Episode 70

247 Years Young! Happy Birthday America!

Published on: 4th July, 2023

Join us for our 70th episode, as our guest, Robert Begley, discusses the similarities between Founder Alexander Hamilton and Ayn Rand. Robert gives a clear Call to Action, at the end of our conversation!

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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:

Episode 70 (66 minutes) was recorded at 2200 Central European Time, on June 24, 2023, with Ringr app. Martin did the editing and post-production with the podcast maker, Alitu. The transcript is generated by Alitu.

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Transcript
Blair:

Well, good afternoon and good evening, everyone.

Blair:

This is another episode of the Secular Foxhole podcast.

Blair:

It's actually episode 70.

Blair:

And today we're happy to have our friend

Blair:

Robert Begley is returned.

Blair:

Robert is a certified world class speaking

Blair:

coach, Och, who helps executives, entrepreneurs and thought leaders deliver more

Blair:

memorable messages.

Blair:

He has appeared on national television and

Blair:

spoken to an audience to audience acclaim across America, including Duke University

Blair:

Freer Future Fest and the Libre Institute.

Blair:

He also co hosted The Hero Show, a podcast

Blair:

that celebrates heroism.

Blair:

And Robert's here today to discuss a recent

Blair:

lecture he gave on Alexander Hamilton.

Blair:

The similarities between Alexander Hamilton

Blair:

and Ein Rand, but it's also a deeper thought or subject.

Blair:

Robert, how are you?

Robert:

I am fabulous, Blair.

Robert:

Thank you and Martin for having me on again.

Robert:

This is one of my very favorite topics.

Robert:

So let us jump in.

Blair:

All right.

Martin:

Dive in.

Martin:

And I will start Martin here.

Martin:

And then not to give out everything because we want the listener to listen to the whole show,

Martin:

of course, and reflect.

Martin:

But why Hamilton?

Martin:

If you pick one of many and then, of course, the challenge to do a comparison with Rand.

Robert:

Yes. Well, one of the many things that I'm Rand, influenced me by.

Robert:

She has so much respect for America's founders.

Robert:

And one statement she makes is that America's founders were something that's somewhat

Robert:

unprecedented in history, where they are both thinkers and they're men of action.

Robert:

And that always appealed to me because in philosophy, we call this mind and body

Robert:

integration and thought and action should be together.

Robert:

And the founders, during the Enlightenment era, there was such an upheaval of ideas

Robert:

taking place, and this idea of liberty finally was coming to being for the first time in

Robert:

history on the scale that had never existed.

Robert:

And that always childhood.

Robert:

From my own childhood as an American, that always appealed to me.

Robert:

On a personal note, it was more the George Washington type of hero that stood head and

Robert:

shoulders for me, his leadership style, but the thinker side.

Robert:

Okay, like, who are the ones who wrote these documents and these lasting founding

Robert:

documents? Declaration of Independence.

Martin:

And even under a pen name, we will come back to that, right?

Robert:

Yes. What was their stature? And so for me, for much of my adult life,

Robert:

thomas Jefferson was the man.

Robert:

Declaration of Independence was the document.

Robert:

Life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness to me, is still one of the most long lasting and

Robert:

expressive phrases in the English language and probably in world language.

Robert:

So Jefferson was a guy for you.

Martin:

Even have a paperweight now I interrupt you, Blair.

Robert:

Robert, I have a paperweight that I show in my presentation, which I bought in

Robert:

Monticello and for the longest period of time.

Robert:

And this love of Jefferson was something that

Robert:

I felt I bonded with my mother over.

Robert:

And Hamilton was the opposite in so many ways,

Robert:

he was the opposite of Jefferson.

Robert:

So I just had this aversion to who's this guy

Robert:

who stands for kind of a strong government and some kind of central banking.

Robert:

I don't want the bank to have anything to do with the government.

Robert:

I just had this kind of eerie discomfort with Hamilton for much of my life.

Robert:

But what happened over time, gentlemen, was that I lived in New York City my whole life,

Robert:

and I'd go into Central Park and I'd see a statue of Hamilton.

Robert:

I'd go to Columbia University.

Robert:

Another statue of Hamilton museum of the City

Robert:

of New York.

Robert:

Hamilton is right outside that place.

Robert:

And then up in what is Hamilton Heights, Harlem, his Grange, which had a fourth statue,

Robert:

and not even George Washington has four singular statues in Manhattan I can't even

Robert:

call New York City.

Robert:

So I thought, I have to read about this guy.

Robert:

I need to look at him, his personality, his character, his impact.

Robert:

And it jumped out of me that, wow, I got this guy wrong.

Robert:

And then the other thing that jumps out of me is the heroism of all of the Founders.

Robert:

Nobody traveled a farther distance to become self made.

Robert:

I mean, he's born in the Caribbean, in this dirt poor island where slavery is rampant and

Robert:

no one wants to during the global wars that are happening at this point in the mid 17

Robert:

hundreds, between France and Britain and the Dutch and the Spanish, the Caribbean was

Robert:

incredibly important because of the sugar and molasses and different products coming out of

Robert:

there.

Robert:

And this is what Hamilton was born into, this

Robert:

kind of background.

Robert:

And he literally writes his way off the

Robert:

island.

Robert:

He describes a hurricane with such beauty when

Robert:

he's aged like 1415 years old, and they send him to the mainland America to study.

Robert:

And so it's the proverbial foreigner comes to America before it's even really America, and

Robert:

then rises to the top of society by merit.

Robert:

Okay, purely by merit.

Robert:

Not because he knew people, but it was ability to come in and carve out his own destiny and

Robert:

become what we call self made.

Robert:

So that was, like, one of the major things

Robert:

that shifted my thinking about Hamilton is that what kind of self made man he was that

Robert:

always jumped out at me.

Robert:

I tailor my life trying to be self made, and

Robert:

I'm like, what this guy did when he's 15, I still haven't done yet.

Robert:

So those were some of the things.

Robert:

But if we want to transition to specific

Robert:

topics so slavery and racism, this is something that he was completely different

Robert:

from several of the Founders on constitutionalism.

Robert:

He fought with the Founders with several Founders on business and finance,

Robert:

industrialism and foreign policy.

Robert:

Now, any criticism I give of the founders has

Robert:

to be with this context.

Robert:

They were all needed to create the United

Robert:

States of America and united in the the first place where they were united was in opposition

Robert:

to Britain.

Robert:

The tyranny that Britain was imposing on the

Robert:

13 colonies.

Robert:

And everyone will always, in my mind and my

Robert:

heart, will always have a special place.

Robert:

But whereas I totally admired Jefferson early

Robert:

on in my life, I came to see a lot of differences.

Robert:

My evaluations of him has definitely gone down over the years, and it's for largely these

Robert:

different topics constitutionalism slavery and racism, business, finance, industrialism and

Robert:

foreign policy.

Robert:

And here's where I look at Hamilton and I say,

Robert:

iRant is in favor of all of these things in the 20th century.

Robert:

I don't think anyone any thinker has been as strong and consistent an advocate of those

Robert:

topics as I, Rand.

Robert:

So I thought, let me do a compare and contrast

Robert:

between Rand and of all of the founders I single out Hamilton.

Blair:

Yeah, I have to say, I traveled a similar journey.

Blair:

I was a big Jefferson fan for a long time.

Blair:

And then I started reading about the others

Blair:

and sort of soured on Jefferson some.

Blair:

And then James Madison has taken the mantle

Blair:

for me.

Blair:

Okay.

Blair:

But also seriously in the last year because there's so much about Hamilton out that I

Blair:

started delving into him.

Blair:

And then your speech came along to the local

Blair:

group here and I had to see that.

Blair:

So thank you for opening the door even further

Blair:

on Hamilton.

Robert:

Sure thing.

Robert:

Well, if we could go to Hamilton and Madison

Robert:

when Madison was young, he was very close to Hamilton in writing The Federalist Papers.

Robert:

If we jump into where the two of them were most successful as a pair was when after the

Robert:

Revolutionary War was over and America won, the question became, okay, now that we

Robert:

defeated the British, what kind of country will we have?

Robert:

And they had this agreement called the Articles of Confederation, which was this

Robert:

loosely based concept that the states are still free and independent, which is what the

Robert:

Declaration says 13 free and independent states.

Robert:

But both Madison and Hamilton realized that, no, we need to connect the state.

Robert:

We need to unite the states.

Robert:

And by having a constitution that will make it

Robert:

the law of the land, by having checks and balances, this will prevent there being one

Robert:

part of government that dominates over other parts of governments and more importantly,

Robert:

does not dominate the citizens lives.

Robert:

James Madison was incredibly important at this

Robert:

time while Jefferson was away in Europe, jefferson and John Adams, who was stellar

Robert:

during the Declaration of Independence era, they were both away when the Constitution was

Robert:

being written.

Robert:

And this was largely Madison and Hamilton

Robert:

working together because not only after the Constitution was written, it needed to be

Robert:

ratified.

Robert:

And between New York and Virginia, there was

Robert:

opposition in both states.

Robert:

Patrick Camry was largely against it, and he

Robert:

was a much better he was a more towering figure than James Madison.

Robert:

And in New York.

Robert:

So that was Virginia.

Robert:

And in New York, Clinton was the governor and he was very powerful, and he was against the

Robert:

constitution.

Robert:

So Hamilton came up with this idea of writing

Robert:

these Federalist papers, which totaled 85 of them by the time it was done.

Robert:

And the guys to know what the importance of writing these papers?

Robert:

85 papers, which they did in about six months while both men were lawyers feeding their

Robert:

families like running off law practices.

Robert:

But they would knock out these papers and they

Robert:

each specialized with different subjects, but written as Martin, alluded to not under their

Robert:

name.

Robert:

They used the name public.

Robert:

Yes, publius.

Robert:

And because they wanted the words to stand on

Robert:

their own, they wanted the reader to be objective and not say, oh, this guy Hamilton

Robert:

wrote that.

Robert:

I can't stand him, and just dismiss it without

Robert:

even reading.

Robert:

But it's interesting.

Robert:

Historians can tell one difference between the writing styles of Hamilton and Madison.

Robert:

Madison would use the term wild, W-H-I-L-S-T which is more of a current British expression.

Robert:

And Hamilton would use wild while and that was one of the ways that they figured out who was

Robert:

the author, because there was discrepancy afterwards, because the promise was not to

Robert:

publish, not to say not to identify the authors.

Robert:

And so Madison, for me, I definitely agree with you on his import.

Robert:

Certainly during the Constitutional Convention, he took the notes.

Robert:

He was the major notetaker.

Robert:

He summarized a lot of the material.

Robert:

And to me, as a Hamiltonian, I say that was my favorite era in Madison's life.

Robert:

Some of the differences in fact, I think in all of the other topics that I want to bring

Robert:

up, there are differences there.

Robert:

But if we bring in I'm Rand now, on

Robert:

constitution, one of my absolute favorite quotations from Rand is about, if a drought

Robert:

strikes them, animals perish.

Robert:

But man builds irrigation canals, and if a

Robert:

flood strikes them, animals perish.

Robert:

Man builds dams.

Robert:

If a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish.

Robert:

Man writes the Constitution of the United States.

Robert:

Wow, I get goosebumps just repeating that.

Robert:

How precise is that?

Robert:

If we go to current day, can we agree we're being attacked by a carnivorous pack,

Robert:

particularly over these last few years, and the constitution is our only salvation in the

Robert:

United States, and I think even Martin over in Europe and Sweden, they could use a taste of

Robert:

this.

Robert:

If they had a taste of the US.

Robert:

Constitution in its original form, they'd be better off.

Blair:

I agree.

Blair:

But let me just question you on that quote

Blair:

from Rand, wasn't it? She said, the Declaration, not the

Blair:

constitution.

Blair:

I could be wrong.

Robert:

No, I'm sorry, you are wrong.

Robert:

What Rand says about the Declaration, that's a

Robert:

different thing.

Robert:

She says men should kneel.

Robert:

If ever men should kneel, it would be in the presence of the Declaration of Independence.

Robert:

Yes, true.

Robert:

Which she does call the greatest political

Robert:

document ever written.

Robert:

Okay, so let's do a contrast.

Robert:

The declaration is the and I would agree with her in one sense, that of the importance of

Robert:

this.

Robert:

You needed this to get the country off the

Robert:

ground.

Robert:

The interesting thing is, at the time that it

Robert:

was written, it was simply a declaration.

Robert:

It wasn't a document for the ages because so

Robert:

many of those ideas were baked into the culture.

Robert:

And nobody john Adams thought it was average.

Robert:

He didn't think it was this towering document.

Robert:

We all properly think it is today, but that doesn't tell you tells you the purpose of

Robert:

government, but it doesn't tell you this is the law of the land.

Robert:

That is what the Constitution is.

Robert:

And that's why America didn't really exist.

Robert:

It was not yet united until the Constitution itself was ratified, because that is what lays

Robert:

out the law of the land.

Robert:

And the Federalist Papers, just coming back to

Robert:

that, is all the checks and balances of describing what the different parts of

Robert:

government would be and what their functions are.

Robert:

But Rand admired both.

Robert:

In fact, I'll say this, she actually had

Robert:

problems with the Constitution properly.

Robert:

Sure.

Robert:

Yeah.

Robert:

They wanted to get if we can move them now,

Robert:

kind of backtrack to the slavery issue.

Robert:

Hamilton was against slavery.

Robert:

He started the New York Manumission Society, 1785, and he wanted to eradicate it.

Robert:

Eventually was in New York.

Robert:

But I think if we look at history, it was too

Robert:

soon for slavery to be eradicated.

Robert:

It was kind of an either or.

Robert:

Either we start a brand new country, which has never been done of this type in human history,

Robert:

and we deal with the issue of slavery as soon as we can, or we're at a stalemate over

Robert:

slavery, and we're not going to have this Constitution because the Southern states, they

Robert:

were not budging on that.

Robert:

And this is where Hamilton agreed it's more

Robert:

important to start the ball rolling.

Robert:

And if I could give a plug for Brad Thompson,

Robert:

brad's book on the revolutionary thinkers.

Robert:

He makes his ball statement.

Robert:

Before the two American documents, 1776 and 1787, slavery existed everywhere on the globe

Robert:

throughout history.

Robert:

Those documents did more to eradicate slavery

Robert:

than anything else.

Robert:

And so, again, I'm going back to although I'm

Robert:

going to criticize certain founders for certain things.

Robert:

Whoever got both of those documents, kudos to the sky.

Blair:

Sure. Now, I think, again, as far as the issue of slavery, I think the founders

Blair:

thought it was more important to establish the political concept of individual rights that

Blair:

had never been heard of before.

Blair:

So you have to get that started, and then you

Blair:

deal with the slavery issue.

Blair:

Unfortunately, it took, what, 70 more years or

Blair:

60 more years for that to happen.

Robert:

Hamilton predicted he saw this, he saw that issue.

Robert:

Hamilton predicted that at some point there will be a civil war and it would be the

Robert:

Northern industrial Hamiltonian north, free north that would defeat the south.

Robert:

But he said it would come at a steep price, which we still in America are suffering that

Robert:

price to this day in a lot of the issues that we have, sadly, mostly that revolve around

Robert:

race and slavery.

Robert:

But the thing is, we have to be realistic.

Robert:

How can you expect some group of men to eradicate an age old institution that has been

Robert:

around forever, and now they're going to start a brand new country and eradicate slave at the

Robert:

same time? I think it's too much to ask for.

Robert:

So, yes, I dare any other country to do what America did.

Robert:

Right.

Robert:

I'll just put it and sadly, if we go to

Robert:

education, particularly the backwards indoctrination that happens in America, you

Robert:

would think America invented slavery.

Robert:

It didn't exist even before, right?

Blair:

Yes.

Robert:

Built on slavery.

Robert:

Well, guess what?

Robert:

Brazil imported ten times the amount of slaves than America, so they should be ten times

Robert:

richer.

Robert:

Right?

Robert:

If we go with that logic, if America was built on slavery, but not so.

Robert:

In fact, if you want that's a perfect segue to the next topic.

Robert:

Next Hamiltonian topic, which is industrialism, because Brazil never had the

Robert:

industrialism, and only Britain had industrialism on a scale.

Robert:

They opened the door for America with this idea of industrialism.

Robert:

And there's a place called Patterson, New Jersey, probably from where you are, Blair,

Robert:

maybe 90 minutes drive.

Robert:

It's about 15 miles west of New York City.

Robert:

And Hamilton, there's this great 75 foot waterfall there.

Robert:

Here's the reason why I love this man so much.

Robert:

They're fighting the Revolutionary War.

Robert:

America is on the run.

Robert:

The Washington, Lafayette Hamilton.

Robert:

They're camped out in this place.

Robert:

The British have already taken over New York

Robert:

City, and they're taking a break, and they see this waterfall.

Robert:

And Hamilton points to it.

Robert:

He says, after we win this war, we have to

Robert:

harness that power.

Robert:

Just what kind of vision is that if you're a

Robert:

betting man, okay, and you say, what are the ODS of America?

Robert:

First of all, winning this war, it's like 99 to one odds.

Robert:

Then turning around and building, making an industrial center when most of the founders

Robert:

are agrarians.

Robert:

And these free farmers, and they don't like

Robert:

industrialism, they don't like banking, which will be the next topic we'll cover.

Robert:

And Hamilton is envisioning this.

Robert:

He's like, we have to harness this power.

Robert:

We have to exploit the Earth for all of its resources and build it to our comfort so we

Robert:

could have this incredible standard of living.

Robert:

And there's a beautiful plaque in Pasaic

Robert:

Falls, and it says, alexander Hamilton envisioned this great potential power of these

Robert:

scenic falls for industrial development.

Robert:

And again, he differs from the other founders

Robert:

on this because they were more thinking.

Robert:

Most were southerners who had this agrarian

Robert:

feudal lifestyle that they largely wanted to preserve.

Robert:

And even the northerners, even like John Adams and the New Englanders, they were somewhat

Robert:

mixed on industrialism.

Robert:

They didn't envision the way Hamilton did.

Robert:

And now, if we tie this into iront, who is a greater proponent of the Industrial Revolution

Robert:

as a writer, as a thinker, than I'm read.

Robert:

She just glorifies it in her novels and in her

Robert:

nonfiction, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal.

Robert:

And she has an article, The Anti Industrial

Robert:

Revolution, where she shows the damages that come out of living in an anti industrial

Robert:

society.

Blair:

Yeah.

Martin:

Yes.

Blair:

Similarities are very striking.

Blair:

I'll tell you what about now.

Blair:

Let's go back and touch on the self made aspect of the young Hamilton.

Blair:

It was very young, as you said, I guess he was self taught, but he wrote that letter that

Blair:

other people just recognized and said, well, he's not going to learn anything here, we

Blair:

should send him to the colonies.

Robert:

Yes. Self taught.

Robert:

Yeah. I would say when his mother died, so his

Robert:

father left, his father abandoned him and his younger brother when he was ten years old.

Robert:

And then a couple of years later, his mother, both him and his mother got sick.

Robert:

They're puking up a storm.

Robert:

He falls asleep and wakes up and she's lying

Robert:

in bed dead next to him.

Robert:

Yeah.

Robert:

Then he moves in with his cousin.

Robert:

The cousin commits suicide.

Robert:

I mean, all this is in the Hamilton musical.

Robert:

It's all covered in the opening song.

Robert:

I credit Lin Manuel Miranda for synopsising the man's 1st 20 years in an excellent five

Robert:

minute piece.

Robert:

But when his mother dies, she leaves him these

Robert:

books.

Robert:

Alexander Pope livies the lives of Plutarch

Robert:

and Hamilton's reading about these heroes.

Robert:

And he just has this glorious vision.

Robert:

And he wanted to be kind of like an Achilles, to lead this glorious but short life, to die

Robert:

on the battlefield, to make a name for himself.

Robert:

In doing this, he wished there was a war.

Robert:

That was like his statement to his best

Robert:

friend, I wish there was a war when he's like twelve years old.

Robert:

And so the confluence of events with him coming to the United States and then he

Robert:

studied.

Robert:

So he wanted to go to what would be called

Robert:

Princeton University.

Robert:

He wanted to do a rapid, like, two year

Robert:

course, cover everything briefly.

Robert:

And Aaron Burr, his nemesis, was at school at

Robert:

the time, and they said, no, you can't go that fast.

Robert:

And James Madison, too.

Robert:

So he got turned down from Princeton and went

Robert:

to King's College, which is now known as Columbia University.

Robert:

And Hamilton and John J. Were the ones who renamed it after America won the war.

Robert:

They took out a lot of the regal names of streets and institutions.

Robert:

But at King's College, he was excellent student, loved to write.

Robert:

He was writing pamphlets when he's like 1516 years old, during the revolutionary era, and

Robert:

long documents, going again back to writing them anonymously.

Robert:

And at one point they found out, they're like, it's a collegiant, this guy is he's in

Robert:

college? And when the war broke out, they closed King's

Robert:

College.

Robert:

And Hamilton was a captain of a unit.

Robert:

He was drilling the militia and so, yeah, these are all self made elements.

Robert:

Player this is like I'm thinking, again, I'm using myself as a contrast, and I'm like, Man,

Robert:

I'm sorry, I want to shine this guy's shoes, but I'm not the self made type that he is.

Robert:

And if we go, even if we think of Iranda, what she experienced in her youth with the Russian

Robert:

Revolution, the upheaval there and that she survived that and then wrote her way, the both

Robert:

of them kind of wrote their way out of this real, depressing, disgusting early years of

Robert:

their lives misery.

Robert:

And they just had this global this global

Robert:

vision, this heroic vision of what life could be.

Robert:

So I think that's about enough on the self made aspect that I can.

Blair:

Okay, let's touch on his tenure as George Washington's aide.

Blair:

Camp yeah, he was brilliant.

Blair:

Strategist I believe I read.

Robert:

Yes, he was in fact Hamilton.

Robert:

So all he did, he butted heads with Washington

Robert:

because he wanted to fight, not write.

Robert:

That's kind of the way he wanted to be on the

Robert:

battlefield.

Robert:

And Washington is like, no, you are way too

Robert:

important.

Robert:

He could think the way Washington could think,

Robert:

and he could write letters, dozens of letters every week asking for supplies.

Robert:

And Hamilton came up with this idea because Washington fought for the British military and

Robert:

they had this old world form of fighting where you line up on each side, both sides line up,

Robert:

they count down, and then they shoot at each other and the soldiers die.

Robert:

And all the generals are off limits because they're going to have tea parties during the

Robert:

winter when you don't fight.

Robert:

So it was like a completely different type of

Robert:

battle.

Robert:

And the French on the American continent, the

Robert:

French and English had done this for 150 years, the final one being the French and

Robert:

Indian War, 1760.

Robert:

Like, I think 59 to 64 was that war.

Robert:

And Washington fought during that war.

Robert:

And Hamilton said, no, we need something

Robert:

different.

Robert:

Instead of taking them head on, we would get

Robert:

slaughtered because they outman us.

Robert:

They outgun us and they out think us.

Robert:

So what we need to do is take advantage of the terrain.

Robert:

We need to pick them off.

Robert:

We need to have what is kind of today called

Robert:

guerrilla warfare and fight long enough to bankrupt them, to bankrupt the British bank,

Robert:

the bank of England, which is funding this war.

Robert:

And then also where even the English would say, you know, why are we still fighting that

Robert:

war across the Atlantic Ocean? We got our own problems over here.

Robert:

And that's precisely what ended up happening.

Robert:

So that was one of Hamilton's strategies that

Robert:

he persuaded Washington about.

Robert:

He wasn't the only one.

Robert:

But that wasn't Washington's initial plan.

Robert:

His initial plan was fighting a European war,

Robert:

European style, and Hamilton persuaded him otherwise.

Blair:

Okay, yes.

Blair:

Now, I agree with Hamilton again about because

Blair:

of the debt situation, a bank should be formed what can you say about that?

Robert:

Yeah. So let's set the context here that America wins the war and they are

Robert:

bankrupt.

Robert:

And the 13 colonies, there are border

Robert:

disputes.

Robert:

There are currency disputes.

Robert:

Some states will take the Continental, which was this printed worthless currency, and other

Robert:

states would not.

Robert:

And this is again where Hamilton realized we

Robert:

need to unite these states and we need a central currency where everyone agrees.

Robert:

And guess what? That currency needs to be backed by precious

Robert:

metals, by gold and silver.

Robert:

Even argued with Benjamin Franklin, who was a

Robert:

printer and kind of wanted to print money to deal with this issue.

Robert:

But also Jefferson and others were like, we have a new country.

Robert:

We forget about the debt.

Robert:

Let's just start all over.

Robert:

The debt was so high to European nations and to people like Robert Morris, wealthy

Robert:

businessman who had financed the war.

Robert:

And Hamilton said, first of all, morally, we

Robert:

need to pay off the debt, okay? There's a moral obligation and there's a

Robert:

sanctity in contracts.

Robert:

That's one thing.

Robert:

And then secondly, financially, if we pay the debt, we will establish our credit with the

Robert:

rest of the world.

Robert:

And because we uphold individual rights and

Robert:

freedom, we will leapfrog over these countries because we have these incredible resources

Robert:

here in the colonies that if we go with my industrial system, we are going to surpass

Robert:

these countries within a couple of decades.

Robert:

A lot of people knew that.

Robert:

They actually knew that.

Robert:

Some Europeans feared that America would

Robert:

leapfrog over them.

Robert:

And Spain in particular, they were really

Robert:

jealous of the rapid ascent.

Robert:

So several of the founders just wanted to

Robert:

forget the debt.

Robert:

They were like, no, let's just wash our hands

Robert:

and startle over.

Robert:

So Hamilton had to persuade them that and he

Robert:

comes up with this idea of the bank of the United States, which was a privately run bank,

Robert:

but it was chartered to exist for 20 years for the purpose of paying off the debt, and then

Robert:

it would dissolve after that.

Robert:

Servicing the debt is the banking term.

Robert:

And he fought.

Robert:

He fought with Madison, he fought with

Robert:

Jefferson.

Robert:

And this is where it gets a little bit blurry,

Robert:

particularly whether it's objectivists or libertarians.

Robert:

They want a sharp line divided between state and economics, and there should not be one

Robert:

inch of crossover.

Robert:

But I've talked a lot with my good friend

Robert:

Richard Salzman about this, and we think it's impossible.

Robert:

I can't call it a good theory.

Robert:

That doesn't work in practice.

Robert:

I don't even think it's not possible.

Robert:

Even in theory.

Robert:

The two overlap.

Robert:

It's called political economy.

Robert:

And there is an overlap there.

Robert:

And Hamilton's idea was we have this bank, we

Robert:

service the debt, we get the country off the ground, and in 20 years it dissolves precisely

Robert:

what ended up happening.

Robert:

But before then, there are just two other

Robert:

quick things here, Blair.

Robert:

Before then, the first bank was called the

Robert:

bank of Philadelphia, which robert Morris, the America's first wealthy banker and

Robert:

businessman, who, as I said, funded the he largely funded the 90% of bullets that were

Robert:

shot during the war came from the bank account of Robert Morris.

Robert:

In a few senses, he was kind of like Hamilton's forefather in coming over from

Robert:

Britain and becoming incredibly successful and wealthy.

Robert:

So he had the same idea of having this bank and funding the debt and then dissolving.

Robert:

And in fact, Washington went to morris was the superintendent during the war.

Robert:

He was the Superintendent of finance.

Robert:

And he got tarred and feathered, almost

Robert:

literally.

Robert:

In fact, Ben Franklin said, be prepared.

Robert:

Every blood sucker is going to come and call you names that you wouldn't believe, which is

Robert:

what happened to Morris.

Robert:

So when George Washington approached him and

Robert:

said, can you be the Secretary of treasury to run our finances?

Robert:

Morris said, no, thank you.

Robert:

But you have a guy on your own staff who could

Robert:

do it.

Robert:

That's Alexander Hamilton.

Robert:

So another thing, Blair and Martin during the war, hamilton is lugging around these massive

Robert:

volumes of economics books.

Robert:

Okay?

Blair:

Really?

Robert:

Yeah. And he's reading them and he's corresponding with Morris.

Robert:

And one of the things was this famous expression, a debt is a blessing, if not

Robert:

excessive.

Robert:

That's the main clause there.

Robert:

And the idea of credit and debt was not really understood back then.

Robert:

The idea of credit meant you lend money and you will get paid.

Robert:

So you're making money kind of work for itself and your reputation is what allows, you know,

Robert:

is what allows this credit to be something valuable.

Robert:

But a lot of people were old fashioned and they didn't understand this concept, and they

Robert:

just thought money and banks were swindlers and all they did was move other people's money

Robert:

around.

Robert:

We could see in the 220, 30 years we haven't

Robert:

advanced that far because that's still kind of the perception of banks today.

Robert:

But also Hamilton himself founded the bank of New York 1784, which got New York itself.

Robert:

It was burned out after seven years of fighting during it was British occupied it and

Robert:

it was kind of their headquarters.

Robert:

And it was all burned out after the war.

Robert:

So Hamilton started bank of New York, which got the city itself off the ground.

Robert:

It was actually the first capital of the country as a result.

Robert:

So he had a lot of experience, but he had to explain to the Madisons and the Jeffersons who

Robert:

said, no, there's nothing in the Constitution that says you could charter a bank.

Robert:

That's not the purpose of government here.

Robert:

And what is the purpose of government?

Robert:

That's a that's a broader you know, that's a broader category.

Robert:

Is it something so if if we want to I want to go back to a term that what Hamilton calls

Robert:

energetic government.

Robert:

And this is why libertarians in particular

Robert:

hate him and I think objectivists who don't like him buy into the libertarian argument,

Robert:

which is.

Robert:

That government.

Robert:

It should only do a few things and nothing else.

Robert:

And that part I agree with.

Robert:

But when Hamilton says energetic, meaning,

Robert:

yes, we need a police force, yes, we need a military, and we'll cover that.

Robert:

He founded the Coast Guard and wanted a military at West Point.

Robert:

That was his conception and objective laws.

Robert:

He was a lawyer.

Robert:

He wrote this in.

Robert:

And he wanted sanctity of contract.

Robert:

All of these things that I ran herself in her political philosophy.

Robert:

Advocates follow up there.

Blair:

No, I was just agreeing with you.

Martin:

Go ahead.

Blair:

Sorry.

Robert:

Okay. Yeah. So just wrapping up with the bank.

Robert:

So it does what Hamilton wanted it to do and then he dies.

Robert:

He gets killed.

Robert:

18 four in the duel with Aaron Burr.

Robert:

And then 1812 rolls around and America and Britain are at war again and they have no

Robert:

money to fund this war.

Robert:

So Madison and Jefferson jefferson is the

Robert:

president.

Robert:

No, I'm sorry.

Robert:

Jefferson handed it over to Madison at this time.

Robert:

And they're like, even though Hamilton is dead, his idea of having a bank, we need a

Robert:

bank.

Robert:

So they founded the Second National Bank and

Robert:

it financed the war.

Robert:

And so precisely the reason that Hamilton

Robert:

wanted it came to fruition to the arch opponents of his idea of having this bank.

Robert:

And so I think that's a short case that could I would yield now to my friend Richard Salzman

Robert:

on anything deeper on this idea.

Robert:

But the thing to keep in mind, privately run,

Robert:

gold backed so this idea that Hamilton's National Bank was a precursor to the today

Robert:

central bank and Federal Reserve, that is as opposite as can be.

Robert:

The two have nothing to do in common except they both have the word government in it.

Robert:

I don't buy that case.

Martin:

Robert, I have a commentary, you said about the Spanish.

Martin:

He also discussed about how we should set up monetary regarding if it would be like

Martin:

decimals or tens or whatever, or in these eight pieces, the Spanish.

Martin:

So that was funny when he mentioned the Spanish were afraid of it.

Martin:

And then also as interesting in coin collecting and so on and silverstacker, you

Martin:

could say, have you seen coins that he have minted, in a way, or come up with this idea of

Martin:

a mint?

Robert:

It's interesting, Martin, that you bring that up.

Robert:

Actually, that was Jefferson's.

Robert:

Jefferson's.

Robert:

So they both served.

Robert:

Jefferson was Secretary of treasury.

Robert:

And while Hamilton was Secretary no, I'm sorry, jefferson was Secretary of State while

Robert:

Hamilton was Secretary of treasury.

Robert:

And so it was actually Jefferson's job to mint

Robert:

the coins.

Robert:

And Hamilton wrote about it and praised

Robert:

Jefferson for his ideas, his design of the coins.

Robert:

There was definitely some overlap, but he wanted Americans on it.

Robert:

Hamilton did not want royalty, which was on all coins, all currency before America.

Robert:

Pretty much it was royalty, I think every country.

Robert:

And if we look at denominations of American currency, hamilton was on more different

Robert:

currencies.

Robert:

I have a picture in my presentation showing

Robert:

all the different kinds of currencies that he was on the face of.

Robert:

And of course this reminds me if we go to Ein Rand herself, one of my absolute favorite

Robert:

articles called The Money Making Personality.

Robert:

And she says wealth is a product of human

Robert:

intellect.

Robert:

And again, this is Hamiltonian because he saw

Robert:

industrialism comes from the mind, okay, it's taking natural resources that stood under the

Robert:

natives bare feet forever.

Robert:

And he's like, no, we need to utilize this by

Robert:

thinking and by using our thought and labor and putting it to use.

Robert:

So again, here's the parallel I see between Rand and Hamilton.

Robert:

And if we look at Wall Street, wall street was born out of Hamilton's idea of having a stock

Robert:

exchange and allowing traders to speculate on money and make your money work for you.

Robert:

And of course, there's a famous picture of Iron Rand standing on Wall Street and you can

Robert:

see the statue of George Washington in the background.

Robert:

And Hamilton, who was effectively the founder of Wall Street, was died and is now buried on

Robert:

Wall Street at Trinity Church.

Robert:

So I think it's a bit of there's another

Robert:

overlap there between the two of them.

Robert:

So between Iron's money making personality and

Robert:

Hamilton's total pro business, pro finance approach, there's overlap there that I can't

Robert:

say there is with another founder in America's founding era.

Martin:

Okay, Robert, I will do before I continue and then also wrap up about I mean,

Martin:

this is so it's historical, but you really hear back of a history here what's going on in

Martin:

the world today, especially foreign policy.

Martin:

But I wanted to have a call to action here

Martin:

middle and then also on a good note, so I would envision that Alexander Hamilton, if he

Martin:

would see like Bitcoin and trade and forex trading and others and he could really support

Martin:

that.

Martin:

So I will say if you like this value and this

Martin:

conversation so far, you could send digital telegram a boostogram and send Satushis, for

Martin:

example, with a symbolic number like 1776 around I think one $2 in fiat currency at

Martin:

today's date.

Martin:

So really interesting to hear with Robert.

Martin:

And yeah, we have his foreign policy and military academy left.

Martin:

And then, of course, Blair, if you have something but I wanted to put that in because

Martin:

it's so interesting with fascinating with the history and ideas in action and what he did in

Martin:

a short time period because he didn't live for so long.

Martin:

He was a so called like this gentleman to be in duel and ending that too soon.

Martin:

So that's in a way sad.

Martin:

But yeah.

Martin:

So please continue.

Martin:

And blair.

Martin:

And okay.

Robert:

Blair.

Robert:

I'm sorry.

Blair:

No, go ahead.

Robert:

A couple of quick things that Martin said.

Robert:

First of all, call to action, please support this program, Secular Foxholes.

Robert:

It is awesome work that the two of you are doing.

Robert:

I gather it cost maybe a bitcoin, I don't know, put some of my money where my mouth is

Robert:

and have you get more resources and preferably more reach with the good work that you're

Robert:

doing.

Robert:

But we come back to this Bitcoin.

Robert:

What hamilton thing? One thing I forgot to say was so when he's a

Robert:

kid in the Caribbean, he works for this import export company, Beekman and Kruger.

Robert:

In downtown New York, there's a famous street, Beekman, which I'd always whenever I go there

Robert:

as a kid, I would like that word, but I didn't know this was the guy who had the import

Robert:

export company.

Robert:

And they would leave Hamilton for six months

Robert:

at a time.

Robert:

They would leave this 1314 year old kid for

Robert:

six months at a time running while they go to the colonies.

Robert:

He's running the business and he's cursing out older men who come in with cattle that are

Robert:

like bone, they're like bony and they're ready to die.

Robert:

And he's like, compounder what you've just done, this mistake you've just made, and he'd

Robert:

fatten them up by giving them a lot of water and then trade them up, the value of them.

Robert:

But one thing if we go to currency so in his head, he had to calculate the exchange rates

Robert:

of Spanish ducats and Dutch.

Robert:

I should know, Florence.

Robert:

I think he had to make these calculations in his head.

Robert:

So international currency, what you're talking about here, Martin, is this is what Hamilton

Robert:

is doing, age 13, 1415.

Robert:

And again, when it came time for United States

Robert:

and Secretary of treasury, he wanted to unite all of those things.

Robert:

Now, my last thing on Bitcoin is that I should know more about it by now, which I am

Robert:

ignorant, more ignorant than I'd like to be.

Robert:

But I guess my one question is in Hamilton's

Robert:

idea of currency, it is backed by something.

Robert:

And that's the part that I tend to be.

Robert:

If you can explain this to me, I'm open to persuasion.

Robert:

I mean, I see the value of it because people are using it and the value goes up and down.

Robert:

But in Hamilton's mind, the currency must be backed by something tangible and objective.

Robert:

That's where I can't say 100%.

Robert:

I can't speak to that.

Robert:

But then again, I'm not that knowledgeable.

Robert:

Either way, we'll link you that in.

Martin:

Show notes when we had the guest dave, Wexler, about explaining about Bitcoin.

Robert:

Okay? Yeah, I know.

Robert:

Dave yes.

Martin:

So thanks again for that because we haven't been fought about that and we say we

Martin:

are newbies also, but to get that AHA moment and then, of course, think about it and learn

Martin:

from the history.

Martin:

So, yeah, please continue.

Martin:

And thanks for that note.

Robert:

Sure.

Blair:

Blair you have all right, well, thank you.

Blair:

One thing I'll quickly say about Bitcoin is I think the most attractive aspect about Bitcoin

Blair:

is it's a decentralized currency.

Blair:

It's a peer to peer, one person to another

Blair:

without government interference.

Blair:

And I think I have the originators some of his

Blair:

crucial documents that he published, but I haven't gotten to them.

Blair:

I'm slowly reading through a compilation.

Robert:

There.

Martin:

You have a good connection, Blair, and you will continue because think if we would

Martin:

read what they read wrote in these federalist papers and so on and get it the same thing as

Martin:

Satushi when you see that document or get it explained for somebody who knows a bit more

Martin:

and explain it for a layman and you get it.

Martin:

That's the AHA moment.

Martin:

Same thing when you're reading rant's work and as you have done here, Robert, I mean, it's

Martin:

amazing to compare and contrast it and then do it in a nice presentation, including that

Martin:

you're in train of thought and we are interrupting you whole time.

Martin:

But of course, it's our show.

Robert:

One topic, gentlemen, that there's dispute about it.

Robert:

I totally agree with Blair.

Robert:

If I could just add one other thing.

Robert:

So there are two reasons for my caller mistake.

Robert:

I have not gotten involved with bitcoin.

Robert:

One was not backed by something concrete.

Robert:

And two, I totally love the idea of decentralized.

Robert:

Decentralization.

Robert:

My fear is the government's going to find a

Robert:

way to come in and shut this damn thing down because that's all they do, is destroy

Robert:

everything they touch.

Robert:

So I have stayed away while this value has

Robert:

gone up and up and up and up.

Robert:

That's my short history of bitcoin and what I

Robert:

like about it and what I'm not sure about it and why I did.

Martin:

And thanks again and for the green room.

Martin:

You gave an offer there how to present it in a good way, to ask about how to support work,

Martin:

but also to present it so you could say the fellow individual listener understands it.

Martin:

And there you have your skills and expertise with leopard and others to do that.

Martin:

So that got me thinking it has to explain in a good way.

Martin:

Yeah.

Martin:

So I really have been thinking of it myself

Martin:

and Robert Blair was introducing me to, for example, services like Swan, Bitcoin and

Martin:

others, that you could do it in in a safe way and and so it's a development.

Martin:

So again, you have to get it and then grasp it and then apply it.

Blair:

All right, Robert, we're approaching an hour and there's just a few more things you

Blair:

say in your notes.

Blair:

You have book comma myth about Alexander

Blair:

Hamilton, question mark.

Robert:

Oh, boy.

Robert:

There's one book.

Robert:

Yeah.

Robert:

What is it, the myth?

Martin:

It's my comment during the presentation.

Martin:

You have these myths about Alexander Hamilton and you took out of your bookshelf book that

Martin:

explained all these different myths.

Robert:

Yeah. So one of the things about Hamilton was because he was an outsider and

Robert:

here's again with Rand, here are so many parallels with Rand.

Robert:

He was always the smartest guy in the room and he was brash and I'm Rand, check and check.

Robert:

Okay.

Robert:

As far as Rand goes, they were very

Robert:

Domineering persuasive or aimed to be persuasive.

Robert:

And this rubbed people the wrong way in many cases.

Robert:

And because Hamilton's life was cut short, died age 47 in 18 four, and his enemies

Robert:

outlived him by 20 to something 28, the two most prominent being John Adams and Thomas

Robert:

Jefferson, who both died July 4, 1826.

Robert:

And they had a chance to kind of rewrite the

Robert:

history and say these things about Hamilton.

Robert:

And I've seen the same thing with Iron Rand.

Robert:

If someone says, Well, I was in a room with Iron and she said, A, B, and C, we have no way

Robert:

to verify that.

Robert:

A lot of this in the book about the myths of

Robert:

Hamilton is the author goes through that, all of these things, and he debunks so many of

Robert:

these myths about him.

Robert:

And that's kind of one of the problems.

Robert:

And that's where I appreciate the work that Ron Chernow did.

Robert:

First of all, Hamilton's wife outlived him by 50 years.

Robert:

And she saw his stature, his legacy being twisted by a lot of these opponents of his.

Robert:

And again, rewriting history and making it all about only the Declaration and not about the

Robert:

Constitution.

Robert:

This definitely had an impact in his life of

Robert:

what did he do? What did he not do?

Robert:

Alexander Hamilton and The Persistence of Myth is the name of the book which, as I said, I

Robert:

highly recommend.

Robert:

I met the author, Stephen Knott, and chatted

Robert:

with him about I wish this book came out on audio.

Robert:

That's what I asked him.

Robert:

Because I love audiobooks.

Robert:

I read it.

Martin:

You're reading my mind now, Robert.

Martin:

And I like audiobooks also because the time

Martin:

and you could do the same thing with podcasting.

Martin:

But I understand the value of reading a hardcover book.

Martin:

And I've written a blog post about that with Tim Sanders that talked about love cat and how

Martin:

your library.

Martin:

So when I saw your library, I could definitely

Martin:

say, oh, Robert, he knows the thing to have a library.

Martin:

But do you have any tip of that? The Federalist Paper like Audible and

Martin:

audiobooks.

Robert:

Yes, I have papers.

Robert:

And Carrie Ann and I, the first thing we wrote

Robert:

for the objective standard was a celebration of the Federalist Papers.

Robert:

When I used to write regularly for the Objective Standards, it would always be kind

Robert:

of like on this day in history.

Robert:

And one was on the celebration.

Robert:

October 1787, I think was The Federalist number one written by Hamilton.

Robert:

But, yeah.

Robert:

So I think between the two of them, their

Robert:

legacies were diminished.

Robert:

Their impact was diminished partially because

Robert:

they had very strong characters that didn't mind clashing.

Robert:

I ran with the conservatives in the 1940s, particularly some of whom could have been her

Robert:

defenders, maybe Von Mises and Henry Haslett.

Robert:

On the economic side, there were no

Robert:

philosophers in her lifetime who were really prominent philosophers who were with her.

Robert:

And Hamilton had the same thing, the same pattern, where he clashed with all the

Robert:

Virginians except for George Washington, and he persuaded Washington over time to free his

Robert:

slaves.

Robert:

Okay, here's the impact of Hamilton where none

Robert:

of the Virginians freed their slaves, they all died with their slaves intact.

Robert:

And Washington, through the efforts of Hamilton, ended up doing that.

Robert:

And so he clashed on industrialism, he clashed on banking.

Robert:

He clashed we didn't even get to foreign policy.

Robert:

He clashed on foreign policy.

Robert:

They didn't even want there to be an army, a

Robert:

standing army in his lifetime because they thought that would lead to war.

Robert:

And Hamilton was like, no, we need not only an army, but we need a military academy to train

Robert:

soldiers.

Robert:

And guess what?

Robert:

West Point, where we fought this battle and Benedict Arnold betrayed us, that's a good

Robert:

spot.

Robert:

And also we need a Coast Guard to protect our

Robert:

shores.

Robert:

This is tying in again to Iron Ram.

Robert:

When we look at her famous speech to the graduates at West Point, there dovetails

Robert:

perfectly with one of my favorite quotes that she says is that West Point has given America

Robert:

a long line of heroes, known and unknown.

Robert:

And one of those heroes is Alexander Hamilton.

Robert:

She might not know, I don't think.

Robert:

To my knowledge, her favorite founder asked in

Robert:

the Q and A was Jefferson, and it was only because of the Declaration of Independence.

Robert:

To my knowledge.

Robert:

I don't know how much she knew about the other

Robert:

founders, their personalities, and for much of Hamilton's life and career you asked about in

Robert:

school.

Robert:

When I was in school, I didn't know anything

Robert:

about him.

Robert:

He's on the $10 bill and he's on the verge of

Robert:

getting kicked off the $10 bill because they wanted to put a woman on it about seven, eight

Robert:

years ago.

Robert:

But it was the musical that came in and kind

Robert:

of gave this gave him a second life.

Robert:

And unfortunately, he's not going to be taken

Robert:

off currency now.

Robert:

I think Andrew Jackson is in danger of being

Robert:

booted off the currency at some point.

Robert:

Those are a couple of other things that I

Robert:

think are important in Hamilton, distinguishing him from the other founders.

Robert:

And then a couple of centuries later, Ein Rand distinguished from other intellectuals in her

Robert:

era, and their message is largely bastardized.

Robert:

How often do you see an article on Iran where

Robert:

they get everything wrong about her and it's usually on purpose?

Blair:

Far too often.

Blair:

Yeah.

Robert:

And it's kind of the same thing with this persistence of myth with Hamilton as

Robert:

well, where they say these things about him and his ideas that just are not grounded in

Robert:

fact.

Martin:

But thanks to you, Robert, and others, you could go to the source and do you want to

Martin:

end on that? Because your presentation really made an

Martin:

impact and how you could have really, in a positive way, stamp something into your head,

Martin:

but voluntarily.

Robert:

That was a perfect setup.

Robert:

In baseball, Martin, we call that a hanging

Robert:

curveball.

Blair:

That's right.

Robert:

Yes. So the stamps so Hamilton is on the stamp.

Robert:

In 1957 was 200th anniversary.

Robert:

So he's on the $3 stamp.

Robert:

And in the 1980 $3 stamp.

Robert:

Did I say $3?

Robert:

I'm sorry.

Robert:

$0.03.

Robert:

Thank you.

Robert:

Sure.

Robert:

$3 stamps are coming probably, right?

Blair:

Yeah. Really?

Robert:

I still use proudly.

Robert:

I still use stamps, I still write letters, I

Robert:

still card.

Robert:

I definitely advocate that older way of

Robert:

communication.

Robert:

But in the 1990s, I took part in a letter

Robert:

writing campaign because my sister worked at Minkus Stamp department and she gave me a

Robert:

magazine that had an article.

Robert:

Here's something by you, that Lady Anne Rand

Robert:

that you like.

Martin:

Do you have that read meals?

Robert:

Why? I like stamp collecting.

Robert:

And I'm like, wow, what an awesome story.

Robert:

Because she's looking for heroes.

Robert:

And this was something I would bond with my mother over.

Robert:

I said there should be a stamp about her.

Robert:

And sure enough, and I think it was 1997, it

Robert:

was passed 33 cent stamp.

Robert:

So Hamilton's on the three cent and ran eleven

Robert:

times.

Robert:

Is it?

Robert:

And this beautiful art deco.

Blair:

Yes.

Robert:

Beautiful type painting of her wrapping this up.

Robert:

It brings up this idea.

Robert:

They both made a stamp, they made a statement

Robert:

with their lives, and they've inspired me to make different kinds of statements.

Robert:

I don't know if my letter writing ended up having an impact, but I took some kind of

Robert:

action.

Robert:

And that's what I think.

Robert:

If there are takeaways for your audience, don't be the passenger.

Robert:

Don't be the passenger in your life.

Robert:

What kind of stamp do you want to make in your

Robert:

life? And I think the two of you with this program,

Robert:

there's an opportunity this will outlast you.

Robert:

What can we do that, first of all, that we can

Robert:

enjoy during our lifetime? That's kind of the first thing.

Robert:

But the second thing is what will outlast you.

Robert:

And I'm always personally striving for that in

Robert:

my own life.

Robert:

I think for your listeners, I think that's a

Robert:

good goal to aim for.

Blair:

Outstanding.

Blair:

Thank you so much, Robert.

Blair:

Thank you.

Martin:

Thank you very much, Robert.

Blair:

All right, well, we've been talking with Robert Begley.

Blair:

He is an entrepreneur himself, a speaking coach.

Blair:

And Robert, thanks again.

Blair:

We hope to have you back.

Blair:

And thanks for manning the Foxhole with us.

Martin:

Yes, that's good.

Martin:

When you are in the Foxhole and if you have

Martin:

internet connection or some other, how could listeners reach out to.

Robert:

You and find my website? Robert@begley.com is my email website.

Robert:

Robert Begley.

Robert:

Begley.com.

Robert:

You could google me.

Robert:

I'm out there.

Robert:

I'm in the process of kind of revamping all that material.

Robert:

But I have tons of writing, tons of speaking out there, have upcoming presentations coming

Robert:

up and coaching all the time.

Robert:

My goal is I help presenters to wow their

Robert:

audience.

Robert:

Sadly, I think too many speakers do not know

Robert:

the import and how to be very effective on stage.

Robert:

And that's one of the things I aim to help and often do help presenters, whether it's on the

Robert:

boardroom or on a national stage.

Blair:

Very good.

Blair:

Awesome.

Blair:

All right, that's a wrap.

Martin:

Yeah. Thanks.

Robert:

Thank you.

Blair:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are planning to air this on July 4, america's

Blair:

247th birthday.

Blair:

Happy birthday, America.

Blair:

I speak for myself when I say I'm so grateful to our founders and I'll never apologize for

Blair:

what they did for us.

Blair:

But that's our plan for this episode with

Blair:

Robert.

Blair:

Robert, do you have anything to add?

Robert:

Yes, I would go a step further.

Robert:

Not only never apologize, I will always be

Robert:

grateful for everything they did.

Robert:

Every July 4, I hold a zoom based reading and

Robert:

celebration of the Declaration, which flair you and I did this in Connecticut.

Blair:

Oh, yes.

Robert:

Or so ago.

Robert:

And we also make it a point.

Robert:

After we go around the room reading paragraph by paragraph, then we end the reading by

Robert:

naming all of the signers.

Robert:

Because there were so many names that we don't

Robert:

know.

Robert:

Yes.

Robert:

Thank you.

Robert:

Thomas Jefferson.

Robert:

John Hancock.

Robert:

Benjamin Frank Franklin.

Robert:

But there are others, and they deserve that merit as well.

Robert:

So celebrating American independence is a global thing.

Robert:

Martin does it in his own way in Sweden.

Robert:

And Iran called this the greatest document in

Robert:

political history.

Robert:

So let's celebrate it.

Martin:

And thanks for that.

Martin:

And as an American spirit, I really am

Martin:

interested to be part of that also.

Martin:

We could talk about that.

Martin:

Robert and I have my proposal to have a new holiday, and that's December 16 for

Martin:

celebrating the Boston Tea Party.

Martin:

That we could talk for some other time.

Martin:

And I thank the Industrial Revolution and entrepreneurs and others, and the Hero Show

Martin:

that you have.

Martin:

If everything goes according to plan, it will

Martin:

be published on July 4 on Independence Day, when we are recording this on June 24.

Martin:

So, again, you could have a hat tip and thank you.

Martin:

Thank you, guys.

Martin:

Yeah.

Blair:

All right.

Blair:

You're welcome, Robert.

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About the Podcast

The Secular Foxhole
Separation of Religion and State
As a freethinker, are you looking through binoculars out at the world in the safety of a foxhole? Get fuel for your soul and intellectual ammunition by listening to The Secular Foxhole podcast, in order to fight for the separation of religion and state.

Blair chose this name (The Secular Foxhole) to dispute the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes, but also as a place to share ideas and defend Free Speech. The co-hosts both advocate the separation of Church and State, but also Economics and State. In short, Liberalism, Individualism, and Capitalism.
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About your hosts

Blair Schofield

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I'm a 'lapsed' blogger who turned his blog into a podcast. Now the task is to keep both up to date! My co-host Martin Lindeskog and I have already celebrated our one year anniversary, with the podcast.

Martin Lindeskog

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Creator, ✍🏻 Tea Book Sketches. Indie Biz Philosopher ⚛️ & New Media 📲 Advisor, TeaParty.Media. Blogger since 2002 and podcaster🎙since 2006. First podcast: EGO NetCast. Latest podcast: High Five for Hemp. Support 💲My Work and 🗽 Freedom of Expression: https://bio.link/lyceum