Theory 2 Action Podcast
Theory 2 Action Podcast
LM#64--Lovers of Liberty series--Book 3
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The drums of liberty beat loudly through America's most transformative period—the Civil War and the Reconstruction era that followed. These pivotal years not only ended slavery but fundamentally reimagined what America could become through three constitutional amendments that would forever change the nation's character and legal foundation.
At the heart of David Kaiser's passionate discussion lies Eric Foner's "The Second Founding," a book that examines how the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments collectively redefined America. Despite acknowledging Foner's liberal political leanings, David makes a compelling case for why conservatives should engage with this scholarly work. The book illuminates a period many Americans know little about but whose consequences shape our daily lives. From establishing birthright citizenship to guaranteeing equal protection under law, these amendments transferred significant power from states to the federal government, creating what many historians rightfully call America's "second founding."
The episode delves into the tragic paradox of Reconstruction—Republicans won the war but "lost the peace" for the next hundred years. This failure to secure lasting equality raises profound questions that still haunt American society: Who deserves citizenship? How should voting rights be protected? What is the proper balance between state and federal power? As David reminds us, "It is impossible to understand American society today without knowing something about the Reconstruction period." Whether you're preparing to celebrate America's upcoming 249th birthday or simply seeking deeper knowledge about our constitutional heritage, this exploration of Reconstruction's ongoing legacy offers essential context for appreciating both America's struggles and its enduring promise. Subscribe now to continue our journey through the five essential books every lover of liberty should read.
Key Points from the Episode:
• The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments collectively formed a "second founding" of America
• Eric Foner's "The Second Founding" provides deep historical context despite the author's liberal political views
• Republicans won the Civil War but "lost the peace" during Reconstruction
• The amendments shifted power from states to the federal government in unprecedented ways
• Key Reconstruction questions about citizenship, voting rights, and equality still shape American society today
• Most Americans remain unfamiliar with this crucial period despite its ongoing relevance
• Understanding Reconstruction is essential to understanding modern America
• Recommended additional reading includes works by Randy Barnett, Alan Gelso, and Wilfred McClay's "Land of Hope"
Keep fighting the good fight.
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Those are the drums of liberty. The US Civil War didn't just transform countless lives, it reshaped our nation. At the heart of this transformation were the three Reconstruction Amendments the 13th, 14th and 15th. Together, they redefined America, leaving an enduring legacy of change. Leaving an enduring legacy of change, it was, as many historians have coined the term, a second founding of the country. Let's talk about it on this Liberty.
Speaker 2:Minute. Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.
Speaker 1:Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Liberty Minute and to our third book, book number three, in our Lovers of Liberty special series. Five Books in Five Days to celebrate our national birthday coming up soon, in just a couple days. These five books we believe you should read to appreciate and grow in your love for our country. We are giving you the Mojo Academy Cliff Notes version today, but it is our hope, our supreme hope, that you will want to dive more deeply into these books over the next 12 months to make the 250th celebration of our country that much sweeter. So with that brief housekeeping item out of the way, let's roll into book three Now.
Speaker 1:For many staunch conservatives, once I mentioned this book and its author, they will recoil and say no way. There might be some gnashing of teeth and rolling of eyes, especially if they are major readers of today's political and legal scene and if they have read some of this author's latest books. So with that caveat mentioned, our third book in our Lovers of Liberty series is Eric Farner's the Second Founding. And please, before you start throwing tomatoes and eggs at me figuratively and sometimes maybe physically, if you see me soon, please allow me to explain why I'm including him in this series. Yes, I know that Eric Foner is a liberal he's almost a verge radical liberal. I know he routinely gives interviews and has even contributed to the Jacobean magazine, a Marxist website. Yes, it's true, it's a real Marxist website. Check it out, jacobean magazine, and even there the website says they are a self-described socialist magazine based in New York. They say they offer perspectives on politics, economics and culture from a left-wing viewpoint, and it is a magazine that is ideologically aligned with democratic socialism and with the democratic socialists of America. And furthermore, I rightly understand and firmly acknowledge that in some other books perhaps the other half of history written in 2011 and from my beloved Claremont Review of Books, both that book and that organization, the Claremont Review of Books, have labeled Eric Foner a communist sympathizer. They cite his family ties, his praise for the Communist Party, usa's anti-racism efforts in the 1930s and the writings like why there Is no Socialism in the United States, where he laments socialism's failure. I agree that Foner portrays communists like Paul Robeson and WEB Du Bois favorably in many of his books, without disclosing his personal connections. Bad move on Eric's part.
Speaker 1:However, all that said, foner's academic work on Reconstruction and the book the Fiery Trial is widely respected across many disciplines and many ideological spectrums. It's respected for its rigor, not its propaganda, and he has won mainstream awards like the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, I certainly understand now that the Pulitzer Prize for history has been hugely compromised, that the Pulitzer Prize for history has been hugely compromised, and the last say 10 to 15 winners we got to really look at circumspectly. But I have read the Fiery Trial. It was the first book that I read of Mr Fauner's work, even though he is a verge radical liberal, and I found it quite good and I'm working my way through this book almost done, and I have to say that the second founding this book that we're going to touch on today, I believe it is quite good too.
Speaker 1:Now, as a conservative, I will point out where Foner is way off base, like in his view of the long implications of the 14th Amendment and its interpretation, and I will have others that are much better to read. On this specific instance, for example, randy Barnett handles the 14th Amendment with much better clarity and depth than Foner does, handles the 14th Amendment with much better clarity and depth than Foner does. But for even my staunch conservative critics, I understand and I am with you. I understand you're very uncomfortable and I'm sure you will send me many articles where Foner offers a mea culpa, such as in the 1994 dissent article where he offers many mea culpas and acknowledges his need for a balanced reassessment of American communism and then never follows through. Yes, if you have been a close reader of this gentleman's work for the last 30 years, you will also know that we have been waiting for that mea culpa on American communism and its reassessment from Eric and others like him for those 30 years. So we will continue to wait.
Speaker 1:But here's the reasons why I believe this book is worth your reading and I wanted to include it in this. Five books in five days. No conservative historian has authored a book that matches the depth and the nuance of this time period as well as this book. Yes, foner gets interpretations wrong of the amendments, but if you can set that aside and just appreciate that you're getting some very good writing. Can't dispute that.
Speaker 1:About this time period, about the people and their views at the time, I believe this book captures very, very well the thoughts and the actions in the two different warring camps of Reconstruction and you've got to remember these two visions and worldviews just completely destroyed each other in actual fighting. Yes, lincoln's side won, the GOP won the war, but Reconstruction's history is they lost the peace and the peace that would be lost for the next 100 years, until the Civil Rights Acts of 1965. So from the end of the Civil War until 1965, we had a cold war of sorts. It was brutal, it was nasty. There's many, many issues to sort out, to peel away, to grasp to struggle with and, frankly, our public education system and even our private education system, just completely shies away from even attempting to dissect this in a professional way and teach our kids the real history. Fulner's book does this. It helps us to capture that immediate time, those years just after the end of the civil war, until 1876 roughly.
Speaker 1:I think this is a pretty good book. There are other books that are much shorter that I don't think give us the depth that we wanted for this series. But also there's many books that are 20, 25, 30 hours and I don't think that really captures these five books in the essence and the clarity that we wanted to deliver. This book comes in at just under eight hours, very easy to do on Audible and, like I said, there's others that are out there that I can certainly recommend and will recommend later in this podcast, but there's none that reach this level of a good explanation and let's just get it out of the way now. If you try this book and you can't stomach it, I would recommend Alan Gelso's Reconstruction. It's very good, I just think it's too short. I would love for him to write more on Reconstruction. But enough of my explanations. Let's go to the book so you can get some samples and understand how Eric Foner writes and where he is coming from, especially how he describes 1865 to 1876 and the three crucial Reconstruction Amendments the 13th, 14th and 15th. With that, let's go to the book so you can get some samples. Go on to the book.
Speaker 1:The Civil War and the Reconstruction period that followed formed the pivotal era of American history. The war destroyed the institution of slavery, ensured the survival of the Union and set in motion economic and political changes that laid the foundation for the modern nation. During Reconstruction, the United States made its first attempt flawed but truly remarkable for its time to build an egalitarian society on the ashes of slavery. Some of the problems of those years haunt American society today vast inequalities of wealth and power, terrorist violence and aggressive racism, but perhaps the era's most tangible legacies are the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution. The 13th irrevoc the principles of birthright, citizenship and equality before the law and sought to settle key issues arising from the war, such as the future political role of Confederate leaders in the fate of Confederate debt. The 15th aimed to secure black male suffrage throughout the reunited nation. All very, very true. So we're off to a good start.
Speaker 1:Let's continue Together, with far-reaching congressional legislation meant to provide former slaves with access to the courts, ballot box and public accommodations, and to protect them against violence. The Reconstruction Amendments greatly enhanced the power of the federal government, transferring much of the authority to define citizens' rights from the states to the nation. They forged a new constitutional relationship between individual Americans and the national state and were crucial in creating the world's first biracial democracy in which people, only a few years removed from slavery, exercise significant political power. All three amendments end with a clause empowering Congress to enforce their provisions, guaranteeing that Reconstruction would be an ongoing process, not a single moment in time. This in itself was a significant innovation. The Bill of Rights said nothing about how the liberties it enumerated would be implemented and protected would be implemented and protected. Introducing into the Constitution the words equal protection of the law and the right to vote, along with the qualifying mail, to the outrage of the era's women's rights activists. The amendments both reflected and reinforced a new era of individual rights consciousness among Americans of all races and backgrounds. So profound were these changes that the amendments should be seen not simply as an alteration of an existing structure but as a second founding, a constitutional revolution, in the words of Republican leader Carl Schertz, that created a fundamentally new document with a new definition of both the status of blacks and the rights of all Americans.
Speaker 1:Again, very good writing, very good framing, good framing. And I know we're going to go long on this episode, but stay with me for just one more long quote, because here I think Foner gets it right. Quite right, I have devoted much of my career to the study of Reconstruction, but I must acknowledge that this part of our history is unfamiliar to many, perhaps most, americans. As a result, the Reconstruction Amendments do not occupy the prominent place in public consciousness of other pivotal documents of our history, such as the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. But even if we are unaware of it, reconst reconstruction remains part of our lives. Or to put it another way, key issues confronting American society today are, in some ways, reconstruction questions. Who is entitled to citizenship? Who should enjoy the right to vote? Should the laws protect the rights of aliens as well as citizens? How should the equal protection of the laws be defined and guaranteed? What should be the balance of power between the federal government and the states? How should Americans be protected from the deportations of terrorists? All of these questions were intensely debated during Reconstruction.
Speaker 1:Every term of the Supreme Court, moreover, adjudicates cases requiring interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Some of the most transformative decisions of the modern era, from Brown v Board of Education, outlawing school segregation, to Obergefell v Hodges, establishing the right of gay persons to marry, were based on that amendment. It is impossible to understand American society today without knowing something about the Reconstruction period a century and a half ago, and that is our nugget of wisdom. As your takeaway, that last sentence it is impossible to understand American society today without knowing something about the reconstruction period a century and a half ago. A century and a half ago, yes, I understand.
Speaker 1:Farner is completely radical on the gay marriage case of Burgerfield v Hodges, establishing the right of gay persons to marry, which is based on the 14th Amendment. There is no right to marry anywhere in the Constitution and the Supreme Court got that case very wrong. But then again it got Roe v Wade wrong for 50 years. Faulner's liberalism, and close to radical liberalism, doesn't diminish his scholarship in writing. In other areas of the book you just don't have to agree with his conclusions. Like I said, randy Barnett is a much better author and historian and lawyer on these amendments in the Constitution as a whole.
Speaker 1:Alan Gelso, who we've mentioned before, very good as a beginning on Reconstruction and our book five, land of Hope, the textbook we recommend for everybody by Wilford McClay, is a very, very good as an overview of this time period. But again we have to come back to. Most Americans simply don't know or understand this period of our history and we have to. We have to dig in because it's an important part of the history and we have to. We have to dig in because it's an important part of the history. It literally shaped and continues to shape who we are as a country. Foner's book begins that process. You don't have to agree with his conclusions. I certainly don't. But the book and the writing and the descriptions are actually quite good and they give us wonderful reference marks, wonderful historical marks, I should say, as frames of reference to then begin building our knowledge in reading more about the Reconstruction period. I hope you agree to read the book too.
Speaker 1:So, in today's Liberty Minute, in the short term, as we approach our national birthday, our 249th birthday just coming up in a of days, let us go to these good works that tell the American story for its greatness. Foner's book actually does that. Levin's book yesterday does that. Land of Hope, our book five, two days ago does just that two days ago, does just that. As Americans, we know we're always working as a people, striving together towards the ideals of our country, and please remember that, as Americans and as conservatives, that conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. Today's book teaches us that conservatism was tried, with Republicans leading the way after the Civil War, in a party in a country that simply lost the peace. And they lost the peace for the next 100 years for a whole host of reasons. And those reasons and that history, we would do well to learn and study it. And Foner's book begins that process. Now join us tomorrow where we will reveal book two in our countdown to our national birthday, celebrating our great country in the exceptional nature of our national character.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.