Welcome back to the new thingery and I'm David Barn with me. It's always this how it's pretty hard to know. Doing well David, how are you? I'm well.
How are you Greg? I'm feeling great Dave. How are you doing? Why the delayed response?
Well because I mean I should tell the folks at home about the domestic situation for a barn or no. What if one member is so many? One of the members of the company was all positive. Yeah the kids got to say okay.
For COVID. I also know how to use. No, no, no, no. I wanted to borrow a house that's COVID.
No. No, it's good news. Congratulations. It's because we have kids I worry for them.
Anybody that has COVID you worry about since we have a baby. It's like sh**. You know. Sure.
Can I bring some good news in? New thing. We broke into the arts of top podcasts. In Estonia?
No. In Finland. Our assembly women episode was number 46 in education in Finland. We're number 240 something.
We have a lot of news in podcast. And we have a lot of news in Finnish. Right? Yeah we have listeners in Paraguay.
Right? We have our blood. I'm glad you're here. Your host goes to my family members of my family members of my nice in the podcast too.
Which is why we have Paraguayan listeners. Listener singular day. We have one listener in Paraguay. Yeah, this is one family member.
I sense one family member. Who do we have? We have one. You guys are working on that gaggle of ladies talking over each other.
What's going on tonight? Well it's a night thanks to the Jack Miller Center tonight. If you remember folks at home might remember that now it's night but not David. We're sent to the Jack Miller Center Conference back in the beginning of August.
And we arranged for course in episodes. They made some connections for us. And so tonight we have Nicholas Kollar who is the Elizabeth Morris of Blitzman chair in Global Science at Linfield University in Mackinzel, Oregon. He's going to speak with us about Frederick Douglass.
We're actually using I'm actually reading selections from is the total thought of Frederick Douglass. Some sort of the essential Douglas writing speeches with Hackett Publishing in 2016. He's also the author of the total thought of Frederick Douglass in pursuit of America and Larry. That's with NYU Press.
And we also would love to have it back on discuss his most recent book. The fires upon us James Baldwin William is ugly and debate over race in America. But tonight. Oh really?
I remember watching that debate when they I think on Amazon Prime Nick you'll have to let me know. You can watch all of the old Buckley firing lines. And there are a few of them which are hilarious because the ball I mean the the bottom one is not hilarious. It's just really it's just really well done.
But he gets taken to task like it's not Chomsky it's a Huey P Newton really does a good one. Larry he asks him a funny question if during the revolution which side would you be on. Right. Anyway I just want to say the first thing first thing you knew in the aspect of the after a buck introduces Newton.
Yeah Newton says you know my friend was asking me Mr. Buckley if you've been on in America right away turn the table right away you we going to get up. Yeah and their debate the Buckley Baldwin debates over across the pond right was that at Oxford was before that famous debating society or it's a Cambridge and the Cambridge students what the central job they've given me in the world is to make sure that I recommend people who say it was at Oxford and so shame on you it was a Cambridge. Well Brits all Brits are kind of the I heard Buckley told everybody was Oxford that's what the confusion.
Sorry Greg I interrupted so what are we chatting about? That's okay. Well tonight we're lucky enough to have Nick whom Alex and I had the pleasure of hearing talk about some selections from Frederick Douglass's many writings he's going to talk to us about well I guess sort of education Douglass's understanding of civil rights Douglass's Douglas on sort of violence maybe or self assertion of rights we did a series of his pieces Douglas pieces that is with Nick down in Atlanta some which I read before and some which was new to me so is it right why I said get never some selections from one of his biographies which is repeated in a couple of your biographies his account of a fight that he has with Cubby when he's still a slave and sort of the role that that fight plays in his freedom Douglas's comments on the fugitive law and a couple of other pieces that Nicholas has written actually so he says he pieces in preparation for tonight so and can I ask that Nick if we can is it okay to call you Nick or do you want Nick? Oh Nick is fine yeah okay yeah so one thing I've always like many great Americans like Douglas is claimed by the left and the right so I would really be curious if maybe toward the end of our discussion if you could lay out a little bit of kind of how each side claims him very differences or what they really glom on to because I know that he's he's a darling and conservative circles and definitely circles on the left so that was just a small question absolutely.
Yeah we should talk about that question at the end of Nick so let's start uh I forget you know it's on the right show we'll get there so why don't we just start with how you got interested in Douglas I mean you've it's fair to say I mean you've written this book on you've written this book on Buckley of Alderman but I mean all of your work you run an institute right at your university and all of its devoted to Douglas you seem must have had a moment of captivation and you spoke once when we were at the JMC about your attempt to systematize Douglas and all this stuff so there seems to be a real fondness and a deep connection that speaks to something like version or real sort of captivation so why don't you speak about that because I imagine there's something there that's quite good and interesting for our listeners. Yeah well thanks guys for having me I'm excited to chat with you about for Douglas yeah and it's you know Douglas and I go way back I read Douglas you know just sort of bits and pieces of Douglas you know in high school and when I was an undergraduate and I think as I became more interested in political philosophy I was sort of thinking about Douglas in a slightly different way than he's usually thought about as I engage Douglas both in his autobiographies and the more I read of his speeches and essays I was really taken with the ways in which he was doing political theory and kind of a different key right he's not a systematic political theory he doesn't have a treatise we can look to to sort of lay out his theory of government and riots and so on and so forth but taking together is nearly six decades in public life he really has a fairly coherent political philosophy he's really addressing the sorts of questions that we care about in political philosophy and so as I was you know kind of being seduced by political theory in graduate school I studied a little bit as an undergrad but I went to grad school to do law and court stuff do constitutional law constitutional theory and it was in graduate school that I was really introduced to American political thought in a serious way for the first time and as I began studying American political thought Douglas was sort of back in my mind somebody who I wanted to get to know better and as soon as I got an opportunity to do that during my first year of graduate school I was hooked and I just continued to work on Douglas and eventually came to the idea of writing a dissertation on Douglas sort of thinking about him using kind of a framework of political theory and yeah here we are all these years later and I'm still still talking about Douglas. Nick where did you go to graduate school and with whom did you study who turns you on really or who sort of maybe exposed you to that there was something deep and profound going on in Frederick Douglas's thought. Yeah so I'm a late bloomer so I'm a model of bawdersanichler University just had a little a nice little profile about me and one of my friends wrote to me and said the headline of this should have been Nick are we allowed to cuss on the new thinkery yeah so one of my buddies said the headline of this story that the Santa Clara should have been Nick was a real f*** up as an undergraduate which is part of the theme and I sort of led the reporter down this road which is that I was really a late bloomer as an undergraduate and I was fortunate enough to be at a small university where my blooming you know as people noticed that I was like as a freshman grew to my senior year I was kind of getting more engaged intellectually and I was really really quite interested in questions of theories that just review constitutional theory and so I went to USC with the intention of studying that stuff which is a really strong area at USC at the time and so I sort of stumbled into graduate school by way of my biseur saying hey do you thought about graduate school and I went oh but not really to pursuing that and then once I was there just through a series of accidents I ended up working with a guy named Mark Kahn that's K-A-N Mark says his name Kahn and he was the kind of last political theorist standing at USC so I think I make a claim that I may be the last maybe the last political theory PhD that's to come out of USC because political theory kind of it sort of died in the years when I was there and then it's now kind of coming back to life a little bit but yeah so Mark was somebody studying American political thought really Mark most of Mark's work was kind of founding era through early early 19th century but I did a summer I was independent study with Mark and two other students and I just sat around with Mark and studied American political thought my first summer and I was really interested I went about it backwards we were studying like kind of all these classic interpretations of American political thought you know Louis Hartson, PoCog, and Gordon Wood, and David Greenstone, and John Patrick Higgins all these really cool books I hadn't really read the primary sources very well yes and so I was sort of reading I was doing it backwards and I said to Mark you know I said where are the abolitionists the abolitionists they're not really you know they're not well represented here in any of these books and so that kind of got me started down this road thinking about abolitionist political thought and Mark as a good advisor does you need to narrow your scope you can't just write about abolitionist political theory but want you to actually leave at some point next so why don't you narrow your scope to something manageable and so I knew the Douglas of somebody I wanted to think more about it and so I ended up you know really focusing on Douglas and then just kind of left the long court thing and still a secondary interest of mine but I really became an American political thought guy in those days.
It was Santa Clara Jesuit University was there any social justice stuff in your background I have a good buddy that went there yeah I don't know if it's falling away from it or if there's still no it is that's one thing I love most about Santa Clara is I and it is you know going back to like a really young age I was really interested in kind of ethical questions political questions and Santa Clara is they have ethics in blank you know name the topic they have about a thousand ethics forces they're everyone's required to take an ethics force in order to graduate and so I took every ethics class that was also the classes and even when I was kind of not really intellectually engaged I love my ethics classes so I was kind of like a you know I was a philosophy of political science that was major in Santa Clara I had the political science major basically done and I like to tell people that I added the philosophy major to make sure I could do the job when I graduated and so I love the ethics stuff and that was definitely part of I think you know I was a little fierce all-wise didn't realize it before we get into it I think we should take a second to talk about today's sponsored are you tired of being Kakos Kysgroves would you like to be Callus Kakathos would you like to even know what that means you have no idea do you well you should just go to ancient language institute ancient language dot com there you can learn to read listen to even speak an ancient language they have offering offerings in land ancient greek both coin a and anach as well as biblical Hebrew a li or ali as I like to call it given my version roots dispenses with long vote cameras and grammar charts instead they get you reading and speaking on day one registration for spring term is open until December 18th and classes start in early January they have live online courses with flexible schedules and innovative interactive curriculum and fun readings you'll be dropping tithames and callos and anis and no time on top of that they have a happiness guarantee do you lack eudaimonia or you'll get some from this and if you don't they'll give you a full refund after the first class if you decide it's not for you get your language on go to ancient language dot com and hey this is their second time advertising with us so support the people who support the show and now back to the conversation we're already having this was not recorded separately I swear so so I have a before we delve into the heart like I'm eating tatas of what we're gonna talk about tonight you know my mom listens right so the folks at home most people probably know who Frederick Douglass is but if you had to give a sort of quick intro to who Frederick Douglass was maybe people have heard the name they're not quite sure what are the important things to know about Frederick Douglass yes so Frederick Douglass I was born I'm Maryland's Houston Shore and he was born in the slavery and Douglas spends the first 20 years of his life as a slave in 1818 to 1838 and I always you know I think it's important for people to know and that they can read plenty about this there's three autobiographies and so he describes what life was like you know in those years of what when he was a slave bolt as a kind of plantation slave and is what he called the city slave when he spent some time in Baltimore as a kid and one of the things that's right when you look at Douglass you know Douglass in those early years you know he's just trying to survive he was kind of at least when he looks back at it he was really doing political theory in those years and slave trying to understand what it meant to be a slave why he was a slave what it might take to be free and so he spends those first 20 years in slavery and then in 1838 he escapes actually the anniversary of his escape was September 3rd so I always I have this movement that I've started which I think would be called Annemarie day Annemarie I saw on Twitter yeah yeah I saw you that's good yeah which is the last couple years I've been thinking about you know Annemarie right Annemarie is a free black woman who really you know helps Douglass escape from slavery in 1838 so I do somebody who's a lesser know but becomes his wife and she's an American here to be sure and I was this game so within three years he's he ends up being kind of quote unquote discovered by the abolitionist movement William Lloyd Garrison meets Douglass at the slavery convention on the island and tuck it and Douglass is you know maybe we'll talk about this Douglass is somebody who is prepared for this moment right he's asked this anti-slavery convention to speak given in proper speech on his experiences as a slave and he delivers you know a stirring oration he was ready for that moment he had been thinking preparing for that moment really his whole life and from that moment forward 1841 through the end of his life in 1895 he is on the road he is speaking he is writing he is using his voice in his penance his weapon and he's one of the most important social reformers of the 19th century one thing I was reading which I recommend to everybody listening an article you wrote from the review of politics and which was a kind of overview of the different sorts of arguments that Douglass made on behalf of some of them are very counterintuitive very interesting and we have a systematizing stuff is because it struck me that you you would you've come to understand Douglass as the way he put it as a philosophic statesman right and it you know looking back at the narrative which I teach every semester through that lens it does seem like he's engaged in oratory but not oratory of a mere aim of persuasive but persuasion but oratory intended to bring people back to their sort of sounding principles and guide them to the morally sort of high road and arguments being presented contextually and it makes so much sense of his early discussions with the white kids in Baltimore as well as the way in which he kind of pivots throughout his career so I want to talk about his thoughts on natural rights and arguments he makes but I think it would be interesting if you could talk a little bit about how he saw his role in the public sphere and in what way his arguments should be read context dependent but not for that reason historicized or something there's sort of a guide in how to lead through persuasive speech and if I could just ask a quick follow up sorry Alex uh I would be curious if you could shed a light on how his speech is uh how was he as an orator just just simply I mean because Churchill's speeches they read wonderfully but when you hear with his little voice I mean it's like it doesn't match the dude in my opinion and so I don't really respect or Douglas uh did he really captivated on it yeah yeah so maybe I'll take that that one first and then talk about you know the substance of the speeches or you know kind of the to Allison's question um yeah by all accounts right unfortunately I mean I'm fortunate I don't have a recording of Douglas but by all accounts and Douglas was probably about 6 foot 2 over 200 pounds and extraordinarily good shape you go to the better Douglas National Store excited you see they actually have his weights you know you can see his weights that uh I don't know if they're the original but they're apparently you know he was in there pumping iron and part of the idea was that the idea was that Douglas thought there was a really important performative dimension to what he was doing right he's he is in his in his very being he is an argument against slavery right he's standing there uh before these audiences and this extraordinarily impressive really cared about how he looked how he sounded he had this you know very impressive you know baritone voice from what we understand and um and he could just yeah he could absolutely captivate an audience and he was somebody who also you know was able to incorporate quite a bit of humor he would do you know sort of imitations southern preachers that was kind of one of his go-to impersonations he would do so yeah by all accounts he was an extraordinarily powerful public speaker um and you know as you guys know certainly difficult rhetorical situations right I mean often he was he had a very hostile audience even though you know abolitionist of his sword I mean he was a radical abolition so even when he had a somewhat friendly audience there were often people in the audience who were talking too far one way or another so I mean going back to Alex's question yeah I mean I think this is one of the really fascinating things about about Douglas I would say I was initially drawn in two and this is such a graduate student story and you probably have you know some grad students who listened to this this wonderful show is that I was really upset I was like 20 years late to like a liberal communitarian debate you know I was really interested in like liberalism and its critics and not just you know some of the aftermath that's a liberal democracy all that stuff this is like the early early 2000s when I was in grad school and I was I was sort of like interested in the liberal tradition and kind of like defending liberal tradition against its critics and one of the things that struck me about Douglas uh and sort of the question that I found most fascinating was that Douglas on the one hand was clearly somebody who was devoted deeply to some basic liberal principles right natural rights, liberty, these sorts of things are at the center of his political philosophy but he's confronted with you know this big problem which is that you know he has to figure out how to convince a free society a somewhat free society that you know he's to convince free people that they ought to care about those who are not free right and so he has to kind of go beyond a basic liberal idea that yes you know individual rights ought to be protected and we have to respect and the other people other people's individual rights because it's kind of big philosophical questions how do we convince other people that they should care about the rights of those who are being rights who are being violent people are having their rights violated and so that was a kind of big philosophical question interesting is how he worked that out philosophically and then to get out of the question rhetorically right so how when Douglas was standing there before an audience in the 1850s as he tried to convince many people in the audience who are at least somewhat sympathetic to him or reading him or somewhat sympathetic to him that they need to go from a kind of moderate anti-slavery position to a radical abolitionist position it's not enough to just say you know slavery is wrong but I don't know what to do about it. Douglas wants to convince his audiences that they have an obligation to use all moral and political means to bring about its end so what I do in that review of politics piece is I try to think through and it kind of somewhat fills off the way like what are the major categories of arguing that Douglas is using and how much of this is kind of philosophy and how much of it is a kind of different categories of rhetoric that he's using to advance you know a particular political case. And that is I know Greg wanted to jump in but just that point that you made I think this is a really important point about Douglas himself being an argument against slavery you touched on that in the last argument which was somehow to persuade people that they should be free you had to appear free right and powerful to not just appear eloquent or walking about to your business but seem to have the power to achieve and maintain your own freedom in addition and that is I think a very interesting point that you're making that I think is also makes sense of what he's doing as author right he's getting a testament about about his own story that is I think in many ways an account of what it means to your and for freedom and to follow through the steps that you need to take to get there and it's hard to read that and not admire him and say if there's another man just like him who dies because he doesn't have the right circumstances and doesn't make it the way that he does that's a tragedy right you just can't deny it looking at it and hearing his tail. Yeah yeah Greg you want to jump in?
I mean if you have something to say there I just just a couple of small points one is that I talked of course on rhetoric last fall I taught Douglas for years but in the fall was first time I taught him in a rhetoric class and it's amazing I mean he's very I mean I assume intentionally sort of employing a wide variety of class or 12 devices and then you're reminded of horses you as we all know that one of the handful of books that he had access to as a kid is that Columbia and order right so I mean he must have a moving voice he must have practiced his cadence but he also did things like repetition at the end at the beginning you know switching you know ava patterns that sort of thing right like figuring out how to raise your total questions in the answer and it's just the other thing you mentioned that sort of stuck with me there was that how you came to this as sometimes interested in liberalism and there seems to be this I don't know this uneasy relationship between rhetoric and liberalism on the one hand we only seem to find rhetoric in democracies or liberal regimes on the other hand it seems like if you can simply argue in the public sphere your position we don't need rhetoric or something like this and so I really like the way you said it that the Douglas seemed to recognize the need for persuasion not just simply rational arguments and how he saw himself as a living embodiment of it my last point before I let you sort of move on was when I read his narrative I don't know if you guys all had the same feeling but when I teach it it seems to have the same effect on my students I feel like I'm drawn to put myself in his position like he's making me feel the things that he felt and you know Alice did you get help and admire him but I mean it gets my spirit in this going when I read this right like I get angry and I feel my own sense of manhood being called into question and I sort of impressed with his ability to do these things I mean I guess there wasn't really a lot of questions much just because this is a podcast in the therapy session you know yeah you're having a good transfer paper manliness no I agree and I'll add to that the brutal detail and factuality of his description of vicious acts of violence right really puts him in there it's just just clear vivid unembellished here's yeah the beating of uh ant Hester and then when was it Demby the name of the guy that shot in river and yeah all those yeah oh then when he overtakes when he fights against his kovie or kovie yeah you're rooting for Hampton I was rooting for Hampton to seriously harm the guy but then he's like I just held him at bay and parried the blows and stuff and you're like no no no laughter there's a really gripping yeah yeah no I think that's all that's all true and I think that yeah I think part of what Douglas does you know really beautifully in his oratory and his writing is you know he's sometimes without saying it explicitly right the autobiography is writing about himself you know himself not just way and often in a you know very intense political context in which he's trying to you know sort of move his audience politically but yeah I mean the oratory as well and I'm not I'm certainly not an expert in and you know rhetorical structures like that but yeah he certainly had a way to to to move an audience right to draw on this is one of those things it's really fascinating about his own recollections of his early careers as an order is that you know he tells the story of being on the abolitionist lecture circuit with these like really patronizing paternalistic white abolitionists right who you know the line he gives if they say to him um Frederick give us the facts we'll take care of the philosophy and Douglas is like you know fuck you right I'm saying you know it's a basically I have every right to stand up here and I will give the facts right but this is the point getting back to Alex's original question like Douglas is really interested in not just narrating not just chronicling these things that he witnessed as a slave or things he experienced in his own person but to reflect on them in a really deep and serious way and so he's really doing philosophy you know in a way that I think is really profound that's what drew me most is sort of like when I kept getting that question of sort of why Douglas right why Douglas for me from the early days through today is that there's something about the way that everything you just all describe the different ways and what speaks to you in the autobiographies that to me is the most you know that was the compelling book for me in terms of thinking about Douglas's political theories he's drawing us in in a not only a visceral way in an emotional way that gets us angry at someone but he's using that giving us in and out in that space and then and then asking us to think through the implications of what he's just right yeah so that let's get to the substance of it you know what are Douglas's useful software the one of the things you things you brought up in both of the pieces that I read was how much this episode of Covey helped form his thinking and not just thinking in well I ought to be free but but he's thinking in what it means to have a doctrine of natural rights right and in a way right his writing his his life story you know multiple times is meant to walk you through the experiences that lead up to the ideas so the oratory is deeply related to his own discovery of what he thinks is the truth of justice but also how he leads you to that so where's he trying to bring us and Greg I think wants to jump in here well I just want Nick so Alex Alex I want you to raise how he how his theory emerges out of this incident so maybe useful for folks to explain what this incident is with Covey and then explain how it formed his thinking is it this is for what is worth this is one of my favorite passages in the entire book yeah yeah absolutely yeah so that the fight with that with Edward Covey is something that yeah Douglas talks about in all of his autobiographies it sort of gets a grows his account of it grows by I think it's like 12 pages in the second autobiography by bondage in my freedom which is significant and we'll get to something in a second but yeah the back story there is Douglas's you know how this very interesting background in which that you learn to read that kind of basic way from this this one so he all when he was just a kid living in Baltimore so he all did not been a slave holder before he was teaching to read tried to treat him almost as if he's one of his one of her own children and tell her husband shuts it down says he will ruin him as a slave if you teach him to read and Douglas says that hearing his master say do not teach him to read Douglas says that was the first anti-slavery speech I ever heard right he learned something about the relationship between education emancipation and then he came to turn it as his kid as his young kid to continue his education whatever way he could figure out how he could build on his basic reading this basic reading comprehension he had and so he does comes up with the genius ways to kind of advance his education through you know his teenage years he's really you know he's reading as much as he can whenever he can he acquires the Columbia and order of which earlier is speech a great historic speeches he has a bible he can teach and kind of Sunday school so to speak with other slaves and he says by the time he's a teenager he's the only slave in the area who is who's literate and so he's kind of looked to his like as like a 16 year old as this kind of really special figure in the community of black and he said of course given this knowledge given the fact that he's able to speak so well he's able to read so well he's often calling his master out on his you know his cruelty and his injustice and justice that he witnesses and his master is fed up with him by the time he's a teenager so he sends him to live he hires him out as they say to a farmer named Edward Covey who was known in the area as a slave breaker so Covey lived this place called Mount Misery and Covey himself wasn't particularly wealthy slave holder I think he only had one or two slaves of his own but he had all these slaves that were hired up to him on his farm and what the idea was you send your slave you send your bad slaves to and he will break their will right he will make them he will make them good he will make them good slaves and so Douglas is subjected to Covey's brutality over I think it's something like 18 months or something like that prior to several months I guess the numbers six months he's he's in and he reaches the lowest point it's like middle of the summer he says I was finally reduced to a brute and then from there I think it's within a few weeks or something he really just turns it around yeah exactly exactly so so yes six months is right and so he's there for six months subjected to Covey's brutality he's probably brutalized other slaves and Douglas decides that he can't take anymore he's gonna escape not escape it's a freedom but escape back to his master to tell his master you know this is not okay what's happening at Covey's farm and he he describes in in the autobiography trying to convince his master by way of reason by way of the fields was master's religion um but the fields was master's self-interest you know he's destroying your property as a kind of argument Douglas makes his master is unwilling to listen Douglas is sort of trying to figure out whether or not he should just then try to escape to freedom or if he should go back to Mount Misery now that his master is rejected all of his arguments and he describes his kind of harrowing night in the woods where he's sort of in the woods you know trying to figure out what to do um it's it's a you know it's a very fascinating couple of chapters and out of August where it strives to kind of you know essentially being suicidal and he says I think I had my fill of life and but then decides he gets he runs into this slave named Sandia his wife and you know Sandia kind of in his own funny way it kind of helps Douglas you know steal himself to go back and and confront Covey and Douglas has his epic what he describes the two-hour fight with Edward Covey Covey attacks him not right away he doesn't attack him he returns back to Mount Misery on a Sunday and Covey wouldn't try to attack him on the Sabbath so he waits till Monday he tells him Douglas is gentleman right exactly and so they have this epic you know two-hour fight where you know it's very interesting as David said earlier Douglas says he mostly tried to just defend himself against Covey although Douglas has a pretty capacious understanding of what capacious maneuvers are in a fight and and there's other people brought it Covey tries to get out of the help of others slaves to help him and sort of another other white folks to help him and Douglas spends them all off and and and eventually he defeats Covey Covey he sort of took out he wouldn't admit it but he defeats Covey and Covey never lays hand on him for the rest of the time he's there about misery nor does he report Douglas to anybody else and Douglas has this really I think in the second autobiography especially this extensive reflection on what that meant to him that encounter yeah let's get Greg up it I was just gonna ask if you mind if I read that passage or I think I was I was I was I was I was I was I was I was I was I was a page 18 and the essential Douglas bottom of the page this is right after his fight with Covey Douglas as well my dear reader this battle with Mr. Covey undignified as it was and as I fear my narration of it is was the turning point in my quote unquote life as a slave it rekindled in my breast the smoldering embers of liberty it brought up my Baltimore dreams and revived a sense of my own manhood I was a changed being after that fight I was nothing before I was a man now it recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a free man a man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity human nature is so constituted that it cannot honor a helpless man although it can pity him and even this it cannot do long if the signs of power do not arise so that's one of my favorite passages in the second autobiography and it's similar to what happened to him but I kept thinking of Gethsemane I know it's such a stretch but he's just like he's in the woods by himself and it's like suffering and it comes out with this determination and the way he puts it in the imperative the first autobiography is he says do I might remain a slave in form I wasn't one in fact which right right right no legally in a formal sense he was somebody else's property but his essence the factuality of who he was was no our slave so I mean in essence he had gone from nothing to something right I was a changed being he says he's a different now yeah I mean I got a really quick question because the the facts of his life are so awesome there's no need on Douglas's part for self self-mythologizing but so many of our American states and you know like Lincoln does a little bit all these political papers do is this all you think this is all factually true because it when he starts finding like what he's doing is I mean it takes incredible courage I thought that like this was something that he was you know that it was master's that I'm just gonna kill you for this he just could have killed him it's like you're reading it you're kind of worried for for his life not just that he'll have to be able to kill him because the guy didn't own him and if he'd ever got out that he did this it would have ruined his business right as Nick was saying you have to so the circumstances were such that you know he you know he had really lucked out that this was the okay I just thought that he would invest some kind of subterfuge in just a yeah I mean that's yeah I think you know Douglas describes and you know some of what you know David's asking is you know unanswerable in terms of I believe Douglas right I mean I had to get her and he says like himself had almost come on burdensome to me right just before he describes the client so you know I think he kind of went into that situation with you know here we go let's do it you know I'm just ready to I'm ready to do it 16 years old right do you think about it so incredible yeah yeah so he's not gonna see do you know I've done that yeah but it's only about the sort of the hubris of a 16 year old maybe two that back of it into his decision to just say you know what I'm just gonna do this but yeah I love that paragraph thanks for reading Greg's I feel like that paragraph you know as you said is one of the most remarkable paragraphs period as far as I'm concerned and in that paragraph being back to something I would mention earlier is kind of you get in that paragraph right a kind of encapsulation of Douglas's natural rights philosophy right he talks about rekindling in his rest of his mothering embers of liver he said part of what he argues is that you know I've never met I've never met a human being who would choose slavery for himself right this sort of idea of you know and reflecting on nature and try to reach some moral and political conclusions Douglas says you know human a human desire to be free basically you know there's some kind of exceptions but he does believe there's a kind of basic human desire to be free and so unless a human being has been so brutalized by circumstances that they they have convinced themselves they don't want to be free so it's a kind of desire but also that next line right revived a few of these lines provide a sense of my own manhood right there's some gender dimensions this we can talk about but I mean a lot of these references you know you know in our Douglas is thinking about the ways in which human beings right are fit to be free they have certain characteristics right reason you know sort of free will moral passive moral choice and so on that that he thinks are the basis for a claim to dignity which is also an idea that comes up in the paragraph as well and so I think that that's that's Douglas's natural rights philosophy right there right and also this idea of a human being able to think to themselves like he says that the physical brutality suffers a slave is sufficiently harassing and revolting to you know to make an argument against slavery but he says it's not the worst cruelty of slavery the worst cruelty of slavery is a psychological or existential terror of slavery that knowing in your mind you are a slave today you will be a slave tomorrow you will be a slave for rest of life and so that to me is like Douglas's natural rights philosophy you're going to read a one paragraph about that I think that's the third draft three and this you know this is it's interesting because I teach Douglas at the end we do some Aristotle to start we talk about virtue what it means to have sort of complete human virtue and then we read a bunch of modern thought and then when we get to Douglas one of the things I asked my students is what's the notion of freedom here right and it strikes me that the psychological freedom he's talking about taps into something that's even bigger than sort of modern sort of commercial states right freedom of exchange it's bigger than lock right it's bigger than Hobbes it's it speaks to a sort of deep yearning not just to not have somebody's hands on you right but to be fully articulate and able to speak your mind of freedom of the soul right that speaks to a range of virtues that to me is just so powerful and all too human about Douglas right that he really gets at this deeper a deeper notion of freedom right a fuller notion that isn't isn't this sort of bottle of freedom that we tend to hold out right as you know modern citizens right but something way more profound yeah that's beautiful absolutely and this is and this is the thing right if you think about some of these things that we we sort of the rhetoric that we use right it's sort of this idea of sort of being the author of your own lives where this idea of self creation or self-making and remaking oneself I mean that that's stuff you know Douglas is all about that right the speech it was you know sort of like the most in-demand speech that you know the one that you get requested more than any other was called self-made men and of course we have this association of self-made men that is especially you know who's while you know we hear that term it's sort of like this idea of a kind of self-made millionaire something like that but Douglas that speech one of things is so remarkable about it and profound about it it's runs through right it's also what he's doing out of the way of his doing so many parts of his you know his writing and his rhetoric is that he is he's really he's he's yeah as you said talking about self-making this really profound way right he's think he's he's I was born into slavery right and I and I fought and I resisted and I became free and then I made myself and then I remade myself and you know so there's something that I think is about Douglas' story and his willingness to kind of reflect on that story and also to do it in a way that this is where the political philosophy we found to be so fascinating and simultaneously as radically individualist as you can imagine the sense of like this real like a deep individualism in terms of self-making and self-creation but also this you know acute sensitivity to the ways in which each of our self you know as we make ourselves how interconnected that is everyone else right so simultaneously this radically liberal project and the kind of radically other you know I used to enter and sort of passé but there's something about Douglas that he's very much interested in both the right celebrity side of this and the duties obligation virtue side of this that whole moral vocabulary is really important to him and that's where I think a lot of magic is in this political club. And do we know anything we have any kind of timeline that tracks the Douglas' political and social writings with what he's reading at the time like do we know if he comes across certain books in middle-aged let's say books of political philosophy that in like you know if he comes across the spirit of the law and he's like holy sh** and then you see this kind of reflected in some of his work or do we know in his personal library on leader on in life? Yeah great question.
Yeah so one of the things one of the first things I did when I was I think probably when I was like embarking on the dissertation or the dissertation proposal stage was the National Historic Site has this like this document there was probably a preparation on typewriter of all his holdings of Douglas' library when he died which was fascinating I think it was like a 20 page single space document and you can just use great pictures of him with his bookcase. My bookcase is pretty cool but Douglas is a schooler and he had a very extensive library in his house in DC that is fascinating to look at in terms of what he had for people like us right who interested in old books he had a lot of cool books you know things that you'd expect a lot of philosophy a lot of theology a lot of history but one thing I should note about that is that he did also of course spend a great deal of his life with me a Rochester and his life in Rochester was you left Rochester with his home and flames right there's a lot of you know speculation as to the origins of that that fire so there's sort of an original Douglas library and original Douglas you know papers that were lost in that fire and so I would say one thing about that is when I was working on Douglas it was difficult to draw those lines right because he in the writings that I was able to you know access the time was not being very self-conscious about citing things or saying I got this idea from reading Locke or reading we know he read those things but we don't know at least in that case we didn't know what was going on now what I would say one thing that's happened since I just went out to folks who are interested studying Douglas is the Frederick Douglass papers project which is a remarkable intellectual endeavor that's been going on for now I mean I guess almost you know maybe 45 almost 40 years or over 40 years they are now in the process of publishing his you know at least selections from his correspondence so we have more access to more of his correspondence and I think for like a scholar starting a dissertation on Douglas today there's going to be a lot more there at least I hope there would be in terms of figuring out his Douglas writing to his friends about hey I just read this and it had to sort of change my view of this and that's one thing I would just say that for me that's an unanswered question but it's definitely an area where I was supposed to be more discovered about Douglas. Well one small point on that and then first off the image of Douglas reading Tocqueville that's kind of a nice image to have in your head but the other point there is we know that he read the Declaration of the Constitution closely right because I mean I don't know how much you want to talk about this and how it's central to his thought but one of the major things is his major break with other abolitionists and how he understands the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution right because I mean the abolitionists a lot of I guess Garrison is the most vocal and the most famous of these group who hold a view that America's a country founded on slavery and that the founding documents endorse slavery and Douglas early in his career holds that similar view but at least in writing and all this public statements later says the famous one's called change of opinion and mouths I guess in his own journal but he comes to you know in fact that the Declaration is not the Declaration of the Declaration of the Union of the Union of the Human beings and he sort of has this great interpretation of the Constitution most of which I find fairly persuasive that there's actually nothing in there that's pro-slavery whatsoever so I don't know if that's just in all the things we read we know that he reflected deeply on the documents that shaped the country in which he lived so. Yeah and that's sort of I think another way to think about you know Douglas as a kind of role model right is that you know we met guys it was in the context of think about civic education right Douglas took his obligations as a citizen as a member of the political community in such a serious way right and maybe you know we can't we know about so live up to the kind of level the Douglas took this do but when you think about what Greg was just described and right Douglas going from the scary stoning position of a kind of belief that the Constitution is fundamentally corrupt that you can't really engage ethically under this regime to the view that the Constitution could be read in the anti-slavery light and that could be read in light of the Declaration of Independence and so on and so forth like that took him years and took him years of reading years of studying years of debating years of arguing before he would be felt like he could in good conscience change his view right and part of what he says is that you know the moment when he really when he announces the decision is when he's founding his own newspaper right is there in the process he's founded his own newspaper he says that this is what really prompted him to start engaging in these debates in a more serious way because he said I now have my name on you know I am on the mask head I have an obligation to rethink all these things I've been taught but he's other abolitionists you know some of those things to be honest he never really bought completely like he was never a pacifist as many of the carestonians where we know that from the fight with come before where he was not a bad answer and his writing sort of justifies you know it's okay to kill somebody trying to turn a fugitive slave and talk to a number of other places and the one piece the one piece I had never read by the way until you signed it for our seminar was the piece on John Brown that was fantastic I'd never sort of his ambivalence ambivalent attitude toward John Brown's violence and whether or not that was justified or not so that was a fast so much yeah I'm a little bit more or less of it so I was wondering how much the grounds were just like with his opinion changing on the Constitution how much of it was principled and how much it was prudential so like even if he agreed in principle John Brown prudentially this is just a bad way to go and the same can be said for other things right like you're talking about him wagging these things and this moral change that happens over the course of many years trying to think these things out so which gets to this question of Douglas as a statesman and his own account of so I'm wondering if maybe this is a good way to transition to this question Douglas calls Abraham Lincoln a statesman in his oration for Lincoln and it's strange because he sort of says there are different standards by which you judge a statesman including prudence and including how he can deal with the people that he's governing and so I guess if one were to try to think about how Douglas was grappling with these questions if we're if we're going to say that Douglas was something like a philosophical statesman all these factors go into his in to try to understand him that we don't put on to a philosopher who's simply a detached philosopher like he's involved in the world of politics and so his decisions have real world applications real world questions so what's it like for us as Americans to think about Douglas as something like a statesman yeah great question I mean that's that taking you know your last question together with that one it gets a the heart another the heart of really important matter with Douglas that's one thing that I really one of the things I really find telling about the cck in the context of the reflections about the Constitution and the context of his reflections about Lincoln John Brown I mean you get at the heart of the Greg which is that he's really just really enacting the kind of way in which a serious philosophic statesman philosophic citizen goes about navigating how to you know sort of strike a balance between principle and pragmatism but the sort of the things that you believe are philosophically true and the demands of the political moment right so I think that Douglas is somebody who you can just sort of watch you know through time in so many different contexts and Leslie Gereton Goldstein who's one of the early political theorists read about Douglas she has a really good piece about this that I think has like it was probably way back in the 70s and it's a good kind of you know series of reflections about this tension between principle and pragmatism and Douglas's political thought and it's definitely a theme of a lot of my writing on Douglas as well is yeah I mean he's somebody who in all these different contexts is really in a very serious way thinking through these questions and ends up you know coming to kind of nuanced thoughtful conclusions that make you know to me and I'm a kind of both and kind of guy they make a lot of sense right so I always tell you know so for the the truth listening I mean you know assigned Douglas's 1876 speech on Lincoln right sort of that the freedom's memorial alongside his 1881 speech on John Brown right and you have Douglas reflecting with you know in the full list of time reflecting on these two men that he knew that are so radically different in so many ways and trying to sort of grapple with their legacy right and coming to some conclusions about each of them right they're like they're both heroes and Douglas right and that's the fact right we can't and they're but they're so different so that that there's something that we can learn right about politics that is not doesn't fit neatly in the category Douglas is not a brown guy versus a linked guy or a linked guy versus a brown guy he's a both brown and linked and he's saying to I think what part of what he's saying taking these things together is that we need that we need our rounds we need our legends we need our dougless right and and so I think that's a really powerful thing for students to see because they're often confronted with a political world in which they're presented with these choices right even down to the campus clubs and things like these kind of purity tests you know on whatever ideological point of view and I think Douglas confronts what they can confront in Douglas is somebody who it's hard for them not to respect who is able to say to them look sometimes in a man's politics require you to take a more nuanced position than might be I think that's a really powerful lesson for us to at least confront whether or not they accept it as your story but they do you can find all of us and that's great yeah and there's there's something he has multiple sort of rhetorical registers that he works at and I think speak to his his wish to meet his audience on their level pull something out of their opinions or out of their sentiments that that isn't being provoked in a personal direction which I think goes to the sort of breadth and capacity he has as a as a thinker and as a figure and what he's able to accomplish to go back to this and this may be a good transition to our last sort of topic to let this issue of the his views on the Constitution as an anti-slavery document how he's breaking from Garrison on this this point and I like to connect always to his discovering the Columbia Order it seems like Douglas's life as Jefferson's I think in an inverse way is an embodiment of these sort of contradictions that exist in America at the time and I guess in the West between a sort of liberal and a sort of anti-liberal trends that have been embedded in modern modern life and it strikes me that that on the one hand he's able to speak to the systemic quality as you like to say it right of racism and the depth of it while also seeing a beacon of light within the US which makes him I think a thinker that can be pulled to the left pull to the right in contemporary conversations but I would argue at least not doing justice to the full capacity of Douglas so how is he appropriated on the left and the right and where does Douglas himself stand amidst these attempts to adapt him to current issues?
Yeah that's a great a great question Alex you know this is definitely something that is something I've written a bit about I address a little bit in the conclusion of my book on Douglas but it's sort of one of these topics every year you know I tell my students every year on the 4th of July there's you know dueling op-eds you know on Douglas and and sort of attempts to appropriate him into one camp or another there's been organizations for him for Douglas Republicans that are these different you know these different attempts to sort of champion Doug's I tell people it's sort of one of these fascinating things one of these figures that can be simultaneously claimed by you know Angela Davis on the left and playing Thomas on the right or you know you should all sorts of different examples of this and so I mean one of the things I think that your question gets at the answer I was which is that and since I'm much related to my last response which is you know because I think Douglas is a serious nuanced thinker you know any attempt that anybody who you hear out there sort of making a simple claim about Douglas fitting neatly into one idea lecture camp or the other is probably not telling you the whole story is kind of one of my one of my arguments so what I tend to intervene in those debates and so far as I think somebody's taking it in too far in one direction the other so I'd say substantively though what's what's really interesting to me is that you can look at Douglas like I'm teaching Douglas to the group of first year students tomorrow we're reading you know a couple of essays that are from after the Civil War and one of the essays that we're reading is called What the Black Man wants one of the speeches that we're reading what the Black Man wants and that's one that's often cited by conservatives right so this is one that's one of Clarence Thomas's favorite Douglas speeches right and it's what's fascinating about that speech is that it concludes the concluding paragraph is is one in which Douglas uses language that sounds extraordinarily libertarian right so he says things like I'll just open up to us since I have it right here he says things like what the Black Man wants right so so he says like leave us alone right what shall we do with the Negro right one answer from the beginning do nothing with us you're doing with us it's already played the mischief with us do nothing with us if the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength if they're warming at the core if they're early ripen supposed to fall let them fall and so on and so forth and so he kind of has a strongly you know kind of libertarian claim right like leave us alone it's sort of a very non-interference kind of understand liberty but what's fascinating about that particular piece is that the whole thing it's an essay he publishes in 1865 the previous whatever nine paragraphs of the piece are all about the government's affirmative obligation to protect voting rights right and so so what I think it's that speech and that that's a particular piece in itself right that's a speech that's that's a publishing all these things in slavery newspapers because it captures the duality of Douglas' political thought right on the one hand yes he says time and again we can find great lines where he seems to fit neatly into a kind of a vision of a kind of libertarian society where we leave each other alone in the legitimate exercise of our rights right we're we see people on their way to school let them go to school and see people on their way to work let them go to work don't discriminate them against them in the workplace don't discriminate against them in terms of their their educational you know freedom and so on but there's a kind of way in which that depends on an active state in particular circumstances and so I think there's a way in which neither side can have Douglas right that there's something about what he's doing that is is it complicates our categories and so even the self-made min speech I'll just I'll show up at this is the self-made min speech which is a very individual speech right it's all about the amazing capacity individuals have to remake to make and remake themselves through work work work I mean he has all caps you know all these exhibition points the answer is how do you become a self-made man it's through work and again that has you know dimensions for Douglas Beyond the Economic Mention how do you make yourself into something that you want to become how do you achieve success how do you help other people and so on it's through work but he says in that speech right that this vision of individualism only works in the context of fair play right so if they're if we're off if we're really going to be committed to this idea of individuals having the freedom to make themselves and remake themselves and express their individuality in all these important ways we also need to commit ourselves to fairness right and he says fairness is is a concept it's all too often forgotten so I think that both he's both the individualist and the kind of fair play guy and there's ways in what he sees those things is fitting neatly together and philosophically I think there's intention there that he never quite solves you know I don't think anybody can really resolve them I think that there's something about him again as a kind of both and thinker that I find really if you and I think in essence what you're getting at is that the attempt to appropriate Douglas to a specific cause I keep coming back to this I think this is one of your best points from the review of politics article when you would probably have to a specific cause or an ism right you lose this this power as a model as a character and humanity right which is is something that you can't down now what you do with that sentiment how you achieve it in practical politics and how you that leads to action in the fight for justice is a difficult question but you can't you can't lose that that humanity and that that that power is a figure or else you've just got you know an ideologue or a theorist right it's much more than that which yeah yeah I would say that yeah yeah I would say that I will confess that I this is something I had to untrain myself you know after you know this or this experience of being trained in political theory where part of what we're doing is true of many other academic stuff fields what part of what we're being trained to do is to categorize things well right and so I was obsessed with labeling Douglas even though I have this thing where I'm saying don't label him in my smelly writing about Douglas I was in many my pieces right you could point to me essentially in some ways doing what I said I just shouldn't do and that basically that was because I felt like that was what I had to do is to be a good political theorist and I will say that you know so I think about like rewriting you know like my book on Douglas I would be very different and really the person who I think you know my advisor Mark Connie for mention the late great Mark on is and he tried he was actually a good good influence in the sense that he tried to get me out of this mode of thinking I had to you know sort of find these precise labels for everything but I still was a graduate student and I couldn't unlearn this idea that I had to label everything but James Baldwin right so this is maybe a good segue to our next conversation for me to get involved with and one thing I love most about Baldwin is that he is somebody who is so passionately against categorization and I think that I read Baldwin you know say the serious way before I worked on Douglas you know it would have helped me a lot because part of what Baldwin says is that it's his passion to categorize it's his passion to fit things into these into these particular groupings that causes us to misunderstand so much about the real world you know and and so so I think that and that's where and I think that's where so Douglas really what I should have done that Baldwin has really taught me to do and I think I'm sort of better now that I talk when I talk about it's better about this is to say like here's who he was right here's what he said here's the context of which he said it and and and that's what that's what he gives us so I'm not going to try to take her anymore what he's not trying to give me right he's not trying to give me an easy way to categorize him in this mess that political world we live in now he is giving me an incredibly full life of real philosophically serious engagement with the political world around him and so recognizing that and trying to work through that and then try to say okay here's the best we can we can come up with an understanding why he did what he did and why you know the reasons for it and the other context when she did it then we can take that and say it's not that Douglas should be left in the past we can then take that and say okay now we have our political world and Douglas provides us I think in many cases with a model of how to engage the political world around us in a serious way so after such a rousing statement about not putting human beings into a narrow box Greg's going to ask you a bunch of very stupid little questions about yourself good let me tell you something I want to say I say Greg you're so like this you're Greg you're so like yeah you went into like a you know a Georgian rage that's like I contain multitudes I'm a capacious man and he goes into his little question so right well I did enjoy that Nick and I do hope you come back but this was a lot of fun I learned a lot and I think that folks at home you can always benefit from reading more Douglas I'm teaching actually here in just a couple weeks myself so we do lightning grounds so these are short questions meant to elicit short answers it's just a little fun thing we just have folks at home gets no you you can pass all that jazz what's your what was your first job my first job my first job was painting mailboxes painting yeah yeah so there was a particular I don't know if this is true and I grew up in Southern California there's a particular I was a brand of mailbox there's sort of like there's like a command off worst it's on the front of them and they were everywhere in my neighborhood and I get my dad credit for this he's like you know Nick those mailboxes are everywhere they're all rundown they're all about you know 15 years old they need to be paid as you know so I had this advertising campaign I said what is the first thing what is the first thing people see when they pull up to your house it's your mailbox and so I was terrible I was terrible I definitely got a lot of pay all over sidewalks it wasn't especially lucrative business but but that was my first real job now this break real go get her right I couldn't even drive right so I did you know I was getting the trunks of my parents cars too which is not especially I'll put yeah speaking of jobs what do you think you'd be doing if you had not become a professor well that's a that's a good question you know I would say so if you ask me yeah I would say like high school teacher like teaching history and government and a football coach I've coached in football in my life so I know every now and then if you have like one of my academic notebooks or if I was bored at any point from the Jack Miller Center I think I never was but I do find some kind of you know but if I guess yeah the rival if yeah some other summer institute I was bored you find some exes and those there and then now I think that sort of like in my current moment I'm sort of thinking that maybe I would be doing more creative writing like street writing I just like that Michael what's your favorite football team oh man I grew up in Silicon Point so I'm sort of a man without a team so I was very young we had the Raiders and the Rams right and the Raiders and the Rams left and then they came back and then they left and you know I don't know the Rams are there I'm sort of a man my father-in-law is a die-hard Rams fan so I'm I'm a I sort of I'm one of my best friends is a hard Ravens fan they're probably playing right now against the Raiders right so I sort of find myself rooting for teams that matter lots of people around so I say Rams Ravens Rams Ravens Seahawks now them in the Northwest I kind of pull through those guys and the Chargers have a good friend as a big charger fan too so those are kind of my teams opposition did you play I had a short and not especially last week's football career but I was in office a long I was off the tackle so I I appreciate the trenches and I was coaching I was I was really a defensive coach and so I I appreciate a good defense with a good blitz game and a solid offensive line of a solid running game so that's the other thing is I will I like watching teams that sort of fit my style of football and that's kind of what I look for very cool what was your first car first car was a Nissan champagne colored Nissan Maxima which I within months of getting that car I you know I crashed it I crossed five lanes of a freeway luckily didn't get any other cars along the way hydroplane when it was raining and crashed in the center divider the car the car actually I think the car survived I mean we also bought the three cars the car survived no major the only drink is to stay with me kicking a center divider in anger and in the car survived I think it bounced back and yeah that's my first car all right I'm going to more see you at the time how many tequila is in were you at the time I was I was stone cold sober I driven you know about 30 miles to we went to go watch a high school basketball game in Ventura California and it was one of those things where we were just raining and I was I was a you know a Southern California driver didn't know anything about driving the rain I don't think I was going that fast we're actually right about to get off the freeway we're almost home it's just they say you get next and try you let your guard down right about to get off the freeway let's get over the right lane and then lost control and then all the rock things quite at the brakes and I just kept spinning and uh no tequila is not tequila's we're all glad you're okay thank you I'm glad yeah me too what is your favorite work of literature oh favorite work of literature uh and you and I talked about this actually uh is like a better see if that's a great book yeah if we were messing you up with hot dogs I already noticed that this image of the guy and just like hot dogs falling from his mouth I couldn't have hot dogs for three years not you found you found other things to eat though right dude yeah I don't I've never seen David turned down a hot dog on some I like a Hebrew national there's something about like you know Ignatius Riley the main character in that book you know there's no about he is but like a chunk of hot dog don't imagine about that big just sort of stuck in his beard right so yeah talking his big mustache so no I think there's something about stories where you have a character this is maybe this is something about you know the political theory the political theorists me the philosopher me is that there's not about stories where characters are at these really like a really strong worldview and the world doesn't understand right yeah so whether it's Ignatius Riley or Larry David you know I just don't think about who's really speaking to me man we should do that book that is for the photo to come if you haven't heard of the Confederacy of Donsense by was it was a check uh Kennedy O'Toole check Kennedy O'Toole right yeah John yeah John Kennedy O'Toole right John Kennedy tool no tool just tool just to a Kennedy tool such a good book I read every time I visit Morlinds so such a fantastic book okay any nicknames have you ever had nicknames nicknames um man I had a you should go by literary arts I think literary arts that's right um man okay so I've had I can't remember why this is the case but there was at some point when I was a kid my brother's buddy you're an apple to me and I can't remember why this happened we had sort of meat thing in the name so I was meatloaf for a while and he was shish kebab oh my god those are so good yeah yeah and then I was uh and then at some point somebody was telling us about I was nick bob you know because my middle-inch robert um and then my most my I care or what for some reason what I meant the the the first thing is now my beloved my beloved wife Emily um we she my nickname in the early days was dr. midnight and she's gonna kill me for saying that and her name was Jezebel and that was I don't know why we actually entered our names in each other's cell phones back in 2000 whatever that was um we entered them in that way I have no idea why we're just in a we're a coffee shop nothing you know unsorted happened but that's so dr. midnight's my last nickname not last night I like that all right doc doc diamond the night our last lightning round question for you uh who's your favorite philosopher oh man that's a tough one yeah fishing off favorite yeah that's a tough one um think on a think on a dr. midnight think on it you know I mean I will say right now and I'm a little biased because I'm teaching him right now and I'm also maybe biased because I I'm trying to impress my audience but I do I do love playdoh um you know I mean playdoh's republic is the book and so I guess all the authors that I've that I've taught um I've spent more time in the classroom than any other author and um I'm sort of I do you know my intro to political theory class which we call great political thinkers uh at lindfield you know we spend like you know a good chunk of time with playdoh's republic and I find that book even today as I was rereading I'm one of those guys re-reinsed you know every time I teach for the most part um and uh and I just it's one of those books that you know like a masterpiece does where it just reveals new things every single time and so I think that I do have there's something about playdoh there's something about this you guys know Alex and I are both teaching at this semester too and I was just reading at this morning in preparation tomorrow and texting Alex and questions I had so that my students will have the right answers instead of mine so well your answer is like go read Xenophon um right thank you so much Nick please everybody go check out the essential Douglas the selected writings and speeches also your book the political thought of Frederick Douglass and most recently the fires upon us James Baldwin William F Buckley Jr.
and the debate over race in America. Nick thank you so much uh your students have a real uh treat I mean you're a good speaker relatable you're a good guy and uh you know give our best to Jezebel and uh we hope that you get see me look thanks that thanks so much guys it's been a lot of fun I feel like we're already coming back on whenever you're happy yeah I'm glad to have you back and thanks to the Jack Miller Center for putting us in touch with you yeah thanks a lot Jack Miller Center for the back. Keep up with you guys. See you home folks.