Welcome back to the new thinker. My name is David Barr and with me is always his my good friend Alex. How are you Alex? I love you.
And how are you doing Greg? I'm doing very well Dave. You're looking younger actually. Just sort of strange.
You're slipping down, your hair is still dark. You look boyish. It's very murky. You must be a new filter on my computer screen.
Speaking of some of the external youth, we have Dr. Michael Zukirk on again who has more and bigger than you know like a 25 year old which is really a blessing from the Lord I hope to be in the same way. How are you doing Dr. Zukirk?
Doing well thank you especially with that description absolutely. Yeah and so what's the nice occasion? This is Michael if I'm not as formal as David but we're this is I think you're 15th 16th appearance. I mean looks back through our archives and I realized actually we've never released an episode where you're not on it so I think this is 150 or so but we've had we've had you on a few times to talk about Lincoln and because you you were at the time writing a book on Lincoln or it was out for review and but now the books out and and we ought to promote it now that people can actually buy it.
Absolutely. That people you know waiting six months for it so but we're here to talk about another of Lincoln's speeches Greg. You've told him what's the name of the book? Oh yeah we should talk about the book.
Greg. Yeah you want to sell it? Yeah. What's the name of the book?
A nation so conceived Abraham Lincoln the paradox of democratic sovereignty from University of Kansas Press now out in Hardback anywhere your your your local peddler books pedals books like Amazon. Yeah you can get it. Jeff Bezos is a great book lover you know he and and you hear Hardback academic you know University Press and you think oh what's this gonna run 150 250 and maybe 300 dollars. That was like Alex per you territory.
Yeah no it's quite expensive it's like it's like buying a you know Liberty Kuntash or something but it's not it's not that expensive. University of Kansas has a affordable variable. I picked up the book it's in the 30s range. And I stole the book so it's free.
Yeah but let's just tell more friends. No that's true that's true. Yeah yeah yeah. Michael can't afford his ten thousand dollar day vaccination to keep him youthful unless he gets residuals from the book so yeah don't steal it.
Yeah don't steal it. Every time's a day blood transfusion. So Michael why don't you give us a quick rundown of the book. We've talked about this before I think the approach you take Telegen is quite unique and I think it's worth worth stating for the audience.
Good okay let me say a little bit about it. In a way the my main goal I had two goals in book. One was to attempt to give a kind of sense of the unity of Lincoln's thought. That is people often talk about Lincoln in terms of this speech or this thought but very seldom do you see it all pull together.
I at least made that effort to try to pull it together on the one hand. And on the other I've tried to integrate his actions as a statesman or a political man with his thought. And I think I do that to a greater extent than a lot of books anyway. You know very often people focus on the Lincoln's thought and not so much on his action or alternatively like historians or the bographers they give you a picture of what he did but they don't really go into this stuff very much.
So I've tried to combine both of those. The main thing in the way is the book is captured in the title or in the title plus the subtitle. The title of course is taken from the case of a dress and it really means to capture what is the dominant thought I'd say from almost the very beginning of Lincoln's thinking until pretty much the end of his thinking. That is to say a nation's so conceived that as he had this notion that America was a nation conceived in a certain way and that both its strengths and its weaknesses he arrived from that particular derivation.
And I try to argue that the derivation was a conception to which he's referring there is this thing I'm going to democratic sovereignty. Which is basically a version of the social contract theory that we're all familiar with from intro to political theory one-on-one. And that's the basic idea that Lincoln had but he saw this as a very paradoxical thing. I try to argue with the book that Lincoln's thought is really revolves around that paradox.
On the one hand the social contract theory, natural rights, all of those all those things are the basis of the true and right theory basis of legitimate government. On the other hand though they are themselves the source of how should we say disallutive tendencies within the regime as well. And so interestingly his very first important speech the so-called perpetuation speech on the perpetuation of our political institutions raises that question can this nation what's going to take to perpetuate this regime? In the Gettysburg Address he raises that exact same question we are now engaged in the great civil war testing whether this nation can endure.
Same question 25 years apart and extremely different circumstances but the challenge to the endurance or pepper perpetuation of the union that he sees is indeed a challenge bound up with the idea of democratic sovereignty as I described. And the movement of the book in way is to show how Lincoln develops a series of different analyses of the nature of their challenge over time. So we see just a mention one. So in the first instance the problem of Bob Gould in the perpetuation speech in the second instance Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty which is a gasterized version of the social country.
In the third instance secession which is a kind of dissolving to actually say evil twin to the social country. And then finally the challenge posed by the challenge of the doctrine of equality altogether by the institution of slavery. So I would say all of the challenges all the features of the regime the dangers of regime that Lincoln saw were themselves offshoots of this doctrine of democratic sovereignty which he saw to be the basis of political right and of the goodness of this particular regime. So there is in the nutshell that's pretty much it.
One small point before we talk about what we're actually the specific speeches we're talking about tonight. You mentioned mob rule popular sovereignty and of course the last one slavery. In a way the first two Michael isn't it kind of the case that I mean behind mob rule and behind popular sovereignty still lurks or stands this third biggest issue of slavery. Right?
So what are they mobbing people about? What is popular sovereignty an attempt to respond to a problem right? Isn't it is a fair or no? I think it's partly fair I mean it's pretty fair within the circumstances of Lincoln's own life.
I think that was true in every case. The problem of mob rule was exacerbated by the fact of the background of slavery dispute. But I think Lincoln and I'm yet again saw this as a danger of this kind regime always. So I don't really go into this because I've most written the book before it all happened.
But if you look at this you can famous events of January 6th. Right? Where people were marching through the capital and one of the things they were saying I think so revealing our house our house our house that is to claim this map. We've made this government we're behind this government we have a right to reclaim it if we want to and that's the kind of thing that Lincoln was concerned about with the dangers of mob rule.
So yeah so slavery figured but that's continually so there was a problem with the slavery is an issue. Very good. Very cool. So Alex or Zoox what are we doing tonight?
We're not focusing on the Gaysburg dress or the the perpetuation or the second inaugural or the temperance. What are we focusing on? It's actually one of my favorite speeches of Lincoln in fact. Yeah we're gonna talk about is that is I said S.A.
Laxury is speech on Discover's Inventions. Right? And one of the things that claim you make about this speech and similar speeches that I think was really you only made it toward the end of the essay but I think it's helpful to contextualize why this some of these speeches but this speech in particular might be important is well so like he's not as free in this life right like he's focused on freedom right okay but why is that a good thing? Why is freedom matter what is the end of freedom right?
And this is I think it's such a difficult authority question right because if you look at freedom as sort of freedom from is freedom from any kind of authority and therefore it can slip into the kind of libertarianism right and when you think of freedom as a freedom to write a freedom to cultivate yourself develop certain virtues etc that's that's a very much more robust notion of freedom so a lot I think theoretically hangs in this but you say the following that these speeches on their face so peripheral to Lincoln's central concerns with politics are actually incredibly important for understanding his overall project he fought slavery in the name of freedom and it is here more than anywhere else that he lays out the good of freedom and I think that's that's the question right because especially in today's day and age where it seems like liberalism is constantly under attack and it seems like there's this constant question of what good is this sort of doctrine of freedom right what is the end which it serves how can you continue to justify it you know when Lincoln in these speeches offers an older but but perhaps still current sort of argument so then within I should say and we'll get here eventually but within an enlightenment viewpoint right so it's it's very modern in its region it's very scientifically progressive in its understanding so let me you know the best way to answer I think would be to say just a little bit of background about the speech itself or actually the chapter that we're talking about is actually about two speeches of nakins that were given oh about a year apart from each other one a little bit before his battle against Douglas and the other a little bit after the battle with Douglas they both seem rather peripheral to his what seems to be a central concern which is the issue of slavery and the contests with Douglas over it but as I interpret the speeches anyway I see them as actually quite deeply connected to those what seem to be real central concerns so this first piece on discoveries and inventions is a speech in which he gives a kind of a commitment of the progress of human we would call it probably the development of human technology but he's he's not quite as high-fluent as that so these are discoveries and ventures human beings have over the course of their history discovered an event number of things and the outcome of that process is what he calls it is the discovery of human freedom and the development of certain kind of human faculties and therefore the discovery of human equality and therefore the possibility of democracy and so if we put all these things together what are the goods that come out of this process in this regard Lincoln is a progressive there's like I don't think it's possible to deny that what is the outcome of that well one just most obvious thing human human beings are freed to a large extent from the burdens of just animal like labor okay labor saving devices we let's just say that turns out to be important but much more important really than than those is the is the development of the human mind and as he puts it the emancipation of the mind from darkness and suppression he has a picture of the process or the progress of this technological development in which human beings start from the stone age as he says we start from as if we're we're in a mind and it's not opened and we know we're without knowledge and it's up to human beings to figure out all the things they need to do in order to live a better life and what he tries to do is trace the key developments in that process but in a longer way we discover equally equality because in the earlier days human beings that understood themselves as Rosalie unequal and some as unfree completely unfree and so at the end of the day we have moved to another point where the possibility the possibility I should say not necessity of equality democracy and the emancipation of mind as he says from darkness and suppression and the possibility of living of life as he says at the end of his second speech on which is sort of by agriculture of all things as he says at the end of that speech the combining the combining now for the first time in human history of the possibilities of education that is an awakened mind with labor and he says the task of our time is to figure out how to combine those things with each other but that combination pointing to the development for the blossoming of full human capacities and therefore I think he would agree with the formulation I gave with the blossoming of humanity that's what Lincoln sees to be the good of the liberal order the technological order and this process that he is the chrysotice that he is identified so I mean I'm not kind of not sure that's what that's what I think he's getting at. I was surprised Michael that he didn't or maybe could explain he didn't he doesn't cite any of his great intellectual in the sedence in this essay Benjamin Franklin came to mind both probably for me these totally absent here it seems like Franklin would agree with Lincoln's formulation maybe even somebody like Bacon but but he doesn't he doesn't find a need to bring any of them in. Well yeah that's interesting I mean it raises one of the questions it raises that I think all of us who grab it with Lincoln here to be have to face somehow is what actually did Lincoln know I mean he knew some Benjamin Franklin but I mean I was meant to be how much did he know? Did he know John Locke?
No he sure no John Locke's political philosophy but it's not clear that he knew it from Locke he could have picked it up it was in the air so to speak so that doesn't prove very much he knew Jefferson we know that because he read a lot of Jefferson and I think this vision of the good of liberty is one that Jefferson also pretty much would have shared so he you know so it's a question really in dealing with like how much is it made of that he enjoys or he picks up from the atmosphere and he's able to kind of flesh them out in ways that we could recognize relate to you know serious thinkers in the tradition but you know also I don't think we should underestimate how well he read he doesn't he doesn't wear it in his sleeve he doesn't write to scour the articles things like that but he did live near a pretty good library we know that he he read things from the library and but we don't know exactly what's very well most of the time so you know you made a point about him not using the word technology but using discoveries and just not to say that technology was being timed but there's also something just to be said of a incredibly acute mind encountering a phenomenon and be able to think it through to if not the first principles obviously but at least at a very deep way yeah sure so a couple things one is I'll transition maybe to the one that next happens we had mine but I couldn't help it sort of think of like Prometheus myths of man's founding and how we're sort of left to own devices and so was he aware of these things I'm not trying to ask that that's more a rhetorical question but you mentioned a few time and we can come back to that because I want to talk about the Bible because it seems like a different kind of account of the getting as you point out rightfully than the Bible but you mentioned a couple times that Lincoln is progressive and I definitely see that here but I will say it does strike me as a particular kind of progressivism if it is progressive as insofar as it's it's not we're not bound to progress it does seem historically contingent and although the trajectory does seem to be forward I mean there doesn't seem to be an inevitability to it that you find another progress so hence you know the need for democratic statesmanship but I don't know what to say anything about it I would like to because it seems to me actually that Lincoln was at this moment I think that there's a crossroads moment right if you need an m4 and in his view of what of the faith that humanity faces and it's interesting because this the first the discovery and invention speech was delivered I don't know a few months before his famous house divided speech and the house divided speech raises the issue are we to be a nation all free or nation all slave and he raises that very same issue in both of the other in the two speeches that were part of the chapter that we're talking about today in the in the speech on discoveries and infections he says on the one hand this process has led to a discovery of equality and freedom of equality and freedom of human beings okay the basic a basic fundamental ten of the social contract philosophy that he had he accepted the philosophy that he accepted on the other hand he says we have now moved to a point in which there was a sense that we who possess these modern ideas modern technology and techniques are superior beings than other people in the universe who have not shared the benefit of this history that's gotten us this point in this to the same degree and so he speaks out against a movement that was powerful in his day the so-called young American movement which was the basis or they formulated the project of manifest destiny that is the project of the US to expand to the ocean if not beyond but also the project of America like many western westerns within this act to somehow dominate the non they can fear your other peoples of the world and so they were in favor of or at least not opposed to slavery they were in favor of dominating the natives they were in favor of many cases expanding into the Central America of that American so on and Lincoln said well this is they've drawn the wrong conclusion from what we from where we are now they've drawn the one conclusion and we face the choice as a people as a culture which we were going to go and there's a towards all slavery to offer your choice you know system where some people dominate in our supreme or system there's basically democracy and that was I think the broader chance of the slavery the the contest against slavery was part of the story but it's not all because the this is a bigger issue than just slavery back so and obviously was a small issue so I'm yeah I think this was it was certainly true that you cannot see this as an inevitable process towards these good outcomes in fact I would have we discussed that I mean to discuss his house divided speech but I think at the time that he gave that speech he was more persuaded that the likelihood was in favor of all slavery and in favor of all for them so he said this was a it was a bad moment there were dangerous there were dangerous things and when he was when he tried to oppose it yeah can I tell us to the I mean there's this striking statement with which he opens the speech that I think because there's a strange drawing on biblical sources and the string and white and its progressivism scientific progressivism just like to hear thought because it's if you press it it's almost like his state of nature almost it opens right all creation is a mind and every man a minor well it opens as powerfully as it does a close with like a whimper is a very bizarre bookend it's you're sorry I'm sorry to yeah no and then he goes I says in the beginning the mind was an open to the miners to make it and knowledgeless planet fishes birds beasts and creeping things are not miners but feeders and lodgers merely beavers build houses but they build them in no wise differently or better not they did 5,000 years ago etc etc this idea of man as minor I mean I couldn't help but this is obviously complete projection can help think of stresses idea of a cave but the cave right which is what is the journey is you're digging deeper right in the cave you're mining the cave in a way of when what you should be doing is trying to get out of it and there's this idea of man in the beginning so there's this strange biblical and modern hybrid going going on here and this is going way too far field but it actually just now as I'm talking about reminds me of the second coral ode from Antigone right man is Dana said and part of the reason we're going is we we far the earth and we ride the earth right we dig beneath the surface of things that we are to obey right so there's a kind of tension between in the beginning and the sort of the revelation picture that he's invoking there and then the mining image which is man relying on his own powers so how is he synthesizing this or how is he is this this might be going too far field maybe like it only read Shakespeare and Euclid and then he went about his business but we don't know what he read but it's strange you know in the hands of modernity in the Bible at once and it's confounding to me yeah yeah yeah I think he read out here streaming down the ocean and I'm not sure I call it a synthesis I could worry I mean one of the things we know he did we do is to buy a game of the Bible extremely well I mean that is what that we we have very good reason to know that he knew well I see this actually as a kind of a parody is too strong but re-telling of the Bible and in effect a rejection of the biblical count of the beginnings and you know this raises really an issue that I grappled with quite a lot of work how does Lincoln stand towards the religion and it becomes especially problem at the end of his career in for example the second inaugural address in which the spiritual content of that speech is so powerful and it's difficult to believe this is written by a person household to the Bible or to Christian religion but you know I don't know how well this is in general but so when he was a young man Lincoln was known to be a bit of a scoffer about religion and there's nearly got him in some trouble and he so he learned to kind of pull it in this regard he reminds again a little bit of Benjamin Franklin because these are two guys who I think had very similar experiences in their youth that they were raised in very religious environments and they as youth they came to think that a lot of what they heard around them was nonsense and that they both they both concluded about age eight that they were the smartest persons in town and therefore look down at all those other people we're thinking and so I think Lincoln is young and we know that he was influenced by people like Paine the age of reason and other other of the sort of enlightenment skeptics and so and so he it isn't clear though how much he stuck to that how whether he changed or not so there are two at least one point at one point of view to Lincoln partly because of personal experiences partly because of the war and what he personally suffered in the war that he had a change of heart and change of mind about religion and that by the time he wrote the Second and we can where he actually stood on that because I think the things he says in a speech I think could be explained otherwise but on the other side they it isn't clear that they should be explained otherwise but this particular speech we're talking about predates his presidency predates really the first times we see him speaking in a you know I think apparently heartfelt way about Providence and such like it's interesting that the first I would say the first clear such case was when he left Springfield to travel to Washington for his graduation and there he gave a very big speech about Providence in how he needed to depend upon one could say well that's Lincoln being president you know he said this is a person that was so anyway I so I I at least I believe that the time that this he gave this piece that we're talking about today he was in that skeptical mode I mean he was in a mode which he saw the stories that the Bible told about human beginnings and human and human nature was just not true and so he's looking at alternative version and in this regard I think it is a bit like somebody really not a philosopher's I think do something after I feel similar but what is worth that's what I think we see out there not very good yeah thanks there's a wonderful movie by John Ford at great Scott something I can tell you know I was gonna ruin that beautiful thing that Michael just said so I thought I just should be quiet that's so good and persuasive there's a wonderful movie by John Ford on just this problem John Ford's films are rightly celebrated but nobody really watches the sunshine and I was joined by a film scholar who's who was he's dead now a big Ford aficionado but in that you know the the statesman is in charge of the situation is just trying to reconcile Kentucky after after the war and every time he invokes a guy there's always takes a sort of alcohol or something like that he has a sense that he's somehow in control but he's barely holding on and if he's holding on there might be somebody keeping his hand to the wheel so it might be that once you get involved in practical politics the scoffing but you actually start to pull things off becomes a little difficult yeah I mean that's true and that's true and the second you know you know it can be read very much that way I mean that's a very good way to say it's in exactly that way none of us playing this outcome none of us playing this word to be like this none of us and yet here's the outcome and we need to accept we need you except the authority of it is it's got God produces outcome so we need to accept it you said I think it's a little yeah I think it's a little far field on tangent just on the basis of that since you mentioned that you can't southern man you're ready to have to collect some Georgia so he gets a lot of yank yeah no go ahead great you get to know what I was going to say when we talk about like he says there's nothing civil about this war that's what he keeps saying like the war of northern aggression and the war is not like the ring you on Michael so it's three northerners here hard for grags go go on listen that anyway I should defend my honor against this this great colony but you know that with a gun right but she's a least I'm right luckily I'm not a southern hothead what I was gonna say was in the I see Alex and I read some of this with Diana Shaw a couple summers ago and one of the things that she was arguing that I was somewhat persuaded that was that and I think maybe I took it farther than she did so I don't want to tribute it this to her but that Lincoln actually has a slight critique of say Jefferson and these guys who think that the government can be guided simply by reason and so you see even in the perpetuation address toward the end right but we need to deploy for religion and he's sort of he's recognizing that simply the sort of state of nature rational devotion to this kind of regime doesn't work and so he's infusing already some religious language in there and you see the guys were dressed of course again and then most obviously I suppose in a second inaugural so it's just a recognition like the perpetuation is like what is it that's gonna keep people attached to this regime and it's not actually gonna be cold calculating reason over the long course of its survival we're actually gonna need to supplement rational reasons to be devoted to the United States with something like religious reasons and so I think it's actually critique of the founders in a way and maybe that's she didn't say this I don't think but that it's um they did not recognize how important reverence now of course Madison has his remarks about the reverence of constitution and so forth but like something more like religious devotion is going to be required yeah although you know interestingly it seems to me that while the perpetuation address speaks of a political religion that's a political religion there's nothing to do with religion I mean it's yeah I know it's you're just in the sense of we're going to do our duties here with a kind of you know severe commitment right but he doesn't evoke God as the authority here he doesn't say do it because that's what God wants us to do he says do it because that's what the founders want us to do that's where not on the blood of the lambs where on the blood earth of the revolution I mean in other's there's so many themes of um there's so many themes from the actual biblical religion that he then transmutes and gives a little bit and so I think that is in a way more significant than the fact that he used to be the term really is the significance of the use in that in that particular context I mean I do happen to agree and I think I would agree with Diana on this up to a point in my in a chapter that one of the few chapters we haven't talked about chapter five of the book in which I call the faith of our fathers and I in that chapter I try to talk about how Lincoln comes to make the Declaration of Independence in what he puts in the in the tabernacle is the Declaration of Independence and how he came to do that and how he tried to fix the Declaration and the consciousness in our minds of the American book and that there does have something now to do there's something that like a religious faith it is something like what we experience in good poetry and not just it's not just Jefferson that I definitely and so yeah it is I think in that sense of kind of particularly I think in that in that in that chapter mind is mostly about his famous Peoria address which was his initial reaction to the Kansas-West-West-West and but not only that it's also it also incorporates some of his segments in which he talks about he talks about slavery but in he talks about why he in that chapter I haven't talked about where he does talk about an idea with it why he hates slavery and what the case against slavery is as he understands it and so it's a very important chapter and so he gives us three arguments in this context one argument is this slavery is bad because we in our hearts know that it's bad almost all people realize that slavery is a horrible thing so that's one of this one second he gives a kind of rational argument against a slavery and the thing is the hard-of-mind argument this rational argument I believe is a pretty potently good argument just matter of reason however he then tells the story about some of you know the story of the Reverend Ross you know the story of Reverend Ross who we have slaves and Reverend Ross is wondering whether whether it's right for him to have slaves about this in accord with God's will and so it's like it says what Reverend Ross sits in shade with his gloves on and thinks about this question and Link it says well but will Reverend Ross will Reverend Ross give this the kind of thought that one wants a question of this story and he says because if Reverend Ross decides that these people should not be slaves then he has to take off his gloves he has to step out of the shade and do it again work himself right so this is these are not the conditions under which one can actually say just interestingly make a decision in he I mean the option of this is that while Lincoln he has a he has a representative argument in which he shows that it would be self-contradictory for one to accept the slavery of others but I think he shows with the story of Reverend Ross that worse than self-cometition people don't like this go stepping on about some doing the labor myself that is reason has its limits right and so reason may rule the mind of a philosopher but reason does not rule politically and I think he came to appreciate that too much for your degree than our friend Thomas Jefferson ever he meant yeah I am Jefferson's case is interesting because I mean he's himself a kind of indication of how he wasn't stepping out of the shade very good point either so that's a very good point okay so so I mean I would I would that okay we got to do that we're gonna meet them and I was actually perfect this is this is maybe an abrupt shift but I think drawing on a lot of a lot of what's been said I want to look at some of the remarks you make about Lincoln's critique of manifest destiny this is I think will help us talk about technology and in relation to slavery and therefore to freedom more generally and there's sort of two competing visions of of America I guess that are that are proposed here or or where American ambition can be driven one is manifest destiny the acquisition of more land and here he has in mind John O'Sullivan right who's a very young American movement I just want to read this quote from Lincoln that you include in your chapter he says he is a great friend of humanity and his desire for land is not selfish but merely an impolst extend the area of freedom he is very anxious to fight for the liberation of enslaved nations and colony colonies provided always they have land and have not any liking for his interference as those who have no land and would be glad of help from any quarter he considers they can afford to wait a few hundred years longer but it seems like if you take a kind of acquisitiveness right a typically modern acquisitiveness there's two directions they can go which is why I want more stuff I need more land the other is I want more stuff let me refine my techniques and now the first requires just brute force the second requires actual ingenuity and this is another concept we haven't talked about what you know we'll have so much more but maybe something you might want to touch on is the idea that man is his own invention that you can reflect on on the the equipment intellectual equipment you use and ask whether it's adequate or not and on the deepest level this is thinking about the nature of thinking and how to go about it more methodically let's say so that you can produce more desire outcomes so for that latter things we have manifest destiny on the one hand which I was surprised to see him attack but I understand the spirit in which he is isn't the principle opposed but more as regards the practical sort of aims or the spirit of it but the other side is this idea of thorough cultivation right which is okay you can get more land or you can better use the land you have which on the one hand requires you don't need to go off and do all the stuff but on the other hand it has the added boom that you become more subtle more human in a way right more more fully so I don't know whatever you want to take I found that threat of your argument and your emphasis very interesting so I'd like to hear more yeah well I mean this is related to Lincoln's promotion in this particular in the second speech the agriculture speech promotion of the what he calls thorough agriculture or thorough cultivation which he argues that by his calculation the land that we farm in America the update was productive up at most only half of what it could be producing and that they could be more thorough in the way they cultivated and he in this regard he brought on the scene the steam plow he's very interested in this technology this invention that's being worked on and he thinks there's a promising steam plow out there and so he's he wants to promote it partly because he seems just for the reason Alex that you mentioned is that making more of what we have makes us less needy or less desirous of getting more and taking land from other people there's Lincoln does not seem to have had a sense that we get our destiny our necessity to go coast to coast although you know by his time California already was in the unit so I don't know what we would have done left or the middle of the country on the settle but it's not clear exactly what he had right there but he was trying to throw the country of that kind of expansionist sense that it had that it had and he was also it's interesting because even Jefferson way back begins to talk about an empire liberty that's our speech is a way of bringing liberty to the world and this is a thing that then gets picked up by these young American folks and by Stephen Douglas the young American people were parsons of Douglas in fact and Douglas of them and Douglas one of the one of Douglas's nature themes is that this the spread that America America needs to thrive survive and thrive because it is bringing liberty to the world just I mean in a way that's the same thing that's the same thing but however for me to get rid of slavery and make that happen for Douglas you could do it with slavery however what does seem to not notice is that this liberty he was bringing to the world was at the expense of enslaving a whole race of people and possibly you know the Indians everyone else so that was that was Lincoln's concern that this expansionism is this the expense of others it really was a form of imperialism that's what it really was you can I bring up here the example he uses of of where steam technology arose which was in Egypt and it failed to cultivate further and we'll get speculate why they didn't make steam engines but I think heavily suggested that he's slaves you don't need to right so I think it seems like the problem is is keep expanding keep in slaving and you never have to confront this other possibility it could be a direction that's lost to man for another 2,500 years or whatever it is 6,000 years or whatever it is I mean if you're thinking at the time now it seems like inevitable right it was gonna happen anyways right but the steam engine is one thing and it is developing in his time but the steam engines developing what's the other thing that won't develop what's the other sort of innovation you know that that would be lost because you just rely on brute force and what you rely on brute force and period of slavery all that yeah yeah well I mean this so I mean Lincoln saw I mean one of the things that Lincoln was I think concerned about was that we had gotten to a human humanity had gotten to a certain point in this process that he talks about of invention in this or discovery and invention this and a lot of what had happened in that process was that human beings had made themselves transform themselves from being knowledgeless and low very low conscious beings into something quite different you know which our minds had become and they had become awake it I think that notion of an awakened mind that's what we asked that's very much we isn't right and that what one of the dangers was that if we were able if we westerners or white people or whoever were dominating here are able to an effect going off all the labor of the world onto the onto the lower classes other races backward people so we would lose that those games that we the supremacists had gained over the course of that history and so that was one of the dangers that you have to recognize the equality of all in order to keep advancing maybe I don't yeah but it may take us maybe a question for the end we can cut it I'll break it if you have something more german now there is Michael did I don't I mean I suspect that Lincoln didn't consider all technological progress and unalloyed good can you discern anywhere a limiting principle and is writing with respect to the blossoming of technology now when I was here yeah because now it's popular for us so AI is out of control we're trying to put things back in the box and we're very intermoded problem really seems that technology is outrun our ability to understand it and he might say you know podcast technology might say that would be good I know next week we're having a chat GPT yeah I think Greg is a more substantive point no no it's piggyback on David no let's all piggyback on David he's got a big back I know with the slavery stuff Alex it's a fact I think it's a really good point and it's an interesting point especially in the context of the war because the civil American civil war was like the worst most destructive war of the dead time in human history and partly because of you know the technology destruction was getting a little a little more advanced as well as the technologies and for us the the limits of technology or the dark side of technology is pretty clear things like nuclear weapons in mind you're clear or there even that in AI but you know I don't see maybe I just I don't know Lincoln's materials but I don't see that he grabbed with that problem just on that same point about just as they're limiting as they're limiting principle I was really I really enjoyed the way that you draw out that Lincoln thinks man can kind of reinvent himself or man is his own invention and I sort of wondered if there was a limiting principle there to and I'll ask two kinds of questions I mean I wondered if I was sort of seeing is there an anticipation in this in these two speeches that perhaps we could get to a point where brute force is no longer necessary good technology relieve us of the curse of labor for example and and are there we also become humans become to recognize human equality are there are there I mean so this does sound super progressive right the human nature say with me changes over time like we and so can we actually change ourselves into something far superior to what our answer granted that we have we must recognize of course the only reason we're able to progress is because of the things that they did we're not actually better than them but we can build on what they did to make ourselves better right there yeah yeah I think it's exactly the view he was trying to defend him in this speech I mean he his views on progress technology you and remaking things like that are not entirely these two speeches so there is another speech the one on the temperance address which is the first place where he puts forward a kind of progressive account of things they're talking about reform movements and the spread of human human freedom but he in that place he emphasizes there are limits to human nature human nature is not going to change you know human beings always will have a selfish side to them always you know the dark side will always be there so you don't think he's ever quite as much we say utopian as he might he might in some of these places sound I try the conclusion to the book to try to pull together these two major discussions of the progressive dimension of Lincoln and argue that his position has to be one of a kind of moderate or temperate progressism that he might recognize that there are lots of enterprises on which human beings are setting out that cannot succeed and and that you know better heads would have to kind of pull them back pull back the rings a little bit but you know it isn't quite clear how well they works out I mean one of the one of the I guess one of the downsides of the fact that Lincoln was a thinker obviously but he was a statesman political actor in a particular context and that context did put boundaries around things he was actually pursuing or thinking about it in detail or at least talking about I mean he wasn't like Gary Dye you could have an opinion about every possible subject but take up I mean he just didn't have time the occasion of the lack of seriousness and so on to do that hey I've heard from a very trustworthy source that they're not is a post-modern Plato I wonder if you're trying to get the nice I'll say we'll now say about Lincoln and the science is you know the context of the speech is an agricultural bear where people get together and they share their inventions which is a very Cartesian understanding of scientific product which is you got to get together and that out of generosity today you give your which is French for generosity for David you have your inventions and discoveries to one another right and that's that's the sort of well it's very different from the lock in understanding which I think is more predominant today which is you know that's patented that's proprietary I'll show you the stuff I made from it but you don't you're not gonna figure out how I how I do it right and that creates and that creates a whole different relationship between between knowledge and consumer versus producer economics right whereas in the former knowledge is is equally accessible and therefore the consumer and producer have access to it in the latter for all you know you're buying something from snake oil sales right that's always the problem of the light I mean I hate to I hate to puncture this story but he does say that to go vote is anonymous I don't say so well but it is affected Lincoln is the only president to ever hold the patent that's right did he do something with a boat over something about a boat yeah and he also says and this is in the lecture in every lecture he actually includes writing printing discovery America and the introduction of patent laws among the greatest inventions that was it's absolutely correct if I remember correctly the whole speech ends with the with the expression with patent watch that's all you're ending it's just like but it has it's like a patent says I'm the only one who can use this information if something's proprietary I'm the only one who gets to know it right profit from it yeah yeah so there's there's something okay anyways there's no but I think but the the speech ends with I wish I put this in the chamber the speech ends with patent laws because patent was are the perfection of the art of invention right they are the invention that sparks invention yes and that's why he ends there it seems like a weird ending doesn't it's very like what and that's what you're getting at that David with the whimper at the end yeah yeah I think I think actually they have this interesting this interesting point it's the it's the perfection of the art of invention that he talks about so something like a legal legal spur to reflection or something like that yeah I mean it's a it gives it incentives to teach about inventing things that will be a huge doctor people and it is in the Constitution for us right this is what Congress's duties is to grant patents precisely for this reason interestingly enough Franklin never decided to patent any of his invention that's true yeah yeah yeah yeah he ends another posse and David wears patents leather pants all the time well one of Franklin Street invented right there you have to see how very does dance the art book yeah I think that's a good note to end on David and in patent leather pants yes yes we could which we should post for this episode David went to a daddy daughter dance and you wore pink leather pants did you know is it true no that is not true they're they were salmon colored but the photograph the photo makes it seem bizarre but only analytics had this reaction to my pants well it was only after you told me you kept going to the fathers you don't know asking if you could have this dance with their so we have before we end Greg do you have the title of Michaels new book and the can't press etc of course I say we definitely have to hawk the wares wherever you're you can find your local book monger the book is called a nation so conceived Abraham Lincoln and the paradox of democratic sovereignty with university press can to so we're not in by it we should not do it so every single chapter because then really folks won't have reason to buy it so we'll have to stop we'll have one chapter out so yeah a nation so conceived it says available on Amazon it's only about $34 $35 which is a for a hardback as Alex mentioned so you should run out and buy it so thanks for thanks for being here once again Michael it's always a treat you sort of it really is a masterclass you do it with this David was texting on the side saying it's so obvious and clear how great of a teacher you must be because it's just you're so good at this so thanks again and we'll see you next time on the new thing or don't forget to like rate subscribe all that good stuff don't eat hard words Michael I feel like Greg of course sorry it's been great being here I'm a working on both the man and we'll be both get together about that well how many please that you got five ten fifteen twenty like we'll do we'll do as many as you want so what I don't do so her accent oh yeah all right the law thanks for you there let's go thank you I care