Funnily that that princesses I loved. Why do you and any of.
This is? Oh right, everybody, Welcome to the Rue Book Show, specially edition. We're doing this from beautiful Clemson University campus. I'm here with uh doctor Bradley Thompson brad As Uh, I will call him uh. And I haven't been here god, and I guess since before COVID.
Yeah, that's probably five years at least.
Yeah, so campus is completely different. I don't recognize it. There are new buildings everywhere. Were sitting in the new Business School, which is uh completely I mean you and and I I'd never seen it. Uh. I have to say that the Institute for Capitalism, which is a house here, has got this beautiful I mean, I remember when it was like a dinky little office in a big business school,
economics department, whatever. And now it's got this whole beautiful set of officers, suite of offices, a bunch of staff. It really really is cool to see how much progress has been made just in the last few years since I was here last Yeah.
No, absolutely, We've had serious growth in the last few years, and Clemson continues to prove to be remarkably welcoming in supportive place when few other universities in America would have something like what we do, an Institute for the Study of Capitalism. And also, let me just say welcome back. Oh right, Yeah, it's going to be great to have you back in Clemson and where the handshake is a little stronger. Yeah.
So tell us a little bit about the growth. I mean, you recently got a twenty five million dollar commitment over you know, several years to grow the Capitalism Institute. But tell us what kind of what it used to do, what it's doing now, what this money is going to be used for the future.
Yeah. So the Clemson now the Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism was founded in two thousand and five with a startup grant from BB and T and John Allison. And in the early years we were very small. I mean, in the first year I was the Clemson Institute and wherever I was standing on campus, that's where the Clemson Institute was. And then I'm sure many of your audience members know or have heard of Eric Daniels. Eric was
my first hire. And then over the course of the next five or six years, we grew very very slowly. You know, hired an administrator in the early years and then started slowly hiring faculty through postdocs that we had. And so in those early years we did what most similar kinds of institutes do. We had a lecture series,
probably the best lecture series on campus. We ran summer conferences that we sponsored co sponsored with AARI, a conference for undergraduates from around the world on Atlas Shrugged and the moral foundations of capitalism. But then in twenty fourteen, we launched our premiere academic program, the Lyceum Scholars Program, and we can talk about that, I'm sure we will a little bit later in the conversation.
And that was that changed.
Everything for us, and we have really grown significantly since then. But this twenty five million dollar gift that we receive from David and Lennette Snow.
Obviously has changed everything.
And what it has done most importantly is that twenty million of the twenty five will go into an endowment, which means now that the Clemson now the Snow Institute is forever. And that's a great thing as long as we can stay true or a mission right. And of course, the story of most institutes universities right is slow corruption over time, and my primary goal in running the institute is to preserve the mission and the integrity of the institute for as long as I'm here and for many
decades after you know, I eventually leave. So and then with the remaining five million dollars, we will use that money to expand our programs.
You know, one of the funny.
Things about getting this kind of gift is, you know, I receive phone calls and emails.
And your money.
Everybody want Everybody wants my money. And secondly, they don't think I need any more money, right, I think with twenty five million dollars.
As they put it, your set.
Well, the fact of the matter is the five million that we actually get to spend above and beyond the endowment is really just for an expansion of of our current program So so in many ways, it doesn't change anything in terms of the fundraising that I have to do for the institute. We still have to pay salaries, we still have to run our programs and all of that.
NASMIA is still ambitious and want to even go bigger.
Well that's the plan.
So you know, our plan is the double and triple in the next five or six years, all of everything that we're doing, particularly the Lyceum.
So if we set aside the LYCM program for a minute, what is the What is the institute? Is the SNOW Institute actually do.
So Our mission, in a phrase, is to explore the moral foundations of capitalism. So, as you know, there are lots of free market think tanks, both on university campuses and state policy think tanks, all of which are great for the most part, all of which I support. The difference though, between all of these free market think tanks and what we do is the emphasis on the moral foundations of capitalism. So all of these other thing tanks are run by economists for economists. They all do public
policy work in the area of economics. We don't do any of that, So I'm not an economist. Nobody that I've hired as an economist, in fact, will never hire an economist. We focus on the moral, the historical, the constitutional foundations, not just of capitalism. In many ways, I mean, you could say a better name for the institute would now be the SNOW Institute for the Study of a Free Society. That's we're interested in promoting a free society
in its various aspects, but most importantly morally right. So we want to be able to defend leis a fair capitalism morally speaking, because as you know, that's where it needs the greatest defense. The fact of the matter is, you know, in any battle of ideas between economics and morality over the long term, morality always wins out, which is precisely why the defenders, conservative and libertarian defenders of capitalism continue to lose, right, because they just want to
defend it on economic grounds. The problem with that, however, is that even Karl Marx understood that capitalism is the most productive and efficient economic system ever devised by man. He wrote that exactly in the Communist Manifesto, right. And the problem is that capitalism, with the exception obviously of iin Rand, has never had a proper moral defense. And absolutely that is true in the context of American higher education.
So that's our mission. And you know, we, as I said, we do conferences, we do lecture series.
To promote that.
And going forward, one of the things that we plan to do in the next couple of years is to launch what we call the Atlas Shrugged Project. So our goal is to make Atlas Shrugged great again, at least culturally, by which I mean, you know, we want hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans, particularly young Americans, reading at lists. So that that is something that's a new program that we're going to be launching in the next copy.
So what would be what would be the way in which you'd achieve something like that?
Yeah, So you know, the first, as with everything we do here at Clemson, we start, we start locally, that is to say, working Atlas Shrugged into courses here at Clemson University, running reading groups here at Clemson, and then but we want to expand out and this will be more of a community oriented program. So the idea is to find ways, probably I'm sure, via online courses that
focused primarily, if not exclusively, on Atlas Shrug. And you know what I'd like to see is I'd like to see the rebirth of the old Iron Rand campus clubs. And I mean that was one of my earliest and first introductions to the objectivist movement.
I remember.
This would have to go back to the early eighties, I think, and I remember being at Boston.
I was I was attending a lecture at Boston.
I think it's there.
You go attending a lecture at Boston University by Peter Schwartz.
And yeah, and you know those were pretty heavy days, and so I I want to try to sort of revive that would be amazing, you know, Atlas Shrugged in the culture generally, but but more particularly with with college students.
And so you know, we're going to think of ways to make that happen. And I also want to start running some summer conferences. I want to bring back our Atlas Shrugged in the Moral Foundation of Capitalism conferences. My real dream, My real dream though, is I want to I would like to uh start running summer conferences on Atlas in. Tell ride Colorado, which I know you've been there for.
It's beautiful of those beautiful places on the planet.
It is, and I actually think that it is a better representation of Galt's gulch then you ray Colorado, which which is said to be the place that I ran.
It is the place spied hoe. But tell you it is more dramatic that the cliffs on both sides are much much taller and much more value, is much more dramatically set. It is. So you talk about the more foundations of capitalism, what extent is is objectivism a part of the of that mission, if you will.
Yeah, no, it's it's at the heart of the mission, because where else would you go.
Right, Well, Adam Smith would claim he has them all defensive capitalism, right, he.
Would kind of sort of claim, but it's it's it's self evidently not sufficient. Not and only is it not sufficient, it's wrong on many many levels. And you know, he completely concedes to altruism as a first premise. Right, His defense of cap morally speaking, is because we can help a lot of people. And it's true that capitalism delivers the goods and raises the boat for for everybody. But that's is not and should not be the primary moral defense.
The primary moral defense of capitalism is that it's grounded in human nature and in the greatest possibilities of human nature. And and you know that that's what we have to that's what we have to liberate and and and if in the sense we discover is that you know, I Ran talked about the virtue of selfishness, and we should be talking about the moral virtues of capitalism. And so, yeah, we're gonna make Atlas great.
Again, as is always great again, Well it is always great.
But in the culture.
Yeah, Atlas great again. In the culture, it's that it's a long that's a long one. So the big program, or the program I think you spend the most time on within the institute is the Lyceum. Lyceum program we us actively with students. Once you talk a little bit about that and how that's changed over the years.
Yeah, So we started the Lyceum scholars Program in twenty fourteen. It was kind of a wild idea I had. The original idea was actually much bigger and more ambitious, but in order to get up and running, we chose a much more modest plan, which it turns out I think was a much better idea to begin with. So the first thing to say about the Lyceum scholars Program is
that it's a scholarship program. Up until this year, we have given ten scholarships per year to incoming freshmen, renewable over four years, which means high school students high school seniors apply for it, and we use a great books approach to studying the history of liberty, capitalism, the American founding, and the principles of moral character. And in exchange for
the scholarship, the students take our eight course curriculum. So freshman year they take a course called Wisdom of the Ancients, of course, an ancient Greek and Roman moral thought. I'll just give you one course of each year. Second year they do a course on the political theory of capitalism, in which we do.
Use Atla Shrug.
In their junior year they do a course on the American political thought of the American Founding. And then in the senior year they do a course called Wisdom of the Moderns, which is modern moral thought. Essentially, generally speaking, the books change every year, but Shakespeare to Iinrand and the course as it's currently being taught includes the fountain Head excellent. Yeah, so it's it's it's a kind of Great Books curriculum, but not simply a Great Books curriculum.
It has these particular emphasies. So our position, unlike many other Great Books programs, is that we're not simply about the pursuit or the quest for truth, right, because a lot of these programs that they pursue, they pursue, but they never get there right.
And they don't want to suggest, maybe that they can get.
Precisely right, that there actually is a truth, because to suggest that there is truth would be, from their perspective, a kind of dogmatism. And our position is that there is truth, that the truth is something, that the truth about things can be understood, and that and you know, most university logos, most university mottos include.
Truth, right, but how many from an ancient tradition nobody would do that today.
Precisely, And and the other the other, one of the other virtues that they or values they talk about, is virtue itself.
Right.
So the you know, Harvard motto and virtually all the Ivy League mottos take very seriously when they were founded, the ideas of truth and virtue. But of course they don't anymore, not even not even close, because from their perspective, we live in a post truth society. And so in addition to making Atlas great again, we're going to make the truth great again and virtue and that's really kind of at the heart. So we take very seriously. In addition to this kind of modified Great Books program, we
take very seriously the question of moral character. Moral character and the development of moral character within our students is something we take seriously, very seriously, and I don't think any other college or university with the exception possibly of Christian colleges, right takes that seriously, but I think we actually take it even more seriously through our Socratic tutor program. So this Socratic tutor program that we run is there is no other academic program in the United States or
really around the world quite like it. So what we do is we assign to each one of our Lyceum scholars what we call socratic tutor. Socratic tutor is a faculty member connected to the program, and the socratic tutor will meet with his or her two teas every other week. And each tutor will have six or seven two teas, and they meet the more than one and they meet one on one, so this is not a group meeting.
They meet one on one for about an hour.
Right. So that means over the course of the semester, each student will meet with their tutor about eight times. And the purpose of which is twofold first, to help
these young men and women translate theory into practice. So, for instance, if they are in our freshman course Wisdom of the Ancients, this course of an ancient Greek and Roman moral thought, and one of the books they read is Aristotle's Nick McKee and Ethics well, I can tell you, as somebody who is much older than you know, an eighteen year old reading it for the twentieth time is
still a challenge. It's a very very difficult book. And the question is how does your typical eighteen year old twenty first century American translate Aristotle's ideas into their lives here now today. So that's the first concern, right, and because that's we take that seriously, because we don't think reading great books is simply about philosophizing.
Abstract knowledge absake of abstract knowledge.
Precisely right, Yeah, it is for living, that's precisely right. But that's the hard part. That's where the rubber hits the pavements, and the question is how do you do that? Right? We don't want our young people just philosophizing about ideas and then you know, on Friday and Saturday night doing lots of things that maybe they ought not to be doing. Right. In the end, we want them to lead lives of
nobility and honor. And that goes to the second purpose of the Socratic tutor program, which is we take the question of moral character very seriously, and we want our students to think seriously about moral character and their own moral character in particular. And you know, the fact of the matter is, most young people ages eighteen to their early twenties, they don't really think seriously or deeply about the question of moral character and their moral character in particular.
And so through these conversations we get them to do that. Now, let me make it clear, however, the purpose of this is not by the end of their four years to create, generate, promote a kind of ideal student or citizen or person of moral character. Right. We're not that vain that we think that we can do that or even should do that. What we're really trying to do is plant seeds. Right, So my goal is not to transform some young person's
life over the course of four years. My goal, my hope is that you know, maybe ten years down the road, when they're married and maybe are starting to have kids and have a job, and they for they face the first crisis, the first real major crisis of life, and you know, and they're struggling, and and you know, maybe maybe one of these students will back to those sessions that he had with one of our socratic tutors and think, yeah, I remember that conversation with professor X, and he or
she said something that actually applies to this crisis that I'm dealing with in life right now. Right, So we're really just planning seeds with the hope that they'll bloom later in life.
So, a lot of a lot of people out there in the culture because of religion, I think, view mal character as a list of negatives. You know, don't party too hard, don't do this, don't do that, and commandments and focus primelion the negative and what not to do. Rand's of course view of ethics is very different than that, and and agents have a different perspective. And so how do how do you how do your socratic tutors approach this question of what is what does it mean to
have moral character? Because obviously there's not agreement about what it even means.
Yeah, and I can tell you that not all of my faculty agree on all of these issues. Right, So we come to these questions sometimes with somewhat relatively speaking, different perspectives, But the focus really is on trying to get the most out of these young people, right. So, you know, we live in a time and age where many young people have a deficit of meaning in their lives. Right.
And you know, there's there's the there's this famous book written in the forties or fifties, the Search for Meaning. Yep uh. And you know, and I and I think as that you know gen Z today as much as any generation that I've ever known in you know, in my adult lifetime, is searching for meaning, right and and and so you know, one of the questions that I'll ask, one of one of the first questions that I might ask a student when they one of my own tutor two teas, is so you're on who is the best
version of yourself in ten years? Right? And of course they've never thought, really thought about that.
Question, particularly when you're young.
Yeah, And the.
First go to answer is, well, you know, I want to be a lawyer, and maybe I'll be married, maybe I'll have kids. And I'll say, no, no, no, that's that's those are all fine things, right, But that's not what I mean.
What's the best.
Version of yourself? Morally? Who is who is the person that you want to become? So one day, yes, you know, you may be you may be a husband or a wife. You may be a mother or a father, you may be a ballet instructor, you may be a soccer coach, You're certainly going to be a colleague. And and in all of those relationships, these you will have moral relationships with all of these people in your in your life. And what is the best version of yourself that will
help other people to become better themselves. But in the end, the real question it's not about so much first your relationship with other people. It's always about your relationship with with yourself, right, That's what is most important. And in my experience, this is the one thing that I find that most young people, in fact, not even young people, I think most people that I've experienced in my life,
they don't have a proper relationship with themselves, right. They don't introspect deeply enough into who they are, what they are, what their virtues and vices are, and what that best version of themselves is and or could be, right and so, and of course what that means is this is fundamentally a question about truth, right, discovering the truth about oneself, discovering the truth about one's values, discovering the truth about
one's own choices in life. Right. And and you know, one of the things I talk about with my students in our soocratic tutor sessions, actually is the question of truth. So you're on, you know, what is truth? Young?
Young You'uron?
An eighteen year old Uron comes into my office, sits down, and literally the first words out of my mouth will be so you're on, what is truth?
And it's it's a question that almost nobody can answer today. I mean, there was this amazing exchange between Lex Friedman and oh god, what's his name, the guy who runs open AI, Sam Altiman, the guy who winns Open. So here's the guy responsible for training AI. Right right? And Lex asks him what is truth? And he basically says there's no such thing? And you know nothing. He says maybe some maybe math is truth, maybe math right right?
And but that so rationalistically, some creation above here is truth. And I think about the fact that we live in a culture in which all the information could be filtered through a eye. Soon AI trained by people who don't believe there is such a thing as truth. Right, It's it's a scary proposition. This is one of the most important questions you can ask anybody.
It is right? And and no student has ever given me a satisfactory answer.
And I wouldn't expect no.
Maybe after four years with you.
Maybe after four years, but you know, should ask the same question, and we do. We do ask the same questions in the end. And but you know, so they give me incomplete answers to the question, and then we and then I tell them, all right, you know, I think that's inadequate, so let let's and they usually want to give me kind of a dictionary definition or another question I often ask is you know what is friendship?
And the first thing they do is they give me Aristotle's definition of friendship from the from books nine and ten of the Nick Mcker.
I've just read it.
Because mostly because they've just read I said, no, no, no, no, I tell him, I've read you know, I've read Aristotle. I know his views on friendship. Just tell me, you know what is what does friendship mean to you in your life? And then what we do is you know and I'll say, so, you know you're on do you have any friends? And of course uran will say, oh, I have about fifty friends.
I don't have many friends at all.
Okay, yeah, so but the real most often they say ten, right, so ten's a good number to work with. Oh okay, so you've got ten friends. Well, what is the difference between number one and number ten? Right, And so we talk about that, and all of a sudden, and by asking a lot of other questions. So you know, I may ask a young man, do you have any female friends? What does it mean? And our female friends different from your male friends? Right? And what do you consider yourself
to be friends with your parents? Which most young people do, And all of a sudden, so we start attacking the question of what friendship is from a number of perspectives, but none of which are based on books. It's all based on one's first hand experience, your observation. Right, So when you look, you have friends yourself, when you know, tell me about your friendships, your own personal friendships, What about the friendships that you observe? What about your parents' friendships,
et cetera, et cetera. And so we attack the question from a variety of perspectives, then trying to induce certain characteristics that really get to the heart of what friendship is. But now I want to go back to truth because so you know, one of the things that you say about friendship, right, friendship is a relationship. That's that's where you start friendship. Friendship is a relationship. Well, guess what so is truth? Truth is a relationship. Truth is a
relationship between an idea or a proposition and objective reality. Right, so, which is very difficult for my students to understand because most of my students think, for instance, that if there were no human beings on planet Earth, truth would still exist.
Yes, and truth somehow gets implanted in you. I think they most don't have anytrinsans that religious based correct conception of.
Truth reveal exactly. So we start to think about truth as a relationship, right between an idea, proposition and objective reality. And but it's still too abstract for them. They have a very difficult time understanding it. So I give them example what I think is actually the best example to talk about truth, and that is a court a court room in a jury trial. Right, what is involved? What's involved in a jury trial?
Well, we know this.
Something happened.
Should show them twelve any of the men.
Yeah, absolutely, precisely. Something happened. Somebody was murdered, all right, and we're not certain who did it. The prosecution thinks it knows who did it. The defense is defending the person, a person who says they did not do it. So what's at stake. What's at stake is the truth about what happened. The prosecution presents its evidence demonstrating that the defendant committed the crime. The defense presents its evidence demonstrating
that the defendant could not have done it. And the jury and by the way, every witness who comes on the stage right has to put their hand on a bible and say and And they're asked, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Right?
So it's about truth.
It's about identifying what actually happened, right, which is a relationship right now? But what is the most difficult when it comes to the question of truth. What is the single most difficult relationship. That's what I said earlier. It's one's relationship to oneself. The most difficult area in life in which to be truthful, right, is not with your parents or your friends, your colleagues. It's with yourself and.
The most important one, not just it was difficult one, the most important.
One and absolutely the most important one. Right. So this is this very long winded way of just giving you an example of what we do.
Kind of conversations.
Yeah, but ultimately it always comes back to helping these young men and women think seriously and deeply, probably for the first time in their lives, about their moral character and the core sort of the core pillars of their moral character, the single most important of which is their own relationship with their self and their own selves and whether they can be truthful about who and what they are.
And once you have once once you gain that insight into who and what you are right, then you can start to think seriously and deeply about who is the best person that you envision in ten years.
So what is your vision for where this program is heading? What is your ambitious, ambitious goals for I see in program.
Yeah, So, thankfully, with this gift from the Snow family, this year, we will be doubling the number of scholars we take into the program. So we'll be going from ten to twenty, and then we hope to go from twenty to thirty within five or six years, and then eventually to quadruple the number. Now, let me also mention I haven't mentioned this yet because of the success. Let me take a minute to talk about the success of this program. Because of the success of it just here
on the campus at Clemson University. I had regular Clemson students knocking down the doors wanting to be a part of the program, and I had to tell them, I'm sorry, Bet, you had to apply as a high school senior. You know you can't get in this stream. So we created a parallel track program that we call the Lyceum Fellows
Program for regular Clemson students. The requirements are exactly the same, except they only have to take six of the eight required courses, and they also have more flexibility in taking those courses. And we now have over one hundred and fifty Lyceum Fellows. So right now we've actually got just north of two hundred students in the Lyceum program, and within the next few years we want to double and triple those numbers. And we went at five six hundred
students in the Lyceum program. Let me also share with you in your audience, I think some extraordinary statistics. When we first launched this program in twenty fourteen, I only had two staff members working for me. At the time, we had a five thousand dollars marketing budget, and we literally did not know what we were doing in terms of marketing to high school students. I was expecting thirty to fifty applications for a program that nobody in America
knew anything about. That first year, we had one hundred and ninety applications. This year for the current freshman class, we had over one thousand applications from high school students around the United States. So, I mean, you know, build it and they will come. And we have built it, built it, and yeah, we have built it and they are coming, which is which has been extraordinary. We have
just enormous potential for growth. I mean. And what this tells us, of course, is that there is a yearning, burning desire of ordinary Americans, high school students and their parents for this kind of an education. So we're going to be expanding, all right. So there's internally here at Clemson.
The other remarkable thing is that there are over the course of the last few years at least ten other universities have contacted me because they want to try to replicate what we're doing here at Clemson with the Lyceum program.
And just in the last month.
I've had conversations with several people around faculty members around the country who want to do this. So it's an idea I think whose time has come and our goal is, uh, we want to export this, right, We're not going to keep this here just a Clemson.
That's not how you change the world.
So you may have to change the world. So put this into the perspective of your view on how the world gets changed. How do we change the world?
Yeah, well, I mean I hate to be trite.
Be trite. Truth sometimes is traits.
Ideas have consequences, right, That that is a truism that that has sort of guided my life from from the time I was a freshman in college and I sat.
They have consequences and us as individuals and they have consequences for.
The culture in general. And uh, you know another metaphor to use, right, is that economics is downstream from politics. Politics is downstream from culture. Cure is downstream from the universities, right,
and the ideas are in the universities. So I have always believed that that if you really want to change the culture in any meaningful and permanent way, it has to it has to be through through the generation of ideas, the culture of ideas, and at the heart of the culture of ideas in the United States, right are the colleges in universities. So generally speaking, that's that's how we do it. And you know, and we also live at
a very interesting time in history. America's universities are collapsing. They're collapsing for a number of different reasons. They're collapsing demographically, right there just aren't enough students. I heard recently that I think a college is closing every other week in the United States, and that trend is only going to
continue and actually deepen. And of course they're being destroyed internally ideologically, and you know, of course we've seen this in particular in the last eighteen or twenty months post October seventh. And the fact of the matter is there is a major shift going on in this country. People parents do not want to spend one hundred two hundred thousand dollars to have their son or daughter indoctrinated in bad and evil ideas, and so they're looking there, They're
looking for alternatives. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've been so successful, is because we provide an alternative to what's going on at Harvard. And by the way, I mean, you know, since since October seventh, there has been a major turn away from the IVY League I've been promoting this hard on my various social media sites.
Have you seen any increase in applications here at the interest oh at those program? Yeah? Well, now, I mean the growth, the growth has been massive anyway, but have you seen any added increase?
Yeah, since October seven, not since October seventh. But that's for internal reasons, because to be honest, I mean, we have the most serious application of any college or university in the United States. Our students, high school students, they have to write three essays, uh, and they're they're not you know, why do you want to you know, why do you want to go to college? Or you know, why should you dig wells in Guatemala? Right?
These are serious questions.
One of the questions that we ask on the application is is three words why be moral?
Okay? Right?
Not your typical college application essay. And so we we've actually sort of tried to uh the number of apps. So we have three application, three essays on the application, and we had a thousand applications, three thousand essays that my staff of eight people have to read in one month. Right. So anyway, yeah, so we would otherwise see, yes, a huge spike and you know, one of the things I want to make sure your audience hears directly from the horse's mouth. The IVY League is dead. The IVY League
is a clown show, and now everybody knows it. And there has been and the new and this is what I've been promoting on social media. The new IVY League is south of the Mason Dixon. Uh. And there have been a number of newspaper articles promoting southern universities and Clemson in particular.
So Clemson is the new Harvard.
That's my line, and I'm sticking with it.
All right, you heard it, You heard it here first. So one way change the culture is by teaching people and getting them engaged with these ideas and changing minds and impacting their ability to think. Another is to advocating for ideas, writing books, audicles. So tell us a little bit about what you'll be doing in terms of books, audicles, essays, things like that.
Yeah, so some of your audience at least might know of my twenty nineteen book, which I happen to have a copy, of America's Revolutionary Mind, A moral history of the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it. I think this is my best book, and so for those of you who are on you're on super chat, you might go to Amazon get yourself a copy.
And then most recently.
Just a month ago, I published this five hundred and twenty page book, The Political Thought of the American Revolution A reader. It's and it's volume one. Okay, Volume two will be coming out in a week or two. Oh wow. Yeah, So this is it's what.
We call a reader who's essays a in here.
Yeah. So it's the essays of all of the major American revolutionaries. So James Otis, Daniel Delaney, Richard Bland, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, et cetera, et cetera, and many many more.
How many volumes do you plan on?
Yeah, so there'll be two volumes on the American Revolution. Then I will do a separate volume on what I call the American Founding, it's distinct from the Revolution. And then I'm also going to do a volume on loyalist political thought, those people during the revolution, right, who are loyal together to.
The British crown.
And then two more things. So you know, and many of your audience members actually have have been politely harassing me. Now for a couple of years wondering where the next volume right. So, going back to America's Revolutionary Mind, I promised in the preface to the book that there would be a second volume titled America's Constitutional Mind.
And I'm sorry.
To report that that book has actually been on the back burner for the last five years. And it's been on the back burner because, as I think, you know, I started a sub stack called the Redneck Intellectual and you know, you know, I've been putting out five thousand word essays every other week or so, and that's just taken up a huge amount of time and drawn me into you know, sort of never ending controversies, which I enjoy.
And uh So that so I've been doing a lot of writing on my sub stack, and for your audience, I think they might be interested in this. I've got a new series that will be coming out. It's actually been written for about seven months, but it'll be coming out sometime in the next month or two.
On self interest, on the on the sort.
Of the the the the the history of self of self interest in moral philosophy, with a particular emphasis. Uh One. One of the essays is on the Christian view of self interest, which I think your your your audience will will find will find of interest. So anyway, last thing I'll say and then I'll end on this, and that is I am back to write America's Constitutional Mind. It
is two thirds the three quarters finished. I've got two or three more chapters which i'll have done within the year, and so it'll be out sometime in twenty twenty six.
All right, that's that's fantastic. I mean, you're also going to work in a project. I hate to bring this up because you aren't going to work on something about the French Revolution.
Uh yeah, you're you're you're you're recalling the conversation.
We had about a long time eighteen years ago.
Yeah, because because the contrast, of course, in the in the too many people out there in the intellectual world, you know, have viewed these two revolutions as the same, right, right, and they're maating from the same ideas, and they're not, of course.
So if I live long enough, I will write a book comparing and contrasting the American and French revolutions. I've got parts of it written, and I do. Actually, your audience is either not gonna believe me or just think I'm insane. But I do have another book do both, Yeah,
could be both. I've got another book half written titled Political Philosophy in the Age of Revolution, which will be case studies of the great thinkers philosophers of revolution, namely Locke, Modesky, were so Burke, pain and Tookeville.
Cool. So you know, there are probably some listeners out there, you know, young, ambitious maybe thinking about a career in academia, a careers intellectuals, who might be feeling like everything's already been written. This is you know, there's nothing that interesting to do.
Fix that, because yeah, well it's understandable. I entirely understand, particularly when you're young.
You don't really know.
Right well, and you you're just overwhelmed by how much has been written, right and and it's hard to think that anything more could be said, for instance, about uh, you know, the American Revolution or or the Civil War, for instance, and that that is it's an understandable view, but it's it's wrong. The fact of the matter is I I have come to the view actually that we know very little about the American Revolution. I mean, we know all about all the superficial events, we know about
all the battles but I mean America's revolutionary mind. This there's no other book, you know, mind me saying like it on the American Revolution. And and I was inspired to write it when I read a quotation from John Adams, which i'd read many times before was very familiar with, where Adam says he asks himself rhetorically the question what was the American Revolution? Followed by a second question, the war question mark he said, no, the American Revolution was
not the war. The American Revolution took place in the minds of the American people in the fifteen years before
shots were fired at Lexington. When I read that, it wasn't until the thirtieth time that I had read it that shazam, like all the lights went on, and I realized that despite the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of books written on the American Revolution, we don't know the causes, the nature and the meaning of the American Revolution because there's been there's never been a book that attempts to understand the moral revolution that took
place right in the minds and actions of the American people. And that quotation changed everything, and it changed the way I approached the study. The reading and then events actually in the form of the book the writing of And I think that that is true of virtually everything. So for your audience members maybe who follow me on substack.
Last year I did a series of essays on the frontier, the role of the frontier in American history, and I think, I mean, I came to realize that if I had another life to live, that there are no end of books that one could write.
Yeah, we were talking earlier about the death of books about the nineteenth century and how much we don't know about the nineteenth century. I mean, just to I mean, this is the century of capitalism. It's a century industry, It's a century of the frontier. You know, it's a century where America goes from a relatively poor country to the rigious country in the world. I mean, so much happened during the century, and we know we have very
few good history books. And part of it is this idea that ideas shape history, morality, shape approached a bouty shape history. You know Iman's you know a few thinkers who who've thought about this in one way or another. Man, Really that's a theory of history. But so many books about so many periods of history need to be written still.
From that perspective, absolutely, no, no question about it. And every every subject, every historical subject that you think has been exhausted, I would argue that we barely know anything about it. And that's certainly the attitude that that you have to have if you're a young particularly if you're a historian. You know, history in many ways is uh, history is really a kind of philosophy, or.
Well, it's the concrete that allow you to come to philosophical conclusions.
So largely, well, it's it's what you need.
You need to have an empirical data, and the history provides you with empirical data.
History is teaching philosophy by examples, right, and and so you know, I described in the book what I developed as a new approach to the study of history that I call the moral Moral history. And I do think that using adopting this methodology, this historical methodology, I think opens up all kinds of new scenes and venues for the reinterpretation of the past. So yeah, I mean I would say, don't listen to anybody who tells you that
the subject has been exhausted. Absolutely, I think we barely we barely scratched the.
Surface, right, So we've got a few questions and we can see you know I'm here. It comes in because I'm giving a talk in a little while, an hour and a half, I think on the war in the mid least to the sum scholars, which will be fun because it'll be a small group, but it might be I think engaging, and we have an opportunity for lots
of Q and ah. So any any anything, I mean you've told us about the new books, anything we've missed in terms of anything exciting going on right now that you want to say before we go to the questions.
Well, I think we've covered a fair amount. But you know, people should contact us if they want to learn more about the Lyceum program.
So where do they find information about it? Yeah, they just go online google Clemson Lyceum.
Yeah, Clemson Lyceum, Clemson Capitalism snow Institute the Study of Capitalism, And there's a lot there. And I'm always having people who who come through the area and want to come and visit, and I'm always happy to host and entertain people who we have.
We have a kid who are Lysium scholars, who are three of them of the of this of the class right now, children of parents who I think listen to the show involved in with the institute in one way or the other. So so it's becoming a real alternative of people searching for something outside of the conventional education that's out there. Education and quotation boksa that's out there all right, Wes asks. Wes asks, is the list of books that are part of the program publicly available?
Uh? Yeah, it's it's on our It should be on the website. And I think we have course syllabi on on on our website, on the Lyceum website. So if you just go to you know, the Snow Institute's website and then go to the Lyceum program, and I think if you just search around, to be perfectly honest, like I haven't gone to our website in probably two years, so I don't really I can't. I'm not entirely positive
about what I'm saying. But yeah, and if if, if that's not adequate, we send out our course syllabi for people who ask, so.
How could he do that? Okay? Right, So you can send a message probably on the website if you don't find what you're looking for, send a message and they'll they'll get back to you. I always said we wouldn't talk about politics, and I have no interest. But you're gonna get asked. Ian wants to know what you think. Do you think the president has a the proper power of impoundment? Do you know what that means?
I have no idea what.
Okay, So what that means is it's it's the big crisis now in DC, which is, if Congress allocates a certain amount of money for certain program and it's written in the law and its law, and if he there's a budget and the budget, can the present us say, nah, I don't like this program. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna spend the money on that program. I'm gonna impound the money. I'm gonna either use it for something else. You just not spend it. I cannot spend it.
Thank you Ian for the question. But that's above my pag, right I I I don't know. Yeah, I mean simple answers.
Yeah, we need a We need a somebody who's studied the law and the Constitution from that perspective. All right, here's another one. No, this is uh, thank you Brad for being strong against woke. Hey, you're on and Brad, how important are soft skills in a business professional setting. I like being direct, but some find that to be too abrasive.
So from Thomas, Umm, look, I mean I I would advise two things. First, speak the truth, be truthful, but also be but also be decent. Sometimes the way I put it is be Canadian. You know if he's Canadian, that's why, right, So by which.
I mean, of course, just be polite.
Right.
Two things. Actually I'll add a third. So the advice I give to college students who want to go to graduate school where there will almost certainly be facing a hostile environment. There are really only there are three things that you can do to survive and to do well. And these were the things that I lived by when I was a student, and they are First, yes, be Canadian, by which I mean just always be polite, decent, courteous yep. Secondly, always speak the truth, which I always did, even when
I knew my professor's disagreed with me, and sometimes even violently. So.
But third, did you ever suffer grade? Why? Because of that?
Maybe on the margins?
And if you thought somebody would fail you because you spoke the truth to them, I don't think because professors out there who will do Yeah.
No, so I well, I never failed, so I never thought I would fail.
But you know, you were in a different era. I was in a different era.
Yeah, So it was on the market. So if I suffered it at all, it was only on the margins, right. It was the difference between an A and an A minus. And but I definitely, I mean, I definitely got into it with with some some professors. I mean, I distinctly remember when I was in graduate school, a professor.
It was a small seminar.
We're sitting around a table and I said something, and he was a large man, and he literally he took his fist and he pounded the table as hard as he could. He was he was so angry by by what I said. But here's the lesson of the story, and this goes to the third point. The third piece of advice I can give you is just always work harder than everybody else. So if you are one polite, two you work hard, and three you speak the truth,
you'll be You'll be fine. So that same professor who reacted literally violently in my presence to something I had once said, the last time I ever saw him before he died, he.
I'll never forget this.
Uh he he. I were I was in his car and he was dropping me off somewhere, and he turned to me, knowing that it might be the last time I would ever see him again, and and he said, you know, Thompson, he said, I know I've been hard on you during your time here at Brown. He said, but I want you to know it's because I respect you and because I thought you could handle it.
I thought you could take it.
And I'll tell you what that meant the world to me.
Of course, of course that's a real compliment. Yeah, all right, like number, says Brad. Thoughts on the administration, it's a two dollars question, you can you can wing it.
Well, I think the two dollar question should be your question.
I'll take the two hundred dollars question.
There you go, There you go. It's not enough to get Brad to talk about the administration.
Yeah. I have opinions, but I think those opinions are best kept to myself for the moment.
Okay, em it says American Mind. Great book. Thank you, doctor Thompson.
Well, thank you Emmett.
Alright, now, these questions I think, I mean, I think this one if you wanna this is this is related to something I said yesterday. So I'll just answer this questically, just to correct something from yesterday. This is from not your average algorithm. Uh. The reason people signed waivers over use of they image at ocon or other film private advantages because it's on private property and there is an expectation of privacy. That is not the case on a public sidewalk.
Uh.
You don't need anyone's consent to film in public or use their images. It's your responsibility create your own privacy, according to the Supreme Court. I get that, but I would argue Supreme Court is wrong. And part of the problem here is that there is private there's public space. You should treat public space from the perspective of these kind of issues, perspective of rights, as if it was private.
So imagine the pavements were private. Could you then film in public in a sense in a in a setting in would would the you know, maybe you could if the owner of the of the place said, hey, if you walk on my side work, don't expect privacy. You would develop norms that associate with private property. The problem is that where we have a public space, I can
tell you that. My sense is you can't just you can't just film me walking in a public space, use my image anyway you want to take my face and put it on somebody else's body or something like that, use it in plann, use it to have me say things I don't agree with. I don't believe in that. All of that seems wrong. My image is mine and
you shouldn't be able to use it. And even if I even if you say okay, you can use it in a public space, and you can use it in a public space as you took it, you can't then manipulate it. So there has to be guardrails here that recognize your ownership over your own image. I don't know if you have any thoughts about this.
I don't, although that does kind of raid. What you've just said raises an interesting and maybe slightly deeper philosophic question, which I know is debated in objective circles. So I'll ask you, do you believe in the idea of self ownership?
No, because I think although Iran uses that term, I think peacock. Yes. But but if you really I think, particularly at least I know Lanard, I think Leonard. I've also heard him say that it doesn't make sense, and I agree with it doesn't make sense, but because I think it reverses, it's reversus hiochy right to own imply somebody owning it. So you have to have self before ownership. So self comes before ownership. So once you have a self,
you own things. But you're just you. But you own your in a sense of it's yours, your bodily fluids and your kidneys and whatever. I think you own your image. And and certainly the ability and this is the context of AI today, the ability to manipulate your image, the ability to have you say things you don't believe in, or say things that they invent, or the ability to put you in situations you would want to be in.
There's something wrong with people's ability just to take your image and do whatever they want with it.
So it might be.
True that in a public space you can fill me and I don't, I don't have a say and no, but then that's all you can use. You can't then take that image of me and use it in some other in other ways. So they have to be limitations in this. Otherwise it becomes Yeah, it becomes anarky, right, so yeah, I think the self ownership is an issue of of just conceptual hieroarchy, and also the way that the libertarians try to do the self ownership, because in a sense what they say is well, self ownership is
self evident. Of course you own yourself, right, and then they derive everything from that, right. But none of that is obvious, none of that. There's very little it's self evident in life. And certainly concepts like ownership and self are not self.
Evident correct, right, And they're also and as with the concept of rights, it's always in the context of a relationship.
Right, So it's a relationship to other people.
Right. So it seems to me that the one sense in which you could say that self ownership is legitimate, right, it's I mean, if it's the case that the fruits of a man's labor are his by by ownership, they are an extension of who and of what he has done to create it, right, And and and you know I have control over what I've created, and and what I've created has been created by my hands, uh my,
my my mind ultimately most importantly my mind. I certainly have I I have self self governance, right, I govern myself, I govern the I control my mind and how I exercise my will.
It's just an ownership business. And and also it's it's it's something outside of you that you own, or something inside of you that you own, but it's you are you, and and to own you is is is so just hieroartical. It's also leads to these with Again, libertarians will argue, well, if I own myself, I can sign myself into slavery. I can you know, I you know I can. So it leads to these strange but that's them, right. I just don't think hierotically conceptually.
So in other words, for you, it's redundant.
That's definitely redundant. But it's just that the concept of self comes first. Ownership is something you do, so you know, to do you already you already are right so and you don't need it. It's not necessary. I think you're right. Your your your fruits of your labor, are product of your effort, your you need to survive, your requirements of survival.
They are yours by the fact that you created them with your labor, your effort, your mind that went into went into making them, you know, rights, freedoms, of action, your freedom of action. They don't require ownership here. They don't require the concept of ownership yet.
M H.
Ownership is again I think further down.
Downstream, downstream, yes, conceptually, but.
I'm not a philosopher. Alright, Michael is asking, is Germany's far right firewall crumbling? I mean, I'll I'll just say it certainly looks like it. That is this idea that we keep out the far right, particularly in this case the AfD, uh because they they have a certain affiliation and association with Nazism and and we wanna shut that out. Uh,
that certainly seems to be crumbling. First of all, it's crumbling because they're very popular, right, they have twenty percent of the vote, uh, at least according to the polls right now, and they might have more than that. We'll
see what happens in the elections. But it's crumbling. Uh. I give an example of it crumbling, is is uh the vote that happened I think yesterday or the day before in the Buddist whatever, where they voted on an immigration new immigration law and it couldn't pass without the af D supporting it, and the FD did support it, and it passed because the AfD supported it, so clearly in order to pass certain types of legislation, they're going
to need the AfD. Now there is a move right now in Germany, convenient to all the existing political parties, to ban the AfD, that is, to take it outside of the law, which they can do. They have a majority, you know, the non AFT or eighty percent, so they could. You could do it, but it would be horrible, what a violation of freedom of speech. I'm not a fan of AfD. I think I think there's a lot of really horrible stuff in there, but that's not the way you deal with it. You don't deal with it by
banning it and excluding it from political participation. If Germany had a constitution, that would be that would be barred, but of course they don't have a constitution. And remember Germany really started the whole hate speech movement because it was in Germany after World War Two where the first violation of free speech occurred in the West, in the modern West, when or maybe not the first violation of free speech or exaggerating but political speech at least when
Holocaust denial was viewed as a crime. You could go to jail for Holocaust denial, and that was the first and that was the wedge, and of course everything is a slippery slope. We believe in slippery slopes. And today if you you know, if you condemn I don't know Muhammad or the Qur'an, you could go, you could get in trouble with the law in most of Europe. And it really started with the Holocaust denial. So the best thing to do with Nazism is to condemn it, to
fight it, to ideologically object to it. But criminalizing ideas is always wrong. Agreed, absolutely so. And you know, the FD is now big because because their long Musk has endorsed them, I mean explicitly and quite strongly. And in a recent appearance where he made in front of the National Convention, he told them that it was time for Germany to stop, in a sense obsessing about their past, which which there's an element of truth to that, but
there's also an element of real danger there. So and Elon Musk is a lot of things, but you know, he the subtleties and nuances is not his strength. So I think I think he was I think he was wrong to say what he said. All right, Jeremy says great to see you, Brad. I'm glad you were able to do a stream. Yeah, me too. This was fun, cool, absolutely right? Anything else, anything else you want to talk about.
So we've got a few minutes. You're asking your audience or me, I'm asking you, and I'm asking that I want to ask any questions. They've got a couple of minutes to ask now they need to be quick about it.
Well, I don't know why we're not doing this show in Puerto Rico.
Well I've invited you. Yeah, I invited you, but you never seem to find the time to come. And I see my fault, absolute fault. And I can see why. I visited Brad's new home today, and I think if he still lived in the old house, he would be coming to Puerto Rico quite often. But now that he lives in this beautiful house with a beautiful view on the you know, kind of on a golf course, it's really pretty there. And now it's like this is the ugly season because everything is gray and the no leaves on
the trees. I can just imagine what it's like in the spring, where everything is green and it is beautiful. It must be beautiful. So yes, the incentive to come to Puerto Rico has clearly gone down since he moved to the New Rose.
It has, but I'm available between December and January.
January. December January is usually a very good time to usually a very good time to come to Puerto Rico. Oh it's a kok asques. This is a topic that Brad loves to talk about. I know, would Brad say that he defeated the BAP Dolks.
Well, question, Kirk, thank you? If it's the Kirk, I think, I know, and.
Well, I know, I can't.
Say that I've defeated Still the bare still there, you know. I'm assuming his Twitter account and his podcast are growing, his books are still selling. I mean, his Bronze age mindset has been now out eight years or so, seven eight years, and it's well, look.
At literally what just happened to Kotishyovin, who's not exactly BAP, but similarly in that world, just did this big New times in it.
Yeah, absolutely, so he's gaining and promo. Look, I mean I wrote my BAP essays because I saw the influence that he was having on particularly young men between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, and I thought it was a pernicious influence.
And so you know, I wrote, I wrote my essays.
In twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and I mean it is sort of interesting. I mean, I guess I've won to the extent that bapp seems to have an obsession with me now and talks about me on a semi regular basis on his podcast and is still tweeting about me.
So I mean, he clearly views me as some kind of threat I think to his ideas, and you know, but it is I think also the case that I think the more fundamental point is that for objectivists and I think for everybody, is that there is a lost there's a generation of lost young men, and we need to find a way to appeal to them, to help
them find meaning in their lives. And I have always thought and continue to think that objectivism can and should be the philosophy which gives them that kind of meaning, because that philosophy is in many ways. I mean, not only is it pernicious, it's just stupid.
It's stupid, and in that sense, we've talked about this many times. The more dangerous trend out there with young men is their attraction to you know, Catholicism slash the integration into intellists, the means and mules, and kind of that part of the religious right or a new religious right that's much more philosophical and dangerous. Also at the end of the idea is a pretty stupid but they're much more anchored.
They are, and they're advocating. I mean Curtis Jarvin you mentioned, he's a monarchist, right, he thinks that the American Revolution was a mistake and that the wrong side one right. And then the Catholic integralists, Uh, they want world popedom. They want a world governed politically from the Vatican.
And they take this seriously. I mean it sounds upset of ridiculous, like the Muslim Sharia law, you know, global domination. But they really believe this stuff, and they really think that America, because of its its values, is an abomination.
They do, and they also hold positions of genuine not only political power, but academic power, right. I mean, there's an integralist, one of the leading integralist thinkers Adrian Vermuil at Harvard Law School, dinneen Is at Notre Dame and.
A huge influence on Jade Vans didn't yeah, no.
Exactly, so I agree entirely. The Catholic integralists are a much much greater threat to the future freedom in this country.
And this is the thing. I go back to the point you made earlier. God, we should be able to crush him right well, should be able to intellectually defeat these guys and be objectivism should be so much more attractive to young people than ancient Catholic I mean, what's you know, young people are supposed to be radicals and want to be different.
You know, I'm passionate about ideas, but I will say this gen z really is searching for meaning in their lives. And you know, first Jordan Peterson was able to fill that void. He gave them a He helped them to regain meaning in their lives. But what's interesting is that Jordan Peterson, I believe it was August of twenty and nineteen when he kind of fell off the earth and disappeared for a year and a half because of health reasons.
That same month, the Claremont Review of Books did a somewhat positive review of Bapp's Bronze Age Mindset, and all of a sudden, as I say, the youth vote switched and all of a sudden, Peterson was gone and bapp was attracting the attention of young men. And you know, one of the things that he does quite successfully is I mean, I think part of his goal is to give young men a sense of meaning, and most interestingly,
he focuses on aesthetics, on beauty. You know, he says, we live in a world of ugliness, and there's a sense in which, of course that is entirely true.
But his conceptions of aesthetics is, oh, it's it's shallow and superficial.
To say the least of what it is. But even that fact alone tells you, right that there is a hunger and a need for a kind of new aesthetic, a new sense of beauty, and a new understanding of meaning. So I guess what I'll you know end this. My answer to this question on is objectivists, I think need to do a better job of understanding their audience. And let's just say the audience is young people between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, and we need to better understand.
Where they're coming from, what their needs are.
Because I Rand, like I Rand has answered solutions to the problems of meaning that they're experiencing. Right, it may not be, for instance, in capitalism, the unknown ideal. Maybe it's in the in the Fountain hit for the Fountain had for sure and her and I RAN's the romatic manifesto.
Yeah, I mean, and that's the other sense, is I completely agree we live in a desert. Aesthetically, I imagine what this we're looking out the windows on the campus. Imagine what this would look like if it was ancient Greece, right, this would be covered with culture. There wouldn't be just I mean it would be there would be a real.
Esthetic to it.
And this is pretty, it's pretty, but it's just it's kind of bland. And particularly this building was sitting in this missmash of architecturally. I don't know who designed it exactly, but there's this, you know, it's neither here nor there, but there's a real thirst for beauty that is not fulfilled in the modern in the modern world. And again, has answers to that. Romantic manifesto is clearly answers has answers to that. That's right, right, Cook, Thank you. Cook.
Cook wants to point out that the one great book that you wrote that you didn't mention is the one that I was a small part of, and that's ne ecncivitism and obituary for an idea, a book.
Which I will mention I do not see when you're back in Puerto Rica broadcasting. I do not see on your bookshelf.
It's on the bookshel. Oh, it's definitely on the bookshelf, no question about that. And it's a book that I use often. The link to Amazon because I'm accused almost on a weekly basis of being a neo conservative, so I like to link to the book. I don't know if any of those people actually buy it. But wait, last two questions. Call says, how does bad handle students coming in who are religious, philosophically speaking, faith in, epistemology, altruism and ethics, magical worldview and metaphysics.
Good question, great question, Tough question to answer as I'm sitting here on campus, you know, surrounded by my students, right, And the fact of the matter is, you know my students, Well, let's say the students in the Lyceum program are of n plus religious conservatives, and they are also really really smart, and they are also wonderful people. So you know, it's I don't have the luxury of sitting behind a paywall
on a private blog denouncing lots of things. I live in this world and am surrounded every day by wonderful people who maybe have different values than I do. And my job is not to publicly denounce them. My job is not to attack them. My job is not to mock them. My job is to make them serious young men and women who take ideas seriously, who take their own moral character seriously. And you know, if I can introduce them to if I can broaden their perspective, then
you know, I think I've succeeded. You know, the other thing, in addition to being Canadian, you know, just sort of moral decency goes a long way, right in helping to bring people who might not share your own views around to at least being opened to your views.
Right, if you.
Model your own moral philosophy and people who have a very different moral philosophy, different religion, if they see you and they can admire you and respect you, knowing that you do not share their deepest, let's say, theological commitments, at least, at the very least, it diffuses their immediate what would otherwise potentially be an immediate hostility and if I can do that much, then I think I will have succeeded.
All right, justin this one could be a three hour the whole book so quick. And so was America's founding of Christian founding?
No, yeah, yeah, read the book, read the book, actually read both books.
Yeah they you can hear it from his mouth, so to say, yeah.
No exactly. The answer is no.
But that's not to say that ninety nine percent of all of America's founding fathers weren't Christian. Of course, they were Christian. They were all Christian. They took their Christianity very very seriously. But was it founded as a Christian nation? The answer is the answer is no. And you know, one way you can answer or look at the question is to ask what the Puritans would have thought of what was founded in seventeen seventy six and seventeen eighty seven.
The Puritans would not have They.
Would have considered it a moral and theological abomination.
Yep, okay, justinos asks, do Bible stories implicitly support capitalism? Non explicity.
Look, I.
Know a lot of.
Christian pro capitalists, of course, who tell me all the time that that the Bible supports capitalism and they and I'm sorry I don't remember the exact passages, but you know, they can rattle off at least half a dozen parables and stories in the Bible that they think support capitalism. And sure, maybe maybe there are some which would seem
to support capitalism. Well, of course, the term which was not even understood, the very idea of las fair capitalism was not understood, no conception of anything.
Yeah, no exactly.
But I think what's most important is that you have to look at the overall philosophy, particularly the philosophy the teachings of Christ, which i'll be writing about on the sub stack. You know, I mentioned this series of essays will be doing on some self interest. It's really self interest in altruism. And the most important of the essays will be on the Christian view of self interest in altruism. And I kind of lay out the Apostles Creed, which I think is profoundly anti capitalist.
Yeah, and I think the similar the amount is profoundly anti capitalist. And look, I mean my view is the Bible, like many books like it, was written in a way that you can find pretty much anything you want in it, that it's got an agenda. Certainly the New Testament I think has an agenda, but it also has enough so that it can satisfy lots of different perspectives and lots
of different people. When we studied the Old Testament in school, we'd study a sentence, and then we'd study the fifty different interpretations of fifty different rabbis of that statement, and each one of them to put it completely differently. And if you come at it already a convinced capitalist, then you'll find capitalism. But it requires you to evate in parts of it. They're inconsistent, all right, They keep coming with questions, right, Paul says, I thought the founders were mostly Deists.
Yeah, I mean some of them were clearly deists. Jefferson, Deist Adams, John Adams pretty close to being a deist, Madison Washington, I mean, Hamilton. I mean, they were sort of all in that world. None of them were five point Calvinists, although some of founding fathers were five point Calvinists, right, So second third tier founding fathers were Calvinists. And you know, I don't think there were any Founding fathers who said that they were not Christian, were certainly not anti Christian.
Most of them in to one degree or another, you know, uh said that that that they that they were Christians to one degree or another.
But what's important.
What's important, though, is what they created publicly, yes, right, And what they created publicly was a constitution which created a government. And that constitution is grounded in certain moral principles. And what are those moral principles? Are those moral principles explicitly defined as the laws of God? No, the principles are defined as the laws of nature. Right, So if
you read again, it's all in here. If you read the revolutionary pamphlet literature, you can't help but be struck by how enlightenment these revolutionaries were, how pro enlightenment they were, and students of John Locke and and who who grounded their moral theory on what they call the moral laws and rights of nature. And now maybe they thought the ultimate source, you know, was God, or as they as
Jefferson put in the declaration, nature's God. But even the idea of nature's God, right, is very different than the Puritans old God.
In the declaration right, he used creative.
Well, he creators used.
But in the first sentence of the declaration he talks about the laws of nature and of Nature's God. Right, so it's it's not just God, it's Nature's God, which is.
Very which is an enlightenment.
It's a new it's a kind of a Newtonian God, that is, a god who created the universe and then stepped back and let it run on its own.
All right, rob It says, thank you for the reasonable, insightful discussion, gentlemen, very much appreciated. And oh, and what do you think of the newmonistration? He's kidding, Justice says, Okay, this will be the final question, doctor T. I don't know if anybody calls you doctor T, doctor T. Is this still any Canadian left in you?
That's a that's a that's a great question. I left Canada in nineteen seventy nine to escape Pierre trudeau socialism, and I have other than going back to visit my family. I've been out of Canada since then, so you know, for many, many decades, and and and as I've written about before in different contexts, I from the time I was a seven or eight year old boy born in Canada, I knew that I was born in the wrong country, identified with America from the time I was a child.
So even even when I was living in Canada as a Canadian, I didn't identify as Canadian. Now that said, you know, you can take the boy out of Canada, but you know there are surely there are some elements that you can't take out of the boy, some Canadian elements in me. Apparently there's one word that gives me away as Canadian. It's the about word. And I don't
hear myself, but there you go. And you know, I guess the other thing is I still put a high value on manners and politeness and just being a decent bloke.
There you go. So I mean by that interpretation, being an American is about the ideas that you hold and your sense of life and your character, not about where your parents were born. Yeah, it's a big debate going on right now. Of course. All right, this is quick one. My son is a senior in high school looking at colleges. Is it super difficult to get into your program? And how can we find out more about admissions? I thought you'd want to answer that one.
Yeah, So, I mean you have to do two things. You have to Your son would have to apply first to Clemson University, to be honest. If he's a senior in high school right now, it's it's too late. It's too late to apply to Clemson, and it's it's too late February. Yeah, it's too late to apply to the Clemson to the Lyceum program. So I'm very sorry.
That's fine. Tell him to take a year off. It's good for him anyway. Most most Americans need a year off before they go to college anyway, because they don't know anything about anything. And then you can apply next year.
Yeah, I agree.
So why can they find out of information about admissions?
It's all on the website, well, admissions to Clemson or yeah, it's all on our website at the Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism and just go to the Lyceum tab and it's all there. The application process is all there, and you know our curriculum. Just about everything you want to know is on the website.
Well, it's been a pleasure as always. It's good to be in Clemson. Back at Clemson, even if it's just one day. And I will see you guys. Actually don't know when else see you because I'm traveling. So when I have an opportunity, I'll turn the live stream on and we'll do a ship but have a great rest of your week and a weekend. And Brad, thank you and we'll see you right see everybody, Thanks everybody,