The Words That Made America

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forth. We are bringing free pressers a year of events, live streams, debates, subscriber meetups, and so much more. We're calling it America at 250. Here's just some of what you can look forward to. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will join me in New York City on September 4th. The next month, I'll be on stage with tech pioneer Palmer Luckey to hear about how he is building America to secure itself for the 21st century.

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From the Free Press, this is Honestly, and I'm Barry Weiss. A year from now, America is turning 250 years old. And so we're throwing a year-long celebration of the greatest country on Earth. The greatest? Yeah, the greatest. I realize that's not a popular thing to say these days. Americans have a way of taking this country for granted. A Gallup poll that was released earlier this week

shows that American pride has reached a new low. And the world at large, which is wealthier and freer than it has ever been in history, thanks in part to American power and largesse, often resents us. And I get it. As journalists, we spend most of our time finding problems, exposing them, shining light in dark places. It's what the job calls for. But if you only focus on the negatives, you get a distorted view of reality.

As America hits this milestone birthday, it's worthwhile to take a moment to step back and look closely at where we actually are and the reality of life in America today compared to other times and other places.

And when you do that, you see that that reality is pretty spectacular. Could Thomas Jefferson and the men who gathered in Philadelphia, who wrote down the words that made our world, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Could they ever have imagined?

what their Declaration of Independence would bring. The Constitution. The end of slavery and the defeat of Hitler. Astonishing wealth and medical breakthroughs. Silicon Valley. The most powerful military in the world. The moon landing. Hollywood. The Hoover Dam. The Statue of Liberty. Well, that was a gift from France. Actual liberation. A thing we gave France. Humphrey Bogard and Tom Hanks. Josephine Baker and Beyonce Knowles.

Hot dogs, corn dogs, American Chinese food, American Italian food, the Roosevelt's and the Kennedy's, the Barrymore's and the Fonda's, Winston Churchill, his mom was from Brooklyn, in case you didn't know, Marshall Plan and Thurgood Marshall. Star Wars, missile defense shields, baseball, football, American football, anyway. The military industrial complex, freedom of religion, UFO cults, television, the internet, the pill, the Pope, the automobile, the airplane, and AI.

Also, jazz and the blues, the polio vaccine and GLP-1s, the UFC and Dolly Parton. The list goes on because it really is truly an endless one.

Arts is a country where you can hear 800 languages spoken in Queens, get in the car, drive two hours, and end up among the Amish in Pennsylvania. We are 330 million people. from California to the New York Island, gathered together as one. And each of those 330 million will tell you the same thing, that ours is not a perfect country, that it has many flaws.

and many sordid things in our past. But we also suspect that most of those 330 million would agree passionately that their lives would not be possible without this country. So for the next 12 months, leading up to America's 250th birthday. We're going to toast to our freedoms here at the Free Press. We're going to do it on the page, on this podcast, and in real life. And of course, we're doing it the Free Press way.

by delving into all of it honestly and fearlessly, the bad and the good and the great, the strange and the wonderful and the wild. And today, on America's 249th birthday,

We're kicking off this year-long event with none other than Akeel Amar. Akeel has a unique understanding of this country and of our Constitution. He's a Democrat who testified on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh. He's a member of the Federalist Society, but he's also pro-choice and also anti-Roe. And these seeming contradictions, I think,

make him perfectly suited to answer questions about the political and legal polarization we find ourselves in today. Akhil is also a historian, a scholar, and a constitutional law professor at Yale. He is the author, among other things, of the brilliant book The Words That Made Us, which explains how a small set of documents birthed an entirely new world.

Akhil also hosts the podcast America's Constitution, and you might also recognize his name from his work in the Atlantic. Today we talk about the unique history and the set of genius figures that created this country. by writing our founding documents. We talk about the state of that country 249 years on. We talk about the American legal system and what this country means to him, why he loves it, why I love it. and why we think you should love it too. Stay with us.

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Akhil Amar, welcome to Honestly. Thank you for having me. So excited to have you here. America, as we know, is a very weird thing. A lot of other countries in the world, most other countries in the world, are based on genetic line. They're based on the idea of, to say it in the most neutral way, blood and soil. America is not like that. America is based on a set of ideas, starting with the Declaration of Independence signed 249 years ago this week.

in Philadelphia. I hope this isn't too broad a question because you've written so many books about this. You have more coming out about this topic. But let's just start by asking, how did they come up with this unbelievable document that really formed the basis of

the constitution and so many things that were to come how'd they come up with it well you got it just right this is a unique place in the world because it's not based on blood it's based on a creed on the American creed, and the Declaration of Independence is one of the two most important documents in defining that creed, the other being the United States Constitution. You said...

Where did they come up with it? So one question is, you know, who's the they that we're talking about? Now, many in our audience will just say, oh. Jefferson. It's Thomas Jefferson. He contains multitudes. He's a they himself. And I basically think— He was non-binary, yes. That that's wrong. It comes from the— Continental Congress as a group, but within that group, there's a five-person drafting committee, and right alongside Jefferson, and this is actually very important, right alongside...

Virginia's Jefferson is Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin and Massachusetts' John Adams. And America declares its independence from Britain on July 2nd. On July 2nd, the Continental Congress votes that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states. And by the way, they're independent even of each other. It's a league. It's like...

NATO or the EU. So we, 13 colonies, although New York is a little late to the party, they're going to hop on in a couple of weeks after early July. But we... declare our independence. These 13 united colonies declare our independence. And 12 of them are in the room on July 2nd. But now we want to give.

reasons, reasons to the world. Let facts be submitted to a candid world because we think we're justified in doing this because there's probably going to be a war and we want to say here, we're not looking for... a fight, but if pressed. We will fight, and here's why, because here's what's at stake. Here's what we believe. Here is our creed, and here's what the British have done that's not fair to us, the grievances. And then, so you said,

You know, where did it come from? Not just from Jefferson, but Franklin from Pennsylvania and Adams from Massachusetts. And where are they getting this from? from all of America, which has been In conversation over the preceding couple of years, especially ever since the Intolerable Acts of 1774, everyone in America is talking to each other about what the Brits have done. that's wrong, and in every colony.

They're bottom-up organically. There are documents that are emerging from local grand juries, city councils, colonial assemblies, generating texts that say, what we believe, and this is why the British are not treating us well. And what Jefferson and Franklin and Adams do is basically kind of collate, curate, cut and paste, distill, and we call that the Declaration of Independence.

So the core argument of this brilliant book that you've written and that I sort of refer back to whenever I'm looking, frankly, for inspiration for myself and for an understanding of the role. bluntly, that newspapers can play in, and newspaper editors and writers can play in shaping a world. Your core argument, which you've just sort of referenced, is as much as we associate Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence or Madison with the Constitution,

that they were a reflection of all of these conversations that were happening. And yet one person did hole himself up in that house in Philadelphia and write the first draft. And that was Thomas Jefferson. Why Jefferson and not Franklin or any of the others? Because the war has broken out in 1775, April 1775, the battles of Lexington and Concord. have broken out. A hundred people die in these skirmishes. And then it's June of 1776, a thousand people die. So there's already a fighting war.

The Brits already have lots of boots and troops on the ground in Massachusetts. Now, Massachusetts can't go it alone. It's going to need the support of everyone in the continent. And the most important colony is Virginia. It's the biggest. At the time, remember that Virginia includes what's now West Virginia. It includes what's now Kentucky. It has claim to what's now all of Ohio. That's northwestern Virginia. It hasn't yet ceded that part. So it's a huge...

It's in the middle of the continent. Massachusetts can't go it alone. It needs a partnership, and it especially needs Virginia. Now, you say, fine. Why Jefferson among all the Virginians? Well, it's not going to be Washington. He was in the Second Continental Congress, but he's been tapped to be the general of the Continental Army.

And there's a reason why. He's a Virginian, and the Virginian needs to go up to Massachusetts to show solidarity with the Massachusetts folks, and he does. And he's also, he's not really quite an orator. a great pamphleteer. Who in Virginia is the best writer, the most poetic?

and powerful, and that would be a then obscure 30-something, young 30-something fellow named Thomas Jefferson. One final point. John Adams. is really the guy who's the most energetic. He's the atlas of independence. And his cousin, Sam, are the leaders of Massachusetts. And he's got to get everyone on board. And he comes down from the Boston area down to Philadelphia. And he lines up everything. And he's on every committee because, oh, we got to.

line up troops. We got to start putting out feelers to foreign countries to see whether they'll support us. You know, we need to start creating a Navy. There's so much work. to be done. And Adams is on every committee. He's doing all this work. And he has to bring everyone else along. Okay. But if he had known that everyone was going to pay attention to this declaration, this document, he would have been.

He would have wanted to actually write the thing. He thinks the key is declaring independence, which is July 2nd, and he actually seconds the motion. The motion is put forth by another Virginian. richard henry lee to repeat it passes on july 2nd but adams basically

doesn't realize that the key date will end up being the fourth, and the key document will end up being the declaration. And if he had known all of that, I'm not sure he would have been quite so deferential. But he does say to Jefferson, you do it all. help, you know, I'm a workhorse, I'll help you, but it needs to come from Virginian. And he also says stuff like the following. Now this is, he says this later on, so we don't have contemporaneous evidence, but in his memoirs.

things like that. He said, well, I told Jefferson, people don't like me, they really like you, and you're 10 times the writer than I am. Now, I'm not sure all of that was said at the time. When he says it later on...

and we're getting a little ahead of the story, he wants to butter up Jefferson. So they're frenemies. They're friends at the beginning, and then they're rivals. And then at the end of his life, he wants to be friends again, in part because he wants Jefferson to help him help his son, John Quincy Adams.

Unless there's contemporaneous evidence of something, you know, trust but verify. Okay. So when we think about that core line, the line, that even if you had the worst civics education in the country, you know.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. It makes me cry to even say it. It's so beautiful. Written by a man, or at least— first drafted by a man that has hundreds of slaves, I think 600 over the course of his life. How does he understand the contradiction of that?

Like the idea that a person would write those lines and then go back to, you know, a house full of slaves. How did they understand the contradiction in their moment? He was a dreamer, a utopian, a poet. He writes soaring prose. In his heart, he knows that slavery is totally wrong. And he didn't... invent slavery. He didn't create it. He kind of inherits slaves and debts that are connected to slaves who are collateral for all sorts of loans that his father-in-law

has basically thrust upon him. He gets the assets, but he also has the liabilities. He didn't create the whole thing. He knows it's wrong. How do we know that? Oh, because he says it in every... way imaginable and he never makes excuses for slavery itself the way

Other people later in American history say, oh, it's a good thing. People aren't equal. John C. Calhoun will say that. Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the Confederacy. Alexander Hamilton Stevens, by the way, will say that. Jefferson Davis. as in Jefferson Davis, the president, the Confederacy will say that. So people from the deep South.

Do not think slavery is wrong, even at the founding. People later in American history from the South will make all sorts of excuses. Jefferson never does. He knows that slavery is wrong. He says at some point, like, When I reflect on all this, I tremble for my country when I know that God is just. As a young person, he's actually imagining, even after the declaration,

ways of trying to limit slavery, prohibit slavery in the West, for example. We're going to call that the Northwest Ordinance. That's Jefferson's baby. Oh, and he's a reformer in so many other ways. He's a utopian. In the 1770s and 80s, he's going to... to champion religious freedom, public education, an abolition of primogeniture and entail, land reform, and slavery limitation. He's woke. in the language of today. He believes in the Enlightenment project. But he's weak-willed.

He's a hypocrite. You might say today he's a limousine liberal. Before there were limousines, he's a carriage liberal. So he makes excuses. And by the end of his life, he is actually, he has created a pro-slavery party for reasons that we might get into. He needs it because... President John Adams is going to try to criminalize critics of President Trump. I mean, President Adams. So Jefferson is going to have to create a party to resist.

certain bad things that his former friend, once and future friend Adams is doing, but it's going to be a Southern party, a pro-slavery party in the end. And so Jefferson, as he ages, Alaska gets...

worse on slavery. He believes those words totally. He just doesn't live them out. When the declaration is signed on July 4th in 1776, it fascinates me to hear you say that Adams didn't really think of that as the thing. Was that kind of the consensus view? Like, oh, great document, moving on. Or did people at the time understand that this was sort of—

Like tilting the world on its axis. Here's what we do know. On July 3rd, John writes Abigail, his wife. She's back in Massachusetts. And he says, for centuries to come. People will mark July 2nd as the day that changed the world. There are going to be fireworks and parades and games. So he thinks actually he's already done it. And yes, he didn't.

proposed the motion. That was Richard Henry Lee from Virginia. It had to come from Virginia, but he seconded the motion. So he thinks it's going to be huge. He writes to a friend. He said, Who in the history of the world has ever been able to... create new constitutions for a new world. He's thinking about state constitutions. Thomas Paine in January 1776 says, We have it in our power to begin the world.

anew. Not since the days of Noah, you know, have humans had this opportunity. So they are audacious folks. They think they're doing something that no one quite has done. But he doesn't think, he doesn't realize that... The document, decoration, is going to be the key document. What does that tell us about the importance of words to history, but maybe particularly to American history? That it's not the action of the vote that is remembered, but it's the words.

That are remembered. And it's also a reminder that what happens afterwards is important. If you look at newspapers in 1776, the Declaration is a big... deal. It's splashed across the front pages or the front two pages. There's some complexities there of all the newspapers in America, hundreds of them. Washington immediately.

has the declaration read to his troops so they know what they're fighting for. It's proclaimed in all the churches and all the bell towers and all the town meetings and all the local assemblies everywhere. written to be read aloud. And Jefferson is a poet. He has an ear. He's curating and distilling all these other documents and coming up with something that will soar, that will sing. And he was good for that project. Okay, so...

So that's all important. But when you read the newspapers, there's only one phrase that's capitalized or italicized at the time. And it's not the all men are created equal and self-evident truths. These united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states. And they can wage war and make treaties and levy peace and all sorts of things. That's the key. That's the payoff sentence.

Why then do we focus on that other language so much? Because later generations of Americans, beginning with blacks in the 1770s, pick up on that language. Lincoln is going to make it central. say another thing that I hope, because you and I are very patriotic Americans, brings tears to your eyes. And he's saying this about something that happened in July.

July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg. And to commemorate that, Lincoln says in 1863 in November, four score and seven years ago. So that's 1863 minus 87. That's 1776. Our fathers, not just Jefferson, but all of them, brought forth. Upon this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. That's the phrase that he plucks out as the key. And before that, Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the Seneca.

Cuffall's Declaration of 1848, the first woman's convention kind of in the world, actually riffs on the Declaration. She composed a document called the Declaration of Sentiments, and she says, we hold these truths to be self-evident. Evident that all men and women are created equal. So later generations of Americans take this text. And use it to expand the application of the principles that are there. And glom onto a certain thing because they read it every year.

Adams was right. There's going to be hoopla every year. He was wrong. He thought it would be the second. It was going to be the fourth. Well,

How do you fill it up? Okay, with hot dogs and roller skates and parades and all sorts of stuff. But you want a little bit of a ceremony, and the ceremony becomes... reading the declaration aloud, but people for their own purposes, blacks early on, and then Elizabeth K. Stanton for women's rights, Abe Lincoln, the Civil War, actually emphasized this phrase, which wasn't.

the key necessarily to the declaration at the beginning. One final point. And this is why it's so important that we actually give honor, especially to Franklin and Adams. alongside Jefferson. And when you go to the Capitol Rotunda and you see John Trumbull's painting of the Declaration, the three of them are kind of front center. Yes. Jefferson has his hands on the quill, but where the diagonals cross in that painting, in the very center is John Adams's breast. And there's...

You know, Benjamin Franklin, who's like the most famous person in the new world, you know, an American Einstein, the American Prometheus. He's right there too. Why do I keep mentioning them? Because Pennsylvania is key. It's a big state in the middle. And Massachusetts is key. It's kind of the drive. force of all this. And immediately after the Declaration of Independence, state constitutions start to get written.

And in those state constitutions, remember, that's what they want. They want to govern themselves. There are declarations of rights, bills of rights in the state constitution. Here's what Pennsylvania says. And it's adopted or it's drafted in August. 1776. In the same space as the Declaration of Independence, what we call Independence Hall. And here's what it says in its state bill of rights. All men are born free and independent.

or free and equal and are entitled to basic rights. And Franklin is the presiding officer. Massachusetts is going to adopt a constitution in 1780. John Adams is kind of the architect of the thing, the superintendent. And it says, All men are born free and equal. And that's going to lead those texts to abolition of slavery.

in the north, north of the Mason-Dixon line across America. So you've heard a lot about the 1619 Project. It's affiliated with the New York Times. I know you know a thing or two about the New York Times. okay, the world had always had slavery. Asia, Africa. 1619 is when slavery comes to the new world and the old world. Had slavery almost everywhere. It's in the Bible. And the old world had the idea of freeing slaves. It's in the Old Testament.

It's in the New Testament. It's in Ben-Hur. It's in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the Zero Mostel character, freeing slaves, individual slaves getting their freedom. But never until 1775. Was there a mass movement, not to free slaves, but to end slavery? The abolition project. The world's first anti-slavery society is founded in Philadelphia.

In 1775, and Ben Franklin and Benjamin Rush, who both signed the Declaration, will later become presidents of this organization. And immediately after the Declaration, state constitutions are saying, all men are born free and equal. That will lead to the immediate in Massachusetts or the gradual in Pennsylvania and other places. Abolition of slavery. Not freeing slaves, ending slavery.

virtually everywhere in the North. And Jefferson, I think, in principle, thought these were all good things. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but given that you brought up 1619, I want to stay on this for a second. What you're saying, Akil, and this is my understanding, is that the exceptional nature of—everyone in the world had slaves.

Everyone, the whole world was awash in slavery. The thing that made America exceptional was the ending of it. And yet in our own time, that distinction feels like it's been erased or lost. Why is that? Why is that happening in our particular moment? Well, in part because there's too much focus on Jefferson.

And there are reasons why we focus on Jefferson because the Democratic Party claims him as its founder and the Democratic Party is an important party in America. And Lincoln actually... who finds the other party, the Republican Party, says all honor to Jefferson. So if we think it's Jefferson, we focus on Virginia and he doesn't free his slaves. And so we say, oh, that's not what they really meant.

But that's why I keep emphasizing, no, it's not Jefferson. It's also Franklin. It's also Adams. And the North has a different understanding of these words, and they take it seriously. immediately. They don't have as many slaves. It's easier for them to do that. It's harder to persuade slaveholders to give up what they have, their property, their way of life, and there are many fewer slaves in.

Massachusetts, so it's easier for them to abolish slavery. There are fewer in Pennsylvania. They were hoping that Virginia would go along, and as late as 1833, Virginia came close to adopting gradual emancipation. So one problem. We're paying too much attention to Jefferson. And that's why getting the story straight matters. That's why I'm trying in my work to offer a national narrative that gets the facts right. And the facts are, it's not Jefferson alone.

America. And the facts are, there's not one America. You could say there are 13. But to read history backwards just a bit, it very quickly emerges that they're basically two Americas, or maybe two and a half. There's the North, and it's the abolitionist North that's really going to take seriously. All men are created equal. And there's the South that doesn't quite take that seriously. Virginia is caught between.

Virginia doesn't understand that it's just totally Southern. Because remember, at the time, it includes what's now West Virginia, which is anti-slavery. was now Kentucky, which never secedes, actually, to where Lincoln is born, was now Ohio, which was free soil from the beginning, thanks in part to Jefferson, because he pushes a thing called the Northwest Ordinance that prohibits slavery.

North of the Ohio River. That's initially part of Virginia. And the language of the Northwest Ordinance saying no slavery will become... word for word for word, the 13th Amendment, Lincoln's 13th Amendment. So the two reasons, and then I'll give you one final one. So one is we're paying too much attention to Jefferson. Second is we think America is an it, it's actually a they, and we're not seeing that the North is moving away from slavery and the South isn't. And the third is...

For different reasons, both the hard right and the hard left are missing the abolitionist. a project. The hard left because they don't understand American greatness. They dump on America too much. And the hard right because, oh, if we really from the beginning were abolitionists in important respects, that means that... Their great-grandparents who fought for the Confederacy and the lost cause or what have you, maybe were on the wrong side from the beginning.

Okay, so the Declaration of Independence is the first document of a series of documents that sort of make up the words that created this. New world. The words that made us. That made us. And it's a pun. We the people. Right, of course. But also the U.S. I got it. I got it. I know you did, but just for the rest of them. Okay, so.

The Declaration of Independence sort of gets America, gets the colonies through the Revolutionary War. And then the founders recognize, to gloss like a ton of history, that... They need a more cohesive structure. They need more than that. And so they come up with the Articles of Confederation. But that doesn't really work.

moment, what is the locus of sort of the, what is the germ of the beginning of the Constitution and the understanding that that is the document that they're ultimately going to need?

So it's a gradual recognition throughout the war that there's not enough power. in the central government to actually have a strong enough army. So Washington is beginning to see this early on. Remember, he's not there in July of 1776. He's already... up in Massachusetts. It's after Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, but there's a siege of Boston, and so he's a southerner helping the north, and he has his troops hear the Declaration of Independence. They know what they're fighting for.

But wow, they're getting their butts kicked. And it's a five-year war and a bloody war. And George Washington, over the course of five years, has maybe six good days. And good days include just... saving your skin and living to fight again. So Washington, who's there every day, and Hamilton, who's there every day, and John Marshall, for that matter, who's a young soldier at Valley Forge.

are realizing because they're living it every day that troops need more support people are dying at valley forge from cold because they don't have enough blankets. They don't have shoes from hunger because they actually don't have enough food. The army is just starving and Washington feels it and Hamilton sees it and Marshall sees it. Even after Yorktown, we win and there's a treaty of...

peace, and Britain recognizes our independence, and so does France, and the rest of the world is about to recognize American independence. But people like Washington and Hamilton realize there's going to be another war, and a war after that. Welcome to the world. It's a nasty... In a world, maybe Brits will come back. Maybe the French will turn on us. Maybe it'll be the Spanish. Russians have designs on the new world. We don't know exactly when and how.

But we do know it's a nasty world. The rest of the world is not democratic, pretty much, controlled by monarchs. And we're going to need something much stronger to win the next war. And... We still haven't paid all the soldiers for the last one. And we still haven't paid all the people in Europe who lent us money.

for this war, and unless we pay them back, they're not going to lend this money for the next one. How did they come up with the idea of a constitution? Like, drop us into the kind of discussions that were happening, especially with kind of like the six main… founders and shapers of it. And here are the big six by acclamation. They are the first people who will become the first four presidents. They're not yet presidents, but George Washington, John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Those are your first four presidents, and they're all revolutionary leaders. Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton. Those are the big six by acclimation. Yeah, there are other people. There's John Jay, there's John Marshall, there's Patrick Henry and Sam Adams. There's a whole cast of amazing secondary characters, but those are your big...

And they don't always agree, you see, and partly because they have different revolutionary experiences. Jefferson never gets it quite. And here's why he doesn't. What's he most associated with? The Declaration of Independence that talks about free and independent states with an S. They're independent even of each other. It's a league. It's a treaty. It's a confederation, okay? So he never quite gets it, and he's not at the fighting end of the American Revolution. He's off.

in Paris, drinking wine and chasing women. You know, he's in Virginia where he's a governor, perhaps, but he's not seeing the problems of keeping an army in a field. And neither is James Madison. He's not at the fighting. end of the American Revolution. So basically, those who were at the fighting end, especially Washington and his, in effect, adopted son, Hamilton Washington, has no children of his own.

Hamilton doesn't really have a father who's around. So the two men kind of adopt each other. They bond. It's very tense. Lin Manuel Miranda, who is a genius, captures all this brilliantly, building on... Ron Chernow's biography of Hamilton and Ron is also a genius so they don't all agree but just in a nutshell Washington and Hamilton understand

that we need a stronger financial system. We need an army and a navy because you can't do without it. We don't want it too big, an army, too big, but we're going to need something.

and therefore they're going to need to be paid, and the Articles of Confederation are not generating the funds that are necessary to pay the troops, and here's why. The articles say each state should pay depending on its ability to pay, its population, its wealth. So each is requisitioned, assessed to pay a certain part of the dues. And the states don't pay. And what are you going to do?

How are you going to throw Virginia in prison? How does that work? So they realize, ah, here's what we need to do. We need to tax individuals. And we can tax them especially. This is, you know, today. With tariffs. Okay, if you want to buy that silk shirt, if you want to buy that beautiful scientific instrument, if you want to buy this great farming implement, they're coming from... Britain and Europe.

Okay. And if you want to import all this stuff, you know, for your personal use or for your business use, fine. But you're going to pay something at the customs house. And New York is really important. And Philadelphia is really important. That's, you know, in Boston, that's. And if you don't pay, you're not going to get the thing that you want to buy. Individuals can be made to pay taxes. And that can support the Army and the Navy. But here's the thing.

If they're taxed, they have to be represented because the Declaration of Independence and before that, the American conversation insists. No taxation without representation. The Brits shouldn't tax us because we're not represented in parliament. Who's taxed under the Articles of Confederation?

The states, but the states as states are represented in the Articles of Confederation. If individuals are going to be taxed, they have to be represented. Oh, but now that Congress is going to have to be a real legislature. And if it's a real...

Real legislature should look like state legislatures. It should be bicameral. It should have three branches of government, like the Massachusetts Constitution or the Virginia Constitution. So we need a stronger executive who will also help for national security. an independent judiciary. So check, check, check. It's almost like a math problem to be solved. And it all begins with the need for continental defense, because without that, you're dead. One of the things that is...

kind of almost shocking when you read about these figures, all of them, but probably especially Franklin, is you just named five contemporary people as geniuses. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I don't think anyone alive.

maybe, you'll tell me, would hold a candle to Franklin. I think I agree. And I didn't understand that 10 years ago. What made them that way? You know, like, was it the culture at the time? Was it a sense that, you know— You could be an expert in some—like, how did that culture, how did the new world allow for that kind of—

particular genius that when we look back, it's just like the amount of things that this one man in Franklin, forgetting all the rest of them, was able to accomplish is astonishing. What was it? So there may be no just... Complete explanation for genius. But you've put your finger on it, Barry. There is a culture. And it's a culture that's more open to the genius of everyone, including low-born folk.

People who are geniuses in the old world have no ability to shine because they weren't born to the right family and so they're never given a chance. And it's a hierarchical system in which, for example, in Britain, if you didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge, you're nothing and only certain families go there. So Ben Franklin is the son of a candle maker. He's the product of the second marriage.

There are 17 kids in all, and he's 10th or something like that. He's just a natural genius. This isn't true of all of his siblings, but he's astonishing. But the culture enables him to actually... go out on his own and make himself self-made. And it's also a world... in which actually there's not such severe specialization of labor that you can't kind of be a bit of a generalist, okay? So he's a scientist. He has all these experiments with electricity.

Oh, but he's a business person. He creates actually a media empire. He would be Rupert Murdoch today. He begins just, you know, lowest of the low as just a printer's assistant, but he's able basically to own. not just his own printing press, but a whole bunch of other printing presses. So he's a business genius. He's a scientific genius. And then he eventually enters.

Oh, and he's a great philanthropist. He's going to create libraries and volunteer fire companies and philosophical associations. So it is a culture that's more open. It has less specialization of labor. So Jefferson's a polymath. He's an architect and an artist and a musician and a poet. So it's an enlightenment world that's a little bit more open. And...

And there's this opportunity. And they see it. That's why they say, like, no one since the days of Noah has had the chance that we have in this place and this time. A couple of other things. You know, Hamilton, how does a bastard, orphan, Son of a whore and a Scotsman. Right. So he's born out of wedlock. He's born in the middle of freaking nowhere. But he's a total genius. And his genius is different than Jefferson. Jefferson doesn't understand. Banks?

and armies, and taxes, and administration. These are not Jefferson's virtues. This is what you need to create a powerful government. Hamilton understands all these Jefferson doesn't. Jefferson's values are actually old world aristocratic. Oh, he paints. Oh, he sings. Oh, he plays. Oh, he's an architect. Oh, he's an artist. Oh, he's a poet.

You know, those things actually don't protect you against the Brits or the Spanish or the French or the Russians. So, but Hamilton, his genius is identified and he's allowed. And Washington spots him and says, that's a smart guy. I want that guy on my staff. Washington himself is slightly higher born, but he'd be like lower gentry in the Jane Austen kind of pecking order.

He's not a lord, like Lord Bartram or whatever in Mansfield Park or something like that. He's not like Lady Catherine de Bourgh or whatever. I'm a huge Shane Austin fan.

It's a culture that's open to talent. One of the things that I learned from your book that I was just blown away by is Franklin's creation of what... you could call the original American meme. And I'm talking about the snake that probably many, many people have seen, the join or die snake of the 13 colonies cut up.

Tell us a little bit about that, because I found it to be a fascinating example, not just of Franklin's, like a kind of genius that I didn't even know he possessed. But then also, I think it's a great example of one of your core arguments, which is... the way that the American conversation is not just happening among the big six, but is happening among normal people that are consuming media and newspapers at the time. Explain the snake and the power.

that it came to hold. So I had no idea 10 years ago how impressive Ben Franklin was. I thought, you know, he's a kind of kindly old gent or something. Walter Cronkite or Santa Claus, you know. I had a kind of fuzzy feeling about him, but... but nothing more. He is a scientific genius, understanding that static electricity and lightning are the same phenomenon.

Okay, that actually what a lightning bolt is, is electricity. And that's what the experiment is all about, trapping it in a Leyden jar. So he's like Edison and Einstein. He has a brilliant mathematical mind. I want your audience just to go on the internet, look up... Franklin's magic square. This is like Rubik's Cube. It's astonishing. He comes up with a 16 by 16 grid using every number from 1 to 256. Once and only once.

And every row adds up to the same number, 2056. Every column adds up to the same number, 2056. Every four by four matrix adds up to 26. And every chevron, these diagonals, like... How did he do that? It's like, okay, so he's a math whiz and a science whiz. He's a business whiz, okay? And he has all these self-help books and this newspaper empire. But he's also, he's got interpersonal skills. He can talk to anyone, high or low. But he's a democratic genius. He understands how to reach fellow...

So how does this cartoon fit into that? So first of all, if you're a newspaper person, you have to sell newspapers. You have to figure out what people want, okay? So he creates the world's first cartoon. in the world, political cartoon, and the world's first viral meme.

It's three words, hashtag join or join. Because ordinary people, they've got other things to do. You've got to keep it simple, stupid. He understands that. He has to persuade ordinary people with a big idea in a small package, with an image too. You don't have to be particularly highly literate to understand three monosyllabic words, join or die, and it's the snake. And here's the point. If you chop the snake up into parts, it dies. America can only succeed.

if it actually unites. Originally, this cartoon was we have to unite against the French in what's going to become the French and Indian War because he's a very loyal British subject. But eventually, he's totally dissed. when he's in London. The king, you know, and the king's ministers are completely rude to this very great man until he becomes a strong patriot and... Now join or die means we have to join or die, but we have to join against the Brits.

this viral meme hashtag, and it's for a democratic culture. He's making a really, and it's going to be Lincoln's argument later on. It's going to be my argument if we talk about today, if we don't hang together.

We're dead. Our great strength as a nation is that we're a continental regime separated from oceans by some of the thugs of the world. Franklin is... alleged to have said, I don't have contemporaneous evidence of this about the Declaration of Independence, because look, they're signing their death warrants.

We pledge our lives, our lives, our fortunes. And he's a rich guy. Jefferson's a pretty rich guy, although he has a lot of debts. Washington's a rich guy. And our sacred honor, okay? They're putting it on the line. And if they lose... They're dead. They're traitors. But here is now join or die. He says we must hang together.

or we will assuredly hang separately. And by that, he means not just the colonies, but we as individuals are going to hang by the neck until we're dead, because that's what they do to traitors, you know, in British law. So join, and this is... He's democratic, but he's also looking at maps of the world and all the rest. And the snake is actually, it's a map metaphor, actually, when you look at it carefully. Because, see, what we call the northern states are actually also the eastern states.

because of the angle of the coastline. And so the head of the snake is New England, and it's on the right, and the tail of the snake is sort of South Carolina, because, you know, later Georgia, because it's on the left. So it's a map, but it's an image. And it's an image that anyone can understand. Three words, and it goes around the world, and we're still talking about it today. But he invents.

The political cartoon and the viral meme. Because he's a product of a democratic culture. What was their roadmap for creating the Constitution? And the thing you learn in civics class is that... Madison was the driving force of the Constitution. I'm sure that you have a more complicated version of that story, so tell it to us. I do. If you just look up Father of the Constitution in... word searches of old newspapers. And we can do stuff, Barry, today that you couldn't have done 10 years ago.

All the newspapers from the era are now online, word searchable, and if you just put in the Father of the Constitution, before 1825 it never refers to Madison. Who does it refer to? Of course, the one, the only, the indispensable George Washington. There are only two people that Americans up and down the continent know. They've never heard of James Madison. I'm short. Madison's 5'4".

And he's not a hero of the American Revolution. Today, he'd be like a political science professor somewhere. And he's interesting. But no, no one's ever heard of this little nebbish, okay? They've heard of two... Oh, yeah, you know, I... And several of my roommates at Yale are Jewish, so I know lots of Yiddish. Okay. So Americans know two people.

Einstein Edison, of course, they haven't been born yet, but the greatest scientist in the world, Benjamin Franklin, and he's homegrown, and he's a great businessman too. And Washington. And Washington, who has an army. who has, after Yorktown, the only viable army on the continent and gives it up to go home. No one had done that.

in the history of the world. So in the history of the world, strong military people use that military power to grab political authority for themselves. This is Xerxes or Darius. This is Caesar when he crosses the Rubicon and allows the diadem to be put on his head. Cromwell will name himself Lord Protector. Napoleon, in this era, shortly after the American Revolution, will grab the crown.

from the Pope's hands and put it on his own head. And Washington walks away from power. So, wow. And now his country needs him and he has to be begged to come back. And Madison's contribution is begging Washington to preside at Philadelphia. But who presides? Not Madison. It's Washington. He presides by acclamation. It meets in Philadelphia. And, of course, that's...

Franklin's turf, but he's old. So who actually nominates Washington to be the presiding officer? It's Franklin, a bow, a tip of the, and the two work together. Washington has the energy. Biden—oh, excuse me. Franklin is just a little too—Freudian slip there—a little too old, okay? So— Washington is the unanimously selected presiding officer. He gets...

Everything he wants in the Constitution and the two big new things are a really strong central government and a very strong president because he and everyone else knows if the Constitution is ratified, he'll be the first president. The Constitution only, many of them, the fence-sitters, because Washington and Franklin are vouching. for it and they know that if it goes into operation, Washington will steer the ship of state, will helm it.

Every single person, every elector votes for Washington for president. Every elector votes for Washington again for president. And he walks away. He's the indispensable man. Meaning. If lightning strikes Washington on the way to the Philadelphia Convention, maybe no Constitution. If Franklin is... indispensable, maybe in another way, if he had opposed it, if America's two great figures were on the opposite sides.

maybe no constitution. But Franklin backs Washington at every moment because he knows he can't quite lead. He's too old and he trusts Washington. They worked together to win the American Revolution. Franklin at the diplomatic table, Washington on the battle. field. And Madison is nobody. And here's another way of putting it. Madison has ideas for the Constitution. Every one of his distinctive ideas.

And what wins is basically generic state constitutions. So why is Madison remembered? Because he helps co-found a party that will become the dominant political party in America, Jackson's Party. which becomes the modern Democratic Party. And so the Democratic Party has had an incentive forever to talk about Jefferson and to talk about Madison, and they're getting too much.

credit, and because Madison has some real contributions. I'll lay them out, but let me just first say, most of the Constitution is actually generic. american state constitutions pick the best features of every state constitution put them together and you get the u.s constitution and the two things that are different are a hugely powerful

president, chief executive, and that's Washington's idea, not Madison's. Madison has no clue about executive power, which is why the Capitol burns to the ground on his watch as president. He doesn't understand executive power. and a really, really powerful central government. These are Washington's two must-have. A bicameral legislature, all the states have that, say Pennsylvania and Georgia. Three branches of government, a separate executive, a separate judiciary.

The states have that. So these are not distinctive Madisonian ideas. Here's what he proposes, that the Senate be based on population rather than equal state representation. He loses. He wants the president's veto to be part of a collective committee with judges as well as the president exercising the veto, a thing called a council of revision, he loses. He wants the federal government to have an absolute veto on all state legislation.

He loses on that too and other things as well. So it's not Madison's constitution. I'll say it one other way. There are 55 people at Philadelphia. at one point or another. 12 states show up, Rhode Island doesn't. In five... different delegations. They vote by state. In five different delegations, Washington has one of his assistants, okay? Like his law clerk, his aide-de-camp. For New York, that's...

Alexander Hamilton. For Virginia, that's Edmund Randolph. For South Carolina, that's Charles Coteworth Pinckney. For Pennsylvania, that's Thomas Mifflin. For Maryland, that's McHenry. So there are only 12 states. He's got a guy in five of those. He smiles and people vote yes. He frowns and people don't know. He doesn't even have to say stuff. Who writes the account of the Philadelphia Convention that we use today?

Well, that would be James Madison, and he publishes it only after everyone else is dead. And he's not cheating that much, but of course he's going to tell the story through his eyes, so of course he's going to loom pretty large in his narrative of the Philadelphia. convention which is the most complete narrative we have so he writes the story okay and everyone else is dead and he does have a whole bunch of ideas

although he loses on a whole bunch of things. He will co-found this political party that will become one of America's two dominant parties in America. Here's the case for Madison. He persuades Washington to show up. He backs Washington pretty much at Philadelphia. In the ratification process, he and Hamilton...

work to get the Constitution ratified. We call that the Federalist Papers. In the first Congress, in part pushed by Washington, he's going to actually help push through a Bill of Rights. He's a big believer in religious freedom along with Jefferson. He partners with... Jefferson, who's going to be the rising star. Akhil, how much of this is about the genius and the particularity of the words in our founding documents? And how much of it is the character of...

the leaders at the time and sort of the character of the culture. There's that famous learned hand speech from like 1944. I think it's called The Spirit of Liberty. And I don't have the whole thing memorized, but there's this... beautiful part where he talks about if the spirit of liberty, and I'm going to butcher it, like dies in the hearts of men and women, there's no law, there's no court, there's no constitution that can save us. In other words,

Is the exceptional thing about America the fact that we had a leader in Washington and our first president who walked away from power? Or is the thing that makes America exceptional the documents that we've been spending this time so far talking about? I am not a fan of everything Learned Hands said, but...

I totally agree with the idea that in the end, the spirit of liberty has to live in the hearts of the people. That's what your podcast is all about. That's what the whole 250... project is about is reminding Americans actually what our creed is because if Americans don't know that creed and don't live that creed if it doesn't abide in their hearts and minds then then the whole project dies because every generation has to renew itself. So my answer is it is the culture. That culture created...

And then picked, okay, these people. Because these people didn't anoint themselves. They're not like Charles, and I'm not a huge fan of Charles, who gets to lead just because he popped out, you know, of some woman's womb, you know, in the right order at the right time.

No, you know, and this is from Monty Python, you know, a mandate to rule derives from the masses, not because some watery tartlob dissimiter at you. I pulled Excalibur, you know, from, you know, the Lady of the Lake or something, and I pulled it from the... stone or something like that. The lady of the lake gave me the stone. No. So a culture creates these people and then picks them. And by the way, Washington wouldn't have been a good diplomat and Franklin wouldn't have been a good

general, and only Hamilton knows how to run a financial system. It not only picks them, it puts them in the best slot rather than picking a scientific nitwit to be in charge of our healthcare policy, for example. And that's bad. on us, you see, because there are smart people that we are producing and we're not putting them in the right slots and that's on us. Abraham Lincoln, you know, four score years later. No country, in my view, has ever produced anyone as amazing as Lincoln and then...

put him in power at just the right time. So it has to be something not just about these people, but about a culture. And the culture has to be refreshed. Every generation, we have to remember who we are, who these people were, what they did right, what they did wrong. Sometimes they agreed. Sometimes they disagreed. We need to know our story. Now, Barry, you're Jewish. And every year, Jews for millennia, across the globe.

in a diaspora where they've been hounded and persecuted in so many places and so many times, but they recollect, they recollect, they remember. who they are, and they say, we are the people, just like in the words that made us. And this is like 5,000 years before, but we're a people who, you know, were in Babylonian exile, and we were slaves in Egypt, and then, you know, and then we were...

The Lord spared us. And so they remember who they are. They have a narrative. They have an identity. And if you're Greek, you know maybe the Iliad. and the Odyssey, and these are constitutive texts for your culture. But you put your finger on it at the very beginning. You say, America isn't about blood. It's not even about first language, okay? It's about... a creed. And the Declaration of Independence is a distillation of American creed North and South.

The North has a different understanding of all men are created equal. That becomes the American understanding thanks to Lincoln and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The North wins. both the argument and the war and the amendments. And you need to know that story in order to be an American and to have enough in common with fellow Americans to go forward.

There's a war on that story right now. Yes, from both left and right. Yes, and the right is telling a very dark story about... kind of, you know, heritage America. Yes. And the idea that your genetics or your DNA somehow makes you a more true inheritor. of our history and our creed than others. And then the left is basically saying that we're unexceptional. And because of the flaws, not just of the founders, but the hypocrisies of our history and we could pick out.

hundreds, thousands of examples. And because America can never live up fully to its ideals, it should somehow be torn down. Right. How— optimistic are you about the ability in our present moment to renew the truth of our creed? Well, I think it's a mistake to bet against America. Now, past performance is no guarantee of future success. They tell you when they're trying to get your money to invest in this or that. And there was a civil war, but America is an exceptional nation.

We've gone from nothing to being the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. And the internet and other things have...

put a lot of pressure on institutions. So it's enabled kind of cranks. on the left to have more power and cranks on the right to have more power and to be able to coordinate with each other kind of more directly. But what you and I and lots of others are trying to do is hold the center. We believe in American greatness and we won't sweep under the rug, you know, many of the flaws. But we think that especially if you look...

at the Constitution and not American history, which is ebbed and flowed. The Constitution has gotten better over time. We've made amends for the sins and the omissions of the founders. I think that could still... happen, but we need to know the story. Because you need to know the script in order to understand where you fit.

What's the meaning of life? Why am I here? But if you have a script, if you kind of know who came before you, who you are, then you have a little bit of a sense of what you're supposed to do for the next generation. And that's why the 250 Project is so important. I'm so grateful to you for doing this because it's an opportunity week after week, program after program, to help Americans kind of... understand who we are and we're better than

what the hard left says, which is we're not exceptional and we never did anything great. And part of our greatness is acknowledging slavery and the other lapses, which we've talked about very openly, you and I today. And we're way... greater than what the hard right thinks, which is this is a project. only for white people, or only for people who were born of citizen parents, or only for people of a certain religion.

or certain ethnicity. You've been around a little bit longer than me, not by much. Your parents are immigrants from India. Have you ever in your adult life felt...

well, I'll just speak for myself, felt the kind of fear about where we could be heading that a lot of people are feeling right now? Oh, sure. Like when? All the time, because I'm out there criticizing. officials in all sorts of ways, and some of them are thin-skinned and powerful. Oh, and John Adams was thin-skinned and powerful as president. He was generally a pretty good guy. So this happens to people in power. So you don't feel like this is an exceptionally... precarious moment.

I think a lot of people do feel that way. I think it is an exceptionally precarious moment, but so was the 1850s, so was the 1770s, so was the 1780s, so was the 1790s, and what ultimately was a... peaceful transition of power from Adams to Jefferson. So the historian in me says, yeah, wow, I'm living in interesting times, but so have a lot of other people. And when I look around the world.

And I see how much, you know, this is precarious, but my parents, my mom passed away three years ago this week. And I think about her all the time. My dad is 96 years old. But my... were born under a British king halfway across the world that didn't care about them enough, and a British parliament in which they couldn't vote halfway across the world.

And I understand a little bit through my family story what John Adams and Sam Adams and Patrick Henry and James Otis and the other people I talk about in the book, I kind of get a sense of how they felt. My parents tell me stories about what they felt as youngsters. But today, India is not perfect. but it's self-governing in a way that it wasn't when my parents were born. And I believe that's in part because of the United States Constitutional Project, because of the legal, political...

Military, cultural, social, and economic successes of the American Constitution, especially after World War II, helped generate democracies across much of the world. Now they're struggling. We are at risk of backsliding here. But you look at the world in 1776. There are basically...

two self-governing societies that have been somewhat enduring, Switzerland and Britain. And that's about it. The Dutch are in the process of losing theirs. That's it in the world. You know, there's not self-government in...

China or Russia or Eastern Europe or Western Europe. There's an absolutist tyrant who sits on the French throne. He's going to help the Americans in the end, but he's not a Democrat, small d. So, Republican, small r. So, and now you look across the planet by population and landmass. Democracies are prevailing in at least half the planet, pretty much. And that's because of the success of the American Constitutional Project. We should not give up on this lightly.

We should fight for it in every way. People risked their lives, their fortune, their sacred honor for this project. Lincoln died for it. Millions of people. have risked their lives from John Lewis and Martin Luther King through Lincoln and the founders. So we should not give up on this project. It's an admirable project. It's not a perfect project.

Part of what makes it admirable is that it is amendable and we can fix things. So I do not share the bleak view of American history of the 1619 Project. or the Howard Zinn Project, which has been very influential among a lot of young people today, my own kids and their friends. And neither do I believe this hard... Right idea that this is a project only for a select few. After the break, more with the brilliant Akhil Amar.

Earlier in this conversation, we talked a little bit about what is, I think, one of the great themes of our era, which is institutional crisis and the crisis of trust in institutions that we all sort of used to believe in. The one institution that has largely felt immune by that, and I feel this is changing and I'm curious if you agree, are the courts, which have felt like... At least the courts are sacred. At least the courts are, you know, institutions that we can all agree with and trust.

Do you feel that that's the case? Are you worried about the integrity of the courts? And by the integrity, I mean more the public perception of their objectivity and fairness. It is changing for some of the reasons we talked about. Courts have, for much of their history, been under attack, the Supreme Court in particular, but we're at a unique moment. Here's why.

The 1850s, the court, when it sided with the slavocracy in Dred Scott, was under attack from the left. Lincoln led a charge against Roger Taney's Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott. And he was right to do so because Dred Scott made stuff up. And so Lincoln led a leftist coalition against a court that had gone off the rails. In the 1930s, after many, many decades of kind of conservative jurisprudence, the left once again launched a kind of critique of the court.

Franklin Roosevelt even proposed packing the court. It was the bad old court, the conservative court, and it was again critiqued from the left. In the 19... 60s, late 50s, early 60s, the court is being attacked from the right by McCarthyites who don't like the court's effort to try to protect the speech of communists and socialists, by racial segregationists who don't like Brown versus Board of Education, by all sorts of folks who are saying, impeach Earl Warren. So the court has been attacked.

At times, from the left, Lincoln and the New Dealers. From the right, impeach Earl Warren. But what we're seeing now is unique because it's simultaneously under attack from the hard right. No more suitors. and the hard left that think that all these people are just hacks. That's what's unique, and it's been created in part because of communications technology that is different now. Twitter enables…

people on the hard right and the hard left who used to be kind of excluded from the conversation. They couldn't get their op-eds published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the establishment, the institutions. They now have more power than ever before. The parties are more polarized. rights than ever before because each party is worried about being primaried from the extreme. So that's why it's a unique moment. Have we ever had a precedent for the personal attacks?

not just many public figures in American life, but on justices at their homes. Like people protesting. When I was growing up, that would be— considered insane. But now that's become a totally normative part of life for judges in this country that are coming under tremendous pressure, including threats of violence to them at their homes. Has there been, is there historical precedent for that?

I don't think anywhere near where we are today. And now I want to say a word of support for the judges and justices. Words have consequences. I believe in robust free speech. But when you go around saying these justices are on the take, they're corrupt, they're evil. Well, people hear that and some crackpots say, well, if they're corrupt, if they're evil, then I'm going to save the Republic by vigilante action.

I criticize the justices from time to time, but I never say anything like that. I say, wow, they got it wrong. They screwed the pooch when they said ex-presidents are immune from criminal prosecution because the Constitution just doesn't say that. But I never attack the good faith. of the justices themselves because I actually believe they are people acting in good faith. I sometimes agree with them. I sometimes disagree with them. But they're not corrupt. They're not...

Just hacks. Every single one of these justices, just to take a step back, could be making a ton of money in private practice. 10, 20 times what they make on the court. And you say, okay, but they like all the power of being on the court. And I say, yes, but as young people, none of them were on the court. They were doing public service.

in a pretty low visibility way on lower courts where they had almost zero chance of ever being elevated to the Supreme Court. These are people in the main who... worked very hard at demanding colleges and got into top law school programs and worked very hard in these law school programs and actually began their lives as a... apprentices within the judiciary. We call them judicial law clerks. Many of them were the absolute superstars of

their graduating classes. In all of America, in any given year, about 36 people clerked for the Supreme Court. Most of the justices were in that 36 when they graduated from law school. So they were among the best of the best. the best as young lawyers, and they could have taken jobs in this city and gotten gazillions of dollars, huge bonuses, but instead they... decided to be public servants, and they started in lower federal courts. They weren't...

particularly famous. They've got little money. Their spouses are reminding this every day because they've got bills to pay and kids to raise. kind of lightning strikes, and they end up getting on the Supreme Court, and they're not hacks. Here's my evidence for that, that the cases where they really go off the rails are pretty unusual.

More than anyone else in Washington, D.C., Republicans sometimes vote with Democrats. That doesn't happen in the House. It doesn't happen in the Senate. Four of my students are senators of the United States. And the Senate is not at all what it used to be. The House of Representatives, I have students in the House, friends in the House. It's a snake pit. Those folks don't read anymore. They just, you know, dial for dollars and tweet.

And they're not that serious. There are a few exceptions. The justices do their own work. Listen to the oral argument. work on their own opinions, sometimes cross the aisle, way more than anyone else in Washington, D.C., and you might disagree with them, but they're not corrupt. They're not hacks. I'm going to need to have you back to talk about all of the...

all of the news going on in the world of law, and we'll do that. Just given time, I want to close with a very simple question, which is, should people love America? I think, you know— It feels like maybe an obvious question or maybe a dumb question, but I think there's a lot of people that struggle with the idea of you love a person, but is a country a thing worth loving? And if it is, why do you love it?

Yes, I do, and you should. And Socrates writes about this, about Athens, and the Athenians put him to death, but he says, they're my parents. I owe them. They protected me. They nurture me. And you should not take for granted that... You get up today and there are not bombs dropping on you and there's not an army just a few miles from you that wants to kill you and rape your family members and your children.

Oh, please, my fellow Americans, look around the world and thank your lucky stars every day. I wake up and I kiss the ground because I don't take it for granted because my life is so much better than my parents' was in India, so much better than— I have two dozen first cousins, Barry, and the ones who are here— aren't trying to leave, and the ones who aren't here want to come.

We can debate the wall, but the wall is to try to keep people out because people want to come here as opposed to the Soviet Union and Eastern Germany, which had walls to keep people in, to fence them in. So our lives... They're not perfect at all. And I voted against Trump three times and fiercely opposed him. But you compare the general peace and prosperity of the United States, our great... private institutions, the innovation, the centers of learning, the vibrant inclusive culture.

where the great-grandchildren of all the other peoples in the world actually try to talk to each other and work together, which isn't true, even in the other major democracy of the world. You compare that to... people around the planet today, you compare that to a lot of the fate of people in decades and centuries past, these are the good old days.

Akhil Amar, are you ready for a lightning round? Okay, shoot. Okay, one word for the following people. John Roberts. Chief. Clarence Thomas. Reader, scholar. Samuel Alito. Traditionalist. Sonia Sotomayor. Crusader. Elena Kagan. Precedent lover. Neil Gorsuch. Maverick. Brett Kavanaugh. Team player. Interesting. Amy Coney Barrett. Cautious. Katenji Brown Jackson. Junior most. And two more just for fun. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Notorious.

Alas, I think it went to her head. Scalia. Overrated slash arrogant. Interesting. Who is the best sitting justice on the current Supreme Court? Each in their own way. Oh, diplomatic. Who is the most important justice in American history? For fun, Hugo Black. People would say John Marshall, but Hugo Black. the driving intellectual force of the Warren Court, a former Klansman, white Klansman, who actually generated the ideas.

initially in dissent, for FDR's first appointment to the court that will become the Warren Court Revolution, and who always carried around with him a pocket Constitution and who sang the song of the Constitution. And he didn't go to a fancy law school, but he worked.

hard, and he read, and he thought, and oh, he loved America. Most important president in American history? Lincoln. What do liberals get right about the Constitution, and what do conservatives get right about the Constitution in a sentence each? Liberals get right that the Constitution is amendable and was transformed by a reconstruction that really did.

create a new birth of freedom and a renewed commitment to human equality at its very center. And conservatives? America is great. There really is American greatness. And young people need to be taught this and old people need to be reminded this. Other than your books, which we'll get to in a second, what is the book that you would recommend to people on the founding or on our founding documents, most important, other than your own? Well, of course, read the Declaration. It's short.

Read the Constitution. It's short. If you have a taste for 18th century language, read the Federalist Papers, a series of newspaper op-eds arguing... that the Constitution is a good document that should be ratified. So start with the Federalist Papers. In the secondary literature, among today's historians, although I respectfully disagree with him on some things.

The greatest American living historian is Gordon Wood, in my view. And almost anything that he, he's 92 years old, something like that. Almost anything that he wrote is worth reading.

And if you read Howard Zinn, trust but verify, because he gets lots and lots of things wrong. So Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting actually has a huge shout out to Howard Zinn, who in real life was his neighbor, and a kind of snarky scene about... Gordon Wood, I would say read Gordon Wood. Akhil, you have a new book coming out this September. You mentioned it, but tell us the title and tell us in a few sentences what it's about. Thank you.

Born Equal is the title. The subtitle is Remaking America's Constitution, 1840 to 1920. It's the second of three volumes. We've been talking about the first volume. the words that made us America's constitutional conversation, 1760 to 1840. And the key is that's... how we come together and us, and we do it by talking to each other and listening to each other, and we become a people. And we join, because if you don't join, we're dead.

And then the founders die off. And this book tells the story of the next generation that carries the project forward. It's especially, we talked about the big six at the founding. Here are the big four from 1840 to 1920. Abe Lincoln preeminently. Oh, but now there are going to be women in the story, and there are going to be blacks in the story. So preeminently. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe,

and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It tells a story especially of those four. So my big six now become the big four, and they champion an equality project, a birth equality project, a born equal project that reinterpreted and reinvigorates the clause that you and I began with. All men are created equal from 1776. And I get up to 1920. Volume 3 is going to carry the story, if I live long enough, from 1920 to the present moment. It's going to be called, I hope, Earth's Best Hope.

which is a line from Lincoln, which is America's Constitution, 1920 to the present, and here's why I'm doing this. And I need, Barry, your help, and you are helping me, and I need the audience's help. I'm not telling the story of Akil. I'm not telling the story of any one person. I'm telling the story of us, of America. This is who we've been, the good and the bad, the great and slavery.

over the course of a quarter millennium, from 1760 to the present moment, and someone needs to tell that story because it's what we have in common. We Americans, here's what we don't have in common. Race, ethnicity, religion, first language, politics, geography. What we have in common is the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the story behind those documents.

And I want to tell basically the story of America. I won't hide the blemishes, but I will tell a story of genuine American greatness and how... Each generation actually in the past has improved upon what it inherited. And so this is like every year when Jews remember who they are as a people over. millennia and understand that if they don't carry forward the project,

then it dies because every generation actually has to understand the generations that came before and think about the generations to come. So this is, if you're a Tolkien fan. The Two Towers. It's the middle of three volumes in this trilogy. Born Equal, Remaking America's Constitution, 1840-1920. Kilimar.

I cannot wait to read it. Thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, thank you for inviting me. This is the maiden conversation that launches the massive project we are undertaking to commemorate America at 250 years old. You can learn more about that unbelievable project, I am so excited about it, by going to vfp.com slash America.

And there's only one way that the work that we do here on Honestly and at the Free Press is made possible. It's with your support. So visit vfp.com to become a subscriber today. I hear we are having a discount. for the lovely price of $17.76 off. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.