May 15, 2026 • 17 mins
Tim “The Lawyer” Sandefur (Vice President for Legal Affairs with The Goldwater Institute) joins Jack to talk about this latest book, Proclaiming Liberty: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence, which details the story of the origins of The Declaration.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So our next guest started calling into the radio show,
and he was practically a child, and we called him
Tim the Lawyer, and he was a lawyer, and he
would call in and correct us when we were wrong,
or helping us out when we didn't understand something like that.
And he was a fan favorite. And that was many,
many years ago. And his more grown up name is
full name is Tim Sandifer. He's actually the vice president
(00:22):
of legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute. He's an adjunct
scholar whatever that is, with the Cato Institute. And he
writes books, including this new book Proclaiming Liberty John Adams,
Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence by Timothy Sandefer.
I hold a signed copy in my hand. I started
listening to it last week. I got the audio version.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Tim. Welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Thanks for having this old, worn out old man on
your show. Jack.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How old were you when you started calling in? You
had to be young.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well, yeah, well it must have been twenty twenty five
years ago or something like that, so I was in
my mid to late twenties.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Cool, I'm listening to your book. Do you consider listening
to books counting as reading it.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Oh, yes, definitely, Otherwise I would have to say that
I'd read half as many books as I actually have.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, I know some people don't count it that way.
I actually feel like I retain information better hearing it
than reading it. I know different people's brains are different
on that, but I started listening.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
To different kinds of books too, you know, long, long
fiction books like the great classics like Victor Hugo or
Charles Dickens. I would probably never get through those on paper.
I much prefer and they were actually written with the
intention to be read out loud when they were originally
published in the nineteenth century, so I think there's nothing
wrong with that. However, if you listen to the audio
of my book, you're missing out on one hundred pages
of some of the finest footnotes.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Not to get distracted, but I'm halfway through Ulysses for
the second time.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh poor thing. It's awesome. It's my favorite thing I
ever read.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Why would you do that to yourself?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
It took my whole life to get to where I
could read it, though I started it like ten times
throughout my life and gotten like a chapter in and thought,
this is the ridiculous and a wasted time. Somehow I
reached the point by like training my brain through harder
and harder literature that I now can fully enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
And it's the greatest thing ever. Anyway, I don't want
to get off on that.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
So coming up on July the fourth, it will be
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of you know, the
signing of the Declaration.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
No, not the we signed it on January.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
We voted for it on July second, because I know
John Adams thought that would be the date that would
be remembered throughout history. They voted for independence on July
the second, seventeen seventy six. They signed it on the
fourth of July. You've got this book out this year,
in this year where we're all taking a look at
the founding proclaimed proclaiming liberty.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
What's it all about? Tim?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I wanted to tell the story of the origins of
the Declaration of Independence, and that includes a lot includes
a lot of things that are frequently left out. For example,
in the seventeenth century in colonial America, there was a
rebellion against Great Britain that a lot of people don't
talk about. One hundred years before the Declaration of Independence,
Britain went through or England at the time went through
(03:04):
a civil war, and that civil war had effects in
colonial America, and in fact, the King of England created
a dictatorship in the New England States and put a
single dictator named Edward Andros in charge of what he
called the Dominion of New England, who imposed taxes without
legislative consent and all this sort of thing, and Massachusetts
(03:26):
settlers rose up and overthrew him, and people don't know
about that story. I also wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I don't know that story, and I've read a lot
of founding stuff, so that's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
And I wanted to talk about what specific things Parliament
was doing to the Americans that take them off. I
wanted to go through the declaration claused by clause and
say what each of these grievances specifically refers to, because
I think a lot of people don't know when they
read the declaration what exactly is being discussed. When the
declaration says like he has refused his assent to laws
that are wholesome and necessary, what laws were they talk?
(03:58):
So I go through each of them and talk about
that and I want to put the whole story in
a narrative story, and in telling it not like facts
and dates, but telling like about Jefferson and Adams and
their friendship and how they grew together through the summer
of seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
So that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I wish I said earlier on if you heard me
say this, I wish I'd have had you as my
eighth grade history teacher, or any migrates. It's amazing how
many teachers, you know, and I you know you're doing
your best, can take such an exciting story and make
it so dry. Yeah, because the whole founding story, it's
really a miracle that it turned out the way it did,
(04:37):
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It really is. There are so many moments when things
could have all gone wrong, and just almost by accident
or by because you know, the slowness of communications back
then was a big factor. So for example, you know,
by the time the British finally got around to sending
a commission to negotiate with the American colonist, that commission
(05:00):
did not arrive until ten days after independence had already
been declared, And so all these little things that could
have changed the outcome that just didn't. It's really remarkable
when you go through that list. Yeah, it is unfortunate
that history teachers sometimes make the story boring, which is
really remarkable because it's such an exciting story. And I
was very lucky that my history teachers, for the most part,
really were good about talking about these things in a
(05:23):
way that really made you think, well, what I have
done if I had lived back then? And I think
that's really the key to understanding and appreciating this history.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Ah, that's a good way to look at it. Man,
there's so many different directions I could go with this.
I know you're such a big fan of the Declaration
of Independence. Where does it rank as our founding documents?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Well, that is one of the arguments I make in
the book. So if you ask most lawyers today, unfortunately,
most lawyers would say that the Declaration of Independence really
isn't a law.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
In fact, Justice.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Barrett, when she was going through a confirmation hearings, was
directly asked about this and she said, the Declaration of
Independence is not law, and that's completely wrong. Of course,
the Declaration of Independence's law. It's part of our constitutional documents.
There are four of what they call organic laws of
the United States. That's the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution,
(06:16):
the Northwest Ordinance, which organized the territories in the Northwest
United States, and the Declaration of Independence. And I think
it's important for lawyers particularly and judges to appreciate that
the Declaration isn't just a statement of rhetoric. It creates
a rule about how American government ought to operate, and
(06:36):
that is to respect the rights of life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. And the classical liberal political philosophy
that informed the writing of the Constitution. And unfortunately, lots
of lawyers and judges today shrug at that, and they
don't care about those principles, or they don't think that
they're binding, or they think that they're just matters of opinion.
(06:56):
It's not a matter of opinion. It is a fact
of the war. That all men are created equal, that
they are endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These are not just statements. These are as true as
the idea that two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule
of oxygen I mean atom makes a molecule of water
absolutely a verifiable fact about existence.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I don't want to get off on why some of
those scholars or teachers might want to downgrade the Declaration
of Independence because they want to because they're neo Marxist
who want to destroy the country. Won't get off on
that does. What did the Founders mean by pursuit of happiness?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Well, they meant a lot of different things, but the
most important thing that's often neglected today is economic freedom.
The Founders, by pursuit of happiness, they meant your right
to put your skills and knowledge to work, to provide
for yourself and your family, and to build up as
fortune if you want to, to care for your economic circumstances.
(07:57):
They understood that a lot of people came to America
with nothing to their name. A lot of colonists had
arrived here with nothing, and they had put their skills
to work and built up businesses to provide for themselves
and their families or farms or whatever. That's the foremost
thing that Thomas Jefferson means when he uses that phrase
(08:18):
pursuit of happiness. A month before the Declaration of in attendance,
the Virginia Declaration of Rights had been published, the very
first bill of rights in the world. And it says
every person has a right to pursue and obtain happiness
and safety to acquire property for that purpose, and that's
what they're referring to. Unfortunately, a lot of pseudo scholars say, well,
(08:40):
the Founders didn't believe in property, that's why they took
out the word property and said pursuit of happiness instead.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
That's nonsense.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Of course, the Founders believed in the essential importance of
property rights. But the pursuit of happiness is how people
who don't have property acquire it, right, It's freedom of opportunity.
That's what they meant by pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
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safe like simply Safe. The whole pursuit of happiness thing
(10:22):
and uh equal opportunity? What where were the founders on
equal outcomes? Which seems to be such you know, a
big thing in modern America that there are if there
are people that have more than others, then clearly we've
got some sort of systemic problem.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
They were very firmly against that idea. You know, it's
funny that this idea gets floated around today as if
it's some new modern idea that nobody's ever thought of before.
But the Founders are very familiar with this idea. Plato
had written about it thousands of your years before. And
the Founders Founding fathers sounded disgusting and the and they
and very dangerous. You know, if you if you redistribute
(11:00):
property rights because you think that you're going to make
everybody everybody else's friend, the result is actually going to
be disaster. Nobody's going to care for their property. People
are not going to put their efforts, their best efforts
into their work, and they're going to resort to politics,
which is to say, coercion instead of negotiation and bargaining
(11:22):
and exchange. So Jefferson it believed that there were certain
existing laws about private property at the time that were
obstructions to economic freedom, and he wanted to get rid
of those. And so sometimes you'll read things that they
write about how it's important to create better opportunity for
the poor and things, but that was how they wanted
to do it. They wanted to get the roadblocks out
(11:45):
of the way. But the idea of equal outcomes, they
were very familiar with it, and they rejected it as
contrary to the fundamental rights they were fighting for. The
right to pursue happiness means that if I go out
and I work hard and I develop a fortune, or
if my father goes out and works hard leaves me
a fortune, then I have the right to those things.
Nobody has the right to take them away. You know.
The other day, what's their name? That socialist congressman.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
From New York?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
His name, I can never remember.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Aoc she was saying.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, she was like, well, you can't earn a billion dollars,
and Tim popples to earn a billion dollars with Well,
I didn't earn my lungs and my liver and my
heart either, But they belong to me, and you're sure
as hell better not think that you have a right
to them because you need them or something. Absolutely not.
Of course, not their mine, because I didn't hurt anybody
to acquire them, and so that was the view of
(12:32):
the Founding Fathers. As long as you didn't commit a
crime or something, then that property is yours and nobody
has the right to take it from you, and if
they try to, you're setting the rules up for violent
civil war.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The book is Proclaiming Liberty.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
If you want to learn more about this from Tim
sand for Tim can you stick around for a while, Yeah,
because I got a question I've been wanting to ask
you about this, all this kind of stuff and a
few other things that will fit in with the news
of the day around this issue and our Founding Fathers.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
All on the way. Stay right here.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Hey, I downloaded the audio version of Proclaiming Liberty. Maybe
you want to get the paper version if that's what
you're into, uh, or you read done Ken Kindle or
whatever you do. Proclaiming Liberty by our friend Timothy sand
for John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.
(13:24):
Tim is joining us today. So, Tim, I was talking
to a super smart friend of mine years ago and
all this sort of stuff like we are, and I
remember we were having the classic conversation of if the
founders were you know, if you dug them up and
could re animated Mursa and they were alive today, what
would they have to say? And his thought was he
(13:45):
thinks the first thing they would say, oh my god,
it worked.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
What do you think. Yeah, well, that's not a bad answer.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Jefferson I don't think would have said that. Jefferson was
confident that it would work, and he believed in uh,
he had confidence in change. He thought people would go
wrong and make a lot of mistakes, but that eventually
they would realize their errors, and that there was really
no better option than to trust the people of the
country to run the country themselves, because you can't come
(14:16):
up with a system that is going to protect the
people from themselves. That's a futile undertaking. John Adams he
was a little bit more cynical about things, and he
was very worried that certain forces would undermine the American
constitutional system. And you know, it's so impossible to really
compare their vision with hours because there's been so much
(14:40):
change that it's like there's a old saying the past
is another country, and so that's really the way to
think about it. However, I do think they would be
The one thing that they feared most of all is
that Americans would get so rich and so comfortable that
they would care, oh, where you're going to seek to
(15:02):
care about the principles that that underlie the system, right,
And that they would care more about their next fried
chicken meal than about whether or not Iran gets a
nuclear weapon. That you know, that sort of thing was
really concerned them because that's what had destroyed Rome, right,
and they were afraid that something like that would happen here.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Well, that seems to ring true. Does it their next
next Netflix special or whatever? I was watching the President
meeting with Chi yesterday in Tianaman Square there in front
of the Great Hall, and they.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Got giant portrait of Mao up there.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I mean, the fact that the doesn't get more remarked
upon to me is amazing. If if our experiment doesn't
continue to work, the whole world could end up like
communist China so easily.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, there's no there's nothing. We have been given, no
guarantees that the civilizations of Egypt and Rome were not
also given.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Right.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, it's absolutely amazing, And that's why I think books
like yours proclaiming liberty are so important. I know, Fourth
of July is one of your favorite holidays. Are you
enjoying taking in and all the stuff leading up to it?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
My wife and I have this little tradition where we
spend the July fourth in a different state every year,
and so this state, we're gonna spend the whole week
in Charlottesville, in Thomas cools hometown and hang out with
mister Jefferson himself.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Jefferson your favorite founding father.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Oh yes, Jefferson is, with all due respect to my wife,
my favorite person who has ever lived in history. And
told I said this in front of her a while back,
and she smiled and nodded and said me too.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So wow, well, and that's why you toured together.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Right of course to me too, I like him better
than you also, so we're even. That is fantastic. That
is a funny note and a great way to end.
That's really great, Tim Sanderfer. The book is proclaiming liberty.
You can listen to it, you can read it in paper,
you can read it on kindle, or however you do it.
Thanks Tim, appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Thank you Jack. That is really funny.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
You get two lawyers who are super into personal freedom
and property rights and all that sort of stuff, and
they each look at each other's eyes and say, my
favorite person who's ever lived is Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Me too. That is great.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Armstrong and Getty
So our next guest started calling into the radio show,
and he was practically a child, and we called him
Tim the Lawyer, and he was a lawyer, and he
would call in and correct us when we were wrong,
or helping us out when we didn't understand something like that.
And he was a fan favorite. And that was many,
many years ago. And his more grown up name is
full name is Tim Sandifer. He's actually the vice president
(00:22):
of legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute. He's an adjunct
scholar whatever that is, with the Cato Institute. And he
writes books, including this new book Proclaiming Liberty John Adams,
Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence by Timothy Sandefer.
I hold a signed copy in my hand. I started
listening to it last week. I got the audio version.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Tim. Welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Thanks for having this old, worn out old man on
your show. Jack.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How old were you when you started calling in? You
had to be young.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well, yeah, well it must have been twenty twenty five
years ago or something like that, so I was in
my mid to late twenties.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Cool, I'm listening to your book. Do you consider listening
to books counting as reading it.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Oh, yes, definitely, Otherwise I would have to say that
I'd read half as many books as I actually have.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, I know some people don't count it that way.
I actually feel like I retain information better hearing it
than reading it. I know different people's brains are different
on that, but I started listening.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
To different kinds of books too, you know, long, long
fiction books like the great classics like Victor Hugo or
Charles Dickens. I would probably never get through those on paper.
I much prefer and they were actually written with the
intention to be read out loud when they were originally
published in the nineteenth century, so I think there's nothing
wrong with that. However, if you listen to the audio
of my book, you're missing out on one hundred pages
of some of the finest footnotes.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Not to get distracted, but I'm halfway through Ulysses for
the second time.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh poor thing. It's awesome. It's my favorite thing I
ever read.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Why would you do that to yourself?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
It took my whole life to get to where I
could read it, though I started it like ten times
throughout my life and gotten like a chapter in and thought,
this is the ridiculous and a wasted time. Somehow I
reached the point by like training my brain through harder
and harder literature that I now can fully enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
And it's the greatest thing ever. Anyway, I don't want
to get off on that.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
So coming up on July the fourth, it will be
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of you know, the
signing of the Declaration.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
No, not the we signed it on January.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
We voted for it on July second, because I know
John Adams thought that would be the date that would
be remembered throughout history. They voted for independence on July
the second, seventeen seventy six. They signed it on the
fourth of July. You've got this book out this year,
in this year where we're all taking a look at
the founding proclaimed proclaiming liberty.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
What's it all about? Tim?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I wanted to tell the story of the origins of
the Declaration of Independence, and that includes a lot includes
a lot of things that are frequently left out. For example,
in the seventeenth century in colonial America, there was a
rebellion against Great Britain that a lot of people don't
talk about. One hundred years before the Declaration of Independence,
Britain went through or England at the time went through
(03:04):
a civil war, and that civil war had effects in
colonial America, and in fact, the King of England created
a dictatorship in the New England States and put a
single dictator named Edward Andros in charge of what he
called the Dominion of New England, who imposed taxes without
legislative consent and all this sort of thing, and Massachusetts
(03:26):
settlers rose up and overthrew him, and people don't know
about that story. I also wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I don't know that story, and I've read a lot
of founding stuff, so that's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
And I wanted to talk about what specific things Parliament
was doing to the Americans that take them off. I
wanted to go through the declaration claused by clause and
say what each of these grievances specifically refers to, because
I think a lot of people don't know when they
read the declaration what exactly is being discussed. When the
declaration says like he has refused his assent to laws
that are wholesome and necessary, what laws were they talk?
(03:58):
So I go through each of them and talk about
that and I want to put the whole story in
a narrative story, and in telling it not like facts
and dates, but telling like about Jefferson and Adams and
their friendship and how they grew together through the summer
of seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
So that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I wish I said earlier on if you heard me
say this, I wish I'd have had you as my
eighth grade history teacher, or any migrates. It's amazing how
many teachers, you know, and I you know you're doing
your best, can take such an exciting story and make
it so dry. Yeah, because the whole founding story, it's
really a miracle that it turned out the way it did,
(04:37):
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It really is. There are so many moments when things
could have all gone wrong, and just almost by accident
or by because you know, the slowness of communications back
then was a big factor. So for example, you know,
by the time the British finally got around to sending
a commission to negotiate with the American colonist, that commission
(05:00):
did not arrive until ten days after independence had already
been declared, And so all these little things that could
have changed the outcome that just didn't. It's really remarkable
when you go through that list. Yeah, it is unfortunate
that history teachers sometimes make the story boring, which is
really remarkable because it's such an exciting story. And I
was very lucky that my history teachers, for the most part,
really were good about talking about these things in a
(05:23):
way that really made you think, well, what I have
done if I had lived back then? And I think
that's really the key to understanding and appreciating this history.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Ah, that's a good way to look at it. Man,
there's so many different directions I could go with this.
I know you're such a big fan of the Declaration
of Independence. Where does it rank as our founding documents?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Well, that is one of the arguments I make in
the book. So if you ask most lawyers today, unfortunately,
most lawyers would say that the Declaration of Independence really
isn't a law.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
In fact, Justice.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Barrett, when she was going through a confirmation hearings, was
directly asked about this and she said, the Declaration of
Independence is not law, and that's completely wrong. Of course,
the Declaration of Independence's law. It's part of our constitutional documents.
There are four of what they call organic laws of
the United States. That's the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution,
(06:16):
the Northwest Ordinance, which organized the territories in the Northwest
United States, and the Declaration of Independence. And I think
it's important for lawyers particularly and judges to appreciate that
the Declaration isn't just a statement of rhetoric. It creates
a rule about how American government ought to operate, and
(06:36):
that is to respect the rights of life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. And the classical liberal political philosophy
that informed the writing of the Constitution. And unfortunately, lots
of lawyers and judges today shrug at that, and they
don't care about those principles, or they don't think that
they're binding, or they think that they're just matters of opinion.
(06:56):
It's not a matter of opinion. It is a fact
of the war. That all men are created equal, that
they are endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These are not just statements. These are as true as
the idea that two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule
of oxygen I mean atom makes a molecule of water
absolutely a verifiable fact about existence.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I don't want to get off on why some of
those scholars or teachers might want to downgrade the Declaration
of Independence because they want to because they're neo Marxist
who want to destroy the country. Won't get off on
that does. What did the Founders mean by pursuit of happiness?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Well, they meant a lot of different things, but the
most important thing that's often neglected today is economic freedom.
The Founders, by pursuit of happiness, they meant your right
to put your skills and knowledge to work, to provide
for yourself and your family, and to build up as
fortune if you want to, to care for your economic circumstances.
(07:57):
They understood that a lot of people came to America
with nothing to their name. A lot of colonists had
arrived here with nothing, and they had put their skills
to work and built up businesses to provide for themselves
and their families or farms or whatever. That's the foremost
thing that Thomas Jefferson means when he uses that phrase
(08:18):
pursuit of happiness. A month before the Declaration of in attendance,
the Virginia Declaration of Rights had been published, the very
first bill of rights in the world. And it says
every person has a right to pursue and obtain happiness
and safety to acquire property for that purpose, and that's
what they're referring to. Unfortunately, a lot of pseudo scholars say, well,
(08:40):
the Founders didn't believe in property, that's why they took
out the word property and said pursuit of happiness instead.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
That's nonsense.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Of course, the Founders believed in the essential importance of
property rights. But the pursuit of happiness is how people
who don't have property acquire it, right, It's freedom of opportunity.
That's what they meant by pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
That's I want to talk about that specifically. First, I
got to tell you about Simply Safe. We'll be back
with Tim. Simply Safe is it's right there in the name,
simply Safe. It's simple to set up, it's a home
protection system. It's a security system. It's simple to order,
it's simple to set up, and it's simple to use.
And all those things need to happen for you to
(09:19):
actually have a security system that you're going to use
a your home, because I don't know if you've had
one or seen them before that they're so complicated you
just never go around to or they always went off
accidentally because of this or that. Simply Safe it's fantastic.
You go to the website, you set it up, you
customize it for your home. You ordered, it gets there fast,
could take thirty minutes to set up like it did
(09:39):
for me, the sensors and the cameras and all the
different sort of stuff. If you need help, they've got
help available to set the thing up. Be can set
it up on your own, and then you've got this
amazing protection that five million people like me use and
there are no contracts or anything like that. It's not
that expensive. They earn your business every single day, and
(10:00):
you'll keep using it like I did. We trust simply
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safe like simply Safe. The whole pursuit of happiness thing
(10:22):
and uh equal opportunity? What where were the founders on
equal outcomes? Which seems to be such you know, a
big thing in modern America that there are if there
are people that have more than others, then clearly we've
got some sort of systemic problem.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
They were very firmly against that idea. You know, it's
funny that this idea gets floated around today as if
it's some new modern idea that nobody's ever thought of before.
But the Founders are very familiar with this idea. Plato
had written about it thousands of your years before. And
the Founders Founding fathers sounded disgusting and the and they
and very dangerous. You know, if you if you redistribute
(11:00):
property rights because you think that you're going to make
everybody everybody else's friend, the result is actually going to
be disaster. Nobody's going to care for their property. People
are not going to put their efforts, their best efforts
into their work, and they're going to resort to politics,
which is to say, coercion instead of negotiation and bargaining
(11:22):
and exchange. So Jefferson it believed that there were certain
existing laws about private property at the time that were
obstructions to economic freedom, and he wanted to get rid
of those. And so sometimes you'll read things that they
write about how it's important to create better opportunity for
the poor and things, but that was how they wanted
to do it. They wanted to get the roadblocks out
(11:45):
of the way. But the idea of equal outcomes, they
were very familiar with it, and they rejected it as
contrary to the fundamental rights they were fighting for. The
right to pursue happiness means that if I go out
and I work hard and I develop a fortune, or
if my father goes out and works hard leaves me
a fortune, then I have the right to those things.
Nobody has the right to take them away. You know.
The other day, what's their name? That socialist congressman.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
From New York?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
His name, I can never remember.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Aoc she was saying.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, she was like, well, you can't earn a billion dollars,
and Tim popples to earn a billion dollars with Well,
I didn't earn my lungs and my liver and my
heart either, But they belong to me, and you're sure
as hell better not think that you have a right
to them because you need them or something. Absolutely not.
Of course, not their mine, because I didn't hurt anybody
to acquire them, and so that was the view of
(12:32):
the Founding Fathers. As long as you didn't commit a
crime or something, then that property is yours and nobody
has the right to take it from you, and if
they try to, you're setting the rules up for violent
civil war.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The book is Proclaiming Liberty.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
If you want to learn more about this from Tim
sand for Tim can you stick around for a while, Yeah,
because I got a question I've been wanting to ask
you about this, all this kind of stuff and a
few other things that will fit in with the news
of the day around this issue and our Founding Fathers.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
All on the way. Stay right here.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Hey, I downloaded the audio version of Proclaiming Liberty. Maybe
you want to get the paper version if that's what
you're into, uh, or you read done Ken Kindle or
whatever you do. Proclaiming Liberty by our friend Timothy sand
for John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.
(13:24):
Tim is joining us today. So, Tim, I was talking
to a super smart friend of mine years ago and
all this sort of stuff like we are, and I
remember we were having the classic conversation of if the
founders were you know, if you dug them up and
could re animated Mursa and they were alive today, what
would they have to say? And his thought was he
(13:45):
thinks the first thing they would say, oh my god,
it worked.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
What do you think. Yeah, well, that's not a bad answer.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Jefferson I don't think would have said that. Jefferson was
confident that it would work, and he believed in uh,
he had confidence in change. He thought people would go
wrong and make a lot of mistakes, but that eventually
they would realize their errors, and that there was really
no better option than to trust the people of the
country to run the country themselves, because you can't come
(14:16):
up with a system that is going to protect the
people from themselves. That's a futile undertaking. John Adams he
was a little bit more cynical about things, and he
was very worried that certain forces would undermine the American
constitutional system. And you know, it's so impossible to really
compare their vision with hours because there's been so much
(14:40):
change that it's like there's a old saying the past
is another country, and so that's really the way to
think about it. However, I do think they would be
The one thing that they feared most of all is
that Americans would get so rich and so comfortable that
they would care, oh, where you're going to seek to
(15:02):
care about the principles that that underlie the system, right,
And that they would care more about their next fried
chicken meal than about whether or not Iran gets a
nuclear weapon. That you know, that sort of thing was
really concerned them because that's what had destroyed Rome, right,
and they were afraid that something like that would happen here.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Well, that seems to ring true. Does it their next
next Netflix special or whatever? I was watching the President
meeting with Chi yesterday in Tianaman Square there in front
of the Great Hall, and they.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Got giant portrait of Mao up there.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I mean, the fact that the doesn't get more remarked
upon to me is amazing. If if our experiment doesn't
continue to work, the whole world could end up like
communist China so easily.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, there's no there's nothing. We have been given, no
guarantees that the civilizations of Egypt and Rome were not
also given.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Right.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, it's absolutely amazing, And that's why I think books
like yours proclaiming liberty are so important. I know, Fourth
of July is one of your favorite holidays. Are you
enjoying taking in and all the stuff leading up to it?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
My wife and I have this little tradition where we
spend the July fourth in a different state every year,
and so this state, we're gonna spend the whole week
in Charlottesville, in Thomas cools hometown and hang out with
mister Jefferson himself.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Jefferson your favorite founding father.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Oh yes, Jefferson is, with all due respect to my wife,
my favorite person who has ever lived in history. And
told I said this in front of her a while back,
and she smiled and nodded and said me too.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So wow, well, and that's why you toured together.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Right of course to me too, I like him better
than you also, so we're even. That is fantastic. That
is a funny note and a great way to end.
That's really great, Tim Sanderfer. The book is proclaiming liberty.
You can listen to it, you can read it in paper,
you can read it on kindle, or however you do it.
Thanks Tim, appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Thank you Jack. That is really funny.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
You get two lawyers who are super into personal freedom
and property rights and all that sort of stuff, and
they each look at each other's eyes and say, my
favorite person who's ever lived is Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Me too. That is great.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Armstrong and Getty
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Jack Armstrong
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