Darren Staloff is a history professor at the City College of New York and the author of two books: Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding and The Making of the American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts.

He talks to us today about the ideas at the core of our Constitution, the people who fought for it, and the results of those political conflicts. What is so special about our constitutional republic?

And don't miss Christy Lynn's Great Antidote EXTRA on this episode, where you'll find even more to explore!




Want to explore more?

Juliette Sellgren 

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. Hi, I'm Juliet Sellgren, and this is my podcast, the Great Antidote named for Adam Smith, brought to you by Liberty Fund. To learn more, visit www.adamsmithworks.org.

Hi, welcome back. Today on September 14th, 2022, I'd like to look at something that we often take for granted, the American Founding and how it came into being and the ideas that our constitution is built upon. I'm excited to have Professor Darren Stoff on to talk about this. He's a professor at the City College of New York and is the author of two books, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, the Politics of the Enlightenment and The American Founding and the Making of the American Thinking Class. Welcome, professor.

Thank you very much.

So before we get into this, what is the most important thing that people my age or in my generation should know that we don't?

Well, I don't know if you don't know it, but if you don't, the one thing I would suggest is just how difficult and rare it is to achieve both freedom and prosperity and how incredibly fragile those things are. I think we've had so much of it for so long that we assume that that's just a constant in the background, but it's actually fairly rare in the human experience and it's fairly easy to lose either or both of those.

And it's worked out for us so far. But I'm pretty sure that America is kind of an outlier in terms of freedom and the amount of time we've had it.

Yeah, I would say, I don't know if we're an outlier in that we're unique in the sense that we're the largest federated republic the world has ever seen. We've actually first country to have a full bore written constitution to guide us. So those things all gave us huge edges, but we've faced major challenges to both our freedom and our prosperity before we haven't in a little while, and I think that's made us kind of complacent, and I think your generation more than any, because you all grew up after the Cold War, but for previous generations they knew that two World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Great Depression, the great stagflation of the 1970s, and a lot of European countries, not so much the United States, but a lot of European countries fell into chaos. And so it's easy for the younger generation that isn't schooled in history as much to not know that even not that long ago, things went kind of sideways.

Yeah, I remember learning history growing up, even just a general survey type of history and not realizing that that was, I don't know, 20, 30 years before I was born, my mother was alive. And then as I grew up and had a better conception of time and the timeline of humanity, realizing that, wow, this period of, I don't know if I want to call it tranquility, but it's kind of this tranquility where freedom wasn't where we weren't engaged with some, I don't know, it's freedom is less explicitly fought against almost. I don't know if I want to say that, but yeah, I think the biggest thing against freedom that I've experienced in my life is covid. And I don't know, that was such a difficult thing, especially at the beginning because we had no idea what it was. Whereas the USSR during the Cold War was a threat to freedom, but it also, it was less of an unknown, I think. Plus I'm a part of the computer classes, Jay Bachar [?], it puts it. So I still got to do my Zoom school and all that stuff.

Well, I think that's true. I think also, we'll no doubt talk about this as we get into our deeper into our conversation about the Constitution. But in a real simple sense, it's not unfair to say that the founders envisioned for the federal government a fairly limited government, a government that would have due power to achieve its objectives, but its objectives were fairly limited. They were commerce, interstate commerce, foreign affairs, defense, and most plenary or police powers, in fact, all of them were left to the states. And within the states, the localities, here's the trick. The fly in the ointment as it were, is that everyone knew you would eventually come across national crises and emergencies. And when that happens, and similarly at the state and local level, you tend to understandably sort of suspend the normal constitutional liberties and freedoms. I mean, this has happened in every war we've ever declared. Those things go by the board until the emergency's over.

And I guess in a way, what was different about Covid was that the nature of the emergency was never made as crystal clear to everybody in the same way that a war is when you're bombed at Pearl Harbor or so, you see the problem and you see the Germans marching. In this case, we hadn't reached a consensus or a complete understanding about what the problem was. And then when we sort of deferred or transferred the authority to medical institutions, it became problematic in that I have no doubt they made the best medical decisions they could. But medical issues are only one of a set of issues that face something as unique as the lockdowns we faced. I mean, we've had quarantines throughout American history throughout ever since the quarantine was invented during the Great Plague in Venice. We've never quarantined the healthy. I mean, that was new and unprecedented, and I think that kind of shocked some people, particularly because they noticed this wasn't done through the normal deliberative process of representative government.

So in that way, I think that kind of heightened an awareness about potential threats to traditional ideas of liberty. But it's funny, Juliette, I met my interlocutor over the summer. We read some Tocqueville together and Tocqueville was, he said the way the great threat to liberty in American democracy, what he called it would not come from some sort of fascistic, militaristic, but from he basically said a nurse that your liberty would be a threat because they're trying to keep you safe and safe from yourself. And what we saw was a very interesting illustration of this point. There's a certain number of people who are very happy to defer and are frightened, understandably, and are happy to let other people make those decisions for them and for everybody else.

Covid is interesting. An endemic emergencies always are endemic danger to the system. But what makes it different is with other emergencies like a war, you can tell when it's over and therefore those powers have to recede with something like Covid. I'm not so sure when it ends. I mean, at some point the government stops calling it an emergency, which they did, and therefore has to follow regular rules. But that's really up to the President to make that decision. As far as I know, every opportunity has to extend the deadline of emergency just extends it. So I mean, that raises an interesting question. Unlike a war, when does this emergency end? It doesn't look like Covid will ever disappear. It's hopefully going to mutate into some part of the common cold, but who knows how long that'll take? So not to disagree with you. I mean, I agree with you. There are specific reasons why that I think struck people as stranger than other things that they've gotten used to. 

Yeah well, it's particularly weird when, I mean, the Tocqueville quote is awesome in a kind of unfortunate way, smart but smart guy. Yeah. When the state becomes the nurse, to use his phrasing, it becomes either something that the people have to struggle. You get into public choice, but let's set the scene. Let's jump in back in time. So it's hard to imagine an America without our Constitution, but what did government structures look like before that, particularly before the Declaration of Independence? What did American life look like?

So you're talking about government in pre-Revolutionary America? Yeah. Yeah, it was, I would say for most people that experienced government, they experienced it at a very local level. Now, it depended where you lived. If you lived in a seaport, you needed the provincial government or colonial government very often to set up facilities for inspection of goods and stuff like that. But I think roughly before the revolution, something like 94 to 96% of the people are farmers or agrarian. And there most of the important things you worry about setting up roads, setting up schools or relief. The provision of basic services is fairly local, and most judicial proceedings are likely to be at the county level. So that's a big thing. It would've been a very local community-based thing. And that's significant because I think something people don't realize about early America, we think of us ourselves as a country that it's become very diverse.

Well, we are very diverse, but we didn't become diverse. We were diverse from day one, ethnically, racially, religiously, but also regionally and culturally, and even within, not just between states and regions, but within states. There's a very funny story when a New England minister by the name of Cotton Mather, I believe it was, went up to either, I think it was Marblehead, Massachusetts, and gave a traditional Jeremiah about how you guys just aren't living up to the way your parents lived and said, you are all pursuing wealth. But we came here for God, and someone in the audience yells that, no, you're thinking down the base. We came here for the fish. And the funny thing is that's literally true. The people who settled Marble and Gloucester weren't actually puritans. They came for the fishing. And even in a place like Puritan, Massachusetts, you would've had, not everyone was going to be a Puritan and they would've had different goals and agendas.

In Virginia where you guys are, the reason you're at University of Virginia is Thomas Jefferson was a man of the Piedmont, of the western part of the state, and he wanted a university there for that community. The difference between the Piedmont and the Tidewater was a big deal. They may all have been wealthy planters and many of them slave owners, but the political differences, the demographic differences were very significant. And you had a bit of a cultural difference there, and that's true between the backcountry of North Carolina and the coasts. There's actually insurrections that's true in upcountry, South Carolina. There's that regulation movement. In the 1760s, the state where I live, New Jersey actually was two separate colonies, initially East Jersey and West Jersey, and to some extent it still is. It's now known as North Jersey and South Jersey. But South Jersey is still oriented around Philadelphia. I mean, they're all Phillies fans and Eagles fans.

It's still much more rural and probably a lot more conservative. And North Jersey is still oriented around New York City, and it's much more dense and urban and industrial, and New Jersey is not that unique. That would've been true across the, so a lot of that tension that would've occurred between these disparate groups. The key to our national motto, E Pluribus Unum, for many one, was that decentralization was let this region run itself, let that, and it really wasn't outside of the big things, commerce, law enforcement, that much of a need to impose a standardized policy across the board. So that would've been a very big difference in early America, I think from what's followed, I mean, not entirely. We still have a lot of that locality and regionalism too, but that was very pronounced.

Another big cultural difference in terms of politics was that regardless of whether you were the country party or the court party, what your political agenda was, the overall political culture was monarchical. I mean, you had voting and you had representative institutions, but the presiding power was a monarch, and it was the re to just be loyal to that monarch. And if you were fighting against the current regime in power placed by the monarch, you always appealed. Instead, if the king knew what they were doing, he'd support us. That's why we're doing what we're doing. And that was a very big change to move beyond that monarchical culture because that gave a certain, as we see now with the death of the Queen, it takes a certain pressure off of politics because there's this one given that everyone across the board can recognize, and the king, when he's prudent and wise of the oil administration is as nonpartisan as possible so that everyone feels loyal, and that obviously creates a real challenge when you get rid of the monarchy, what's going to hold, what's going to stand above politics to hold the country together.

Particularly, I have a friend from Scotland, and when the Queen died, this blew my mind. I don't know why. So I was like, oh, what's happening? Is the country falling apart? What's going on? And he was like, yeah, it's a struggle. We all have to change our bank notes. They all have our face on them. And it baffled me because I didn't realize that it makes sense, I guess, because she's been there for more than, for longer than some people's lives. I know a lot of people from there that haven't existed in a time without her, but it just blew my mind to realize that, oh, her face is on every single piece of currency that they have.

Yeah, yeah. She reigned for 70 years, so she reigned longer than the vast majority of Britain's have been alive. They've never known another monarch, but she also stands for the state above politics. And that's again, Americans are so blissfully happy with what they have and unaware of what surrounds them. If you sort of just doodle on the back of a sheet of paper, what are the countries that have had voting the longest without interruption? In Europe, they all turn out to be constitutional monarchies, right? Actual democracies just in Europe don't turn out to be that stable. I mean, France is probably the most successful, but they're already on their fifth republic, and it's not clear that Macron's not actually sort of creating a sixth, maybe that's a good idea, but look at the contrast with say the Netherlands or Great Britain or most of the Northern European countries.

It really takes pressure off of politics or off of the state from political division. When you have that symbol for the country who does have a political role, I mean, again, something we don't know much about, but believe it or not, before you were born, when I was about your age, Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the mid 1970s really was the guy had taken power in the 1930s and he remained in charge as was Portugal, as Greece had had a military coup was a military. In the case of Spain, what happened is when the dictator died, he turned power over to the monarch, the old monarch and the monarch reinstituted democracy.

You can imagine that there've been some governments that have gotten what are called the kernels and the barracks eager to bring the troops back out and have another coup. And it has been the king who goes to the barracks says, get back in there. Trust me, I represent this country and you got to trust me that this government's not going to do all the crazy things you're afraid they're going to do. And it's worked. I mean, he's that royal family held together. That's what makes us different is we don't have that to draw on. And the revolutionary generation they did, they had George Washington and he was that symbol and they could trust, and that's why if he said, vote for the Constitution, you took it seriously. When he ran for president, he got elected unanimously. I mean, every registered electoral vote was for him twice, I think twice. It's certainly the first time. But after that, you need something else to take the place that can stand above the political fray. And oddly enough, that has turned out to be our constitution. And I think also the Declaration of Independence and some of the other important founding documents. 

Let's start with the Declaration of Independence.

Yeah.

It was interesting because I'd obviously read parts of it mean I went to public school, but we're Americans, we've read at least part of it. I would think in most places, half of it's explaining why the 13 colonies declared independence. I mean, if you look at the song, you'll be back from Hamilton. It's interesting because it's often referred to as a breakup song between King George and the Colonies, and that's truly what the declaration reads as at least for half of it. But then you kind of get into this part where the declaration is talking about these inalienable rights and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and consent of the governed. It's lovely phrasing, but Thomas Jefferson did not coin those terms necessarily or come up with those. They're not original ideas. So who were his influences? Where did those ideas come from?

That's a great question, and to be fair, Jefferson said as much you said, I didn't come up with anything original. It was the common sense at the time. He lists several figures that influenced that thought, and a lot of them we haven't heard of today. We don't read, or some of us don't read. Some of us do guys like there was bit of a firebrand, clergyman, Bishop Ley, and he had been a great spokesman for Wi Liberty. So his writings are referenced by Jefferson, Cicero, Algernon Sidney, who was a republican, actually executed for attempting or charged with attempting to foment revolution. Obviously Locke was very important, but even [John] Locke and Locke's probably the most important- Second Treatise of Government. But he's also expressing things that others had events like Podo or after him or Es before him, and also some of Sydney and some of those Commonwealth ideas from the mid 17th century. So there was a lively tradition of commonwealth men of thinking about Republicanism that was in the British tradition, and genius of Jefferson was the ability to distill it in a couple of short and powerful phrases, though we shouldn't give all the credit to Jefferson, he did have a committee to help edit his work, and then the Congress edited it again. So it didn't change super dramatically, but it changed some.

Yeah, I'm a, I am a Virginian that goes to UVA, so I often default to, yeah, that's Thomas Jefferson's brainchild. But no, definitely was not a hundred percent him, especially the ideas, but also redrafting after the fact.

Let me say what was, I think his idea, and that is that long section of the speech, again, the various charges against the king and then the parliament of Great Britain that was required. He had to write that. That was what justified this and the section at the end where they pledge their lives in sacred honor. The declaration will not do its work unless you do that. Basically, one of the things you're going to do with the declaration is use it as a state paper to go to France. I mean, that's what Franklin's going to do with it and say, look, you can back us. We're not going to reenter the British Empire. If they back us, they'll have to go to war with Britain, and they're not going to do that just to get us a better deal. Once you've signed that document, you're guilty of treason. If you lose the revolution, you will be executed. Your entire family estate will be confiscated. I mean, that's the worst thing you could do. So that stuff had to be there. What didn't have to be there I don't think, was that opening section about its inalienable truths, and it was, I think that's the genius of Jefferson realizing that no, we really should put that in here because it's not just what we're fighting against. These are the principles we support, and that really does serve as a unifying creed,

Juliette Sellgren 

And it's really interesting to learn about this, especially the part that they're using their lives almost as bargaining chip to ensure that they're not going to back out. So France should help out because the war had already started, which I didn't know.

Yeah, it's been going on for about 15 months by that point.

The things they don't tell you in school. So the Articles of Confederation, that's our first, I don't want to call it a constitution, it's not the Constitution, but it failed and brought the founders back to the drawing board. What happened? What was it? What failed?

Well, so what failed? Let me backtrack and say first what succeeded, because it wasn't a complete failure. So what succeeded with the Articles of Confederation, which was our first constitution? So it did a couple things successfully. One, it did prosecute the war to victory, and you were fighting one of the world's great empires, and United States was a very weak, weak, small country. So that's not a small accomplishment. It did it. We had a successful revolution in war for independence without massive. We had some, but without massive political violence and basically carnage because not all Americans support the revolution. So it was a little bit rough, but it was nothing like the subsequent revolutions of France and Russia. There was no reign of terror. There was no mass retribution and mass murder under the articles. That's again, not a small accomplishment. Americans take it for granted, but it's a mistake to do so. I mean, look at the Civil War. It didn't have to go that way. So those are successes. It also did eventually, by the late 1780s, come up with a pretty good plan for the governance of the federal territories. And what were the federal territories, the Old Northwest. So those were successes.

What were the failures? Why did it fail? Well, one, it lacked the ability to enforce its own rules on the states. So in the spring of 1787, James Madison, and I know it's this Thomas Jefferson land down there, but you should take a look at this, James Madison wrote a very interesting piece called Vices of the Political System. This is in thinking out what he wants to do at the convention, and it's pretty short. It's made up of about 11 main indictments, and a chunk of them are against the Constitution, against the confederation itself. It says it lacked the authority to enforce its will. So if it passed an order, it needed the states to enforce it, and that was a problem. Two, it said it never had the legitimacy it needed because it was ratified by the states and not by the people themselves. So the states had to be loyal, but the people didn't.

And since the states were the creation of the people, and it was tempting for them to slough off their responsibilities, they did things like ignore treaty terms, which the Confederation had passed. And that's the problem. If you ignore your treaty obligations and say he points out Virginia, then the British aren't going to follow their treaty terms. So Americans refuse to allow the courts to pay back British debt. The British decide they're going to hold on to Detroit and they're not going to evacuate the Midwest. So those were failures. The biggest failure, of course, was fiscal, and again, this is not something I think they teach in public schools, but the Confederation had the ability to print currency and issue debt, but it didn't have the ability to raise taxes. It needed the states to raise the taxes to secure the value of that money, and they didn't as a result, the currency, I mean, talk about inflation, oh my God, within, I think when is it, within about three or four years, they're forced to revalue the currency, devalue it, 40 to one, and even that doesn't stop it.

And eventually the currency is known as the continental, the continental dollar by the end of the war, it's like a wheelbarrow of continental dollars might get you a loaf of bread and a sandwich, but that's about it. So the entire Fisk collapsed. We couldn't pay our debts. We actually had John Adams going over to the Netherlands to borrow money on an emergency basis to pay back the interests we owe on our debts to, in this case, not private creditors, but the private creditors are completely left with nothing. So we have this huge debt. We have a collapsed currency, and because the states won't follow and cooperate with treaties, European countries won't make any treaties with us. And so we don't have any commercial treaties. So we're really in a bad trading way. And the result is America actually basically from 1775 till about 1790s, you got to kind of long depression where the American standard of living actually goes down dramatically and will until the Washington Administration. So those are real failures.

But there are some good things in there.

And that was critical because although the federal Constitution was written de Novus, it was not an amendment of the old system. They saw the things in the old system that did work. One of the first things the federal government does once it's organized is ratify that Northwest ordinance from the articles of Confederation and make that fundamental law of the land, right, the basic settlement law. So yeah, that's right. It wasn't a complete failure, and there were things they could draw on.

And listeners to learn more about inflation and how our government tries to control that or influence that. Listen to my episode with Thomas Hoenig. So yeah, a little shout out there. So who were the major players in the drafting of the Constitution? What did they contribute?

Well, so this is what's interesting, the actual drafting or writing of it, it was done by a committee of style, and the central figure of that was a very colorful founder from New York, though at the time he was representing Pennsylvania, I believe Gouverneur Morris, and he actually wrote the thing, but the basic architecture was resolved through a long series of debates, compromises, and votes. The core plan was something called the Virginia Plan, which was presented by Mr. Randolph, though most people think that Madison had the key hand in drafting its provisions, and that was approved though the actual document that came out at the end was quite different from the Virginia plan. It also incorporated elements of something called the New Jersey plan. So yeah, for the auditors who don't know this, so the Virginia Plan basically wanted to create a dominant federal government.

It would work this way. There would be the House of Representatives would be represented, elected pretty much the way it is now, and that would be the extent of popular voting. They would elect the house. The house would then elect the Senate and the House and Senate would then elect the executive that government would have veto power over every state law. It's a legislatively dominant body, and the dominant body is obviously the house, but you don't have what we have now with the architecture of the Senate where the Senate represents the states. That wasn't going to happen. That was the result of, I think William Patterson or New Jersey who counter proposed, well, why don't we just give the federal government the powers that everything except for the veto of course, of state law that Madison wants, but instead keep the architecture of each state being equal, having the same number of votes, just have a Senate where every state is equal.

And the genius of American government is when the small states, say, without the New Jersey plan, we're walking and the big states say, well, we're not putting up with that. We want the Virginia Plan. The genius thing is to say, okay, good. Let's do 'em both. We'll have the Virginia plan in the and the New Jersey plan and the Senate, and it was actually a big deal. If you look at Article five, the amendment things, you can amendment everything except for that. If you try to do away with the Senate, it's all over. You cannot touch that. The state representation, and that's

A big federal government, which leads us to one of the major conflicts in creating our Constitution, which is the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Who were the people in each camp? What were their ideas? What was the conflict?

Well, again, let me do my quote backtrack and say part of what made the conflict fruitful, because I think they both helped found our government, is to see where they actually agree, because there were actually a lot of things that they shared. So everyone, Federalist and anti-Federalists supported popular government, however you want to define that. They thought, just like it says in the Constitution, in the, excuse me, Declaration of Independence, all government or good government must be grounded in the consent of the governed. So that was something both sides shared. They also both shared a rejection of the norms of Europe at the time, which is to say titled aristocracy and monarchy, that they were going to have nothing to do with that. Neither side were willing to go there. And they also shared what historians called the real Whig ideology or a set of political convictions that are rather distrustful of power.

The central idea being that the power of government ultimately, although necessary to secure order and liberty, is inherently liable to expand and threaten the liberties of the common people. I think it's Brutus who says, everybody of men invested with power are ever disposed to increase it and to acquire a superiority over everything that stands in their way. This disposition, which is implanted in human nature, will operate in the federal legislature to lessen and ultimately subvert the state authority. So he's looking at the states, but I think that's something that the Federalist would've agreed with. That power has a tendency in government to expand, to expand at the expense of either local power or individual liberty. And they all feared the danger of centralization. It wasn't a uniquely anti-federalists thing. They all were worldly in their expectations about politicians and politics, and they all thought that in keeping with that notion of popular government, that the most powerful and important branch of government was the legislature that you live in a legislature of laws. So those are very important things that they shared and that highlights then the differences. And maybe the biggest difference was the anti-Federalists in a lot of ways continue to hold a very sort of populistic, almost egalitarian rhetoric of the revolution, which pitted the power of monarchy against the power of the people, and the people were the source of political rectitude and Vox populi Vox Day, the voice of the people is the voice of God, and it's impossible for them to be wrong or corrupt.

I mentioned this because the final part of Madison's vices of the political system after he is criticized the Confederation, and then the states is at the very end of Section 11, the last section he says, and by the way, part of the problem is the people themselves. They're really not the voice of God. The people are also capable of being selfish and passionate, and all the themes we read about in Federalist 51 are there in vice political system. He's already seen it that there is a danger of popular government becoming majoritarian democracy. And he thought that that opened up the really real problem of a tyranny of the majority. And as the old joke goes, what's democracy? Well, it's two wolves sitting down with a sheep to discuss what's for dinner. Well, it's not so great if you're the sheep. Right? So that became then one of the distinctions between I think Federalists and anti-Federalists is that Federalists anti-federalists distrust of the government.

I think anti-Federalists also distrusted them, but they also distrusted the majority. Not that the majority was necessarily wrong, but any more than the government is necessarily wrong, but that all of them are subject to potential abuse. So in some ways, they're even more, I don't want to say paranoid, but let's say worldly than the anti-Federalists. So I think that's a big difference. Another, they're much more, not all of them, but many of the Federalists were members of a previous movement in the Congress called the nationalist Movement, and where they really began to think of themselves more as Americans than just residents of their states. They had a more kind of continental vision, and this was a very important core of political federalism. And the Federalist movement were actually the veterans of the Continental Army officers and soldiers. And in large part because unlike the militias, when you served in the continental army under Washington or Gates or whoever, you actually served the people from different regions, and it was very hard to travel back then.

So it was pretty special for you if you were from New Jersey to have spent time with someone from North Carolina and discovered that you can be friends and you've got a lot in common. And US military has always done that since it's been a real glue that brings people from different regions together and they see that despite different accents and food tastes, we have a lot in common and we can work together. And so I think that was a very important constituency that Officer Corps the soldiers, some of the people who served in the Continental Congress and then others who were involved in commerce and saw that the fiscal crisis meant that without a stable currency, it's almost impossible to engage in trade. So urban people tended to be more federalist merchants, business people because you need the government to get you commercial treaties to establish a standard currency, contract law, stuff like that.

What were the main results? Were there tangible results? I want to say the Bill of Rights, but am I right to say that?

Yes, in almost every one of the states where the vote was even, it was problematic and you really had to push it. One of the strong indictments of the anti-Federalists was where is the Bill of Rights? Because most state constitutions had them, and Madison actually kind of pledged. He said, if you vote for this, I'll make sure you get a bill of Rights. So an interesting thing, a lot of the Madison originally opposed a Bill of Rights. He did it because that's what the people demand did, and he understood popular government at some level, they actually do get what they want after you've reasoned with them as much as you can. But his argument against it, it's very interesting. Well, his was to Jefferson was you can write as many things on Parchman as you want. If the politicians choose to ignore them and take away your rights, they will.

But another argument used against it, which less cynical is if you come up with a bill of rights, you won't be able to list everything and then you'll lose those. So better to have an idea of inherent natural rights. But when it became clear that the anti-Federalists were not satisfied with that, many of their concerns were addressed in the Bill of Rights. In fact, most of 'em. So yeah, I would say that's a big element they had also, another is the anti-Federalists didn't go away. They became a political opposition that eventually won. And so they had an impact on how the government would deploy its powers and how we would understand the limits of its powers. And that happened after the So-called Revolution of 1800. And to that extent, it really was a revolution. Jefferson had a much more constrained idea of what you can and can't do with the federal government.

He saw it as a compact of the states. And there is an extent to which just as part of the political culture, the federal government became, in some ways more decentralized than it might've been, had the Federalist settled on certainly the Democrat Party, which at the time pushed for more decentralization states' rights, had a very different idea of what the federal government could do than say the wigs, and then later the Republicans. So it's important to realize that the anti-federalists didn't just get their impact on the body of the Constitution. Constitution itself leaves a lot of things up to precedent and practice, and they influence that in powerful ways.

It strikes me as very human, where you can have a certain amount taught to you, you can memorize what you want, but some things just really come from learning from experience. And it seems like our country is very human in that way.

I think so. And I think one of the things, we've talked about this in another setting of the conflict between federalists and anti-federalists, but that's why I stress the things they have in common, because they fought and they fought hard against each other and with a lot of doubts about one another. Having said that, they fought side by side in the American Revolution. They were on the same side, and they had the same goals and objectives. And so even at the end of the day, when you get two guys, I mentioned two guys who they didn't dislike each other, they robed each other. And I mean, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, two of the smartest guys that have ever lived in this country's brilliant, served together, couldn't stand each other.

Jefferson used to accuse Hamilton of being a closet monarchist who wanted to bring in aristocracy. But in his final remarks on Hamilton, he does say he's a curious guy. He believed in the importance of corruption, but he was utterly honest and sincere and upright and honorable. I mean, just the ideal guy. And when Jefferson is facing a conundrum because there's a tie in the electoral college between him and Aaron Burr, Hamilton lobbies for Jefferson, he said, look, his ideas are crazy. I mean, he's just a crazy man, but he's completely honest. He would never betray his country. And despite the fact that he screamed against presidential abuse as long as the Federalists had it, once he's president, it'll be a very powerful presidency. And he was right. And there was a certain level at which they disliked each other and they disagreed with each other, but they both recognized that each one was legitimate and had the wrong vision, but did care for their country.

And that allowed their conflict to be fruitful, I would say. And I do think that comes out of the fact that they both faced death and danger in the revolution together. And I think that's why when I mentioned the need to be aware of how fragile your freedom is, we've had intense political disputes ever since the end of the Second World War. But at least until 1992, I would say they were fairly constrained by a generation that as much as they disagreed, and boy did they disagree, I mean Ronald Reagan to Ted Kennedy, boy, that's a big disagreement. But that generation all came to the Second World War together, and they all knew at the end of the day that as dangerous as Ted Kennedy's ideas are, he's loyal to this country as dangerous or as ignorant as people thought. That side thought that Ronald Reagan's ideas are, he's loyal to the American system. I mean, he's a patriot and they know this because they serve together.

Right now, I think part of the reason we're so intense in our differences is we haven't served together in a long time, done anything together. And so there's a real breakdown of trust because serving together, even with your differences, they're very, very real. I mean, profoundly real. The big differences between supply side economists and Keynesians and whatever, there are certain core things that you agree on, and that's what you're fighting for. We still have those core things we agree on, but we haven't had to fight together as a group for it. And so we don't even think about those anymore. All we think about are the things we disagree about.

Juliette Sellgren 

I have 1,000,001 more questions, but due to time, I'm going to ask you one more. What is one thing that you believed at one time in your life that you later changed your position on and why?

Okay, well this, oh, lemme think about that for a minute. Well, I don't know that it changed my position, but I had a conviction for a long time that turned out to be wrong. And so reality has corrected me. For the longest time. I had a saying with my colleagues, which is that academia or the campus where you guys are, where I have been is like Vegas, and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And that crazy stuff that we say and do on campus is going to stay on campus. It has to, because if it ever morphed out into society and they saw it, they'd shut us down. And that held for a really long time. But it has morphed off campus, and I did not see that coming. And so I'm chastened, don't trust me as a prophet for the future. I didn't think that'd ever happen.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yeah, I mean, that's why I ask this question is because we listen to me asking questions for however long, and then it's like, oh, expert also gets things wrong.

I got that one wrong.

It's a humbling thing, but I don't think there are a lot of people who really didn't see that coming. It's really interesting talking, especially to free speech, people seeing just how surprised they were. I mean, it starts with free speech in a lot of ways, but it's like the entire culture kind of, it's fascinating and not necessarily in a positive way, but, well…

I mean, it's a mixed bag. We will see how it plays out. But for a long time, you'd had some edgy, shall we say, contrarian and critical views on campus, which had become more intense, but they've been fairly insulated, isolated from the general culture. Just real quick to give an example, I'm an American historian, and one of the phenomena I saw in the 1990s and two thousands was a growing frustration by fellow historians at the rise of popular historians who were not actually historians, but just wrote history. They are historians, they're just not academically trained. David McCullough is probably the greatest example, but Ron Chernow, John Meacham, these guys would sell copies after copies after copies, and no one would read books, or not everyone, some people could write successfully and popularly, and there was a whole lot of resentment at that, and there was a lot of ringing of the hands and gnashing of the teeth. But I remember thinking, well, that's because we are writing for each other.

We, we've been reading each other's works for so long that it's like we're speaking Latin to each other. It's like the medieval period. If you wanted to speak to the general public, you'd have to enter a whole nother world. They just don't think in the categories we think in. And if they knew the categories we think in, they'd be, why am I sending my kids for that? So I didn't think it would ever leach out because certainly we in the academy weren't interested in what they were thinking. I mean, it was just unenlightened and darkness, and they probably thought we were a bunch of pointy headed eggheads, couldn't park a bicycle straight. We were probably both right on each side. But when that leached out, I mean, maybe it's a similar situation. What we need to do is say, well, what are the things we share in common? What do we both believe in and work from there. But yeah, I got to confess, I didn't see that happening.

Once again, I'd like to thank my guest for their time and insight, and I'd like to thank you for listening to the Great Antidote podcast. The Great Antidote is sound engineered by Rich Goyette. If you have any questions, any guests or topic recommendations, please feel free to reach out to me at  greatantidote@libertyfund.org. Thank you.