The Thomas Jefferson Hour; #0334; Happiness/Federalism

Welcome to the new Thomas Jefferson Hour, a weekly conversation with the third president of the United States. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Today's program was recorded on August 5, 2003. The main topics in the program include the pursuit of happiness, private versus public, and federalism. Please join us as our host Bill Crystal speaks with Thomas Jefferson portrayed by Humanity Scholar Clay Jenkinson. Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour your weekly conversation with the third president of the United States. Good day to you today, Mr. Jefferson. Good day to you today, citizen. Mr. Jefferson, one of the Chateauquins Richard Merrill who portrays Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a later president of the United States, has asked if it would be possible for you to discuss the phrase the pursuit of happiness. I would be happy to do that. You sort of borrowed that phrase, at least most of it, from John Locke. Perhaps you

could tell us what Mr. Locke had in mind and then you could share with us what your own particular vision of that phrase means. Mr. Merrill's contention is that in this period of time most Americans look upon that phrase as a license to go to the store and buy anything they want. He thinks that what you had in mind was something considerably different, that it was not about the individual doing the purchasing, but it was about covenant and society living together as a whole. I think he's right. Happiness involves many things and it certainly involves material happiness and comforts, but that is not the primary meaning of it. This is a dense issue and we'll have to talk about it from several different perspectives, but first of all let me clear up Locke. The phrase pursuit of happiness is Locke and in two senses. John Locke, the British political theorist, who wrote the essay concerning human understanding in the second treatise on government, also an essay concerning toleration, was a 17th century British political theorist, and he's really in many

regards the father of the Anglo-American rights tradition as we understood it during the Enlightenment and American Revolution. In his second treatise on government he argues essentially what the Declaration of Independence argues that whenever a government ceases to respect the natural rights of its constituents, those constituents if they can find a pattern of abuse or despotism, have it in their power to dissolve that government, to withdraw their consent from it, to go back to what Locke likes to call a state of nature, and then to generate a new consensual government through a new constitution. So that's the Declaration of Independence argument in a nutshell that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the rights of man, the people have a right, even a duty to rise up and change that government, including by use of force. In the second treatise on government, if I remember correctly, Mr. Locke uses the phrase, life liberty and the pursuit of property. That is correct. The my phrase,

life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is a paraphrase with an adjustment of Locke's phrase from the second treatise, life liberty and a state, or life liberty and property. Locke believes that amongst the natural rights that we cannot alienate that are ours inherently and we retain them in any government, are the rights to protection of one's person, the security of life, liberty, the ability to choose one's career, to be mobile, to be left alone by outside restraint as much as possible, and then the right to accumulate a modest estate, to have a garden, to have some livestock, to fence in a plot of ground, and to live off the fruits of that estate. And Locke, those are not the only self-evident rights, but Locke centered on those as the key trinity of rights that all human beings enjoy, life liberty and a state. When I

came to write the Declaration of Independence, although I had neither book nor pamphlet open in front of me, only a blank sheet of paper, I was of course aware of Locke's treatises and all of the paraphrases of them that had been very widely circulated. Locke was speaking natural law and anybody who articulates natural law in an age that's committed to natural law is going to be paraphrased endlessly by others because we all, I think, agree on the basic sets of rights that humans have by virtue of their birth alone. So the phrase comes from Locke, the tripartite nature of the phrase comes from Locke and even the phrase pursuit of happiness interestingly enough comes from Locke, but in another context, Locke says in several other places in his writings that the purpose of public life, of community, of what you're calling a covenant, is the creation of public happiness. Not private happiness, but the creation of a public wheel, a common wealth, which produces happiness for its collective citizen body. Happiness, wheel,

common wheel, common wealth, that's an interesting concept that doesn't really mean that what we're talking about is going to Walmart when you say that we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you're saying really that we have the right to life, to liberty, and to common wealth, to a life liberty and good government, good government, good republic. When I said in another context in this are happy republic, that's the sense in which I mean that the republic has been designed to emanate from and lean on the will of the people and to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of our citizens and to instead of creating duty or warlike valor or some puritanical notion of grim public or private responsibility or cringing before an Old Testament God, the purpose of a common wealth says lock is to produce happiness by which he

means satisfaction, a sense of being empowered, being listened to, not being over-regulated, having the right to come into the public sphere and make your views known, having the right to worship any God of your choice. That's what he means by happiness, not gleeful parties laid into the night or individual hedonism, one person loves to fly kites and another person loves to drink wine. Those are all important things to talk about but that's not what lock meant by pursuit of happiness. And yet I think probably just Merrill is right that in our time that's precisely what people do think when they encounter this phrase, that I have the right to go out there and do anything that makes me feel good. Well I think that's all right. I think that America unique in history is a nation which serves as a platform for individual definitions of happiness. If you're happiness is to grow tulips, you should thank goodness that you live in a republic where that's possible. There's an economy which makes that possible. There's a

distribution system. But I can grow tulips even when I'm living under bad government. Maybe. You may or may not be able to. I could grow tulips living in the Soviet Union. If there is a tulip supply, if there's a distribution network, if there isn't a prohibition on gardens, if the land hasn't been confiscated by a tyrannical nation state, yes. If there is a reasonable amount of liberty and the economy is reasonably intact and by that I mean prosperous enough and with a distribution system that is working in some sense, yes, you could have your tulip in any country. Mr. Jefferson, you're sounding Hamiltonian. You're suggesting what is really at stake is life, liberty and a large national bank and trade and I don't think that's an essence. I don't think I don't think I don't think any of those things are necessary. But I do the point I'm attempting to make is that I don't rule individual prosperity or individual whimsy out

in some broad definition of happiness. But that's certainly not the sense in which I used it in the Declaration of Independence or the sense in which John Locke uses it. Tell us again how you used it, how you meant it. I mean that instead of being in your home and suddenly having the door knocked down by British troops and your house rifled for contraband, you have a reasonable security that nobody is going to intrude upon your private sanctuary, your home, without due process of law, without a search warrant that has been signed using proper civil procedures or criminal procedures by a judge who is responsive to the community. I mean by that that your child is not drafted to fight in a foreign army. I mean by that that you are not taxed without your consent that if there is taxation that you have had a reasonable opportunity either to consent to that taxation or to argue against it if you think that it's unnecessary. I mean that you are in your bed and

and you can sleep through the night and you are not going to have troops suddenly thrown into your house and you force to feed them and find shelter for them. I mean that if you're accused of a crime you are tried by peers in your own community and not taken two or three thousand miles to be tried in a star chamber somewhere else according to rules that you were never a party to. These are securities that I believe are the definition of public happiness that your government exists to serve your needs and it has no particular interest in intruding upon your life except by your own consent. Let me ask you sir if you felt confident that that was the model that was really extant as a result of the American Revolution. Why were you so insistent after the constitutional convention that a Bill of Rights be drafted? Because all governments no matter how virtuous they are at their birth lose sight of these important principles. It seems to me it's the Bill of Rights that really

guarantees much of what you have just described in your previous sentences. Yes you want this to curve voluntarily, spontaneously, organically you want the community a true commonwealth in which people would say with Voltaire I disagree with what you say but I will defend the death you're right to say it or I disagree with your theology but I would defend the death you're right to worship the God of your choice or I disagree with the the way you party on Saturday night but it does mean no injury as long as you're not overload. You want a commonwealth where people voluntarily tolerate each other and champion diversity and don't feel the need to regulate each other's behavior unnecessarily and yet at the same time their basic securities are protected so you you can't party loudly through the whole week because it disturbs my children's sleep and so we all agree voluntarily to create a civil code it may not even be a written code which which regulates our mutual intercourse with each other. That's what you want but that's not how history has shown that

things actually work. A government even a beautiful one soon becomes regulatory and bureaucratic and it begins to tax without consent and believes that the people are childlike or irresponsible and the government takes on a supervisory almost a parental role and at that point government is corrupt even if it's benign it's it's already corrupt because it no longer trusts the people to generate rules of civil behavior out of their own breasts and so we have to have checks and balances and guarantees and restraining mechanisms on government and that's the bill of rights. You would expect that in a free society like ours John Adams would never have passed the sedition law but he did pass it and so you need a first amendment that says that law violates an agreed upon area of human freedom and therefore it can't be allowed will either throw the rascal out at the next election or the legislature will reconsider and overturn that ignominious law but you need checks against excess in government because all governments have

a propensity to become self-righteous and excessive in their reach. Interesting sir so your concept of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is really life liberty and minimal government. Life liberty and a government that is both minimal and philosophy and principle is to allow people to thrive on earth rather than to get in their way. And what happens when government becomes the Leviathan the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes? Well what happens is and I say this in the Declaration of Independence that our habits are such that we don't want to be bothered and so we allow encroachments some some piece of bad legislation is passed and we all agree that it's bad but we think our lives are are going along well and it's maybe a minor ephemeral intrusion it's not worth fighting about and so we accept it and then a moment a year or a month later some

other law is passed and there's a gradualism a creeping octopus-like nature of government that it takes away a bit of a right here and it erodes a liberty there and it confiscates somewhat here and we put up with these because our habit is to be left alone and our habit is not to be too prickly and so modest abuses which if they were singular would perhaps not be deadly to freedom wind up accumulating over time until they have the net effect of creating tyranny and this is something that all cultures have to work against and during the revolution people would say to me well that the closing of the Boston Harbor is a terrible thing but is it worth a revolution or the British concept of virtual representation is is clearly illegitimate but do we want to have a revolution over that and so on any given issue there's not a broad consensus of of protest but the accumulated effect of all of this produces tyranny and when you see that pattern growing

you must resist it and if you wait too late and people always do wait too late then the tyranny is often installed and it requires a blood bath to to overcome it so that you have to be eternally vigilant and I said in the Declaration of Independence that light and transient causes are not enough to legitimize a revolution but when there is a pattern and it's a growing and deepening pattern of despotism then the people have a moral responsibility to reclaim their rights as bloodily as necessary that's my concern most people do not want to be rebels most people want to mine their own business and be with their families and read books and grow petunias they are not eager to be rabble browsers but that government's force us eventually into rebellion and you thought that frankly a new constitution would be needed every generation or so did you not that's as you you're exactly right because instead of waiting for all of this abuse to accumulate and tell

us Leviathan what if every 19 years or so you had this moment where you step back and said let's review maybe this or this or this discrete piece of legislation was not tyranny but what's the accumulative effect are we happy with the level of government that we have are there areas that are not being addressed that are vital to our needs have there been creeping forms of modest tyranny that we have been to to a sleep to notice and so if you step back every generation and essentially wipe the tabula rasa clean wipe the slate clean and regenerate government there's a kind of a sunset clause there that says all the accumulated abuses are now wiped away and now we have to recreate them and now we have to say deliberately do we want this tariff do we need a national bank is it interesting for us to have a navy of of such and such size so if you periodically step back you can have a paper revolution and a paper revolution can occur in debate and not a single ounce of

blood needs to be spilled and it seems to me that the citizens are always signatory to what their government is doing they belong to the social compact because it is drawn every generation and you're speaking like a true Jeffersonian because the you know we consented to our form of government but our grandchildren did not they have a natural right to consent to their form of government and I do not accept the notion of tacit consent that just by virtue of living in a society you and not objecting to it by let's say obeying a traffic law or obeying a law of sale contract that that is a form of tacit consent to the social compact lock argues that I do not believe that I think we need not tacit but explicit consent and that explicit consent must be renewed every generation and if you don't redo it every generation there will be two effects one is creeping tyranny and the other is the effective disenfranchisement of the people who will believe that they are governed rather than that they govern themselves thank you sir I think you have spoken eloquently for a time far removed from your own time if you would just think in

your day if you wiped the slate clean and you had to regenerate the government of the united states from nothing what percentage of of your government do you think the people would regenerate if they deliberated carefully about what is the proper use of the Commonwealth an interesting question I suspect that a great many federal bureaucrats would be out of work I think it's safe to say that perhaps many of our foreign entanglements would be discontinued it would be an interesting exercise yes sir and here is where the pursuit of private happiness becomes an issue most people in most eras including my own would rather be left alone to prosper than to engage in the public debates that lead to public happiness most people really don't like government nor should people like government government is a is a necessary evil for freedom it's not unobtrusive in our own time though if one watches television watches the cable news networks government takes just about

half of every of every hour I mean it's it's what the president is doing can you imagine people with cameras following you around every day of your life sir I would never have been president under such circumstances I would have been home growing hyacinths Mr. Jefferson we're going to have to take a short break in a while but when we come back we need to continue this question of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and what would happen if citizens had the chance to enfranchise themselves each and every generation we'll be back in just a moment please visit our website www.thifinjeverson.org www.thifinjeverson.org our website will list humanity scholar Clay Jenkinsons public performances in addition Colorado Endowment for the Humanities will be sponsoring John and Abigail Adams in February of 2004 stay tuned for more details you

welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour Mr. Jefferson in the first segment of this program we talked at length about what you meant by the pursuit of happiness and the declaration of independence and it's clear to me that you intended public happiness in that phrase more than you intended any form of private happiness although you didn't exclude it what what do you think is gone wrong in our society that would cause most people to to assume that it's a matter of private happiness and that there is no public dimension to it well I mean my sense is that the people are actually quite content that whatever they might say by way of grumbling about government or taxation or regulation that most people actually believe that their government is representing their

interests and delivering for them the fruits of life and therefore they are in spite of their rhetoric substantially I would say overwhelmingly happy with the state of things that they find themselves in I do not believe that in your day out of a population of nearly 300 million that there is any widespread fundamental discontentment with your way of living in the United States you don't sense that there are there are many people who feel disenfranchised that the large third-party movements that you know that crop up in presidential election time suggests that there are there are many unhappy human beings there seem to be people who are unhappy but certainly not enough to shake your society and I think as long as people can go to the stores and get items and as long as there is fuel for their automobiles and as long as there is heat and entertainment piped into their houses

and they have plenty of discretionary funds to buy clothing and wine and other pleasures that the people are willing to put up with a great deal of commonwealth frustration or do the people realize that there is no longer a possibility of rising it up against what they see as bad government I do not see I mean I am not a pessimist about your culture I believe that there is a profound general consent to your system by your people and that the the voices of discontentment are relatively few and they do not represent widespread concerns and if they did there would be third-party movements that would shatter your system interesting Mr. Jefferson I'm not sure I know how to respond to that so let me just instead ask you what what do you find that define as happiness well leaving the public sphere out I want the public sphere to create conditions of general

modest prosperity and responsible honest limited government a responsible foreign policy and a careful balance between local state and national sovereignty systems so I want basically a modest commonwealth in place and running efficiently like a machine once that's in place then individual happiness becomes the issue now I'm trying to understand what you mean by a modest commonwealth it would not be anything that approximates what you see in the beginning of this 21st century no I would be appalled by the level of your government I think that if the people hadn't seen it come gradually they would be appalled by the level of their government I believe as in government is referee I'm a minimalist but I lived in the 18th and early 19th centuries but even so as I look at your government I do not see a modest commonwealth I don't see

Leviathan because I think the intentions of your government are relatively benign but I see gigantism in government that would have appalled anybody of our time even Hamilton I think so for you ideally modest modest government modest commonwealth privately what do you look at and once that's all in place and and it wasn't quite in place in my time and I would say it's certainly not in place in your time and the paradox of your time is what we've just been discussing the widespread acceptance either through resignation or through acquiescence by the American people of the system that they find themselves in but but leaving that aside what is private happy it's well it varies from person to person one person is eager to read books and another person wants to write horses and gamble I think that these things vary mightily and then we should thank goodness that we live in a republic which has so wide a range of geographies and land types and soils and weather and there are mountains and rivers and oceans and there's there's there is

a continent wide base of possibilities for private happiness in the American people this is not true in a nation like Britain or Scotland or Wales where you have a tiny land base and there's a sameness to most of it and and the land has been deeded out long sense and there's there's not much maneuvering room and there's a state church so there are there advantages that the American people have and space the giant space of America is one of the fundamentally important advantages that Americans have was an advantage in your time would you see it as an advantage in this time space is rapidly disappearing I think is it not there are empty spaces in in your time of course in my time it was an infinite space you know there were a couple of hundred thousand people across the Appalachian mountains and when your day the whole continent has been filled and you know we had a population of six millions and you have a population of almost three hundred million so you

don't have quite the space that we had and yet if you go out into the middle of America there's still vast spaces and and foreigners even in your time are just struck almost dumb by the the gigantic land base federally owned land that citizens are routinely not permitted to travel upon well some of it indeed there's another reason for a social compact so that my sons the other day were given tickets for illegally trespassing on federal land well they were obviously violating a regulation which has been consented to by some legislative body or other and if they feel oppressed they should strike back by demanding a change in the law these and I don't know what to tell you it's it's not a good thing when the public lands have too much regulation on the other hand it's hard to believe that these are unilateral decisions made without due process at some level I would lament living in your time you know we had all this infinite space and when Lewis and

Clark wanted to camp they camped they didn't have to get a permit they didn't have to pay an entrance fee they didn't have to to haul out their garbage and take it somewhere else they didn't they weren't they were not told how they should enjoy wilderness and I think enjoying wilderness is one of the fundamental American privileges I wouldn't say rights but privileges and when that when that era passes I will feel deep lament and it sounds like it has passed in your time but at any rate let me go back to happiness for me happiness is different from your sons I I didn't spend any time walking in the wilderness what I did was read books I wrote letters I drank wine I had conversations with my friends and you could do this knowing that you had a good government in place that would not oppress you well most of the time but I have to say when the Federalist Party was in power between particularly between say 1792 and 1800 I regarded as creeping oppression and there were times when I despaired of the future of this country because I believe that instead of reading the revolution as a as a empowerment of the people the Federalist

Party was reading the revolution as a as a separation from Britain that would be followed by more or less the same but the elite now would be homegrown rather than imported from the island and don't you think that federalism has has won we oftentimes say Hamilton is won but don't you think that federalism is won yes I do I think that again I think that you have a you live in a profoundly federalist society in which the states have really been reduced as Hamilton hoped to mirror administrative units and I think that the the ancient balance between the states and the national government has been upset and the 10th amendment has been violated the 10th amendment which says those powers not delegated to the national government belong instead to the states into the people that that amendment has been forgotten and you have become a profoundly nationalist or federalist society in which everybody looks to Washington on every concern from education to agriculture to exploration to health care people turn not to their township or their county or even their state they turn to the national government and then reserve

the right to grumble about the solutions that are that are widespreadly imposed by the national government yes I mean I don't I don't find much to admire in your system but I don't think that I speak for your people your people seem to to grumble incessantly but to basically vote yes for the system that they find themselves in well as one who continually votes no for the system I can suggest Mr. Jefferson that there are lots of people who are not happy so why can't you build the majority apparently we can't get high enough on the radar why can't you build the majority well I think as long as Mr. Hamilton's vision holds as long as there are consumer goods of plenty and people are sated by their little pleasures their little happiness is that perhaps they're content to you know to live with bad government I mean you're basically saying that the American ideal that you are essentially a self-governing society is a massive fraud and that people are really governed and they only have the illusion of self-government I know I'm sounding like a pessimist

and you hate pessimists Mr. Jefferson but that's the sense that I get I feel as though I'm being governed I feel as though and I miss no opportunity to vote but seldom if ever are any of the people for whom I vote elected do you think that that there is I hate to use a phrase that was made notorious by a president of your time but do you think that there is a silent majority of fundamental discontentment in the United States I think he assumed that there was a silent majority that was contented that the discontentment that was high on the radar during that Vietnam time was an aberration rather than the reality I think in my time there there seems to be a silent majority that is contented and that is contented that is contented that that takes the status quo as something wonderful but then that is good I mean that is what I've been arguing all along to that today that the majority of the American people whether you like it or not are basically

accepting of their system and I'm the one that needs to vote with my feet yes Mr. Jefferson where would you go well that's the problem there I can't go on federal land I might get a ticket do you think that if there were a massive dislocation and your prosperity a depression say or a collapse that this would awake in the people well I don't think there'll be a massive collapse I know that there are lots of people like me who are not at all happy with what they see of their government that we are not we are not an insignificant number of people and are you pursuing private happiness as a way of escaping from the burden of the Commonwealth I think for me private happiness is in large measure being useful to my fellow human beings and I pursue that with great abandon I do the best I can to help people but I at the same time as a citizen feel impotent I watch many things happen that I am bitterly opposed to on a regular basis I vote for people who are never elected you know I know the sense of discontentment believe me I live through the American revolution

and all that led up to it and the Federalist reign of terror during my midlife was one of the most disheartening things that ever occurred and I'm an optimist but to think that we were squandering our revolution and that a powerful elite led by my men like Hamilton was was really perverting the revolution for their own ignominious ends believe me I understand discontentment but I am I am such an ameliorative I want if I feel discontented I rally I get Madison to go do something I get I get my tropes Monroe Madison William Short Maryweather Lewis all all the people who agree with me and we we write pamphlets and we stir up discontentment and we we rally the American people to rise up and to regain their birthright as free human beings and I write my senator and he writes me back a letter and points out to me where I am wrong but you're I mean you're suggesting that a well-meaning person has impotent and that the in the countries being run by people who

are not well-meaning people whose interests don't reflect my own well I understand the the sense you have I would urge you to take up hobbies to make yourself extremely busy with learning Greek and growing tomatoes and gardening and horseback riding and building fences and redesigning your house to to rebuild you I don't mean that just as escape because I'm certainly not an escapist but to rebuild your sense of the possibilities of life that if you say I'm going to build a fence and then you see it through that gain that gives you a confidence to move on to the next thing and I thank you sir now you tell me mr. Jefferson you travel around a good bit you talk to many people in my time am I an aberration am I a lonely voice in the wilderness or are there many like me Vox Clomatus voice calling in the wilderness I believe from your own biblical tradition indeed I'm going to give you an honest assessment and you may not like it I think that you are an idealist who has become disillusioned and you must recommit yourself to action because action

can change the world believe me if you had asked the founding fathers in 1775 if we could if we could truly rebel against great Britain and get away with it and produce our own constitutional republic most people would have said it's an impossibility that this is the heart speaking not the head the head would calculate that you cannot win a revolution against the world's great power but let me ask you again you talk to many people in this time aren't there many disillusioned idealistic people out there yes but see the the nice thing about it is that their ideals are still embedded in them they're still there to be sparked that the right if the right person with the right message or the right the right ideas are articulated widely enough by common people that the idealism of the people can be made to flare up again and much as I love what you're saying Mr. Jefferson I know that the person elected to office will be the one with the biggest award chest with the most money well I think you should do one of two things I want of three things you

should either escape into purely private pursuits of hedonism which I don't recommend but that's certainly one thing that people do or you should rally those like-minded people and make a run against your government state local or national but try to to affect a revolution or you should vote with your feet and move to some other nation where you feel that the social compact is more in keeping with your ideals but the worst thing is to stew in your own pessimism and I would urge you to to take action either private action or public action because I don't think that we I don't think that we ever have an excuse for non-action in life he who's always busy will never be melancholy even if he's not busy building a better world if he's building a better farm or a better library or a better cabinet of curiosities he will be happier than he would be otherwise I gracer I think there's also an old Chinese proverb if I dig another out of his troubles I have a deep hole in

which to bury my own I believe in the virtue of action we're talking about canis citizen in the United States today make a difference in the government that she or he has well I think after the election of several years ago that the answer has to be yes that if if the government was there was a governmental revolution that pivoted on a handful of votes if if one million people a lot of 300 million had had voted I dare say the the election would have been clear one way or the other so that there wouldn't have been a contested election actually the popular vote was clear one man one but he was not the man who was occupying the oval office well we have the electoral college a wonderful device but it is our system it's our consensual form of government I didn't consent to it sir it was it was ratified long before my birth I've you know I'm just cheerfully trying to make you happy and you you do not want the pursuit of happiness what I'm simply trying to say sir is that I agree with you wholeheartedly I really wish that I had the

opportunity to vote on the constitution which binds me I truly wish that my fellow citizens were not so lulled by material goods and and didn't have consciences that cleared so readily by putting bumper stickers on their cars that they felt more earnestly about the the suffering of people and the deep deficiencies in a system that exists well I let me try to distinguish between different types of private happiness you know I wrote a letter to my protege William Short who was really the most gifted of all of my protegees but he wrote me a letter saying that he was an epicurean and of course Epicurus was the ancient stoic philosopher who argued that the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness and I said you misunderstand Epicurus young man because you when you read happiness you mean pleasure and hedonism and when I talk about the pursuit of happiness I mean virtuous happiness restrained intelligent thoughtful responsible happiness not joy this and spasm that and pleasure this that's that's a decadent form of happiness and I think that you're right the

American people have misunderstood what happiness really means and you need to teach them a better form in other words we are Epicurian more in this day and age you make Epicurus look like a restrained fellow not high personal your piece of society of course yes thank you mr. Jefferson will be back in just a moment please visit our website www.thiffinjeverson.org you

welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour this is Clay Jenkins and speaking Jefferson has gone away for the day we've been talking about Jefferson and the pursuit of happiness it was a question that was put to us by our good friend Richard Merrill to Colorado Springs Colorado Richard Merrill among other things it's a shatalk one who now portrays Franklin Delano Roosevelt and you can look forward to having a visit from president Roosevelt on this program when quite soon the pursuit of happiness is a phrase that of course is a quintessentially American phrase Bill Crystal but I like to think of John Adams at the the continental Congress when Jefferson was drafting the Declaration of Independence I don't know what you think but I'm just guessing John Adams would have been less likely to use that phrase if he had written this document I think it would have read as if John Locke had written it happiness was not a was not a term that

I think Adams was terribly comfortable with although he promised Abigail the day would come when they would be happily happily together you know happily married he was always off pursuing glory and and fame duty and duty and if she wanted domestic happiness she wanted the family at home so I think he would promise her happiness but but he himself was uncomfortable with the whole notion of personal happiness we've been dividing the day between our discussions of what public happiness means the commonwealth and private happiness and I want to come back to private happiness in a minute Bill but what about public happiness do you think that John Adams would have agreed with the enlightenment concept that societies exist to promote a commonwealth happiness I think the word commonwealth would have been enough for him being a new englander which was established him Boston was established as a commonwealth it was it was going to be that perfect union of church and state I think that for him commonwealth would have been a better term than happiness simply

because I think happiness can be easily misunderstood and perverted as it seems to be in our own time and really that was how Richard Merrill began this by by suggesting in his question that the American people take happiness to be some individual private and largely hedonistic pursuit of pleasure and that says Richard Merrill that can't have been what someone like Thomas Jefferson had in mind and I think we're agreeing that Jefferson did not have individual happiness and particularly consumer happiness material happiness in mind when he wrote this document but I I would guess that John Adams would have thought when he saw that phrase there he goes again that's Jefferson that's quintessentially Jefferson but you know maybe that's just too optimistic about the prospects for the new republic I think at that point in their lives they they they shared a great deal more than than differentiated them and I suspect that that Adams wouldn't have reacted as negatively perhaps but I don't think that would have been the word that he would have chosen he would have said life

liberty and and the pursuit of commonwealth let's want to go back and clear up a couple of things from from our in-character segment you know we spoke several times about a Leviathanic government and I know some of our listeners are probably puzzled by that Thomas Hobbes wrote a famous book called the Leviathan as you know better than anybody else the Leviathan is a biblical creature probably a behemoth yes comes up in the book of Job among other things and have you wrestled with the Leviathan lately as a phrase that Job puts to his detractors so but the Leviathan for Thomas Hobbes and for the for political science means a gigantic government may be despotic but it's certainly a hyper-government rather than the sort of limited governments that the United States has attempted to use over the past two hundred years all of government seems Leviathanic today does it not it certainly does you know it's just shocking I go to Washington a great deal and and you find that there is a bureau on something that you never even heard of and there are 75 or 75 hundred employees who are busy spending your money to pursue something that could not have

even registered with Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton but today it's regarded as essential to the the running of a of a great national society so I'd say it would not be unfair to call our government Leviathanic because it's so benign but it's certainly gigantic in proportion and that's one possible meaning of Leviathan benign if in fact information that that would critically affect the way citizens looked for example at going to war was was with help I'm talking about the you know the the bureau the Department of Transportation or the National Endowment for the Arts or the National Science Foundation do you think Bill that there are any nations on earth that have a government that could justly be called a Leviathan in the Hobbesian sense of the term a hyper government that manages people's lives well I think probably Iraq was was Leviathanic I suspect that the government in China is Leviathanic Egypt I would say

Egypt one would hope that that's more enlightened despotic I don't think so I mean I think any government that that systematically tortures its own people when they when they showed discontent meant is I would I'm guessing would qualify as Hobbesian or any government in which the freedom of mobility is watched or the censorship where people are for example as in Iraq forbidden to listen to the BBC and that's what Hitler attempted to do in Germany to to deny people access to outside information those are I think all part and parcel of what a Leviathan means and I think there are plenty of them in our time although I would say just categorically that none of the none of the great western democracies can justly be called a Leviathan no they're active perhaps overly active in the lives of their citizens but as far as basic fundamental human rights I think people have them in all of those they do western countries let's go back to John Adams so you're saying

Adams might not have bristled at Jefferson's life liberty and the pursuit of happiness although I'm guessing Adams would be more comfortable as you say with locked life liberty in a state privately do you think John Adams was ever happy no I don't think so I think it was constitutionally incapable of being happy why I think probably if we could get his body and put it on a table in autopsy it we'd find he was chemically imbalanced I think that may be one of the reasons you know he was so fond of of the kind of vigorous physical exercise chopping wood and that sort of thing I think it's in his time that was a great way to get an endorphin hit and to feel a little bit better about life so if he were alive today he'd be on Prozac and he'd be a cheerful man he you know I think there's something to that I honestly I honestly think that yes that he probably was chemically imbalanced and that his but his chemical imbalance produced a certain kind of greatness well I think that's true and in many cases I think we're discovering that the so-called artistic temperament is perhaps a chemical imbalance out of that horrible angst great genius

expresses itself so in the future as we now as we reset the chemical balance of everybody from John Adams to the Van Gogh no one will do any there'll be no art there'll just be Disney cartoons and sitcoms and shallow it'll be Jonathan Livingston seagull in every direction perhaps oh sad I don't believe it for a minute so we don't want you to be happy Clay continue uh believe me there's no drug in the world now Bill but when was Adams he must have had happiness his he was he was married to an extraordinary woman his son became the president of the United States and was arguably the greatest secretary of state in American history that had to produce happiness I suspect in Adams case it was always a very short lived thing I think happy moments were followed almost immediately by self-doubt by by anger you know and frustration I think he was just a man that in our time we'd say was beset by demons he lived life very creatively though

and I think for a person beset by by those kinds of forces the path of duty was probably his salvation but I don't think he was ever very contented for long well I think it would be possible to say that he I'm sure he was chemically imbalanced but I'm sure we all are in that regard but don't you think that his software was a little on the on the grim side he is after all a New England Calvinist and I think that's where a lot of that software comes from I think one might argue that the climate is a factor in how New Englanders face life North Dakotans are cheerful there amongst there amongst the most cheerful people on earth so of course that they don't have to live in nature quite the way that New Englanders did then you know we have now so many technologies of comfort you have heated garages I mean life can't be too bad head bolt heat what do you think the crack I mean this is this is what Jefferson would say the craggy infertile soil and the fierced winds and the the the the climate of New England is nicely connected with

the climate in quotation marks of Calvinism and my guess is that Justice Jefferson found a great deal of fault with the English diet the New England diet was not much different it wasn't it well it's not called New England for nothing you know the most English part of America was was New England so if the gastronomic tract isn't you know isn't it lighten then the rest of the person probably won't be either well you know we we were earlier today talking about Jefferson's day of happiness letters wine grandchildren exercise books what's Adam's happiness I think Adam's really enjoyed being with friends and he loved a glass of Madera you know unlike many New Englanders of his class he drank and I think those were probably among the best moments that he had do you think he held court did he pontificate I think at home he was a pontificate the problem with John Adams is that he had no one expressed thoughts either on paper or in front of

his poor family but I'm just guessing that at a at a at a round table discussion if you have the Adams family together at Quincy Massachusetts and they have this traditional sort of English meal hasty pudding and and roast duck or something and that if the subject of the tariff or homosexuality or the Virginia slavery comes up I'm just guessing that Adams began to sputter and that suddenly everybody in the room is watching Adams give a pronouncement he was a litigator and I'm sure he litigated in in every setting that raises an interesting question could Abigail Adams have ever been happy married to such a man well early on her idea of domestic happiness was having him around I wonder if later on she got to the point where happiness came from having John on the road no I think her family was her son he's her most extended family and you know really sometimes I get uncomfortable as Thomas Jefferson is talking about daughter Martha

I will love you if you learn living in the in the original Greek Abigail determined that John Quincy was going to be president of the rather young age and drove him she drove him mercilessly oh my goodness if you read that letter where she says something to him like I can't get it exactly right but she said something like given the advantages you have had of birth and education if you do not do something very remarkable with your life it will be better that you had never been born that makes Jefferson look like a liberal in a in a self indulgent and that's not grumpy John that's Abigail I know I'm just a madman who feminists want to embrace his cheerful and ahead of her time and her son will he really only wanted to be a poet and a man of letters and his family drove him to be this famous man if Thomas Jefferson hadn't taken away his postmaster see maybe he would have succeeded who knows but do you think that she was more wired to go back to your chemical view more wired for happiness than her husband I'm not sure neither

one of them were happy unless they were driving themselves and other people I don't know that she had any more of the equipment for happiness than John did it just intended to express itself differently I think for her a lot of her frustration was visited as you just described on the children and she had tragedy in her life too you know one of her children was died as a severe alcoholic and that was one of the greatest blows to John and Abigail Adams I mean outliving your children in any situation is a horrible thing and another one of her children Abigail junior Navi as she was called died of breast cancer and Jefferson wrote one of his finest letters actually to the Adams on that occasion and you know Navi was treated for she had a mastectomy at a time when there was no anesthetic and she had to be held down while surgeons cut her breast off then she recovered somewhat and then rapidly declined as the cancer regrouped you know this

had to just be horrific for all of the Adams family and particularly I'm guessing for Abigail who would have been the one most clearly connected in the domestic arena I think the New Englander was well equipped as any though to deal with loss I think but as Jefferson points out so often it's just in the air it's in the culture I mean one loses children with regularity child birth and at a young age so I'm sure it was difficult for them but I'm not sure it would be any more difficult for them than anyone else I do think he spent a lot of time beating up on Calvinism but Calvinism taught people that life was struggle and life was filled with sorrow and this in a sense was a useful intellectual makeup for people who were going to face sorrows wander into a New England barriangound and look at the stones that are there from the time of the Adams and you realize that there are these death angels these skull faces with wings I mean I

think that was just a kind of vision they give way to cherubs as the theology becomes a bit more cheerful things cheer up a little in the enlightenment but at that point in time they were still pretty grim a little crystal our John Adams color we're out of time but in one sentence do you think John Adams would think that we are happy in our culture I think he would be appalled by us on that appalling note we leave you all we'll see you next time for another edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour thank you Bill thank you Clay here's a spotlight on John Adams and this comes from the book Passion at Sage by Joseph Ellis on page 76 Joseph Ellis says that John Adams requested on his tombstone that it contained only one inscription and that be here lies John Adams who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800 as we have seen what has come to be called the Quasai War with France was the dominant event of Adams presidency and as we have also seen the detailed history of this earlier chapter in American foreign policy is enormously

complex it took Adams the breath equivalent of 1000 pages to tell his version of the story in the patriot for it involves such formidable characters is Hamilton Jefferson and tolerant the split of the federalists the emergence of the Jeffersonian Republicans as the majority party the bribery of American ministers to France negotiations with a constantly changing French government still in the trauma of revolution and headed for dictatorship under Napoleon systematic piracy by both French and English naval vessels and all the facilations and misunderstandings rendered inevitable by the communication problems of an era ignorant of the telephone or the telegraph music for the new Thomas Jefferson Hour was provided by Stephen Swinford of Reno and Nevada you can visit mr. Jefferson's home page on the worldwide web at www.th-Jefferson.org to donate $9 to the program and receive a CD or a cassette of today's program or to ask mr. Jefferson a question please call 1-888-458-1803-1888-458-1803

thank you for listening and we hope you join us again next week for another entertaining historically accurate and thought-provoking commentary through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson here's a spotlight on John Adams and this comes from the book Passionate Sage by Joseph Ellis on page 76 Joseph Ellis says that John Adams requested on his tombstone that it contained only one inscription and that be here lies John Adams who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800 as we have seen what has come to be called the Quasai War with France was the dominant event of Adams presidency and as we have also seen the detailed history of this earlier chapter in American foreign policy is enormously complex it took Adams the breath equivalent of 1000 pages to tell his version of the story in the patriot for an

involve such formidable characters as Hamilton Jefferson and tolerant the split of the federalist the emergence of the Jeffersonian Republicans as the majority party the bribery of American ministers to France negotiations with a constantly changing French government still in the trauma of revolution and headed for dictatorship under Napoleon systematic piracy by both French and English naval vessels and all the fascinations and misunderstandings rendered inevitable by the communication problems of an era ignorant of the telephone or the telegraph music for the new Thomas Jefferson hour was provided by Stephen Swinford of Reno Nevada you can visit Mr. Jefferson's home page on the worldwide web at www.th-Jefferson.org to donate $9 to the program and receive a CD or a cassette of today's program or to ask Mr. Jefferson a question please call 1-888-458-1803-1888-458-1803 thank you for listening and we hope you join us again next week for another entertaining

historically accurate and thought-provoking commentary through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson