Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And now time for something completely different. I am so
pleased to welcome back to the show a gentleman who
is not only a good friend, but one of the
few people I really consider a mentor and a teacher
and a guy who's really influenced my life. And that's
doctor Tom Cranewitter, who is, among other things, senior lecturer
(00:20):
at the Leadership Program of the Rockies for over twenty
years now. And gosh, I went through LPR twenty or
twenty one years ago, and nobody better to talk to
as we head into the July fourth Independence Day weekend.
So Hi, Tom, welcome back. It's good to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, thanks a lot. Ross.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, you know, we should make a little plug here
for the Leadership Program of the Rockies because one of
the key themes are the timeless principles of liberty and
human flourishing. And so we launch day one, the very
first class begins with a deep dive that I lead
into the Declaration of Independence and some of those ideas
(01:00):
and you know, terms enshrined in that famous document.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I would note, actually, as long as we're doing a
free plug for LPR, normally the deadline to apply is August.
I think Leadership Program dot org and go take a look,
and if you want to apply, I suggest you do.
It's been the most important thing I've done since I
moved to Colorado, other than becoming a parent. It's changed
my life, all right. So one quick thing before we
(01:25):
talk about July fourth, because I was just looking at
your recent video and Tom has a great substack t
Crana Witner t k r A n n A w
I T t e r dot substack dot com, and
I was greatly heartened to hear what you said about Juneteenth,
(01:45):
which was just a couple of weeks ago. And I
don't know that you and I have talked about Juneteenth.
And I do know that a lot of folks who
listen to my show, conservative Republicans had sort of a
gut negative reaction when that holliday was created. And I said,
on the one hand, I do understand the argument that
there are too many federal holidays and we get all
these government workers who get taxpayer money to not work.
(02:08):
But I said, this is a holiday really worth celebrating it.
And I spent some time talking about it, and I said,
I'm down with this holiday.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I fully agree.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Look, it's one of the great moments, not only in
American history, in the history of human liberty. I mean, right,
it's this astounding thing when the Union Army shows up
and finds hundreds of thousands of slaves in South Texas
who don't know that they had been freed by Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation, and General Granger announces that they're free.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And that's why this became.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
This this event worth celebrating each year, and so in
and of itself, it's worth celebrating. It's a story of
human freedom, it's the story of liberty. And then what
really boggles my mind is that Republicans in particular tend
to be the ones who mock it and dismiss it
when this was a Republican triumph. This was a Republican
(03:07):
event that never would have happened if Abraham Lincoln, the
first Republican President of the United States, hadn't been elected.
So here's the Republican Party. It's part of the bigger
story of the Republican Party bringing an end to legalized
chattel slavery, and their main opponent were the Democrats. They
(03:29):
were the ones willing to fight a nasty, horrific war
to preserve the Southern way of life which revolved around
legalized slavery, and the Republican Party brought that to an end.
And June tenth is a big important milestone in that
story of victory.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So let's tie that in now to going into in
Penns Day weekend and again in your video and in
you know many or most or close to all of
your talks, you do talk about fundamental American principle. This
is what LPR is all about, but maybe more importantly
for today, it's what Tom Cranewitter is all about. What
do you want us thinking about on this July fourth weekend?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That the United States is unique in this way.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It is the first nation, the first sovereign political regime
that was founded upon a rational, universal moral political principle
of justice, a self evident moral truth. To borrow some
(04:36):
language from the declaration itself, there had been no other
regime like that in thousands of years of human history.
No group of people stood up and said, look, we
are declaring ourselves, you know, a sovereign nation here, a
sovereign body based on these principles that apply to the
rest of the human family, that apply to every human being,
(04:58):
and they're accessible to everyone. No one else like we
Americans have no special knowledge about these or we have
no special access to these. It's not like it's it's
prohibited that other people can't understand these ideas. We've thought
about these, and we're going to act upon them. We're
going to create a self governing regime, a self governing republic,
(05:20):
the purpose of which is going to be very narrow
based on the ideas of the declaration.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
The regime.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
The goal of the regime is to protect the rights
of the citizens of the regime, to protect them in
their individual liberty and their private property. And we encourage
people around the world to do the same. I was
just rereading there's this wonderful letter that Jefferson writes to
a guy named Roger Weightman.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
This is in eighteen twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Six, so it's fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. Right,
seventeen seventy six to eighteen twenty six.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I think I'm doing that math right.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
And they were going to have a big celebration in Washington,
DC to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration, and
they invited Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
He was still alive.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Jefferson was an old man, then he really couldn't travel well,
so he didn't, but he wrote this letter that he
asked he wanted the letter to be read. And among
the things he says, look, the Declaration was not simply
for Americans.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
It was meant to be a signal, a.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Resounding signal to all of mankind all over to the
world to open their eyes and become aware of their
own individual natural rights and start demanding that their own
governments protect their rights. And if they're not protecting their rights,
then then lead an effort to reform your government, or
(06:49):
replace your government, or you know, revolutionize and rebel against
your government. Do whatever's necessary so that various regimes around
the world protect those individual natural rights that are described
in the Declaration of Independence. Now, when you step back
and look at that, you think, good grief. This is
a radical worldwide, at least potentially, it has the potential
(07:12):
to be a worldwide universal revolution for liberty. I always
love to contrast that with something like a Marxist revolution,
which by definition cannot be universal. It cannot apply to
the whole human family, the whole human population, because some
big number of human beings, the capitalists, the people who
(07:34):
own the means of production. We got to kill them
in a real Marxist revolution, because that's how we're going
to take the means of production from them.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So even though many people think, well.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Real revolutionaries are you know, they're Marxist revolutionary or they're
Communist revolution Oh, the most radical revolution in the modern era.
By modern, I mean in the past five hundred years,
it was the American Revolution because, in principle, all human
beings could stand up and demand that no one violate
(08:05):
their own individual rights, and they could respect the individual
rights of others.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I mean, no one has to violate the rights of
someone else.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
That means, in principle, the American Revolution could be a universal, worldwide,
global human revolution for liberty. That's ultimately what Independence Day
is all about is celebration of those principles.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I'm going to ask and answer one question, and I'm
going to ask you a follow up question. So you
argue that our founding principles are universal, and I can
imagine you get a question then in a sense sounds deep,
but it's actually a boring question. Well, how can it
be universal if they're not applied everywhere?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, Well, any principle of justice is not universally obeyed,
It doesn't mean that, it doesn't mean the principle is
wrong or in fact, with our principles they're universal, which
is what allows us to identify injustices as injustices. When
there's a government tyrannizing over its own population, we say
(09:13):
that's wrong.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, why is it wrong?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Because those people have the same universal, equal, individual natural
rights that all other human beings have, which which is
why it's wrong for their government to be tyrannizing over them.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay, so you then started to go into the next
question I want to ask you, which I think is
more interesting and more philosophical. And you started down this
road already. This is not a question of people believe
it or don't, but as a philosophical epistemological question, how
do you know that our principles are universal? There may
be somebody or a lot of people who have a
(09:48):
very different viewpoint about the proper way to govern a
society that is antithetical to the things you and I believe,
and they think theirs is universal. And by the way,
they don't think that the fact that you have to
kill some people to get it done means it's not universal.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Right right, Well, there are also some people who deny
gravity and and things like this and that, and yet
gravity exists. There are certain laws of nature that that apply.
Whether someone believes them or not, whether someone agrees with
them or not, is no. This is a universal moral
political principle. And so as long as we find beings
(10:26):
that have two components. They have a body which is
the source of all kinds of appetites and desires, and
and a rational, freethinking mind that can govern that body,
that can make moral choices.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
About what the body does. Right, we're the only ones.
Lots of animals have appetites.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
They get hungry and they want to eat, and they
get tired, and they want to sleep, and they want
to procreate during certain seasons, But only the human animal
can choose whether or not to indulge those appetites. The
rattlesnake simply strikes at the bunny rabbit out of instinct,
and it doesn't have any choice about whether to do
(11:04):
that or not. The rattlesnake cannot choose to behave like
the bunny rabbit. But we get to choose how we're
gonna behave and what appetites and desires we're going to indulge.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
That's a form of self government.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
It means within every human being, no matter what they
look like, no matter tall, short, skinny, fat, black, white, green, yellow, blue, red,
doesn't matter, as long as it is a human body
that houses a freethinking, rational mind, that is a self
(11:40):
governing being. That's the very kernel, that's the very source
of what it means to govern ourselves. And when I
come along and say, Ross, my mind is going to
choose what your body does, and I hold up a
whipper chain, right, and I threaten you with violence, your
body is going to do My mind wants your body.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
To do the slavery.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And we rightly denounce that as a gross injustice, because
it turns out your body has a free mind. It's
the home to a free mind. Your free mind, your
mind should make choices and govern your body, and my
mind should make choices for my body.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So I still, okay, I'm still trying to get to
a deeply philosophical point. I mean, I think I'm like
channeling Plato or Descartes or something like, how do we
know that? How do we know that all men are
created equal?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
It begins by understanding what a man is, what a
human being is, Right, when the founder said all men,
they of course they meant all human beings. They meant
all males and females of the species Homo sapiens, all
human beings.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
What is it that makes a human human?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And now there's two thousand, more than two thousand years
a philosophic investigation over this question.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
What really?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
It's nothing physical? Lots of other animals have hair and
skin and eyes, and right, all the physical features that
we have, bones and blood and internal organs.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
What makes a human human? What is distinctly human?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And it turns out it's this freethinking mind with the
capacity for reason to judge, to choose, that capacity to choose.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Only human beings have that. I know I have that
because I experience it.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I make choices, and you do too, and every one
of your listeners makes choices about mundane, boring things like
what to have for lunch and things like that, but
also great, big important things like where to go to
college and who to marry, and and how about this?
What kind of person am I going to be? I
get to make that choice. What is the right or
(13:47):
the best way of life for me? Is it the
life of a thief or a gangster? Or is it
the life of a philosopher, or is the life of
a productive business person?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Or what is the right way of life for me?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I get to make that choice, and every human being
gets to make that choice. That's how we know that
we have the capacity to govern ourselves, because we experience
the fact that we are self governing creatures.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
We're talking with doctor Tom Craniwitter, senior lecturer at the
Leadership Program of the Rockies and a great substack at
Tcranowitter dot com. If you forget any of that, it's
up on my blog at Rosskaminsky dot com. I've got
just a minute left here, Tom, Let's move away from
the philosophical for a minute, and I just want you
to wrap up for about a minute with anything you
want to say, like real world, not philosophical about Independence Day.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Look, there's a growing number of Americans who are openly
embarrassed by their country. And I'll be the first submit
the United States has done some things that are embarrassing
and not great, but in its founding, in the ideas
of its founding, those ideas are perfect.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
They're beautiful.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
The moments that are the most embarrassing in our history
is when we have fallen short of those ideas. So
the way to make America good and morally decent and
worth being proud of is to make sure that we
live up to those ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Don't be smirched those ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Don't denounce them, don't ignore them, don't run away from them.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Embrace them.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
And if there are parts that whether it's our government,
our culture, our individual behavior, that are falling short of
those ideas respecting the equal individual rights of all fellow citizens,
let's change the Let's change the laws, let's change the government,
let's change our behavior.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
But the ideas cannot be improved.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
They're perfect, and in the end, that's what Independence Day
is all about, these beautiful, perfect moral political principles of
action that we should act upon, and we have acted upon.
And it's a wonderful thing, folks.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
If you would love to be more inspired, learn more
from doctor Tom Cranawitter. You might try applying to the
leadership program of the Rockies Leadership Program dot or you
can email me to learn more because I've been through
the program, of course, and I'm a huge supporter, and
you can find the links to all the Tom's stuff
at my blog. Today, Tom have a wonderful Independence Day weekend.
(16:12):
Thanks for your time. You're always inspirational. It's great to
talk to you you too, Ross, Thank you very much.
And now time for something completely different. I am so
pleased to welcome back to the show a gentleman who
is not only a good friend, but one of the
few people I really consider a mentor and a teacher
and a guy who's really influenced my life. And that's
doctor Tom Cranewitter, who is, among other things, senior lecturer
(00:20):
at the Leadership Program of the Rockies for over twenty
years now. And gosh, I went through LPR twenty or
twenty one years ago, and nobody better to talk to
as we head into the July fourth Independence Day weekend.
So Hi, Tom, welcome back. It's good to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, thanks a lot. Ross.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, you know, we should make a little plug here
for the Leadership Program of the Rockies because one of
the key themes are the timeless principles of liberty and
human flourishing. And so we launch day one, the very
first class begins with a deep dive that I lead
into the Declaration of Independence and some of those ideas
(01:00):
and you know, terms enshrined in that famous document.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I would note, actually, as long as we're doing a
free plug for LPR, normally the deadline to apply is August.
I think Leadership Program dot org and go take a look,
and if you want to apply, I suggest you do.
It's been the most important thing I've done since I
moved to Colorado, other than becoming a parent. It's changed
my life, all right. So one quick thing before we
(01:25):
talk about July fourth, because I was just looking at
your recent video and Tom has a great substack t
Crana Witner t k r A n n A w
I T t e r dot substack dot com, and
I was greatly heartened to hear what you said about Juneteenth,
(01:45):
which was just a couple of weeks ago. And I
don't know that you and I have talked about Juneteenth.
And I do know that a lot of folks who
listen to my show, conservative Republicans had sort of a
gut negative reaction when that holliday was created. And I said,
on the one hand, I do understand the argument that
there are too many federal holidays and we get all
these government workers who get taxpayer money to not work.
(02:08):
But I said, this is a holiday really worth celebrating it.
And I spent some time talking about it, and I said,
I'm down with this holiday.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I fully agree.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Look, it's one of the great moments, not only in
American history, in the history of human liberty. I mean, right,
it's this astounding thing when the Union Army shows up
and finds hundreds of thousands of slaves in South Texas
who don't know that they had been freed by Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation, and General Granger announces that they're free.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And that's why this became.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
This this event worth celebrating each year, and so in
and of itself, it's worth celebrating. It's a story of
human freedom, it's the story of liberty. And then what
really boggles my mind is that Republicans in particular tend
to be the ones who mock it and dismiss it
when this was a Republican triumph. This was a Republican
(03:07):
event that never would have happened if Abraham Lincoln, the
first Republican President of the United States, hadn't been elected.
So here's the Republican Party. It's part of the bigger
story of the Republican Party bringing an end to legalized
chattel slavery, and their main opponent were the Democrats. They
(03:29):
were the ones willing to fight a nasty, horrific war
to preserve the Southern way of life which revolved around
legalized slavery, and the Republican Party brought that to an end.
And June tenth is a big important milestone in that
story of victory.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So let's tie that in now to going into in
Penns Day weekend and again in your video and in
you know many or most or close to all of
your talks, you do talk about fundamental American principle. This
is what LPR is all about, but maybe more importantly
for today, it's what Tom Cranewitter is all about. What
do you want us thinking about on this July fourth weekend?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That the United States is unique in this way.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It is the first nation, the first sovereign political regime
that was founded upon a rational, universal moral political principle
of justice, a self evident moral truth. To borrow some
(04:36):
language from the declaration itself, there had been no other
regime like that in thousands of years of human history.
No group of people stood up and said, look, we
are declaring ourselves, you know, a sovereign nation here, a
sovereign body based on these principles that apply to the
rest of the human family, that apply to every human being,
(04:58):
and they're accessible to everyone. No one else like we
Americans have no special knowledge about these or we have
no special access to these. It's not like it's it's
prohibited that other people can't understand these ideas. We've thought
about these, and we're going to act upon them. We're
going to create a self governing regime, a self governing republic,
(05:20):
the purpose of which is going to be very narrow
based on the ideas of the declaration.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
The regime.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
The goal of the regime is to protect the rights
of the citizens of the regime, to protect them in
their individual liberty and their private property. And we encourage
people around the world to do the same. I was
just rereading there's this wonderful letter that Jefferson writes to
a guy named Roger Weightman.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
This is in eighteen twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Six, so it's fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. Right,
seventeen seventy six to eighteen twenty six.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I think I'm doing that math right.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
And they were going to have a big celebration in Washington,
DC to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration, and
they invited Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
He was still alive.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Jefferson was an old man, then he really couldn't travel well,
so he didn't, but he wrote this letter that he
asked he wanted the letter to be read. And among
the things he says, look, the Declaration was not simply
for Americans.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
It was meant to be a signal, a.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Resounding signal to all of mankind all over to the
world to open their eyes and become aware of their
own individual natural rights and start demanding that their own
governments protect their rights. And if they're not protecting their rights,
then then lead an effort to reform your government, or
(06:49):
replace your government, or you know, revolutionize and rebel against
your government. Do whatever's necessary so that various regimes around
the world protect those individual natural rights that are described
in the Declaration of Independence. Now, when you step back
and look at that, you think, good grief. This is
a radical worldwide, at least potentially, it has the potential
(07:12):
to be a worldwide universal revolution for liberty. I always
love to contrast that with something like a Marxist revolution,
which by definition cannot be universal. It cannot apply to
the whole human family, the whole human population, because some
big number of human beings, the capitalists, the people who
(07:34):
own the means of production. We got to kill them
in a real Marxist revolution, because that's how we're going
to take the means of production from them.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So even though many people think, well.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Real revolutionaries are you know, they're Marxist revolutionary or they're
Communist revolution Oh, the most radical revolution in the modern era.
By modern, I mean in the past five hundred years,
it was the American Revolution because, in principle, all human
beings could stand up and demand that no one violate
(08:05):
their own individual rights, and they could respect the individual
rights of others.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I mean, no one has to violate the rights of
someone else.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
That means, in principle, the American Revolution could be a universal, worldwide,
global human revolution for liberty. That's ultimately what Independence Day
is all about is celebration of those principles.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I'm going to ask and answer one question, and I'm
going to ask you a follow up question. So you
argue that our founding principles are universal, and I can
imagine you get a question then in a sense sounds deep,
but it's actually a boring question. Well, how can it
be universal if they're not applied everywhere?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, Well, any principle of justice is not universally obeyed,
It doesn't mean that, it doesn't mean the principle is
wrong or in fact, with our principles they're universal, which
is what allows us to identify injustices as injustices. When
there's a government tyrannizing over its own population, we say
(09:13):
that's wrong.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, why is it wrong?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Because those people have the same universal, equal, individual natural
rights that all other human beings have, which which is
why it's wrong for their government to be tyrannizing over them.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay, so you then started to go into the next
question I want to ask you, which I think is
more interesting and more philosophical. And you started down this
road already. This is not a question of people believe
it or don't, but as a philosophical epistemological question, how
do you know that our principles are universal? There may
be somebody or a lot of people who have a
(09:48):
very different viewpoint about the proper way to govern a
society that is antithetical to the things you and I believe,
and they think theirs is universal. And by the way,
they don't think that the fact that you have to
kill some people to get it done means it's not universal.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Right right, Well, there are also some people who deny
gravity and and things like this and that, and yet
gravity exists. There are certain laws of nature that that apply.
Whether someone believes them or not, whether someone agrees with
them or not, is no. This is a universal moral
political principle. And so as long as we find beings
(10:26):
that have two components. They have a body which is
the source of all kinds of appetites and desires, and
and a rational, freethinking mind that can govern that body,
that can make moral choices.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
About what the body does. Right, we're the only ones.
Lots of animals have appetites.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
They get hungry and they want to eat, and they
get tired, and they want to sleep, and they want
to procreate during certain seasons, But only the human animal
can choose whether or not to indulge those appetites. The
rattlesnake simply strikes at the bunny rabbit out of instinct,
and it doesn't have any choice about whether to do
(11:04):
that or not. The rattlesnake cannot choose to behave like
the bunny rabbit. But we get to choose how we're
gonna behave and what appetites and desires we're going to indulge.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
That's a form of self government.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
It means within every human being, no matter what they
look like, no matter tall, short, skinny, fat, black, white, green, yellow, blue, red,
doesn't matter, as long as it is a human body
that houses a freethinking, rational mind, that is a self
(11:40):
governing being. That's the very kernel, that's the very source
of what it means to govern ourselves. And when I
come along and say, Ross, my mind is going to
choose what your body does, and I hold up a
whipper chain, right, and I threaten you with violence, your
body is going to do My mind wants your body.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
To do the slavery.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And we rightly denounce that as a gross injustice, because
it turns out your body has a free mind. It's
the home to a free mind. Your free mind, your
mind should make choices and govern your body, and my
mind should make choices for my body.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So I still, okay, I'm still trying to get to
a deeply philosophical point. I mean, I think I'm like
channeling Plato or Descartes or something like, how do we
know that? How do we know that all men are
created equal?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
It begins by understanding what a man is, what a
human being is, Right, when the founder said all men,
they of course they meant all human beings. They meant
all males and females of the species Homo sapiens, all
human beings.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
What is it that makes a human human?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And now there's two thousand, more than two thousand years
a philosophic investigation over this question.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
What really?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
It's nothing physical? Lots of other animals have hair and
skin and eyes, and right, all the physical features that
we have, bones and blood and internal organs.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
What makes a human human? What is distinctly human?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And it turns out it's this freethinking mind with the
capacity for reason to judge, to choose, that capacity to choose.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Only human beings have that. I know I have that
because I experience it.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I make choices, and you do too, and every one
of your listeners makes choices about mundane, boring things like
what to have for lunch and things like that, but
also great, big important things like where to go to
college and who to marry, and and how about this?
What kind of person am I going to be? I
get to make that choice. What is the right or
(13:47):
the best way of life for me? Is it the
life of a thief or a gangster? Or is it
the life of a philosopher, or is the life of
a productive business person?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Or what is the right way of life for me?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I get to make that choice, and every human being
gets to make that choice. That's how we know that
we have the capacity to govern ourselves, because we experience
the fact that we are self governing creatures.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
We're talking with doctor Tom Craniwitter, senior lecturer at the
Leadership Program of the Rockies and a great substack at
Tcranowitter dot com. If you forget any of that, it's
up on my blog at Rosskaminsky dot com. I've got
just a minute left here, Tom, Let's move away from
the philosophical for a minute, and I just want you
to wrap up for about a minute with anything you
want to say, like real world, not philosophical about Independence Day.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Look, there's a growing number of Americans who are openly
embarrassed by their country. And I'll be the first submit
the United States has done some things that are embarrassing
and not great, but in its founding, in the ideas
of its founding, those ideas are perfect.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
They're beautiful.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
The moments that are the most embarrassing in our history
is when we have fallen short of those ideas. So
the way to make America good and morally decent and
worth being proud of is to make sure that we
live up to those ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Don't be smirched those ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Don't denounce them, don't ignore them, don't run away from them.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Embrace them.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
And if there are parts that whether it's our government,
our culture, our individual behavior, that are falling short of
those ideas respecting the equal individual rights of all fellow citizens,
let's change the Let's change the laws, let's change the government,
let's change our behavior.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
But the ideas cannot be improved.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
They're perfect, and in the end, that's what Independence Day
is all about, these beautiful, perfect moral political principles of
action that we should act upon, and we have acted upon.
And it's a wonderful thing, folks.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
If you would love to be more inspired, learn more
from doctor Tom Cranawitter. You might try applying to the
leadership program of the Rockies Leadership Program dot or you
can email me to learn more because I've been through
the program, of course, and I'm a huge supporter, and
you can find the links to all the Tom's stuff
at my blog. Today, Tom have a wonderful Independence Day weekend.
(16:12):
Thanks for your time. You're always inspirational. It's great to
talk to you you too, Ross, Thank you very much.
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com