefferson damned

(17:06):
as entangling alliances, mostfundamentally the NATO alliance
which we're struggling with,entangled by to this day.
And so historians such asDaniel Boorstin, the Librarian
of Congress, and other veryprominent American historians

(17:29):
reached back to the founding era, to the colonial era.
Really, and elevated peoplelike John Winthrop, the first
governor of Massachusetts BayColony and a leading Puritan, of
course, a 17th century PuritanBoorstin and others reached back

(17:50):
to these initial Americanfounders and spoke of them as if
they had been kind of theauthors of the keynote addresses
of the American project.
Authors of the keynote addressesof the American project.
And of course, john Winthrophad famously likened the Puritan
colonies to a city on a hill,which was a phrase borrowed from

(18:22):
the Sermon on the Mount by ourLord in the bible um and um, uh.
And of course our lord wasmaking a uh, and preachers who
quoted that scripture weremaking a religious argument to a
religious audience.
They weren't talking aboutpolitics, but uh, the the uh.
The idea got twisted around uhto the uh, to the effect that,

(18:42):
uh, that john winthrop wasreally talking to the colonists
about the political culture ofthis new country.
To end the world over again, asTom Paine would later write,
and for the United States tohave a great destiny under God,
which not only was going toprosper the American people but

(19:05):
eventually was going to be amodel for the rest of the world.
And so American exceptionalismwent into our political culture
in a kind of a very belated anda way that wasn't really merited
, really an unmerited way.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, and you captured this kind of gets us as
one of the major dichotomiesthat you put, or binaries you
put forward in your historicalwork, which is America as a
promised land.
And then, but you, I think youcharacterize as one of the early
ideas about America versusAmerica as a crusader state,

(19:51):
which is never said that way butis what it sort of becomes, in
part because of this belatedidea of American exceptionalism
and this kind of twisting aroundof the idea of America as a
city on a hill.
Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yes, it is.
I became enamored one mighteven say obsessed.
Enamored, one might even sayobsessed with a concept called
American Civil Religion.
I didn't invent the phrase.
It was invented by a UCBerkeley sociologist named

(20:18):
Robert Bella.
He was a very prominent 20thcentury sociologist and he wrote
a seminal article in 1967,which he published in the
journal Daedalus called theAmerican Civil Religion.
And what Bella had noticed andbegun to wonder about was the

(20:42):
pervasiveness of religiousrhetoric in American political
dialogue.
And at first he had assumed, asa young scholar, that all this
rhetoric, all this God talk, ashe called it, all this God talk

(21:04):
in American political life wasjust a kind of a way to appeal
to the Bible Belt.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Like a cynical political discourse.
Basically.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Exactly, yeah.
But then he was really quiteshocked by the inaugural address
of President John F Kennedy in1961.
Now he heard a Catholicpresident say, a democratic

(21:38):
president, an intellectualpresident, indeed a Harvard
graduate, appealing veryexplicitly to the same kind of
what biblical audience, as aProtestant politician would do,

(22:01):
kind of as a matter of course.
What's Catholic about this?
Why is Kennedy saying thesethings about the United States
of America, as if the UnitedStates were a holy land blessed
by heaven and pursuing aheavenly mission to reform the

(22:23):
whole human race?
And he decided this isn'tChristianity, it certainly isn't
Catholicism.
This is what I call civilreligion, and I first discovered
it when I was researching thebook you have behind you Freedom
Just Around the Corner.
And when I studied the latecolonial and early national

(22:48):
periods in US history, Irealized that everyone took this
for granted, everyone spoke inthis kind of language, everyone
kind of made the sameassumptions about the divinely
blessed nature of America andits people, but nobody expressed

(23:08):
it in explicit terms all theway on down until roughly the
Cold War era, war era, uh and um.
And then you have a whole,whole slew of episodes uh, that,
uh that demonstrate that, uh,that, the, this, this faith in
um, in uh, in america's uh civilreligion and uh divine, uh

(23:33):
destiny, was an expression ofCold War.
What A Cold War ideology, incontrast with godless communism,
right right and the rhetoric ofPresidents Truman and

(23:55):
Eisenhower.
Eisenhower once famously saidwithout religious faith, our
system makes no sense and Idon't care what faith it is.
The American civil religion is avoracious and shape-shifting
beast.

(24:15):
It doesn't express any specificreligion or denomination.
It embraces them all.
We have freedom of religionunder Constitution, but it
devours them all.
Or, if you're an American,you're free to go to whatever
church or synagogue or mosque,for that matter, or to go to or

(24:39):
not at all, so long as yourspecific faith does not
contradict and indeed honors thecivil faith.
We're Americans first, andwe're Catholics or Protestants
or Jews second.
That's an unspoken but veryreal truth about the United

(25:01):
States.
If you go through the historyof American presidencies during
and especially after the ColdWar and look at the rhetoric of
the presidents and the issues,of the social and cultural

(25:21):
issues that have come up, youwill find that the controversies
over the content of the civilreligion have become still muted
, have become, they're stillmuted.
People don't talk in explicitterms about the civil religion,

(25:46):
but more and more of our socialand cultural conflicts have
involved civil religion.
We talk about the gay rightsand the feminist, and now we got
.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
It commands less unanimous support.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Now would you say Now we have transgender rights and
scientific absurdities likethere are not two sexes, but
there are 24 genders.
But all of this, all of thisnonsense and Trump is trying to
roll back.
It's hilarious.

(26:27):
Donald Trump is a phenomenon,there's no question.
He's an extraordinarypersonality and he's
extraordinarily flexible, likethe civil religion itself, civil
religion itself.
I can't think of a lesschurched person than Donald
Trump.
Yet he has made himself a herofor more traditional, especially

(26:48):
Christian Americans throughoutthe country.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
It says a lot about what you were just talking about
, right, the sort of thecombination we have, unspoken
combination, between Americanismand adherence to a particular
faith, that he can straddle thatline in a way that makes some
kind of intuitive sense topeople.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Trump is a fascinating phenomenon in
another respect, with regard tothe history books that I've
written.
In that Freedom Just Around theCorner.
I was inspired in anotherrespect with regard to my the
history books that I've written.
In that freedom just around thecorner, I was inspired to

(27:33):
imagine that Americans arehustlers hustlers in the in the
best sense of that word, but andalso in the worst sense of that
word and also in the worstsense of that word.
Americans are hustlers.
Now, this should not surpriseus because Americans created and
certainly were shaped by such afree country, limitless

(27:59):
possibilities, a whole continentto develop, and Americans were
free to hustle.
Free to hustle.
And if you look at Americanpolitical and economic and
cultural history, you'll findthat everything is a hustle.

(28:23):
And nearly all of the mostcreative Americans have been
hustlers, meaning game thesystem and try to get ahead by
whatever means possible.
Preachers have been hustlers.
We live in a free market inreligion, and so churches,

(28:49):
inevitably, will develop in waysparticularly Protestant
churches develop in ways thatlead to these mega, mega, mega
parishes or mega congregationswhere some charismatic preacher
will have thousands ofcongregants and, of course, a
number of them are corrupt.

(29:09):
So they're hustling in theworst sense of the word.
And when I began, when I beganthe book Freedom, I thought to
myself maybe I can introducethis concept to my readers
through fiction.
And so the first section of thebook is simply an adumbration

(29:35):
of four American novels greatAmerican novels.
Four American novels, greatAmerican novels.
Herman Melville's excellent butlittle known novel called the
Confidence man.
The Confidence man.
It's a book essentially tellingthe story of this con man who

(29:58):
gets on a steamboat in theMississippi River.
It's the middle of the 19thcentury and he hustles everybody
.
He gets by, makes a living byessentially doing con jobs on
everyone.
Then there's Mark Twain'sConnecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court.
A delightful novel, a satirereally, about this yankee

(30:19):
hustler from connecticut um, uh,connecticut, a yankee peddler
really who gets transported uh,uh through a?
Uh, I guess.
He gets hit on the head and hedreams that he's been
transported back to kingarthur's court, whereupon he
realizes he's living now in asociety of people who are

(30:41):
extremely ignorant by modernstandards, and so he just makes
up his mind to take over.
He takes over king arthur'skingdom.
He leaves king arthur in power,but he takes over the entire
society, begins to industrializeit and modernize it, and he
wants to give himself a name andhe says to himself what should
I call myself the boss?

(31:04):
And then there's Willa Cather'sOld Pioneers.
I love Willa Cather, she's oneof my favorite authors.
She wrote a beautiful novelabout the death comes for the
archbishop about New Mexico, Ibelieve and she wrote a

(31:24):
wonderful book about Quebec incolonial times Exactly right.
And her book Old Pioneers isabout land speculation in
frontier Nebraska.
It's all about hustling and theheroine of the book is a woman.
The men in the book are allkind of ne'er-do-wells.

(31:47):
They get in their own wayPsychological problems or
whatnot.
But this dynamic woman is likea 19th century Donald Trump.
She's a real estate investor.
She owns a farm, but mostlyshe's investing in land and then

(32:09):
selling it for a higher priceon the market and making a huge
fortune.
And the fourth book is WilliamSapphire's Scandal Monk.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, I wasn't familiar with that until I read
your book.
It's interesting, it's awonderful book.
I loved William Sapphire back,scandal Monger.
Yeah, I wasn't familiar withthat until I read your book.
It's right, it's a wonderfulbook.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
I loved William Sapphire back in the day and
this book is about the formationof the first American political
party system In the 1790s.
George Washington wants topreside over a unified country.
He doesn't.
He doesn't believe in factionsand especially hates political

(32:43):
parties.
But Thomas Jefferson and JamesMadison and many other Americans
who oppose Washington'spolicies for one reason or
another form the DemocraticRepublican Party, which becomes
the opposition to Washington'sand Alexander Hamilton's

(33:04):
Federalist Party.
And there's all kinds ofhustling going on in the
political realm.
You know backroom deals, andthe scandal monger refers to a
ferocious and manipulatingjournalist who edits a

(33:28):
Jeffersonian party journal andbecomes kind of the prototype
for all future journalists inAmerica who are essentially
hustlers, promoting their ownagendas, whether it's political
or economic or cultural and soforth and so on.

(33:50):
I was interviewed on a programsuch as this one about the book,
and when I described thehustler characteristics of the
American people the moderatorsaid oh, you mean people like

(34:12):
Donald Trump?
This was way back in the 2000s.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
And I said exactly.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Trump is a hustler and he now hustled his way to to
uh, to to multiple hugefortunes in the real estate uh
business and that, but now he'shustled his way into the white
house.
Yeah, he's a perfect, perfectum expression of uh, of the real
American dream.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
And hustling in both senses, as you say, and that
seems to be what some peoplefind attractive about him.
Absolutely, there's somethingdeeply American about what he's
done.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Now in my next book, the sequel to Freedom, the book
on the Civil War era, I alsointroduce the notion of the
United States as a republic ofpretense.
The memoirs, but also thenovels of many European visitors

(35:20):
to America in the Jacksonianera, the 1830s especially, all
of whom commented on the extremepretense of these Americans.
They all talk as if they're allequal and they live in a
country where there's no classconflict.

(35:40):
So hogwash, class conflict allaround you.
The blacks have been slaved.
The poor Irish immigrants areshutted off to ghettos where
they can have them starve todeath, even to the point to the
middle and upper middle classes,where one British observer I

(36:03):
believe it was Trollope.
She says the Philadelphians wholive on Locust Street look
their noses down at thePhiladelphians who live on elm
street, a block or two away.

(36:23):
Why?
Because this neighborhoodconsists of old money, that
neighborhood consists of newmoney.
There are all these socialdistinctions, um, among
americans.
Uh, the fact that we're so freeand the fact that Americans can
express so many differentpolitical, economic, cultural,

(36:45):
religious points of view andstances also means that we're
all, we're constantly, oftensubconsciously, layering
ourselves.
We're above these people, butwe're below these people, and so
on and anyway, the reason Ibring up this concept of

(37:10):
pretense is that Donald Trump isvery relevant for this
phenomenon as well.
He has absolutely no patiencefor pretense.
He tells it like it is anddoesn't care who's upset by it,

(37:33):
and certainly his proclivity forusing social media to put out
presidential pronouncements oneverything is an expression of
this.
Now, many people many Americans, especially Democrats, but even
some Republicans loathe thischaracteristic in Donald Trump,

(37:58):
but I love it, and no less anAmerican political observer than
Henry Kissinger wrote an op-edpiece in 2016, the year or 2017,
the year the first Trumpadministration began.

(38:19):
He observed Trump's proclivityfor telling the truth or the
truth, at least as he saw it ondomestic issues and especially
on foreign policy issues, andHenry Kissinger said that Donald

(38:39):
Trump is an historicalphenomenon who comes along every
generation or two.
He's a rare phenomenon, but heis a political leader who tells
it like it is and who busts orbursts many of the pretenses

(38:59):
that the rest of the country hasbeen going along with for years
about a foreign policy thatpursues quote universal values

(39:22):
and rules and norms instead ofthe national interests of the
United States.
I mean, all of these arepretenses.
Now, there happened to be anarticle by Arthur Herman in the
Wall Street Journal the otherday that made this point about

(39:42):
Trump in a different way.
He said that Donald Trump andElon Musk Trump's right-hand man
, right now they are founders,they're entrepreneurs, they're
capitalists, but they'refounders.
They found new industries, theyfound new companies, are the

(40:06):
original creators of a great uh,great institutions, as opposed
to managers.
Managers are people in inbusiness or in politics who have
essentially risen in apre-existing hierarchy a mature

(40:29):
industry or a mature corporationthat's been around a long time
and everyone kind of gets set intheir ways and it's business as
usual you go along to get along, and Trump being a founding
personality, with the help ofElon Musk.

(40:52):
Such people always say tothemselves why are we doing this
?
How come we're makinginvestments over here?
Or what is this agency for?
Is this agency or this sectorof my corporation really

(41:13):
pursuing the goals that it wasset up to pursue, or are they
just time-filling now?
Goals that it was set up topursue, or are they just
time-filling now and so afounder will shape things up, as
opposed to a manager?
All the people whom Trumpdisparaged in the first set of

(41:36):
Republican primaries, all ofthese senators and other career
politicians who were bidding tobecome the Republican nominee.
He disparaged them and put themdown with silly nicknames, but

(41:57):
basically what he was saying wasyou're all a bunch of
establishment managers and I amrunning for office with some
genuinely new ideas.
I'm going to shake things up,which he certainly has, for
better or for worse.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
It's a very fruitful idea.
I think this idea thatimpatience with pretense or
disdain for pretense is acentral part of sort of the
american personality, along withthis sort of hustling idea, let
me ask you, before we, as wesort of near our end here, to
talk a little bit aboutphilanthropy.

(42:33):
I wonder if both of these ideasdon't illuminate some part of
why American philanthropy andthe forming of associations
forever, as Tocqueville talksabout, is also a central part of
what has happened here in thelast 200 years.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
It is indeed.
You wrote a book a few yearsago on philanthropy, right,
Didn't I blurb that yeah?

Speaker 1 (42:55):
you blurbed it.
Thank you very much.
It's called the PhilanthropicRevolution, that's right.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
It's a gem of a book, as I recall.
It was short but it was verydense, loaded with good ideas.
Thank you.
The American people, by allaccounts, by all poll numbers,
are becoming less and lessreligious, young people

(43:26):
especially, and churchattendance is down across the
board.
But Americans have always had apassing familiarity with the
Bible, even if they've neverread it, they've heard certain
phrases and concepts from theBible, or the good book as

(43:49):
Americans used to call it backin the 19th century.
And one of the adages in theBible it's from Luke, chapter 12
, as a matter of fact, reads asfollows From those who have much
, much will be expected.

(44:09):
That adage is still extremelypowerful in American culture,
despite the fact that peoplemaybe don't even know where it's
from.
And when you have a society aswealthy as ours and a society as

(44:32):
extremely unequal as ours is,as extremely unequal as ours is,
with huge discrepancies betweenthe most wealthy and the most
poor, there's a natural tendencyfor those who have much to feel
responsibility, that much willbe expected from them, and so

(44:56):
the fact that Americanphilanthropy has a history on a
truly grand scale should notsurprise us, I believe, in the
least.
I liken it to the superstitionthat led wealthy medieval
noblemen, landowning aristocratsand dukes and earls and other

(45:23):
nobility in the Middle Ages tomake huge bequests to the church
as they neared their own death.
They neared their own death.
You give large amounts of moneyor great works of art or an
expansion on the cathedral tothe church in exchange for which

(45:48):
the priests promise to saymasses for your soul after your
death.
I think that Americans, eventhose who are not religious,
hope to make themselves immortalby endowing, for instance,

(46:10):
university buildings or endowingthe symphony orchestra in your
city, or the art or a school, anelementary school or even a
bridge.
Everything's got somebody'sname on it.
Yeah, I've been interested inthis phenomenon.

(46:35):
Being an academic, it's naturalthat you notice the rich alumni
whose names are on all thebuildings.
One egregious example of thatat the University of
Pennsylvania is the hall whichnow houses the admissions

(46:55):
department as well, as it hasmany classrooms in it.
It used to be called Logan Hallon the Penn campus in West
Philly.
It was named Logan Hall afterJames Logan, who was the

(47:27):
executor for William Penn.
William Penn was the proprietorwho had been given, who had
been granted Pennsylvania Penn'sWoods as a colony under his own
ownership, and Penn, who spentmost of his time in England,
kind of put in command here inPennsylvania his trusted agent,

(47:53):
james Logan.
So James Logan really presidedover the early growth of
Philadelphia and thePennsylvania colony generally,
and Penn had in its wisdom, inmy opinion I'm an historian
named this important buildingafter James Logan.

(48:14):
About 15 years ago it ceased tobe Logan Hall.
It's now called Cohen Cohen,after a wealthy Jewish alumni.
I think it might have been evenan alumna, I don't know if it
was a female or a male.
Many of the philanthropic giftsin America, as you know, are

(48:36):
donated by widows, and so,anyway, logan Hall was renovated
and he or she paid for it, andso the university, in its ill
unwisdom, changed the name toCohen Hall, which means nothing

(48:57):
to anybody, whereas Logan Hallhad a real historical ring to it
.
By the way, I mentioned CohenHall, which brings to mind
philanthropy among Christians asopposed to Jews.

(49:18):
Now, the Jews, as you know,have a kind of a calling of
their own, whether or notthey're observant, called Tikkun
Ola.
Tikkun Ola, which means torepair the world.
I think it was coined by rabbisin the 1890s, and so Jews feel

(49:45):
a particular responsibility,again, whether or not, they're
observant in their faith to givesomething back, to help repair
the world, to make the world abetter place, and of course,
this dovetails perfectly withthe american uh ethic or the
american creed yeah, interesting.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Well, I think, um again this, the concept of
hustling the pretense.
There's just such rich, uh,concepts to consider as we
hurdle towards thesemi-quincentennial and I do
hope it ends up being somehow,um, not as grim in time let's
put it that way as 1976 was.
I agree, I have that same hopeokay, thank you, uh, dr

(50:29):
mcdougall, for joining us heretoday.
And again, I want to reallyencourage people to pick up your
latest book, gems of americanhistory.
The lecturers are to keep aneye out.
Oh there it is.
Oh, you already have a copy.
Good.
And again, I want to reallyencourage people to pick up your
latest book, gems of AmericanHistory.
The lecturers are to keep aneye out.
Oh there it is.
Oh, you already have a copy.
Good, all right, it's real.
So it's fun to have it actuallyin your hands, right.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
By the way, Jeremy, do we have another minute or so?

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, absolutely yeah .

Speaker 2 (50:52):
There's a quotation from this book that I that I
wanted to read to you.
Okay, please do Uh, uh.
You indicated uh in an email acouple of weeks ago that you?
Uh that one of the things youwanted to ask me about was
American exceptionalism.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
And um, and of course I uh, if you, as you've heard,
I I uh this uh.
This morning I replied thatreplied that I don't believe in
American exceptionalism.
Right, but here is a quotationwhich makes the point perfectly.
So what if the or historicalclaims made for American

(51:30):
exceptionalism are a civil,religious myth?
Don't the truths they symbolizeabout the nation's new world
character remain valid?
Not really, because commonsense tells us, new worlds
cannot baptize themselves.
Only people from aself-conscious old world can
conjure a new world, which isexactly what happened in the

(51:54):
centuries since 1492.
As a British skeptic hasobserved, quote not even the
Puritans were impelled by aunique or exceptional American
impulse.
On the contrary, they wereproducts of European education,
european culture, european pietyand were engaged in a great

(52:16):
European quarrel the ProtestantReformation.
Some 140 years later, the 13colonies' representatives did
gather in Philadelphia to rejectEuropean rule, but the
principles they invoked includedthe beliefs of the English
Revolution and the Whigtradition in the
English-Scottish and FrenchEnlightenments and in the

(52:39):
ancient principles of Englishcommon law.
In short, the core beliefs of aEuropean civilization.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Very good, and that's a great segue into why people
should also keep an eye out foryour history of modern Europe,
which will come out in somemonths.
Down the road.
It's called the MightyContinent.
Yeah, anovus Ordo Seclorum.
Not so much, not so much.
Thank you, dr McDougall, reallyappreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
You're very welcome, Jeremy.
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Hey, thanks for joining us for today's podcast.
If you enjoyed it, we inviteyou to subscribe and or rate and
or review us on YouTube, apple,spotify or wherever you listen
to our podcasts.
Thanks a lot.