WEBVTT NOTE The Beginning of American Independence 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 The beginning of American Independence. We live in that part of the world that at one time was known as the New World. 2 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:22.000 As we all know, the Western Hemisphere was brought to public attention in Europe as a result of the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. 3 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:29.000 In fact, when I went to school, my history book said that Christopher Columbus discovered America in that year. 4 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:36.880 Actually, we now understand that there may have been a number of other voyages that predated 5 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:42.800 Columbus. And yet my history book, at that time, a number of years ago, indicated that 6 00:00:42.800 --> 00:00:49.400 Christopher Columbus was the first. And that particular fact is now being disputed by various 7 00:00:49.400 --> 00:00:56.720 scholars in other sciences, such as archaeology and anthropology, who have discovered the 8 00:00:56.720 --> 00:01:02.880 The traces of other landings in the New World and dated them so that we know they occurred 9 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:09.320 prior to the Columbus voyage. Why did Columbus get the credit? 10 00:01:09.320 --> 00:01:14.520 There is an important point here to keep in mind. Christopher Columbus sailed for the 11 00:01:14.520 --> 00:01:21.320 King of Spain, and at the time of his voyage Spain was the most powerful country in the 12 00:01:21.320 --> 00:01:28.720 World, and Columbus sailed on a political journey that was supported in essence by the 13 00:01:28.720 --> 00:01:36.120 taxpayers of Spain, and the consequence of that fact is that Columbus got a good press. 14 00:01:36.120 --> 00:01:42.320 The other voyages, so far as we can determine, were those that occurred without government 15 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:43.320 backing. 16 00:01:43.320 --> 00:01:49.940 In other words, private adventurers paying their own way set sail for lands they knew 17 00:01:49.940 --> 00:01:57.180 do not of, and by the time they returned, there wasn't a press corps on hand to welcome 18 00:01:57.180 --> 00:02:02.920 them, and thus they escaped history. But of course when Columbus returned with news of 19 00:02:02.920 --> 00:02:08.900 what he had discovered, there was a large contingent of important people around to greet 20 00:02:08.900 --> 00:02:14.340 him and to ask all kinds of questions, and thus it was that whether Columbus discovered 21 00:02:14.340 --> 00:02:22.700 America or not, it is true that publicity relating to the discovery was first unleashed 22 00:02:22.700 --> 00:02:29.820 by the Columbus voyage. As one wag has told us, Columbus, like so many people operating 23 00:02:29.820 --> 00:02:34.340 for the government, didn't know where he was going when he set out, didn't know where 24 00:02:34.340 --> 00:02:39.240 he was when he got there, and did it all on taxpayers' money. But the fact of the matter 25 00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:45.680 is that he did get publicity, and as a result of that publicity, the entire Western Hemisphere 26 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:52.080 was opened up for European exploration and settlement. 27 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:58.260 Since Spain was the most powerful nation in the world at that time, Spain was not slow 28 00:02:58.260 --> 00:03:04.160 in taking advantage of this new discovery, which was essentially a Spanish discovery. 29 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:09.560 Although Columbus himself was not a Spanish subject, nonetheless he sailed under that 30 00:03:09.560 --> 00:03:15.560 sponsorship, and so Spain took the credit and proceeded to lay claim, in essence, to 31 00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:21.840 the entire Western Hemisphere, North, Central and South America. And a question might be 32 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:28.400 asked rhetorically, how does it happen that we are today not subjects of Spain? 33 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:33.920 Certainly Spain had all the advantages. They got here first. They got here a long way 34 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:34.920 of the World. 35 00:03:34.920 --> 00:03:38.400 We are way ahead of their nearest rivals, who didn't begin coming over until several 36 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:42.120 years after the Columbus voyage was known about. 37 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:47.320 And yet we are not Spain, or related to Spain primarily. 38 00:03:47.320 --> 00:03:52.280 Of course in Central America the antecedents are primarily Spanish. 39 00:03:52.280 --> 00:03:57.920 And there is a very strong Spanish influence in South America, although the Portuguese 40 00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:00.960 have actually eclipsed it in many places. 41 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:06.720 In southwestern United States we have a very strong Spanish influence, but in the main, 42 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:12.780 in what we think of as the United States, we have fundamentally a British influence, 43 00:04:12.780 --> 00:04:18.640 and of course in Canada we have both a British and a French influence. And yet Britain and 44 00:04:18.640 --> 00:04:25.400 France were much slower than either Spain or Portugal in beginning to develop the New 45 00:04:25.400 --> 00:04:32.520 in the New World. How did it happen that Britain primarily, and France also, got such large 46 00:04:32.520 --> 00:04:39.000 footholds in the New World when they originally got off to such a poor start? If you examine 47 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:44.880 what happened politically in Europe during this period, you may be able to see certain 48 00:04:44.880 --> 00:04:52.720 things there. What happened was this. Spain had risen to its ascendancy as a result of 49 00:04:52.720 --> 00:05:00.760 of the Moorish Occupation. The Moorish occupation had come into Spain as a result of the expansion 50 00:05:00.760 --> 00:05:09.560 of Islamic ideas, and Spain flourished under the Islamic culture that was imposed on it. 51 00:05:09.560 --> 00:05:17.160 Now, this type of imposition was primarily not so much political as it was religious 52 00:05:17.160 --> 00:05:19.100 and Enterprising. 53 00:05:19.100 --> 00:05:26.720 The Islamic peoples, the Saracens, who came into Spain and whom we call the Moors, were 54 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:31.600 very much interested in developing industry and business as it was done then. 55 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:35.880 Of course they did not have mass production as we think of it today. 56 00:05:35.880 --> 00:05:42.400 But they literally took Spain by the scruff of the neck and shoved it forward so that 57 00:05:42.400 --> 00:05:48.280 it became, productively speaking, the most important nation in the world, and this happened 58 00:05:48.280 --> 00:05:54.380 at a time when the Spanish government was weak. If the Spanish government had been strong, 59 00:05:54.380 --> 00:05:58.700 the Moors would never have gotten a foothold. They came in because the Spanish government 60 00:05:58.700 --> 00:06:07.200 was so weak it couldn't keep them out. Now, at the time Columbus sailed, the industry 61 00:06:07.200 --> 00:06:12.880 History and Business of Spain was beginning to go into a decline. It was going into a 62 00:06:12.880 --> 00:06:19.840 decline because there was the emergence of some very, very strong Spanish rulers. But 63 00:06:19.840 --> 00:06:26.280 curiously at the same time this was happening, the contrary type of movement is found in 64 00:06:26.280 --> 00:06:33.200 Great Britain. In Great Britain, which had been under very strong kings such as the Tudors, 65 00:06:33.200 --> 00:06:39.360 which included both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, they passed from the scene. 66 00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:45.680 And when Elizabeth I died in 1603, then the British turned around and introduced a new 67 00:06:45.680 --> 00:06:48.780 ruling house, the stewards. 68 00:06:48.780 --> 00:06:53.580 And the stewards were always incompetent in many areas. 69 00:06:53.580 --> 00:06:56.360 Most historians have commented on this fact. 70 00:06:56.360 --> 00:07:00.240 And the result was that the British government became weak. 71 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:05.320 Now as the British government became weak about the same time that the Spanish government 72 00:07:05.320 --> 00:07:11.600 was getting strong, this opened up the way for British people to come to the New World. 73 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:19.480 It came to the New World primarily in a way that tended to emphasize the development of 74 00:07:19.480 --> 00:07:26.920 colonies and the development of American production rather than, as the Spanish were doing, developing 75 00:07:26.920 --> 00:07:33.680 Settlements on the basis of exploitation and taking over and essentially looking for gold 76 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:39.680 and things of this sort, so that your British colonies, when they began being founded, were 77 00:07:39.680 --> 00:07:47.680 founded with enterprise and colonial survival in mind, whereas the Spanish colonies were 78 00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:54.040 fundamentally provided as outposts of the Spanish Empire and they were more or less 79 00:07:54.040 --> 00:08:24.040 Motus operandi, Motus operandi 80 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:31.160 and the British colonies began to flourish precisely as the British government in England 81 00:08:31.160 --> 00:08:37.360 began to decline in potency. And the Spanish colonies which were established at an earlier 82 00:08:37.360 --> 00:08:44.860 date began to decline as the Spanish government gained in potency. In fact, this particular 83 00:08:44.860 --> 00:08:53.860 episode gives us a good way, a good guideline, a rule of thumb that we can watch. Whenever 84 00:08:53.860 --> 00:09:02.340 A political agency becomes supreme in a nation. The tendency is very good for the economy 85 00:09:02.340 --> 00:09:10.220 of that nation to weaken. And when the economy is freed from these tentacles, then it tends 86 00:09:10.220 --> 00:09:15.820 to rise, but it does so as the government tends to decline. Now there will be those 87 00:09:15.820 --> 00:09:21.820 who will argue that this is disproved by the actions of the Soviet Union, that the Soviet 88 00:09:21.820 --> 00:09:27.700 Government has demonstrated that it is possible for a strong and powerful government to come 89 00:09:27.700 --> 00:09:33.420 in and at the same time to improve the economy, and that you can have both the government 90 00:09:33.420 --> 00:09:38.300 and the economy expanding at the same time. But I would have to challenge that. In point 91 00:09:38.300 --> 00:09:46.520 of fact, the government of the Tsars was extremely powerful, extremely despotic, and it continued 92 00:09:46.520 --> 00:09:52.820 to hold down the Russian economy so that there was never any chance of an industrial development 93 00:09:52.820 --> 00:09:59.200 in Russia until such time as the government of Lenin appeared. Now, of course, it is true 94 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:05.600 that at the outset of the Leninist experiment in Russia, the government became the leading 95 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:13.120 agent in trying to establish industry, commerce, and agriculture. But virtually all of these 96 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:19.640 These efforts, if you examine them, failed. The way the Russian economy finally began 97 00:10:19.640 --> 00:10:26.000 to take hold was when the government, yes even the government of Stalin, began to back 98 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:32.280 away and open up the area of the economy so that people in the market could function. 99 00:10:32.280 --> 00:10:38.440 And you'll find that this rule of thumb will apply even in Russia. As an economy grows 100 00:10:38.440 --> 00:10:45.360 is strong, it tends to grow strong as governments pull back. And if governments do not pull 101 00:10:45.360 --> 00:10:50.760 back and let the economy alone, then the economy will weaken. 102 00:10:50.760 --> 00:10:57.760 In our own case, since here in the United States we owe most of our antecedents to the 103 00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:03.280 British Empire and to the British way of thinking and doing, it follows that when we examine 104 00:11:03.280 --> 00:11:10.000 And we will see that this is the case here. The British government began to decline with 105 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:17.120 the passing of the Tudors, and that was in 1603. The first permanent British settlement 106 00:11:17.120 --> 00:11:23.320 mentioned in our history books is usually Jamestown, which was established in 1607 while 107 00:11:23.320 --> 00:11:31.260 King James I was on the throne. And King James I was a much weaker, much more dilatory ruler 108 00:11:31.260 --> 00:11:37.020 than Queen Elizabeth I. And the stewards from that time on operated in a sort of haphazard 109 00:11:37.020 --> 00:11:42.720 manner insofar as political action was concerned. And during that time the British colonies 110 00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:47.860 in the New World flourished. So we have that background and it's an important thing to 111 00:11:47.860 --> 00:11:53.520 keep in mind whenever you are reading history or examining economic history to see and see 112 00:11:53.520 --> 00:12:00.580 See how things develop. Governments, powerful governments and powerful economies tend to 113 00:12:00.580 --> 00:12:07.580 be opposed. If your economy is going to be strong, then your government cannot be. If 114 00:12:07.580 --> 00:12:12.640 your government is going to be strong, then your economy will not be. And this is the 115 00:12:12.640 --> 00:12:17.880 dilemma that at present we are facing in this country. Many people in this country have 116 00:12:17.880 --> 00:12:26.960 sense that the economy is in very, very serious straits. It is not doing well. And in order 117 00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:31.720 to rectify these problems in the economy, many people are turning to the government 118 00:12:31.720 --> 00:12:37.520 and asking it to do more. The result is that the government day by day, month by month 119 00:12:37.520 --> 00:12:42.760 and year by year gets bigger and stronger and to do so it has to extract more of its 120 00:12:42.760 --> 00:12:57.800 In any case, we do know that following the settlement in Jamestown and then year by year 121 00:12:57.800 --> 00:13:04.240 in other places, British subjects came to the New World, some of them trying to escape 122 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:09.280 the oppression that they were experiencing in Great Britain, both religious persecution 123 00:13:09.280 --> 00:13:15.120 and economic privation of various sorts, they came to the New World and they established 124 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:20.540 settlements and they did so with one idea, and that was to colonize and to make the New 125 00:13:20.540 --> 00:13:26.320 World their home, not to exploit it, to take out of it something that was to be sent back, 126 00:13:26.320 --> 00:13:31.360 but to develop it themselves for their own use and to live here and make this land their 127 00:13:31.360 --> 00:13:36.860 own. Now this made a big difference in the development of the territory that is now the 128 00:13:36.860 --> 00:13:38.500 in the United States. 129 00:13:38.500 --> 00:13:46.180 So we began to feel the influx of the British influence, and it began to spread up and down 130 00:13:46.180 --> 00:13:49.460 the entire eastern coastline. 131 00:13:49.460 --> 00:13:54.220 Most of the original settlements were coastal villages at the outset, and then they expanded 132 00:13:54.220 --> 00:13:56.660 and worked back into the interior. 133 00:13:56.660 --> 00:14:05.180 And this condition went right through the first 150 years of the American experience. 134 00:14:05.180 --> 00:14:12.260 During that time, we were British colonies. We finally got thirteen of them, and these 135 00:14:12.260 --> 00:14:19.940 British colonies were at no time out from under the control of Great Britain in a nominal 136 00:14:19.940 --> 00:14:27.980 sense. Everybody over here realized that they were colonists under the British government, 137 00:14:27.980 --> 00:14:34.340 and of course various British governors were sent over and took up residence in the key 138 00:14:34.340 --> 00:15:04.340 in the 18th century, which became, at that time, one of the most important economic 139 00:15:04.340 --> 00:15:13.740 This is the century that brought us the Industrial Revolution, which began in 1760. It brought 140 00:15:13.740 --> 00:15:20.860 us the American Revolution of 1775. It brought us the French Revolution of 1789. It was a 141 00:15:20.860 --> 00:15:28.460 period of vast intellectual stimulation and turmoil. There was a resurgence of all kinds 142 00:15:28.460 --> 00:15:35.060 of Ideas of Great Significance, and it is important to understand our own background 143 00:15:35.060 --> 00:15:41.460 here in the light of what was happening not only here but in other parts of the world. 144 00:15:41.460 --> 00:15:48.140 We in America, who were British subjects and had come over to colonize, had in the main 145 00:15:48.140 --> 00:15:54.140 been motivated either by a religious conviction that we were and of right ought to be free 146 00:15:54.140 --> 00:16:04.440 Men, or by a political conviction which paralleled the religious view to wit that as human beings 147 00:16:04.440 --> 00:16:12.480 we had the same rights anybody else had. The American colonists were fundamentally Whigs, 148 00:16:12.480 --> 00:16:20.600 and the Whiggish movement was opposite the Tory movement. Now the Tory movement was essentially 149 00:16:20.600 --> 00:16:26.200 the loyalist and the royalist group. These were the people that supported the state and 150 00:16:26.200 --> 00:16:31.840 believed that whatever the king did was right, because after all he was divine, and that 151 00:16:31.840 --> 00:16:37.840 the only proper procedure was for everybody to obey the king. That was right in the Tory 152 00:16:37.840 --> 00:16:43.840 framework of reference. But we were Whigs. And we disputed that view. And that's one 153 00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:48.720 of the reasons many of us left England and came to these shores, because we wanted to 154 00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:53.960 to be more independent of the king. We wanted to make up our own minds and manage our own 155 00:16:53.960 --> 00:16:59.800 affairs. And here in the New World we could own property privately. And note, please, 156 00:16:59.800 --> 00:17:05.000 the British government wasn't doing very much to protect it. Oh, of course it will be said, 157 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:11.360 and accurately, that the British government sent over troops from time to time to help 158 00:17:11.360 --> 00:17:17.920 quell Indian uprisings. But in point of fact, many of these Indian uprisings were simply 159 00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:25.160 The colonists when they came over here found that they had to deal amicably with the Indians 160 00:17:25.160 --> 00:17:32.480 or fail utterly. And so in instance after instance the colonists settled down peaceably, 161 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:37.240 worked out amicable relationships with the local Indian tribes that they came in direct 162 00:17:37.240 --> 00:17:43.840 contact with, and in the main kept their promises with the Indians, and the Indians treated 163 00:18:13.840 --> 00:18:43.840 The French influence has been and remains strong there even now. Because there had been the political rivalry between England and France in the old world, that political rivalry continued in the new world between the French colonists and the British colonists, and the two governments in the old world were not the least bit averse to using the Indians to try to stir up trouble with their opposing number in the new world. 164 00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:49.160 World. Hence we find Frenchmen encouraging the Indians to attack British settlements, 165 00:18:49.160 --> 00:18:54.960 and we find British officials encouraging the Indians to attack French settlements, and 166 00:18:54.960 --> 00:19:01.160 the colonists were dragged into it because they lived here with the Indians. 167 00:19:01.160 --> 00:19:09.200 This dichotomy, this ambivalence between the promises made by the settlers and the facts 168 00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:15.760 The ethics of what British officialdom did, and French officialdom did, caused the Indian 169 00:19:15.760 --> 00:19:22.600 to feel that the white man spoke with a forked tongue. Because, like most of us, when we 170 00:19:22.600 --> 00:19:30.280 view members of another race, we tend to categorize and collectivize them. And if we hear something 171 00:19:30.280 --> 00:19:35.840 from one member of another race, and then we hear something that is different from another 172 00:19:35.840 --> 00:19:42.320 Remember of that same race? We think that the race is speaking and that the race is 173 00:19:42.320 --> 00:19:47.720 dishonest. Actually what you have is two different persons and one is saying one thing and one 174 00:19:47.720 --> 00:19:54.480 is saying another and the race gets blamed. Well this is what happened. The private colonists, 175 00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:58.400 many times, I don't mean to suggest that in every case this was true, but it was true 176 00:19:58.400 --> 00:20:03.040 in most cases, the colonists dealt fairly with the Indians. They traded with them, they 177 00:20:33.040 --> 00:20:39.720 may be liars but in this particular case the Indians appeared to be liars too and we got 178 00:20:39.720 --> 00:20:44.800 so that we didn't trust each other and the result finally roiled up in the French and 179 00:20:44.800 --> 00:20:53.200 Indian War which actually was a war between Britain and France in which Indians participated 180 00:20:53.200 --> 00:21:00.920 and in the end for which Canada became the war prize. The French lost the war and Canada 181 00:21:00.920 --> 00:21:11.280 was seated to Great Britain as a war prize and that was the event that actually marked 182 00:21:11.280 --> 00:21:18.080 the ascension of George III to the throne. Now George III was a very, very competent 183 00:21:18.080 --> 00:21:24.560 monarch. In fact, historians have said this and I have no reason to quarrel with the statement 184 00:21:24.560 --> 00:21:31.340 that George III was probably the first competent monarch to occupy the British throne since 185 00:21:31.340 --> 00:21:36.160 the death of Queen Elizabeth. Well, he took that view of himself, and I think we've tended 186 00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:44.600 to accept his judgment here. In any case, George III saw that the American colonists, 187 00:21:44.600 --> 00:21:51.000 that is to say the British colonists in America, had become very independent of the crown. 188 00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:58.260 And he decided that something should be done to bring them under a real British rule. 189 00:21:58.260 --> 00:22:03.520 You see, what he discovered was that he had been sending troops over to, quote, protect 190 00:22:03.520 --> 00:22:05.720 them, unquote, from the Indians. 191 00:22:05.720 --> 00:22:08.440 Actually, the colonists resented this. 192 00:22:08.440 --> 00:22:11.440 They didn't need the Indians. 193 00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:13.720 I mean, they didn't need the troops. 194 00:22:13.720 --> 00:22:17.840 They may not have needed some of the Indians either, but they didn't need the troops. 195 00:22:17.840 --> 00:22:22.920 And yet these troops were quartered on them without their consent. A man, a sergeant would 196 00:22:22.920 --> 00:22:27.600 knock at your door and take a look at your house and at you and say, well, I think three 197 00:22:27.600 --> 00:22:32.200 men can live here all right, and he'd order them in, and you had to support them. Well, 198 00:22:32.200 --> 00:22:37.320 this was an outrage, and the colonists didn't like this. Of course, this was our king who 199 00:22:37.320 --> 00:22:42.780 was doing this to us, but we didn't like it, and we said so, and we didn't want the troops 200 00:22:42.780 --> 00:22:47.780 in the first place. We weren't fighting France. This was an old world quarrel that had been 201 00:22:47.780 --> 00:22:53.140 transported to the New World and we got ourselves involved in it, but in any case the war had 202 00:22:53.140 --> 00:23:00.420 ended and France ceded Canada to Great Britain, and now George decided to collect the taxes 203 00:23:00.420 --> 00:23:05.300 to pay for the troops. But in all this period of time, and it's hard for us to realize 204 00:23:05.300 --> 00:23:15.100 this, from 1600 approximately, I'm using a general figure here, on up to 1760, the colonists 205 00:23:15.100 --> 00:23:22.700 was living in these British colonies, hadn't been paying taxes, they hadn't been ruled, 206 00:23:22.700 --> 00:23:27.900 they had actually been living in a state of contractual relationships with each other, 207 00:23:27.900 --> 00:23:32.680 and it had worked out very well. Now all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, they got 208 00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:37.980 George III and George decided that they were going to have to pay taxes to help support 209 00:23:37.980 --> 00:23:43.080 their own governments, that is the Crown colonies and all the rest of the things that went on 210 00:23:43.080 --> 00:23:48.840 in Britain, and the Americans backed up and said no. It's a very interesting thing to 211 00:23:48.840 --> 00:23:55.720 keep in mind the kind of ideas that were roiling up during the latter half of the 18th century. 212 00:23:55.720 --> 00:24:03.360 We had these three major revolutions occur. Now the Industrial Revolution was simply a 213 00:24:03.360 --> 00:24:11.440 fantastic breakthrough in the field of manufacture, primarily in the textile industry, but also 214 00:24:11.440 --> 00:24:17.200 So in the manufacture of steel, in the development of new ways to raise agricultural products 215 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:22.960 and so on, it brought about a complete change in the way that people ordinarily lived. 216 00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:30.280 Now in conjunction with this industrial development there emerged two conflicting bodies of thought 217 00:24:30.280 --> 00:24:35.400 and they led to two different revolutions. The American Revolution on the one hand and 218 00:24:35.400 --> 00:24:41.400 the French on the other. Now here is an important point to keep in mind. The American Revolution 219 00:24:41.400 --> 00:24:50.360 Revolution was essentially a middle-class revolution. It was inspired by this trilogy 220 00:24:50.360 --> 00:25:00.880 of ideas—life, liberty, and property. In fact, life, liberty, and property became the 221 00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:10.720 watchwords of the period from 1775 to about 1785. During that period of time, that was 222 00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:18.000 was the constant cry on the lips of Americans, life, liberty, and property. 223 00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:25.420 The French were undoubtedly inspired by what happened here. But they were listening to 224 00:25:25.420 --> 00:25:31.880 a different drummer. They were following a little different heartbeat, and a man who 225 00:25:31.880 --> 00:25:39.800 had influenced them profoundly was a French philosopher and novelist named Rousseau. And 226 00:25:39.800 --> 00:25:45.280 and Rousseau provided them with a different trilogy of political essences, which were 227 00:25:45.280 --> 00:25:53.280 called liberte, egalite, fraternity. Liberty, equality, fraternity. 228 00:25:53.280 --> 00:25:59.640 Now this particular group of essences is quite different from the concept of life, liberty 229 00:25:59.640 --> 00:26:08.080 and property. In essence, this second trilogy of ideas was to inspire the working class, 230 00:26:08.080 --> 00:26:14.960 Not the middle class, but what we have called earlier the lower classes. The thing that 231 00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:22.440 the French sought to do was to place the working man in a position of power. In other words, 232 00:26:22.440 --> 00:26:29.760 the French sought to establish a government that would represent the downtrodden masses, 233 00:26:29.760 --> 00:26:36.720 so called. Whereas the American Revolution sought to establish the right of each man 234 00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:42.560 to his own life, to his own liberty, and to his own property. 235 00:26:42.560 --> 00:26:49.140 Now, the results of these two different revolutions, both of which came on the heels of the Industrial 236 00:26:49.140 --> 00:26:56.560 Revolution, has in fact altered the appearance of the world. And we are in a very real sense 237 00:26:56.560 --> 00:27:03.680 today continuing both of these same revolutions. The American Revolution has never really been 238 00:27:03.680 --> 00:27:33.040 are the proper essences by means of which to organize society. 239 00:27:33.040 --> 00:27:39.700 These two different views are profoundly at odds, and to understand what happened we are 240 00:27:39.700 --> 00:27:42.680 going to have to take a closer look at them. Thank you.