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July 4, 2022 - Bannon's War Room
48:42
Episode 1,976 – Fourth Of July Special: The Declaration And It’s RevolutionEpisode 1,976 – Fourth Of July Special: The Declaration And It’s Revolution
Participants
Main voices
d
dave brat
15:51
s
steve bannon
12:20
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
♪♪♪
Make sure your flints are not uncocked.
We don't want any accidents.
We want to be safe.
This is a test.
This is a test.
alive outer all call
the
It presents no obstacle, sir.
Shall we pass them by?
We will not.
Hold your fire!
Keep right!
Captain Parsons, bomb front!
All right, everybody, on your marks, get ready, go!
Ready!
Go!
Yes!
Keep going, keep going!
Keep going!
Go!
Go!
Hold steady.
Hold steady.
Do not fire.
Nothing without day begin at first.
Music playing.
Prepare to fix bayonets!
I'm out.
Fix your bayonets!
Shoulder your firearms!
Subscribe to our channel!
Lay down your arms.
Disperse.
Get off the king's green.
We are here to talk.
Talk of what?
This is our green.
Lay down your arms and there will be no trouble.
Disperse at once in the king's name.
We are gathered here peacefully.
Hold your fire.
Charge out!
Fire!
Advance and disarm them!
Thanks for watching!
Oh, no, lads.
You must stand.
Stand fast.
Battalion will advance.
Forward march!
Disperse men!
Don't fire!
Stand fast, Deming!
Alicia, they're tired!
Get off the bridge!
Go!
Move!
Move!
Farley!
Help! Help! Help!
Help! Help! Help! Help!
I
ah Cease fire!
Cease fire!
God's blood, Major.
What's happening here?
It didn't have to happen like this, sir.
It shouldn't have happened.
Your men fired in direct violation of my orders.
But we were fired upon, sir.
Are you certain?
I heard the first gunshot, sir.
It was there.
Well, no matter.
We've wasted enough time here.
Form the men up for Concord.
Sir!
Arrgh!
I can't do this.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
of welcome it's monday for july the year of our lord twenty twenty two and we start our fourth of july celebration by getting back and
remembering had all commenced on nineteen april of seventeen seventy five That was a recreation of Lexington Common.
Dave Brat is my wingman for the entire two hours today.
We're going to have a lot of clips, some music, and Dave Brat's going to walk us through a lot of the underlying philosophy and thinking Of the, uh, of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.
It's the 246th, uh, birthday of, uh, the United States of America.
But people have to remember, this was all fought for.
This was fought for, and you saw right there, I think the reason that, the portray of, I've gone through so many and looked at them, that's so powerful.
You see the terror.
You see the power and a love of that open.
You see the drums far off, and then all of a sudden they come into Lexington Common, and you see the power and might of the British Army right there with a handful of militia or just farmers?
Dave Brat?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, no, as my good friend Jack Brewer says to everything properly, so glory be to God for the patriotism of those young men and patriots who had none of the privileges and advantages we have today, except for a faith which maybe is even stronger.
We'll dig into that a little bit.
But the heroism and the valor they showed It's sticking together against the grain.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Was the underpinnings of that a firm idea of a moral order?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And the underpinnings, the strong foundational elements of the Judeo-Christian West?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
And the key to it, it was a unified system back then.
Everything hung together.
It was a Judeo-Christian political philosophy.
It was the religion.
It was the family structure.
It was the nation.
It would be the constitutional logic that came out of it.
It was the educational system, it was the community values, all of it hung together as one system.
That thing has broken apart now and we're fighting to glue it back together.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
The one thing I want to make sure we bring up on today's birthday for the next two hours, you know, we love doing these specials on particularly for all the civic, the big civic occasions we have.
One of the reasons I really like that was not just you see the, you hear the drums and you hear the, the martial music of the, and then all of a sudden it's, I think it's over a minute you hear it and then you see, particularly for our podcast and radio audience, you see the power and might of the British army against these, but the song that he has played before they come through, the little, the little young boy in the fife, that's Hearts of Oaks.
That's the World Navy song.
That's the song of kind of the enlisted men, Hearts of Vokes.
That was from really, became obviously popular in the West, we found about during Nelson's time, Nelson's Navy, the World Navy.
But, they were Englishmen.
The key here when this all starts is that this becomes a revolution that turns into a civil war.
But it starts, Dave Brat, they start as Englishmen.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, that's right.
And what hits me when I watch that clip is, what would I do?
Would I stand strong there, or would I chicken off into the woods?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
That's what everybody has to answer.
I tell you, everybody talks, oh, if I was there in the Revolution.
I say, do your gut check today.
Because right there is perfect.
Look, a lot of those guys are brave, and a lot of those guys go, let's scatter.
We can't stand up against them.
They do fixed bayonets.
Right, and you've got a battalion of those guys in front of you that do fixed bayonets, and those brothers have, they have taken down, it mirrors the most powerful army in the world at the time, as they were to prove Napoleon, what, 150 years later?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
The British Army, but it was, no.
What would you do, would you be one of the guys that skedaddled, or would you stand and fire?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, in that Judeo-Christian tradition, we can dig in a little bit later, but today, you know, I'll ask some of the young people, would you kill Hitler, knowing what he's going to do, what he already did?
And some folks say no.
To that one.
And so, much less fighting for your country's freedoms.
But we'll dig into that.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
No, we can go ahead and play our out music.
We're gonna play our out music, our fife and drums, which we love so much.
It's the Turkish March.
Very famous Revolutionary War marching song to keep people in cadence.
The Turkish March.
Dave Brat from appropriately named Liberty University down in Lynchburg, Virginia.
He's in the War Room today.
Really want to thank you for doing this.
Very special occasion.
The 4th of July, the birth of our nation.
A birthday that had to be fought for so it lasted for 246 and many, many more decades and years ahead of us.
Okay, short commercial break.
We're going to be back for our 4th of July special in a moment.
unidentified
We're going to be back for our 4th of July special in a moment.
By the root bridge that our song followed, Fair flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once in battle farmers stood, And by the shattered ground the world.
The whole of St. Stiles slept, All like the conqueror's silent sleaze, And time the ruined bridge had swept, Down the dark stream where seaward breeze.
On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set today a golden stone, That memory may there deep redeem, When like our sighs our songs are gone.
Spirit that make those heroes dare to die, And leave their children free, If time and nature gently spare, All shalt we raise to them and thee.
Present arms!
After this short firefight, the Redcoats continued their way to Concord.
The Redcoats were on the move.
When the British troops arrived in the village of Concord, they separated.
Some soldiers went searching for militia supplies, and some of them secured the town.
A relatively inexperienced Captain Walter Lorry secured the bridge with 90 soldiers, and this bridge was attacked by 400 militia men.
Prepare your weapons!
Hold somebody on the side door!
Fire! Fire!
Fire! Fire!
Hold on tight!
Hold on!
Freeze!
Soon, almost 2,000 militiamen gathered to fight exhausted British soldiers.
Redcoats started to retreat.
The enemy was too far away.
three three death of death of
death of death of death of death of death of The militia men hid behind trees, fences, and continued to chase the retreating British.
At the end of the battle, there were almost 4,000 armed rebels.
The colonists were stunned by their success.
No one had actually believed either side would shoot to kill the other.
The battles of Lexington and Concord proved they could stand up to one of the most powerful armies in the world.
News of the battle quickly spread, reaching London on May the 28th.
The war had started.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
For our podcast audience, that was done by Legos, and it's one of the best renditions I've seen of Concord Bridge.
And London was the money center capital of the world.
where all the equity capital bond market in fact we'll get into what caused this was was interest coming on due on debts to the French and Indian war they want that they want the Congress to pay their fair share the French Revolution later the French borrowed the money from the same places essentially and and supported our revolution that we won with the French Navy and the French system the French Army and French cash that had to be paid off that led to the
French Revolution it gets back to money and power but right there on 19 April 1775 were celebrating commemorating the fourth of July the birth of our nation which is kind of interesting because the Declaration of Independence a lot of people miss the history here started at the essentially Not the commencement of the war, but very early on.
They would fight for another, what, six, seven years?
It took forever to really bring it to the end down in Yorktown with the Southern Campaign.
Dave Brat, you are the Dean at the Business School of Liberty University.
You guys pride yourself, Reverend Falwell, when he first started, wanted to have a beacon about liberty, and particularly the American experience, sir.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, I'm going to read a famous quote in a letter from John Adams to Jefferson, but he said, upon what can I rely?
I can rely upon the Judeo-Christian tradition and the concepts of liberty, spelled out by the great thinkers.
Unfortunately, there's been a war on religion since the 60s especially, but it began, you know, roughly late 1800s with the Enlightenment and Darwin and evolution, all these kind of things.
We can dig into that a little bit.
And that is a major problem we still have to overcome intellectually.
And then the attack led into this separation, right, this wall of separation with Jefferson, which is a fiction.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
We did not have that separation back then.
In fact, it's totally outnumbered by the most powerful army, not just in the world, but obviously you've never seen.
You saw the uniforms and the discipline and the fixed bayonets.
That's why I remember, at Concord Bridge, they already knew there had been a slaughter at Lexington Common, where the militia had tried to stand first.
This was before they got picked off.
The bravery, and look at it.
You had a call to arms.
There were 2,000.
You had thousands showing up there.
They weren't about to back down.
What was it Against those odds, what was the teachings?
What was the training?
Why did those men stand there, and their families backed them up 100%, not to falter, to say, hey, we've got to take a stand, and a lot of us are not going to get out of here alive?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, well, there's just a lot of themes that flow together.
Right off the bat with the pilgrims, it was the New Jerusalem, which is a hugely powerful theme, that there's something special, divine providence going on here with this What do you mean, New Jerusalem?
New Republican Jerusalem.
I mean, the chosen people, the Jewish people, God's elect.
And by the way, you know, I could do caveats on all this.
When you're the elect, that means you just got called to tough duty.
That's not some, you know... You don't get boned.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's not boned.
People think we say elect.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
There's no bonus point, Church.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Responsibility and accountability come with it.
unidentified
Right.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
And so the New Jerusalem and then those clips, what people miss on the separation of church and state, go out to Wikipedia and take a quick look at the clergy who led all the troops.
There was no separation.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It was the clergy.
All of them.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
The Black Robe Regiment, they're still around today.
The legacy, the historical legacies, especially around Richmond.
I've got a ton of pastors who go back to that.
And now there's this split, and you know, folks go off on Romans 13, and we'll get into sovereignty concepts.
But the other major piece is, you know, the deep thinkers, the Enlightenment thinkers, Locke, Rousseau, all that hadn't kicked in yet, right, to masses of people.
These are just homegrown Americans with the strong religious core family values, and the church and the synagogue was Facebook, right?
It's where boys went to meet girls.
It's where you had your potluck.
This was the big event of the week or the month or the, you know, if you lived way out in the rurals, this was the events of your life at the church.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It was the social gathering.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
So those were the ties that formed hugely strong social bonds, and you knew who you were fighting for.
I'm fighting for a relatively small band of brothers that I know, and sisters.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
That's why you stand at Lexington Common.
That's why you stand at Concord Bridge.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yep.
And you know you've already made the commitment.
You've got your self-propriety.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Is that what Emerson talks about?
Is that Emerson?
He was a transcendentalist.
Is that the spirit he said to flow through?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
And that's what's interesting, right?
In America, you can have the romantics, right, in the Romantic period, but it's buffered by the rationality and the private property rights of Locke, etc.
And last time you asked me about the French Revolution.
I'll get there.
But Rousseau and the general will and Hegel and the absolute mind.
Whenever you hear anybody in this country mention the general will or the absolute mind, head for the hills.
And ironically, it's not on the conservative side, right?
These are all leftists, right?
The Nietzsche, Rousseau, Friedrich Hegel, the absolute mind.
I can see, you know, Napoleon.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is what people are saying now.
How come all these liberals are all for free speech?
How have they become such control freaks?
We're getting to all that.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
They don't mean it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
We've got the, we're here on the 4th of July.
It is for the, it is for the commemoration of the 246th Happy to be here.
unidentified
Love it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
of the united states of america give a little history about the philosophy i've got a breath that's uh... given his time today from liberty university it's the core of liberty right now have to be a lot of love this is this is why livery such a special place to short commercial break back in the world
unidentified
and of course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth
the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitled them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation We hold these truths to be self-evident, and that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain...
What's that word there?
Unalienable.
With certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is in the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain This is a history of repeated injuries, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.
In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms.
Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
We Therefore, the representatives of the United States of America solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are...
And of right ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown.
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
God save our American states!
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, welcome back.
It's 4 July, the year of our Lord.
2022 is the 246th birthday of the United States.
Found it there at, I guess, became known as Independence Hall.
Dave Brat is my wingman here.
I couldn't think of a better brother to have in here.
This is a very powerful, dramatic recreation of that moment.
Walk us through how we got, not the history of it, but the thought.
How did these Englishmen... One of the reasons I wanted to start it at Lexington Common, and particularly that very powerful moment of the flute.
Those were Englishmen, right?
In an English colony that saw English troops coming through there, and they knew the power of that.
And the song the little boy played was the famous song of the Royal Navy, Hearts of Oaks.
They were Englishmen.
How did you go from Englishmen In everything that they were built, with the Church of England and everything, how did you get to basically just a year later, right?
Fifteen months later, to have one of the most profound documents in the history of man, Dave Brat?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, well that's the merger of some great elite minds.
Those elite minds, though, were tethered firmly to both That local Judeo-Christian culture, but also the great elite schools that came before, right?
And so England had great minds, you know, Newton and all that come out of come out of that tradition, great science, and then you have the Enlightenment figures in Rousseau and Cottonhead.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
He was at Cambridge, he headed the math department right at Cambridge.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
But that doesn't mean that the political philosophy was correct.
And so the American elites, I think it was...
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
But they were trained at...
Oxford, Cambridge.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Cambridge, but Jefferson went to school at William & Mary.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
William & Mary, right, English school.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Adams went to Harvard.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Adams, Harvard, right.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Which were essentially, particularly Harvard was a religious school at the time.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Right, Hamilton, King's College, Columbia today, Madison, Princeton.
Right, and people don't, you know, there is a legacy of the universities, right?
Started back with the monks in the 6th century, Bologna, the first university, the first, you know, true European university in Italy, Christian, I think, right?
And so people miss these huge moves, and I just want to read a letter from From John Adams of Harvard to Jefferson, right?
And this wall of separation idea, this crushes the wall.
And these letters, people can look up the letter if they want, but this is John Adams of Harvard.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Are you pitching Christian nationalism on the 4th of July here at the thing?
Is this where we're getting?
You know how Media Matters is going to freak out on our 4th of July special?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, Media Matters and Politico, I've read all their things, and they give you the first sentence, right?
Linking, you know, Judeo-Christian themes to this country.
Oh yeah, like George Washington and Madison, everyone we're talking about, right?
And then they go on to some sinister, you know, trying to make some dark-sounding words and adjectives that follow.
Don't believe it.
And here's your evidence, right?
We believe in the receipts on this show.
So here's a major receipt.
John Adams, Harvard.
John Harvard, of course, the founder of Harvard University, from Cambridge, Christian England.
It goes on and on forever.
Harvard's motto at the founding in 1640 is, Truth for Christ and Church.
And now listen to this from John Adams.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Veritas.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Veritas, right?
For Christ and Church.
For Christ and Church.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
And all of them are the same.
Princeton was the same.
All of them are the same.
And you saw the young men going off to battle.
What could have united them?
It wasn't some esoteric theory of liberty and freedom alone.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
That's my point.
People talk about that today, but those terms, particularly for them as Englishmen, were so ephemeral.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Right, right.
And the American experiment is unique, and here it goes.
The general principles on which the fathers, meaning the founders, achieved independence, independence, that's what we're talking about today, were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentlemen could unite.
And these principles could only be intended by them in their address, or by me in my answer.
And what were these general principles?
I answer the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects, religious groups, were united.
"...and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence.
I will avow that then I believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God, and that those principles of liberty, as are understandable as human nature and our terrestrial mundane system, I could therefore safely say, consistently with all of my then and present information, that I believed they would never make discoveries in contradiction to these general principles.
In favor of these general principles in philosophy, religion, and government, I could fill these sheets with quotations from Frederick of Prussia, from David Hume, the great philosopher, Gibbon, Bolingbroke, Rousseau of France, Voltaire, as well as Newton and Locke, not to mention thousands of divines and philosophers of inferior fame.
Talk about receipts.
It's just a home run of a statement to his friend Jefferson, who believed all the same things, and they all read each other.
And these are the fundamental ideas that framed the American Revolution, that combination of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
And when they say everybody is united, minorities, you know, today it's all about unity and harmony and all this kind of thing.
That's what we had.
We had negative rights.
You have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our Declaration.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Why is that considered?
Why is that called a negative right?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Negative rights because they don't force anything out of you.
In order for me to have that right, I don't have to force you to do anything.
For me to have my life, my liberty, And my pursuit of happiness, I don't have to take property from you, or money from you, or tax you, etc.
And that system provided a tremendous boost to liberty because everyone could live within that framework.
And that's what allowed for the true toleration of different religions, which our founders clearly embedded in the Constitution.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Why did they specifically not have a state religion like the Church of England was in the United Kingdom?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, and for that reason.
They did not want favoritism.
They just got done with favoritism.
They were sick of favoritism.
If you want to read in deep on this, I recommend Alan Bloom.
Atheist, right?
University of Chicago philosopher.
Top brain.
He translated Plato's The Closing of the Western Mind.
He translated Rousseau's Emile, the great educational work of Rousseau, who has a very different tradition than we are.
But he goes in on this, and this American experiment in the 60s, when you had the radical leftists in every university.
They were all ginned up, and the Enlightenment was behind them, and they had Darwinian thought.
Boy, they were on a roll, and we're going to get rid of this God thing and crush the conservative movement.
And they sent out sociologists all over to find Rousseau's Noble Savage, right, throughout the world.
So they went into all the lands, and they came back horrified.
Because the receipts they gathered showed that the U.S.
was the most sophisticated, most free... What year was this?
Oh, this is the turn of the century, 1900 or so.
And Bloom documents all of this with footnotes galore from Chicago, the great anthropologist Levi Strauss, the great sociologist, and they were good scholars back then.
They weren't liberal freaks like we got today.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This was because of what Darwin had brought up, and so they went out to find the noble savage.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Right, Rousseau's noble savage.
Human nature is good until it enters bureaucracy, modern social life.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Well, until it enters, really, civilization.
Civilization corrupts the noble savage.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
And then Rousseau hit a dead end there in his explanation.
Why is it that otherwise good human nature, why when you group them together, do they go bad?
And he couldn't answer that question.
And then Marx showed up, the most unsophisticated philosopher in the Western tradition, right?
Bloom calls Marx one of the greatest, I mean, Rousseau, one of the greatest liberals ever.
And Marx is just as deep as a wading pool.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And Marx said, very simply, here's why... Why did he say Marx is as deep as a wading pool?
Because Marx... I know he got the economics wrong.
You're saying he got the society wrong?
unidentified
Oh, no.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
His metaphysics was just... He was a materialist, right?
He followed Hegel, who was a great philosopher.
Just philosopher, though.
He got it wrong, too.
Marx inverted Hegel, and Marx was a materialist.
He tried to explain that everything came from the internal contradictions of capitalism, right?
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and you needed a conflict of these class revolutions.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
But no spiritual... Hegel was really the spirit of history, right?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Oh yeah, too much so.
A little on steroids.
And then Marx comes along, gets rid of all ethics, all religion, says it's the opiate of the masses.
That's his famous line.
And of course every system that Marx has set up has degenerated into totalitarianism.
And yet he still has a following because he appeals to the angst and the suffering of minority classes and promises the Kingdom of God at present.
And the Judeo-Christian tradition knows better.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
By the way, is this taught?
Do you have, at Liberty, are there courses that, because people talk about, you know, you need Hillsday, you need these colleges, because this is not taught.
You don't go to Harvard today, you don't go to Columbia today, you don't go to Princeton undergraduate today, and you don't get this, do you?
unidentified
In fact, it's a hatred of the Judeo-Christian West.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
And just to make it abundantly clear, the first principle, of course, is always God.
Right, and Leibniz with Wittgenstein and Bertram Ross, all these guys, they said the central metaphysical question of Western philosophy is why is there something instead of nothing?
Think about that statement for a minute.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
The left has offered no answer to that.
They don't have a system of ethics they can produce.
Marx doesn't have it.
Nothing on the left does.
And so, yes, at Liberty, we go back to the roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Of course, that is God, and a particular God, Father Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus.
And that history is worth studying.
It entails everything we're seeing today in the American Revolution, celebrating our freedom and all of the... We're free to do good and to worship God is one of the first principles that made this country great.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Let's take a short commercial break.
How does an economist know so much philosophy?
That question next.
Adam Smith.
Get back.
Short break.
Back in a moment.
unidentified
Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules.
Of Hector and Lysander and such great names as these.
But of all the world's great heroes, there's none that can compare.
With a tau-ro-ro and a ro-ro-ro to the British Grenadiers.
Those heroes of antiquity ne'er saw a cannonball Or knew the force of powder to slay their foes withal But our brave boys do know it and banish all their fears Sing a ta-ra-row and a row-row-row for the British Grenadiers
Whene'er we are commanded to storm the palisades Our leaders march with fuses and we with hand grenades We throw them from the glasses about the enemy's ears Sing a ta-ra-ro and a ro-ro-ro for the British Grenadiers And when the siege is over, we do the town repair.
The townsmen cry, hurrah, boys, here comes a grenadier.
Here come the grenadiers, me boys, who know no doubts or fears.
Sing ta-ra-ro and a-ro-ra-ro for the British grenadiers.
Then let us fill a bumper and drink a health to those who carry caps and pouches and wear the lupid clothes.
May they and their commanders live happy all their years.
Sing a ta-ra-ra and a ra-ra-ra for the British Grenadiers!
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, welcome back.
It's our 4th of July.
That is Diane Taraz.
We're going to be playing some of her music through the rest of her Revolutionary War songs.
Incredible.
If you go online, you can buy her album of the American Revolutionary songs.
Obviously, Brat, that's a song about the British Army, but my point is, these people We're British subjects.
They praised the British Army, obviously since Lexington and Concord were at war and then the lead up to that, the years of British occupation of Boston, things had changed.
But in 1776, and this goes to the arguments of the Tories, you have this radical, it was radical, Declaration of Independence.
Which, I think the math shows you still only 33% of the colonists, most, a third, supported this.
One third were Tories, which are loyal British subjects.
Another third was kind of in the middle.
We'll see how this thing plays out.
In the first six months, ladies and gentlemen, you had the publication of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons, volume one.
You had Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, in the Declaration of Independence.
Why Would you let hotheads like Sam Adams, John Adams, with a little throw-in by Jefferson, and Franklin, why would you let these radicals dream up this thing to actually form a new country?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
Well, you sketch it.
Freedom's on the march, right?
The trick is, how much freedom are you going to allow to be on the march?
The French, with Rousseau, he took freedom of the individual seriously, but didn't have the guardrails, right?
He kind of dismissed religion.
He took individual freedom and the Enlightenment very seriously.
And the Renaissance is in the background, right?
Man is the measure of all things.
So God in French thought takes a hit and he comes up with a reconstruction of all of society through the Emil, his great work on education.
And boy, go take a peek at that because you'll see what's going on in American society right now.
You try to condition the kid and shape the kid by the experiences you allow that kid to go through.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Walk me back through this.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
So the Emil by Rousseau, his great work on educational theory which has to do with how he constructs society, which is the modern leftist project.
Is if you want to shape society for real, if you're a real liberal, you get down into the archetype of that kid and you allow that kid up to the age of two or three.
You don't want them to experience anything harmful, anything nasty about human nature.
He's trying to reconstruct the noble savage and the good person in all of us.
unidentified
Right?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
And so the Enlightenment had this hope, right?
And so that's the simplicity and the complexity of it, because the Enlightenment project did wonders for science.
Undisputed, right?
Medical breakthroughs we're all thankful for today.
But if you'll notice, all the breakthroughs were in the hard sciences.
The closer you get to the human being, to the human soul, the Enlightenment had no impact.
No impact.
There's no science of religion that works today.
There's no science of ethics.
There's no science of philosophy.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Aren't Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, wouldn't Jefferson say he was a child of the Enlightenment?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Oh yeah.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, but then he's the drafter of the Declaration.
How do you square that then with, they were proud that they were Enlightenment figures.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Oh yeah.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And derived from Enlightenment thinkers, correct?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, and that's correct, but Madison was the most important hand.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
But hang on, that's a constitution.
I'm in 1776.
Madison is 19 years old now, or early 20s?
unidentified
Yeah.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
What are the ages, just to make sure?
Jefferson is early 30s?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
30s, yeah, early.
Adams just turned 40.
1776, yep.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Just turned 40.
And Franklin's the old man, he's 70, which is ancient back in those days.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, it's fun to look that stuff up.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
How does a man at 33 have this much knowledge he can write?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Well, they didn't have Facebook and all these modern irritations, so they're serious people.
And they read the greats, right?
The greats all read the greats.
In the history of philosophy, the Greeks would just call them the philosopher Aristotle, right?
No footnotes, no nothing.
Everybody just had a presumed knowledge of the classics.
And Jefferson certainly had all that.
But, you know, he cut out the miracles out of the Bible, and that's an example.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Was he a deist?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
Jefferson, he actually went to church.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
So where is your Judeo-Christian?
I mean, was he a Christian as we define it?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Not Orthodox.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
They believed in divine providence.
What did they believe in?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
Well, like Adam Smith, for example.
So he signed the Calvinist Creed up in Scotland, right?
But he wasn't Orthodox either.
But he did believe in a warm, benevolent, personal Father God.
unidentified
Right?
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
So is that Christian?
No, because Christian has Jesus Christ front and center.
And so he wasn't fully Orthodox that way.
But you know, that's what I'm saying about the Enlightenment.
The human arrogance got a little carried away with the knowledge of the sciences and Smith's unbridled genius when it comes to economics and the invisible hand and unleashing these new powers for us.
But on the ethics, there's no, you know, the great ethical theories, if you go to MBA at Harvard, They get utilitarian ethics, there's no followers.
Kant is a great philosopher, there's no followers.
Today there's no followers.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, and Aristotle.
Why?
Because they're so... It didn't work.
dave brat ▲ ● ▼
The Enlightenment Project on ethics didn't work.
The people today that live out the ethics are the Chinese, the Buddhists, the Confucius, the Christians, the Muslims, the Jewish.
It's all religious.
That's what you base your life on.
That's what people choose.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Dave Brat, it's our commemoration of the 4th of July.
We're going to get into all of it.
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