Mayor Rudy Giuliani's recovery from ICU is celebrated alongside a deep dive into America's founders' religious faith, where Professor Mark David Hall argues they grounded natural rights in God rather than Enlightenment deism. Citing Washington's 1789 National Day of Prayer proclamation and George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, the segment asserts that biblical principles drove early abolition efforts and defined liberty as a right, not privilege. While honoring Major Scott Smiley's military service and promoting QUXNOW.com, the discussion concludes that Thomas Paine's Common Sense remains the rational guide to the enduring American ideals of religious freedom and self-governance. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Spiritual Freedom and Family Duty00:03:25
is out of the ICU.
He'll spend some time recovering before leaving the hospital.
The mayor and his family appreciate the mayor Giuliani, the man who took down the mafia, saved the towers on September 11th, is the same fighter he's always been, and he's winning this fight.
Please, keep the prayers coming.
We feel them, and the mayor feels them.
We'll continue to update you as we can.
Fortune and our sacred honor.
Middle class families could own a home, care for their loved ones, and leave their children better off than themselves.
Many of my friends' parents had lived through the Great Depression and some fought in World War II.
They knew privation, grief, and sacrifice.
It shouldn't surprise us that their understanding of the American Dream was largely rooted in a.
Some might say this notion of spiritual freedom belongs to the private sphere.
It is a matter of personal practice and not of public affairs.
Some might even argue that can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?
And to that question, Jefferson and his fellow founders would have the drafters of the Constitution disregarded a fundamental right to life.
The American people, just like every people across history, can claim a share of that right or that gift as Jefferson recognized.
Because of the basic fact that life comes not from the government, but from God.
This is the animating principle behind what the founders called natural rights.
Rights inherent to the human person, not because of the rage of divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
In basic terms, a right is what justice demands, as measured by the divine order.
By this, he meant something in accord with God's design for man.
Discoverable by natural reason, written as St. Paul did not declare political independence from their ancestral homeland, simply the rights that we are given by God.
And while it's impossible for us to know the thoughts within the hearts and minds of men, I believe it was the conscience, the inner witness of the neutral on questions of good and evil.
It does not leave us in a naked public square, to use Father Richard John Newhouse's famous phrase.
Rather, it presumes that firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
recovering before leaving the hospital.
The mayor and his family appreciate the outpouring of love and support sent his way.
Mayor Giuliani, the man who took down the mafia, saved New York City, and ran toward the towers on September 11th, is the same fighter he's always been, and he's winning this fight.
Please, keep the prayers coming.
We feel them, and the mayor feels them.
We'll continue to update you as we can.
Washington Outspied the British Spies00:04:58
In order to form a more American union, kept under wraps and waged in the shadows.
But a war that was no less dangerous than the kind fought on horseback as cannonballs whistled overhead.
By November 1776, mere months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Army had endured heavy losses and a punishing string of setbacks in New York and New Jersey.
In Long Island, roughly 1,300 Americans were killed.
Wounded or captured.
At Fort Washington, General Washington was forced to surrender roughly 3,000 men.
In the five major battles between August and November of 1776, the Continental Army was reduced to fewer than 5,000 men.
Inside a candle lit tent along the New York Harbor, following the catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Long Island, General Washington confronted a grim reality.
Surrounded, outnumbered, and outmaneuvered, the pivot on which The entire Revolution War turned, said John Adamson.
Failed.
The execution of Lieutenant Nathan Hale, who was caught, tried, and particularly well trained.
Indeed, these informants consisted primarily of old friends' secrets from the lips of British soldiers.
According to speculations, it was aged a system of extraordinary precision, and given that names were too traceable, assigned each of his spies a code number in their encrypted communications.
In total, 763 numerical identities were created, each site for protecting a patriot.
Rivington was 726 in the Culper Codebook.
Only once secrecy was no longer needed did it become public knowledge that this apparent traitor to America had in fact.
Been one of its fiercest defenders.
Information flowed from New York City northward to General Washington's camp in New Windsor, threading its way through miles of British controlled territory.
The operation began with Austin Rowe, who would make the long ride from Long Island into Manhattan under the guise of routine business.
There, in the quiet of Townsend's shop, Rowe would place an innocuous order, one encoded with Washington's prearranged phrases, which Townsend had received via courier from headquarters.
The request, signed by Talmadge, Under his alias, John Bolton, triggered the next phase.
Roe concealed the dispatch among the merchandise.
Anna Strong, a local, would hang a black petticoat on her clothesline, visible for the Long Island Sound to alert Caleb Brewster, the Continental Army's boatman.
The series of handkerchiefs indicated the precise cove where Brewster could land under cover of night.
Brewster would then ferry the intelligence across the Sound and into the hands of Talmadge.
From beginning to end.
Through painstaking observation, the culprit spies uncovered a devastating British scheme of economic sabotage.
Thousands of Ford's continental dollars were being printed in New York and smuggled across enemy lines.
The British were deliberately devaluing American currency, aiming to wreck the fragile economy of the nascent republic.
Washington responded swiftly, shutting down the counterfeit circulation routes and launching efforts to stabilize the currency.
It was an invisible victory.
But without it, the revolution may well have buckled under the weight of economic ruin.
But that would have been a crushing British blow, it was thwarted through daring espionage.
Most famously, the spies uncovered the treachery of Benedict Arnold, exposing his plan to surrender West Point to the British.
Had Arnold's mission succeeded, West Point would have fallen into British hands.
The Hudson River would have been severed, the colonies divided, and the revolution itself smothered in its cradle.
It's no exaggeration to say that the course of the American Revolution, indeed the very existence of the United States, turned on messages no one could see, sent by men whose names history almost forgot.
The British intelligence officer, Major George Beckwith, put it this way Washington did not really outfight the British, he simply outspied us.
It may be more accurate to say Washington outfought the British because he outspied them.
The heroes of the culprit spy ring operated undercover without recognition.
without reward and at immense personal risk.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani is out of the ICU.
He'll spend some time recovering before leaving the hospital.
The mayor and his family appreciate the outpouring of love and support sent his way.
Mayor Giuliani, the man who took down the mafia, saved New York City, and ran toward the towers on September 11th, is the same fighter he's always been and he's winning this fight.
Founders' Letters on Civic Faith00:15:40
Please, Keep the prayers coming.
We feel them, and the mayor feels them.
We'll continue to update you as we can.
We are blessed as a nation to have the letters of John and Abigail Adams as a window into the sustaining relationship that women played in the founding of our country.
Let us look more closely at what was going on on the home front.
While John Adams was participating in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, far from his home in Quincy, Massachusetts, Abigail and John had had two children two years apart.
After being blessed with little Abigail and little John, they had a daughter who died at age two years old.
But since they were together for this family tragedy, there are no letters relating to it.
They went on to have two more boys, Charles and Thomas.
In 1775, When Abigail's mother dies, John is far from the scene of the deaths of intimate family members, and he takes a somewhat detached and stoic approach to this personal tragedy.
It is, for him, drowned in the general calamity, to be bounded and restrained by a firm belief that a being of infinite wisdom and unbounded goodness will carve out my portion in tender mercy towards me.
Yea, though he slay me, I will trust in him, says Holy Job.
Abigail explicitly says that the trial of her husband's absence had deepened her reliance on God.
Oh, how I have longed for your bosom, to pour forth my sorrows there and to find a healing balm.
But perhaps that has been denied me that I might be led to a higher and more permanent consolator who has bid us call upon him in the day of trouble.
John Adams responds in amazement at her strength.
I am charmed with that.
Admirable fortitude and that divine spirit of resignation which appears in your letters.
Just over a year later, Abigail writes to John with touching immediacy about what she is experiencing.
Yet, even these most personal of tragedies did not pass without some philosophical reflection from them both.
John suggests that perhaps Abigail's mother, who has just died, was too devoted to the domestic realm to be a fitting model for their children who should be trained up.
To value the public and civic virtues above all.
It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage, to accelerate and animate their industry and activity.
If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
But their bodies must be hardened as well as their souls exalted.
Without strength and activity and vigor of body, the brightest mental excellencies will be eclipsed and obscured.
This is not the only time that John is critical.
Of a life that is too limited in its horizons.
Reflecting on the great Roman philosopher Cicero's discussion of the levels and degrees of human sociability, John up with virtue in private life as well, that civic obligations cannot be separated from religious and moral obligations.
I have been led to think, from a late defection, that he who neglects his duty to his maker may well be expected to be deficient and insincere in his duty towards the public.
Abigail insists that merely civic motives.
Cannot replace the more internal motives of religion and morality.
Let revenge or ambition, pride, lust, or profit tempt these men to base and vile action, you may as well hope to bind up a hungry tiger with a cobweb as to hold such debauched patriots in the visionary chains of decency or to charm them with the intellectual beauty of truth and reason.
She clearly got through to John because years later, looking back at the founding, he echoed her image.
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human patent Christian tradition in which they stood.
The ancient statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, who had stood up for the liberty of the Roman Republic against the tyranny of Caesar, was not just the founder's tutor in the understanding of the Republic and the laws.
The American founders had been educated in his moral philosophy by reading his book On Duties, which was the textbook for ethics throughout the Christian ages and into the modern period.
John Locke, The English Enlightenment philosopher said that Cicero's little book on duties was the most important book that a parent could put into the hands of their children.
The American founding generation read there of the interconnectedness of the laws of nature that unite all mankind under God, family, and country.
Even as the American founders demanded their rights, grounded in the laws of nature and of nature's God, they acknowledged their duties to God, family, and country.
They did not think that rights could be abstracted from those duties.
Which were grounded just as surely in the laws of nature and of nature's God.
In the letters of John and Abigail Adams, we are given a glimpse into this founding family, with sorrows, joys, long months apart, and innumerable sacrifices for the cause of freedom.
John and Abigail's letters remind us that the bonds of marriage and family gave our founders the strength to serve with honor and bravery.
And like Abigail Adams, many of the ladies of the founding played an indispensable role.
Indispensable role in American independence.
They ran the family farms and businesses, made warm clothes for freezing soldiers, prayed for a swift and definitive victory, counseled their husbands, and reminded the young republic of the importance of duty to God, family, and country.
And we will forever remember the ladies whose quiet service and tireless toil helped give birth to this new land of liberty.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani is out of the ICU.
He'll spend some time recovering before leaving the hospital.
The mayor and his family appreciate the outpouring of love and support sent his way.
Mayor Giuliani, the man who took down the mafia, saved New York City, and ran toward the towers on September 11th, is the same fighter he's always been, and he's winning this fight.
Please, keep the prayers coming.
We feel them and the mayor feels them.
We'll continue to update you as we can.
I've been asked to say a few words about the religious faith of America's founders and why it matters.
Hi, I'm Mark David Hall, a professor in the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.
Let me begin by observing that a lot of nonsense has been written about the faith of America's founders.
Scholars and popular authors alike routinely assert that they were Enlightenment deists who desired to strictly separate church and state.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
On September 24, 1789, the House of Representatives of Approved what would become the First Amendment, an amendment that includes these important words Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Those who oppose religion in public life often point to this amendment as evidence that the founders wanted to build a wall of separation between church and state.
But consider this.
The day after the House approved the First Amendment, alias Boudinot, who later became president of the American Bible Society, Proposed that Congress ask President Washington to recommend a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.
In response to objections by Idonias Burke and Thomas Tucker that such a practice mimicked European customs or should be done by the states, Connecticut's Roger Sherman justified the practice of thanksgiving on any single event not only as laudable in itself but as warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ.
For instance, the solemn thanksgivings and rejoicings which took place in the Time of Solomon.
The House agreed with Goudinot and Sherman, as did the Senate.
Congress requested that President Washington issue a Thanksgiving Day proclamation.
He didn't have to, but he did.
On October 3, 1789, Washington issued a proclamation designating Thursday, November 26 as a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving.
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God.
To obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor, I do recommend the people of these states to the service of the great and glorious being who is a beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be, that we may then unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, and also that we may then unite in our most humble offerings and prayers and supplications to the great Lord and ruler of nations,
and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, Whether in our public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually to render our national government a blessing to all people.
President Washington encouraged prayer, but he did not attempt to compel it.
America's founders saw nothing wrong with civic leaders endorsing religious practices like prayer, but they had also come to a consensus that there must be no compulsion in matters of faith.
In the late 18th century, 98% of Americans of European descent were Protestant, 2% were Roman Catholic, and there were about 2,000 Jews in four American cities.
Although it is often claimed that many of the founders were deists, that label may be applied to only a handful of individuals.
Now, Protestants are people of the book, that is, the Bible, so if faith was important to the founders, one would expect them to make significant use of the scriptures in their political writings.
And they did.
Donald Lutz conducted an impressive study of the pamphlets, articles, and books on political subjects in late 18th century America.
The study found that the Bible was cited far more often than any other book, article, or pamphlet at the time.
Indeed, the founders referenced the Bible more than all European authors combined 34% to 22%.
Think about that 34% of all citations are to the Bible alone, only 22% to Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Montesquieu.
Or Adam Smith.
Did the founders' religious convictions make a difference in the creation of America's constitutional order?
Absolutely, they did.
The Declaration of Independence.
Its central paragraph relies on a theological claim.
We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
For almost all the founders, God is the source of natural rights.
And it is a primary duty of government to protect these rights.
Many Enlightenment thinkers in the era supported a strong centralized government run by experts.
But America's founders would have nothing to do with this because they believe that humans are sinful.
In Federalist 51, James Madison observed that if men were angels, no government would be necessary.
If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
This led them to design a constitutional order characterized by the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism.
Critically, the founders believed that humans were created in the imago Dei, the image of God.
In his 1793 Supreme Court opinion in Chisholm versus Georgia, Justice James Wilson, paraphrasing Psalm 139, observed that man, fearfully and wonderfully made, is a workmanship of his all perfect creator.
He echoed this conviction in his law lectures.
Noting that innocent life must always be protected, he wrote with evident approval that, with consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life from its commencements to its close is protected by the common law.
Many founders were also coming to recognize that slavery fundamentally undermines the idea that all humans are created in God's image, and so they were coming to oppose it.
This is why the Confederation Congress passed.
And the first federal congress reauthorized the Northwest Ordinance, a law that prohibits slavery in the territories, which became the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.
As well, eight states north of Maryland abolished or put slavery on the path to extinction between 1777 and 1804.
Finally, the founders understood the Christian faith to require the robust protection of religious liberty for all.
This is illustrated well.
By George Mason's draft of Article 16 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which reads, That as religion, or the duty which we owe to our divine and omnipotent Creator, and the manner of discharging it can be governed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore that all men should enjoy the fullest toleration into the exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate.
Note how Mason's provision is grounded in the duty which we owe to our divine and omnipotent. Creator.
Inherent Natural Right to Conscience00:08:07
Now, this is not a bad provision, but James Madison, in his first significant public act, objected to the use of the word toleration in the article, believing that it implied that religious liberty was a grant from the state that could be revoked at will.
The Virginia Convention agreed, and Article 16, which had a profound influence on subsequent state constitutions in the National Bill of Rights, was amended to remove the language of toleration to make it clear that the free exercise of religion is a right.
Not a privilege granted by the state.
By the end of the Revolutionary Era, every state constitution offered significant protection to religious liberty.
The federal constitution of 1787 did not have a religious liberty provision per se, but Article VI prohibits religious tests for federal office.
Now, some objected that this would allow non Christians to be elected to federal office.
Federalists conceded that this was the case, and many undoubtedly thought this outcome unlikely.
But fortunately, they insisted on a Constitution that did not favor one religious tradition over another.
Anti Federalists thought the Constitution did not sufficiently protect religious liberty, and they insisted that a Bill of Rights be added to it.
In the face of popular outcry, the first Congress proposed and the states ratified a constitutional amendment prohibiting Congress from making a law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
This provision clearly bans Congress from creating a national church.
And it goes well beyond protecting the freedom of worship.
It insists that citizens have the right to the free exercise of religion.
Not only did the founders understand that religious liberty must be robustly protected, they recognized that religious convictions of all Americans must be carefully guarded.
I already mentioned Article VI's prohibition on religious tests, but let me close by returning to President Washington.
In 1790, he wrote a letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island.
Keep in mind, there were only about 2,000 Jewish citizens in America.
And they had little political or economic power.
As a matter of principle, not politics, President Washington insisted that all citizens possess alike liberty and conscience and the immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.
For happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, Requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
Like James Madison, Washington emphasized that Americans have moved beyond toleration to respecting the inherent natural right of all people to the free exercise of religion.
Washington closed this letter with the following paragraph May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell on this land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants.
There are nine scriptural references in this last paragraph.
One of them is to Micah 4 4, which reads, While everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
This was George Washington's favorite Bible verse.
He quoted or paraphrased it more than 50 times in his writings.
Today, we give thanks for our founders' religious faith and for their wisdom and foresight in protecting the sacred right of conscience in the First Amendment.
Now, it is up to every generation to protect these rights, to ensure that every American can sit under his own vine and fig tree and never be afraid.
Thank you for joining me.
U.S. Army Major Scott Smiley paid a high price serving our nation.
Scott was leading his platoon in Iraq when a blast sent shrapnel through his eyes, leaving him blind and temporarily paralyzed.
Scott would become the first blind active duty military officer before medically retiring years later.
Thanks to friends like you, the Tunnels and Towers Foundation gave Scott and his family a mortgage free, specially adapted smart home.
Show your support for America's heroes now.
Donate $11 a month to tunnels and towers at t2t.org.
56 patriots gathered in a meeting hall in Philadelphia and signed their names to a document that would change the course of history forever.
The Declaration of Independence.
And I have it right there.
What a beauty.
Not only did they sever the political bonds with Great Britain, they announced a new era in human events, proclaiming that all of us are endowed by our Creator with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In our war for independence and every generation since, thousands of American patriots have enlisted their lives in defense of that cause.
From Trenton to Yorktown, from Gettysburg to Chambersburg, from the fields of France to the shores of the Philippines, and on the battlefields all over the world, every generation of Americans has drawn meaning and been inspired by the immortal deeds of the founding generation and the nation they gave us to build and to defend.
In two and a half centuries, that's 250 years, the spirit of 1776 has carried our flag to places and heights that our founding fathers could never have dreamed.
Americans forged into the frontier and place across the Great Plains.
We tamed the Wild West.
We pushed the boundaries of scientific discovery.
We enlightened the world with electricity and commerce.
We defeated tyrants and vanquished dictators, and we planted the American flag on the moon.
We owe it all to the patriots and heroes of 1776.
This is the story of America.
We're excited to retell one of the greatest tales in the history of mankind, working with Hillsdale College and some of our country's brightest leaders and foremost thinkers who have contributed to the Story of America video series.
including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Dr. Larry Arne, Eric Metaxas, Brian Kilmeade, and many others.
Join us in honoring this incredible history, and together we will give America the greatest birthday celebration our country has ever seen.
God bless you, and God bless America.
U.S. Army Major Scott Smiley paid a high price serving our nation.
Scott was leading his platoon in Iraq when a blast sent shrapnel through his eyes, leaving him blind and temporarily paralyzed.
Scott would become the first blind active duty military officer before medically retiring years later.
Honor America's Heroes Today00:02:12
Thanks to friends like you, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation gave Scott and his family a mortgage free, specially adapted smart home.
Show your support for America's heroes now.
Donate $11 a month to Tunnels and Towers at T2T.org.
Are you ready for some action?
I'm ready for action.
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Here we are, pretty much at the beginning of the process here at this.
Pristine, I call it a laboratory.
It's not like a factory, it's like a hospital.
This is the beginning of the process for roasting.
Deep grain, very good quality.
Most people don't use this quality.
We deal with small farmers because they like to know who we're dealing with.
They give us the highest quality, all organic, non GMO.
You should know all Arabica beans.
No robusto.
All Arabica.
They're gonna go into the roaster and it'll get roasted for about 20 minutes or so.
Oh my goodness, look at these.
God-Given Common Sense in 177600:03:35
My goodness.
They're gonna want to specially order these.
This is what goes into Rudy's coffee.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani is out of the ICU.
He'll spend some time recovering before leaving the hospital.
The mayor and his family appreciate the outpouring of love and support sent his way.
Mayor Giuliani, the man who took down the mafia, saved New York City, and ran toward the towers on September 11th, is the same fighter he's always been.
And he's winning this fight.
Please, keep the prayers coming.
We feel them, and the mayor feels them.
We'll continue to update you as we can.
It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking.
that brought to us the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers, in which Thomas Paine explained, by rational principles, the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the Kingdom of Great Britain and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, for freedom, freedom of religion. freedom of speech, the ability to select the people who govern them.
And he explained it in ways that were understandable to all the people, not just the elite.
Because the desire for freedom is universal.
The desire for freedom adheres in the human mind and it is part of the human soul.
This is exactly the time we should consult our history.
Look at what we've done in the past and see if we can't use it to help us now.
We understand that our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world.
The greatest democracy, the freest country.
A country that has taken more people out of poverty than any country ever.
All of us are so fortunate to be Americans.
But a great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we're able to reason, we're able to talk, we're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God-given common sense.
So let's do it.
It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
It was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought to us the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers, in which Thomas Paine explained by rational principles.