A conversation on America and its Founding[s], with help from James Baldwin, Hannah Arendt, Dorothy Day, Christopher Lasch, Garry Wills, Kermit Roosevelt III, and Fred Dewey
I realized, listening to your intriguing summaries of the four lost prophets’ bicentennial messages, that they were going through something like their own version of our sestercentennial. A common theme you point out among them—our need to face ourselves, e.g., visit the underfunded schools and the prisons—seems like an indirect means of signaling this month’s inconvenient stock-taking.
The summaries and commentary also made me wonder if anything really has happened between 1976 and now. Maybe our 250th amounts to the 200th’s augmentatio ad absurdum (with an assist there from Google’s AI).
I love Pete’s defining moment when the current republic was founded, when Washington’s relics, including his sword, were handed over to the slaves who took over Harper’s Ferry. (“I cannot tell a lie” might give way to James McBride’s excellent The Good Lord Bird, a mostly fictional account of John Brown’s public career.) I think Kermit Roosevelt has freed us all to come up with our republic’s moment of founding. It would be a lively discussion.
I confess to a few tears when you guys related the story of how the Algerian World Cup team was welcomed in Lawrence, Kansas, and how the team in turn welcomed the Kansans.
I realized, listening to your intriguing summaries of the four lost prophets’ bicentennial messages, that they were going through something like their own version of our sestercentennial. A common theme you point out among them—our need to face ourselves, e.g., visit the underfunded schools and the prisons—seems like an indirect means of signaling this month’s inconvenient stock-taking.
The summaries and commentary also made me wonder if anything really has happened between 1976 and now. Maybe our 250th amounts to the 200th’s augmentatio ad absurdum (with an assist there from Google’s AI).
I love Pete’s defining moment when the current republic was founded, when Washington’s relics, including his sword, were handed over to the slaves who took over Harper’s Ferry. (“I cannot tell a lie” might give way to James McBride’s excellent The Good Lord Bird, a mostly fictional account of John Brown’s public career.) I think Kermit Roosevelt has freed us all to come up with our republic’s moment of founding. It would be a lively discussion.
I confess to a few tears when you guys related the story of how the Algerian World Cup team was welcomed in Lawrence, Kansas, and how the team in turn welcomed the Kansans.
Great show!