An Eden In The Wilderness: The Story of America [Ep. 2]

Introducing new frozen lemonade Starbucks refreshers beverages.

Try one of three blends of sweet fruit flavors, real fruit pieces, and lemonade to savor every sip of summer. Order yours in the Starbucks app. For the ones who know safety isn't a catchphrase, it's a culture. And the ones who help make sure everyone makes it home safe. For the safety minded who watch everyone's backs, Grainger offers supplies and solutions for every industry, as well as safety assessments and training to keep your facility safe and your people safer.

Call click Grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, the second episode of our series about us, the story of America. And here to tell it is Hillsdale College Professor Bill Maclay, author of the fantastic book, Land of Hope. We owe much of who we are today to our mother country, England, and how different it was from the rest of Europe. Let's get into the story.

Take it away, Bill. England was really lucky to be cut off from the continent. The English channel is not much of a moat to us today, you know, you can drive from London to Paris in a car.

But in those days, a channel was a pretty formidable obstacle. It meant that the culture developed quite independently and the English had their own distinctive institutions. Institutions like common law, a view of law that is very protective of the rights of the people, of individual people, as a result of the fact that common law is customs, customary law. A case at law that's decided by common law is decided on the basis of what did a judge do before? What is the precedent? This is where the whole idea in our law of precedent as an important element in rendering a judicial decision comes from.

It comes from the English. Common law is, as I say, customary law. It's hard to tell the difference between custom and law because in some ways the law is the codification of what's customary.

This is a very different way of looking at law. It's not systematic. It's not abstract. When Napoleon came to power in France, you know, he enacted the Napoleonic Code, which is like an effort to translate the law into a form of geometry and apply all the propositions to the individual instances of life. It's very abstract.

It has lots of big problems. Like where do you draw the line in saying that you're in favor of liberty? Does liberty mean you can do anything? Well, the English, you know, had no problem distinguishing between liberty and license. But if all you have is an abstract principle of liberty, you don't really have any guide rails based on what's worked in the past.

So it's a very stable way of looking at things that this island nation evolved. The other thing that I think is important to point out is that the English, and later we would call them the British, did not go in for absoluteness. They went in instead for an idea in which power of rulers is limited by opposing forces that divided and restrained power. Sounds very American, doesn't it?

And in fact, that's because it is very American. Going back to Magna Carta, the king had to share his power with the barons, the wealthy landowners. And coming out of that tradition, the parliament, they had the power of the purse, as we say, the power of taxation, the power of appropriation. So the crown, the king, couldn't control completely what his own armies did if the parliament didn't approve of it.

And nor could he control a government on the local level. Every place had its sheriff, its justice of the peace, the idea of trial by jury, which is a common law institution. This is a very English thing that once we've got something going that works, we're sort of set in our way. So the English approach was different.

It's complicated. I don't know that anybody could have sat down, some of their philosopher, and devised the English system. It came about because of history, came about because the kings, through the period of the 17th century, the kings were constantly testing the limits. And there were various efforts, the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, and then the Glorious Revolution, a hundred years after the Armada. These all were successful efforts to tamp down the efforts of kings to claim the kind of power that the guys in France and Spain had. While all this is going on, this battling, at the same time, the colonization of the New World is taking place. So it's not that surprising that this was not being micromanaged from London. They had too much else going on on the home front. And what a great thing this was for America, that it worked out this way, because the Spanish colonies, and we can sort of see the legacy of this in the Spanish colonies today, in Mexico, Latin America, a lot of instability. These are systems that got a bad start in life, whereas the English ones started on the notion of entrepreneurship, of individual initiative. They were private undertakings. It was a private thing. If you were a gutsy proprietor who wanted to establish a colony, or got a group of people together who wanted to establish a colony, for whatever purpose, if you can get that together, you could do it.

The playing field was open. In Virginia, which was first 1607, right at the beginning of the 17th century, the people who came, came for one reason and one reason only, to get rich. They were gentlemen. They lived in town, did not have any pioneering skills. They kind of grew up in a part of the English class system that disdained manual labor. They didn't know how to do much of anything. And they didn't really see why they should.

They're a little bit hard to cozy up to. Nor could they own land because actually they were employees of the Virginia Company. That incentive was lacking too. It was really take the money and run in a lot of ways. It's a wonder that Virginia didn't fail.

Half of the settlers died in the first winter. Ironically, what comes along with To Save Virginia is tobacco. Tobacco is a great hit in Europe.

King James I called it a filthy novelty and compared its emanations to the smoky fires of hell. He didn't hold back. When we come back, more of Bill McClay, more of Land of Hope, our second episode here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to hillsdale.edu to learn more. Experience the power and design of the all new, all electric 2023 Nissan Ariya.

This is the total package. Premium finishes, a lush interior, unrivaled tech and unbelievable torque, all powered by an electric heart. Nissan has been pushing the boundaries of what's possible for 90 years. Loaded with new electric and semi-autonomous technologies, the Ariya is Nissan's most powerful EV ever. When you're ready to unlock the thrill of driving, do it in luxury. Do it in the all new, all electric Nissan Ariya and see for yourself why the Ariya is the EV for people who love to drive. Visit NissanUSA.com to learn more about the all new 2023 Nissan Ariya. Available features, limited availability.

Contact your dealer for local inventory information. For each person living with myasthenia gravis, or MG, their journey with this rare neuromuscular condition is unique. That's why Untold Stories Life with myasthenia gravis, a new podcast from iHeartRadio in partnership with Argenix, is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with MG. Host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by this rare disorder. Each episode will uncover the reality of life with myasthenia gravis. From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every person with MG has a story to tell. And by featuring these real life experiences, this podcast hopes to inspire the MG community, educate others about this rare condition, and let those living with it know that they are not alone.

Listen to Untold Stories Life with myasthenia gravis on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Four tickets for just $80 all in can only mean one thing. The sun is out, outdoor venues are open, and summer is live. Get four tickets for $80 all in and choose from over 2,500 of this summer's hottest shows like 50 Cent, Avenged Sevenfold, Counting Crows, Finatonics, Pepe Aguilar, and more. The best summer ever starts with tickets to all your favorite artists. Don't miss out. Four tickets for just $80 all in, on sale July 19th through August 1st.

Head to LiveNation.com slash summers live. And we return to Our American Stories and the second episode of our series, The Story of America, this one titled Establishing Eden in the Wilderness. And it's being brought to us by Hillsdale College professor Bill Maclay, author of the book Land of Hope, and there's a terrific children's version. When we last left off, Bill was telling us about those who arrived first in America from England, those who formed Virginia. They came for business purposes. They came for wealth. Others would come for religious reasons. The pilgrims were the first.

Let's return to the story. These were not desperate people. They were people who were comfortably middle class, even well off, and they were willing to leave all of that behind. They brought their families. They brought their wives and children. These are people who came to stay because they had a goal.

They were establishing Zion in the wilderness. But there was a problem. The original Plymouth was going to be in Virginia. The land was designated for them was, but they got blown off course and they ended up at Cape Cod. And that's where they decided, well, you know, we've run out of provisions.

We can't go any further. So we're going to just drive our stake in the ground here. The problem was that it was actually beyond the jurisdiction of any known government. And there were some really smart guys aboard the ship who were not puritans who figured this out. They joined onto this voyage partly because they could get a free passage to the New World this way and they might be free to just go their own way once they hit landfall. What would happen if all these workmen, what they called aboard ship, they called them the strangers?

What if they all split once they made landfall? So they realized they had a problem. And they and this is why they sat down together before they came ashore and drafted and signed something that we now call the Mayflower Compact.

And it's a very important document. I would say in the history of the world, it represents a group of people coming together and creating themselves as a civil society. It's an act of self creation of a civil society. This is before the idea of the social contract. You know, we think of John Locke and people like that. They were such an influence on the founders of our country. But this was a long time before the Declaration of Independence, a long time before John Locke.

Anyway, they did this. What they did was they created a secular society. Yes, it's got all kinds of flourishes to make it clear that these are God fearing people.

It's also full of flourishes expressing happy subjection to the king, to their king. So they're not declaring independence or anything like that. And they're not saying we are secular. But in fact, it is a secular agreement. And they leave room for freedoms of religion, those who are not believers.

It's quite an interesting document in that way where they tailored it to the situation, but it ended up having a broader applicability. And it mirrors what began to happen in other aspects of life in New England. The churches were all what we call congregational churches. You know that each individual congregation has its own leadership, makes its own rules, unlike, let's say, the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Church, both of which are episcopal churches, meaning that they have people all up the pyramid to whom individual congregations are accountable.

Not so in New England. Each congregation was self-governing. And that's how, to a large extent, they ordered their political life. This is new.

This is really unique. Now, later on, this doctrine would be in the Declaration of Independence itself. But as I say, they did this in practice before it became a theory. And I just want to say, this asks the question, could this have happened at any previous time in human history this way? Isn't this some way connected with the age of exploration?

People from highly developed societies coming to places where they had a pretty free hand in creating the institutions they wanted out of uncut cloth. That's a kind of unique event in human history. Now, Massachusetts Bay Colony was a little bit different.

It was much bigger. The leader, John Winthrop, was a layman, but a very well-educated layman and a very well-off lawyer. Again, this is a guy who, you know, he gave up a lot to come to this far strand. And before they landed, he gave a speech which has come to be regarded as one of the quintessential statements of the Puritan outlook. It's called, by the way, a model of Christian charity. It's establishing at the start what the model according to which the colony should develop itself. And he says, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold the familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together. The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as his own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways so that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness, and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with.

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies. For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. I want to emphasize the fact that to be a city on the hill is not to win some kind of prize, like you've won the Academy Award and you can flaunt your Oscar in front of everybody. It's the eyes of the world are upon us. See, that's what Winthrop says, the eyes of all people are upon us. And he goes on to say, if we are found wanting, if we mess up, not only do we mess up for ourselves, we mess up for all Christians everywhere.

High pressure. You know, you've got to keep shining. You can't just say, oh, I'm having a bad day. I'm not going to be the light of the world.

I'm going to go around and cuss people out. And you've got to be the light of the world constantly. And that's what they believed. And here they are on the other side of the world, dark side of the moon, so to speak.

They're far away from everything known, everything civilized. How could they believe that the eyes of the whole world are upon them? But they did.

But they did. And they took the words of Christ as their own assignment. William Bradford, who was with the pilgrims, he has a passage that's even more powerful in this regard.

Listen to this. Being now past the vast ocean and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men? At what multitude of them there were they knew not, for which waysoever they turned their eyes save upward dead. And they could not have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object.

For summer being ended, all things stand, and appearance was weather-beaten faced. And the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild, a savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now a being bar or gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? And what indeed? Everywhere they looked, save upward to heaven, they saw formidable challenges. And a special thanks to Hillsdale College professor Bill McClay. His book, Land of Hope, go to Amazon with the usual suspects and buy it, and there's a terrific children's version.

The Story of America, the second episode, Establishing Eden in the Wilderness, here on Our American Stories. You know, there are some things in life you just can't trust, like a free couch on the side of the road. Or the sushi rolls from your local gas station. Or when your kid says they don't need the bathroom before the road trip. But there are some things in life you can trust, like the HP Smart Tank printer.

With up to two years of ink included, and outstanding print quality, you can rely on the HP Smart Tank printer from HP, America's most trusted printer brand. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm a car nut. And I will do anything to keep my cars happy, to make sure they stay running smoothly. I look for those things at eBay Motors. With eBay Guaranteed Fit, when you see the green check, you know that part will fit. Get the right parts at the right prices. eBayMotors.com. Let's ride. Eligible items only.

Exclusions apply. $80 all in. On sale July 19th through August 1st. Head to LiveNation.com slash SummersLive.