Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Armstrong and Jettie and He Armstrong and Yetty.
Goodness sakes, what a day. The crew has taken the week off next week to enjoy Independence Day in a little summer fun, family time.
Travel, etc.
Today is the last show obviously, before that Jack is winging his way toward Florida with his boys, and I decided I would love to talk to Tim Sander for the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute about the Declaration of Independence. Independence Day and one of
my favorite books. Tim wrote, The Conscience of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independent and it's in the right to liberty and by coincidence, today is also the day that the Supreme Court is handing out rulings right and left.
Tim Sander for joys Is, Tim, how are you.
I'm just great. Thanks for having me back.
Oh, it's always a pleasure.
Have you gotten a chance to take in some of the Scotis' recent issuances.
I had to skim some of them, and.
This universal injunction decision is really unfortunate. It's a bad ruling, and honestly, it's a really stupid ruling because here's the thing so universal injunctions. That's when a plaintiff goes to court and says the government is doing something unconstitutional, and the judge says, that's right, the government must stop doing
this unconstitutional thing. That's a universal injunction. What the opponents of universal injunctions complain about is they say, well, why should a judge in California be able to bar the federal government from doing something in Florida. And the answer to that is because it's unconstitutional. What the ruling today says is now the California federal judge can only issue a ruling barring the unconstitutional thing from happening to the
particular people in that particular lawsuit. Well, of course, that's how injunctions work anyway. So all that this ruling says today is that the judge has to write in his opinion, I'm only saying this applies to the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Well, of course, everybody knows that's already the rule. It's just that the federal government has to follow the law. So if it's doing something in Florida, that's unconstitutional in California.
It's still unconstitutional wherever it's happening, so it's illegal. So it's really just creating this weird new formality in how courts go about enforcing the Constitution and justice. Jackson, in her dissenting opinion, has it exactly right. She says, now a court's power to prevent constitutional violations comes with an asterisk.
A court can make.
The executive cease its unconstitutional conduct asterisk, but only with respect to the particular plaintiffs named in the lawsuit before them, being the government free to violate the constitutional rights of anyone and everyone else.
It's a terrible thing, and it's just anyway. It's frustrating by it.
No, because there's been a lot of talk among the conservative legal community about trying to stop nationwide injunctions because a lot of conservative lawyers and judges are scared of what they call activist judges. I am not scared of activist judges. I'm scared of judges getting things wrong, whether it be conservative or liberal judges getting things wrong. But activists, there's no It's much worse to have a passive judge
who does nothing right. That's much worse when the government does something unconstitutional and you go to a judge that get them to stop, and the judge says, oh, I'm not I'm just gonna let them do whatever.
I'm not going to be active. That's terrible.
That's Kilo versus New London, right where the government comes along and steals your house to hand over to Kyo or something, and the court stands back and refuses to host the constitution.
That's a passive judge. That's not what we want.
We want judges to be active in enforcing the constitution. We don't want them to be wrong, of course, but we don't want the Congress or the president to.
Be wrong either.
So the idea that what we want is a passive, non activist judiciary is just crazy.
Right.
So, people who object to the high number of these injunctions and how they've interfered with federal policy, that's in quotes.
I mean, you can agree with that or not.
The answer is that's why we have the appeals process, and it'll be fine, just give it a little time.
Yep, exactly.
And the reason why we have so many of these injunctions going on right now is because the president is doing so many unconstitutional things.
That's why, Oh, look at you say. If you expected pandering, you're not going to get it here. So the specific reason I invited Tim to be on the show today is we're leading up to Independence Day July fourth, and I know how much you like to talk about the Declaration of Independence liberty in general, and one of my favorite books of years, as I mentioned, was The Conscience of the Constitution, which, to my horror, came out like eleven years ago. I know, why did you write the book?
What argument are you making?
Well, So for I'll preface this by saying, if you like this book, you'll be excited to know I've got a new book about the Declaration of Independence that's schedule to come out next year, in time for the universtieth anniversary.
I just finished what I hope is the final draft of it, and I hope people will read and enjoy it about the history of the declaration and what exactly are all of the grievances talking about, and what exactly Britain was doing, because it really bothers me that people say, oh, it's just a fight over a text on tea, and they ignore that British colonial rule really was oppressive and tyrannical.
But that aside.
The reason I wrote Conscience of the Constitution is to argue that the Declaration of Independence isn't just a piece of political rhetoric. It's law. It's the law of the land. It is as much the law as the Federal Constitution itself is law. And we tend to kind of shrug that aside for a couple of reasons. In fact, worse than that, when Barrett was at her confirmation hearing, she was directly asked, is the Declaration of Independence law? And she answered no, Well, she would have flunked MI con
law class for some of that. The Declaration of Independence is a statute. It was passed by the Continental Congress. It's in the Statute Books, Volume one, page one of the United States Code, Declaration of Independence.
And for good reason.
It sets forth the principles that make our government justify that make it a legitimate government instead of just an arbitrary rule. And those principles are equality of rights, individual liberty, limited government, the people rule, and so forth.
How do you suppose somebody is learned and intelligent as justice Barrett would come to that conclusion.
Well, so I mentioned earlier that a lot of our conservative friends are so scared about judicial activism, and so they think the way to fight back against judicial activism is to say that judges are never supposed to draw any kind.
Of moral or normative distinctions.
That judges are supposed to be just as Chief Tess Robert said, we're just umpires calling balls and strikes. And that theory is that the Constitution has no moral direction to it, that it's just sort of this value neutral framework for democracy, and that's not correct. The Declaration of Independence tells us that the Constitution has a moral direction to it, and that is that individual freedom is the
primary political value, not democracy. And today we're so propagandized to to believe that democracy is the most important thing about our system that we forget that, in fact, the word democracy doesn't even appear in the Constitution of the United States. On the contrary, the reason we have a constitution is to limit democracy, to prioritize individual rights over majority rule.
But because that seems to lead to judicial activism, a lot of our.
Conservative lawyers and judges don't like the Declaration of Independence, particularly Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia had this sort of fight with Thomas over this issue.
Thomas is a pro Declaration.
Of Independence justice and Scalia was anti Declaration of Independence. And the reason why was because Scalia thought it led to judicial activism. And Justice Thomas believes, at least to some degree, in natural rights, that there really are individual rights and government must respect those in all cases. And
so there's a very interesting opinion. They were called Troxel versus Granville, where Scalia agreed with Thomas except for two sentences, and he specifically said he did not agree with those two sentences, and those are the two sentences where Justice Thomas quotes the Declaration of Independence. So it's really this is not just a bunch of abstract theorizing. This relates to how the government actually operates in daily, day to
day work. Whether you believe, really believe in the principles of the declaration, or whether you just recite them without thinking what they mean.
Right, And I certainly count myself among those who believe in the principles fervently. I don't know exactly how to ask this question, but on a practical level, you said, you know, the Declaration is a law. The first Really, on a practical level, as I look at the truths that we hold to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they aren't doubted by their creator, with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Do I then look at everything that happened after that through the lens of that declaration and assess whether it holds true.
To those principles or not.
I mean, on a practical level, how do I use the declaration as law?
Well, the declasion is a very broad law. A lot of One of the things that this brings up an interesting point. So a lot of the reason whylawyers or judges say the decoration is not laws because they say, well, it doesn't have any kind of.
An enforcement mechanism.
And usually laws say, you know, if you run the stop sign, you'll get a ticket, you know, and there's there's some sort of punishment involved.
But that not all laws do that.
Laws that say how you write a will or how you get married, those the laws don't contain any kind of punishment to them. And yet there's still laws, right And in a lot of the time what law does is it announces broad, abstract principles that the government should
aim at. For example, here's an example I use in my in the book that's coming up soon, there's a law that declares how the International Space Station program should operate, and it says in there, in all cases, the government shall prioritize the following considerations.
Well, there's that's still a law, right.
The generation of Independance is kind of like that. The Declaration says everything the government does is legitimate only if it respects the principles of almon are created, equal with fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit.
Of happiness and so forth. And that's obviously.
The most important time that that was ever applied is in the controversy over the Civil War, right in talking about whether or not the Constitution guarantees slavery or not. That turns on whether you think black people qualified as part of the people of the United States as part of the one people referred to in.
The Declaration of Independence.
And when you read Lincoln and Douglas and their debates over the meaning of the Constitution and slavery, they're constantly referring to the Declaration. The dread Scott opinion itself talks about whether the Declaration of Independence means what it says, So of course, this is a crucial element in analyzing whether government is doing something justly, and that's why you find the Declaration quoted in cases involving affirmative action programs
like the recent Harvard case. Just as Thomas says, the Declaration of Independence is part of our law.
It says all men are created equal.
These kinds of racist government policies violate that principle.
Wow.
Interesting, So I don't want to get hung up on the point, and we need to take a break. But so what would you say to somebody who's defending a policy that you found to be antithetical to the themes of the declaration? Would you declare it undeclarational or what would do your objection sound like?
Maybe the Declaration informs how we interpret the Constitution, which informs how we understand the law, and so it's kind of, you know, it's like multiple layers here. So if a question comes up about whether something violates the equal protection of the laws, which the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution protects, then we look back at what do we mean by equal protection? Do we is it okay for government to give some people an advantage over others based on the
color of their skin. Well, that turns on whether what we what do we mean by the people of the United.
States who are citizens?
What is the substantive values that the law is protecting and enforcing here and understand that we have to read the declaration and understand also the context of declaration was written in, which is the principles of classical liberal political philosophy that underlie the American Revolution.
I wanted to get into that very thing, the origin of the declaration, why was written? And why was written the way it was in a moment or two. Tim Sandifer, the Goldwater Institute. Much more to come an extended conversation this hour with Tim Sanderfer, vice president for Legal Affairs with the Goldwater Institute, about the Declaration of Independence. As Independence Day approaches rapidly, Tim, this is a short segment, and I hesitate to ask one of the big questions
in a short segment, but what the heck? Will get started and see how it goes. Why was the Declaration of Independence written? Why not just say I'm out listing all those grievances. Did they just not want to make King George mad?
Or what? What was the purpose?
So between the people, forget that the American Revolution was a very long process. It actually began in seventeen sixty four when Parliament passed law called the Sugar Act, which was the first attempt by Parliament to impose taxes on the colonies. And for over a decade there were these angry disputes over Parliament's authority over the American colonies, and Americans insisted that they were loyal to the King, but
not to Parliament. And they were very consistent about this, that Parliament had no authority to.
Pass laws over them.
That's why Parliament isn't even mentioned in the declaration. Instead, they used the phrase a jurisdiction. A power foreign to our jurisdiction is the phrase they use. They don't even want it to use Parliament's name in the Declaration of Independence because they say it has never had any authority over America. But the King started saying no, no, Parliament
is what governs the colonies. And so after years and years of begging the king to change his mind, and he kept ignoring them, finally he made He sent armies to the United States started making war on Americans.
And so they said, all right, we're.
Done having any kind of loyalty to the king also, and they had to issue a declar that explained why and what they were fighting for. And so that's why they wrote the declaration. But it was the last of a long series of documents that explained the causes of a dispute between America and Britain, you know. And so you have to understand that history to get what they're referring to when they list all their grievances against Parliament and the King.
But it seems to me it was a message to the Crown in Parliament. It was a message to other countries who may or may not be helpful, and a message to the American people as well.
Yes, and that last part is really important.
A lot of people overlook the fact that the Continental Congress was speaking to Americans also. They weren't just speaking to Britain, and they weren't just speaking to France and other countries. They were explaining to Americans themselves what it
is we're fighting over. And that's why Jefferson tried to put in a provision damning slavery as evil, because he thought, maybe if I can sneak this provision in here, it will sort of force Americans to view slavery as un American and that would allow enable us to later abolish slavery, and unfortunately that tactic didn't work.
Yeah, I want to get into that in particular next segment, when we'll have a lot of time to stretch out. But I think it's one of the more insidious lies of for instance, the sixteen nineteen project that claims that the country was founded on slavery and the founding fathers were big fans of it. A lot of them spoke openly of its evil and how they had to get rid of it somehow.
That's right, that's right.
Tim Sanver of the Goldwater Institute on the line. We are going to come back after a brief break full of fascinating and helpful commercial messages and continue on our discussion of the declaration of Independence. I want to get into Thomas Jefferson's role, what got left out, who fought for what, because like every process that's ever happened in this country, it was full of bloody knuckles and differing opinions and that sort of thing, which is why I
love this place so much. And Tim also mentioned that he's working on a book soon to come out about the Declaration of Independence. I'm for the anniversary thereof, so we will discuss that and much more. Also get back to some of the Supreme Court decisions and check in with Jack from Sonny Humid, Florida. I think before long stay with us.
Glad you're here. Thanks, Armstrong and Getty. Welcome.
Tim Sanderfers the vice president for Legal Affairs with the Goldwater Institute, longtime friend of the Armstrong and Getty show. And we're doing a slightly premature independence stage show just because we are off next week and I really really
wanted to, so here we are. I was centering the discussion i'd planned to around Tim's twenty fourteen book, The Conscience of the Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, and the Right to Liberty, But he unleashed on us the news that you're working on a new book on a somewhat similar topic.
Yes, I'm doing a book called Proclaiming Liberty, which is about the writing of the Declaration, what it means, and then you know, going clause by clause to the Declaration, explaining what each of the references are, and then concludes with sort of a my slap at the sixteen nineteen project should be out in April of twenty twenty six in Times for the bisis Sessquit Tenniel whatever they call.
Them, right right, Yeah, give the sixteen nineteen project a good solid slap if you can. We mentioned just before the break, Tim mentioned that Thomas Jefferson, who allegedly wrote the Declaration of Independence, wanted a clause in there about the need to eliminate slavery, which it runs so counter to some of the woke narratives these days. First of all, to what extent was this a solo writing project by Thomas Jefferson?
And what else was fought over? What to leave in, what to leave out? What should we know?
Oh?
Yeah, So it's a wonderful and complicated story, which I'll get into in my book. But yes, Jefferson was the primary draftsman on a committee of five, and really it was primarily him. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were primarily responsible for Franklin was six, so he was working from home and so they didn't really consult him very often, and so it was primarily Jefferson and Adams, and Jefferson did.
The first draft.
He wrote it in about two weeks and you know, got or two days, I'm sorry, and had it all ready to present to them, and then they added and took some things out, and then presented it to the Congress as a whole, which then went over it all over again, editing it, taking things out and putting things and all that sort of stuff. And he had wanted to include an attack on the slave trade. Jefferson when
he was he was already young. He was one of the youngest members of the Continental Congress in seventy six. But even before that he had been in his colonial legislature, and he had tried to get laws passed restricting the trade in slaves as a first step to attacking slavery itself. And because you know, you got to get your camel's nose under the tent, right, And that was the plan.
And that failed because the King issued in order saying colonies made not pass any kinds of restrictions on the importation of slaves, because he said, because that harmed the profits of the Royal Africa Company, which was the Imperial Slave Trade Corporation. And so when he got a chance to write the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson says, well, I'm going to include an attack on the King for blocking
our efforts to limit the slave trade. And what he wrote was the single longest passage in the Declaration of really passionate paragraphs. I mean, he's using all capital letters and underlining things because he was really into this, and he was partly hoping to persuade his fellow Americans to see slavery as an evil thing that could be blamed on Britain. Now today we say, oh, how silly for him to blame Britain for providing Americans with slaves when Americans bought slaves perfectly, happily.
Well, that's kind of true. But look at our own day. Look what we do.
Today Nowadays, we blame oil companies for global warming. We blame fast food companies for making us fat. We blame tobacco companies for selling us cigarettes.
It's basically the same thing.
It's blaming the company for providing you with the evil thing. As a matter of political rhetoric, it was just a handy technique that Jefferson was trying to get away with, and Adams and Franklin liked it, but unfortunately the rest of the Congress did and they took it out. And Jefferson was so upset about this that for years afterwards he could. He sent copies of his original draft with a bunch of friends and he said, didn't you think.
I think it's better the way I wrote it, And even in his memoirs when he was retired, he did the same thing. He put his original version in there as a way of saying, look what I tried to do and what they wouldn't let me do.
You know, obviously getting the southern colonies to go around and go along and satified was it was an ever present concern too, I would guess, yeah.
Because the most important thing, above all else was to keep all of the colonies united. If one colony peeled away and said well we're going to make a separate priest with Britain, that would have been a disaster, because then another colony, another colonue pretty soon there would be no way of fighting back.
He gets written.
So no, South Carolina and Georgia, according to Jefferson, were really anti really opposed to his anti slavery passage, and a few of the northern states he said too. Oh, he didn't say which ones, and so it was taken out because he had to have unanimity. That was the most important thing.
I'm so intrigued by your mention of Ben Franklin's role in the process, though he was sick and it was somewhat limited. I think most Americans have a view of Ben as sort of a learned godfather of witty sayings and occasional scientific discoveries. And then he went to France and had a big party and represented us. But how would you describe Franklin's role there in the very early days pre declaration and post.
And Franklin started out as a really as loving the connection between England and America.
He thought that was really valuable and wonderful and important.
And he gradually came to see that Britain viewed the colonies as subordinate and the colony and that Britain thought of the colonists as their job was to work, pay taxes and shut up. And that started to really great on Franklin over the years, and eventually he became one of the most intense throw independence guys. He was, you know, famously disowned his own son, who was the royal governor of the Colony of New Jersey, and disowned him for siding with the king over America.
So this was not this is not just a lovely grandfather figure. He was very passionate revolutionary.
Right, And I remember, I can't remember where it was that I read about it, but I was somewhat surprised to read of the overt, shameless bigotry of a lot of Brits, and specifically British troops who came to pacify the colonies. They actually looked at us quote unquote as a bunch of loud, idiotic roubs.
Yeah, a lot of the officers especially, and you know, with some there is some legitimacy to that. I mean, the Americans work country pumpkins. But on the other hand, we were the ones doing the working and the fighting
and having to pay the taxes. And then have a bunch of aristocrats who were sent over here a lot of time, these, especially the royal governors who were sent over to govern, A lot of them were just, you know, some kind of aristocrat who had gone bankrupt and needed to get away from his creditors and would come over to America to rule for his own wealth.
I mean, the governor of Virginia was quite open.
Governor Dunmore was quite open about the fact that he had come to America to make a fortune because he needed money from the old country, you know. So, and then a lot of time these governors wouldn't even come to America. Virginia, for example, was governed by for almost a decade by a governor who never even bothered to visit Virginia. The British colonial policy was crazy and it was very oppressive. You know, there was no freedom of speech.
You could be executed for expressing your political views in a newspaper. Your property basically existed at the wheel of parliament. If Parliament decided to take your stuff way, they claimed literally absolute power. And in fact, that's the most important
thing that led to the revolution. Parliament passed a law in seventeen sixty six called the Declaratory Act that said that Parliament had the authority to legislate for the colonies quote in all cases whatsoever end quote Wow, And that ends up yeah, right, that line ends up in the Declaration of Independence, because that's really the source of all
the other problems. Right, if they can legislate for us in all cases whatsoever, then your property rights and your free speech rights and your freedom of religion counting, and you really are a save.
If that's the case, what do you think is most underappreciated about the Declaration of Independence.
Oh, that's a great question. I think it's probably people don't know what the grievances referred to they read. If you read the declaration, it says, you know, it has those beautiful opening paragraphs about Amini created equal to these things, and then it lists the things that Britain has done, and they're written in kind of general terms, like the first one, you know, the king has he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
And people don't know.
What they're talking about that day is and what it is is actually Britain claim the King's deputy claimed the authority to veto any colonial legislation. And they did this a lot. I mean, for example, it was illegal to get a divorce in the colonies. The colonies weren't allowed to pass laws for divorce. You had to get the king's own permission to get a divorce in colonial America. But of course the most important one is laws banning the slave trade.
The King said no to any of those.
People don't know this history, and it's starting to fade, and that leads to this general impression of well, the British rule over America wasn't really so bad? Well, were the patriots were just a bunch of whiners? And this which really ticks me.
Off right and also in the particulars I think, and this gets back to the theme that we began with that it's Tim's fervent belief that the Declaration of Independence is indeed law in an important United States law founding document in the truest sense as you get into the particulars and work through them, and maybe Jefferson should have had footnotes, but it further illustrates what sort of country we did not want to be and what we wanted
to be in a fair amount of detail. Because it's easy enough and sometimes funny to portray it as the king's jerk and we don't want to be under him anymore.
We're going to start a new country.
But the thought of what sort of country was thought out very very carefully.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of political philosophy that's distilled into the Declaration of Independence. And I mentioned that there was well over a decade of political arguments that had gone on before independence. There had been a First Continental Congress, and they had also issued a declaration, and if you read their declaration, they actually list by number the particular parliamentary laws that they're objecting to, so they get into
a great deal of details. And there were pamphlets and speeches that talked about to go philosophy, and Jefferson's distilling this all down into a single page because he wants
it to be easy to read and understand. But we're talking about ideas that go back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome in the declaration, so to really get a grasp of that, it requires a good deal of depth, which you know, of course, our educational institutions don't give students nowadays because we're all supposed to believe that the Founders are just these evil white guys who wanted to wanted independence because they wanted to perpetuate slavery, which is a complete lie.
Of course, right forgive me if this is inaccurate, but I think Jack mentioned that one of his sons knew all about Sesar Chefz, who was an admirable fellow in a lot of ways, but knew nothing about Thomas Jefferson, which is, yeah, the.
Only thing people know about Jefferson is Sally Hemmings Noday.
Yeah, what's your favorite Jefferson biography?
By the way, Alf Mapp m App he wrote two volumes. The first one is called Thomas Jefferson A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity, and the second volume is called Thomas Jefferson Passionate Pilgrim. And that's my favorite biography if you only want to one volume biography. I really like the John Meachim biography that came out a few years ago.
The only thing wrong with it is the title.
It's called The Pursuit of Power, which is a crazy title because Jefferson did not pursue power, and the book makes clear that Jefferson did not pursue power. I don't know why they called it that. Incidentally, talking about books, I want to mention you. You know you mentioned about the Declaration setting forth the ideas of the New Country. So clearly there was a great book that came out what thirty years ago now called The Radicalism of the
American Revolution by a historian named Gordon Wood. And it is a hugely important book, very famous in history circles because it shows just how rapidly and extensively the idea of equality transformed American culture that within a single lifetime, people went from a sleepy colonial society where you know, you had to take your hat off to somebody who was higher than you on the socials ladder to a bustling industrial country with railroads and democracy and all these
sort of thing. And it's a very It really tells the story beautifully, and I would really strongly recommend it because a lot of people think, oh, well it was you know, it was a very conservative revolution.
It wasn't. It was a radical revolution in many ways.
Great.
I hear the audience shouting, wait, wait, I'm trying to write this down. So Tim, if you could text that to me, your executive producer Hanson, we will post it at Armstrong and getdy dot com so you can find it easily. One more segment with Tim Sandafer the Goldwater Institute coming up.
Stay with us.
The final segment with Tim Sandifer of the Goldwater Institute. It's our Independence Day show a little bit early and Tim, one of the main reasons I wanted to do this is I've come to believe that the idea of liberty has become like the furniture the background of our national discussions. We've got the people and the food, and there's a TV going in the corner, and sometimes somebody mentions liberty.
But we don't teach it.
We don't teach enthusiasm for it, reverence for it. I think maybe it's my generation that's at fault. We just assumed that everybody would always love liberty and want to defend it, and I've become convinced that's not the case. And so I've become a bit of a zelot for trying to do that. So thanks for helping. We're talking about you.
Thank you.
Oh yeah, goodness. I try to stop me. But we've been talking about the Declaration of Independence. Excited to hear that Tim has a book on that topic coming out before too terribly long. My daughter went to undergrad at George Mason University, and I knew the name, and I thought, oh, George Mason, and I'd started doing some reading and realized that he, in my mind, is one of your great underrated founding fathers. Who are your favorite underrated founding fathers?
Well, I would agree with you about not enough people knowing about George Mason. He was the author of the very first Declaration of Rights or the very first Bill of Rights in America, the Virginia of Rights, and he was the mentor of George Washington and an elder statesman that Jefferson and all the others looked up to a really great years ago, I was at a conference in Washington, DC.
This is when I was in college.
As a conference, it was a week long conference, but we had one day off to go explore a town. And so I came down that morning and I'm sitting at the breakfast table and a bunch of these other college students sitting around, and Uh, I was planning on going to George Mason's house, which is just a little south of Washington, d C. And I hear them talking about what they're going to do, and I'm just sitting there quietly. I hear one of them say, where are
you gonna Where are you gonna go? And the other one said, I'm going to Uh, I'm going to go to Jamestown. And I thought, wow, that's that's kind of far. And then the first one says, well, what's that and the other one says, that's where the Pilgrims landed. So I had to I said I'm sorry. I said, I'm sorry, But the pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. You're thinking of Jamestown is is is quite a distance from here, and I don't think you could really get there in time. And
they go, wow, you really know this stuff. Where are you going to go? And I said, well, I'm going to Gunston Hall blank blank stairs. I said that that was George Mason's house, blank stairs. And one of them, one of them turns to the other says, I'm really embarrassed. I don't know who George Mason was. I go to George Mason University. So I made them go with me. I ordered them to come with me, and we all three went down to see Gunston Hall.
Oh that's great, all right? Who else?
My other favorite totally unknown founding Father's got named Heim Solomon H.
J Y M. Solomon.
He was a Polish Jew who came to America and became a financier and was a spy for the for the Patriots. Was captured twice by the British for spying and managed to escape, and later on became a prominent banker and lender who helped to finance the Revolution, in part by by directly paying people like James Madison when they weren't getting their paychecks from from home, you know, mail was slow, so he would just give them money to pay their rent. He died bankrupt because he gave
away all of his money to the American cause. There's a statue of him in Chicago, and he you know, and he was very much of the view that America, because of religious freedom, was the promised land for Jews. And I'm getting moved even talking about.
It because he was. He was a great hero we all should remember.
Yeah, wow, that is fantastic in moving. This stuff is not over studied. It's understudied and underappreciated, especially now. Tim, Thanks so much for the time, and back to work on that dang book. Years. I know you have so little ready to do what for advocating for liberty with the Goldwater Institute. Tim, great to talk to you. Best to the missus and we will talk again soon.
Thank you, see you later.
All right. Yep.
Jack is going to join us in the next hour from Florida. I think I think they're already there on vacation, but he is. He already has stories to tell, probably alligator related. I'm looking forward to that. If you happen to not get our four of the show, or you got to go do something.
That's fine. Just subscribe to our podcast, Armstrong and Getty.
On demand and the radio show is available to you whenever you want it. We'll also hit some of the news of the day because there's a good bit of it.
And goodness knows, whatever comes. Oh, Clips of the Week.
We have a super bonus Clips of the Week for you to kick off next hour. Stay tuned if you can. Tom McClintock, Congressman, will join us as well. Armstrong and Getty