The Revolution as a change in minds
C. Bradley Thompson told Bob Zadek that John Adams described the American Revolution not as the war but as a revolution in the minds of the people in the 15 years before Lexington and Concord. Thompson said that quotation led him to realize the true story of the American Revolution was this intellectual, moral revolution in the 10 or 15 years before independence, and that he broadened his book from a study of the Declaration of Independence to a broader book on what he called the deepest causes of the revolution, namely its moral causes. Zadek identified Thompson as the Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and described his book as America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It. Thompson said he had read a horrible book on the Declaration of Independence by a Harvard professor that so offended him he decided to write his own. C. Bradley Thompson on America’s Revolutionary Mind (2019)
The Society of the Cincinnati and the memory of the Revolution
Zadek told listeners that the Society of the Cincinnati is one of the oldest organizations in America, founded in 1783 by veterans of the American Revolution, and that as far as he knew its membership is restricted to descendants of veterans of the American Revolution. Thomas Fleming, an honorary member, corrected the restriction: the only descendants of officers, with only one officer descendant per family, divided up by state just like the 13 original states. Fleming explained that he received the honor during the Bicentennial in the ’70s, when he gave so many speeches to the organization that they never paid him for, they made him an honorary member. He said he is the George Washington scholar for the New York State Society of the Cincinnati. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
According to Fleming, Washington was uncomfortable participating in the society because Ben Franklin and a number of other people, including Jefferson, thought it was going to be the foundation of an American aristocracy and would undermine the whole idea of the Revolution. Fleming recounted that Franklin wrote a funny satire proving that anyone who claimed after about 100 years to be related to the original heir would be out of their minds. Fleming added that the society honors American history, gives money for causes having to do with teaching it, and that its members really love American history. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Money, corporations and the Founding generation
In the same episode, Zadek framed a discussion of how the Founders felt about money and politics, asking about corporations as citizens, their free speech rights, and how much they may economically participate in the democratic process. Fleming answered that there were not enough corporations during the first ten years of the Republic to make much difference in politics, though there were wealthy men and people who controlled banks, such as Robert Morris in Philadelphia, probably the wealthiest of all the businessmen in the country. He said these men felt there should be no bar to participating in politics by running for office or supporting with money people who ran for office, and that it was part of their rights as citizens. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Fleming said he did not think the Founders got into the corporate issue to any great extent, but that they had a strong sense of an ongoing conflict between the rich and the poor. He credited Jefferson with the point that it was important to make sure all the people felt they were participating in politics as much as possible, and said that after 1800 there began a tradition of fighting and defeating the rich in American politics. Zadek raised a figure named Duer; Fleming said Duer tried to corner the market in shares of the Bank of the United States, and that in Philadelphia, then the capital, Jefferson was ecstatic over the 1792 crash, writing in a letter that there wasn’t a single man in New York who wasn’t bankrupt. Fleming described the deep conflict between wealth and non-wealth as rooted to some extent in the temperaments of some of the Founders, certainly between Washington and Jefferson. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
“The whole story of the Revolution”
A caller named John told Fleming he had taken the television program Liberty! The American Revolution to friends in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet state, who were astounded to learn that the United States had to win its freedom from another country and had no idea it was Britain. Fleming said he had been the consultant on the program, which was written by Ron Blumer. Fleming said he was on the board of the American Revolution Center in Philadelphia, which was trying to build a museum that, in his words, would tell for the first time in any museum in the whole country the whole story of the American Revolution, and he hoped the plug would raise money for it. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
The Revolution invoked: elections, courts and a new country
Zadek told Larry Klayman that he had used the phrase “Second American Revolution,” that he was a student of the American Revolution who studied it with great passion and intellectual interest, and that he had concluded the 2012 election was maybe the most important election since ratification of the Constitution. In the same segment Zadek described recusal rules in the inferior courts and contrasted them with the Supreme Court, which he said had long since decided those rules do not govern it, leaving each justice to decide whether to step aside. He argued that if this were an inferior court there is no question that Elena Kagan would be required to step aside, but because it is the Supreme Court the requirement is not there. Who’s Looking Out for Us? (2012)
Klayman told Zadek he had two matters in different courts and that he had filed a case concerning Obamacare to get the contacts of the White House and its communications with lobbying groups including Planned Parenthood, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association. He said a federal judge, a Clinton appointee, held that he was entitled to the information under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and told Obama he had 30 days to say whether meetings were still going on; Klayman said Obama stonewalled through the Justice Department and that he then filed a motion to hold Obama in contempt, on which the judge had been sitting for six months. Klayman said he did not think we have a republic anymore, and proposed a citizens’ grand jury and possibly civil disobedience, Gandhi style. Who’s Looking Out for Us? (2012)
The Revolution in the curriculum
Zadek said that a graduate of the North Carolina school system would not know about the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War or the War of 1812 if the state’s Chief Academic Officer, Rebecca Garland, had her way, because in her view no history should be taught prior to 1877 — the Civil War, the writing of the Constitution and the Revolutionary War included. He said she did not want American history taught prior to 1877 because her high school students cannot relate to it. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
Across episodes
The topic recurs without a single line of development, and the treatments differ in kind rather than in argument. In 2011 Thomas Fleming supplied the Revolution’s institutional memory through the Society of the Cincinnati and the Founders’ attitudes toward money and corporations; in 2019 C. Bradley Thompson recast it as a moral revolution in the mind; in 2012 Zadek applied the phrase “Second American Revolution” to an election and Larry Klayman extended the theme to judicial recusal and Obamacare litigation; in 2021 Vít Jedlička invoked the spirit of the Revolution in founding Liberland. The 2010 excerpt treats the Revolution only as material a state curriculum proposed to drop. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011) C. Bradley Thompson on America’s Revolutionary Mind (2019) Who’s Looking Out for Us? (2012) Founding the Free Republic of Liberland (2021) Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
A founding date borrowed
Vít Jedlička told Zadek that Liberland planted its flag on April 13th, which he said many listeners would know is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, though which day he was actually born on is still disputed; he said it is very likely Jefferson was born on the 13th of April. Jedlička said they wanted to appreciate Jefferson’s personal involvement in the whole American Revolution and felt the Declaration of Independence was a great document, so they started the country on his birthday and wanted to invoke the spirit of the American Revolution with that step. Zadek asked whether the date was a coincidence and whether he had the date right. Jedlička described Liberland as a modern-day tax exodus or a new kind of Tea Party movement creating a new country, this time in Europe, and said that on the day they started they did not have a constitution ready, though their first press release stated they wanted to make a country where honest people can prosper without over-regulation and over-taxation. Founding the Free Republic of Liberland (2021)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not narrate the war itself, its campaigns, its treaties, or any battle or date beyond Lexington and Concord, April 13th, 1783, 1792, 1800 and 1828. They do not state the text, adoption or legal effect of the Declaration of Independence, and no excerpt says which amendment, statute or holding any case turned on. Rebecca Garland’s title, the outcome of the North Carolina proposal, and the contents of the Liberland constitution’s final draft are all left unstated in the excerpts.