[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. Welcome to spill the tea, the podcast that brings awareness about topics in pop culture, history, literature, music and life, the universe and everything as far as we're concerned. We research different topics and share with our listeners what we discover. I'm Brigitte. I'm a writer.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: I'm Lara. I'm a researcher.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today's episode is about the origins of the Declaration of India. Attendance. So stick around and just hear us out.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: I figured the first best step, honestly, was to go ahead and revisit the declaration in language that we all understand. Since, yes, it's modern English, I get it. But the language has changed just a little since the 18 hundreds.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: It definitely.
So I see that you. You took the Declaration of Independence, which we are not going to read the original.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Well, no, I did read the original to translate it into modern. We're not going to read the original on air because I'm not that crazy.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: But we can translate it into modern language because, man, I remember in the 8th grade we had to memorize the preamble to the constitution or to the declaration.
I know, that's what stuck in my.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Memory for the preamble things, but yeah.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: We had to memorize the preamble. I didn't read any of the rest of it.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: No, neither did I.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: And I.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: This is actually the first time I'm literally this many years old since I finally read the full declaration of Independence.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: And I was one of those students. I was the nerdy student who would do above, go above and beyond. And yeah, I still didn't read the full declaration of independence. I was the nerdy student who did.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Above and beyond because I was bored out of my mind. And if it was a writing, I read it and I still didn't read the damn thing.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: I'm such good us citizens. Although I would be curious to see how many people actually do know the declaration. So we're going to go ahead and go through and translate the declaration into something a little more understandable in modern language. I'm going to warn you, my cats are wandering around today, so if you hear the occasional purr or meow, say hi to Leo or Sabrina, whichever one's.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: In here, because they're going to know that.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Sure.
You started with a preamble, which I'm guessing is what, one and two? Yep. Okay, I'll go ahead and read the quote unquote preamble. It's about time to let us grow up and become our own country. And here's the reasons why we think we're ready. It's pretty obvious to us, at least, that all men are equal, regardless of social status, and have the basic rights to live, be free and be happy. And because people be people, we have to have governments to make everyone play nicely together and share. Beyond that, the people in charge are only running things because the people who are not running the show allow them to do so. Further, when things get bad and the people in charge are abusing things, the people who aren't running the show will only take so much before they finally say, enough is enough. And historically, that takes a pretty long time. People seem to be willing to put up with an awful lot before they finally get to that point. We are out of patience with the king and his bullshit. And since we're willing to be rational about this, we're going to list examples of how he's been abusing his privileges to govern us. Actually, I like that a lot more than the original preamble.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: It makes more sense, doesn't it?
[00:03:50] Speaker A: It really does. I really like the fact that you also took out endowed by our creator.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that was. There was a big controversy about that, about how much was not enough and not enough. Apparently, the Declaration of Independence went through multiple versions. I found this great resource. There were apparently two weeks of work with a committee of five making multiple adjustments to this, and the sticking points pretty much predominantly included slavery. Some of the delegates from the southern colonies were refusing to sign because it was critical of slavery initially. So Jefferson struck the pieces about slavery to be able to get the Declaration of Independence written. One of the fun trivia things I ran across while looking all the information for this.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: So they had to take slavery out.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: There were 86 changes made by the Continental Congress to the draft. The draft was done June 28, 1776. There were 86 changes made before it was finally about completing July 4. And a lot of them, all references to slavery, got struck.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: I'm not surprised, having worked on group presentations before, variety of places.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: I always had that motto in my head, that a camel is a horse designed by committee whenever I had to do committee work. So it's reality. It's what comes out of a committee. You try to design a horse, you get a camel. All good. You have to learn to go with it.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: And I gotta tell you, when it comes to government, it's even worse.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Oh, I believe it.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: I've worked in medical policy writing, and I've worked with Medicare before, and this is a type of situation where you. You literally have to say, okay, we only get so many revisions, and then we have to stop I can tell you right now, as a writer, the concept of the endless revision is a very real thing.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: When I work freelance with clients, I give them two revisions. After that, we have to renegotiate the contract, and it's gonna start costing you more money, because otherwise you could go into the cycle of endless revisions, and it by endless. I'm not kidding. It never ends. Oh, yeah. Ever ends.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: I have my own history of it. Had. The research document had to be perfect in my mind, and I could have sat and kept working on it, but the deadline was there. So it's like, yep, I'm done. I'm not happy with it, but I'm done. Here. Take it away.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: The reason I handed my novel to you and said, read this and give me feedback, because I've looked at it enough times that I can't look at it anymore. I'm starting to not see things, and I know that it's time for somebody else to look at it.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: So then we have. If we're getting back to the declaration, we have the list of things that were abuses as far as the colonists were concerned.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: And there were 26 of them. Apparently.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: There were a lot. There were only 26 that stayed.
Remember, 86 revisions in the space of a couple rooms.
I kind of feel bad for them because they didn't have computers. They didn't have.
They didn't have the easy, quick, you know, let's erase. They didn't have erasable anything.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: And it was June in Philadelphia, from what I understand. It was stupid hot. Well, yeah, of course, as well.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: And no air conditioning.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Air conditioning. No modern fans, no electricity.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Wonderful modernization.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: I think Franklin was in the process of discovering electricity at the time, so.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Well, he wasn't discovering electricity. They had discovered that over in Europe, it was fine electricity. Been around for a while. It was just. He figured out the lightning rod.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Oh, see, my american education lied to me.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Yes, they did.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Here's my not surprised face.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: But speaking of Ben, he was working on this, too. He was part of that group of five, which is kind of cool, because I always wondered, what all did Ben Franklin actually have to do with all of this? I mean, you know, he was a delegate. Delegate. And I know we call him one of the founding fathers, but it's like he was never an author of anything except for his autobiography, wherein you might as well call him, you know, the divine sent to earth. But he had a bit of an ego.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Well, there was Richard Solomon. Horrible. No, it wasn't Richards. It was.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Was it Richards? I believe he was poor Richard Dominic.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Poor Richard Dominic. Yeah.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: He was a huge in. A huge contributor to that. But at the same time, he isn't known for any of our founding documents. Well, guess what, folks? He was part of this document. So I thought that was kind of cool, because that was another piece of my american history that Kat went, whoosh. Okay. There were five people working on it. I always heard. Oh, Jefferson wrote it. Well, he was the principal author.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah, he was a group effort. Yeah, he was the principal author. Yeah. As I got older and learned more and more about writing through college, I started questioning that Jefferson wrote the declaration by himself. I'm like, I seriously doubt it.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Well, and he borrowed pretty heavily. We'll get into that, though.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: But we're gonna get into that after we deal with the declarations.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: After we deal with what we were actually bitching about.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Right? So the list. Here's the list. Number one, he won't allow us to have laws that are good for our well being.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Number two, when there's an issue that needs immediate attention, he won't let his representatives act on his behalf without a direct intervention from him. And when the issue gets delayed to get that direct intervention, he still doesn't act. Sound familiar, Harry?
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Hmm?
[00:09:36] Speaker B: When our congress became this, I'm not entirely sure, but it happened. Guess what, folks? We have the same bitch today that they did then.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: It's amazing how things come full circle.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Isn't it, though?
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Number three, he refuses to accept that we live extremely far away and cannot make all of the required meetings to have continuous representation at his court and activities. Fair argument.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Fair.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: The Atlantic Ocean is pretty good size.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: No airplanes.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: Especially when you're dealing with, you know, wooden sailing ships and, God help you, the weather.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Exactly. Wind and sails. Yeah.
He keeps forcing compliance by being inconsistent with the meeting locations and by having those meeting locations which are extremely far away to begin with, mind you, also pretty far from the documents that were needed to research and support, debate and offer alternatives to his position. In other words, he didn't have them anywhere near the library or the document stores.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. Five, he has repeatedly invaded our rights and has just removed any people in positions that would defy his decisions to continue the invasion of rights. Project 2025. Anyone?
[00:10:47] Speaker B: And even farther.
After removing those people. And this should sound familiar, folks.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: After removing those people, he has refused.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: To refill the positions to allow us to have representation in that day and age as well as today. Kind of. This leaves a communication gap which has significant impact on our physical safety because we've lost our overseas representation. We could get invaded or have internal violence and you'd never know. Now, if anybody happens to think of certain Supreme Court positions that weren't filled. Sound familiar?
[00:11:20] Speaker A: So that was number six. Number seven, he won't let us fully populate our own country. We can't make incoming foreigners citizens. We can't advertise to bring more people here, and we can't expand out from where we currently live. Well, I mean, we did eventually start doing the expanding, but, yeah, we're kind of starting to run into that with the immigration issues.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Number eight, he won't let us have a judicial system locally. We can't have our own judges locally, nor will he let us establish any laws to actually create our own system, despite his being over in England. So, you know, guy comes along, kills a couple people, we have to arrest him and deport him to England to get tried.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: We're back to the sailing ships and. Wow, that's inconvenient.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Isn't it, though? And we can't even really do much about it if he decides to let him off and come back and kill more people.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: True. Very true.
Nein. I'm reading the odd ones that make sense. Nine, he has created lots of new officials in England. I sent them over to enforce his whims on us and demands that we feed them our food without offering any payment.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: How nice.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Right? Right.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: We are just. We were just so generous and we had so much to spare.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Really.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Isn't that one the one that caused.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Was it the third or the fourth.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Amendment to come into play? I don't know. The Bill of Rights is its own monster.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: The constitution of the Bill of Rights is its own monster. Which we will maybe eventually cover.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Yep. Because I really should go back to the Bill of Rights.
Number ten is he's. He keeps standing armies among us while we're not at war and against our laws. Our laws say you don't get to have standing armies here, and yet they're here. That doesn't sound scary at all. Sounds like a grand time, really.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Right?
I can see how many of these we actually did deal with in the constitution. His military, number eleven. His military doesn't answer to our local leaders. In fact, they have more power and authority than our leaders do.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Scary there, too.
And then number twelve is he has given authority to foreign interests and their laws, which do not match our own laws that are already in place here. Now, we don't recognize laws they've made as legitimate because they're in conflict with our pre existing laws. So he has sent over people to. From foreign countries that aren't even England. It's not even like they're from where we're from. They're coming in and making. Bringing in their laws, and their laws get to take the place of our laws. Wait, what?
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Right. Interesting. Number nine and number 13 are really similar.
He is making us house and feed large bodies of troops at our cost.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Well, number nine is just new officials. Number 13 is just the armies.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: And we were housing and feeding a lot.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Oh, we were.
Number 14. He has protected them with. And these are. This is relative to the troops. That's for them here. He's protected them with fake trials when they've murdered citizens so that the suffer. Soldiers suffer no punishment.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: That sucks.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That's how you built. This is how you win friends and influence people.
Don't you understand?
This is the perfect way to make.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Yourself look like a really good ruler. How to succeed in business.
He's cut off all of our trade with anywhere else in the world.
I mean, to be fair, he was barricading.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: No, he was barricading the coasts and making sure that the ships couldn't get out.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Absolutely. He wasn't making sure they couldn't get out. Or sometimes get in.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Get in. Exactly. And then the one that everybody knows is number 16. He's taxed us without our consent.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Taxation.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Familiar with this one?
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Taxation without representation.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: 17, he has, in many cases, kept us from trial by jury.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: That was a major part of british society.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: And he was keeping that from colonists.
Again, have to go overseas to get trial by jury. He could not have it in America. Wow. Yeah.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: God, that sucks.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: So, wow. This is so fair. Really?
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no kidding.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: And then we continue continuing the trial concept. In 18, he's taken our citizens overseas to be tried for crimes he's made up, crimes that aren't even on the books, is known to be criminal issues.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: He's pleas.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: This is not intended as a pun. This is the word used as it's supposed to be used. He's trumped up charges to take them overseas.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: You know, the funny thing is, I've tried to find a synonym for that word.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: There isn't.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: There isn't one.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: There isn't. And this isn't a bitch fest about a former president. This is literally, that term has a specific meaning. And, yeah, there's not a really good replacement.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Overrule, override are the closest second rule we get to. I really want to study the etymology of that word, though.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: I was looking at that the other day. I don't remember what it was now, but I was already looking at that the other day. It's been around since the 14th century.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Oh, now I really want to go look it up.
Language nerd alert.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Two language nerds. Like I said, it came to mind. I looked it up at the moment, and then I moved on. That's why I'm pretty sure, if I remember right, it was a 14th century thing.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah, words and names can send me down the most interesting research.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Rabbit holes.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: So he made up crimes. Okay, 19. We are getting down the list, folks. We promise. He has removed the free system of english laws in Canada, established an arbitrary government there, and enlarged its boundaries. So that is both an example of what will happen to us, as well as a good staging area to attack us and introduce the same absolute rule. Read also despotic government for us about that.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: So trumped up real quick. It's from the old french trompe receive to make up. But it was used in Middle English. Trumpen was the Middle English term, and it means to deceive, cheat.
To fabricate, devise, deceive or cheat.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: There are so many comments I can make.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: We're not going there on this one. This is not what the point of this one is. This was just filling in the blank about. We brought it up. So I had to 14 hundreds.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: That doesn't surprise me.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: It does track.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: So many things come from. So many things come from middle English that people don't realize, like, I don't know, the singular they.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: How about that?
So number 20 keys removed our charters, which were, for those of you not familiar with the charters documents that will allowed us ownership and self governance of the lands listed in them. So that was what got us to America to begin with, was the people that owned, that got the charters from the king as grants to come here. That's what that was. He's removed them and completely removed our most important laws, and it's fundamentally changed how our governments are set up. I have cat paw.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: I'll put you. And he won't cop up. He won't hop up on my lap. He just wants to paw at me.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Of course he does, because you're talking, and of course you must be talking to him, right, exactly.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Well, he is awake. When he is asleep, Leo pretty much leaves me alone. But if I am in the office and working and he wakes up and he comes in, he must hop up on the desk and help figure big air quotes me bite laying on the.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Keyboard because cats are insanely helpful.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: So healthy. So healthy. As a friend of mine says, we're 21. Thank you. I lost track. There's so many.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: I know, right?
[00:19:11] Speaker A: He has suspended our legislatures and replaced them with his own people, who have permission to rule us in all situations.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Number 22 is he has also abdicated all responsibility for us, thrown us out of England's protection, and begun to actively wage war on us.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Of course he has. 24.
23. I can't count. No, that's not my best subject. 23. He has destroyed our seas, coasts, and towns and killed our citizens. Yeah, they were doing a lot of that.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: They were. 24. He's brought in huge bands of foreign mercenaries to continue to kill and steal on his behalf and to impose tyranny in his name in the manner of a barbarian rather than a civilized ruler. And, yes, they really did use the term barbarian. They were not happy with him.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: They were not pulling punches. No, I may or may not be partially descended from some of those mercenaries.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: I have enough of a mutt that who knows?
[00:20:09] Speaker A: Found out this. Found out that some of my german origin is from Hesse.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: And hessian mercenaries were the biggest ones.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Hired by the british people, specifically in the american revolution. So he has captured and forced our citizens to fight against family, friends, and neighbors on his behalf, requiring them to either kill their loved ones or to be killed by them in turn. How kind.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Isn't that so nice of them?
[00:20:36] Speaker A: So nice of him.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Such a generous, giving man. And the last but not least, he has pushed people to move to insurrection from our own people, as well as pushing. And here is where the language gets really racist, okay? The language that is used in the declaration is, quote, the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions, end quote. As well as pushing the native inhabitants to attack us and our citizens.
We had racism issues with the colonists and versus the indigenous peoples.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Oh, did we ever. Well, although I will say this, one thing I do remember learning is one of the struggles the British had with the Green mountain men in the Appalachian, and I feel like it was in Virginia colony. One of the struggles they had with the Green Mountain men, Washington. Green Mountain men learn how to basically do guerrilla warfare from the native tribes.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: That were there, because they actually just said, you know, you know, the land and you're good people and.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Exactly. And the concept, up until I don't even remember when this finally stopped. But during. During the time of the American Revolution, the way warfare usually worked, the way battles usually work, was both sides line up facing each other, and they attack each other in a very regimented format. Thank you.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Ancient Roman, right?
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Very ancient Roman.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Very.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: And I mean, back in. Back in roman times, it was basically fight, kill, sundown, and then stop. But when it came to warfare with the British, that's exactly how they fought.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because, you know, you line up and shoot each other. I. That's kind of stupid, but that's what.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: It was, I have to admit. Yeah. Ancient roman warfare never made any sense to me. But I have my own personal opinions about the Romans, and they're not kind. I blame my irish heritage.
I blame my british heritage in general. But regimented lining up, regimented fighting really does not work in the appalachian mountains.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: It doesn't work in most of the east coast. There's an awful lot of swamps, and there was an awful lot of forestation and things like that. That's in the way.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Big open fields are so much better for fighting. And I would say that would have been Indiana. But actually, during that time period, Indiana.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Was most forest trees.
I suspect, based off of some of the language for number 26, is, they said, inhabitants of our frontiers, I suspect they might have been bringing in some of the Plains Indians, which were actually known for how brutal they were in warfare.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: They were.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: They were known for that level of. You kill. They kill everyone.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: They were known for that. Yes.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: And that. That was the warfare style that the Plains Indian.
Excuse me, the plains indigenous people had.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: I think, first native is also a tournament.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: First native.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: First native is now a tournament.
I can talk, I swear.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: But, yes, the plains first natives were absolutely known for that level of. We slaughter everybody out, and if anybody survives, we might or might not kill them. If we decide we're being generous or if we decide we can live in our slaves.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah. It was effective. It worked for them. Yes, absolutely. Something else that could affect us to some degree. Words, some of the french colonists, although France did fight for us.
Thank you, Thomas Jefferson. And Benjamin Franklin. And Benjamin Franklin.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Let's not forget his diplomacy. Yeah.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So the next section.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: The next section is what? Actually, there is some more to the Declaration of Independence after the list.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: And this is the last. The next section. These are the last few points that they make. It's. We've asked nicely, repeatedly and patiently for these situations to be fixed. Every time we ask, the king has responded harshly. Given what this shows about his character. He's showing us that he's a tyrant, not appropriate to rule a free people.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Mm hmm. Asking nicely and not getting anywhere with that is extremely frustrating.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Really. Never would have guessed that. Also, for the culture of that time, I mean, we also have to accept the culture of that era that is the height of improper.
That is the height of inappropriate and ineffective and just monstrous. It's literally the concept of this level of propriety that we don't really have it anymore. And thank you very much. I appreciate that.
I grew up in a very traditional household that was very much. You had to do things by the proper rules of etiquette. Those of you who haven't, I was not.
I know, and I'm jealous every day.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I was raised by a single mother, so.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: But, yeah, what got me. I love this because I did not realize this was going on, was the next point where it's. We've also made certain to keep the british people up to date on these problems with their king and legislature, because it wasn't just the kingdom, it was the british legislature doing this, too, because we had the House of Commons and the House of Lords both active at this time, and they weren't willing to do anything either. But apparently the crew, for lack of a better way of putting it, the crew was keeping the british people as a whole, up to date. The friends and family that were there. And we reminded them we're family, which should impact their sense of outrage on our behalf. Again, culture of the time. Right. And that, should revolution come to pass, we wouldn't be able to keep in communication with them. Not easily. And those, the british people as a whole, still haven't been willing to take any action to help us. So we have no choice but to cut our ties to them and to accept that we will be enemies in war and friends in peace.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yep. So everyone here is in agreement that.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: We need to be independent.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: From England and I come, our own nation.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: And that is the declaration of Independence in a modern language nutshell, with a few additional marginal comments.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: A nutshell. It takes a half an hour to go through.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Well, if we had just read it, it would have been really boring.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Oh, my God. So boring. I am.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Even if we read it in a more modern version, it still would have been boring. I mean, I'm sorry, this stuff is just. I hate 18th century authors. I really can't stand they are.
Why take five words to say what? You can take three paragraphs.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Right.
Truth.
So true.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: And I get this whole. We have to be precise with our. I'm all about precision with language.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: I am.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: I get it. But damn.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: I'm of the opinion, though, this isn't precise. This is extremely flowery, having learned how to write in plain language.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Because I've worked for government contracts, and that's a requirement. Ironically enough, I have been doing so much plain language writing for so long, I sometimes struggle with reading stuff like this.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: I hated this when I had to do the undergrad class on 18th century lit. I haven't learned to love it anymore, which is why this was such a challenge, doing the research to prepare this, because, honestly, most of the. We have most of this. Thank you, Project Gutenberg. If you people do not know about Project Gutenberg, greatest thing on the Internet for historical research. It has all sorts of free, full text ebooks.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: And all of the big full text ebooks that I looked at of 18th century authors, I got to Padre Gutenberg. And since, you know, the. That's where we head next for the origins of where this all came from. Yeah.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the Declaration of Independence did not spring forth from the head of the four or five writers. These were not concepts that somebody just dreamed up in their head and the conference and said, hey, I got an idea.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Not even close. So there was a huge movement in the philosophy.
There was this huge movement starting in the. Oh, crap. When was Hobbs?
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Oh, when was Hobbes?
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Cause Hobbs is our first real kick kickoff on this. Hobbs was his. I've got him on the. I've got his date next to his name. Where were you, Hobbs?
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Oh, Thomas Hobbes of Malsbury, Malmsbury, 1650 116 51.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: So Hobbes was our big kickoff with his Leviathan. He first started this discussion of natural rights. Okay. He started this discussion of everything. Leviathan is well named.
It is long, it is ugly. It is even enlightenment era. And it's really ugly to read. It's. Oh, I mean, it was. Here's the thing, though.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: It was.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: It was kind of required reading by any scholar of that era, though, which we know thanks to the popular literature.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: From that erade.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Sure. Oh, yeah. A lot of it reflects a lot of these concepts.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Well, not just the concepts. Little women. One of my favorite, Louisa may alcott. Little women. I loved Jo march. Right?
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Oh, me too.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Jo march complained about reading a couple of books. One of them was Hobbs Leviathan.
I will never forget, because I said.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Oh, you know, one of these days.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: I'm going to read some of what Joe March read. I've read it. I don't recommend it.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: But if it was part of their recommendation, if it was part of the reading that the educated were doing in that time period, then I guarantee it was kind of required reading for the people that were writing the Declaration of Independence to be proper scholars.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Little women was how I discovered that a pilgrim's progress was such a horrible book.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: It's a rough read. I read it for Middle English language, and it's a rough read.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: It's a rough read. A pilgrim's progress is not on my list of favorites. That was.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: That was one of the ones I was actually kind of looking forward to when I was doing the masters in English, and I was looking at Middle English language and literature. I'm like, oh, I'm finally going to get to read this. And I started reading, but, oh, my God, I'm finally reading this. Why?
[00:31:17] Speaker A: I thought the program's progress wasn't Middle English.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: I thought it was later Middle English. Oh, it's late middle.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: It explains a lot, doesn't it?
[00:31:24] Speaker A: That explains so much.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: It's late Middle English.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: I have to admit, between late Middle English and early modern English, I really kind of prefer early modern English.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: It all depends on exactly how foreign you want the language to sound and want the words to be.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: That is true. Okay, back to Hobbes.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Back to Hobbes. So he also brought up this concept of a social contract, and that is that government is a contract, is literally think contract law. Contract between the people and the government. So Hobbes is, as far as I can tell. Now, I am not a political scholar, and I did not go into the farthest background of this, but Hobbes really did with Leviathan, really did bring up a whole lot of this during Leviathan. His nutshell concept was that the natural state of man. Because, again, we're looking at natural state. Natural state of man is war. Because everything's fair in war. Man in his natural state has the right to everything.
He gets what he wants when he wants it. I know, right?
You can't see the face. I wish. There are some moments where I kind of wish we could show our faces, because we say as much of our facial expression as we do our voices, the face.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: All I can think is pop's philosophy. Libertarianism, in a nutshell.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yes, actually. Actually, yes, it very much is. He did have what he called his unalienable rights, right. There be some rights, and I'm going to quote Hobbes, and you can see just how rough this is to try and read this. There be some rights which no man can be understood by any words or other signs to have abandoned or transferred. In other words, contract abandoned, transfer. Right. As first, a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force to take away his life, because he cannot be understood to aim thereby at any good to himself. The same may be said of wounds and chains and imprisonment, both because there is no benefit consequent to each patient, as there is no patience of suffering, another to be wounded or imprisoned, as also because a man cannot tell when he seeth, men proceed against him by violence whether they intend his death or not. Yes, that is a run on sentence. Yes, that's how it's written. And lastly, the motive and end for which this renouncing and transferring of right is introduced is nothing else but the security of a man's person in his life and in the means of so preserving his life as not to be weary of it.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: That's a lot of word salad.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: That is a lot of word salad. That's the really bad part. Welcome to reading Leviathan.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Welcome to. Welcome to 18th century literature.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Welcome to 18.
Welcome. 17th century.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Oh, 17.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: 17Th century.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: 1751. 17th century.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: This beast was written during the 16 hundreds.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Yep. 17th century literature. You and where I'm reading through the atrocious spelling because, you know.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Aren't you glad you have someone with.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: Middle English reading this?
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Because I can read right through these and ignore spellings.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Nutshell, as I understand it. Fundamentally, he says multiple rights. But there's one you can't transfer. The right to defend yourself. If someone attacks you, if someone tries to take your life, you have the right to defend yourself. That isn't. That is your. That is a natural, unalienable right. That's what that kind of said. In a nutshell, yeah. It took all those words to just say.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Just say, you have the right to defend yourself. Yep. Oh, yeah.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: And the reason that you have the right to defend yourself is, even though that might cause someone else harm, is because there's no good that can come of someone attacking you. Nothing good can come out of someone attacking you.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Uh huh. And it's whether they intend to kill you or not.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: You can defend yourself, which we do have here. Which we do even more so now with the standard ground laws.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: But then we get into some of the problems I have with.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: That one wasn't enough. No, I mean, the language isn't enough.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: Well, this is. This is. I'm going to skip away from the language for now and say. He flat out says, if you make a contract out of fear, in other words, if you promise to do something, even if someone's holding a knife to you and saying, you got to do this or I'll kill you. You still have to do it. If you say, I promise I'll do it, you have to do it. And that is not something that we have.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: No, it's not.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: But this was his position. He had some really interesting takes.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: Makes me kind of wonder if that was one of the 86 revisions.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: I'm not sure that any of this made it into Jefferson. This is the precursor to the precursor.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Oh, that's true, because everybody that really.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Influenced Jefferson was a reaction to this guy. Yeah. Okay. Now, his whole reason, his whole logic behind why we have to have government is in the natural state of man without threat. Or as he puts it, aw. Now, remember, awe for them is the same root for awful now, right?
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Which is awesome.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Not awesome, awful. So dramatically, immensely huge that it's terrifying. Okay, so awe inspiring is actually some. Is meant to have some measure of both amazing and yet also terrifying at one and the same time for the original meaning of awe.
And that's the meaning he's working with here. So without threat or awe, man is completely vile and reprehensible and given to fighting rather than peace. And because of all that, we found it really necessary to band together in large groups to keep ourselves safe. The larger the better, up to a certain size. Because once we get to a certain size, it's too big. And you can't have that fear factor. Making sure everybody's behaving themselves makes sense.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: I mean, trying to deal with a large room of people can sometimes be like, herding the cats and getting the cats to not, you know, start fighting with each other is a challenge.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: But his comment, because one of the fact, one of the things that he was looking at was the group, the clan concept, where a family grew large and small, families got together to be a larger group that still wasn't big enough for him, but a metropolis like London was too big.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: Okay, that's fair.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: So you have, because the number has to be in that, especially in that Goldilocks zone, or the ability to control the men away from their natural selves. In other words, their vile, natural, nazi, reprehensible selves. He was, did not treat people were generally these human beings.
He made me look. He made me look like, not cynical. Okay, wow. I know, right?
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: I spent the first part of a bias and going, damn, dude, this is a wow.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: I thought I was bad.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: But he was also a firm believer that, oh, he also insisted that the authority has to be continuous. In other words, you can't. You have to always have the same people in power, because if it's not, then man's vile nature is going to hit those cracks and pull back in the.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that definitely did not make it in.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: To either the declaration or the constitution.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: Like I said, it's the reaction. Now, he was a firm believer that once a decision was made, you stuck with it. Okay. So if you selected a representative or a king or something along those lines, there's no questioning, no disagreement, no judgment made against them, nor any replacing them or changing the form of government. Yeah, like I said, a lot of reaction to this guy. A lot of reaction to this guy. But this is why he's kind of necessary to set the stage to understand, because this was the accepted version of political thought leading into the 18th century.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: And that makes sense, considering pretty much all of Europe at that time was under monarch rule of some kind or another.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: And he. He thought the monarchy was great. He was very against the division of powers for the purpose of checks and balances.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Nobody ever explained to him that absolute power corrupts absolutely, apparently, yeah.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: For all that he really claimed to have understood the true nature of man, he was extremely naive. He really was.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: I suspect.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: I suspect, and I also suspect, based off of this next little tidbit about him from Leviathan, I suspect he was part of the Aristotle, because he says that tyranny and oligarchy, he does acknowledge these other terms, for different ways of government are out there. He says that tyranny is just another name for monarchy, and oligarchy is just a name for Aristotle, another name for aristocracy, and that the only time monarchs are called tyrants is when people are unhappy with them, and only the people that are unhappy with them call them tyrants. There is no measure of tyranny in his mind. And that the same premise for the oligarchs. The only time they're called. The only time the aristocracy are called oligarchs is when we're not happy. So very binary thinking, you think?
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Very binary thinking.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: He was, if I remember right, Malmesbury was part of the church. He was. He was an abbot.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Of the church. A Church of England. So, yeah, he also. This is. This one really had me chuckling. He suggests that the people who dislike democracy call it anarchy. In Leviathan.
I suppose everybody has an opinion and everybody gets to vote, so it must be anarchy, right?
[00:41:06] Speaker A: You can't see the confused, dim, confused look on my face right at the moment.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: That.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: Comparing democracy to anarchy.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Well, again, we started this whole conversation with.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Breaks my brain.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Well, no. How did we start this whole conversation about the Declaration of Independence? A camel is a horse drum by committee, fair democracy, anarchy. I can see where he comes from. It doesn't break my brain. That might be one of his not bad ones, to be honest.
But Leviathan really was the seminal work that informed all of these philosophers that were coming after in the Enlightenment era. They were very much fighting against what he said or picking apart what he said to say, you're okay with this, but you're not right here.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: And like I said, it was referenced in popular literature. It was part of the. If you were a learned person or a scholar, you read this, and I feel really badly for them right now.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: If I remember correctly, you said in little Women, Joe had to read Leviathan, and she was not happy about it.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Well, it wasn't her most. Joe liked adventure. Pilgrim's progress was good, because Pilgrim's progress was actually something happening.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it is an adventure.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Well, on any Leviathan, as boring as all get out.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Right?
[00:42:28] Speaker B: Well.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: But I can also see another reason why a character like Joe March would not like something like Leviathan. Because Joe was an American. Oh, yeah, an American in the mid 18 hundreds. We were still a. We were still a fairly young country.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: At the time, and Jo was her favorite character from what she shared. And Jo would have been a humanist. This is absolute monarchical patriarchy. This is absolutely hard and fast. So, yeah, Joe would have hated this.
[00:42:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: With a passion. He would have been pulling teeth to make her read this for more than one reason. It's boring as fuck, and he's an asshole who's got something shoved up his ass sideways, to be really blunt.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: That's very fair.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: Was a huge Louisiana copy.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: I was too, and Joe was my favorite character.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Ditto. Ditto. But the humanism movement was what really got me breaking away from thinking on the christian path that I was on at that time.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: Humanism did the same thing to me.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: So it didn't destroy my belief in Christianity so much as it said, let's open this up to exploration. And then the concept of the founding father fame, Deistenhenne, is its own nightmare for another podcast, because, you know, that's.
[00:43:41] Speaker A: Another thing, I'm gonna be honest with you. What moved me away from Christianity was finding the contradictions that exist in the Bible. And my little non diagnosed autistic brain had a really hard time with that, and the pastor could not give me an explanation that satisfied that little undiagnosed autistic brain.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: So, yeah, I was an artistic brain, but. Yep, I understand.
I got hung up on a lot of those. And I spent twelve years in catholic school and in every detail of the Bible I possibly could. I think I read the Bible more times, cover to cover, than a lot of other people. I know I did not, but I was raised Baptist. Fair.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: So anyway, so back to pomp from.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: My reading of it, and this is obviously since this is opinion, because obviously this is. You're getting our opinions. This is a monstrous beast of his opinion and his arguments. And he absolutely masquerades under this mask of absolute authority. He references the Bible. He references so many biblical stories. He even says, I looked it up in scripture and I looked it up in these other philosophers. I don't look outside myself. Hume says the same thing. I don't look outside myself. But these two locations say the same thing. So I must be right. No, dude, you're not necessarily right.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: Well, to be fair, in the 16 hundreds, a lot of, I know, a lot of, a lot of writing, a lot of culture, a lot of society was still very heavily influenced by the church.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: I know it was still very much.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: A part of people's lives. It really wasn't until the humanist movement that you started seeing that breakaway.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: But unfortunately, right after Leviathan is coming up, the humanist movement. And that brings us to the philosophers who actually fought back against Hobbes and gave us material that really did influence the Declaration of Independence.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Yeah, and I know John Locke was.
[00:45:39] Speaker B: Well, wait, Locke was a huge influence.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: A new locke and Hobbes. I didn't know about Hume until you mentioned him.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: Hume is not a huge influenced directly, but again, it's part of that time period and culture, he's part of the conversation at that time.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: So I'd say that's what we have for today. Am I right?
[00:45:59] Speaker B: I hope so.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: That's what we've got for you today. We hope you enjoyed the episode. We would love to hear what you think. So drop us a line at spilltheteapodcast 224 mail.com. we would also love your support. Please visit our Patreon site or buy us a
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spill the teapodcast. Thank you, everyone, and have a great.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: Week and enjoy your fourth safely.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: Yes, enjoy the fourth.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Happy fourth. Because that's what this is all about.
