1 00:00:03,060 --> 00:00:05,100 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode 2 00:00:05,100 --> 00:00:06,620 of The Way the World Works. 3 00:00:06,620 --> 00:00:09,180 Today, I want to talk about somebody 4 00:00:09,180 --> 00:00:10,640 who's a modern American hero 5 00:00:10,640 --> 00:00:12,980 and somebody who we unfortunately lost. 6 00:00:12,980 --> 00:00:15,180 His name was Gordon S. Wood, 7 00:00:15,180 --> 00:00:20,180 and he was a very famous prominent American history historian. 8 00:00:20,300 --> 00:00:22,180 And he was very old, 92, so he's been around 9 00:00:22,180 --> 00:00:25,340 for a very long time, and he unfortunately passed away 10 00:00:25,340 --> 00:00:27,860 right before we celebrated America 250, 11 00:00:27,860 --> 00:00:31,420 which is so sad because he was so close 12 00:00:31,420 --> 00:00:35,140 to making it to a anniversary of something 13 00:00:35,140 --> 00:00:36,580 that he was so passionate about. 14 00:00:36,580 --> 00:00:39,420 His entire career was devoted to discussing 15 00:00:39,420 --> 00:00:41,740 not only the American founding, the American Revolution, 16 00:00:41,740 --> 00:00:43,700 but the signing of the declaration itself 17 00:00:43,700 --> 00:00:45,740 and why that was so important. 18 00:00:45,740 --> 00:00:49,460 But one of his greatest ideas was this concept 19 00:00:49,460 --> 00:00:51,660 that unlike any other country, 20 00:00:51,660 --> 00:00:55,260 what makes America special is it's not really about a place. 21 00:00:55,260 --> 00:00:57,300 Even though America is a place, 22 00:00:57,300 --> 00:01:00,860 America and being an American is more about an idea. 23 00:01:00,860 --> 00:01:02,940 It's about an idea or a set of ideas 24 00:01:02,940 --> 00:01:04,340 that bring us together. 25 00:01:04,340 --> 00:01:06,180 So I want to talk about that today. 26 00:01:06,180 --> 00:01:08,820 So for starters, let's talk about what a historian is. 27 00:01:08,820 --> 00:01:10,980 You can probably guess by the name, 28 00:01:10,980 --> 00:01:13,700 but a historian is like a detective. 29 00:01:13,700 --> 00:01:16,820 They go through and they find documents from the past. 30 00:01:16,820 --> 00:01:18,180 We call them primary documents, 31 00:01:18,180 --> 00:01:19,740 which are things like letters 32 00:01:19,740 --> 00:01:21,540 that people wrote to each other back then 33 00:01:21,540 --> 00:01:23,460 or documents they may have written. 34 00:01:23,460 --> 00:01:26,020 They go and they find things and they investigate things 35 00:01:26,020 --> 00:01:29,100 and they look for not just information, 36 00:01:29,100 --> 00:01:32,300 but for significance and meaning behind that information. 37 00:01:32,300 --> 00:01:35,100 It's, to me, the coolest kind of detective you can be. 38 00:01:35,100 --> 00:01:37,020 And that's what Gordon S. Wood was. 39 00:01:37,020 --> 00:01:39,060 Now let's talk about his really exciting idea, 40 00:01:39,060 --> 00:01:41,060 which is this America as an idea. 41 00:01:41,060 --> 00:01:44,300 So I want you to think, what makes a country a country? 42 00:01:44,300 --> 00:01:47,140 Is it people who just happen to be born there? 43 00:01:47,140 --> 00:01:48,220 Is it the food? 44 00:01:48,220 --> 00:01:49,180 Is it the music? 45 00:01:49,180 --> 00:01:50,220 Is it the language? 46 00:01:50,220 --> 00:01:53,380 What is it that makes a country a country? 47 00:01:53,380 --> 00:01:56,020 For many countries, it is the land 48 00:01:56,020 --> 00:01:58,140 that they've been on for centuries and centuries 49 00:01:58,140 --> 00:01:59,460 or it is the food. 50 00:01:59,460 --> 00:02:02,980 It's more centered on where the actual place is, 51 00:02:02,980 --> 00:02:04,860 geography of where it is, right? 52 00:02:04,860 --> 00:02:07,380 You look on a map, you see all these places. 53 00:02:07,380 --> 00:02:10,140 But America is so different than that. 54 00:02:10,140 --> 00:02:12,260 And this is something that a professor 55 00:02:12,260 --> 00:02:14,420 would spend a lot of time talking about 56 00:02:14,420 --> 00:02:16,980 because that's what he believed made America so great 57 00:02:16,980 --> 00:02:18,820 or makes America so great, 58 00:02:18,820 --> 00:02:21,940 is that we're not a place based on this similar culture. 59 00:02:21,940 --> 00:02:25,420 We're a club anybody can join as long as you believe 60 00:02:25,420 --> 00:02:27,620 in the ideas, but it's not just that. 61 00:02:27,620 --> 00:02:29,740 It's also important because to understand 62 00:02:29,740 --> 00:02:31,420 that big part of America, 63 00:02:31,420 --> 00:02:34,980 to understand that we are a nation of ideas, 64 00:02:34,980 --> 00:02:37,380 not of soil or a place, 65 00:02:37,380 --> 00:02:38,420 that's going to be really important 66 00:02:38,420 --> 00:02:41,660 because as he says, to understand where we're going, 67 00:02:41,660 --> 00:02:43,500 we have to understand who we are, 68 00:02:43,500 --> 00:02:44,980 how we started as a country. 69 00:02:44,980 --> 00:02:47,620 And that's kind of the significance of history in general. 70 00:02:47,620 --> 00:02:50,220 So let's think about America at the time it was founded. 71 00:02:50,220 --> 00:02:53,340 It wasn't a bunch of colonists who were here 72 00:02:53,340 --> 00:02:54,900 and born here and raised here, 73 00:02:54,940 --> 00:02:57,700 even though colonists had started coming over 74 00:02:57,700 --> 00:03:01,700 almost 200 years before the revolution, 75 00:03:01,700 --> 00:03:03,660 it was a place of immigrants really. 76 00:03:03,660 --> 00:03:05,260 It was a place of people from everywhere. 77 00:03:05,260 --> 00:03:07,780 Remember, we talked about how Thomas Paine 78 00:03:07,780 --> 00:03:09,180 didn't even come to America. 79 00:03:09,180 --> 00:03:10,900 He was a Brit until like two years 80 00:03:10,900 --> 00:03:12,620 before the declaration is signed. 81 00:03:12,620 --> 00:03:14,860 And so America, and there were fans of America, 82 00:03:14,860 --> 00:03:15,940 look at John Locke. 83 00:03:15,940 --> 00:03:20,220 He was a Brit, he never even was an American, 84 00:03:20,220 --> 00:03:23,220 but his ideas sparked this revolution. 85 00:03:23,300 --> 00:03:25,380 And so what does it mean to be an idea? 86 00:03:25,380 --> 00:03:27,340 What does it mean to stand out in that way? 87 00:03:27,340 --> 00:03:30,180 It means that America is like this idea 88 00:03:30,180 --> 00:03:31,860 that brings people together. 89 00:03:31,860 --> 00:03:33,860 It wasn't necessarily that we happened to be 90 00:03:33,860 --> 00:03:36,540 in this particular place on the North American continent. 91 00:03:36,540 --> 00:03:39,060 It was because people wanted to flee where they came from, 92 00:03:39,060 --> 00:03:41,580 to go somewhere where they could live free, 93 00:03:41,580 --> 00:03:44,060 where they could have the right to life liberty 94 00:03:44,060 --> 00:03:45,660 and the pursuit of happiness. 95 00:03:45,660 --> 00:03:48,220 You also have to remember this pursuit of happiness, 96 00:03:48,220 --> 00:03:50,900 and as we've talked about in many episodes before, 97 00:03:50,900 --> 00:03:54,420 that includes property, the original kind of way 98 00:03:54,420 --> 00:03:55,980 you would say it is life liberty and property, 99 00:03:55,980 --> 00:03:58,140 but pursuit of happiness is important here 100 00:03:58,140 --> 00:04:01,660 because this is going to be during a period of enlightenment, 101 00:04:01,660 --> 00:04:04,780 which think of like illumination, of light, of good things. 102 00:04:04,780 --> 00:04:08,180 And for the Americans who followed the John Locke tradition 103 00:04:08,180 --> 00:04:11,140 of this life liberty, natural rights 104 00:04:11,140 --> 00:04:13,500 as a enlightened philosophy, 105 00:04:13,500 --> 00:04:16,380 getting to actually experience a pursuit of happiness 106 00:04:16,380 --> 00:04:20,100 or live in a society that lets you pursue happiness 107 00:04:20,100 --> 00:04:23,260 is crazy because they're coming from history, 108 00:04:23,260 --> 00:04:27,060 from traditions of people living under feudal lords 109 00:04:27,060 --> 00:04:31,500 where their main thing in life is to work and pay their, 110 00:04:31,500 --> 00:04:34,180 you know, feudal fees and to pay their taxes 111 00:04:34,180 --> 00:04:37,420 and to serve their masters, but not in America. 112 00:04:37,420 --> 00:04:39,700 America is a place where you can actually be free 113 00:04:39,700 --> 00:04:41,820 to pursue your own happiness. 114 00:04:41,820 --> 00:04:43,540 This is a huge idea, right? 115 00:04:43,540 --> 00:04:46,100 So these are these core components that made America 116 00:04:46,100 --> 00:04:48,660 what it is and it was those ideas, not proximity, 117 00:04:48,660 --> 00:04:52,660 not geography, that brought people to America. 118 00:04:52,660 --> 00:04:54,500 In fact, Thomas Paine is a really good example of this 119 00:04:54,500 --> 00:04:57,020 because remember he had made friends 120 00:04:57,020 --> 00:04:59,660 with or was an acquaintance of John Wilkes 121 00:04:59,660 --> 00:05:01,500 who we'll talk about and not John Wilkes Booth. 122 00:05:01,500 --> 00:05:04,700 That's the man who shot Abraham Lincoln different. 123 00:05:04,700 --> 00:05:08,620 This is John Wilkes, but he is a member of parliament. 124 00:05:08,620 --> 00:05:10,860 He's actually a really important figure 125 00:05:10,860 --> 00:05:13,300 because he was very intrigued and very supportive 126 00:05:13,300 --> 00:05:15,020 of what the colonists were doing to a point. 127 00:05:15,020 --> 00:05:16,620 We'll get to that in another episode. 128 00:05:16,620 --> 00:05:18,500 But so Thomas Paine comes here 129 00:05:18,500 --> 00:05:22,020 because he is really intrigued by the enlightenment 130 00:05:22,020 --> 00:05:25,420 and these natural laws and the things that America stands for. 131 00:05:25,420 --> 00:05:28,540 So again, people are drawn to an idea and another thing. 132 00:05:28,540 --> 00:05:30,500 And I kind of hinted with this with the feudal stuff 133 00:05:30,500 --> 00:05:32,100 at equality, right? 134 00:05:32,100 --> 00:05:35,260 Because you have to remember not just even a quality 135 00:05:35,260 --> 00:05:36,980 of race, which would come later because slavery 136 00:05:36,980 --> 00:05:39,700 is still in America, even though many, many founders 137 00:05:39,700 --> 00:05:42,700 had big, big concerns with it 138 00:05:42,700 --> 00:05:45,900 and knew that it had to be eradicated eventually 139 00:05:45,900 --> 00:05:47,420 to live in a free society. 140 00:05:47,420 --> 00:05:50,140 But equality of birth and what I mean by that 141 00:05:50,140 --> 00:05:51,820 is everybody is born equal. 142 00:05:51,820 --> 00:05:55,020 It doesn't matter what socioeconomic class you're born to. 143 00:05:55,020 --> 00:05:57,420 It doesn't matter if your dad was just a farmer, 144 00:05:57,420 --> 00:05:58,980 you can be an entrepreneur. 145 00:05:58,980 --> 00:06:01,420 And this idea that everyone is born equal, 146 00:06:01,420 --> 00:06:03,540 that doesn't mean we're all equally talented, 147 00:06:03,540 --> 00:06:05,180 that doesn't mean we're all equally good 148 00:06:05,180 --> 00:06:06,460 at one thing or the other. 149 00:06:06,460 --> 00:06:08,740 But we are born with equal opportunities 150 00:06:08,740 --> 00:06:10,620 to become what we wanted to be. 151 00:06:10,620 --> 00:06:13,580 This is kind of that concept of the American dream. 152 00:06:13,580 --> 00:06:16,020 And when you hear a lot of immigrants talk about 153 00:06:16,020 --> 00:06:19,620 why they came to America today or years ago, 154 00:06:19,620 --> 00:06:22,460 you hear them say it was to get this American dream. 155 00:06:22,460 --> 00:06:24,660 Maybe they were living under oppressive regimes 156 00:06:24,660 --> 00:06:27,020 or places where they didn't have that right. 157 00:06:27,020 --> 00:06:29,980 And so moving to America where they had potential, 158 00:06:29,980 --> 00:06:30,820 that's huge for them. 159 00:06:30,820 --> 00:06:33,540 And this is that idea that's keeping America 160 00:06:33,540 --> 00:06:36,700 so attractive to people and keeping us united. 161 00:06:36,700 --> 00:06:38,860 And self-governance is another huge thing, right? 162 00:06:38,860 --> 00:06:40,620 There had never been a place that's like, 163 00:06:40,620 --> 00:06:43,900 hey, couple of here will let you govern yourself 164 00:06:43,900 --> 00:06:44,740 to a point, right? 165 00:06:44,740 --> 00:06:45,660 There's still gonna be laws. 166 00:06:45,660 --> 00:06:47,100 But when you look at other nations, 167 00:06:47,100 --> 00:06:51,060 this idea of self-governance of do what you want 168 00:06:51,060 --> 00:06:52,300 without hurting other people 169 00:06:52,300 --> 00:06:54,340 and we're only gonna make as few laws as possible. 170 00:06:54,340 --> 00:06:55,500 We're gonna have a limited government. 171 00:06:55,500 --> 00:06:56,500 That is crazy. 172 00:06:56,500 --> 00:06:57,700 That's never heard of. 173 00:06:57,700 --> 00:06:59,260 That's another one of these big ideas. 174 00:06:59,260 --> 00:07:01,860 And again, the other big part is that anyone can join. 175 00:07:01,860 --> 00:07:03,420 You don't have to be born here. 176 00:07:03,420 --> 00:07:05,620 You don't have to be rich. 177 00:07:05,620 --> 00:07:09,340 You can join the club if you believe in the American ideals. 178 00:07:09,340 --> 00:07:11,020 And that's usually why you came there. 179 00:07:11,020 --> 00:07:11,860 It was that freedom. 180 00:07:11,860 --> 00:07:12,860 That's what attracted you. 181 00:07:12,860 --> 00:07:16,020 It wasn't the purple mountain magisties 182 00:07:16,020 --> 00:07:17,980 and amber waves of grain that we talk about, 183 00:07:17,980 --> 00:07:18,940 which are beautiful, right? 184 00:07:18,940 --> 00:07:21,060 America is a beautiful place, 185 00:07:21,060 --> 00:07:22,500 but it's not the place. 186 00:07:22,500 --> 00:07:23,540 It's what it means. 187 00:07:23,540 --> 00:07:25,180 It's what it stands for. 188 00:07:25,180 --> 00:07:27,580 Now here's a question I want you to be contemplating. 189 00:07:27,580 --> 00:07:29,220 Have we always lived up to that? 190 00:07:29,220 --> 00:07:31,860 We're supposed to be this place with these great ideas 191 00:07:31,860 --> 00:07:32,700 that unite people, 192 00:07:32,700 --> 00:07:34,180 but like I just kind of hinted at, 193 00:07:34,180 --> 00:07:36,020 slavery is something that wouldn't be eradicated 194 00:07:36,020 --> 00:07:37,460 till later. 195 00:07:37,460 --> 00:07:39,260 And there are points in time 196 00:07:39,260 --> 00:07:41,300 where we haven't treated people equally. 197 00:07:41,300 --> 00:07:44,700 There's times where we haven't really let people 198 00:07:44,700 --> 00:07:45,540 self-govern. 199 00:07:45,540 --> 00:07:48,300 We've created this bureaucratic admin state 200 00:07:48,300 --> 00:07:49,580 with all these different things 201 00:07:49,580 --> 00:07:52,140 that violate people's ability to solve govern. 202 00:07:52,140 --> 00:07:54,820 So we haven't always been true to that. 203 00:07:54,820 --> 00:07:57,540 But if we forget entirely that the ideals 204 00:07:57,540 --> 00:07:59,260 are what made us a country, 205 00:07:59,260 --> 00:08:00,660 then we're not going to be inspired 206 00:08:00,660 --> 00:08:01,940 to keep government accountable 207 00:08:01,940 --> 00:08:04,940 when they do these things that go against what we stand for. 208 00:08:04,940 --> 00:08:07,860 And that was really big for Professor Wood. 209 00:08:07,860 --> 00:08:09,700 He wanted us to remember that, 210 00:08:09,700 --> 00:08:11,700 to remember that we were built on these ideals 211 00:08:11,700 --> 00:08:13,900 because he wanted us to defend them, 212 00:08:13,900 --> 00:08:14,740 to do what we could. 213 00:08:14,740 --> 00:08:15,580 Maybe that's different. 214 00:08:15,580 --> 00:08:17,180 Maybe it's like him becoming an academic 215 00:08:17,180 --> 00:08:19,220 and teaching generations 216 00:08:19,220 --> 00:08:20,980 of new constitutional scholars 217 00:08:20,980 --> 00:08:23,060 and American founding historians 218 00:08:23,060 --> 00:08:25,940 to keep the truth alive. 219 00:08:25,940 --> 00:08:28,740 Or maybe it's people who work at law firms 220 00:08:28,740 --> 00:08:29,980 and defend people for free 221 00:08:29,980 --> 00:08:31,580 or writers or communicators 222 00:08:31,580 --> 00:08:34,220 who help make these ideas popular. 223 00:08:34,220 --> 00:08:36,140 It's very important to remember 224 00:08:36,140 --> 00:08:38,780 what it is that made this country so great. 225 00:08:38,780 --> 00:08:40,620 History matters so much 226 00:08:40,620 --> 00:08:42,860 because we need to understand the past 227 00:08:42,860 --> 00:08:43,980 to understand the future, 228 00:08:43,980 --> 00:08:47,540 to avoid making the same mistakes people made in the past 229 00:08:47,540 --> 00:08:49,860 and to remember why it's important 230 00:08:49,860 --> 00:08:51,980 to uphold some of these great traditions 231 00:08:51,980 --> 00:08:54,780 and life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness. 232 00:08:54,780 --> 00:08:56,100 That is America. 233 00:08:56,100 --> 00:08:56,980 That is America. 234 00:08:56,980 --> 00:09:00,460 And a place can be captured, it can be destroyed. 235 00:09:00,460 --> 00:09:03,260 But an idea, an idea is bulletproof. 236 00:09:03,260 --> 00:09:04,220 You can't destroy it. 237 00:09:04,220 --> 00:09:06,780 As long as there are people willing to stand up for it, 238 00:09:06,780 --> 00:09:09,220 to encourage people to remember it, 239 00:09:09,220 --> 00:09:11,660 then you can keep those ideas alive. 240 00:09:11,660 --> 00:09:12,580 And it's, you know, again, 241 00:09:12,580 --> 00:09:14,700 so sad to have lost Professor Gordon Wood. 242 00:09:14,700 --> 00:09:16,500 He was such a giant 243 00:09:16,500 --> 00:09:18,860 of the American founding history realm 244 00:09:18,860 --> 00:09:21,420 and of even constitutional foundations. 245 00:09:21,420 --> 00:09:23,460 And it's so sad that we lost him, 246 00:09:23,460 --> 00:09:25,380 but his memory is going to live on 247 00:09:25,380 --> 00:09:27,540 and what he has done in teaching us 248 00:09:27,540 --> 00:09:29,540 about the revolution and the importance of the founding 249 00:09:29,540 --> 00:09:32,620 and America as an idea is just so priceless. 250 00:09:32,620 --> 00:09:34,660 And we would do well to honor his memory 251 00:09:34,660 --> 00:09:35,500 by remembering that. 252 00:09:35,500 --> 00:09:36,780 So I will leave it there. 253 00:09:36,780 --> 00:09:38,620 As always, don't forget to like and subscribe 254 00:09:38,620 --> 00:09:39,460 to the podcast. 255 00:09:39,460 --> 00:09:41,460 And until next time, I will talk to you later.