Dr.

Ray Petersen, welcome to WPBS Weekly.

It's so great to have you here.

- Thank you.

- Well, before we dive into 250 years of American history, let's get to know you a little bit.

We know you grew up on a farm.

You spent decades teaching political science at Jefferson Community College.

I'm willing to bet some of your students out there might recognize you still.

You had plenty of them.

- Hope so.

- Yeah.

How did that background shape your interest in American history and civic life?

- Well, when I was in high school, voltage power lines came crashing through our farm.

- And your farm was in Oswego County?

- In Oswego County, yeah.

From the nuclear plants in Oswego County.

They destroyed nearly 13 acres of beautiful woodlands that were bordered on a river.

So my father fought it in court, but eventually had to give up.

So he bought a sawmill.

We made the trees into lumber, built houses and barns with it.

So we were resilient with that.

We learned the Jeffersonian, you know, characteristic of resilience.

My job on the farm was to raise calves and watching the calves, I became interested.

Why did they do what they did?

And I developed a lifelong interest in human nature as well.

So that'll produce my first novel, which is Cowkind, where the cows are characters as well as the humans.

Everybody there is trying to figure out why are we fighting the Vietnam War, the teaching political science at JCC, there were many great parts of it, but one of my favorites was advising student organizations.

So I was the first full-time advisor to the African-Latin Society, which I'm neither.

I was the first full-time advisor to the first gay lesbian bisexual support group, student group, and the students for peace group.

So my teaching always focused on looking at history from the point of view that the present is history.

What is it that we want to know about the past for our ourselves now and looking into the future?

- Let's dive into that.

I think that's so fascinating.

Thinking, taking our present time, this moment, and looking back in time.

In this case, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, I've heard you describe the revolution as a moment that temporarily expanded opportunity and social equality.

And it sounds like that's right in your wheelhouse in terms of some of the work you did as a writer, as a professor, your work at JCC, what did that look like in real life for ordinary people, 250 years ago?

- As colonists, we were not allowed to make nails.

We are not allowed to make hats.

We had to provide all the raw materials to Britain to be manufactured into clothing or whatever, and it sold back to us.

So getting into like what we forget, we forget about what it was like to be colonies ourselves, exploited politically and economically.

So what happened once we severed ties was we could do those things for ourselves.

Women played a huge role in the revolutionary movement prior to the war, and then afterward by making clothing.

If you showed up in public in what was called home spun clothing, you were making a political statement.

'cause you were supposed to buy the clothing from England at a really, at quite the markup.

The tariffs of their time.

Another part of it is the diversity provided opportunities.

When we got away from feudalism, there are vestiges of feudalism in the colonies, including primogeniture.

So right now, we would settle the question about elections.

The oldest son gets to be the next ruler no matter what else transpires.

And we got away from that.

First with the state constitutions and then with the US Constitution.

- Just absolutely fascinating.

I like this idea too, that you often talk about in your work of, of civic virtue.

Describe to us what that is and why it was so critical 250 years ago.

- Jefferson's a person I like to go to for that.

His definition of freedom was all about being able to do the right thing.

Not to do my own thing, but to do the right thing, which is what's going to expand freedom for myself, my family, and the larger community.

What was involved in that was sacrificing a little bit of my own personal self-interest for the greater good of the larger group.

So civic virtue means that you, you do that.

You set aside that thing that I can gain maybe for myself, for the benefit of the greater group.

And without the larger group having more freedom, I really don't have more freedom.

Best example of civic virtue comes to mind with regard to the war.

George Washington couldn't wait until the war was over and he knew it, so he could hand back his commission as a leader of the continental army.

As soon as he found out that the treaty with Britain was concluded, the treat at the Treaty of Paris, as it was called, he's gave his commission back to back to Congress, he gave power back to the people to govern themselves.

That's a big part of civic virtue as well.

Not holding onto power, beyond your own time.

- So George Washington in many ways at the time, leading by example to what he saw the country wanting to fulfill.

- Well, another one of the things we forget, or if we ever were told this, Washington survived two attempted coup d'état while he was leading the continental army.

So that's the reason it's very important for us to know today.

That's the reason for the second and third amendments.

We've heard about the Second Amendment a lot.

Third Amendment protects us from having soldiers quartered in our homes, which is what, what was happening in Boston, you know, prior to the declaration.

So the second amendment goes a well-regulated militia being necessary for a free state.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

They're all dependent clauses.

If you, you have a right to keep and bear arms because you're gonna be the front line of a defense.

We don't have a big army to defend ourselves that we're paying for raising our taxes, you know, and potentially a threat to a civilian government.

- We're the founders confident that America Americans could live up to that responsibility of that civic virtue of carrying forward that flag?

- If they were confident we wouldn't have checks and balances.

So there are two what's really important, we, and I've found this so many times, we're only told about one part of the checks and balances.

The checks internally to keep one branch from becoming too powerful.

But just as important, maybe even more important for the founders were the checks on the people could be described as external checks.

They didn't trust human nature enough that we could govern ourselves without having this outside force.

And the outside force would be led by these elites who somehow were, they had more reason.

How do we know they had more reason 'cause they had more property.

So if we extend that today, the richest person in the world then would be the most self-governing, virtuous person, not out of self, acting out of self-interest.

I think that kind of flips things on their head in some ways.

- Absolutely.

It makes me think of current conversations about the electoral college.

- Yeah.

- As well.

- The electoral college would be exhibit A for an external check.

We've had probably half a dozen situations in our history where the electoral college created a form of constitutional crisis just in itself.

That the person receiving the most number of votes might not become president, has happened several times in our history.

It always accompanies some controversy and some questioning about the viability of the constitution.

- Can we talk about this tension between liberty and order freedom and stability?

Is that tension part of what has kept the constitution alive for 250 years?

- It's kept the constitution alive sometimes on life support.

It's good to go to a quote from Benjamin Franklin here.

When he came, two quotes, actually, he came outta the Constitution convention.

He was asked by someone, what did we get, a monarchy or a republic?

And he said, a republic, if you can keep it.

it's gonna be up to constant efforts by the citizenry to exercise their civic virtue to maintain it.

He also, this is more, a little bit more pithy.

He said, those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

And that's, it is a constant tension.

Lexus de Tocqueville in the early 19th century wrote democracy in America.

And he said, there's this tension between liberty and equality.

If we go for too much equality, it will threaten our liberty.

He was more worried about that.

I would argue that we need to do more in the way of the economic equality that the opportunities provided when we broke from, from Britain still today.

I brought this book to, to show, this was written in 1976 in the bicentennial crisis of democracy.

The authors are from elite universities in the us, in Europe and Japan, and they argued that we have too much democracy, today.

And democracy is, it grew up along with capitalism.

Adam Smith's wealth of a nation was also published in 1776.

So you've got the whole idea of not having monopolies, of having a competitive economy, a free trade economy to, to benefit us.

But they said in 1976, well, you know, there's too much democracy that hurts capitalism.

So we would go on capitalism and accept limits on our democracy.

I don't think we can tackle issues like climate change.

You name it.

Itself creates an immigration crisis unless we have an engaged citizenry willing to share in the burdens and the benefits.

- Yeah.

Conversations we're still having today.

We've got about a minute left.

If you could sit down with one of the founding fathers for a conversation, what would you want them to know about the country at 250 years old?

What would you tell them?

- I would say the science of your time, which was based upon the, the great chain of being.

The idea that all the creatures on earth are in this chain and the white male was at the top.

No one could exchange positions that this was maybe the best of its time, but in the 19th century brought us evolution.

We evolve, we grow, we change, we benefit.

So that to the extent that we take that in and we use the public education that Jefferson emphasized, local government, civil liberties, we are able to tackle the challenges.

But maybe some of the restrictions on majority rule from the external checks need to be loosened up a bit.

- Great.

Thank you so much.

This has been such a pleasure.

- Thanks.

- Happy 250.