Welcome back to New Thinkery. My name is David Barnes with me as always. My good friend Alex Priyot. How are you?
I'm doing well David. How are you? I'm doing well and who's the other guy in our show? I'm the guy who's Greg McBrayer.
Greg McBrayer. Hey guys. How are you doing Greg? Oh, you call me a good friend.
I'm doing well now better. I'm also doing well because on the way to record tonight I stopped at not Grandpa's G's Barn but Wits frozen custard here in National Ohio, which is fantastic. And I'm a man of moderate appetites but milkshakes are about the only thing that I can't resist. And it was I did not know this.
It was milkshake Monday. It was a dollar and a quarter off my milkshake. I started going on. Why?
I bet I know why. Alex do you know why? That's the story that Greg told us milkshake Mondays when he used to tend to the bowl in Georgia. I just remember his old saying, why buy the milk when you can sleep with a cow for free?
Yeah. But he's full of those little those little things that will collect when he passes away in a thousand years. So we're doing we're doing another movie today. Before we go we are.
Yes. The last movie we did was what was it called? Million Dollar Baby. Million Dollar Baby.
In which Greg asked Clint Eastwood if he has any questions for us on the movie. Now, thankfully everybody in this movie is dead. But I have it on Good Authority that Greg got out his Ouija board and got Henry Fonda, John Ford, John Wayne and Shirley Temple's Ghost all common then asked if they had any questions about for him about their movie. Yeah.
That's what you did. You roused the undead. Yeah. And Laurel Stenman is fine.
So somebody has to save this episode, which is why we invite none of us can. Our good friend and and to somebody that has that that knows the movie. Well, yeah, the movie we're discussing tonight, Adam and Carrington from Hillsdale College, he's a friend of ours. And we're really grateful to have you Adam.
How's it going? Going very well. I appreciate you having me. I will say just as an aside about seances, that's how I used to tease my students that you could solve all the questions about originalism and textualism when I teach constitutional law.
Just have a seance and ask the founding fathers what they thought. That's how you could figure it out. That's scandalized us a little bit. It's the same way as we used to decipher straws all right.
I'm sure it'll clear everything up if we just get Thomas Jefferson and say what do we do about chest feeders? Yeah. I think it'll be like I can't understand. Adam, it's so nice to have you on the your friend of the show.
We're glad that you're here. David mentioned you're a professor at Hillsdale, where you're an associate professor of politics. Actually, you're now a you know how a chair position at Hillsdale, I understand. I'm sure the William and Patricia Lamoth chair in the United States Constitution Hill so far.
That's a big deal. That means you have to be wiser than your peers in the department. Is that how you get an endowed chair? It's a big deal.
It's a big deal. Well, you said to be humble about this by the way, but this is a big deal and it should not be downplay. Do you know what I have a stool? I have a stool.
I have a stool. Ashland University. They gave me a stool. Do we have a distinguished guest on?
Do we give you an actual chair? Like with like a fair one? I think it's a fair chair. Yeah, we asked about that because I had specifications for how a regal I wanted it to be.
Almost unem, and since it's in the Constitution, it was almost un-American legal, almost like I was trying to re-bring us under King George III. So I scuttled those plans. So Adam is at Hillsdale, which is you know, everybody knows Hillsdale College. There's also Hillsdale, our second Hillsdale guest, which is Lance on on just a week.
Yeah, just up a month is to you. But in addition, also we've got friends of course, listening at Baylor University. And that's where Adam did his PhD as doctoral work. But most importantly, Adam is an Eagle.
Adam has also resided in the World Headquarters of Nice People. He did his undergraduate education here at the Ashland University. And I understand very good friends with a friend of mine, Jason Stevens, who says hello and passes on as well, which is, and probably is helpful in getting you on our little dog and pony show. But in addition to Adam, you predated Greg, right?
We never dated. No, no, no. So I just wanted to understand that's why you were so successful. Yeah.
Because before my time, yeah, I'm trying to say nice things about the guy. He's published a book, by the way, this is important to Adam has. I'm now in the game title because I don't recognize about to. Liberty and Full Justice even feels cooperative constitutional.
Liberty with Lexington books, which was published in fall 2017. And real quick, before David, you guys keep taking the show and running the ground for the purposes of Mike's episode is important to know that he just published with Law and Liberty, an article called The Democratic Virtues of Fort Patchee. So he's published on this. Adam and I correspond a little bit.
And we talked about having him on and ran a few options by and we agreed that this we don't want more interesting things to talk about tonight. So welcome, Adam. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I hope it's the first event.
Well, long time fans, first time guests. So happy to be joining you all and to contribute to what I think is really one of the best podcasts on on on the internet. And I mean that I'm not just saying that because I'm supposed to be a nice guest. So it's very kind.
We're the number five educational podcast in Estonia right now. So we are making inroads as we're great, great tracks this worldwide. It's really I do all the time. Yeah, that's absolutely true.
And didn't we crack like some oh well, I'll talk about that later. But we were on a bunch of lists. So what are we doing tonight, folks? We're doing a movie called Fort Apache.
What are just some basics? Like who's the director, who's in it? What's about working folks find it that kind of stuff. I just pointed it out.
We need to come out. Can you give us some basic overview of this film and maybe a good transition question after you've sort of done that is why is this film? And you said you have very high praise for it and what you wrote. So maybe just just some basics for the folks at home.
Sure. It came out in 1948. It's the first of John Ford, the director's cavalry trilogy, which also included to Tuwari Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. And it follows the or begins with Colonel Owen Thursday, who's played by Henry Fonda.
And he's leaving the East and on his way out to take command of Fort Apache somewhere in Arizona. And it's clear, by the way, from the beginning that he thinks that this is a demotion in a slight he's saying that to his daughter played by Shirley Temple on the way out. And he takes command and seeks to put in rigid discipline. He's very concerned with dress.
We may get into that a little bit later. He thinks that the men out there are slumming it and doesn't want that to be the case. And he wants a chance for glory. And this brings him into some tension with the men of the fort, the officers of the fort, which includes Captain Kirby, played by John Wayne.
And a subplot is that while he's there butting heads with the other officers, his daughter Shirley Temple is falling in love with a young officer who just arrived there, who's himself, the son of one of the Sergeant Majors. They end up marrying later toward the end of the film. And again, I said that Colonel Thursday wanted to have glory. He feels like he's been slighted, being sent out here and he's trying to find some way to redeem this demotion that he feels he's been slighted with.
And he thinks he gets it when the Apache tribe, under a leader named Cochise, leave their reservation and they do so do it to a corrupt official named Nietzsche that works for the government and has done all the things you read about that Indian regulation officials did to undermine and hurt Native American tribes when they were on the reservations. So he has left Thursday leads a campaign against Cochise and through his hubris ends up leading a suicide charge of white South-regiment, including himself. What's interesting is you get to the end of the film. It ends with a new campaign led by the new leader of the regiment, which is Wayne's character Kirby.
And we find out though that Thursday's been made a hero, even though he was considered foolish in the moment of making the charge. And we end with this sort of strange instance where this man who seemed to have done a foolish thing has now become a hero of every school boy in America, it's said. And that's how we end with John Wayne's character supporting that, what seems to be alive and talking about the greatness of the regiment at the same time. Yeah, that's great.
I mean, it's really interesting. One thing you point out about him, so he's moving west from the east, but he's also wishes he could be back in Europe. His daughter is not as, doesn't have the same aristocratic tendency, but the way you tend to sort of analyze him, which I think is correct, is as a kind of exhibition of the tensions between aristocracy and democracy. And I think one of the things I think you were pushing for is to say, I guess they both made contributions, right?
He puts them in order, right? The hierarchy allows him to top down, institute some good policies that John Wayne even admits he did a good thing with that, right? And yet he's kind of blind to the virtues of democracy, which are embodied in the mutual respect and deliberation between the Indians and the troops, as well as their ability to observe rank walls, to be familiar with, or not. So maybe we can talk a bit about these bigger issues, what you think is going on.
Right. I think you're right. Ford often has men standing in place for classes or sub parts of society. And I think that Thursday, certainly is operating as a kind of older aristocrat.
And the thing to always remember about aristocracy is it's based in inequality. And he sees inequality as a good thing, as a noble thing. And as a thing that distinguishes him from the men, distinguishes the men and himself from the American Indians. And what you then see playing out is that on one hand, that means he demands a kind of excellence.
That is, I think, the nuance of the film that Ouchu bringing out that it's not as if he is unabashedly foolish or unabashedly does nothing good. So he has his virtues, but he often will then underestimate the men or underestimate the Native Americans with disastrous results often at times. And we see also that he becomes in a way at times even blind to merit. I mean, real aristocracy is supposed to get about excellence.
And you have an interesting instance where he wants to keep the social convention of the difference between himself and his daughter as an officer and the man that she wants to marry because he's part of a lower class father's a non-commissioned officer. And he basically says, there's a barrier you can't cross between us. And that that's a good thing. And that's where I think you see even the idea of aristocracy is merit, give way to aristocracy as convention in a way that I think it just is a prelude to the heavers still show toward the American Indians with even more disastrous results.
Yeah, a small point on that, by the way, though, the love interest between what is it, Shirley Templean and the younger O'Rourke, his dad, you mentioned he's an enlisted guys and non-commissioned officer, but he'd won the Medal of Honor, which is alluded to. So he actually is this, I mean, he is, if aristocracy is the best, I mean, he's the best of the best, right? The Medal of Honor, excuse me. But I mean, there's also like the NCO O'Rourke, the older one is extremely witty.
Like he frequently, you know, I assume that only medals of honor had this distinction. And he's like, yes, I would assume that too. So he doesn't say I had the Medal of Honor, he just sort of confirms it by doing their two or three other examples. And so, and I want to see if I'm not even sure if I was right about this, the NCO father, that I cast that he had actually been an officer in the Civil War, because I thought that there were a number of characters who had been officers during the Civil War who had been reduced in rank.
Even Colonel Thursday, right? He was a general in the war, but I mean, he's a colonel, and I'm guessing some other officers have been, is that not right? Alex? Yeah, I think he was mistaken for general, by somebody.
By John Wayne, but I think what he said is, no, I was a general back and forth. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, right. I thought he never was, sorry, I'm not a minister. Yeah.
No, he was. Sorry. That's what I thought. And he even mentions to John Wayne's character, you may have commanded a regiment to John Wayne in the late war, but as long as you're in my commanding a squad in mind, you'll do what I say.
Right. So, yeah, and that's a harder issue because you don't see the other men struggling with this, right, struggling with that demotion that happens after the regular. And by the way, that means the Colonel Thursday thinks what you are in the regular army, post-war pre-war is what really matters, that the other is a sort of inflation of rank that doesn't really show whether you're part of the aristocracy. Now, of course, what it'll turn to view there, of course, is that the necessity of war is what made us shed these conventions and actually elevate the true, the truly best of these higher rules.
And so, once the emergency is gone, we can go back to our conventions and say something like this, but I didn't mean to rough Jan with all this. Oh, no, no, no, no, that's a good point. And I think Alex brought up that he mentions he was in Europe at one point. So, you see, I think that's just another way of showing he's in love with hierarchy.
He wishes he was back east. He wants to get the attention of those back east. And you're right, you see people like O'Rourke and John Wayne's character very obviously showing great merit, but Thursday refuses to see that because, again, I think that while his aristocracy ultimately rests on a bedrock of conventionality, which puts him in tension again with the democratic values of the fork he's in and causes a sort of strain that on one hand in some ways makes the regimen better, but in other ways, I think undermines its own democratic virtues that we might talk about at some point. Yeah, you know, an interesting side of the conventionality is on the one hand, he's obviously very learned, right?
At one point is talking about a battle, Genghis Khan fought in 12, whatever, right? And then he dismisses John Wayne's character, so he's like, oh, you can go now, like this is not for you. This is for the real strategic, you know, brilliance of us, right? And he also, when he makes his military blunder at the end of the film, as John Wayne is explaining to him to trap the strategic trap that's been said, he's like, you want me to believe that these people are being led by Alexander the Great or who's the other, do you guys remember the other?
It's holy and he says a bonaparte. Yeah, bonaparte. It's the same two examples that Lincoln gives him like Stephen Gress, which I found sort of interesting about it. Interesting, yeah, yeah.
So he's he's he's himself as among the blan parts and the Alexander the Great and the Genghis Khan. But at the same time, he can't imagine that there would be a similar strategic mind among the natives, one of the Apache, nor can he imagine that even the Irish, he's constantly confusing the Irish. He's like, how many works are here? He calls her work a Murphy, O'Brien.
He always gets it as an Irish name, but never the right Irish name. Yeah, absolutely. He's the right to catch that. Yeah, the thing about them.
But meanwhile, if you ever encountered, you know, Asian people on the battlefield like Genghis Khan, he would never think, you know what I mean? Because he's got this sort of so strangely conventional in the way he's blind to the fact that human excellence has tends beyond the merely narrowly sort of conventional, right, but pushes toward a higher human standard, higher, you know, higher than the simply political right and can, especially on the strategic mind, despite this irony of his, he's not a good strategist. And his strategy ends up getting one of his oldest friends killed, who was going to go teach at West Point. So he's arguably wrong to be both.
So there's something interesting going on here between study, but also this sort of almost like ethnic narcissism in a way that's also built into it. That's, I'm not sure what's going on there, but I found that interesting. Yeah, that's I was going to piggyback about more directly on him. He can give an account of why the inclusion of these Irish soldiers, Irish American soldiers, why the racial component?
Well, I think that in some ways it's making a comparison to the treatment and view of the American Indians and trying to say that, like Alex said, there can be brilliance and there can be humanity in the Native Americans and the American Indians, and that we have confused inequality in other ways, most notably the Irish being one example. But I think that that happens on the positive end, coaches ends up outsmarting all of the Thursday and it said that he's outsmarted every cavalry regiment in the southeast before that. And so you see that on excellence, the level of excellence, which Thursday is grave mistake is that he just thinks that's impossible. He thinks that it is utterly impossible for that kind of excellence to be there.
But I think it even comes out on the other end. So you have those three sergeants that are kind of comic relief that gang together and they do the training of the soldiers and it's really other new recruits and it's really funny. They all get drunk at one point when they're supposed to be destroying the whiskey that was found at Meacham, the government, Indian agents place, and instead they drink a good drunk and get knocked down to buck privates. And I think that while that's funny, something that's being communicated on the other end is not just excellence, but decadence.
This is whiskey that was being sold to the Native Americans and was corrupting them, corrupting their morals, corrupting the way they were treating each other, part of why coaches leaves a reservation and thinks that he has to get his people away from these sources of ice. But who actually do we see in the movie get drunk and debauch themselves? These soldiers, these white soldiers, right, these American soldiers. And I think that something that's being communicated there is a notion of human equality and that the difference of merit and vice is less these social groups and more the merit of the individual person, the education of the individual person and the quality of their character, I think is being asked of us in relation to all the groups that you see and categorizations you see within this film.
You think there's anything I'm just going to push back just because we all seem to be agreeing that Thursday, the Henry Fonda character sort of has a low view of the Native Americans. It seemed to me like there might have been a maybe there was a switch in his mind when he realized that the chief might actually be a good tactician because we all agree that this is kind of suicide mission that Thursday leads at the end. And at the very end, there's this new mythology built up around Thursday is having led this charge against him. I thought I saw a twinkling in his eye when he said, oh, you'd have me believe that he's an Alexander or a Bonaparte.
And then it seemed like I thought I saw a click like, oh, I can still, I can get my immortal name out here in this Poughton town of Millnowhere if I'm the guy that brought this guy down in some meaningful way. So he does say that earlier where he realizes that Coaches is actually famous because he because remember he laments, he goes, why am I not fighting the real Indian tribes? Like the famous ones back eat to get attention to the newspapers back east. And that's really his standard for glory is acceptance of a kind of military and and newspaper and other establishment back east.
And so that's where all of a sudden he goes, he arrives at the fort kind of board. Yeah. What am I going to do here? There's not really a place for glory.
He really gets invested and interested when he realizes coaches is at least famous enough to be able to interact with. I still though think when he reacts that way to John Wayne, he's still underestimating man saying, because otherwise why would he make the charge? If you thought, well, that that is an interesting question because then the question becomes, why does he apologize to the Sergeant Major when he goes back? Right?
Indication that he's a drunk at the very beginning of the movie. He offers a drink with his friend. Oh, in the morning, very early in the morning, and his friend kind of reprimands him. I don't know if that's enough.
That's very good. I mean, there are your eyes about how it impacts decision making, but there are subtle indications that he's not as independent of this decadence as he seems to be one is that now there's a point that Adam brought up, which was the papers, right? He's concerned with popular perception, right? This isn't just merely among his the few noble that he wants to be renowned, but he wants to to find some kind of fame.
One thing detail, I think I'm not sure if you went over this in your summary, Adam, but I think it's important to bring out is that, right? So he visits himself as a master tactician, but it's really the fame that he wants to glory that he wants, and that makes him take a certain path. So what's happened is this guy in each of his selling way too much booze. He's supposed to give him a medicinal but he's selling times, he's smuggling it in to make a lot of money and cochies, the decadence happens to people.
So he voluntarily, as a good leader says, I don't want this to happen to my people, takes them to Mexico off the reservation, therefore violating the treaty, right? So for now, there's a very easy solution to that John Wayne devices and the solution is put me to him in his place, make sure he understands that he's not to do this, right? Destroy all the whiskey, talk to cochies, get him back, and then everybody has an understanding of how things are all right, but there's no glory in that. It's too, it's too much bargaining.
And then on top of that, yeah, yeah. And then the top of that Thursday is so determined that he's brilliant that he's just unwilling to make any kind of compromise. So cochies is trying to say, well, every man who dies, he tries to, and he just has forgotten, okay, we're going to attack you in the morning, right? And he's just so convinced.
And so there's that arrogance as well. So I think the intellectual part vision, envisioning himself in that way, blinds him to the fact that there is no glory in the situation, right? For him, at least the real tactic that's piece of all is just something that would be quiet. But Thursday gets the glory and what's his name, John Wayne's character just sort of has to pay lip service to him, even though he's the one who knows what he's doing.
And I think what it blinds his desire for glory, and I think this is a larger point the film wants to make, is the glory can blind you to what else matters in life, and therefore can even blind you to the good that is life itself, I would say. And John Wayne, what is he trying to do? He's trying to save lives in his compromises. He's trying to see the perspective of others, say that the American Indians have trying to say that they're trying to preserve a reasonable, even moral and virtuous way of life as they understand it.
I think Wayne respects it or Kirby is his name, I should be using his actual name. But I think Thursday becomes blind to all that because of the desire for glory. And I think you see that even in small ways, because he's blind to other goods. Now he's not necessarily a bad father, but I think it was very revealing that the first night he comes home and his daughter has at great effort because of she's a young girl who just doesn't know much, has furnished the house and with help of someone else cooked in her and basically made a domestic portion of his life good.
He hears that the telegraph lines have been cut or something or there's been an attack, I forget which it is. And he immediately leaves all of that when it's not clear he has to and says I'm going to basically be gone all night. And I think that shows, and he's always ending dances, that the soldiers are trying to have. And I think that is meant to show that glory has blinded him to the other goods of human life and to why life might be worth living otherwise, that the men, including Wayne, clearly see and provides a kind of cautious common sense to their lives and to their military exploits that he's missing.
Even though beautiful woman who's that daughter has gotten to help Guadalupe, who seems to look at him somewhat inherently, he doesn't pace her no mind at all. There's one, I sort of the John Wayne character Kirby York, is that right? He does so thirsty does have a couple of tactical things, like, okay, that was pretty smart, but they both rely on a kind of duplicity, right? He sort of lures the Indians out into battle by sending a group of folks out, apparently completely unprepared for battle, but they don't even know that they have backup coming, so they don't realize they're exposed all the better to show that it looks like they feel like they're exposed.
So he tricked his own men. And so one of the failings I thought I saw in the John Wayne character is later it didn't even occur to him that he might be similarly used as a dupe, because he's a lot of the drama hinges upon him going to Coachee and arranging sort of this, what appears to be some kind of their trying to work out of truth, but really it's the draw him into battle. And so it's amazing, the glory part, I know we want to talk about the honor and the fact that Thursday is an honor loving type, the John Wayne character, who seems to be sensitive to the things you're talking about, that life is worth living if you have these things and it has to be room for dances and these things. He doesn't seem attuned, he doesn't seem like a good psychologist, he doesn't seem to understand what Thursday is about, and he doesn't understand that some of the things that he's saying, it's a little bit like Nisseus, like we say, oh, you don't want to go to war with him, it's going to be this huge thing.
But you're like, all right, a huge thing, that's exactly what we want to do, right? And so I feel like his attempts to try and talk, I mean, he should have played into his prejudices. Yeah, you're right, they're just these idiot natives, and in trying to dignify the natives, he seems to only have, you know, accelerated the prospect of a war between them and likening them to, you know, Caesar, Ralph, Xander, and Bo-Pus. So I was not very impressed with the John Wayne character, and I wanted to be, I like John Way as an actor, but I don't know where we go from there.
If you guys have any thoughts on that line of thought, but they certainly not sly, he's very genuine. And maybe that's connected to his democratic character that you're talking about. Yeah, I think Wayne is very much in the men to embodiment of the democratic sphere where they want to do their, they have a kind of honor, but they want to do their job well, but they have lives, they created a little polis in the fort where they have, where one can dress as one wishes, it's way more horizontal than we're democratic, sorry. Yeah, and again, I think the sergeants are helpful in this, but Wayne does this too, where they, I don't think they're bad at their jobs.
I think they're good soldiers, but they don't take themselves too seriously. They laugh, they joke, they, and I think you have to, because otherwise you're facing death all the time. How do you deal with that? And I think a more possibly democratic way of doing so is to laugh at it and to have camaraderie in the midst of it, rather than the more aristocratic we're going to use death for fame that I think Thursday pushes.
But I think you're right, that Kirby York John Wayne's character is not a perfect character. He's certainly not shrewd. He's certainly not sly. He is in some ways too genuine to be able to manipulate someone like Thursday, who's very manipulable, I think, along those lines.
But I think that Wayne's character still has a sense of honor that is deep enough and a sense of respect for coaches that he can't stand the idea that the commander of this fort would so foolishly underestimate the enemy. And I think he thinks that he has to convince him rather than try to find other ways. And I think if you spend five minutes with Colonel Thursday, convincing him it's not going to work. He's set in his ways, he's set in his thoughts.
So I think there's a decent point there. I think in some ways, Kirby's virtue is his vice in that sense. So I have a question about the portraits and this for everybody. I know I get hung up on details and these little things bother me.
But the very beginning, almost one of the opening scenes is focused on this portrait of George Washington, which I thought was great. We know in the Man Who Shall Already Balance that Ford seems to have been very intentional about the placement of portraits of people and things like that. And then there are two other portraits that seem to gain prominence. One of them I couldn't make out, but then the third one is mentioned to have been an uncle or something of the family.
So the pride of place for somebody from the family. Oh, no, the portrait. Did you say George Washington? George Washington was the first.
You guys were the first one. And then there were two other ones. I think the third one was a family member. The second one I couldn't make out was a ball.
It was a guy with a very high line, a hairline. I was trying to figure out if he was president at the time. It's not entirely clear. Yeah, that's the way who is because some people have said that Ford maybe had George Custer in mind.
That's for some potential, you know, without it being one to one. I mean, if that's the case, then US grants in his last year, which would be fascinating because this is slightly off topic. I'll just throw it out there for maybe later. The issue of the Civil War is obviously in the background.
Oh, yeah, very much so. Not just for the rankings that we talked about before and the change that goes back to the regular army, but you actually have former Confederates and former Union soldiers in the same army. And I think that that is making some point about the future of the country and even the future of the country with Native Americans, where it's not that they ignore the difference that erupted in the past, but there's this mutual respect that has formed them into one army again, which is I think quite interesting given that the Civil War is a shadow of this, but I'm sort of stepping on your discussion of the portrait. Sorry.
No, no, no, no. Really quick. Can I say something Greg? What's interesting about the unity between two former foes is that the glue that holds them together now is a new enemy.
And so life on the frontier at this fort is a kind of life and suspended animation. They're not dealing with the discomforts of reconstruction and the ill feelings that arise during that time period. They're in a weird purgatory where these things don't matter. All that matters is that unification against a common enemy.
So it's a weird, I don't know if they can give full interplay to their respective histories in the confines of the fort. That makes sense. Right. Right.
And I would say Greg, I think that's really right. And a good point that in some ways it creates a unity that can't be resolved in another context. They're in a polis I said before, but it's a cut off one from the rest of the world. But it's interesting, Greg, you said that the first portrait was Washington, Washington comes up one other time.
And I think this is interesting with the Civil War in the background as the father of the country. It's when Colonel Thursday shows up unannounced. And there's a dance, another dance. Washington tells the first one.
Yeah, he says, what kind of, I assume this dance is not my honor. He says, right, right, but crossly because he feels like he's being slight at every step. And John Wayne's character says, no, it's a birthday dance. He says, who's birthday?
President Washington's. Yeah. And so you see this interesting kind of combination of celebration or entertainment, but also patriotism, that that's how they would market out out on the frontier. I think that's an interesting point to bring up with Washington's portrait as well.
Yeah. I mean, this is good. I do sort of separate topics, but I think they're related one is to what degree or portrait of themselves not democratic, right? Just laying someone's portrait implies that this person's excellent and so it should be shine above.
And Thursday is the final portrait, right? So is this way that he's upset that the party's not for him. It's Washington. There's a portrait of Washington at the very end.
There is the portrait of Thursday. So I don't really have any real sense to go with that. But the other thing I want to mention was, this takes us a little outside of the film. I apologize.
But the portrait of Thursday is based on a lie. So therefore, I was wondering if the movie wasn't saying something implicit about all such portraits. Well, portraits are kind of aristocratic, right? Like monuments and statues.
You're holding up a certain claim to an elevated position in the person, maybe from excellence, maybe from something else. But in some ways, maybe what the film might be saying about that is, as much as we may try as democratic people to escape some kind of aristocracy, John Adams said, this as well, we're stuck with it in some ways. Maybe it's not going to be a legal aristocracy, our constitution forbids that with no titles of nobility. But is it going to seep its way in in some other way?
Are we always going to find some way to put people on a pedestal and want to do that? Because we want heroes. We want to find heroes in some sort of way, which doesn't explain what David brought up. I think we'll have to talk about that at some point that this is all built on a lie.
But I think that the portrait is not a bad point to make that case. There's a kind of polishing act that goes on, I think, in any kind of history. You do the connection to the man who shot the beatdowns, right? When people accept the legend, or accept the lie, you print the lie.
But I think there's a kind of polishing act. And I think you point this out as well, that it seems like it's necessary to do that, because otherwise, the men who fought under him have no remembrance. They have no significance. But you could also go the other side, insofar as he's famous, it's what brings out the soldiers for the next generation.
And so you can't, it's sort of like the way that the military now is sort of losing public confidence because of foolish leadership, right? And I don't want to go fight some war that seems completely removed from my interest, right? And so you can see how that undermines morale and even enlistment. And if that's the case, then you just, you need, however, whatever Thursday his character is, you need to somehow put the interesting thing about it is that it's really not his gory, right?
In a way, I mean, he gets the fame. But it's not like he actually did those things. And so in a way, he just turns into a fiction and he himself is contemptible character and his sort of stupidity. It just robbed him of his life.
It robbed him of seeing his daughter, his daughter getting married. He's not a married the man that she didn't want, he didn't want her to marry, right? And the man that he didn't want to follow his guidance is now guiding things. And in fact, as, as regards to his life, the glory he gets comes out the expense of real sort of tangible goods he could have had as a man alive.
But in studies, just so disconnected lying to John Wade, not knowing anybody's name, right? Not caring about the things in his house, really. I mean, it's actually really quite ugly, right? We remember what when he apologizes to Sergeant Major O'Rourke, when he says my apologies, when he goes back and gets into that little ring that the surviving men get before the American Indians overrun them, he says, you know, my apologies, I mentioned that before.
But remember what Sergeant Major O'Rourke applies? He says, tell it to our grandchildren, right? Which is, I think, again, seeing the other goods of life, family of of more to life than glory. And I think the way to understand what Wayne, John Wayne's character Kirby, are doing, because it seems like he's the origin of that lie.
That's, I think, the most, the person that makes the most sense to come back and say, well, what happened? And he's constructed this is what he says about the regiment, never, the men never dying because as long as the regiment lives on, they live on. But if their lives are caught up in the life of the regiment, that means their honor and reputation is as well. And I think that in some ways, you know, people talk about, you know, the democracy of history being tradition, bringing in ancestry.
And I think you see in trying to create this myth about the regiment and therefore having to create a myth about Colonel Thursday, you're seeing this attempt to bring together the generations in the entity of the other regiment. And I wonder if there's some parallel there to patriotism, patriotism and nationality that how do we have America over generations? And it is this kind of seamless garment of citizenship, a generation after generation that is united by something, united by either ideals, united by common history, united by common mission. And I wonder if the regiment is showing itself as a proxy for that kind of question of citizenship more broadly.
And you need it by myth to go back to the point, right? Right. This is a small aggression. Sorry about that.
Yeah. And that comes to, you know, do we make heroes out of men, we shouldn't as well? And there are men that deserve it. And there are men maybe who don't deserve it that have been made heroes or made heroes in false ways.
The question I think this film asks is how bad is that? And it becomes more of a calculation than I think one might immediately just think it is by saying, well, no, you tell the truth. It seems like myth really does matter here in a way that says the defense possibly not always telling the exact truth. No.
One of the things that you, your remarks and your article and our discussion has led me to think about, I grew up on a military basis, my whole childhood. And you mentioned that maybe there's these there are these ways that air stocks actually creeps back into democracies that we still wanted in some way or another. And growing up on military bases, it is, I mean, it is explicitly aristocratic or a pologarcic, I mean, whatever you want to say, but I mean, there's, I mean, there's everywhere's uniforms, you give up any sense of individuality, right? I mean, there's clearly segregated housing that the officers lived over here, the NCOs, non-commission officers lived over there.
We didn't play with the kids or the officers. I mean, there were a couple of exceptions here, but it was weird. And would you also forbid in from marrying a young son of a commissioned officer? I don't like to talk about that.
It was quite heartbreaking. We're actually temple type, aren't you? Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's funny that our democratic society depends for its defense upon a very undemocratic, I mean, there are ways in which the United States military is democratic, but it's very undemocratic, right?
I mean, if you have a college education, you'd be an officer if you don't, you can't. I mean, there's some wiggle room that used to be greater wiggle room on these things. I mean, you're still rights and civil liberties are great liquor telling the United States military, right? You don't have freedom of expression.
You don't have that. You don't even can't wear your hair, like you want to wear it, let alone, you know, express yourself in other ways. And I just, I've always thought that, and of course, these are sometimes most patriotic people, but then they have great difficulties, even if they haven't seen wartime, my father was in service for 20 years. I mean, he went to some hot zones, but was never deployed in any official capacity.
And so, even him, you know, really had a trouble sort of adapting back into civilian life because it's, you know, he went into management for a retail company. And he was like, you know, it worked. Now I go and I tell people, you know, I give them the orders and they don't, they just don't do it. And I don't like people don't show up for work.
And they don't, they don't, they don't, they're, you know, forms aren't, you know, the shirts aren't, he's like, I'm like, hey, do this. And they're like, I'm not doing that. I had to learn a whole new thing, the whole new system. I don't really, I mean, you see that in the show, actually, in this movie, fairly clearly, right?
Like, some of them are very clearly holding a line. Like, there are these lines, I mean, it's of course, Thursday is the most emphatically addressing this, but there are these lines, like officers get over there and listen to guys who go over there. And it's very ordered and very disciplined. I don't know.
And I hear that that breaks down at the highest levels, at least for some of our special forces, becomes more horizontal. When I think to the movies, I think it's hard to think as a collective, like Navy Seals when they deploy, I think to the movies, right, it also breaks down in forward areas. This is just my guess, right? Like all the pictures, the uniform, also becomes less, way less important, just like for Apache, we're actually out here doing the work.
It doesn't really matter what, you know, if I had my hat on just right increased three tries. No, they were like the blue gene Navy Seals and NAM. Exactly. Right.
Yeah. And I think that forward is wanting to hold on to something of the, even in the professional army, the idea of a citizen soldier. Right. And that even made me think, I think you guys were talking on a previous show about how you want to have a regime based in the rule of law and the based in persuasion and these other things.
Yet how do most regime start violence, accident and force, Federalist One, as as as as as Poulia said. And here you see an instance of an institution that itself is not naturally Republican needed to maintain the Republic and needed to continue to exist in the Republic. So this problem that often begins with founding continues in the question of defense, the question of maintenance. And I think that you see that where forward is at least trying to make some argument for citizen soldiers, that there's going to be Thursdays and there's going to be a temptation to be Thursday like in a professional army, always, always there.
That's very good. This is 1948, this right after World War II. This is, you know, I mean, we think we think it's a long time. It's what's a decade from where Eisenhower warns against precisely this, right?
The dangers of standing military. Yeah, I was just having to be with a colleague about that the other day and the significance of the Second Amendment. He was pressing me on this saying, so are you saying that a standing army is sort of anti-Republican? And I was like, well, I think it's a problem for Republican government.
In fact, it does sort of depend upon citizen militias or something like this in some way. But yeah. Yeah, and that's where you're trading off the question of effectiveness as a fighting force, which is obviously matters for external threats versus the internal threat of undermining your own virtue. Again, this is something that Publius says in the Federalist Papers.
He worries about a standing army, making it so that the soldiers become their own social class, in addition to the social class problems within the military. They themselves become and have their own identity. I mean, this was the problem in Rome, where the legions were connected to and wanted to follow their general rather than having a loyalty to Rome. And there's one instance where we, I think, genuinely had that danger and it was during the Civil War with George B.
McClellan, the general that with the army of the Potomac and to shape and seemed at one point to be a threat to Lincoln to have an army that may be loyal to him and not to Lincoln. Now, the 1864 election proved the Democratic virtue of the army when the army overwhelmingly voted for Lincoln in the 1864 election. But you do have that historical problem that we are not immune to. Yeah.
You don't mind? I'd like to transition to another topic we sort of talked about in the run a show. Maybe it's the last topic we should spend some time on. And I did a little bit of poking around and we'll talk about other people.
And it seems like Ford took some flack for his portrayal of Native Americans. And this seems wrong to me. So I'm sort of shocked at how much I saw this, maybe I'm wrong. But a lot of people see this movie as sort of hostile to Native Americans, portraying them in a very negative light.
But that's, I mean, that was not my impression whatsoever of this. You know, there's a famous book about the history of the Apache, you know, I'm talking about it. Oh, no, it's about the Comanche. I was about to discourage that.
Yeah, it's the history of the Comanche. It was written a few years ago. I was about to describe them in very bloody terms. I'll say if it was about the Comanche, then they underplayed the viciousness.
Well, Thursday calls them savages. And that's one defense he makes of saying Wayne should have no right, no, no, a pecadillos about not having about breaking faith with them. He shouldn't trouble his conscience because we hire people can't have right faith with them. But it seems that the suicide charge just credits all that.
And it seems that Wayne, in my opinion, is speaking for the film when he says that leaving the reservation was an act of moral and virtue and preservation of virtue on the part of the Native Americans. So I would struggle, I haven't read the same things that you've read, but okay, I struggle not to see how it's a grave indication of the Native Americans or the American Indians, and that it's actually asking us if we all have a little bit of Colonel Thursday in us and some hubris that we might need to address. But both on the level of taxation and on the level of moral virtue, I think that he leaves quite open that those the Native Americans are human beings in that regard and capable of virtue and vice just as everyone else in the film. Yeah, definitely.
It's a gross misreading when people start. Yeah, it's I don't know how one can watch the surgeries. I think that's the case where John Wayne's character who hears closer to Thursday ends up scalping. They need of American doing the thing that he right and then he he dismisses his niece, I think in the movie, right, who was kidnapped by them quite young as oh, she's gone forever, but she comes around she remembers them and it's not like she's forgotten that prior life.
I mean, he's constantly exploring the tendency, right, to reduce people to their particular circumstances. That actually brings up another point, contrasting Thursday with I forget John Wayne's character's name with the movie, but York York York, which by the way, the kids name the child of a work and Thursday Philadelphia Thursday is daughter is named something a calling would York or work, right. So he's son ends up having the last name with the two people he's right his grandson. So but it's interesting on the one hand, I want to side and I agree with you to a certain extent.
Wayne's character does speak for the film, but I want to side with him and say, yeah, you know, he learns the language of the Apache develops a relationship, he knows their customs, he trusts them and shows trust by going in just him and a translator. That's it. And I think translation is an interesting metaphor. I got this from Herodis, but translation is an interesting metaphor for humanity.
You assume that the gibberish, these other people are speaking actually makes sense and it's meaningful and worth learning. But on the other hand, when I was thinking of Thursday and how he's kind of cartoonish, he also a little bit in his study of other other generals or other leaders reminded me a little bit of Machiavelli, right, or a few appointments in the Prince where he's like, I can all my recall, and I can union with his great minds, except Thursday's just bad at it. Right. So then the question becomes, well, if he hadn't fallen for this trap, if he had given his his opponent more credit and seen that there, this guy's obviously capable.
Could he have pulled it off? Right. Could he have actually done it and gotten the glory? To what extent are we meant to see therefore kind of hybrid approach between the two?
Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think that it, and I think one thing that was support that is the trap he sets earlier that we were talking about is actually a pretty slide military move that results in a victory. So he's not utterly a fool, even though I think there is some criticism as the scholar is general, that the scholar is general lacks a certain common sense that is needed.
But he's not without his military abilities. And I think that that needs to be taken into account as well. And one thing I'd add about his glory that I think is just building on something we were saying earlier is what's interesting is, what is Thursday thinking when he dies? He has to be thinking that he is going to live in infamy.
That his entire project, his entire project, why does he go back with the men? Maybe a sense of duty, but also a sense of I don't want to go back and face the accounts after what I to be a coward or to be a fool. Right. Lacking moral and intellectual virtue.
I like to ask my students, would you rather be called stupid or evil, which is more insulting to you to see what their virtues and which virtues they've been more valuable. But he goes back, I think in some ways not wanting to face that he's been made a fool. And then he gets glory, which glory that he never gets to experience. Sometimes at least you know if you're a Washington or someone else that you know you're going to be glorified in a certain sense.
You're going to be famous. You're going to be loved in some way, shape or form. He dies thinking, I'm going to be seen as a stupid fool. And so he doesn't even get to enjoy the prospect of his fame and honor going forward, which I think is interesting.
That's what I'm going to count. Yeah. And he knows it. And he knows it because he says, when you're commanding this regiment, right, then you can make the decisions and probably you will soon.
I'm going to die. Just let me die the way I want to die. The problem is he ends up killing a lot of other men and he could have saved some of those. Well, he seems to take life very callously.
He really does because I think he thinks there are, and this is an interesting question. Sometimes democracy or republics value life above everything when at the same time, there's always the question, are there things we're dying for? And perhaps republics can overemphasize what's worth living for. Thursday, I think is an example of two callas and having too long a list of what's worth dying for.
And the film maybe is saying one needs to have a proper moderate ordering of those kinds of questions. On this topic of, like, eternal glory, I was going to transition to please a little bit about Adam's history. But if you had some final thoughts, great Adam, have a good worry. No, no, no, no, but this podcast is forever.
I said a stupid question about names. I couldn't make any sense, but it seems the names are so odd that it seems like they must mean something. The girl's Shirley Temple's character, her first name is Philadelphia. It's very strange and obviously it's the birthplace of American some ways and some regards, but it also means well, well, and Thursday too, right?
I mean, this is somehow just Thursday. That was so funny because he imagines himself to be aristocratic, but he's named actually. I know. I thought that was so well, but Thursday is named after a god, Thor from from mythology.
So there is that at least. And the Philadelphia is also named after mythological thing. Isn't it named after my wrong? Is it named after a famous relationship?
This is the part of the show where Greg does. I'm sorry. I said it was silly. Move on.
Talk about the wall. It's way more interesting. It'll second Greg. I can tell you George Washington's portrait reappears briefly.
I got it. No, I just made that up. I believe it. Adam, one thing we like to talk about is how we came to be interested in political philosophy.
It's not something you do for the money. It's not something you do for the glory. You better like it. And so it usually involves an interesting story.
So we'd like to know what was your story? How did you come about it? What did you study? What you do?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
I came. I was a political junkie starting. This is embarrassing, and embarrassing, say in fifth grade. And what was the reason?
Exactly. I didn't have a serious girlfriend till college that shouldn't surprise you. And they, but it was politics in sort of the regular sense, elections, policy issues. And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way.
But when I got to college at Ashland, I in my first one-on-one class read book, One of Air Salas Politics, I read Henry V and that class I read Xenophon, Cyber Padaya. And the, I was smitten. And I was smitten by the idea that political philosophy is getting at what it means to be human, what it means to know what justice is, what it means to live in community, under law, and that these fundamental questions had to be answered. And that if I was going to be a citizen of the republic, I was in, I needed to know them.
And then the more you study them, the more you realize it's a lifetime. So that was in my first freshman year of college, my one-on-one class. That's where that really started to come to fruition. That was the life.
Now, at first, I refused to go with it. Peter Tram, who has since passed on. And he, I owe him a debt I could never repay because he took a chance on me. I didn't know anything.
I was a hick from Southern Ohio. And he saw something in me that I didn't. He saw that I should not go into regular politics, even though I was doing internships with campaigns and other things. He saw that I needed to go into teaching, that I was a, that I, the teaching was a vocation that I would love, that I'd be a part of.
He knew it before I did. And it was in a class of his on Abraham Lincoln, where he would have us each do five-minute presentations. And I got up into a five-minute presentation that was questioned and answered because he wanted to have a conversation. And I remember in that class, I said, Lincoln believed that to save the union, you had to prove the union was worth saving.
And he stops and says, talk more about that and continue on that. And he had me keep going. And five minutes turned into me talking with a class for about 45 minutes to an hour. And he made me just keep going.
And it was after that that I really thought, you know, teaching this stuff is maybe what I should do. And now I can't imagine doing anything else. I can't imagine having another vocation. I can't imagine doing something other than working with students on these questions and learning alongside them.
So that was sort of how I got into and why I got into political philosophy. That's great story. Well, and talk to us a little bit about the second, the enhancement period at Baylor. So you catch the bug at Ashland, you learn with great teachers like Shran.
And who was on the scene at Baylor when you arrived in? And who kind of added the relishes to your mind? Yeah, I was saying Ashland, I really learned the Declaration of Independence really well and learned the basics of political philosophy at Baylor. It was the Nichols David and Mary Nichols that were running the program at the time.
And Mary Nichols, of course, is so wonderful on Aristotle and taught me so much about how to read him in a way that I had not before. And David Nichols really taught me the Constitution in a certain way, showed me the beauty of the institutions, the beauty of separation of powers and the structure and how to interact that with political philosophy itself. And they were massively important in developing me beyond Ashland was a wonderful education. This was a wonderful compliment to it that I felt very blessed in a very good community.
The other thing they turned me on to, I should say, given what we're doing today is politics and film. The Nichols are very into that. They both contributed to a book on John Field Ford films. And they really showed me that a good film is like a good text and that you can learn fundamental questions about justice, about politics from a really well written screenplay that is put alive on screen by good actors and a good director.
Yeah, I remember when Alex interviewed at Baylor, he had to go to LA but he came back and just had such nice things to say about watching Woody Allen's films. We watched the Woody Allen film and then had a conversation about it and it was wonderful. Yeah, I think Nichols doesn't get enough credit for reviving or I don't mean writing inaccurate. I mean, simply putting on the map the depth and wonders of film.
Cancer is always talked about but. Political philosophy, we should say. Right. Yeah, but for political philosophy, Mary's the touchstone.
I think we reached out to her to be on the show. We should reach out again. She was sort of a little bit suspicious but maybe now that we've had some more outstanding students on the Melinda shred of decent standard. The education and colleagues right now and very good.
Well, should we transition to lightning around now, folks? This is Greg's. Yeah, this is my I love this thing. I love to vlog it.
All right, you're right. You've listened. So you know what the stick is here. You got it's lightning fast, right?
All right. Question number one. Who's your favorite? Oh goodness, that would be I would have to go with.
Oh no, I better not answer that question. That's right. Yeah, I was actually trying to think of is there a third Nichols that I know that I could just throw at James age, but then you're saying you prefer him to. Yeah, no, they were you can't have one without the other.
They are so career and personally intertwined that you have both or you have neither the way they have ordered their lives or their careers, which is really a beautiful thing actually to watch. It is a an intellectual love affair in addition to being a marriage. It really really was neat to watch as a graduate student. It's really cool.
All right. Would you rather be stupid or evil? Stupid. Stupid.
Yeah. Most of my students say the opposite by the way. They say you're evil? Yeah, they take evil because they don't want to think in a college setting.
They don't want to be thought of as stupid. Oh, very interesting. You have a favorite philosopher. Montesquieu.
Montesquieu. Very nice. You have a favorite work of philosophy. This will sound repetitive, but a spirit of the laws.
Okay, fair enough. They work at literature. Brothers cake. Oh, the second time, that's my favorite book.
Now it's the second person too. Who was it? Anton said that somebody else. It was recently.
He made three people down. Huh? Okay. I've ever had any nicknames.
None of this stuck, but I'd say it actually had a future Marine called me Care Bear. Care Bear? Oh, I like that. That's fine.
Yeah, but it didn't stick beyond him, but he stuck to it. Which was quite funny because he could have broken me in half very easily. Great. I don't really have that nickname in Berlin also.
Different reasons. I think it was just bear. Yeah. It was just bear.
What's the favorite place you've ever visited? Favorite place I've ever visited? Oh, that's a tough one. I would say actually New York City.
The first time I visited New York City, I fell in love with that place. I hope it hasn't gone to Poss since then, but I really thought New York City was beautiful in the 90s when I got to go to it. Top 102 things you saw that you really liked. The Solid Broadway play, which was wonderful.
And eight. Oh, of course. No, fandom of the opera actually. So it's the same author.
But then I also ate some amazing pizza. So I guess it was a vehicle too. What was your first car? A 2000 Chevy Cavalier.
Nice. Color? It's so much less. We have these really old people that gave it a little, those first cars a horse.
I mean, it was, I mean, we got some old old cars. It's like 2000. You said 2000. I was like, that hurt me in my heart a little bit.
I was like, man, 2000. I don't think my car car car is a 2000. Yeah. That's fine.
Yeah. I drove that all through college, national and back. So it was a dependable little vehicle. What's your favorite Supreme Court case to teach?
You're a scholar of a Supreme Court. You've won great. Right. Oh, that's a great question.
I would say Marbury v. Madison. No. Because one, I think Judge Chief Justice Marshall is a good writer.
And I like walking them through the logic of judicial review and the role of the judiciary. It sort of sets up all the other cases I might give them. So yeah. I took a course on legal history and undergrad and the professor was obsessed with the Charles River Bridge case.