The Freedom To Do What You Ought To Do…

Dave Does History Returns: How an Ancient Epic Shaped American Liberty

After a five-week hiatus recovering from shoulder surgery, Dave Bowman triumphantly returned to Bill Mick LIVE on November 18, 2025, for a thought-provoking hour that reminded listeners why “Dave Does History” is appointment radio on Florida’s Space Coast.

In this powerful comeback episode, Dave unveils a connection most Americans have never considered: the Declaration of Independence owes a profound intellectual debt to Virgil’s ancient Roman epic, The Aeneid. While modern eyes see the Aeneid as mere “mythology,” the Founding Fathers treated it as a vital repository of moral and political wisdom. Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, and the others were steeped in its Latin verses from childhood. To them, Aeneas wasn’t fiction—he was a model of civic virtue.

Dave masterfully contrasts two visions of freedom. Today, many equate liberty with unchecked personal desire: “I’m free to do whatever I want.” The Founders, however, saw liberty as obedience to a higher moral order, a law above both kings and mobs. That is the essence of Aeneas’s journey. Fleeing the burning ruins of Troy, Aeneas is tasked by the gods with founding a new republic. Along the way he faces storms, monsters, and the greatest temptation of all: Queen Dido of Carthage, the one woman who could give him perfect love and a comfortable throne. Yet Aeneas chooses duty over desire. He leaves Dido (with tragic consequences) because his mission – to establish a just, law-governed society, transcends personal happiness.

Jefferson’s Declaration, Dave argues, is written from this same “Aenean” perspective. “When in the course of human events” is not the cry of petulant rebels; it is the solemn acceptance of a divine commission, much like Aeneas accepting his fate. Every grievance against King George is framed as proof that the monarch has violated the natural moral order that makes ordered liberty possible. The signers end by pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,” a direct echo of the Roman virtue pietas: sacrificing self for community, the eternal for the immediate.

The episode’s most sobering takeaway? We have lost the classical education that once made these ideas second nature to Americans. Most citizens today have never heard of the Aeneid, let alone wrestled with its lessons. Without that shared moral vocabulary, we mistake license for liberty and desire for destiny. The result, Dave warns, is a culture adrift—still at sea like Aeneas, tempted to settle in a comfortable Carthage rather than press on toward the promised republic on a hill.

Bill Mick closed the hour visibly moved, realizing his own father’s lifelong maxim, “Freedom is the freedom to do what you ought to do, not what you want to do,” was pure Aenean wisdom passed down unconsciously.

If you care about where America came from and where we risk going, this episode is essential listening. Dave Bowman doesn’t just teach history; he shows why forgetting it imperils the future.

Catch the full Hour 3 (and the entire show) on the Bill Mick LIVE podcast, and subscribe to Dave’s own Dave Does History feed for deeper dives into the ancient roots of modern liberty.