April 30, 2025 • 56 mins
This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy interviews historian Wilfred McClay about his best-selling book Land of Hope, which offers a more balanced view of American history than the hypercritical perspective popular today. Wilfred expands on the importance of teaching history accessibly and free of academic jargon, the selective application of criticism to historical figures, what the adoption of technology says about the adaptability of American culture, the “unsettlement of Europe,” and his experiences as a member of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission and the challenges it has faced.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on Givers, doers and Thinkers.
We talk to Hillsdale professorBill McClay about his
explosively popular book Land ofHope.
We talk about how to achieve agenuinely balanced perspective
when doing history and the needto avoid reducing history to a
morality play.
We talk about what Bill thinkswe most often get wrong about
(00:20):
American history and we speakabout his experience on the
American Semi-QuincentennialCommission.
Let's go Welcome to Givers,doers and Thinkers a podcast on
(00:50):
philanthropy and civil society.
I'm Jeremy Beard.
It's great to have you with us.
We are recording on AprilFool's Day, april 1st 2025.
This is not a joke.
Bill maybe will have some jokesfor us, I don't know.
But I'm pleased to have as ourguest historian Wilfred McClay,
the Victor Davis Hanson Chair inClassical History and Western
(01:11):
Civilization at HillsdaleCollege.
30 years ago, bill publishedhis award-winning book the
Masterless Self and Society inModern America and most recently
he is the author of thebestselling book Land of Hope,
an invitation to the greatAmerican story.
Aside from his writing andteaching, which have won too
(01:31):
many awards for me to mentionhere, bill has served and still
serves on a number of boards.
He is the chairman of the boardat the National Association of
Scholars on the board of theJack Miller Center as well and,
most importantly andappropriately for what we're
doing this season on thispodcast, he is also a member of
(01:53):
the official USSemi-Quincentennial Commission,
so we're very glad to have himwith us here today.
Bill, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm fine, you may be tired just thinking about these
things, these responsibilitiesthat I don't always adequately
discharge.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I didn't even mention all of them.
I tried to lighten your load alittle bit, it's okay.
Yeah, well, I have Land of Hope.
By the way, for those whohaven't seen it over my shoulder
here, it's sold many, many,many copies.
Really, I don't know if you'reshocked by it.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I was and am.
Yeah, by the way, I want tomention the other great thing
you have over your shoulder issome kind of representation of
the state of Indiana.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
That is true.
Thank you for noticing.
Really really nice.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
A friend of mine, Richard Ryan Shue, you probably
know, refers to Indiana as thevirtuous state.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, he couldn't be more correct.
Yeah Well, but Land of Hope.
I want to make sure I encouragepeople to.
If you haven't bought this bookor you're one of the few at
this point, because so manypeople have it, so get it for
yourself, for your kids, foryour school, for anybody you
think needs to sort ofunderstand or would profit from
(03:14):
understanding American historybetter.
It's very.
It's written very accessibly.
It's not too long.
What is it?
350 pages maybe, or so.
Yeah, yeah, so it's meant to beread.
It's meant to be read.
It's meant to be read.
That's right, it's actuallymeant to be read.
One of those books is meant tobe read.
Tell me why, like what led youto write another general history
(03:34):
of America and to what extent.
Was like the 1619 project inyour mind as you're doing this,
or was it written completelyindependently of that phenomenon
?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
It was written independently of that, and
actually the 1619 Project wasreleased after the book had come
out.
Okay, but the 1619 Projectdidn't occur in a vacuum.
It reflected some trends ofscholarship over the last 30
years or so, and so I have tosay, even though it was a bit of
(04:09):
a shock to me that the New YorkTimes put its institutional
weight behind something that wasas mendacious and really
inaccurate as the 1869 Projectwas the general drift of it,
wasn't that surprising?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah so that wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
No, what led me to do this?
That's a very good question,because it's not anything I ever
thought I wanted to do.
There's a long version of thisstory.
I'll skip that, but basically,well, I'll give you a little
version of this story.
I'll skip that, but basically,well, I'll give you a little bit
of it.
What precipitated it was whenthe College Board, which is the
(04:53):
organization that does advancedplacement testing and offers
accreditation for coursesaccreditation for courses they
came out with a revised versionof their American history, ap US
history test, and it was quiteshocking, shockingly revisionist
(05:19):
, so to speak, in leaving out alot of things having to do with
constitutional history.
Diplomatic history andintellectual history is my field
, and even political history andemphasizing, you know, the
economics of the slave trade andthings like that much more
(05:41):
prominently than say somethinglike the ratification debates
over the Constitution RightAppeared entirely, that's where
the.
Federalist Papers appear, yeah.
So there were a number of usthat were really very concerned
about this and we got togetherand produced a letter, an open
(06:04):
letter to the college board,sort of entreating them to back
off from these changes, whichwere damaging and false, for
reasons that we provided in theletter.
It's actually a reallyrespectful letter under the
circumstances and what they did.
(06:24):
They actually did back off forthe time being from a lot of the
changes that they made.
But it was soon brought to ourattention that the big textbook
manufacturers, like Pearson,mcgraw-hill they had already
revised their American historytext in line with what they
(06:47):
anticipated to be coming out ofthe changes at the AP test.
So and I think they figured well.
It may have a little setback,but eventually, because the
march of progress only leads inone direction.
So people started saying well.
(07:12):
People in our group startedsaying well, we need an
alternative text.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
We've needed one for a long time actually, and there
was no extent, no sort ofunpoliticized text, not really.
There was no extent, no sort ofunpoliticized, not really.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, there were some that were not as politicized,
but they were alsounintelligible.
They, literally, they could beunreadable.
I couldn't read them, and Idiscovered this when I started
working on Land of Hope.
But at any rate, I finally wastalked into doing it, and I that
(07:49):
somebody needed to write such abook At first.
I said you know, I absolutelyagree with you.
I hope you'll find somebody,and I thought that would take
care of the problem.
But no people kept coming backand so, um, in some ways I, I,
um, I won't say my populardemand, but by the demand of a
number of well-placed peoplewhom I greatly respect, I, I was
(08:13):
cajoled into doing it once.
I was about and, and really,jeremy, at first it was just the
hardest thing to do because Iwasn't used to writing that way.
I wasn't used to I.
I'd like to think my writingwas intelligible but this was I
wanted to.
I knew that what I had to do wasto break through to a much more
(08:35):
limpid, much more accessiblestyle.
And I know, uh, academicismRight right.
And no references to varyinginterpretations.
No, you had to.
Yeah, plus, my publisher keptsaying oh, you know, we're
really hoping this will be theantidote to Howard Zinn Howard
(08:57):
Zinn, for your viewers andlisteners, being the political
scientist, not a historian, whowrote A People's History of the
United States, which is a fairlyegregious work.
I can't think of any historiansno reputable historians that
have ever said oh, Howard Zinndid a good, reliable history.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
They like it.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
There's left, but they won't, they won't, they
won't.
They won't accept the idea thatthey won't go that low.
It's the same with history,anyway.
And Howard Zinn, I think, hassold five or six million copies.
It's a lot of copies.
(09:42):
And you know I find friends whoare big fans of Len Oak.
They say, gosh, you know, mykid is using Howard's in his
school, public schools, privateschools, it's still out there.
So anyway, I came to theconclusion yes, there had to be
something better.
So I started in on it and onceI it took me a month to write
(10:07):
the first chapter, um.
And but once I got it, once Igot a handle on the right
diction, the right tone, theright pitch, um, it flowed
pretty well because I'd beenteaching American History Survey
courses for umpteen years andyou know, in many ways my notes
(10:29):
from those years reflected Icouldn't use the notes directly,
but they reflected the outlookon American history that I had
and I brought to bear in thebook.
So by the time I finished I wasreally liking it, I was
enjoying myself and I oftenwonder if that's evident now to
readers that hey, he's reallygetting into this.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
It does read very, very well.
You're right, you've sort ofstripped away the academicisms
and the sort of throat clearingand the references to the
literature and all that sort ofthing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There's only two or three places where I say well,
look, historians differ aboutthis issue.
The Great Depression, forexample, I wasn't going to go
out with.
You have to mention theKeynesian interpretation, which
I personally think is mostlywrong.
But I'm not an economist.
You have to give some sway toit because that's still the
(11:27):
dominant view.
But I also gave the monetarist,bill Friedman, that view and I
hit it some others.
I think it's right to say thatwe don't have a settled
interpretation of the GreatDepression and in those
instances I felt I had to have asettled interpretation of the
Great Depression and in thoseinstances I felt I had to do a
(11:47):
little bit of academicargo-waggo.
But in the beginning of theFirst World War, I think that's
definitely still contested andit's something you have to have
within the scope of the Americanhistory text, even though we
had nothing to do with startingthe thing.
(12:08):
But otherwise, yeah, it's plainlanguage.
I wanted to and I've been verygratified by letters that I get
from people those ordinarypeople.
Sometimes they don't identifywhere they're from, which
bothers me.
I get a letter from somebodythat says Joe Schmoe at
(12:30):
Googlecom or Gmailcom.
But it's very gratifying to getthese people who say finally,
history books I enjoy reading,that's intelligible, that
doesn't go into too much detail,and that was part of the
mission too is to make it short,as you said.
But you also have to have apoint of view, and the view of
(12:55):
American history is, even thoughI have many reservations about
things that we have done, thingswe are doing.
Catch me on a Tuesday or aThursday.
I'm very down on the presentcondition of our culture, but
there's an ultimate affirmationand a sense of hope about the
(13:19):
future.
Right, and when I was writingit that almost seemed like TS
Eliot's famous line aboutgathering up, shoring up our
fragments against our ruin.
I don't think that's right, butit doesn't seem quite as
(13:43):
desperate now as it does.
But I thought about I mean, I'veraised children and we
homeschooled our children, so Ithought they studied history
with my wife and me.
But how do I want to teach thisstuff?
And I don't want to teach it asone long parade of Confederate
(14:04):
flags and Klansman hoods.
That's not America.
In my experience that's not so.
I think the hyper, almostpathologically critical view of
American history that is so muchthe norm in the academic
profession.
I'm not exaggerating at allwhen I put it that way.
(14:27):
Right, it's not only false butit's unhealthy.
It's unhealthy for young peopleto grow up with the sense that
they're living under a reallyevil regime which they should
nevertheless never let youbehave themselves and follow the
laws.
(14:48):
What logic comes from that?
I think, at least at some pointI had dinner with a friend, a
new friend.
I didn't know him very well andit was very interesting what I
was doing.
And he said you know, I believeif young people grow up
believing that they live under abad regime, it affects their
(15:13):
soul in a way that is verydifficult to heal, very
difficult to change.
And you know I had not thoughtabout what I was doing in that
way that this is about.
You know, the study of history,especially one's own history, is
partly an act of moralformation, the country at which,
(15:53):
to the extent we are still arepublic or aspiring to be one,
we expect them to participate in.
So I do try to give weight andI think sufficient weight to the
negative side of Americanhistory.
So there are those for whom youcan never get enough of the
negative side.
But I've gotten remarkablylittle criticism.
(16:16):
I'm almost none about mytreatment of slavery and racial,
you know, white supremacy,racial discrimination, jim Crow,
etc.
I have gotten a bit ofcriticism that I don't do more
with Native Americans.
I think that's actually a validcriticism.
We are in the middle I wantyour audience to know of doing a
(16:40):
second edition and giving methe opportunity to beef up some
parts and also to take out someof the academicisms that just
somehow crept in.
So I'm having a lot of pleasuretaking those out.
So, yeah, I think I could dobetter in that department.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I don't think it's very it's hard to compress an
entire American history into 350pages, definitely.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
To say the least.
It's constant issue oftrade-offs or triage.
It's my favorite image becausethe triage is a life boat.
You put too much detail in thatthe boat will sink, so you've
got to know what to throw out.
Sometimes you throw out thesaying I forget who the British
(17:34):
poet who said you must kill yourdarling.
And in the process of editingyour work you have to think of
that image, that comparison,that name or whatever that you
just thought.
Oh, that's so brilliant of me,you've got to take it out.
More often than not you fall inlove with your own image.
So there's a lot of that, butthe end result I've been very
(18:01):
pleased, not just by the salesbut the reception of it has been
so positive.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
But, as you say, the contrast with these sort of
unremittingly, pathologicallycritical is exactly the right
phrase to use in the way thatAmerican history is not just
presented at the sort of elitecolleges or universities, but I
think all the way down now, allthe way down to the first time
American history is presentedand you think sane public school
(18:29):
that you send your kids to, youknow that's it's all, permeates
the curriculum, does it not?
It is sort of all mid-shaping.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
You know, I think, and I think there's an
assumption, even by mycolleagues on the left, which is
to say most of my colleaguesaround the country.
There's an assumption thatsomewhere out there somebody
Miss Marple somewhere isteaching the sort of basic
account of American history thatwe get to counterpunch against
(19:04):
account of American history thatwe get to counterpunch against
Right, nobody's home.
Miss Marple has become MrMarple or whatever she said, and
gone to California.
But there is no, there isnobody.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It's all a counterpunch.
There's no, there's no.
They're punching, andcounterpunching against a punch
that doesn't exist.
Yes, even in Texas.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
So I think yeah, that said, I feel obliged to be as
balanced as I can and not asugar-coated view of our history
, but I think what people andactually a lot of the work
that's being done has, within alimited frame, validity.
(19:49):
I know these people are careful.
Some of them are not careful.
A lot of careful scholars dowork which I want to ask them
what did you think you weredoing?
People are still writing booksagainst George Washington, which
, to me, is not just sort ofpatriotic sacrilege.
It's not just sort of patrioticsacrilege, it's stupid.
(20:11):
What kind of heroes do youthink the human race has to
offer if George Washington isnot a hero?
So I think the perspective ofthe book is as important as
anything else.
When I look at someone likeJefferson and Jefferson's a
(20:32):
great example, actually, becausehe's obviously a great man with
what are, by our standardstoday, great faults and they
were actually faults by hisstandards, he was utterly
convinced of the moral wrongnessof slavery.
You know, he famously said Itremble when I consider that my
(20:55):
God is just and his justice willnot sleep forever.
He's talking about slavery whenhe does that.
That's at the Jefferson Memorialin Washington.
Those words.
It actually shows thatJefferson would talk about God
from time to time if he felt somoved.
That's another issue, but Ithink you know to acknowledge
(21:20):
the greatness of Jefferson,particularly in his support of
religious liberty, support andthe Declaration, maybe above all
else, is not to deny that hehad other faults and actually he
wasn't that great a president.
He was smart enough to do theLouisiana Purchase and I give
(21:40):
him high marks for violating hisown constitutional principles
to do that.
You know, as the saying goes,sometimes you have to rise above
principle, and Jefferson didthat.
In that case, you couldn't passthat up.
Where would we be withoutLouisiana?
So where would the chicory inour coffee come from?
(22:02):
But seriously, I think learning.
There's a lack of maturity inthe way our history is taught.
When you find some flaw insomeone's makeup, well, that's
it for them.
You know they're gone.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And I mean the standard has become so
ridiculously high.
You know, back when statueswere coming down in 2020 and
2021, they were tearing downstatues not just of Robert E Lee
or Frederick Douglass.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
is that a call, correctly, frederick Douglass?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yes, lincoln, because .
Lincoln, of course was notreally clearly in favor of
racial equality in all senses,social equality.
He was a man of his times, atleast then, and it's interesting
(23:04):
to me that Martin Luther KingJr has not been cancelled
because of his what his FBIfiles show about his feelings
with women.
I'm glad he hasn't been.
I think he's an admirablefigure and deserves place in the
American political pantheon,but it's the selective
(23:28):
application.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
The selective application yes it's, yeah, the
selective application.
It's selective application, yes.
What's the what's the aspect ofthe politicization of history
that seems to have reallymetastasized in the last I don't
know 20 or 30 years.
It seems to me even more thanbefore.
What's a, what's one or twothings that irritate you the
most, like well, I can't believeall this uh uh land grant
(23:49):
business where you have to sayyou know whatever they call it.
Yeah, Explain to people whatthat is.
They may not have encounteredthat yet in the world.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You go to a concert, let's say in, oh I don't know.
Somewhere in New Mexico, let'ssay, and I won't do Arizona,
we'll say New Mexico.
And someone comes out and sayswell, before we do this, we want
to acknowledge this land thatonce belonged to the Choctaw or
(24:25):
whatever.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
The Pueblo Indians, you might say.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
It's this sort of of let's have our moment of our
vitamin G guilt and then we goahead with things to sins that
we had no role in committing,and probably our forebears back
as far as we remember had norole in in, and actually the
history is often very bad, Imean badly done.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
That's what bothers me the most.
I would say, like the landoriginally occupied, let's say,
by Navajo or something.
Well, the Navajo weren't heretill 1300 or 1400 or wherever we
might be standing.
They took it from somebody else, who probably took it from
somebody else, who took it fromsomebody else.
It's a sort of ahistorical viewthat goes all the way down.
(25:20):
That's so irritating.
Like you said, I agree, theland payment thing is so
meaningless and self-righteousat one and the same time.
The end payment thing is someaningless and self-righteous
at one and the same time, butit's a way of saying the regime
under which we live is notentirely legitimate.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, and I think that's corrosive, although it
also makes people a lot ofpeople say, well, I don't care
about anything that came beforeme.
They have the opposite reaction.
It's sort of like decidingyou're tired of hearing
(25:58):
feminists rattle on about things, so you become Jeremy Tate.
I mean, those are extremes.
You're right, One kind ofproduces the other yes indeed,
and so, I think, a balancedperspective that recognizes that
there's a tragic element.
Particularly, one of the bestpeople on this is Tocqueville,
(26:22):
as he is so good on so manythings.
He describes in the last chapterof volume one of Democracy in
America.
He describes when he'straveling, you know.
He ends up at Memphis and hesees a part of the Trail of
Tears.
He sees this, actually theChalk Claws.
(26:43):
But he sees this miserablegroup of people, ill-clad,
freezing and barefoot in manycases, this ordeal of their
being removed to IndianTerritory, what became Oklahoma,
and there's no element of.
(27:06):
Well, these people deserved it.
They're lesser beings.
No, his Christian impulses kickin.
Well, these people deserved it.
They're lesser beings.
No, he, his Christian impulseskick in and he describes it with
great compassion.
They knew that their ills werelong standing and irremediable.
(27:29):
And he ends up sort of sayingthis is a great tragedy because
nothing was going to stop thegrowth of modern European
civilization, the Western growth, nothing was going to be able
to preserve their way of life.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
It's really not any sort of culture of democracy
that he identifies in America.
This is somehow symptomatic ofthat.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And.
I think we still don't knowquite how to.
I mean I think it's still aproblem this is one of the
reasons that I think I need togive more attention to it.
It's still a problem in a waythat raises not as much of a
problem, even though it's all wehear about.
I think you don't hear a lotabout the issue of Native
Americans.
(28:23):
They're indigenous people and Ithink there were treaties
broken A few Left and right.
So there were treaties broken,a few left and right so more
than a few.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
There is a sense of inevitability to it, though,
isn't there of this sort of justwave the power and dynamism?
As you point out, a lot of thedynamism of American society
kind of makes it so hard to stop.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I think it's really important that history not
evolve into a kind of moralityplay, that's not to say history
has no moral dimension, andcertainly those of us who are
Christians or Jews do thinkhistory has a moral dimension.
(29:13):
God is in some way involved inhistory, although whether we can
tell exactly what he's up tobut the morality play.
I just saw a book the other dayabout another book about slavery
, about how we should thinkabout slavery.
(29:35):
I should have thought thateverything that could be said on
the subject had been said, butgetting all this rolled out
published it's not the only andof course, his position the
author's position appears to bewhere it's the question at the
(30:00):
heart of American civilization.
And that's just ridiculous.
And I say that without anydesire to say it's not important
, minimize.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I say that without any desire to say it's not
important.
Minimize.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, and, by the way , you know, when I was growing
up, we were taught Americanhistory Slavery was very
important, it was a cause of thecivil war, even in Maryland
they were.
They were yeah, and it's not asif this has all been neglected.
And yet this sort of startedcrashing in on the scene and
(30:52):
making slavery the sort of newcapitalism theorists who
basically see capitalism as themap for slavery.
I think there needs to be areset, and I was never so crazy
as to think Land of Hope couldbe the beginning of that, but I
feel, as if it is, it is.
It's a success way beyondanything I expected or dared to
hope for has given me hope.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
It can't be a retent.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And, by the way, I mean I should talk a little bit
for your audience about what Imean by using the term land of
hope.
It's not just a sort ofsugar-coated America is the
candy land of human history,it's not like that.
But it is first of all, theplace to which most Everybody
(31:44):
that is here came here fromsomewhere else, his or her
lineage.
Most of us came willingly, somecame in chains, but even they
have, in their beautiful liturgy, the liturgy of songs, are full
(32:07):
of hope, full of the biblicallyinspired hope, but more
generally it's it's a land ofhope in the sense that, that a
place people have come becausethey thought it was possible to
move beyond the conditions intowhich they were born, um, yeah,
(32:28):
and.
Or they had a sense ofadventure or pioneering spirit
or whatever.
But it's that sense.
Things can be different, thingscan be better.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
And there's something deeply Christian and deeply
progressive in that sense bothright?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yes, and it's yes, and I think both of those things
can become too involved in ourdefinition of ourselves.
That is to say, as Christiansand I'll speak as one this world
(33:09):
is not our home.
This country is not our home.
It's a pretty grand place to befor a time being, but it should
never be the eschaton.
No, that's something entirelyelse, and progressive.
Need I say the notion that beinga land of hope means that
(33:37):
everything is constantly in needof improvement?
It's a world of orange cones.
Everywhere you look, everythingis under construction.
No, that's not a civilized wayto live.
We actually, I think and thisis something I'm probably going
to have a little more of this inthe second edition of the book.
(33:58):
I think we really need torethink our notions of progress.
This technology is wreckingAmerican youth, wrecking the art
of conversation, wrecking manyof the things that are dearest
(34:18):
to us as part of our humanendowment, and so these, and, of
course, the technology thatwe're using to talk here, is
wonderful but we don't have asense of proportion about the
use of it, especially youngerpeople who are unsupervised.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Has that been a typically American trait to not
have a sense of proportion abouttechnology?
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I think so.
I mean, there's a term ahistorian has devised I can't
think who it is but thetechnological sublime, which is
a kind of very high, highversion of what we mean when we
say that an app is cool.
Cool Because the coolness inthat sense like I had somebody
(35:16):
singing the praises of aCybertruck to me the other day
you know it could beself-driving if you want to.
I don't want to have aself-driving vehicle.
Well, you can have.
Let's say, you live in Michigan, it's a cold day, it's snowing.
You can have.
Let's say, you live in Michigan, it's a cold day, it's snowing.
You can call your car out ofthe garage across the street,
(35:38):
come up the front door, get theheat up to a certain temperature
, keep the seats, all whileyou're sitting in the comfort of
your home.
And I thought to myself nowthat would be, and more.
But there is that aspect of atechnological fix, something
(35:58):
that requires many differentsteps.
For us, all you have to do ispush a button, step.
I do think we're.
Also.
It's amazing how quickly wepick things up.
I mean, I reflect on how, everynow and then, I'm going through
my files and I find lettersthat I used to write.
(36:22):
I used to write letters andkeep copies of them because it
was one of the ways I augmentedmy poor memory.
I would make carbons.
I've got files and files ofthese green carbons for all the
letters I wrote going back tobefore I was a graduate and, of
(36:45):
course, at some point they juststop because email comes in and
it's just amazing how the mostordinary people in American life
are all you know.
They know what a QR code is.
(37:06):
They know how to operate theirphone better than I do because
I'm not that curious about allthe apps.
So we are very adaptable.
I won't say I hate theexpression in our DNA, but it's
in our blood, it's in our deeplyembedded culture.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, is it true, would you say too as well, this
hope.
I like the key note here of thekey motif of hope, that kind of
what lies at the base, too, of,to some extent, of Americans'
penchant for forming, thisTocquevillian penchant for
forming voluntary associations.
There's a sense that there'shope for something to be better,
(37:48):
either at a small scale or at alarge scale.
Yeah, not a fatalism, in otherwords.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Absolutely.
And again, tocqueville saysthis, that he doesn't only
attribute this to Americans, buthe thinks that's really one of
the most debilitating thingsabout modern thought and I don't
know who exactly he has in mind.
He's right about any number ofmodern things is the sense of
(38:19):
determinism and reductionism, sothat all class relations are a
function of the means ofproduction, and everything else,
the ideas that people propound,and all that it's all a
function of the organization ofthe means of production.
Or Freud, darwin, all of thegreat modern systems of thought
(38:44):
are in some way efforts to robus of our freedom, of the
freedom of our will.
And Tocqueville said no, thatis the one thing, liberty.
He's a great proponent ofliberty in the sense of freedom,
of the will that we are free tomake our world.
And he admired that about theAmericans.
They didn't just sit around andsay, oh well, it's broken, I'll
(39:08):
wait for the government to senda plumber.
No, we'll try to do itourselves if we have to.
But um, and and yes, this avoluntary association.
You don't see that anywhere.
I mean, I I haven't lived thatmuch of my life abroad, but what
I have, um, admittedly was initaly, which is not a place
(39:30):
known for its organizationaltalents, but you don't see
anything like it and peoplecan't conceive.
Why would you start a school?
Don't you have schools already?
And the church would haveschools?
Okay, right, right.
(40:00):
Although in a place like France, the Republican regimes did
everything they could to drivethe Catholic schools out of
business about, because it'syour line of work.
Is that that?
Um in on the continent, youhardly see any?
Um philanthropic foundations,right, they're alien to the
(40:21):
experience of the of the french.
Just pick on the french yeah um,I, I went to a a talk once by a
french, uh, admirer of Americanfoundations.
He just went on and on abouthow difficult it was to do
anything with the legalstructure as opposed to, but so
is the cultural structure.
(40:42):
Interesting point, when youknow, the great Cathedral of
Notre Dame in Paris was redoneand reopened, magnificently,
done, done, um, well, when thefire first happened and they,
they decided that they weregoing to rebuild it and not
rebuild some kind of itchypompadour center as it had been.
(41:05):
Um, uh, the one good thing thatemmanuel macron has done, one
good thing that Emmanuel Macronhas done the offers of money
flooded in from Americans,wealthy Americans, not all of
them Catholics or even believers, and people were deeply
(41:28):
suspicious of them and in theend, I think they did accept
some of the money, but not much.
The French people prefersomething like this to be built
with public money.
They prefer that, yeah, andthat's something very, very
different from us.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, that is not in our DNA.
To use a phrase you don't likeWell, it's okay when you use it.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, and the idea of a philanthropic foundation in
some way violates their notionsof public that if you have, even
if the rich people are doinggood it's much better than it
come out of the public purse, gofigure.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Let me ask you about one more concept that you bring
up, because I wanted to makesure we touch on this before we
go.
I think one of the powerfulthemes you introduce is that of
unsettlement.
The history of the US, for goodand ill, is one of unsettling
individuals, communities, people, seemingly everything.
Can you talk about that alittle bit?
(42:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
yeah, that's a.
It starts with this wonderfulsentence from Lewis Mumford that
I just have.
I repeat it with every class Iteach about American history
that the settlement of Americabegan with the unsettlement of
Europe, and I think it capturesthe ways in which to put it in a
(43:04):
somewhat less clear way Americais a province of Europe.
We are we're not a child ofEurope or the offspring exactly,
but we are maybe in some ways aprovince that are an offshoot,
a byproduct.
I'm not sure that there's anyone phrase that quite captures,
but I love Mumford's phrase andso I do follow that through.
(43:27):
Through that there's.
There are ways in which, um,yeah, unsettlement uh is and I
speak as a very conservativeperson, I prefer settlement to
unsettled, yeah, but thatunsettlement can serve, um, uh,
larger purposes, um, let's shakethings up.
(43:51):
It can help to reorient, toliberate the energies of people
that have not found properoutlet.
There's some way in which oneof the strengths of American
life and I find a lot of timesforeigners we've had a Romanian
(44:13):
guy visit here and he says youknow what I miss in America?
It's not enough of the TomSawyer spirit, and I wonder,
what do you mean by that?
And what he's really talkingabout is our willingness to
operate outside of institutions,got it?
Yeah, our willingness tooperate outside of institutions.
To just float a raft down theriver, you know, or make things
(44:39):
ourselves to, not to paint bynumbers, but to refuse to be
regimented.
And I told him one of myfavorite sayings of GK
Chesterton I'm sure you know itis that anything worth doing is
worth doing badly.
It's such a profound thingbecause and yet we are in this
(45:05):
culture that honors, way beyondits deserts, credentialism,
people in the white coats withlots of letters after their name
, that's what he was talkingabout, the top lawyerism.
You know, there's a creativityin America that comes out of the
farm boy tinkers that developedthe automobile industry, that
(45:33):
sort of, um, unstructured, uh,uh, uh, boundlessness, that
sense of, uh, of the humanenergy without, uh, without,
without constraints, uh, that um, it's a big part of what makes
America so special and exciting,and I think that's one of the
(45:56):
reasons a lot of people areexcited more excited than I am
about the fact that we're nowout in space again, we're
exploring the universe, that.
You know.
There's something to the ideathat Americans need a frontier.
Yeah, frederick Jackson Turnerand that's what Jack Kennedy ran
(46:17):
for president on the idea thatwe need, yeah, that space, was
it?
So maybe he was right.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
So let's end then.
Here we are.
You remember the bicentennialin 1976.
Here we are coming up on thesemi-quincentennial, which I
keep saying, so I can remindmyself how to say it and maybe
pick this up.
You don't hear it out in theworld.
We use it.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
We say America 250 now.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
America 250, but even America 250, we really don't,
which is why we're doing thisseason.
Here we are March 2025 or April2025.
Here we are it's March 2025, um, or April 2025.
Uh, you don't.
If, if most normal people youmentioned this is coming up like
, oh wow, you're right, that'samazing, what?
What's your feeling as a memberof the commission?
What are you hoping might getaccomplished?
(47:05):
Now?
Here's the third administration.
Uh, this commission's beenunder um.
What are you are you hopingmight happen over the next
several years?
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Well, I will tell you off the bat.
There's no secret that I'vebeen very disappointed in the
commission so far, and untilfairly recent, things have
really started to turn around.
It came into being in the Iguess it came to be in the first
(47:37):
Trump administration, and I wasnot one of the original members
, but I was added soon after thebeginning.
Paul Ryan was speaker.
He was the one who nominated meon it.
It was completely consumed byinternal politics, and I won't
go into that except to say itwasn't just ideological or
(48:01):
partisan politics, it was.
There were two differentPhiladelphia groups that each
wanted to dominate the thing,and meanwhile, you know, there
is a country out there beyondPhiladelphia.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
It's always been hard for Philadelphians to
understand, but yeah Well in thefullness of time.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
We started to run out of time and both sides are gone
.
You know, the people who werebasically perpetuating this
struggle are gone and thingsstarted to improve, believe it
or not, when Joe Biden waselected, because it wasn't the
(48:47):
monstrosity of the Trumpadministration for people to
rail against.
It wasn't the monstrosity ofthe Trump administration for
people to rail against.
And, strangely enough, trump'sreelection has.
Well, I think now people arerealizing if we're not going to
be doing something, he's justgoing to do it himself, and it
(49:14):
won't necessarily be whateveryone in the commission will
like.
You know, I won't say what it'sgoing to be, but I think so
we're getting going a bit more,and those of us who are really
interested, for example, theelement of civic education,
really interested in, forexample, the element of civic
education, are really getting on.
(49:34):
We don't have an executivedirector.
He had one.
He stepped down because of thepolitics.
He hired another one.
He quit after a month or twoand we haven't had one since.
The woman who basically runs thething is a Democratic pal of
(49:59):
sorts, not an elected official,but from California.
She's done a wonderful job,rosie Rios I should mention her
name.
I think she's been even handed.
We had a commission meeting inAlabama and she and I were about
the only people to show up, butshe talked to Alabamians like
(50:21):
that.
She was a, you know, a sisterand it was great.
So I'm I'm hopeful that we'regoing to.
We have some programs that arejust launching now and you know
you don't want to peak too soon.
So that's one way.
On the other hand, it's time tostart peaking.
I will tell you this there's aa lot of people have forgotten
(50:47):
that the bicentennial was aclose-run thing, and then there
was also a commission that wasestablished well in advance and
there was political turmoil.
You know, you had Watergate,you had the debacle of the
Vietnam War, all kinds oftroubles and the country was
(51:09):
very demoralized at the time.
A lot of people always sort ofcelebrate.
There was a people'sbicentennial that was sort of
reminding country of everythingbad about america but at the
last minute and I I it was laterin the season than we are now
(51:31):
two people came along thatbasically saved the Bison
Senator John Warner of Virginiaand Warren Berger, then Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court andthey said we can't have this,
we can't blow this, Come on.
And so they instituted all theprograms that people who were
yeah, you're probably too youngto remember any of this, but I
(51:52):
am man the bicentennial minuteswere a staple on broadcast media
, um, and a lot of people uh,remember them and and right,
tell me that theylearned a lot from it.
We're probably going to dosomething like that and they
also.
The utter just out of the boxgenius thing that they did in
(52:21):
the Bison was all ships that was.
I mean, there were very fewthings in my lifetime that had
been more, had more of an effecton the populace than that.
And who'd have thought?
Good, you know a bunch of oldships riding around new york
harbor.
The whole country is watchingthis on television.
(52:43):
There are, I think, eight, tenmillion people lining the harbor
.
It's and um I I think we'd haveto have a whole other show to
talk about.
Why were people so moved by?
yeah but I'll tell you in a word.
I think it had to do withbeauty I think, there's a way in
which something so beautiful,the old um uh three and four
(53:09):
masted wooden ships, justreminded people that they
weren't all, most of them, yeahthat's great.
I've been trying to come upwith something similar it's a
(53:29):
little late.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
10 year ideas to Bill McClay care of Hillsdale
College.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yes, right Well please do I do get these.
I got just sitting on my desk,I got a letter yesterday from
somebody who wants to do abicentennial mural.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
I mean semi-quincentennial,
semi-quincentennial yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:50):
So yeah, it's one of the things you hear from people,
but some of it's good and look,I don't discourage anybody from
it.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
It's not something we have to wait for a government
commission to do.
No, exactly.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
That's one of the reasons I think our commission
may succeed is because of thevery fact we couldn't agree on
anything politically.
I mean the commission, this isa matter of public record.
So I can tell you.
The commission could not agreeon whether to call this a
celebration or an observance.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
Correct.
We never had one which is worthrepeating.
Could not agree.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
This is one of the geniuses of federalism or
subsidiarity or whatever youwant to call it.
So people in the locality say,well, we're not going to sit
here in Indiana and do nothingjust because you guys can't
agree on what time of day it is.
So they're doing things allover the country and, thank God
(54:59):
for it, it's turning out to be atotal effort.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
I should say yeah, your state I'm aware I believe
at least last I heard 48 statesat least had their own
independent commissions.
If you do want to be involvedwith this, you're listening to
this at all.
Your state has a commission.
Yeah, we do, yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Virginia has, in my opinion, the best.
It's terrific.
It's not surprising, yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
Well, bill, thank you for doing this today.
Really appreciate your time.
Land of Hope is the book.
It's out now, get it.
You can get the second editionwhen that comes out sometime in
the future.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
It's not far.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
Okay, very good, excellent.
So thanks so much for beingwith us, bill.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Good to be with you, Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
Take care, hey.
Thanks for joining us fortoday'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.
This week on Givers, doers and Thinkers.
We talk to Hillsdale professorBill McClay about his
explosively popular book Land ofHope.
We talk about how to achieve agenuinely balanced perspective
when doing history and the needto avoid reducing history to a
morality play.
We talk about what Bill thinkswe most often get wrong about
(00:20):
American history and we speakabout his experience on the
American Semi-QuincentennialCommission.
Let's go Welcome to Givers,doers and Thinkers a podcast on
(00:50):
philanthropy and civil society.
I'm Jeremy Beard.
It's great to have you with us.
We are recording on AprilFool's Day, april 1st 2025.
This is not a joke.
Bill maybe will have some jokesfor us, I don't know.
But I'm pleased to have as ourguest historian Wilfred McClay,
the Victor Davis Hanson Chair inClassical History and Western
(01:11):
Civilization at HillsdaleCollege.
30 years ago, bill publishedhis award-winning book the
Masterless Self and Society inModern America and most recently
he is the author of thebestselling book Land of Hope,
an invitation to the greatAmerican story.
Aside from his writing andteaching, which have won too
(01:31):
many awards for me to mentionhere, bill has served and still
serves on a number of boards.
He is the chairman of the boardat the National Association of
Scholars on the board of theJack Miller Center as well and,
most importantly andappropriately for what we're
doing this season on thispodcast, he is also a member of
(01:53):
the official USSemi-Quincentennial Commission,
so we're very glad to have himwith us here today.
Bill, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm fine, you may be tired just thinking about these
things, these responsibilitiesthat I don't always adequately
discharge.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I didn't even mention all of them.
I tried to lighten your load alittle bit, it's okay.
Yeah, well, I have Land of Hope.
By the way, for those whohaven't seen it over my shoulder
here, it's sold many, many,many copies.
Really, I don't know if you'reshocked by it.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I was and am.
Yeah, by the way, I want tomention the other great thing
you have over your shoulder issome kind of representation of
the state of Indiana.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
That is true.
Thank you for noticing.
Really really nice.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
A friend of mine, Richard Ryan Shue, you probably
know, refers to Indiana as thevirtuous state.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, he couldn't be more correct.
Yeah Well, but Land of Hope.
I want to make sure I encouragepeople to.
If you haven't bought this bookor you're one of the few at
this point, because so manypeople have it, so get it for
yourself, for your kids, foryour school, for anybody you
think needs to sort ofunderstand or would profit from
(03:14):
understanding American historybetter.
It's very.
It's written very accessibly.
It's not too long.
What is it?
350 pages maybe, or so.
Yeah, yeah, so it's meant to beread.
It's meant to be read.
It's meant to be read.
That's right, it's actuallymeant to be read.
One of those books is meant tobe read.
Tell me why, like what led youto write another general history
(03:34):
of America and to what extent.
Was like the 1619 project inyour mind as you're doing this,
or was it written completelyindependently of that phenomenon
?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
It was written independently of that, and
actually the 1619 Project wasreleased after the book had come
out.
Okay, but the 1619 Projectdidn't occur in a vacuum.
It reflected some trends ofscholarship over the last 30
years or so, and so I have tosay, even though it was a bit of
(04:09):
a shock to me that the New YorkTimes put its institutional
weight behind something that wasas mendacious and really
inaccurate as the 1869 Projectwas the general drift of it,
wasn't that surprising?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah so that wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
No, what led me to do this?
That's a very good question,because it's not anything I ever
thought I wanted to do.
There's a long version of thisstory.
I'll skip that, but basically,well, I'll give you a little
version of this story.
I'll skip that, but basically,well, I'll give you a little bit
of it.
What precipitated it was whenthe College Board, which is the
(04:53):
organization that does advancedplacement testing and offers
accreditation for coursesaccreditation for courses they
came out with a revised versionof their American history, ap US
history test, and it was quiteshocking, shockingly revisionist
(05:19):
, so to speak, in leaving out alot of things having to do with
constitutional history.
Diplomatic history andintellectual history is my field
, and even political history andemphasizing, you know, the
economics of the slave trade andthings like that much more
(05:41):
prominently than say somethinglike the ratification debates
over the Constitution RightAppeared entirely, that's where
the.
Federalist Papers appear, yeah.
So there were a number of usthat were really very concerned
about this and we got togetherand produced a letter, an open
(06:04):
letter to the college board,sort of entreating them to back
off from these changes, whichwere damaging and false, for
reasons that we provided in theletter.
It's actually a reallyrespectful letter under the
circumstances and what they did.
(06:24):
They actually did back off forthe time being from a lot of the
changes that they made.
But it was soon brought to ourattention that the big textbook
manufacturers, like Pearson,mcgraw-hill they had already
revised their American historytext in line with what they
(06:47):
anticipated to be coming out ofthe changes at the AP test.
So and I think they figured well.
It may have a little setback,but eventually, because the
march of progress only leads inone direction.
So people started saying well.
(07:12):
People in our group startedsaying well, we need an
alternative text.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
We've needed one for a long time actually, and there
was no extent, no sort ofunpoliticized text, not really.
There was no extent, no sort ofunpoliticized, not really.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, there were some that were not as politicized,
but they were alsounintelligible.
They, literally, they could beunreadable.
I couldn't read them, and Idiscovered this when I started
working on Land of Hope.
But at any rate, I finally wastalked into doing it, and I that
(07:49):
somebody needed to write such abook At first.
I said you know, I absolutelyagree with you.
I hope you'll find somebody,and I thought that would take
care of the problem.
But no people kept coming backand so, um, in some ways I, I,
um, I won't say my populardemand, but by the demand of a
number of well-placed peoplewhom I greatly respect, I, I was
(08:13):
cajoled into doing it once.
I was about and, and really,jeremy, at first it was just the
hardest thing to do because Iwasn't used to writing that way.
I wasn't used to I.
I'd like to think my writingwas intelligible but this was I
wanted to.
I knew that what I had to do wasto break through to a much more
(08:35):
limpid, much more accessiblestyle.
And I know, uh, academicismRight right.
And no references to varyinginterpretations.
No, you had to.
Yeah, plus, my publisher keptsaying oh, you know, we're
really hoping this will be theantidote to Howard Zinn Howard
(08:57):
Zinn, for your viewers andlisteners, being the political
scientist, not a historian, whowrote A People's History of the
United States, which is a fairlyegregious work.
I can't think of any historiansno reputable historians that
have ever said oh, Howard Zinndid a good, reliable history.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
They like it.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
There's left, but they won't, they won't, they
won't.
They won't accept the idea thatthey won't go that low.
It's the same with history,anyway.
And Howard Zinn, I think, hassold five or six million copies.
It's a lot of copies.
(09:42):
And you know I find friends whoare big fans of Len Oak.
They say, gosh, you know, mykid is using Howard's in his
school, public schools, privateschools, it's still out there.
So anyway, I came to theconclusion yes, there had to be
something better.
So I started in on it and onceI it took me a month to write
(10:07):
the first chapter, um.
And but once I got it, once Igot a handle on the right
diction, the right tone, theright pitch, um, it flowed
pretty well because I'd beenteaching American History Survey
courses for umpteen years andyou know, in many ways my notes
(10:29):
from those years reflected Icouldn't use the notes directly,
but they reflected the outlookon American history that I had
and I brought to bear in thebook.
So by the time I finished I wasreally liking it, I was
enjoying myself and I oftenwonder if that's evident now to
readers that hey, he's reallygetting into this.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
It does read very, very well.
You're right, you've sort ofstripped away the academicisms
and the sort of throat clearingand the references to the
literature and all that sort ofthing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There's only two or three places where I say well,
look, historians differ aboutthis issue.
The Great Depression, forexample, I wasn't going to go
out with.
You have to mention theKeynesian interpretation, which
I personally think is mostlywrong.
But I'm not an economist.
You have to give some sway toit because that's still the
(11:27):
dominant view.
But I also gave the monetarist,bill Friedman, that view and I
hit it some others.
I think it's right to say thatwe don't have a settled
interpretation of the GreatDepression and in those
instances I felt I had to have asettled interpretation of the
Great Depression and in thoseinstances I felt I had to do a
(11:47):
little bit of academicargo-waggo.
But in the beginning of theFirst World War, I think that's
definitely still contested andit's something you have to have
within the scope of the Americanhistory text, even though we
had nothing to do with startingthe thing.
(12:08):
But otherwise, yeah, it's plainlanguage.
I wanted to and I've been verygratified by letters that I get
from people those ordinarypeople.
Sometimes they don't identifywhere they're from, which
bothers me.
I get a letter from somebodythat says Joe Schmoe at
(12:30):
Googlecom or Gmailcom.
But it's very gratifying to getthese people who say finally,
history books I enjoy reading,that's intelligible, that
doesn't go into too much detail,and that was part of the
mission too is to make it short,as you said.
But you also have to have apoint of view, and the view of
(12:55):
American history is, even thoughI have many reservations about
things that we have done, thingswe are doing.
Catch me on a Tuesday or aThursday.
I'm very down on the presentcondition of our culture, but
there's an ultimate affirmationand a sense of hope about the
(13:19):
future.
Right, and when I was writingit that almost seemed like TS
Eliot's famous line aboutgathering up, shoring up our
fragments against our ruin.
I don't think that's right, butit doesn't seem quite as
(13:43):
desperate now as it does.
But I thought about I mean, I'veraised children and we
homeschooled our children, so Ithought they studied history
with my wife and me.
But how do I want to teach thisstuff?
And I don't want to teach it asone long parade of Confederate
(14:04):
flags and Klansman hoods.
That's not America.
In my experience that's not so.
I think the hyper, almostpathologically critical view of
American history that is so muchthe norm in the academic
profession.
I'm not exaggerating at allwhen I put it that way.
(14:27):
Right, it's not only false butit's unhealthy.
It's unhealthy for young peopleto grow up with the sense that
they're living under a reallyevil regime which they should
nevertheless never let youbehave themselves and follow the
laws.
(14:48):
What logic comes from that?
I think, at least at some pointI had dinner with a friend, a
new friend.
I didn't know him very well andit was very interesting what I
was doing.
And he said you know, I believeif young people grow up
believing that they live under abad regime, it affects their
(15:13):
soul in a way that is verydifficult to heal, very
difficult to change.
And you know I had not thoughtabout what I was doing in that
way that this is about.
You know, the study of history,especially one's own history, is
partly an act of moralformation, the country at which,
(15:53):
to the extent we are still arepublic or aspiring to be one,
we expect them to participate in.
So I do try to give weight andI think sufficient weight to the
negative side of Americanhistory.
So there are those for whom youcan never get enough of the
negative side.
But I've gotten remarkablylittle criticism.
(16:16):
I'm almost none about mytreatment of slavery and racial,
you know, white supremacy,racial discrimination, jim Crow,
etc.
I have gotten a bit ofcriticism that I don't do more
with Native Americans.
I think that's actually a validcriticism.
We are in the middle I wantyour audience to know of doing a
(16:40):
second edition and giving methe opportunity to beef up some
parts and also to take out someof the academicisms that just
somehow crept in.
So I'm having a lot of pleasuretaking those out.
So, yeah, I think I could dobetter in that department.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I don't think it's very it's hard to compress an
entire American history into 350pages, definitely.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
To say the least.
It's constant issue oftrade-offs or triage.
It's my favorite image becausethe triage is a life boat.
You put too much detail in thatthe boat will sink, so you've
got to know what to throw out.
Sometimes you throw out thesaying I forget who the British
(17:34):
poet who said you must kill yourdarling.
And in the process of editingyour work you have to think of
that image, that comparison,that name or whatever that you
just thought.
Oh, that's so brilliant of me,you've got to take it out.
More often than not you fall inlove with your own image.
So there's a lot of that, butthe end result I've been very
(18:01):
pleased, not just by the salesbut the reception of it has been
so positive.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
But, as you say, the contrast with these sort of
unremittingly, pathologicallycritical is exactly the right
phrase to use in the way thatAmerican history is not just
presented at the sort of elitecolleges or universities, but I
think all the way down now, allthe way down to the first time
American history is presentedand you think sane public school
(18:29):
that you send your kids to, youknow that's it's all, permeates
the curriculum, does it not?
It is sort of all mid-shaping.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
You know, I think, and I think there's an
assumption, even by mycolleagues on the left, which is
to say most of my colleaguesaround the country.
There's an assumption thatsomewhere out there somebody
Miss Marple somewhere isteaching the sort of basic
account of American history thatwe get to counterpunch against
(19:04):
account of American history thatwe get to counterpunch against
Right, nobody's home.
Miss Marple has become MrMarple or whatever she said, and
gone to California.
But there is no, there isnobody.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It's all a counterpunch.
There's no, there's no.
They're punching, andcounterpunching against a punch
that doesn't exist.
Yes, even in Texas.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
So I think yeah, that said, I feel obliged to be as
balanced as I can and not asugar-coated view of our history
, but I think what people andactually a lot of the work
that's being done has, within alimited frame, validity.
(19:49):
I know these people are careful.
Some of them are not careful.
A lot of careful scholars dowork which I want to ask them
what did you think you weredoing?
People are still writing booksagainst George Washington, which
, to me, is not just sort ofpatriotic sacrilege.
It's not just sort of patrioticsacrilege, it's stupid.
(20:11):
What kind of heroes do youthink the human race has to
offer if George Washington isnot a hero?
So I think the perspective ofthe book is as important as
anything else.
When I look at someone likeJefferson and Jefferson's a
(20:32):
great example, actually, becausehe's obviously a great man with
what are, by our standardstoday, great faults and they
were actually faults by hisstandards, he was utterly
convinced of the moral wrongnessof slavery.
You know, he famously said Itremble when I consider that my
(20:55):
God is just and his justice willnot sleep forever.
He's talking about slavery whenhe does that.
That's at the Jefferson Memorialin Washington.
Those words.
It actually shows thatJefferson would talk about God
from time to time if he felt somoved.
That's another issue, but Ithink you know to acknowledge
(21:20):
the greatness of Jefferson,particularly in his support of
religious liberty, support andthe Declaration, maybe above all
else, is not to deny that hehad other faults and actually he
wasn't that great a president.
He was smart enough to do theLouisiana Purchase and I give
(21:40):
him high marks for violating hisown constitutional principles
to do that.
You know, as the saying goes,sometimes you have to rise above
principle, and Jefferson didthat.
In that case, you couldn't passthat up.
Where would we be withoutLouisiana?
So where would the chicory inour coffee come from?
(22:02):
But seriously, I think learning.
There's a lack of maturity inthe way our history is taught.
When you find some flaw insomeone's makeup, well, that's
it for them.
You know they're gone.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And I mean the standard has become so
ridiculously high.
You know, back when statueswere coming down in 2020 and
2021, they were tearing downstatues not just of Robert E Lee
or Frederick Douglass.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
is that a call, correctly, frederick Douglass?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yes, lincoln, because .
Lincoln, of course was notreally clearly in favor of
racial equality in all senses,social equality.
He was a man of his times, atleast then, and it's interesting
(23:04):
to me that Martin Luther KingJr has not been cancelled
because of his what his FBIfiles show about his feelings
with women.
I'm glad he hasn't been.
I think he's an admirablefigure and deserves place in the
American political pantheon,but it's the selective
(23:28):
application.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
The selective application yes it's, yeah, the
selective application.
It's selective application, yes.
What's the what's the aspect ofthe politicization of history
that seems to have reallymetastasized in the last I don't
know 20 or 30 years.
It seems to me even more thanbefore.
What's a, what's one or twothings that irritate you the
most, like well, I can't believeall this uh uh land grant
(23:49):
business where you have to sayyou know whatever they call it.
Yeah, Explain to people whatthat is.
They may not have encounteredthat yet in the world.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You go to a concert, let's say in, oh I don't know.
Somewhere in New Mexico, let'ssay, and I won't do Arizona,
we'll say New Mexico.
And someone comes out and sayswell, before we do this, we want
to acknowledge this land thatonce belonged to the Choctaw or
(24:25):
whatever.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
The Pueblo Indians, you might say.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
It's this sort of of let's have our moment of our
vitamin G guilt and then we goahead with things to sins that
we had no role in committing,and probably our forebears back
as far as we remember had norole in in, and actually the
history is often very bad, Imean badly done.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
That's what bothers me the most.
I would say, like the landoriginally occupied, let's say,
by Navajo or something.
Well, the Navajo weren't heretill 1300 or 1400 or wherever we
might be standing.
They took it from somebody else, who probably took it from
somebody else, who took it fromsomebody else.
It's a sort of ahistorical viewthat goes all the way down.
(25:20):
That's so irritating.
Like you said, I agree, theland payment thing is so
meaningless and self-righteousat one and the same time.
The end payment thing is someaningless and self-righteous
at one and the same time, butit's a way of saying the regime
under which we live is notentirely legitimate.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, and I think that's corrosive, although it
also makes people a lot ofpeople say, well, I don't care
about anything that came beforeme.
They have the opposite reaction.
It's sort of like decidingyou're tired of hearing
(25:58):
feminists rattle on about things, so you become Jeremy Tate.
I mean, those are extremes.
You're right, One kind ofproduces the other yes indeed,
and so, I think, a balancedperspective that recognizes that
there's a tragic element.
Particularly, one of the bestpeople on this is Tocqueville,
(26:22):
as he is so good on so manythings.
He describes in the last chapterof volume one of Democracy in
America.
He describes when he'straveling, you know.
He ends up at Memphis and hesees a part of the Trail of
Tears.
He sees this, actually theChalk Claws.
(26:43):
But he sees this miserablegroup of people, ill-clad,
freezing and barefoot in manycases, this ordeal of their
being removed to IndianTerritory, what became Oklahoma,
and there's no element of.
(27:06):
Well, these people deserved it.
They're lesser beings.
No, his Christian impulses kickin.
Well, these people deserved it.
They're lesser beings.
No, he, his Christian impulseskick in and he describes it with
great compassion.
They knew that their ills werelong standing and irremediable.
(27:29):
And he ends up sort of sayingthis is a great tragedy because
nothing was going to stop thegrowth of modern European
civilization, the Western growth, nothing was going to be able
to preserve their way of life.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
It's really not any sort of culture of democracy
that he identifies in America.
This is somehow symptomatic ofthat.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And.
I think we still don't knowquite how to.
I mean I think it's still aproblem this is one of the
reasons that I think I need togive more attention to it.
It's still a problem in a waythat raises not as much of a
problem, even though it's all wehear about.
I think you don't hear a lotabout the issue of Native
Americans.
(28:23):
They're indigenous people and Ithink there were treaties
broken A few Left and right.
So there were treaties broken,a few left and right so more
than a few.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
There is a sense of inevitability to it, though,
isn't there of this sort of justwave the power and dynamism?
As you point out, a lot of thedynamism of American society
kind of makes it so hard to stop.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I think it's really important that history not
evolve into a kind of moralityplay, that's not to say history
has no moral dimension, andcertainly those of us who are
Christians or Jews do thinkhistory has a moral dimension.
(29:13):
God is in some way involved inhistory, although whether we can
tell exactly what he's up tobut the morality play.
I just saw a book the other dayabout another book about slavery
, about how we should thinkabout slavery.
(29:35):
I should have thought thateverything that could be said on
the subject had been said, butgetting all this rolled out
published it's not the only andof course, his position the
author's position appears to bewhere it's the question at the
(30:00):
heart of American civilization.
And that's just ridiculous.
And I say that without anydesire to say it's not important
, minimize.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I say that without any desire to say it's not
important.
Minimize.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, and, by the way , you know, when I was growing
up, we were taught Americanhistory Slavery was very
important, it was a cause of thecivil war, even in Maryland
they were.
They were yeah, and it's not asif this has all been neglected.
And yet this sort of startedcrashing in on the scene and
(30:52):
making slavery the sort of newcapitalism theorists who
basically see capitalism as themap for slavery.
I think there needs to be areset, and I was never so crazy
as to think Land of Hope couldbe the beginning of that, but I
feel, as if it is, it is.
It's a success way beyondanything I expected or dared to
hope for has given me hope.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
It can't be a retent.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And, by the way, I mean I should talk a little bit
for your audience about what Imean by using the term land of
hope.
It's not just a sort ofsugar-coated America is the
candy land of human history,it's not like that.
But it is first of all, theplace to which most Everybody
(31:44):
that is here came here fromsomewhere else, his or her
lineage.
Most of us came willingly, somecame in chains, but even they
have, in their beautiful liturgy, the liturgy of songs, are full
(32:07):
of hope, full of the biblicallyinspired hope, but more
generally it's it's a land ofhope in the sense that, that a
place people have come becausethey thought it was possible to
move beyond the conditions intowhich they were born, um, yeah,
(32:28):
and.
Or they had a sense ofadventure or pioneering spirit
or whatever.
But it's that sense.
Things can be different, thingscan be better.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
And there's something deeply Christian and deeply
progressive in that sense bothright?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yes, and it's yes, and I think both of those things
can become too involved in ourdefinition of ourselves.
That is to say, as Christiansand I'll speak as one this world
(33:09):
is not our home.
This country is not our home.
It's a pretty grand place to befor a time being, but it should
never be the eschaton.
No, that's something entirelyelse, and progressive.
Need I say the notion that beinga land of hope means that
(33:37):
everything is constantly in needof improvement?
It's a world of orange cones.
Everywhere you look, everythingis under construction.
No, that's not a civilized wayto live.
We actually, I think and thisis something I'm probably going
to have a little more of this inthe second edition of the book.
(33:58):
I think we really need torethink our notions of progress.
This technology is wreckingAmerican youth, wrecking the art
of conversation, wrecking manyof the things that are dearest
(34:18):
to us as part of our humanendowment, and so these, and, of
course, the technology thatwe're using to talk here, is
wonderful but we don't have asense of proportion about the
use of it, especially youngerpeople who are unsupervised.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Has that been a typically American trait to not
have a sense of proportion abouttechnology?
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I think so.
I mean, there's a term ahistorian has devised I can't
think who it is but thetechnological sublime, which is
a kind of very high, highversion of what we mean when we
say that an app is cool.
Cool Because the coolness inthat sense like I had somebody
(35:16):
singing the praises of aCybertruck to me the other day
you know it could beself-driving if you want to.
I don't want to have aself-driving vehicle.
Well, you can have.
Let's say, you live in Michigan, it's a cold day, it's snowing.
You can have.
Let's say, you live in Michigan, it's a cold day, it's snowing.
You can call your car out ofthe garage across the street,
(35:38):
come up the front door, get theheat up to a certain temperature
, keep the seats, all whileyou're sitting in the comfort of
your home.
And I thought to myself nowthat would be, and more.
But there is that aspect of atechnological fix, something
(35:58):
that requires many differentsteps.
For us, all you have to do ispush a button, step.
I do think we're.
Also.
It's amazing how quickly wepick things up.
I mean, I reflect on how, everynow and then, I'm going through
my files and I find lettersthat I used to write.
(36:22):
I used to write letters andkeep copies of them because it
was one of the ways I augmentedmy poor memory.
I would make carbons.
I've got files and files ofthese green carbons for all the
letters I wrote going back tobefore I was a graduate and, of
(36:45):
course, at some point they juststop because email comes in and
it's just amazing how the mostordinary people in American life
are all you know.
They know what a QR code is.
(37:06):
They know how to operate theirphone better than I do because
I'm not that curious about allthe apps.
So we are very adaptable.
I won't say I hate theexpression in our DNA, but it's
in our blood, it's in our deeplyembedded culture.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, is it true, would you say too as well, this
hope.
I like the key note here of thekey motif of hope, that kind of
what lies at the base, too, of,to some extent, of Americans'
penchant for forming, thisTocquevillian penchant for
forming voluntary associations.
There's a sense that there'shope for something to be better,
(37:48):
either at a small scale or at alarge scale.
Yeah, not a fatalism, in otherwords.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Absolutely.
And again, tocqueville saysthis, that he doesn't only
attribute this to Americans, buthe thinks that's really one of
the most debilitating thingsabout modern thought and I don't
know who exactly he has in mind.
He's right about any number ofmodern things is the sense of
(38:19):
determinism and reductionism, sothat all class relations are a
function of the means ofproduction, and everything else,
the ideas that people propound,and all that it's all a
function of the organization ofthe means of production.
Or Freud, darwin, all of thegreat modern systems of thought
(38:44):
are in some way efforts to robus of our freedom, of the
freedom of our will.
And Tocqueville said no, thatis the one thing, liberty.
He's a great proponent ofliberty in the sense of freedom,
of the will that we are free tomake our world.
And he admired that about theAmericans.
They didn't just sit around andsay, oh well, it's broken, I'll
(39:08):
wait for the government to senda plumber.
No, we'll try to do itourselves if we have to.
But um, and and yes, this avoluntary association.
You don't see that anywhere.
I mean, I I haven't lived thatmuch of my life abroad, but what
I have, um, admittedly was initaly, which is not a place
(39:30):
known for its organizationaltalents, but you don't see
anything like it and peoplecan't conceive.
Why would you start a school?
Don't you have schools already?
And the church would haveschools?
Okay, right, right.
(40:00):
Although in a place like France, the Republican regimes did
everything they could to drivethe Catholic schools out of
business about, because it'syour line of work.
Is that that?
Um in on the continent, youhardly see any?
Um philanthropic foundations,right, they're alien to the
(40:21):
experience of the of the french.
Just pick on the french yeah um,I, I went to a a talk once by a
french, uh, admirer of Americanfoundations.
He just went on and on abouthow difficult it was to do
anything with the legalstructure as opposed to, but so
is the cultural structure.
(40:42):
Interesting point, when youknow, the great Cathedral of
Notre Dame in Paris was redoneand reopened, magnificently,
done, done, um, well, when thefire first happened and they,
they decided that they weregoing to rebuild it and not
rebuild some kind of itchypompadour center as it had been.
(41:05):
Um, uh, the one good thing thatemmanuel macron has done, one
good thing that Emmanuel Macronhas done the offers of money
flooded in from Americans,wealthy Americans, not all of
them Catholics or even believers, and people were deeply
(41:28):
suspicious of them and in theend, I think they did accept
some of the money, but not much.
The French people prefersomething like this to be built
with public money.
They prefer that, yeah, andthat's something very, very
different from us.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, that is not in our DNA.
To use a phrase you don't likeWell, it's okay when you use it.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, and the idea of a philanthropic foundation in
some way violates their notionsof public that if you have, even
if the rich people are doinggood it's much better than it
come out of the public purse, gofigure.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Let me ask you about one more concept that you bring
up, because I wanted to makesure we touch on this before we
go.
I think one of the powerfulthemes you introduce is that of
unsettlement.
The history of the US, for goodand ill, is one of unsettling
individuals, communities, people, seemingly everything.
Can you talk about that alittle bit?
(42:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
yeah, that's a.
It starts with this wonderfulsentence from Lewis Mumford that
I just have.
I repeat it with every class Iteach about American history
that the settlement of Americabegan with the unsettlement of
Europe, and I think it capturesthe ways in which to put it in a
(43:04):
somewhat less clear way Americais a province of Europe.
We are we're not a child ofEurope or the offspring exactly,
but we are maybe in some ways aprovince that are an offshoot,
a byproduct.
I'm not sure that there's anyone phrase that quite captures,
but I love Mumford's phrase andso I do follow that through.
(43:27):
Through that there's.
There are ways in which, um,yeah, unsettlement uh is and I
speak as a very conservativeperson, I prefer settlement to
unsettled, yeah, but thatunsettlement can serve, um, uh,
larger purposes, um, let's shakethings up.
(43:51):
It can help to reorient, toliberate the energies of people
that have not found properoutlet.
There's some way in which oneof the strengths of American
life and I find a lot of timesforeigners we've had a Romanian
(44:13):
guy visit here and he says youknow what I miss in America?
It's not enough of the TomSawyer spirit, and I wonder,
what do you mean by that?
And what he's really talkingabout is our willingness to
operate outside of institutions,got it?
Yeah, our willingness tooperate outside of institutions.
To just float a raft down theriver, you know, or make things
(44:39):
ourselves to, not to paint bynumbers, but to refuse to be
regimented.
And I told him one of myfavorite sayings of GK
Chesterton I'm sure you know itis that anything worth doing is
worth doing badly.
It's such a profound thingbecause and yet we are in this
(45:05):
culture that honors, way beyondits deserts, credentialism,
people in the white coats withlots of letters after their name
, that's what he was talkingabout, the top lawyerism.
You know, there's a creativityin America that comes out of the
farm boy tinkers that developedthe automobile industry, that
(45:33):
sort of, um, unstructured, uh,uh, uh, boundlessness, that
sense of, uh, of the humanenergy without, uh, without,
without constraints, uh, that um, it's a big part of what makes
America so special and exciting,and I think that's one of the
(45:56):
reasons a lot of people areexcited more excited than I am
about the fact that we're nowout in space again, we're
exploring the universe, that.
You know.
There's something to the ideathat Americans need a frontier.
Yeah, frederick Jackson Turnerand that's what Jack Kennedy ran
(46:17):
for president on the idea thatwe need, yeah, that space, was
it?
So maybe he was right.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
So let's end then.
Here we are.
You remember the bicentennialin 1976.
Here we are coming up on thesemi-quincentennial, which I
keep saying, so I can remindmyself how to say it and maybe
pick this up.
You don't hear it out in theworld.
We use it.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
We say America 250 now.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
America 250, but even America 250, we really don't,
which is why we're doing thisseason.
Here we are March 2025 or April2025.
Here we are it's March 2025, um, or April 2025.
Uh, you don't.
If, if most normal people youmentioned this is coming up like
, oh wow, you're right, that'samazing, what?
What's your feeling as a memberof the commission?
What are you hoping might getaccomplished?
(47:05):
Now?
Here's the third administration.
Uh, this commission's beenunder um.
What are you are you hopingmight happen over the next
several years?
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Well, I will tell you off the bat.
There's no secret that I'vebeen very disappointed in the
commission so far, and untilfairly recent, things have
really started to turn around.
It came into being in the Iguess it came to be in the first
(47:37):
Trump administration, and I wasnot one of the original members
, but I was added soon after thebeginning.
Paul Ryan was speaker.
He was the one who nominated meon it.
It was completely consumed byinternal politics, and I won't
go into that except to say itwasn't just ideological or
(48:01):
partisan politics, it was.
There were two differentPhiladelphia groups that each
wanted to dominate the thing,and meanwhile, you know, there
is a country out there beyondPhiladelphia.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
It's always been hard for Philadelphians to
understand, but yeah Well in thefullness of time.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
We started to run out of time and both sides are gone
.
You know, the people who werebasically perpetuating this
struggle are gone and thingsstarted to improve, believe it
or not, when Joe Biden waselected, because it wasn't the
(48:47):
monstrosity of the Trumpadministration for people to
rail against.
It wasn't the monstrosity ofthe Trump administration for
people to rail against.
And, strangely enough, trump'sreelection has.
Well, I think now people arerealizing if we're not going to
be doing something, he's justgoing to do it himself, and it
(49:14):
won't necessarily be whateveryone in the commission will
like.
You know, I won't say what it'sgoing to be, but I think so
we're getting going a bit more,and those of us who are really
interested, for example, theelement of civic education,
really interested in, forexample, the element of civic
education, are really getting on.
(49:34):
We don't have an executivedirector.
He had one.
He stepped down because of thepolitics.
He hired another one.
He quit after a month or twoand we haven't had one since.
The woman who basically runs thething is a Democratic pal of
(49:59):
sorts, not an elected official,but from California.
She's done a wonderful job,rosie Rios I should mention her
name.
I think she's been even handed.
We had a commission meeting inAlabama and she and I were about
the only people to show up, butshe talked to Alabamians like
(50:21):
that.
She was a, you know, a sisterand it was great.
So I'm I'm hopeful that we'regoing to.
We have some programs that arejust launching now and you know
you don't want to peak too soon.
So that's one way.
On the other hand, it's time tostart peaking.
I will tell you this there's aa lot of people have forgotten
(50:47):
that the bicentennial was aclose-run thing, and then there
was also a commission that wasestablished well in advance and
there was political turmoil.
You know, you had Watergate,you had the debacle of the
Vietnam War, all kinds oftroubles and the country was
(51:09):
very demoralized at the time.
A lot of people always sort ofcelebrate.
There was a people'sbicentennial that was sort of
reminding country of everythingbad about america but at the
last minute and I I it was laterin the season than we are now
(51:31):
two people came along thatbasically saved the Bison
Senator John Warner of Virginiaand Warren Berger, then Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court andthey said we can't have this,
we can't blow this, Come on.
And so they instituted all theprograms that people who were
yeah, you're probably too youngto remember any of this, but I
(51:52):
am man the bicentennial minuteswere a staple on broadcast media
, um, and a lot of people uh,remember them and and right,
tell me that theylearned a lot from it.
We're probably going to dosomething like that and they
also.
The utter just out of the boxgenius thing that they did in
(52:21):
the Bison was all ships that was.
I mean, there were very fewthings in my lifetime that had
been more, had more of an effecton the populace than that.
And who'd have thought?
Good, you know a bunch of oldships riding around new york
harbor.
The whole country is watchingthis on television.
(52:43):
There are, I think, eight, tenmillion people lining the harbor
.
It's and um I I think we'd haveto have a whole other show to
talk about.
Why were people so moved by?
yeah but I'll tell you in a word.
I think it had to do withbeauty I think, there's a way in
which something so beautiful,the old um uh three and four
(53:09):
masted wooden ships, justreminded people that they
weren't all, most of them, yeahthat's great.
I've been trying to come upwith something similar it's a
(53:29):
little late.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
10 year ideas to Bill McClay care of Hillsdale
College.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yes, right Well please do I do get these.
I got just sitting on my desk,I got a letter yesterday from
somebody who wants to do abicentennial mural.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
I mean semi-quincentennial,
semi-quincentennial yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:50):
So yeah, it's one of the things you hear from people,
but some of it's good and look,I don't discourage anybody from
it.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
It's not something we have to wait for a government
commission to do.
No, exactly.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
That's one of the reasons I think our commission
may succeed is because of thevery fact we couldn't agree on
anything politically.
I mean the commission, this isa matter of public record.
So I can tell you.
The commission could not agreeon whether to call this a
celebration or an observance.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
Correct.
We never had one which is worthrepeating.
Could not agree.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
This is one of the geniuses of federalism or
subsidiarity or whatever youwant to call it.
So people in the locality say,well, we're not going to sit
here in Indiana and do nothingjust because you guys can't
agree on what time of day it is.
So they're doing things allover the country and, thank God
(54:59):
for it, it's turning out to be atotal effort.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
I should say yeah, your state I'm aware I believe
at least last I heard 48 statesat least had their own
independent commissions.
If you do want to be involvedwith this, you're listening to
this at all.
Your state has a commission.
Yeah, we do, yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Virginia has, in my opinion, the best.
It's terrific.
It's not surprising, yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
Well, bill, thank you for doing this today.
Really appreciate your time.
Land of Hope is the book.
It's out now, get it.
You can get the second editionwhen that comes out sometime in
the future.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
It's not far.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
Okay, very good, excellent.
So thanks so much for beingwith us, bill.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Good to be with you, Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
Take care, hey.
Thanks for joining us fortoday'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.
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