Welcome back to the New Thinkery. My name is David Barr of the Claremont Institute. With me, as always, is my good friend Alex Priu from the University of Colorado, Boulder. How are you doing, Alex?
I'm doing great. How are you, David? Excellent. And Greg McBrayer from Ashland University, and in Ashland, Ohio, the home of what Greg?
You remind us it's the world headquarters of nice people for the list at home. And with us today, we're all delighted and a special guest, a political science professor from the University of Virginia. Many of our listeners know him, have at least heard him lecture perhaps even studied with him. James Caesar, how are you, Dr.
Caesar? I'm fine. Happy to be in the Thinkery. So this episode, we're recording it prior to November 3rd, but it will be released after the election.
And I have friends on the left and right, depending on who I ask, theorizing that America, if Trump wins or if Biden wins, will balkanize and thus be in need of a new founding or refounding. So today, we are talking about founding Professor Caesar. I was a professional segue right there for the folks at home. I'm making a slight joke, but it's in a way, it's not so jokey, because every month or so, a place like the New York Times will publish an article on the future crackup of America.
They never talk about the need for new foundings. They just say it'll happen and kind of iron itself out. Should we preemptively congratulate the winner? This is a great accomplishment for somebody in their mid to late 70s.
And whoever wins should be proud of what they've done. Exactly. Well, we'll either have someone who's crazy or senile. So that's the point I should make a joke about the making until the election day.
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So Dr. Caesar has an old, an article that you can look up.
I think at AEI's website, it's from the National Interest. We're, no, it's not, I confused that with the public interest. Sorry. You go to the National Interest website on the founder of Modern Founding, James Madison.
We're going to talk about that theme today. So Dr. Caesar, take it away. Good.
Well, I'm happy to be here and to join this group. So let's go. Where do we want to start? Well, I mean, we should probably start at the beginning.
That's usually the rational way to do things. And I thought we'd say the best part for the middle. Yeah, and I thought we were talking about divine law givers today. I didn't see any of that.
Oh, there's most of it's all gone. Like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. David spent all day in, in, in, in the synagogue and then he went over to the mosque and so he's been studying the wrong way.
Online, online. So the people's called the founder of Modern Founding, that founder being Madison. You have this remark kind of midway, you're talking about Machiavelli and you say founding is an individual activity, not the work of a group. You would never, for example, rely on a faculty committee to found anything, which I took as a bar bet, your, you know, administrative duties or committee duties at the University of Virginia.
But then it's struck me that's a not so flattering comparison for our own founding, which was done somewhat by committee. And then I think gets, gets at the heart of what the essay is trying to do, which is look at sort of two stages maybe in the founding, if that's fair to say, first, the founding of the government by all the founders by this committee. And then second, the founding of our reverence for that first founding, which was done by Madison, right? And you laid us out in 49 and specifically as disagreements with Jefferson, I think, which I found really fascinating.
I had really never considered before. I thought maybe you could just start with that sort of two stages or two sides of the founding and what you're really trying to get at by looking at that. Yeah, well, in the classical understanding of founding, and I believe that the idea or concept of founding was at the center of original political science of the Greeks. I think it's the key concept.
So that's sort of the starting point. Now, when we get to American funding, it's a little bit more complicated because obviously we weren't founded by a one person, which is something that all of the classical thinkers recommended has to be done by one person. Machiavelli thinks that way, Descartes thinks that way Rousseau saw one person, but our founding was accomplished by a group. Those who went to the convention, that said, I'm sure Madison was headed mine quite clearly.
That within that group, there was a group within the group, which are the three or four major founders. Of course, he had to recognize what the convention did, it accomplished something great in and of itself, but there were the leaders of the founders. So say, let's say he said a small number of persons, and he recognizes when he brings up the whole concept of founding that this is a little bit of a problem, to have more than one. But if you can pull it off, there's certain advantages to be seen from that, because you can get more people to go along with something.
You've got a group, and remember, our founders, this is a distinctive character, they had no power to do anything. They had no army, they had no military, they had no way to force anything. They could only accomplish this by consensus, which is to get all these states to go along and vote for ratification. So they weren't in a position to command, they had to in a way appeal.
So that was the situation that Madison found himself, I think he did the best he could. And in federal 38, he mentions that the pros and cons of one founder versus many. I think he had a sort of soft spot for one founder, which would have been him. And then as you mentioned, the second stage, the real stage where he lays out the idea of what a constitution is.
And one point I make is that we've had written constitutions going back to the time right after the revolution, when the states had to write constitutions. Jefferson said that America was the first place where they ever had written constitutions of any kind. I'm not sure if that's true, but I haven't found anything. That is something written on paper or parchment that lays out a whole plan for the government puts it down.
Anyhow, that was Jefferson's idea of what the first constitution is. But with Madison, he gave a new twist to this. The important thing is not just the written constitution, that's banal. Now, California is a written constitution who cares, New Jersey has one who cares, you have to be crazy to want to, to revere that Madison invented the idea.
Oh, sorry. Sorry. I find the New Jersey Constitution just beautiful by the continue. Yeah, well, yeah, there's a good one.
But Madison invents the idea in federalist 49 of a constitution as something written down that should be revered and venerated and not changed very often. So in that idea is a whole way of how a people should think they should look back to something and see its merits, put it a little bit on a pedestal. He uses those words of veneration is very important. It appears in that.
And it's only because of that that you have founders that you go back, you can go back to something which was original that we still have, such as the current Supreme Court justice, she speaks of originalism in going back to the founders. Whereas if you rewrite the Constitution every 18 years, which Jefferson proposed 18 or 19 years it changed different years of time, then what kind of founders do you have? Would we really be thinking of founders if the Constitution had been revised five or six or seven times? I don't think we would.
They went and founded anything that endured. So founding has a notion of something that endures. And Madison creates that. He creates a whole epistemology of how one thinks about the past, our connection to the past, our reverence for the past, which of course Jefferson dismissed this entirely.
Can I ask you a follow up question there, Dr. Caesar? One small question and a bigger question I think. One is, isn't there something undemocratic about founding and search Jefferson being so hyper democratic?
Do you think that's why he sort of didn't want this idea of reviewing a generation? And then the second thing, perhaps more important, you sort of in your paper and in your comments just now mentioned that America has, seems to have something in common with the ancient or classical conceptual founding. Would you therefore say that America seems to be sort of mixed up modern and ancient principles? Therefore, is that a fair thing to say?
I would say go to your last one first. Madison brings back the idea of founding. At one point I'm making the papers that in British political law, in the 18th century, they were trying to suppress the idea of founding for reasons we can get into. And I think that's the greatest difference between Britain and the United States still is that we rely on Britain for so many things, common law, this, but they will be or choose to believe that things evolved by accident and then picking the best from accident and adding on to it.
In other words, they believe in things growing organically. That's the Berkey and view of how. But our founders take this idea of founding of something planned and understood and make that the basis of it. And they bring back into modernity the idea of founding.
They make founding, I would say the founding had largely been forgotten or suppressed. And you talk, actually, this might, I apologize for interrupting. No, no, well, we can get back to his first question, which is very important, obviously. No, no, no.
Let's go back. And then if we could, after that, you do lay out this concept of founding had been, it just said kind of forgotten way laid or repressed or repressed. In your paper, you do talk about three political philosophers, at least Descartes Machievelli, Rousseau, who had not forgotten this important part. So we can talk about that in a sec.
Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So the first point.
Yeah, your first question was Jefferson and why he opposed, why he was opposed to founding. Well, there are a number of reasons. But one reason is he believed in progress. So if you have progress, you don't want to keep what is in the past, the past is old.
It's custom, which we should, we should be rid of. So we know more than the past and the next generation will know more than us. And to tie ourselves to the past, as Madison suggests, we should, is a bad idea. We're tying ourselves, I mean, for example, if you want to go to a doctor, would you go into a doctor and say, believe me, but they were bleeding in the 18th century, that was advanced medicine.
So Jefferson believes in that at one point. He also believes along with that. As you go further into the future, things are going to improve. And each generation in his view should repeat the idea of establishing a constitution.
Because otherwise, and this is, I think, an interesting idea. Otherwise, people forget why they form a government. They have to do so existentially every generation so that they've actually done it. And then they realize why they chose the government that they did.
And Jefferson was afraid that if we allow this idea of a founding to continue, people will forget that as they have today. I mean, but you don't think we're reminded of that at the every time we vote? No, not when we vote. I mean, we should be reminded of it.
Surely when we celebrate the Fourth of July, but all we do is stuff our face with hot dogs and things like that. But remember, in the Fourth of July, David does that year round, not just a country. I'm a patriot. I mean, that's a patriotic act, but we don't read.
And in the old celebrations in the 19th century of the declaration, people would read the Declaration of Independence. And it's not so often that people do that. Maybe you do. You're a peculiar sort of guy, but people don't do that at celebration.
So we forgot what makes it means to enter into this new society that we're a part of. And Jefferson was afraid of that. That was a pretty good thought. He was afraid that that would occur.
So those are a couple of reasons that Jefferson had, in addition to the democratic argument. We shouldn't be ruled by our fathers. It's striking because the way you portray it seems like Madison understands what the founding needs to be in order to have a kind of stable regime. But that very principle of stability seems to or the goal of stability seems to undermine a full appreciation of the nature of a founding and everything that's at stake in that issue.
About the British 18th century thought, one of the things I got the impression from your paper, but I was sort of just wondering, was it a sense that this was for Madison a great opportunity to revise an old idea or to bring an old idea into this new era so that he could give a distinctively modern or maybe American twist to the idea of founding. And going back, and this is maybe related to David's question, how specifically does Madison's idea of founding differ from that of the ancients or Machiavelli or Rousseau? And you also include Descartes in that as well. Right.
Well, I would say on the first question that you posed, yeah. Madison repeat that the first thing. It struck me that the idea of founding had dropped out of political theory at least in 18th century British thought was a massive opportunity because when something's forgotten, you could recast it anew. Right.
Okay, here's what I think Madison had the idea that we had to bring this back, but he really didn't have a choice. You didn't have a choice because America was founded on a revolution. So he was in this paradoxical situation. We'd already done something new.
So in a way, he had to defend something like founding. We were based on a revolution, and something entirely new. His federalist 14 says, you know, these are these great men who had done these great things. He was obliged to take that position and to defend it.
But the paradox of what he does is he praises the idea that Americans are willing to try something new. They're not tied to the past. And yet in federal's 49, what he does is he tries not to set forth a new idea what the future will be like, in which we are connected to the past, and we should remain connected to the past. So he's had a very tough job to do.
And that's what he tries to do in federal's 49. And as I said, to create a political epistemology that people now think in different ways, and their minds work in different ways, so far as they look to the Constitution as something stable. That's what he wanted to do. So that gives you a little bit of an idea, walking between two different ideas and putting them together.
We should probably let the folks at home know that you're a great advocate and advertiser, a federalist, 49. True enough, my vanity license plates in Virginia is Fed 49. And I cherish that very much. And especially for those who tailgate, they come back by car, they're going to see that, and they're going to go back and read the federal's 49.
As I hoped they would, they'd be connected to the past, connected to the original originalism, connected to something that is stable for us. Doesn't mean we can't amend and change, but the basic idea is we try and keep what we have, because things aren't always getting better. In some fields, they do, but it's not clear they get better in politics. Sometimes the older is the better.
And that's what he's trying to connect people to. And you mentioned about this question of equality of people, that the idea of founding is undemocratic. That's precisely what founding is. It is undemocratic.
It's undemocratic because it allows for greatness. What's the greatest activity that exists in politics? It's founding and re-founding. So our founders and say Lincoln, as two possible examples, these are the ones who are in the category of founders.
They're great men. And the rest of us, I won't say, are nothing, but we're certainly not great people. So the idea is it makes distinctions among people inside the political realm and brings back the idea of greatness. You're only going to be able to accomplish this if you have a great founder or great founders.
They're the ones who set the stage for the rest of us. And so the idea of greatness is built right into the heart of American politics. We have our Washington and boy, the founders when they looked at Washington, that this is our chance to put forward in all the literature that we're going to write. That there was this extraordinary man.
But for this extraordinary man, we would never have accomplished what we did. It's interesting psychologically, we don't seem to allow ourselves. Maybe it's because these men or women haven't walked among us since time's long past. But psychologically, we don't seem to allow ourselves to elevate anybody else up to the status of, well, certainly not founding because that's impossible.
But you have this great line in your piece for you. It's like the people who we might term statesmen are kind of like the handmaid to these original founders. They're of a lower order, I should say. Yeah, we still make the point.
And I think it's a good one. He says in the hierarchy of rank, the founders at the top, they're the ones who set everything up and statesmen are good, but statesmen maintain, they don't start. So in a way, the founders higher than the statesmen. And that's the hierarchy of rank.
And of course, Lincoln deals with this in the lyseumidress paradoxically, because in the lyseumidress, he says, our problem today is to keep what they established 40 or 50 years ago. That's what they said. That's our problem. It is different from theirs.
But of course, Lincoln himself has to raise his problem. Why is it that we're in a state of danger when he's speaking now with the riots that were taking place in Missouri and in the south where people were stealing, looting, burning, killing people, hanging people. The country he was afraid was going to come apart by these mobs and militias. That's what concerned Lincoln in that speech.
And of course, what he points out, why do people do this? He says, the people who have the desire for greatness without any virtue know that they can only achieve that greatness by destroying what exists. They have to destroy the past founder to make themselves equal or better. So they're in a way the most dangerous people that the dangerous people and he says the dangerous people will be in the future.
He's thinking ahead maybe a little bit will be those who institute slavery everywhere or eliminated everywhere. They're going to change the character of our system. And they'll be driven to do this. So that's the danger that founders pose.
And the danger I think why Burke and others in the 18th century try to get rid of founding because in a way it opens the door to something dangerous but also to something great. Yeah, I guess that's where the reverence and veneration. Keeping with your comments on Rousseau, he not only places the founder above ordinary statesmen, he goes a step further and places them above the gods. They honor the gods with their wisdom by putting their wisdom into their mouths.
So he understood it. And in a way, I guess that's what Jefferson maybe didn't altogether appreciate that. You might invite these sort of imposters and you'd have to change your license by constantly. Yeah, that would be a real problem.
You see the difference in this in a practical sense. If you watch some of those hearings on Judge Barrett, you see that the idea of looking back to the past, the idea of originalism is to offense to many people because they believe that we simply know more and better. And the idea that we should do this, that this should be the standard of judgment, is anathema to them. And it lies in the idea that we're always moving forward, the future is better than the past, etc.
And so Madison way presents a partly opposite point of view. So this mention of Rousseau, one of the founders he admired a great deal on the founder you talk about, I was wanting to get you to talk a little bit about like, you talk about like, Kyrgyz, you talk about like Kyrgyz in your paper. And I want to connect it to a couple of things. One of, I guess two things, one is your emphasis in Madison on the written constitution being so important, whereas like, Kyrgyz, specifically for bad, having a written constitution, I just wanted to speak to that just a little bit.
But then also, I guess, I'm wondering if you saw, you sent us the Plutarch life of like Kyrgyz to prepare for this. I was wondering if you saw sort of a nascent checks and balances kind of thing going on in a sort of constitution. And if you saw Madison drawing on that, so not just a founder insofar as what a founder does, but even the content of the kind of thing that the founder ought to found. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's a pretty good point. Well, like Kyrgyz, I take at least in Greek thought from Greece to be the greatest of founders.
Like Kyrgyz, for those of you who don't know, as the founder of Sparta, we have Sparta, we like the Sparta in Michigan State. We don't have anyone here from Michigan State, but the Spartans are pretty important. And that regime that he established lasted an awful long time. It's not clear that there was like Kyrgyz, but assuming there was, it lasted a very long time and inspired one of the most important cities or the most important cities in Greece.
It's also the, so in a way, that's the most important course. They didn't know about Moses. Moses is also another great founder and same, you can add later with Romulus and others. But like Kyrgyz gets the apple for being the best of founders, I think in Western political thought.
Maybe Machiavelli doesn't think that of like Kyrgyz he done grows in a little bit, he likes Rome, but I would say he's the greatest. And the reason why he's the greatest, if you read that the chapter in Plutarch is Plutarch shows how like Kyrgyz tried to control through his rules, his rhetoric, every aspect of the life of Sparta to create this virtuous human being and soldier, to make everyone, you can say a Marine or everyone, a special force force person. And that requires so much, it requires first of all, a wholly new education system, which he establishes. The Spartans were educated from the beginning.
The breakdown of the family and the rise of the state is the educating agent, the end of privacy, the use of sexuality to encourage this virtue. The women dance around naked and make fun of the people or cowards and praise those who have done great in war. And how they die, everything from beginning to end is shaped political. It's like crazy because in some way there's no freedom in our sense, but people are molded to be good individuals.
That's why you got a lesson of what founding is by studying like Kyrgyz, more than any other person. He does that. So in a way, founding is connected with what's political sciences, because political sciences is studying how you create good regimes, like regimes are good but are bad. The person who knows how to create and has the knowledge of how to create that possesses political science.
And like Kyrgyz himself, before he founded Sparty, traveled around the Aegean and met Thales in Crete. And Thales was already beginning to develop a science of politics. He taught like Kyrgyz, many things which he took back to Sparta. So in a way, you have the literal founder, the one who's actually carrying it out and executing it.
But then you have the theoretical founder, the proto founder, who may not be doing it directly, not doing the active founding, but who's providing the knowledge which helps the founder do what he should do. So that in a way is the greatest proto founder in that sense, probably isn't Thales, but Aristotle. He gives you a teaching. He's not actually founding a place, as far as I know, but he's teaching people how to do it.
And that's what we mean by political science, that knowledge of it. And so Madison, in a way, is also in that position. He brings political science into the United States and uses that to help us found. It's a system of both energetic action by a person.
He's got to have courage and the width and the ability to do it, so energetic action, but knowledge of how to do it. Knowledge is what's important. And that was from the proto founder. I have a quick question, David.
I need to remind you of something real quick, though. Do you remember what happened when we were reading the life of Lycurgis at St. John's when we were students? No, I don't.
We read the life of Lycurgis. And as you mentioned, right, it's very unfree, right? And all the students were complaining. And one woman in particular was just so worked out that it's so unfree.
And who's our tutor? He was an older gentleman, very, very sort of, you know, nicely dressed and a deep voice. And he always said he says, how are they not free? Do you remember David?
Yes, free to be wise, free to be courageous, free to be temperate. And that into that conversation real quick. Sorry, David. I have a question.
I'd be curious for your theory on this. If the importance of founding wisdom, or founding wisdom is central to the health of a regime, how is it that it can disappear for just hundreds of years? And from the scene, I mean, today, I think it disappears from our universities. Well, actually, I'll ask you the question.
Why is it kind of disappeared from our modern political science? But even going back in history, why does it seem to disappear from a lot of intellectual discussion, even outside of the university? Or am I incorrect in thinking about it? Could be, I mean, as I mentioned, it continued to be the center of political science for a time.
I mean, after all the Roman Empire, all political science was this idea of founding was no longer in question because everything was controlled from one place. But it's brought back by Machiavelli. It's essential to his political philosophy, essential to the political philosophy of Descartes in some ways, in a strange way, and others. So it does come back.
But I think people, when they repressed founding, they did so for good reasons. They had the reasons for repressing it. They thought it was dangerous, first of all. When you look at why people found and how they found, here's an important point.
They often come into being the founder without any authority. How do you gain authority to found? To restructure society from top to bottom, as like Hurgers did. If you're not already a king or something like that, you come from the outside, you've got to found.
So they have to recreate their authority. And everything about founding, the rules of founding are different from the rules of governing. The founding takes place by different methods. Like Hurgers used as force to found.
He doesn't say that in the future, people should keep doing this. He uses trickery. He uses all sorts of devices, which at least once the regime is founded, these tricks are hidden. But in the founding, they're central.
And in our own founders, they tricked a little bit too. They didn't have the power to set up a constitution. They were giving that. They went and did it.
And Madison writes about this. He hides the argument. He said, ultimately, the good of the people is the most important thing. But then he goes on and tries to show that they didn't do anything untoward.
But they did. I like the addition that wasn't Franklin that said, this was unanimously agreed to when everything was put in there was only by simple majority. Like this constitution was unanimously agreed by all presidents, but not true. Right.
So you're doing what you're playing tricks. You're doing different. You're acquiring power. So in a way, there's two different ways of ruling.
There's ruling at the time of founding, where all sorts of exceptional things are done. And then there's the regime once it's set up, which is supposed to be much nicer. Now, the distinction does always work in practice. You've got to move back and forth a little bit.
But that's the firm distinction. So the British I believe in the 18th century, we're looking to repress founding because it was dangerous. And one motive repression was social contract. What's the idea of the social contract?
You mean to social contract? I can't say I'm a student of political philosophy. So I don't know everyone. But I know Locke.
There's no founder. He's the founder, but there's no founder. So that's an indication that people will establish their own regime on good sense and rationality. He presents what good sense and rationality is you want to be protected, you want to keep your rights, get together and agree and form a contract together.
No, no, it doesn't depend on the chance of the founder coming. It doesn't depend on greatness. It all looks kind of democratic and rational. Or you get to to burr.
And what does he say? He says, well, the only way that we thinks happen in politics is not to a founder. No one can know that much to find. He says, it's crazy to think of that.
What happens is there's accidents that occur. And political regimes are formed by accidents. And people after an accident has occurred, then come to realize what's good. If it is good, they save that and they throw away the other parts and they keep accumulating.
So the British view, this organic view is that the establishment of a society is not the act of political science for a great individual. It's like a tree, the great British oak tree, which just keeps growing and also has the different directions. And who knew what it was going to be like at the beginning? No, no human being can know this.
But once we see it and it's beauty and we trim it, a few branches and everything, we've got this thing. That's how societies grow. That's what the common law is. The common law is an accumulation of things that are founded by established by different people over time, rather than thinking that there's this one superstar, the Taylor Swift, you could say, apologics, who puts it all together.
That's not the way things should be thought of. So the organic thinkers in history, let's say in Britain, they look back to the past. They look back to what was established by accident in Britain and where did British ideas come from? They came from the Jews and the Saxons.
So that went back to Germany and the Goths and the spawning of the Goths. I would say they're two great schools of thought and about and thought there's the Goths, which links to Tacitus, that everything goes back to how they lived by custom. And we keep repeating what they're doing. Or the idea that you establish something new is profoundly.
Greg McBrayer was known for a long time. Greg, our co-host, Greg, our co-host, Greg, our co-host, Greg, our co-host, Greg, our co-host, Greg, our co-host, Greg, our co-host, Greg, our co-host, his faculty mentor, Charles Butterworth, but a different kind of Goth. I'm thinking about these 18th century thinkers and one of the things that comes to mind is, or counterpoint is Jeremy Bentham and the utilitarianist, who have a much more Cartesian, sort of top down rationalist approach. But it strikes me how little that took hold, at least as in practical affairs, a sort of utilitarian or consequentialist approach, where he's much more rationalistic, much more calculating.
It does seem like maybe it's the British Morais themselves, resist this, but it does seem like the attempt to give a kind of radical refounding or a sort of rationalist basis to politics and reject the old and hold it to this new standard didn't sink its hooks in, at least in Britain. Yeah, that's true what you say about that. But in many ways Bentham looks at things, even though you have a founder in Descartes, he looks at things a little bit through the idea that in a way it's lucky in the sense that rational people can agree on rational programs and should agree on them together. And what's utilitarian for us.
And you don't need a founder, all you need to do is think clearly and logically, and that we can learn. So maybe we should. I have a question about the proto-vound direction. Yeah.
So you mentioned, sorry, I was in your paper, you speak about this proto-founder or the invisible founder, and I found that quite fascinating. And then you also seem to apply the paper, and I think you actually said just a little bit Madison might be this type for America, but he's very visible as a founder, maybe not as visible as somebody else. But I guess I was wondering, and then you also mentioned that Locke, there's no room for founding and Locke, but maybe Locke himself is a founder. And so I'm just wondering if you think in the case of America, I'll grant that Madison, I actually do think that he's probably the most important American founder, but does he have a sort of proto-founder for him or an invisible founder that he's looking to when he's doing this thing?
Yeah, I would say for Madison, it's say Montesquieu, it's the. Now or to what he looks fantastic. But you know, this idea of the proto-founder, which I introduced, I left out some passages in the paper I sent you, but this idea of the proto-founders links to Machiavelli, because Machiavelli founded nothing in reality, you know. So it looks like he's not the founder of a city.
Here's the different forms of founding. There's going into an existing city and changing the form of regime that exists. Okay, so you know that in ways a change of the form of government, which that's one thing. The next idea is to create a new type of government.
So in way, by you look at Alexander the Great and everything, he's a founder, but he's not founder just of his own place. He's found a whole new way of looking at things. So that's the second kind of founder. He actually carries it out and does it.
Then there's this third idea in which the proto-founder becomes in way the founder. That would be Machiavelli. Machiavelli's, you could say, argues that he's going to reform not by actually setting up a new society himself, but by performing the whole culture and civilization of how people think. Once people were Christians, as a result of the greatest founder of antiquity, not mentions Jesus, he gave us Christianity.
Now we're going to switch slowly, maybe over a few generations, we're going to switch from Christianity to enlightenment thought without, therefore, founding any particular immediate political order. He in a way changes the entire culture of the West. He's the one who gives us an entirely new way of direction, a new direction. He's the one who sets the direction of all modernity.
So as I said, the proto-founder becomes the real founder, the one who does it, and he does it through his works. What his instrument of founding is not setting up a new state. It's writing a book, which is so exciting and so interesting that all the young are impressed by this. And they start doing what Machiavelli wants them to do, which is to change the whole direction, to go away from custom, to go away from religion, and to start things in an entirely way of doing things.
He's the origin of enlightenment thinking, and he's the origin of the modern world. And that's done through this idea of being the proto-founder. So the proto-founder in a way, if you begin to think about it, can become the real and truest founder, even though he never sets up a new society. He's greater than Alexander.
That's pretty tough too, because I know one time I used to teach military school in Germany. We took this flight from Frankfurt all the way to the east, Uzbekistan. I can't believe how long that flight was, and that's how far Alexander made it. How did this guy do this?
I'm still impressed by that. Probably had a concord. He could get out there a lot quicker. Yeah, he got on a camel or something like that.
It took me 11 hours on a flight. So maybe this is on the point of the American founding in Machiavelli. Maybe this is a good point to our transition to our listener questions. And the first one really on this point is from Mark Lutz of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
I'm just out there, and I gave this paper by Zoom a few months ago at the time of the Constitution Oh, okay. Did you blow your honorarium at the casinos? I haven't got my honorarium. I have to say, I didn't have to go out to the Las Vegas.
But the system of Mark, come on, dude. Mark, get on the logic. You're so complicated. You couldn't do it.
All right, Mark, go ahead. Was Madison an armed or an unarmed to profit? He's unarmed. Yeah, I mean, that was this problem.
There are certain things that are found that couldn't be touched. Like you raised the question of slavery comes up. What were they going to do? They didn't have the arms to eliminate slavery.
It wasn't even an issue that either they took the southern states as they were, or they didn't. So he's an unarmed founder. So I have a one from our friend Gary Schmidt from American Enterprise Institute. I know Gary Schmidt.
And Gary says, Jim's classic, Jim's classic first work was on the various systems we have used for selecting candidates for president. Is the primary system redeemable? And if not, is the hard and soft demigodory of the last two presidencies just the norm going forward? I say it's the norm going forward.
Okay. You know, I mean, there could be periods where the parties can reestablish themselves. I don't like to predict them in the future. But it's hard to see people going back from something that's democratic to less democratic.
I know there's some people in Washington that are writing in this way. John Johnson, Ralph and others. I sympathize with what they want to do. My teacher was James Q.
Wilson. He said, I did thesis with him at that time. He wanted to go back to an abandoned field where people who said, let nominees be chosen by conventions. That's the sense of way to do it.
But instead, our system of choosing nominations is by open competition, which leads to appeals and demigogy is one alternative. And you can't stop it. That doesn't mean every time we're going to have this, but it's always open to this as long as that system exists. That system was first proposed by would Joe Wilson.
And he believed that the orator should be the one who gets the nominee, the great orator. And demigogy said was no problem. But I think we've seen we have these people who are compelled to be demagogues in some ways using it. And have been that would be Obama was a great, great speaker.
Yeah. And Trump also, in his own way, great entertainer speaker appeal it to the people. And they have that quality, which makes him energetic. And I thought this time that Bernie Sanders was going to get the Democratic nomination, he didn't.
We ended up with a regular party guy, but I don't see that as being permanent. Okay. And hi, Gary. All right, one more Alex and then the lightning round.
Oh, we got a good amount of time. We were still early on. There's a good one from flag Taylor. I know him too.
I was going to do all your buddies are coming out, Dr. Caesar. I'll just say, we got a lot of business assessments to help properly our doctor's Caesar. We got a lot.
There's the most mailbag questions we've ever received. Is that fair? And we posted it like an hour before we take some. Yeah.
So let's save that for the, the lightning round. A lot of people asked about Lincoln as a kind of refounding. What was the nature that we found in one person asked whether it was towards equality more and was successful. Did he complete the founding or derailleur?
We got a bunch of different questions. Maybe just generally, how do you see Lincoln's role as a kind of second founder or sort of second regime American history? Yeah. I mean, you know, we have great statesman in America or someone great like FDR is considered a great statesman.
But the other reason to the question of truly possibly refounding is Lincoln. So he's a curious possible refounder because he casts himself as the redeemer of the old and maintainer of the role. That's how he starts. He maintains the old.
He's going back to the most important point of American founding, what he says is the declaration. So in a way, his whole rhetoric is in the Madisonian vein initially. We have to go back to what's originally ours and reestablish it and keep it going. Yet in so doing, you know, in the end, he has this fundamental transformation of America.
So in a way, it's both for him. I sort of feel as he doesn't present himself as someone who broke with the past. He presents himself as someone in line with the past. But in a way, he does refound or comes close as possible, even though he never says so.
Obviously with Lincoln, we get to change from the inequality to the idea of quality for all. We also get a greater nationalization of our politics for better or worse, a stronger national government. So things are transformed. So leave him.
These are archetypes, the idea of founding and maintaining. He's sort of in between. I have another question then, Professor Caesar. This is from a longtime listener, big fan of the show, Daniel Schillinger.
He's currently at Yale. I used to hear it when I started. Yeah, he says, quote, trust me on this. Ask Professor Caesar whether the Bill of Rights is necessary.
Absolutely not. I've never been a fan of the Bill of Rights. I mean, I know we have it and, you know, in many ways, it's been helpful. You can't deny that in certain ways it gives us liberties, specific liberties and things that we want.
I mean, who wants to walk around without a gun today? I mean, you got to have these rights and protection of a religion. But the larger truth in way is that government exists to protect rights. That's one of its functions.
But how it protects rights is going to depend upon the circumstance. We all realize this. I mean, in a war, you won't have the right full right of free speech in certain circumstances. Things are going to be taken away.
And therefore, the government should be protecting your rights, but it's going to have to shift its condition shift. And that's what Hamilton in a way suggests in the Federalist Papers. We have to realize that this is government's duty to protect rights. And it's going to have to shift this thing shift.
So we're going to wait absolutely twice. We're so afraid that people will go further than they should. The government will become more powerful than it should, that in normal times, it will use its power to take away what rights. And we need something to stop it.
And that's the the Bill of Rights. That's what's good about the Bill of Rights. But it can't really function as true law, because it can never be maintained as well. You don't have freedom of speech in the United States.
Now, we don't have any freedom to speak. But you don't have freedom to say, tomorrow, you as troops will be landing in Point A and publish that in the newspaper. You'd be thrown in jail. If you ever got it out, we just don't have freedom to speak.
You can't say how you make a nuclear bomb. You can't publish that. All sorts of things. Freedom of religion.
Well, in a way, we have freedom of religion to a large extent, but there may be times where this has to be changed as well for the protection of the people. So I don't know. These are good things, though. I would like to see the Bill of Rights in the form of a statute.
We have this famous statute, but it has the function of a statute, which is not part of the Constitution. It's a statute and a revered statute, just like we should only have nine judges on the Supreme Court. That's a statute. That's right.
Maybe at this point, we should transition to Greg's lightning round questions. I'll point on you. This is this is great. Maybe this is so much fun.
He's he's created all these questions. I think he's I think he's trying to get some kind of late night TV show or something like that. This is a little shtick that he goes into. So we apologize in advance for Greg's questions.
Listen, the other thing is, of course, you can pass. So I was asked quick questions. If you have answers, feel free to say if not pass. So okay, who's your favorite philosopher?
Montesquieu. What is your favorite work of philosophy? Oh, I would say parts of the spirit of the laws. I'm not going to sit down and read it from beginning to end.
I'm not crazy. But the parts about the climate. Yeah. And there's a ton of the follicles on the tongue.
That's my favorite chapter. I don't know what you're talking about. Say things are not always correct in Montesquieu, but I think there's a genius there. I did know I spent some time in France and I never read the last part, you know.
And I learned I had a friend there that was teaching the history of jurisprudence, which was developed from the second half of the spirit of the laws, which no one can read and all these people who were going back to it. But that was connected to different things. So I got to be in a greater respect for Montesquieu. Very cool.
What was your first car? Well, going back to my car, I'll deviate it. It was a chavette. It was a chavette.
But it was a diesel chavette. I had the only diesel chavette that ever existed. It was a terrible car. But yeah, but yeah, so that was what I did have my federal sporting name was originally on Mercedes.
And I cashed that in. I needed an American car. I went out and got myself a good Cadillac. Oh, excellent.
I got a 1987 Cadillac. And I got to say this, when I told my wife I was getting this, you know, she's really nice person, but she asked around the neighborhood and everyone in the neighborhood, you know, you could imagine a certain neighborhood. I mean, the only say non-liberal in the whole neighborhood. But everyone said, sure, you can't get up.
You can't get up. You can't get a car like that. They thought it would come with fins. But instead, it's a pretty nice car.
It looks like something a Midwestern banker of rather high income would be proud to have. Very good. Very nice. That's great.
I'm glad I asked that question. You guys, you make fun of the lighting round and then you laugh at the lighting round questions. They're great. Who's the best politician in your lifetime?
I American politician. Sure. Well, politics. Yeah.
Well, yeah. I mean, I think it was still alive, though, only youngster Winston Churchill was still here. I'd say I would say I'd like Ronald Reagan. And I have a lot of respect for him.
I'm sorry. He's not more honored in this day and age, but maybe his time has passed or in a different age. But he was he was he was quite good. So I mentioned those two.
Very good. What's your favorite work of literature? You know, this is a well, I like one piece, but I have to confess that in the last 10 or 50 years, I've stopped reading literature. Oh, okay.
I would like to go back and do it. But I for some reason, I got out of the habit. I used to read a lot of literature. And now I don't think I'll ever go back to reading literature.
I mean, it's all made up, right? It's all fake. Yeah. So it's a man's lies.
Yeah. It's fake stuff and everything. You know, so that's that's a confession. I don't like to share.
But in the thinkery, I think I can be right. No one will listen to our episodes. So you're just interested between just honorable people. Yeah.
So what are you reading right now? Anything good? No, not reading very much these days. A lot on the election.
Okay. And, you know, I don't know why I'm reading so much on the election. I've spent a lot of time on newspapers in the last few weeks and getting some ideas. I have to do some programs on the election and two days after the day after this appears, I go to this program on Harvard.
Mansfield has had this program Harvey Mansfield, where it's always been Galston and Crystal, who have done a wrap up of the election, you know, the two guys one side and the other. Well, Crystal's no longer on that side. I can tell you that. And I don't know what side he's on.
But some Mansfield, you know, he says, they're a little bit too close together. Can I can I put you on the program? Great. So I said, I don't know what questions he's gonna ask.
I got to write in a letter and find out what it is. But don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry.
Don't. Don't worry. Come on our show. I certainly will.
All right. A few more things since you mentioned the election. Who do you think this is the day I've worked? This is going to be published the day after the election.
So listeners will immediately know if this is correct, you can pass it. You want, but who's going to win the presidential election? Okay, I got a story there too. All right.
I used to teach you, you know, I taught on elections the last time. I had a seminar. Of course, I said that Hillary was going to win. I thought Trump had a chance, but a small one.
So I said, Hillary would win. I went home after my seminar that day, which was on election day. And I fell asleep. My wife let me sleep.
I fell asleep at six. Everyone said Hillary was winning. And I woke up 12. And the first thing I heard is I woke up was, there's maybe a chance that Hillary can pull this out.
It's not over yet. And I said, wait a second. I'm like, Rip Van Winkle. I opened up and I was living in a new world.
It was the most amazing thing. I got through two elections that are so amazing. This election 2016 and 2000. I did commenting and over the course of the night, you know, it changed two or three times with different winners.
I was looking in Brooklyn at the time and I got to see all the sad faces at the next morning. It was something to behold. That wasn't for you. I was a nice little icing for it.
So just to be clear, you didn't answer, which is fine. Do you have a prediction? I think I think Biden will win. But you know, that's my feeling.
You know, I think they're corrected. They say that, you know, I sit in my house. I'm like, you guys, and I'm older. So I don't go out and mix so much or fear of virus and everything.
I'm not going to have to put my house. Yeah, I mean, my addict, how do I know what's going on in the world? I know the possibility that all these polls could be fake. And I know why they would be fake.
People never, you know, when they're going to be voting for someone unusual, frequently they don't tell the pollster the truth. But that's the time I think they're corrected for it. So they tell me, I asked Larry Savage up, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's good. And he says, oh, they corrected for it.
There was an air they didn't say. Well, there could be another air this time. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think in the last phase of the campaign, so far, I mean, we have three more weeks, it's gone in Biden's direction for a very serious of the things that have happened. The debate, the first debate was not in Trump's favor. And then he got COVID and a lot of people got frightened about that. So he hasn't been able to make up the deficit that he had.
Well, so it's two more, two more questions and then we'll wrap it up. Next, the last question. Have you heard any nicknames? Uh, I do.
I have had nicknames. I mean, they're funny when my brothers gave them to me. So, you know, my brother and I, you know, we would play I think back on this with great affection. We would make up this world and we'd play in this world for hours.
He was called Marma and I was called Bumba. And we would play, are you serious? That's what that's the nickname I have for my three-year-old son. Well, there it is.
Yeah, serious. I swear on my child's head. There we are. It's coming out of the way.
He started calling him. He had this seat for babies called a bobby. I think in my head, I scrambled it and I thought it was called a Bumba seat. So it's just Stocks since he was an infant.
I come up to this day. It doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't make any sense. I'm happy to know that this has continued.
Yeah. So it's, well, That's a really sweet tradition maintaining itself. I love it. We should have them on the podcast.
Yeah. We definitely should. All right. I have one final question for you.