The Powerline Show

Margaret Thatcher once remarked that “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” What she had in mind here was the strain of thought that considered America and its founding thought as predominantly a product of enlightenment-era rational philosophy, especially as it crystalized in the work of John Locke. Hence the view of America as a "creedal" nation, founded on reason.  This general account has long attracted criticism for neglecting the contributions of Christianity, and our historical inheritance from England, albeit modified in substantial ways by our colonial and revolutionary experience. These two camps that seem especially irreconcilable for some reason, though it ought to be possible in my mind to achieve a synthesis. Somehow it is seldom attempted, let alone successfully accomplished, so we go on firing from our intellectual fixed fortifications.In this second installment of my special series on the Declaration, we take up one book just out that takes seriously the specifically Christian contributions to the thought of the Declaration and the Founding more generally is John G. West's Endowed by Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America's Soul.  As the title suggests, West devotes considerable time to recounting in vivid and specific detail how Christian faith influenced the Declaration and the Founding, as suggested in the all-important phrase "Endowed by Our Creator." But he adds some interesting and original perspectives on the attacks on the Declaration and its theological-political teaching by drawing out attention to the mid-19th century.As most listeners of this podcast or its cousins know, the Progressives, especially Woodrow Wilson, directly rejected the Declaration and its philosophy of natural rights because Wilson thought Hegel had displaced Locke, but West draws out in detail the other figure that influenced Wilson and the Progressives in their rejection of the founding. Remember that Wilson not only said to ignore the Declaration, but that our Constitution must be understood in Darwinian terms. Thus perhaps the most significant contribution of West's book is he account of how Darwinism, and a number of other evolutionary theorists (some of whom actually preceded Darwin) affected American political thought and prepared the way for the predations of the Progressives.

Between now and July 4th I'll be doing a series of podcasts with authors and thinkers who have worthy things to say about the Declaration of Independence on the occasion of its 250th anniversary.  I can hardly keep up with the flood of new books on the subject, and so this series my well extend beyond July 4. I'm delighted to begin this series with Lucas Morel of Washington and Lee University, though this episode is somewhat idiosyncratic, as we take a considerable detour from the text of the Declaration itself. And that's all Lucas's fault; you see, Lucas is easily one of the top five Abraham Lincoln scholars in the nation, as well as one of the top five scholars on Frederick Douglass. Not long ago Lucas and I were together on a panel focusing in on one the key phrases of the Declaration, namely, the "pursuit of happiness."  Most of the time explaining this famous phrase involves going back to what Jefferson and other founders thought about the idea of happiness, which is much different from contemporary understandings of the term. But Lucas decided to direct our attention to one of the best interpreters of the Declaration—that person being of course Lincoln. And while Lincoln, as we know, emphasized the earlier part of that famous sentence—"All men are created equal"—Lucas draws out Lincoln's profound grasp of the whole document. I was curious about the historical and personal paradox of connecting Lincoln with the pursuit of happiness, for the obvious reason that the climax of Lincoln's life and career involved tragedy and personal melancholy. Can Lincoln be said to have fulfilled his own pursuit of happiness? 

Yep, it's happening. I'm getting the band back together, and reviving the Power Line Classic Podcast format, featuring me in conversation with individual guests of note, though from time to time we may get the Power Line Gang itself to appear on some special legacy episodes.  This has been a while in the making, partly by popular demand from listeners who liked our interviews.Among other things, I want to do a series of episodes between now and July 4, and perhaps after July 4, with some of the authors of the flood of new books appearing right now coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  I've written about a few of these for the New York Post, and will have more installments to come.  My first guest for the revived show is one of my favorite current historians who appeared once before: David T. Beito, who is emeritus professor of history at the University of Alabama. His latest book, which I mentioned in one of my New York Post features late last year, is FDR: A New Political Life.  This book is a sequel to a previous book that reviewed the massive violations of civil liberties that occurred during the New Deal—transgressions that have been largely airbrushed out of the sympathetic liberal histories of FDR and the New Deal. David's new book takes a broader look at the whole FDR story, and concludes with a blunt assessment: "Franklin D. Roosevelt was not a great president nor even a good one. The reasons for making this assessment is long"

Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, joins us today to talk about his timely new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites. While America's judiciary has moved to the right in recent years along with the revival of constitutional originalism, our law schools, always left of center, have been moving steadily further to left. Shapiro is himself a victim of a campus inquisition at the hands of the Diversity Industrial Complex, but the problems extend far beyond just the DEI morass. In addition to reviewing some aspects of his book, we also coax an origin story out of him, as Ilya grew up in the old Soviet Union and in 1980 immigrated with his parents first to Canada, and then ultimately to the United States. 

When the history of civil rights in our time is finally written—though no history is ever “finally” written of course—honest writers will mark the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action admissions cases as a key turning point in restoring the principle of equal rights as understood by the founders. Further, the better histories will note they key role of one person: Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions that brought the Harvard/UNC cases.Edward is modest and self-effacing about his role, but it was a long slog to get to the finish line successfully, and there were many disappointments, setbacks, and equivocal rulings along the way in a constitutional story that is nearly 60 years old at this point. In surveying the story arc of Edward’s efforts, I am reminded of Lord Randolph Churchill’s succinct description of Disraeli’s political career in Britain. It was, Lord Randolph said, “Failure, failure, failure, partial success, renewed failure—complete and ultimate triumph.”Edward would say, and I agree, that the triumph isn’t complete or ultimate yet, but the blow stuck with the ruling in the Harvard/UNC case is proving instrumental in the Trump administration’s current efforts to end the abusive regime of DEI. In the conversation that follows I ask Edward how he got committed to this cause in the first place, some interesting inside aspects of the cases, and where we go from here.