ZadekpediaAuthorship and the Texas textbook dispute
In a “Best of” episode, Bob Zadek described a decision by what he called the conservative Texas textbook writing commission to excise Thomas Jefferson as a founding political philosopher. Zadek listed what he said Jefferson did: wrote the Declaration of Independence, wrote the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom, was a scholar of the revolutionary era, the third president, and the first Secretary of State. Zadek attributed the commission’s motive to a letter Jefferson wrote to a Baptist minister discussing the separation of church and state, in which Jefferson wrote a phrase that lives in history, “a wall of separation between church and state.” Zadek said that was Jefferson’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights, written in private correspondence, and that the commissioners decided Jefferson did not sufficiently embrace the church. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
Signing the Declaration: Benjamin Rush
Harlo Unger told Zadek that Dr. Benjamin Rush was the only MD who signed the Declaration of Independence, and that five others who called themselves doctor had never studied medicine. Unger said the other signers, or almost all of them, were wealthy merchants, bankers and plantation owners, most with slaves, while Rush was a man of modest means who actually believed the words of the preamble that all men were created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Founding Healer (2019)
Unger said Rush became the champion of Americans the other founders forgot: women, slaves, indentured workers, laborers, prisoners, the poor, the indigent sick and the mentally ill. He said neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution ever gave women the right to vote, freed the slaves or gave rights to indentured laborers, and that in most states only property owners could vote, so both documents were written by the wealthy for the wealthy. Zadek quoted the Declaration’s closing phrase about pledging lives, fortunes and sacred honor, and Unger said Jefferson, who wrote those words, fled to Monticello and never fired a shot against the British. Founding Healer (2019)
Unger described Rush’s route into the Second Congress: Rush invited John Adams and Samuel Adams to stay at the Rush home in Philadelphia, and because of his service to local Philadelphians as a doctor he was named to that Congress which signed the Declaration of Independence. Unger said Rush then went to Trenton, treated wounded troops on the battlefield, and turned a commandeered house into the first field hospital in American military history. Founding Healer (2019)
The Declaration as a test of belonging
In an episode on liberalism and nationalism, Zadek argued that diversity of background, race or language is “kind of irrelevant” if people sign on to the American system of freedom, individual rights and personal property, and if they sign on to the Declaration of Independence. He said he did not fear a wave of immigration from anywhere in the world because immigrants simply want to participate in the principles in the Declaration. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)
Yoram Hazony answered that Zadek was being a bit naive, comparing it to believing that 4,000 years of Iraqi history, civilization and religion would evaporate if you read Iraqis the Declaration of Independence or an advanced course in Lockean political philosophy. Hazony said small numbers of Iraqis would likely fit in well, but that 100,000 is not the same as a million, ten million or a hundred million, and that at a certain point you are picking up Iraq with everything good and evil about it and placing it within your country’s boundaries. Zadek replied that the core difference is voluntariness: immigrants come here voluntarily, whereas when we go there we impose it on them, one being coercion and one purely voluntary. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)
Lincoln and the promise of the Declaration
John Cribb told Zadek that the Founders had come under criticism for talking a good game about equality and freedom while setting up a country that institutionalized racism and slavery. Cribb said Lincoln argued the Founders knew slavery was wrong, and that even slaveholders like Jefferson wrote in an early draft of the Declaration that slavery is a “cruel war against human nature itself,” while Benjamin Franklin called it an “atrocious debasement of human nature.” America’s Second Founding (2021)
Cribb said Lincoln explained the Founders could not fight a war against Britain, set up a new country, hold thirteen different states together and get rid of slavery all at the same time, and that Lincoln drew a metaphor of slavery as a cancer in the body politic that would make the patient bleed to death if cut out all at once. What they could do, Cribb said, was lay down principles in the Declaration that spelled the doom of slavery, on purpose: that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Cribb said this was the first time in history a nation was created out of the idea that people should be free and govern themselves, and that those principles were a promise to future generations. America’s Second Founding (2021)
Cribb said the Civil War became a fight to redeem that promise for millions of enslaved Americans, which is why Lincoln called in the Gettysburg Address for a “new birth of freedom,” a rededication to the ideals in the Declaration. He said the country has constantly moved toward those promises, and may never perfectly get there. America’s Second Founding (2021)
Across episodes
The Declaration is treated in four episodes, and the episodes show no development so much as four distinct uses: Zadek on the Texas textbook commission’s excision of Jefferson, Unger on Rush as the only MD signer, Zadek and Hazony on signing on to the Declaration as a test of immigrant belonging, and Cribb on Lincoln reading the Declaration as a promise whose redemption the Civil War began.