A nation without its history is like a tree without roots. It s dead. That s similar to what Malcolm X said some time ago. And it s going to be the theme of today s podcast, through a deep dive on a part of our founding culture in American history that we don t often talk about. And it's a little bit different of a kind of episode. This week we re doing something a little different because earlier today I gave a speech to about 8,000 people or more in a packed stadium at Liberty University, mostly of the next generation. And I didn t want to go in there and preach to them about the importance of talking more about American history. I used it as a chance to talk about the founding culture that produced the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution by people who were not that much older than the people in that stadium. And that s a history we owe it to ourselves to remember. And most importantly, by the end of the episode, we ll talk about what the implications are for us in the year 2024, and what we might expect in terms of the lessons that we can take away from it. And I ll tell you what I plan to give you today is a speech about achieving the impossible: I ve written best selling books, founded multi-billion dollar companies, became the youngest person ever to run for president at the age of 37, and was born in Ohio, at the same age as I was at the start of the campaign. Thank you for making that such a success, and I appreciate that from younger people than me, as a lot more than I appreciate the lessons I ve taken away from the lessons we can learn from that we ve taken from our past and from what we ve learned from our history. Tweet me to let me know what you ve learned in this episode. Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What are you looking forward to in 2020? 3:30 - How to live a more fulfilling life outside of politics? 6:15 - What do you would you like to learn from our founding? 8:00 9: What are the lessons you could you take from our own history? 11: How do we live more fulfilling lives? 14:00- What do we could we learn from the founding of our country? 16: How can we live a better life? 17:40 - What would you want to live more fulfilled lives outside of Politics?
Transcript
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00:00:00.000A nation without its history is like a tree without roots.
00:00:12.000That's similar to what Malcolm X said some time ago, and it's going to be the theme of today's podcast, through a deep dive on a part of our founding culture in American history that we don't often talk about.
00:00:23.000And it's a little bit different of a kind of episode.
00:00:25.000But before we get into it, I first want to say thank you to everybody who's following this podcast, who's listening to this on a weekly basis, for helping propel my recent book, Truths, to the top of the bestseller list.
00:00:36.000It was the most successful book on Amazon last week.
00:00:39.000It's a New York Times bestseller as well.
00:00:41.000And I want to say thank you for making that such a success in not only rolling out this book, but the message of this book.
00:00:47.000It's called Truths, The Future of America First.
00:00:49.000I'm grateful to those of you who have gotten it for not only reading it, but using the toolkit in this book to help persuade your friends who might have a different point of view.
00:00:58.000To be able to rethink their point of view on some of the most contentious questions of our day, from the existence of God, to the modern climate fixation, to transgender ideology, to the importance of the nuclear family, to the arguments for and against the existence of the administrative state.
00:01:13.000We cover a lot of chapters in this book on different subject matter, and my number one goal in writing it was to reach as many people as we could with its message.
00:01:21.000It's now the second week the book is out, and I'm asking every one of you to not only get a copy for yourself, I appreciate that, go to Amazon, go anywhere, get Truths, The Future of America First.
00:01:31.000But more importantly, use this as the toolkit to do what I tried to do during the campaign, to be able to actually talk to the people who disagree with us and even persuade them.
00:01:40.000I don't want to be alone in doing that.
00:01:42.000I want people across the country doing it with me.
00:01:44.000That's what this book is designed to do to give you the toolkit to accomplish that.
00:01:48.000So thank you for making it a top bestseller this last week, number one in the country, and I'm proud of it.
00:01:54.000Now this week's podcast we're doing something a little bit different because earlier today I gave a speech to about 8,000 people or more in a packed stadium at Liberty University, mostly of the next generation.
00:02:06.000And I didn't want to go in there and preach to them about the importance of talking more about American history.
00:02:11.000I used it as a chance to talk about American history itself, not about the legal principles of our Constitution, which I talk about in many other occasions, But to talk about the founding culture that produced the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution by people who were not that much older than the people in that stadium in Liberty, people who are younger than even myself today.
00:02:31.000That's a history we owe it to ourselves to remember.
00:02:33.000We're going to walk through that history today and most importantly by the end talk about what the implications are for us in the year 2024. It's a little different than you might expect in terms of the lessons that we take away.
00:02:45.000A lot of them are practical ways that maybe we could even live more fulfilling lives outside of politics.
00:02:50.000But I'll let all of you be the judge of that.
00:02:52.000That's going to be what we use as this week's podcast, and I hope you're able to spread the message.
00:02:57.000And again, thanks for the support, both with the book Truths and with this podcast.
00:03:50.000I appreciate that from younger people than me.
00:03:53.000At the start of the campaign, nobody knew my name, and by the end of it, I had the honor of having beaten multiple U.S. senators, governors, and a former vice president.
00:04:04.000I did that while marrying my lovely wife, Apoorva, who is herself a successful throat surgeon in Ohio, and raising our two sons in Columbus, where we live today.
00:04:19.000It's exactly the kind of family-centric lifestyle that some people would call weird.
00:04:25.000But we think it's actually the way to raise our boys.
00:04:28.000I would say, though, that all of that pales in comparison to the one achievement that I thought was truly impossible when I set out to run for president.
00:04:37.000And that's that most of you now know how to actually pronounce my name, which I appreciate.
00:04:44.000It's Vivek like cake and Ramaswamy like Ramaswamy.
00:04:57.000You're entering your adulthood, I believe, at a truly special moment in American history.
00:05:03.000I believe deep in my heart that it's actually going to be your generation that saves our country, but it wouldn't be the first time that that actually happened.
00:05:11.000That dates all the way back to 1776. I'm talking about our founding fathers, who were not much older than most of you in the audience today when they founded our nation.
00:05:23.000And though I'm talking about our founding fathers, I'll actually start with a quote often attributed to the founder of Dubai.
00:06:10.000Our founding fathers stood up to the most powerful empire in the world, declared their independence and then somehow turned assertion into reality.
00:06:19.000We're a band of rebels who defeated a reigning incumbent of their era, an incumbent that went on to become just another small nation on the other side of an ocean.
00:06:30.000But eventually the insurgent becomes the incumbent.
00:06:36.000And then the new incumbent starts to apologize for its own success.
00:06:40.000Instead of working even harder to create even more of it.
00:06:43.000And eventually that incumbent is then unseated by a new insurgent born on the other side of a different ocean.
00:06:50.000Personally, I think that's what many of us remembered, what we sensed when we rallied behind the cry to make America great again several years ago.
00:07:23.000And one of the things I think we've lost in modern history is an aspect of our founding culture That's personally important to me.
00:07:32.000It's one that I think we've abandoned in recent years.
00:07:35.000And it's one that has nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do with politics, actually.
00:07:39.000And one that if we do revive it, it's going to help every one of us lead more prosperous and more meaningful lives.
00:07:46.000It's reviving the death of intellectual curiosity in America.
00:07:52.000If you think about who are the most intellectually groundbreaking thinkers of the 18th century, They actually weren't our founding fathers.
00:08:01.000Most of them were actually on the other side of the Atlantic in Europe.
00:08:04.000They were the likes of Locke, Montesquieu.
00:08:08.000Montesquieu, Locke, you could talk about David Hume, you could talk about Newton, Leibniz, who led the way in math and physics, Adam Smith in psychology and philosophy.
00:08:16.000They were on the other side of the ocean.
00:08:19.000And the thing that distinguished our founding fathers, though, wasn't their genius in any one of those disciplines.
00:08:25.000They actually weren't the mathematical savants.
00:08:27.000They weren't the philosophical savants, but they learned from the people who were.
00:08:31.000And what distinguished our founding fathers was their ability to combine those intellectual foundations with a future that simply didn't exist in the old world.
00:08:41.000Locke and Leibniz, Newton and Hume, these men were the true geniuses, but the European society into which they were born was different from ours in a big way.
00:08:51.000They valued hierarchy and expertise over curiosities.
00:08:56.000The monarchs and aristocrats who were supposed to run the government, they ran the government.
00:09:00.000The people who were supposed to philosophize about economics and sociology, they philosophized about it.
00:09:07.000And the people who were supposed to make discoveries in math or invent new tools, they were in a different place altogether, another corner to themselves.
00:09:14.000Virtually everybody stayed in their lane.
00:09:17.000Because you see, the old world, they were reluctant to break boundaries.
00:09:20.000They believed that boundaries exist for a reason.
00:09:25.000The expert class exists to advise them.
00:09:27.000The doctor's guilt exists to treat patients.
00:09:29.000The guilt of barristers exists to argue cases in court.
00:09:33.000It was a culture that valued expertise over curiosity.
00:09:39.000But our founding fathers, they were different.
00:09:41.000They didn't believe in those boundaries.
00:09:43.000They didn't even believe in acquiescence to expertise.
00:09:46.000They believed that no man is confined to the circumstances of his birth or his upbringing, and that each of us is so much more than just a product of what we happen to be doing at a given moment.
00:09:59.000For example, you all probably surely know that Benjamin Franklin, he was one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, he was a true Renaissance man.
00:10:07.000Who, in addition to founding this country, founded multiple universities and hospitals.
00:10:12.000He was also a prolific author, a dabbler in medicines, who discovered a treatment to the common cold.
00:10:17.000People don't know that he actually was also an inventor of musical instruments, including one that went on to be used by Mozart and Beethoven.
00:10:24.000And some of his devices actually ended up being incredibly practical.
00:11:37.000he taught himself the law in the library of his local parish while working as a shoemaker he wanted body of Yale and of course in addition to these guys Franklin, Livingston, Sherman there were of course the two most famous drafters of the Declaration of Independence That's John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
00:12:01.000More rivalrous than probably any of the politicians you've seen in your lifetime.
00:12:05.000Jefferson and Adams, they used to butt heads back then.
00:12:08.000But they became friends again in their retirement.
00:12:11.000Jefferson's interest, he was more scientific, and Adams was a little bit more the humanities guy.
00:12:15.000But they were deeply curious about everything the other ones studied.
00:12:18.000And I will tell you, they were unafraid to compete to the end with one another over it.
00:12:24.000Intellectually speaking, they were competitors.
00:12:27.000One of the famous quotes attributed to John Adams in the letter that he wrote to his wife Abigail was this.
00:12:32.000He said, I must study politics and war so that our sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
00:12:38.000Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelains.
00:12:55.000But that was a bit of a humble brag on his part, actually.
00:12:57.000It's true that Adams has studied politics and war, but he also studied math and philosophy.
00:13:02.000He also wrote poetry, while also being educated in Greek, Latin, and the other classics.
00:13:07.000In fact, a little-known fact about John Adams that I find personally interesting is that after serving as our second president, he immersed himself in Hindu scripture and wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson to say that if he were going to live his life again, he'd have become a scholar of Sanskrit literature even earlier.
00:13:23.000The man was a lifelong learner, and so was his great rival Thomas Jefferson.
00:13:29.000Jefferson, he was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, not that much older than most of you in this room, younger than I am speaking to you right now.
00:13:37.000He was fluent in five languages, capable of reading two more.
00:13:41.000Over the course of his life, He wrote nothing short of 16,000 letters.
00:13:48.000I think about people today hearing that.
00:13:50.000You do the math, you'd say, okay, 16,000 letters, that's like 4,000 words.
00:14:10.000Was it uncomfortable for him back then because he didn't have a laptop or a cell phone to do it?
00:14:15.000It turns out that he was writing them by hand and he invented the swivel chair while writing the Declaration of Independence to make it easier to actually swivel and think at the same time.
00:14:24.000The swivel chair you sit in today was invented by Thomas Jefferson.
00:14:28.000He was also an amateur architect who designed the Virginia State Capitol building right here in the state where we're gathered right now designed by none other than Thomas Jefferson.
00:14:39.000Both of them, Jefferson and Adams, they had large sums of money to build their own personal libraries to continue their learning.
00:14:45.000And in fact, Jefferson himself almost went bankrupt several times over.
00:14:49.000It's easy to make fun of him for his taste in wine, but he wasn't just a drinker of wine, he was a scientist of wine too.
00:14:56.000Traveled to southern France to learn about wine production and to figure out how to build a homegrown industry right here in the United States.
00:15:03.000It was knowledge directed at every step of the way, and the fact that sometimes it left you drunk was, as the French like to say, just an unintended side effect.
00:15:14.000But there was something in the water back then.
00:15:21.000That's different than what we have today.
00:15:22.000It was a culture that valued education, that valued autodidacts, people who taught themselves, exploration, a fundamental curiosity about how the world works, and an unyielding confidence that even if you weren't an expert in something, you could still figure it out with the right combination of self-education and curiosity.
00:15:41.000Compared to nations like France and England, It's true that America was actually pretty provincial at the time.
00:15:47.000We were nothing more than a backwater cluster of small towns scattered along an eastern seaboard.
00:15:55.000It seemed that we were destined to be nothing more than a tiny footnote in global history.
00:15:59.000Yet the people who wrote those footnotes, they were deeply curious about the world they inhabited, about the history to which they contributed, and deeply confident in their ability to change every part of it for the better.
00:16:49.000How cool were our founding fathers and then go back to the daily drudgery of our modern technocracy.
00:16:55.000But the question for you is, why can't we behave a little bit more like our founding fathers?
00:17:01.000Political conservatives like me like to talk a lot about staying true to the political and legal principles of the Constitution and no doubt that's important.
00:17:09.000But as Americans, we should also be inspired to stay true to that founding culture of exploration and curiosity.
00:17:18.000The irony, thank you, I appreciate that.
00:17:20.000I think it's going to take, I'm here for a reason, I think it's going to take people like you, whose best days in life are still yet ahead, to see a nation whose best days are actually still ahead of us.
00:17:31.000And the irony is it should be a lot easier for us to do this today than it was for our founders back then.
00:17:37.000For starters, the main language of scholarship back in 1776, it wasn't English.
00:17:43.000You had to wait weeks or even months to just get a physical copy of a book that you might have wanted to read.
00:17:48.000Today, everything's available to us in any language you want.
00:17:51.000You're two swipes away on your iPhone from any book you want to read or listen to on demand.
00:17:55.000The only thing stopping us is our own incuriosity, our own veneration of somebody else's expertise, and our own lack of self-confidence to build our own.
00:18:07.000You might think our founding fathers didn't have the time.
00:18:09.000They were too busy fighting this thing called the American Revolution and setting up a new country to afford the luxuries of intellectual curiosity.
00:18:18.000We were never more curious than when we were fighting for our survival as a country.
00:18:23.000That special sauce that allowed America to succeed as an insurgent was that unmitigated curiosity and the totally unjustified confidence of our founding fathers.
00:18:32.000And it wasn't just a matter of self-indulgence.
00:18:35.000The reason our founding fathers were so curious about the world around them wasn't just to get drunk on it.
00:18:41.000It was because they strived to make America, their nation, a better nation.
00:18:45.000It wasn't idle interests that moved them.
00:18:47.000It was a desire to create a thriving country that would outlive them.
00:18:55.000They made our nation a magnet for minds that were as curious and courageous as their own.
00:18:59.000One of the most important chemists of the 18th century was a man by the name of Joseph Priestley.
00:19:04.000He was a British author and a teacher who had some unusual beliefs that were outside the mainstream Anglican thought at the time.
00:19:12.000In 1791, a mob looted and razed his home to the ground.
00:19:16.000It became unsafe for him to remain in England.
00:19:18.000So he moved to Pennsylvania, where he was welcomed with open arms by our own founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin.
00:19:24.000It may have been the first example of a brilliant scientist moving to America precisely because we're a free society, a tradition that so many others, including my own mother and father, continued centuries later.
00:19:36.000My parents came here for the same reason that Joseph Priestley did.
00:19:40.000It's because we're a free society where creative people are able to pursue their dreams however they see fit.
00:19:46.000Priestley didn't come to America because we had great universities or funding for his research.
00:19:50.000In fact, we had neither of those things back then.
00:19:56.000Freedom to explore ideas without the fear of being attacked.
00:19:59.000Freedom to be himself, including even the freedom to discover who he was.
00:20:03.000That is the unspoken part of the American dream.
00:20:06.000Not just the freedom to achieve whatever you want, but also the freedom to discover what it is you actually want to achieve.
00:20:15.000It's precisely at the moment in our history when we stopped being insurgents and started becoming incumbents, That we ourselves lost that sense of curiosity and confidence.
00:20:26.000Why can't we just remain an incumbent and coast for as long as it lasts?
00:20:30.000Because pretty soon, then we're on track to become the next Great Britain to somebody else's insurgency.
00:20:36.000And if we're being very honest, it's already starting to happen.
00:20:40.000The way we remain a magnet for the most curious and ambitious people around the world is actually by cultivating the culture that drew Joseph Priestley here.
00:20:48.000The same culture that drew my own parents here.
00:20:50.000A culture that prizes free and open debate and inquiry.
00:20:53.000A culture that does not force a monolithic cultural ideology on everybody.
00:20:57.000A culture that doesn't force you to bow down to what a politically appointed expert says on a given day, but instead gives you the latitude to question dogmas in the pursuit of truth.
00:21:06.000That is the greatest thing our founding fathers invented.
00:21:39.000You hear some people object to this vision, I hear it, to say that, no, no, we shouldn't make their exclusive North Star of education in this country, curiosity, confidence, no, that's not enough.
00:21:48.000We can't just teach our children to be explorers or courageous or confident, but we also have to teach them to be socially just, to rectify the injustices created by the likes of our founding fathers who blindly pursued enlightenment values without actually abiding by the values that they preached.
00:22:05.000Well, you know what, I'd argue exactly the opposite.
00:22:08.000That intellectual curiosity and courage, combined with a willingness to traverse boundaries that go beyond your preordained area of expertise, beyond your own lane, that's actually the most important building block of empathy.
00:22:19.000And empathy is the most important building block of justice.
00:22:23.000The arc of the moral universe is long, said Martin Luther King, but it bends towards justice.
00:22:30.000And I believe that empathy is the force that causes it to bend.
00:22:33.000And I believe that curiosity is the foundation of empathy.
00:22:38.000So what's the take-home message from our reflection this morning on our founders?
00:22:46.000It takes about as much effort to do something really small and to do it really well as it does to do something really big and to do it really well.
00:22:55.000And it's your choice how you spend your time on the short time we're all given on this earth.
00:22:59.000It's your choice whether you want to do the small thing or the big thing.
00:23:03.000There's no right answer to that question, but as somebody who myself ran for U.S. president at the age of 37, I'll tell you that I have my bias on that question.
00:23:11.000When the PAC runs in one direction, that's my second piece of advice to you, you run the other way.
00:23:18.000Today, calling the other side weird is considered a political insult.
00:23:22.000I'm sure a lot of you have heard about how weird Liberty University might be.
00:23:26.000I'm sure it's irritating when rival schools mock your beliefs coincidentally by scheduling their Pride Day on the same day that they face Liberty University in football like they did a couple of years ago.
00:23:37.000But don't be afraid of being called weird by anybody else.
00:23:40.000Our founders would have worn that as a label and a badge of honor.
00:23:44.000they ended up winning the American Revolution and as I understand it Liberty ended up beating UMass a couple of years ago too so so we're a little proud of that For most of human history, the idea that you get to express your opinion, no matter what it is, no matter who you are or what your opinion is, that was a truly weird idea.
00:24:07.000The idea that we the people get to create a government that is accountable to us rather than the other way around, that was downright strange, but that's what made America great the first time around.
00:24:15.000And reviving that is how we're going to make America great again.
00:24:23.000As the older man in the room with a few gray hairs now starting to show up in the last couple of months, I'll keep giving you guys some of your unsolicited advice.
00:24:31.000If you ever find yourself in your time, even here at Liberty, to be the smartest person in the room, here's my advice to you.
00:24:44.000I went on to work at a financial institution, a hedge fund, then went to law school for fun.
00:24:48.000I started a biotech company, a technology company, left all that behind to write a few books and then started an asset management firm before running for president.
00:24:56.000Do not make your own identity a product of your occupation.
00:25:00.000You are so much bigger than the thing that you happen to be doing at any one given time, and there is no better time to cultivate that sense of adventure and curiosity than right here in your experience at college.
00:25:12.000Take an elective you wouldn't have otherwise taken.
00:25:14.000Join a club you otherwise wouldn't have considered.
00:25:17.000Go on a service trip, whether that's halfway around the world or as close as Boone, North Carolina, where I understand a team of Liberty students is heading right now to help with hurricane relief, and I'm proud of them for it.
00:25:28.000That's how you actually push yourself out of your comfort zone.
00:25:35.000You know, I get a lot of questions, including from some of you here, about what am I doing next?
00:25:39.000Well, that's my final lesson for you, and I'm pretty sure it's one that Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin would affirm if they were here with us today.
00:25:48.000Every time, and I did a lot when I was in your seats, every time that I went on planning exactly how my career would go, laying that 10-year plan out, it never went according to that plan, not once.
00:26:00.000My advice to you is your plans are silly, okay, and accept that, but your purpose is not.
00:26:07.000Find your true purpose and I promise you the plan tends to reveal itself every time.
00:26:14.000We have a long-standing tradition that we've forgotten in our country of those who return to public service at every stage of their career, even after having served at even the highest level.
00:26:26.000I'll leave you with a story about the first person who led the United States of America who wasn't our founding father, who, perhaps like all of you, took inspiration from them anyway.
00:26:39.000He was the son of the second president, John Adams, who I talked about earlier.
00:26:44.000He became the president after serving as Secretary of State, but he only served for one term, and by many measures at the time, it wasn't a particularly successful first term either.
00:27:52.000He says the word slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery, and intentionally got himself censured.
00:28:00.000And then he used his trial to make the case for abolition.
00:28:06.000Did that over the two weeks, morning to night.
00:28:08.000By the end of his own trial for personally getting kicked out of Congress, he'd actually made the case so beautifully that they ended the gag rule at the end of his trial.
00:28:16.000He continued to serve in that Capitol building for another number of years until he was giving a speech right in the middle of the Congress floor when he had a stroke.
00:28:25.000They were able to keep him alive for two more days in the congressional chamber upstairs before he finally died in that building where he went back to serve his country.
00:28:35.000They came back downstairs to ask for volunteers for who was going to carry out his funeral rites and carry his body out.
00:28:42.000And the person who raised his hand was none other than a little-known first-term congressman from the state of Illinois by the name of Abraham Lincoln.
00:28:52.000These are the stories of American history that we deserve to revive.
00:28:56.000Our children and our grandchildren deserve to hear.
00:28:59.000That's the story of American exceptionalism.
00:30:05.000And I think we, and I'm not criticizing anybody else even but myself here, we as a conservative movement, we've done a really good job of criticizing the other side for their poison.
00:30:33.000Beat race, gender, sexuality, and climate if we have the courage to actually stand for something.
00:30:40.000What does it mean to be an American in the year 2024?
00:30:44.000It means we believe in the ideals of 1776. It means that we believe in merit, that the best person gets the job regardless of their skin color, that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions.
00:31:01.000That is why we stand against the woke DEI agenda, because we stand for merit.
00:31:09.000It means you stand for the rule of law.
00:31:11.000And I say this as the kid of legal immigrants to this country.
00:31:16.000That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law.
00:31:20.000And that is why, if we've had the largest influx of illegals into the United States, it stands to reason that we ought to have the largest mass deportation in American history as well.
00:31:34.000That's what it means to stand for the rule of law in the United States of America.
00:31:38.000It means the people we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government, not the shadow government of unelected bureaucrats who are really running the show today.
00:31:52.000I know many of my fellow conservatives like to talk a lot about those mass deportations of illegal aliens, but I tell them, don't forget about the second mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of the Washington, D.C. bureaucracy.
00:35:34.000Over group identity and victimhood and grievance, then nobody in the world, not a nation, not a corporation, not a virus, not China, is going to defeat us.
00:35:45.000That is what American exceptionalism is all about, and that is what we will revive to save this great nation.
00:35:53.000Thank you all for coming out this morning, Liberty.
00:35:55.000God bless you and your families, and may God bless our United States of America.
00:36:03.000Do not stop fighting until we get this job done.
00:36:06.000This nation is worth saving, and save it we will.