Me, Pre, and the Birth of Nike

00:00:11
Speaker 1: And we returned to Our American Stories. Up next, the story of how the founders of America drew on inspiration from the classical world to shape a new country, starting with the colonies and the emphasis they put on education. Here to tell the story is Doctor Kenneth Calvert, professor of history at Hillsdale College. Let’s get into the story. Take it away.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: Ken, baked into the bread that are the colonies, the English colonies, are these ideas of virtue and of the nature of citizenship. In the eighteenth century, in particular, following upon the Enlightenment, you have in England very much an emphasis upon this notion of the educated, wealth-educated leader, well-educated governors, and more importantly, particularly in the states like Massachusetts and elsewhere, well-educated citizens. This is going to become more and more part of the culture throughout the colonies, this notion of the well-educated citizen. When you look at the colonies, you have to start with Virginia, and what you see in Virginia is already they are very much using the sources that everybody’s going to use, and that is the classical world, the Greek and Roman world, and also the Biblical ancient past. Where education really is most profound in the colony of Virginia really is in the leadership and the upper-level upper class, the landowners of Virginia. It’s more rooted in England and English society. English leadership, they don’t see this as much among the small landowners, and certainly they don’t allow most of the slaves to be educated. Where the Virginia elite get their source of education really is in the classical world—not only Aristotle and the philosophy of Aristotle, but, you know, with the study of Euclid and geometry. This is where they are rooted. They have a very strong understanding of the virtues, particularly the virtues of the Greek and Roman world, but also the virtues of scripture, the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. These things are very much part of the culture of Virginia. It’s not commonly understood that the Puritans were among the best educated of all the colonials. Many of their leading men studied at Cambridge University in England. Harvard University, the first university in the English College, was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And in fact, Harvard was meant to be a place where men would be trained to be pastors, to be ministers, to be great orators, expositors of scripture. Now, what were they reading? They were certainly reading scripture. And of course, the Puritans are famous for really establishing a culture, establishing a society, a government that was to be rooted in scripture, the Old Testament. And the Old Testament guidelines for government and law, the capital punishments in Massachusetts and in New England, were all rooted in the Old Testament, all there. But they also understood, of course, understood themselves to be members of Christ’s Kingdom of Heaven, and they were an expression of that kingdom. And what they wanted to do was to be that city on a hill, as George Woodfield put it, to be that community or set of communities that best expressed Biblical values. They were the city on the hill, and indeed that was very much a part of what they wanted to be, was to be a great representation of what a Christian community look like for the Christians in England, but also for Christians around the world. Now, the Puritans were also, it’s very important to understand, interested in the Greek and Roman classical world, just as the people in Virginia were. These are important models for them. You do have some outliers within the colonies. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the education system and the approach to education was decidedly classical and Biblical. You have that in urban centers like in Philadelphia. But you have to understand, too, that the Quakers who founded the colony of Pennsylvania had a very, very strong commitment to what they would consider to be practical work and what is often called the illiberal arts or the arts of the craftsmen, of the tradesmen, of the farmer. The Quakers were rooted in the classical world, Greco-Roman world, and the Biblical world, but they also is part of their education, believed very much in the training of young people in the trades, in farming, etc. Not that that wasn’t part of the Puritans or wasn’t part of those in Virginia, but among the Quakers and those in Pennsylvania, much, much more emphasized. Now, what are some of the ideals? What are some of the virtues that they’re most interested in? Beginning with the land, there’s a deep regard for farming, for agriculture, and forgetting your hands dirty and being part of the land. That is very much a part of everybody’s perspective. You find this among the Founders like George Washington; John Adams, very much a farmer; Thomas Jefferson, having a large plantation. And you find that in the Greco-Roman world, in the Greco-Roman literature, you also find that in scripture, the man casting the seed as a story symbolizing the establishment of faith. They’re using this in their own ways in their own particular communities. We find in some of these places that there is a tension that emerges from this, because, for instance, those who are farmers—those who are agrarians in the American context—kind of take the side of the person like Hesiod or Cato the Elder. But then there’s also throughout the colonies a great deal of shipping and overseas business and merchant activity, which is often seen in agrarian societies in the ancient world as being almost akin to prostitution, as kind of not a great way to earn your pay. It’s too easy, all the money that’s coming in with his traded merchant activity. Among the merchants, there is this notion, too, that emerges of citizenship, of good hard work, of earning your pay, of becoming part of this American culture that puts an emphasis upon these kinds of ideals. Perhaps one who is best expressing this is Benjamin Franklin, who will talk a great deal about the joys and the good practices of business, of merchant activity, and what earning money and creating wealth can mean for a person and a community. Beyond that are also the political ideas that we find in classical world—in the classical culture—beginning with the idea among the Israelites—among the Hebrews—that you live without a King, that God is your King; and then they surrender that whole idea in First Samuel 8 and establish themselves a King. That idea of kingship or monarchy being held with a kind of suspicion is certainly present in the colonies. They are all under the King of England, and they’re all under the Parliament. But there is still this notion, which is an English notion but also now an American-English notion, that human government has its limits, and human government should be kept in some sort of not suspicion, but certainly within boundaries: that there is a higher power, that is God. These are a lot of the foundations. Through it all, the idea of virtue, of honesty, of telling the truth, of being a it’s citizen, a good man. All of these things are part of the lessons that they’re learning from particular and specific texts, and really lays the foundation for American society, American culture, and ultimately for the American Revolution.

00:09:16
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Doctor Kenneth Calvert tell the story of the connection between the founding of America and the classical world that, of course, is Greco-Roman, and of course, the Bible—the foundations of American civilization and Western civilization. Actually, the underlying feature, the underlying dimension, of course, is character, and it is virtue. And, including the fact that we learn early here in the stories at Harvard, our great universities were once divinity schools and training up pastors, and now, well, things are so much different. We continue the story of the connection between the founding of America and the classical world here on Our American Stories. And we returned to Our American Stories and to Doctor Kenneth Calvert. Let’s pick up when we last left off on how the classical world related to the founding of America.

00:10:21
Speaker 2: Here’s Ken. As things were becoming more and more difficult and really from the Founders’ perspective, it was George III and Parliament who were changing the rules of the game. They were becoming more intrusive in American life and were becoming more intrusive in the development of dividing up the colonies as royal provinces and becoming more intrusive in everyday life for the colonies. This was not something that the colonies were very happy about, particularly because the government was not following its own rules. So, that is the rule that the colonies—the colonials as Englishmen—have the right to represent themselves to the King and to the Parliament when taxes are created, when laws are passed. And so, this idea of taxation without representation—this whole notion of representation—is important. In none of the counties of England would they have put up with what the government was asking the Americans to put up with, and so the Americans began to basically fight back. It’s important to understand that they had a high degree of respect for the rule of law. There is a description in Thucidities of a revolution, a revolution on an island called Corsirah. And in the Revolution of Corsirah, Throucidities talks about a context in which a revolution is started by Athens against the Corsiren’s’ ruling class, against the allies of Corinth, and this revolution dissolves into absolute anarchy, chaos, bloodshed. And so the Founders, when they’re talking about revolution, what they want to do is to avoid that kind of chaotic, bloody revolution that is going to bring just nothing but suffering. And this is where the American Revolution takes on a tone that is very, very different from the French Revolution that’s going to happen in the late eighteenth century, the Bolshevik Revolution in the twentieth century, the Maoist Revolution in the twentieth century. Those revolutions include a great deal of bloodshed and chaos. The Founders understood from reading their classical literature, particularly through Cynities, that this idea of a revolution is one that has to be taken very, very carefully, because it can easily devolve into just absolute chaos, anarchy. You find this in instances like, for instance, when John Adams defends the soldiers who shot the Americans at the Boston Massacre. Why is he doing that? He’s doing that because the rule of law must be maintained. England might be abusing the American rights. The Americans are not going to do that. The Americans are going to be more true to the traditions of England and of what they had learned from the Greco-Roman world. The Roman Republic ended to a great extent. You find this in Livy, and you find in the descriptions of the end of the Roman Republic that it was really a revolutionary dissolution of the Republic into chaos and bloodshed. That’s what ended the Roman Republic. And so the American Founders looked to models in the Greco-Roman world world to help them establish the philosophy and to a great extent, the theology of the American Revolution, of this throwing off of George III and of Parliament. You know, we have to remember on the theological side. You know, there’s a great argument going on here as to whether or not rebellion against established authority was godly. You look at Romans 11, or you look at the writing of Saint Peter, and there is this idea that you honor the government because God has established the government. There were those who were loyalists who preached that to overthrow the government was a bad thing, right; it was ungodly. But then those who were in favor of the revolution also drew upon the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, that Daniel opposes the rule—the bad rule of bad law from a bad king, Nebuchatenzar—and is righteous for that. And so this argument has to go on among the colonials as well. And what the leaders of the colonies want to do is to give a good, reasonable, rational argument on behalf of this revolution. Now, one place we find this is in the Declaration of Independence. Now, the Declaration of Independence, its most famous phrase is that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Why are they talking about philosophy? Why are they talking about this idea of rights? Well, what they’re wanting to show, before they talk about the abuses of King and Parliament, what they want to show is that there is good rational reason to seek independence from England, and that England, by breaking the rules (which they’re about to show how the rules are broke), by breaking the rules, has really upset not only an idea of a social contract that we might talk about, but also just reasonable government, rational government. I want to focus just for a moment on that word happiness. That word happiness is very important. It’s not some emotional idea. The word happiness is inserted there. It’s an extension of Aristotelian thought, of Epicurean thought, the idea that happiness is not an emotional concept. It is a philosophical idea, and it is the seeking of the highest good and virtue. It is the seeking of excellence. And what they’re saying in using this word happiness is that if a government does not promote happiness among its citizens in a way that helps them to become the best that they can be, to seek that excellence, if that government is not promote that but is standing in the way of that, and that is a bad government. And so the Declaration of Independence itself is rooted in Greek philosophical ideas, Roman philosophical ideas, as it’s heading towards a discussion of the various specific accent that the government has promoted and done in order to bring about this revolution. Another part of the declaration is that it talks about God as a Creator and God giving these rights. So this notion that God has given rights, not the government. And this is a throwback decidedly rooted in biblical ideas that there is a nature to human being, a worthiness of human beings that is rooted in scripture in the Bible. And then they want to affirm that. And of course, the final statements within the Declaration of Independence really focus on this idea that they’re going to stand for one another and support one another through God’s providence. At each one of these men signs the Declaration of Independence, which, frankly, in and of itself is a suicide pact, because if they lose, they are going to all die, especially Washington. He’ll be drawn and quartered.

00:18:22
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Doctor Kenneth Calvert tell the story of our founding in the way that, well, we haven’t told it before: through our values, through classical education, through who we were as people, what we stood for, what we cared about. That story about the Boston Massacre trial. John Adams risked everything to defend those Redcoats. He was not a rich man. He had a burgeoning law practice; it had just started, and, boy, folks just wanted to string those Redcoats up. But there was John Adams saying, “We’re different. We want to live up to the ideals that the British are not living up to rule a law. These guys deserve trial.” He was able to acquit a bunch of them because they were defending themselves from mobs. And then those that shot men in the back roll, they were found guilty of manslaughter, not premeditated murder. The story of the founding of our country and its connection to the classical world and of course the Biblical world—that story continues here on Our American Stories. And we returned to Our American Stories, and the final piece of the story of the founding of the United States as it relates to the classical world is told by Hillsdale Professor of History, Doctor Kenneth Calvert. Let’s pick up when we last left off.

00:19:53
Speaker 2: They all very much respected a man named Cato the Younger. This is the adopted great-grandson of Cato the Elder, who they also loved as an agrarian. But here, Cato the Younger. Cato the Younger stood up to Julius Caesar, who was a tyrant—Julius Caesar who helped to end the Republic. None of the Founding Fathers understood Julius Caesar to be a good guy. Cato the Younger was an old-school Republican (small ‘r’), and what Cato the Younger did was to not only fight against Julius Caesar politically, but also militarily. When the Civil Wars broke out between Caesar and the Senate, with Poppy involved in all of that, Cato the Younger did everything in his abilities to try and stop Julius Caesar. But Julius Caesar ultimately cornered Cato the Younger at Utica in North Africa and defeated his military forces. And so Cato the Younger, he knew that Julius Caesar was going to try to use him as a pawn in what happened at the end of these Civil Wars, and so Cato the Younger commits suicide. Now, when Julius Caesar had his triumphal march through Rome, he put on display on these floats (as they did during triumphs) all of his victories, and in one of them, he showed his conquest over Cato the Younger. Now, the people of Rome loved Julius Caesar, but when it came to his display of Cato the Younger as being defeated, that’s when Julius Caesar began to lose Rome, began to lose the crowd. Because here’s a man who stood up for the principles of the Republic and stood up for what was good in the Roman Republic. And this is why our Founding Fathers loved Cato the Younger. They loved him because he was willing to risk everything for the principles of virtue and of republicanism. He was willing to oppose Julius Caesar to the very end and even commit suicide rather than to give in to Julius Caesar. Now, in 1712, there was a play written about Cato the Younger. It was titled Cato: A Tragedy.