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Feb. 19, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
42:20
Ep. 107 - Are Colleges Destroying Race Relations? ft. Prof. Carol Swain

Statue-toppling, shrieking girls, white supremacists, safe spaces, trigger warning, and English degrees without Shakespeare. Somehow one institution has become a focus point for all of these atrocities. We ask: is the Ivy League destroying America? Then, Washington's Birthday on This Day In History! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Statue toppling, shrieking girls, white supremacists, safe spaces, trigger warnings, and English degrees without reading Shakespeare.
Somehow, one institution has become a focus point for all of these atrocities.
We ask, is the Ivy League destroying America?
We will discuss with the great Carol Swain.
Professor Swain grew up in a two-bedroom shack in the rural South with 11 siblings, no indoor plumbing, and no running water.
She dropped out of high school and became a teenage mother.
Carol then earned her GED as well as five academic degrees from institutions, including Virginia Tech, UNC Chapel Hill, and Yale.
She rose to teach law and political science at Princeton and Vanderbilt universities.
But then Professor Swain had the gall, the temerity, the audacity to be a Christian conservative, which naturally led students at Vanderbilt to petition for her suspension in 2015.
The university chancellor tepidly defended her at the time, and she retired from Vanderbilt in 2017.
We will get her thoughts on the academy, race relations, and book recommendations.
Is the Ivy League destroying America?
We will discuss.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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All right, let's bring on Professor Swain.
Professor Swain, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for your introduction.
Well, Professor, you have a lot of notches under your belt.
I've said a few of them.
But also, a lot of people I think don't know this.
You predicted the alt-right years before anyone had ever heard of them, the new white nationalist movement.
You survived for decades in the academy as both a Christian and a conservative.
You rose up from crushing poverty to the most rarefied and elite halls in America.
My first question is, we know the academy is biased against Christians and conservatives.
In what ways does that bias manifest?
Well, first of all, when I started my academic career at Princeton, I was not a divided Christian believer.
I was always viewing the world differently.
And my first book, Black Faces, Black Interest, The Representation of African Americans in Congress, won the highest prize in political science, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Prize for Best Book in Politics.
And I was the first black to win it and the second woman.
And I won three national prizes.
I've been cited by the Supreme Court.
And so I was a hot shot.
I had my Christian conversion experience in the late 1990s.
And when I was hired by Vanderbilt, they did not know that they were getting a Christian.
And when they hired me, I was not as conservative as I am now.
And so I didn't have to Go through being untenured and all of that as a divine Christian.
But I can tell you that once I became publicly known as a Christian, life as I knew it ended.
And then I would say that in 2015, after I published an opinion piece in the Tennessee and criticizing Islam, my life in academia was pretty much over.
Did you know at the time, you must have known, that if you were to contravene political correct orthodoxy in such a way as to, I don't know, criticize Islam, the well-known religion of peace, did you know that that would kill your academic career?
No.
I've always been a provocative thinker.
That's why I've been successful in academia.
And so, I mean, I was the person who was gutsy enough as an African-American I mean, excuse me, as a black person, in the early 2000s, that was when I did the research on the white nationalism,
and I had a researcher interview the leading white nationalists in the country, and that was when I predicted the rise of the alt-right, a new kind of nationalism that was not based on overt racial hatred, not using racial epithets.
It was not espousing violence but made the case, using the language of multiculturalism and political identity, that white was like any other group, that white people were being discriminated against, that white people needed to have the same rights as other people.
I knew that because they framed it around the language of the left that it would be appealing to young people because it pointed out You know, on that point of the alt-right, I'll just skip ahead because I do want to ask you about that.
You predicted it.
You predicted the rise of these white nationalists.
I know you spoke to this new breed of white nationalists.
These articulate people, these well-educated people.
In 2014, I think you point out in one of your books, and I think I've read through most of your books, in 2014, 55% of Americans were satisfied with race relations.
By January of 2017, that number had fallen to 17%.
The number even of Americans proud of their country has declined sharply.
And then in The New White Nationalism, in the book you wrote in the early 2000s, you said, And you presaged these guys like Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer, we see...
You've also said you think there's an increasing white racial consciousness.
The late columnist, white nationalist columnist Sam Francis called for this.
Why is that?
Why is there this new increasing white racial consciousness?
And why is the new white nationalism coming out of places like Yale, where Jared Taylor attended school, and you and I also went, rather than the good old boys Palookaville country bar, as we saw in the old days of the KKK? Well, there's a lot of reasons to that.
And Jared Taylor was one of the white nationalists that I had interviewed, and then later I brought him to Vanderbilt to debate, Tim Wise, a civil rights activist.
And I brought him in because he was an intellectual.
He defied the stereotype.
And the stereotype had been, you know, guys with missing teeth, very good.
You know, they couldn't string together two words.
And we just laughed at them.
We saw them on TV because no one took them seriously.
That was the Klan and the neo-Nazis that the media presented to us.
And so with Jared Taylor, I saw someone that frightened me because I knew that with my mindset and my sense of justice and how I don't like double standards, that if I were that poor white kid from Appalachia, I thought some of his arguments could be persuasive to me.
And I wanted people to see that they had the wrong image, that these were well-educated people And they were taking the language of the left to its logical conclusion.
And I think part of the appeal today is the fact that white people are not doing so well in America.
If you read Charles Murray's research or you look at the opioid addiction, the people that are being affected and just the outlook, the hopelessness that white people are experiencing, I think it's only natural That as they become a smaller percentage of the population, they would act and think like other minorities.
And in parts of the country, they're already a minority.
And so they are just engaging in normal human behavior when you see your world changing.
That's right.
And I love that you point out that articulate racists like Spencer or somebody or Jared Taylor are much more dangerous because people might be tempted to take them seriously and to take their ideas seriously because they have a nice polish, you know, and maybe they wear tweed suits.
It always seems to me that the reason that white nationalists go so wrong is that they love Christendom.
They talk ad nauseum about Christendom and Western Christendom, but they reject Christianity.
Most of these guys are atheists, like Richard Spencer is an avowed atheist.
Between getting part of your academic...
I actually didn't know that.
Jared Taylor, also an atheist, but you had this experience, this born-again Christian experience, during your academic career.
How did that come about, and how did that experience of Christianity affect your view of politics?
I can tell you that as a child, I was the only one of the twelve that was able to reach college.
And so I'm the only one that's, you know, solidly in the middle class.
And so I guess in some ways I'm different as I was growing up.
But I always saw the world differently.
And when I was a young adult working outside the home, I worked in nursing homes.
I worked in a garment factory.
I sold things from door to door.
One year I had seven dead-end jobs and I worked alongside A lot of poor whites that were just like me.
And I think I've always had empathy for people who are working class, just like me.
And I felt very much discriminated against by the black middle class and upper class.
In fact, I didn't feel it.
It actually happened.
And as far as the people that mentored me, groomed me, saw my talent, pushed me, they were all Caucasian.
And I find this very common among people that I talk with that are black that come from similar backgrounds.
The people who offered us a helping hand, many of them were white conservatives.
So I don't know what that means, but I can tell you that my experiences have been experiences where I was treated better by whites than I were by blacks.
That's interesting.
Beyond even the racial point, you notice this in the language of economic envy.
So you hear people say, we hate the 1%, the upper 1% of wage earners.
I've never understood that.
I came from relatively lower means.
I didn't grow up with 11 siblings in a shack, but relative to my area, I came from lower means.
And rich people have always been great to me.
I've always gotten jobs from rich people.
I've gotten scholarships from rich people.
I'm not particularly angry at them.
And I noticed something at At Yale, all the richest and most privileged Upper West Side children and hedge fund managers, they would lecture me and other students on financial aid about wealth and poverty in America.
They would always lecture me.
They'd call fellow conservatives who were on financial aid, they would call them uncompassionate or oblivious to financial difficulty.
How have you responded throughout your life to elitists who would lecture you on race and poverty in America?
I mean, it's really funny when they're white liberals.
And to me, they're the most racist group of all.
That movie Get Out was absolutely right.
The white liberals are the most racist group.
They are.
And I have seen them discriminate in college and university admissions decisions between two blacks.
That there was a black person from a working class background that had higher scores.
And one of the reasons I think...
That I have been treated well by conservatives and people who, you know, like you, people that were more affluent than 1%, is that they saw someone that was hardworking, that was sincere, and they rewarded that kind of behavior.
And I think that those same, some of those same people, if they are liberal, they don't expect anything of blacks anyway.
And so they are willing to reward behavior, you know, that It's not very competent and they don't believe any of us are capable of achieving on our own and so they lower the standards and they are harming black people on the colleges and universities.
They're harming them by not holding them to the same standards and when they remove the classics, when they dumb down a math or economics course because students complain, when they cancel a course on free speech, They're harming everyone's education.
And I think that what we're seeing is the fruits of affirmative action taken to its logical conclusion in that, you know, during the era that I was in college in the 1980s, and I graduated with my PhD in 89, but, you know, that was affirmative action.
But if you were black and you were on those campuses, I mean, you did not get huge breaks.
I did not go to school free.
You know, I had a student loan debt, I had some scholarships, but I had to work.
And nowadays, they seem to be telling black students that they can take separate tracks, that they can avoid any courses that may be challenging to their views.
And I think they're harming everyone's education and that it's totally irresponsible of college administrators making Multi-million dollars to run universities and they cave into the students and they're harming the minority students the most.
That's such a good point because, you know, just last year, Yale decolonized the English department such that now you can graduate with a degree in English literature without reading Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer, which is incredible to me.
And we've all seen that shrieking girl who was on that campus.
In case you forgot, do we have a clip of the shrieking girl?
I did not.
Stay quiet for all salmon food.
You understand that?
As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Sylman.
You have not done that.
By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master.
Do you understand that?
No, I don't agree with that.
Then why the f*** did you accept the position?
Who the f*** hired you?
I have a different vision.
You should step down.
If that is what you think about being a citizen, you should step down.
It is not about creating an intellectual space.
It is not.
Do you understand that?
It's about creating a home here.
You are not doing that.
You're supposed to be our advocate.
It is not about creating an intellectual space.
So when you see things like this, even at elite universities, Professor Swain...
And it's because they've hired the wrong people and they've sort of turned the black people over to the black studies program or whatever ethnic studies program.
But it's spilling over to the rest of the university now.
And if that were my child or my grandchild, I would be horribly embarrassed.
And a lot of black students want to be held to the same standard.
And they're not on board with all of the foolishness, but they're drowned out.
And if they try to stand up for something different, then they risk ostracism, not just from other students, but from the liberal left faculty that are actually manipulating the students.
And all of this ties into cultural Marxism.
That's the roots of all this.
Madness on the college campuses.
Can you go into that a little bit?
Because I was going to ask, do we blame the students like that girl, or do we blame the faculty, or do we blame the administration?
But how do you see the root of cultural Marxism as hollowing out the academy?
I think the students have been brainwashed, they've been indoctrinated, and that they really don't know any better.
And I think it goes back, it starts even in some cases in middle school, And then it gets reinforced in high school, and by the time they get to college, they're ready for the orientation program, you know, to teach them how to be a true victim.
And I think that it's all about remaking American culture, but it's not about remaking it in a way that's going to make black people or make the society better off.
And again, I think that what we're doing is very destructive.
It's harming everyone's education, and I think it's because the universities have looked at the increasing demographic changes, the ethnic makeup of the country, and they've decided that you have to have people in certain percentages with degrees, even if those people are not college material.
And all of this unrest and all of this protest that the university supports I think it's the product of them relaxing standards so low that you have students that can't do the work.
The students are miserable and all they do is agitate and they're being manipulated in some cases by faculty members that are not qualified.
And so it's a vicious cycle.
I don't know how you break it.
The Ivy Leagues are the worst of all because they're turning out people that are going to be Supreme Court justices.
They're going to be senators.
They're going to be newspaper editors.
The thought and opinion leaders and these people are shutting down free speech.
They have no knowledge and respect of the Constitution.
They will destroy America unless we can figure out a way to sort of dial it back and to move people to basics when it comes to honoring our Constitution and our American way of life.
And I think that it's being pushed by a minority, that all of this chaos that we see taking place, it's being fostered by the actions of a few, but imposed on everyone else.
And there's so many people that are cowards, especially, I'm sorry, white people, in that white people seem to be very afraid of being called racists.
What they forget is that it doesn't matter what they do, they're going to be called racists.
They're going to be called nativists.
They're going to be called xenophobes.
And so they might as well stand on some principles.
If people stop standing on principles, we might be able to change things.
That is such a good point.
I've long thought that when a lefty calls a conservative a racist, the conservative knows he's won the argument.
And one shouldn't be afraid of this.
The reason I don't worry about being called racist, I get called racist on Twitter all day long, you know.
I said that Black Panther wasn't a great movie and I get called racist for that.
But the reason that I know that I'm not racist is that I know that I'm not racist.
That's why I'm not afraid of people calling me that.
And yet people are cowering in fear.
And speaking of the destruction of culture and history, you see this most clearly, especially on campuses, with the toppling of all of these statues, the toppling of Confederate statues, the renaming of Calhoun College at Yale, because Calhoun was a South Carolina senator who supported slavery.
You see Harvard taking the word Puritans out of its alma mater because it's not inclusive enough.
You see it, obviously, with taking Shakespeare out of the English department.
What is the endgame for this cultural left in these universities?
Well, I mean, all you have to do is read George Orwell's 1984, and you see part of the endgame.
And if you were to read Cleon Scousin's The Naked Communist, he has a section in there.
The book was published in 1958, and it had a section on 45 current Communist goals, and that was current in 1958.
They were read into the congressional record in 1963.
The political left has accomplished most of those goals, and the end game seems to be to take America down.
And I think that if people would read George Orwell's 1984 and maybe Animal Farm as well, Huxley's Brave New World, if they would read it With the knowledge they have today about society, maybe it would awaken enough young people.
And I also would include Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
I think that every conservative needs to read it.
And those parts of it that doesn't offend their conscience, they should apply it, such as make your enemy live up to his rule book.
And I think that it's up to the young people that People of my generation can point them in the right direction, but ultimately, if they're going to preserve the society, they will have to fight, and they will have to fight with knowledge, and they need to know history, and they need to value the Constitution.
They need to know their enemy.
Right.
I think that's so much of it.
I think the hollowing out of the curricula and knocking down all these statues and trying to erase our history and revise our history, I think a lot of that is so that we can wipe away all of that accumulated knowledge of tradition and make it easier for the reformers to keep reforming and reforming and reforming.
Now, I notice at the beginning of your book, Be the People, you quote two of my favorite men, Leon Cass, in his book on Genesis and C.S. Lewis on Screwtape, both writers about Scripture, both writing about Scripture in that case.
You know, Harvard's founding motto was Veritas Pro Christo et Ecclesiae, Truth for Christ and Church.
All of these early colleges and universities in America were founded to study scripture, to be, as Harvard's Rules and Precepts of 1646 wrote, the main end of a student's life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.
Dan, you fast forward now, and the former president of Johns Hopkins University says the bad news is the university has become godless.
Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, confessed things divine have been central neither to my professional nor to my personal life.
This sure seems like mission drift to me.
Does the university need to return to God, or are we so beyond that point in culture that that's a lost cause?
No, I think that it's up to the Students and their parents and those people who value America to use their influence and their dollars to push the university back to the middle.
I mean, they don't have to go, you know, all the way back to the 1700s when God was honored at these institutions that were founded.
But I think that they are so off balance now.
And I think that we all have a stake in In having leaders and producing citizens who know how to think.
We're not teaching anyone how to think these days.
Not even the faculty can think.
And that's very problematic.
I do have a friend named Mary Poplin, who is at Claremont Graduate School.
She has founded a new organization named The Upper Room.
It's a nonprofit, but it's Christian Intellectual Christian intellectual faculty members who are looking at their disciplines and trying to sort of reinterpret their disciplines based on their knowledge of truth, Christian truth.
And the political left doesn't want to debate because they don't have the facts on their side.
They don't even have science on their side anymore.
They don't even know the difference between male and female.
They lose when you deal with facts and you deal with science.
And I think that the effort that Mary and the faculty members involved in her project, it's all about trying to recapture the universities.
I think the universities can be recaptured, but it's going to take all of us working together with a vision.
Absolutely right.
I've noticed this just speaking to my own friends in the academy.
I find basically all of them are godless except for the smartest ones, and the smartest ones are talking about Jesus.
You know, the son of the great lord of the multiverse, our colleague Andrew Clavin, his son works on classics at Oxford, and he has a wonderful reading group who work on scripture and a reading group of Christians that I try to listen to or glean some insight from.
I wonder if we're on the verge of a revival in that way.
Organizations like that would be phenomenal if that's the case.
If the universities are failing us, which it seems they are, people write in to me all the time.
They say, should I go to college?
Should my child go to college?
Is it a total waste?
Is it going to simply saddle me with a quarter million dollars in debt?
Now, obviously, you did very well in the academy, to say the least.
I enjoyed college very much, and I think I got something out of it.
In what ways should students augment their education?
What books should people be reading that the universities have failed to teach?
What things should people be studying on their own if they're not going to get it in college?
First of all, I would urge every parent as Christian who has the resources to either homeschool individually or as part of a cooperative group.
Do not send your child to the fancy private school or the public school Unless it's a classical Christian school.
And so that's the first thing, because they would get education at those institutions that they would not get anywhere else.
So their foundation would be laid.
And I think that every literate person needs to know the Bible.
And whether or not they are a believer or not, that that's the basic, the greatest book in the world that they need to know.
But Western civilization, stick with the classics.
Stick with the great books of the past.
And I think that's a firm foundation.
But also, know your enemy.
And I think when our children go off to college, they need to know that they're entering enemy territory.
And sometimes it's the Christian schools.
So many of them have gone so far left that they're not a safe place for Christian students.
But I don't think we should stop sending our children to college.
We need to prepare them ahead of time.
If they are Christians in churches, they need to know apologetics as well as worldviews and the literature of the political left.
We need to answer that question before they get to college.
And how do we, that's such a good point, and you talk about the Western canon and Western civilization, and now both the left and, the radical left and the racists on the alt-right, they say, well, the Western canon, that's just white guys.
That's white civilization that is different than, and exclusionary than other cultures.
How do you respond to this?
The Southern Poverty Law Center, that vicious and awful group.
I respond as a, I mean, I respond as a Christian because that's my worldview, and I believe there's only one race, the human race, and that...
I mean, I dismiss, I discount, I do not legitimize those who argue that we should not read Shakespeare because he was white, or that we should not read dead white men.
I think that some of the greatest works of history...
We're making a terrible mistake, you know, by...
Removing Mark Twain and Harper Lee, Tequila Mockingbird and all of those stories that have impacted generations of people.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, that's probably not politically correct, but it's an important book.
I think that we were making a huge mistake when we removed literature because the author happened to have been white.
That's right.
And that if we treat white people the same way the political left says that we should treat members of every other group, we would not have a problem.
They created the race and the racism to a large extent, and they are using it to divide people.
And I think it's very, very important that we don't give up the Western traditions, the Judeo-Christian way of life, that is responsible for America being a country that people are willing to risk their lives to come to Even though they try to change it once they get here.
Of course, and all of these values of equitable governance and justice and liberty and equality, all of those things come out of the Western tradition that people are now so despising.
The Western tradition animated by Christianity in which there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free nor male nor female for all are one in the body of Christ.
That part seems to evade Both the radicals on the racist fringe and also the radical left.
And really, really excellent to talk to you.
We could go on forever, but I'm up against a break.
Professor Swain, thank you so much for being here.
We'll have to have you back and talk a little bit more.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Wow, she is great.
Unbelievable background.
Raised in a shack, one of 12 kids, slept on the kitchen floor, didn't have plumbing, didn't have running water, and rises up to become a professor of law and political science at the most elite institutions of the country.
And now the SPLC calls her a white...
A supremacist or something.
A white bigot.
Absolutely outrageous and despicable.
Yeah, Carol Swain, she is so good.
I urge people to read her books and look her up on YouTube.
She's given other great talks as well.
Okay, speaking about our culture and our history and defending our culture, we've got to get to this day in history.
But before we do that, you guys are monsters.
You guys are just vicious monsters.
I have to say goodbye to Facebook and the audience formerly on YouTube.
The former audience that was on YouTube before they decided to censor us and every syllable that comes out of my mouth.
Probably because I have those white supremacists on like Carol Swain.
That's probably why they can't allow our videos on YouTube.
Okay.
Thank you very much if you're watching there.
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We'll be right back with This Day in History on Washington's Birthday.
It is time for This Day in History.
On this day in history, it's Washington's birthday, which shouldn't be confused with Washington's birthday.
It's Washington's birthday, but it's certainly not the day George Washington was born.
He was born on February 11th under the Julian calendar because the British Empire had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar because they were Protestant savages, and the Catholic Church adopted that Gregorian calendar in 1582.
So on the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we use, Washington was born on February 22nd.
It's also not today.
It's also not Lincoln's birthday.
Sometimes this day is called Washington and Lincoln's birthday.
Lincoln's birthday was February 12th.
The thing it is most certainly not is President's Day, which was a name change proposed in the 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
But mercifully it failed in committee because I do not want to take away George Washington's birthday and start celebrating other presidents like Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter or whatever.
Maybe Calvin Coolidge or something, Warren Harding, but certainly not those later presidents.
George Washington's birthday.
George Washington was born in 1732.
The thing I think we all have to drive home, we have this image of George Washington.
Well, in the old days, we had an image of him as the father of the country, the guy on the $1 bill.
Now we have the image of him as a vicious slaveholder because we all read Howard Zinn and stuff like that in schools.
George Washington was an amazingly courageous, dignified, and virtuous man of a caliber that I don't think we can even fathom in 2018.
He was born in 1732.
His father died in 1743.
George was just 11 years old.
His father left him very little money for formal schooling, so Washington was only able to be formally educated through age 15.
How did he educate himself?
He clearly was an educated man.
He did it on his own.
He decided of his own volition to write down the rules of etiquette that a dignified and gentlemanly guy would comport himself with.
He wrote his own book.
You can still buy it.
Washington's Rules for Civility.
Washington was insanely courageous in battle.
People now criticize him for having made some strategic errors as general.
You know, if they were errors and maybe there were errors, he was saved time and time again by providence and weather patterns, which sometimes you can't distinguish from one another, but he was insanely courageous.
During the French and Indian War at the Battle of Monongahela in 1755, Washington rode through men who were being slaughtered all around him to take charge of the collapsing lines.
He could have stayed back, but he decided to ride charge on ahead to take care of these lines as men were falling off horses all around him.
During this charge, he had two horses shot out from under him and four bullet holes shot through his coat.
Four bullet holes.
Now I am convinced, as are many, that the American Revolution would not have been won.
We could not have won it.
It would have been over in 1776 without George Washington.
Here is a clear example of providence.
Two horses shot out from under him in the same instance.
Four bullet holes through his coat.
And he kept on and was able then to take the lead in the American Revolution.
At the Battle of Princeton in 1777, George Washington led soldiers from his white charger to within a mere 30 yards of the British line.
He was an easy target.
Everyone thought he was going to get killed.
He didn't care.
He is said to have said...
Parade with me, my fine fellows.
We will have them soon.
This reminds me of Churchill when his plane was shot down the third time.
They said, don't you fear death?
He said, I love life, but I do not fear death.
You see this time and again with Washington on the battlefield.
By December 1776, most consider the revolution a lost cause.
The Patriots had suffered defeats in New York and New Jersey, massive defeats.
So what did Washington do?
He led a counter-strike against the ice-filled Delaware River on Christmas Day.
And even that charge was delayed immensely.
People said there's no way, there won't be any element of surprise, which there wasn't.
It was daylight by the time they arrived there.
And he said, it doesn't matter.
We're doing it anyway.
This is how we're going to win.
In 1781, with the revolution once again on the verge of defeat, Washington made the risky decision to surround Cornwallis' British army at Yorktown.
This wasn't the ceremonial end to the war.
This was a major risky decision, and there had been huge setbacks for the Patriots.
Nevertheless, he decided to surround Cornwallis' army.
It won the war.
On December 23rd, 1783, George Washington surrendered his military commission to Congress to affirm civilian control of the military.
This handing over of power caused his former foe, King George III, to call him, quote, the greatest man in the world.
He then followed this up by surrendering presidential power after two terms.
It's not like there were term limits.
It wasn't until that dirty, rotten Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, that they would break Washington's example of two terms and stay on until he died in his mistress's arms.
But George Washington set that precedent.
He could have stayed on.
He could have been the American king.
But it wasn't until a Democrat in the 20th century that someone strove to become the American king.
Washington was the richest president in American history.
He was the richest president in American history.
We now have President Covfefe, who converted the White House into the Gold House.
So now Washington is only the second richest American president, but still pretty good record.
Upon his death, Washington freed his slaves.
Washington was the only founding father to do so.
He was universally respected by his peers.
He was the only founding father who could say that.
They were always infighting with one another, but not with Washington.
Abigail Adams wrote, quote, He is polite with dignity, affable without formality, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good.
It's a pretty good recommendation.
Lafayette said General Washington is the greatest man, for I look upon him as the most virtuous.
Nathaniel Green, one of the greatest officers of the revolution, reported, quote, His Excellency, General Washington, has arrived amongst us, universally admired.
Joy was visible on every countenance.
Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, quote, He retreats like a general and attacks like a hero.
One age cannot do justice to his merit, but the united voices of a grateful posterity shall pay a cheerful tribute of undissembled Praise to the great asserter of their country's freedom.
I hope that's the case, and I hope that ingrates and revisionists don't start toppling statues, as we've seen happening all around us, as President Trump spoke about last year.
I hope we don't see that too much.
I hope the gratitude continues.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, quote, As Henry Lee wrote famously in his eulogy of Washington, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, may he ever remain so, the greatest of the founding fathers, George Washington.
That's this day in history.
And it's not President's Day.
It's Washington's birthday.
Say it out loud.
Shout out from the rooftops.
Happy birthday to Washington.
That is our show.
We'll be back tomorrow.
We'll have much more covfefe to cover.
Until then, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you then.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
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Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
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