NOTE: Transcripts are reproduced by means of electronic transcription. Accuracy is not guaranteed.

Bill Mick

Will McPherson Financial Group brings you our three of a Tuesday morning this 26th of August 2025. Headline at Bill mcdot. Com American government is this how this works? And we kick that around in our last hour, didn’t get through all the topics to raise the question. We will save those for our wide open Wednesday. Tomorrow. You can follow WMB on Instagram at WMB Radio and in these Tuesdays at 8:00 Dave Bowman. He was with us on these Tuesdays. Brings us, Dave, does history, our Liberty 250 series taking us to the 250th anniversary of this country next July, Dave, where we live in the day, my friend.

Dave Bowman

It might seem like a strange place to start, but. There is a film called National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage, Diane Krueger, a few. Other. People and oddly enough. It’s one of my favorite films. It’s a film that if it’s on I. Watch it. It is beautifully. Filmed it shows you a lot of interesting places, the history, and it is complete and utter nonsense. Don’t. There’s no actual history in the film, but but it is a pretty entertaining film and I do enjoy it. There’s a scene in this film in which. Ben Gates, played by Nicolas Cage and and Riley, go to the National Archives and they look at the Declaration of Independence. And in that scene, Ben Gates says these words. Quote there’s a line here that’s at the. Heart of all. The. Others. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object inventes a design to reduce them under absolute deputised M despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and provide new guards for their future. Security UN quote, UN quote.

Bill Mick

Now.

Dave Bowman

He uses that. Line as justification for stealing the Declaration of Independence, which is the plot of the movie. He’s completely wrong, both morally and logically, but he is not wrong about the fact that this line is. At the heart. Of all the others. We’ve talked over the past couple of weeks about how. Congress has shifted the focus from this argument over taxes in Parliament to an argument over the king. The king is being a despot, the king is being a tyrant, the king is doing all this other stuff. And. To that end, to the modern reader of the Declaration of Independence, you’re going to pick up on that very quickly. Oh, the king has done this. We’re getting ready to go into these 27 grievances. The king has refused to do this. The king has refused to do all this. Other stuff and all of this stuff. Makes him a tyrant, and it invents a design invents as being a great English word. That means to to show. Clearly. It clearly shows a purpose of design to reduce us under despotism, despotism, absolute despotism, and therefore we have a right. We have a duty to throw off such. If we’re going. To understand the impact of that phrase. We gotta roll the clock back. We gotta go all the way back. Long before 1776. We gotta go back almost 100. Years. Before that, in fact, more than 100 years before that. When the English underwent what is commonly known as the English Civil War. And in the English. Civil war. You have all kinds of brouhaha going on. But perhaps I guess the most interesting thing about the English Civil War is that when it started King Charles the 1st. Was 5 foot 6 inches tall. And when it ended, he was only four foot 8.

Bill Mick

4 foot eight OK. And we continue and see what Dave’s talking about in 60. Seconds on WMB. And you can make WMMB that number one preset as many you’ve already done. We are the number one preset on the iHeartRadio app here in the market. You can also save waffle for Octave. Those history of Bill, Mac Live and Florida Roundtable podcast at the top of the app Azure Preset. So they’re right there at the top of the app when you’re ready to go. So he gets shorter or. Loses something along the way, Dave.

Dave Bowman

So if you start with James the first yes, that James, the first, you’re 1611 King James Version Bible. James, the first King of England, used to like to brag that he sat on God’s throat, which is kind of a weird way to say that. But he believed that Parliament’s main job was to provide him with money so that he could go off and. Do his his thing. His son Charles the 1st. Carried that even further, he fought again and again with Parliament over taxes and money and religion because he was Catholic at the the limits of the his authority, he dissolved parliament multiple times and this eventually results in the English Civil War. In the 1640s, Parliament Parliament raises an army against the king. The King raised his armies against Parliament. They have a big old war and in 1649 Charles went from 5 foot 6 to 4 foot 8 because he lost not just the war but the English parliament. Cut his head off. So we’re done with you no more. Now what followed was not stable. The The Cromwellian Republic was not satisfactory. It had lots of problems. We don’t have time to go through. All that but in. The midst of all this, the guy by the name of Sir Robert Filmer. Was writing a book and he was an absolute monarchist, and he wrote a book defending the idea that the monarch must be absolute. And he based this in biblical terms. Bill. He said that kings are descended directly from Adams authority. Adam of course, created by God and that therefore political power was just like fatherhood. It’s absolute, unquestioned and ordained by God himself. Self. And therefore you subjects of the king. Are just like children. You have no right to resist him. You have no place in doing so. This book, which is called patriarchy. Gives intellectual ammunition to the supporters of an absolute monarchy. The book is not published right away. It it kind of lingers and it Sir Robert Fillmore actually dies. But the book is finally published in 1680 during the reign of King Charles, the first son Guy by the name of King Charles. The second. Or as I like to refer. To him, Chuck squared. Chuck is much like his father. He’s Catholic. He has a son named James and named after his grandfather, and he clashes with parliament a lot, although not quite as much as his. His father had not enough to. To end up shorter as you will. For the people. Who supported him? Filmers book is a godsend. It’s it’s right on the Bible bull. It’s right on the Bible. God said that this the king is the authority and he’s the father. And if the father is the king, then all political authority goes back to Adam, the biblical first man and is the father of the human race. Therefore, since this authority has passed down through the generations. Through Noah, through the Patriarchs and princes. Eventually it lands in the hands of Kings and kings are therefore chosen by God, and so if you obey the king, you are not just. Bowing to another man’s. Will you are open. You are being the father of all nations. The heir of Adam, the man whom God himself has appointed, and therefore. You’re being, you know, good for God. And that’ll get you into heaven, right? It also means that that’s the theory anyway. That means that the King’s authority is absolute. You know, kids aren’t supposed to argue with their father. Subjects have that no right to argue with their kings. Disobedience is not merely rebellion. It’s rebellion against God.

Speaker

Thought.

Dave Bowman

Which is an interesting idea that will come into play a little bit later. Filma rejects the idea that people are naturally free or naturally equal he. He didn’t need to, he. He wraps this whole. Thing in the in the the robe of Scripture. He doesn’t need to prove that kings had practical authority, he said. It’s a matter of divine order. And of course, in a country that is. Ruled by a Catholic, but it’s a parliament you know. Anglican religion’s a big deal, far bigger than we understand today. We don’t. We don’t really comprehend how much religion plays into this. He holds this as as. A birthright. It’s unchallengeable. It’s eternal. Now to our modern ears. His argument sounds pretty medieval. The giant family tree that stretches all the way back to Eden with every king in Europe claiming descent from Adam. It’s a vision that’s straight out of, I don’t know, a church window or a mythological tapestry. But it’s not. Realistic to us. But in 1680 England, 100 years before the American Revolution. These arguments held great weight, particularly with those who supported the king. Loyalists desperately needed an intellectual foundation for their cause, and they found it in film. Mark. Now, during the reign of Charles the 2nd and his son James the second, this book, Patriarcha is brandished as proof that Parliament had no rights to limit the king. That dissent is treason, and that liberty was not a birthright but a privilege granted or denied by royal favor. Which is totally the opposite of what we believe. There were those who feared that England was drifting into a Catholic style absolutism. In fact, our entire fear of standing armies is based in that religious belief that that’s something that the Pope does. You may not like that, but that’s true. Here’s the iron by the time Patriarcha is published, its argument. Is already outdated. England had tasted reads aside, they’d already gotten. Rid of 1. King lived under a Republic, seeing parliament called the king to account, restore restored the monarchy, controlled it with Parliament. The idea that the king was simply a father and everyone else as a child was sounding ridiculous. But hears that voice from Filmer saying all this. And in the process of all this, Jefferson, of course, knows all this, as do all the founding fathers. This is not history to them. This is their way. Another man sits down and takes pen to paper and says, you know, all that. Stuff from patriarcha. It’s nonsense. And he produces more ideas that will inspire Jefferson to write those words.

Bill Mick

And we get to those as Bill Mick Live continues on the Tuesday morning with Dave, does history, Dave Bowman in Liberty 250 right here on 92.7 FM, WMMB we continue in moments.

Speaker 3

It’s a take on history you won’t find anywhere else. Dave does history on Bill Mick Live?

Bill Mick

Back to our teacher of the Tuesdays. It’s Dave Bowman with Dave. Does history. So Dave will. Building up to the counter to what Sir Robert Filmer had written about the absolute authority of the monarchy, tell us what happens.

Dave Bowman

So when Charles the second or as I like to refer to him, Chuck too, Chuck squared comes back to the throne. At first everything is great. But the problems? Quickly. Reappear. We still have this issue with Protestant England and a Catholic king. Charles the second begins to argue with Parliament, just like his father did, and over the course of the next few years he will do the following things. He will try to push religious toleration schemes, which sounds good, but what it really means is he’s trying to turn England Catholic. He has a cabal ministry, an infamous group of ministers who pursue policies that smacked of self-interest and foreign intrigue. He creates a secret treaty with the free.

Speaker

French.

Dave Bowman

Catholic French France against the Dutch, and even promises to convert them to Catholicism at some point. He’s he’s really pushing all this. He sells England’s foreign policy to lure the 14th. Which kind of looks like treason. He creates a standing army again, as I said to you before, this is something that Catholic popes do. They have standing armies to to suppress the people. That’s where that fear comes from for us. He manipulates elections. While Parliament won’t do what I want him to do, so he starts a thing called Rotten Burroughs, where he basically buys elections and ensures that the people that he wants in Parliament are there. And then there’s this giant thing called the Popish Plot. We don’t have time to get into, but it’s a giant social media scam, much like the cracker barrel thing we talked about earlier in which we’re told that Catholics are doing a thing and everybody should be. Angry about it? Hundreds of people are arrested, 22 people are. Execute it. And yet the entire thing is a total and complete lie. It’s.

Bill Mick

Completely made-up.

Dave Bowman

And it occurs in England when Charles the second dies and James the second takes his his throne. Charles James is openly Catholic. He’s he’s militantly Catholic. He doesn’t hide his faith. He pursues Catholic positions. He puts Catholics in high position. Universities, governments, he defies parliaments, laws that ban them. He starts dispensing and suspending. Power for for. For laws, he starts ignoring laws that Parliament has passed, specifically the Test Act. He reinforces not just the standing army, but he makes sure that it has Catholic. Officers. He puts 7 Anglican bishops on trial. We have time to go through all this stuff, but they’re acquitted and they become national heroes. And then he does this thing that just can’t be tolerated. Bill, he has a son. And the son, of course, is an heir to the throne and a son who is an heir to a Catholic throne. Is going to be a Catholic. And we can’t have that. And so John Locke sits down and he writes what is known as the second treatise on government, primarily to counter filmer’s book and to remind us that. Yeah, this isn’t how this is going to.

Bill Mick

Work. We’re not those people. So Dave Locke sits down to write this and and counter what has been laid out as far as the divine right of kings. Where is he?

Dave Bowman

John Locke’s second treatise on government is. Almost scripture to the founding fathers, the people that are there in Congress, to Jefferson, to Adams. Now your average American colonialist probably hasn’t read this. But they have. These same innate ideas. They understand these things the same way. This is that American understanding, not just of liberty, but of pursuit of happiness as well. But its lock that actually puts this in writing in the 1680. He writes that. All men are free and equal. Remember that Filmer had said that no, you’re not Born Free. You’re not equal. You’re a subject to a king. Locks argument is that we are we’re Born Free, equal and that we are governed not by a king, but by reason. He really gets into life, liberty and property. He really likes the the, the right of property. And locks position on property. Is that your right to property comes from your labor, not from a grant from the king. And that’s an important distinction, because hitherto with kings and the divine right of kings. You didn’t have property unless the king gave it to you. This is how the king bought loyalty. Remember, with his Knights and serfs and that sort of thing, he would grant them land grants. And with those grants came what? The people that lived on that land, and now all of a sudden they had to work for that night or whoever. The king gave that to them. Locks. Truly. I wouldn’t say radical. Ideas. But his his his ideas. That very much differed from Filmer and the idea of divine kings. Was the legitimate government is formed only by social contract, IE the consent of the governed. If we don’t agree to your government. You don’t get to be governor, and we’ve already proved that once because we took Chuck the 1st and we made him 4 foot 6 inches instead of 5 foot 8. We explained to him at the point of an axe that you’re not in charge. Here we are. He also believed that there should be limits on power, legislative legislature, supreme but bound by natural law. Executive held in trust these are these are ideas that should sound very familiar to us because. This is what we have come to believe, correct. He also argued that what the Parliament had done in the 1640s was was correct, that King Charles the first had gone too far and it cost him his. Head. He makes the same argument about James the second, who had gone too far and hence he has replaced on the throne by William and Mary. The stat holder of of the Netherlands in the Glorious Revolution and we don’t have time to go through all that history. But what you need to know is Parliament blows up, pass the law, said no, James, you’re out of here. Your son will never be king. And we’re going to have a law that says only a Protestant can be king. So we gotta look around and find somebody who has a claim to the English throne and is Protestant, and who will agree to this turned out to be James’s daughter, who was married to William over in the Netherlands. And so William invades. England. They give him the throne. And one of the things that lock rights are these words. The reason why this is legitimate is because of a quote long train of abuses. And therefore we have the right to dissolve James’s government. And of course. That’s a phrase Jefferson catches on to, and it’s a phrase that Benjamin Gates will later in the movie say that’s the heart. Of what? This is all about.

Bill Mick

And we dig further into it as we were working our way toward July 4th of 1776, going by all the way back to the 1600s to get us started today. And we continue in moments when Dave does history here on Bill Macklin.

Speaker 3

Call Bill now 321-768-1240.

Bill Mick

The McPherson Financial Group this hour sponsored the program day blowing with Dave. Does history or liberty? 250 series as we’re looking at the what led to the preamble to the Declaration of Independence and where did it all come from? Dave’s been citing John Locke’s second treatise of Government, and Dave, you said Jefferson knew it well. Even if General Americans did not. But the founding fathers did.

Dave Bowman

This is absolutely true. The founding fathers, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, others. When they sat down in 1776 to draft this Jefferson especially, they’re not working in a vacuum. They have been trained in law, they have been steeped in this history. They are steeped in the writings of Locke, Sidney, Montesquieu. The great Canon of English constitutional thought, by the way, there is no English constitution. It is a collection of ideas that all of everybody has agreed to. But he’s also writing this with a specific audience in mind. Yes, the Declaration of Independence is going to be read in Philadelphia. Yes, it’s going to be read in New York City. Yes. It’s going to be read in Charleston and even Milledgeville. But he knows that the words that he. Puts on that. Parchment are also going to be read in London. They’re going to be red, probably allowed in Parliament. And when those words are read, he wants them to sting. And so he writes those words. A long train of abuses and usurpations, and it invents a design. At first glance, these this sounds like just good rhetoric. It reads like a flourish, a way of introducing grievances that make up the bulk of the Declaration of Independence that we’re going to get into. But to anyone schooled in English politics, English history, all that stuff we just talked about from from Chuck the first down through James the 2nd and William and Mary. This is a phrase that carries deep meaning. It’s not new, it comes straight from lock. Jefferson was lifting that phrase straight out of England’s own revolutionary history. Echoing the very language that Parliament itself had once used to justify its own resistance to Charles the 2nd and James the second. To understand the weight of those words, we went back to the 1670s and 1680s. We recited all those long train of abuses and usurpations that Charles the 2nd and James the first had committed. That lock calls a train of abuses. It surfaced again under James the second. This whole idea of the Catholicism and trying to take over the throne again to us, it might seem trite, but in the 1680s this was absolutely the most important political point in the world. It’s this logic, this idea of this long train of abuses and usurpations that justifies the glorious Revolution of 1688, when Parliament. That’s right, the wigs. Stood up and said, hey, William of Orange, husband of Mary. You know, climb into the throne. Why don’t you invade our country and when when you win? We will declare the throne vacant and we will make you the king. The justification was not a sudden rebellion, it was the James had forfeited his right to rule by this sustained train of abuses he had placed himself in a state of war with his people. Dissolving the contract that bound them to him. It was locked language. But it was also wig rhetoric long before Locke. Put it in his book. Now when we Fast forward to Philadelphia. Jefferson takes up the the, the, the quill. And he uses that very phrase. He sets it at the heart of his indictment. Yes, King George is the one being indicted. A long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, inventing a design to reduce us under absolute despotism. Those are not random works. They’re not merely decorative, they are deliberate. Jefferson is reminding the world, and especially Parliament. That we were standing on the very same ground, the very same principles. That those in Parliament had once stood upon themselves. We talked in the first hour about. You know, being misled by by anger. We talked in the second hour about Antonin Scalia and the fact that he stood for what was right. These words that. Were given to the Whigs in 1776, and our Declaration of Independence were holding a mirror up. To the whigs. Look, do you? Believe what you said yourself. What you say you believe. Or. Have you become that which you swore to destroy? It was a challenge that they could not easily answer for their very words, that they held sacred. Were turned against them. They had once denounced the Stuart kings with the same words. And now. They either have to condemn the Americans for doing what they themselves had done and celebrated less than a century earlier, or. They had to acknowledge that the. Dagger turned inwards, exposing their own hypocrisy. This is the subtle genius of Jefferson’s rhetoric. It’s not just lachian philosophy. Though his fingerprints are everywhere through the preamble, it’s wig rhetoric. Wig WHIG. Weaponized against the wigs themselves. Jefferson say you taught us this. You fought for this. You bled for this, and now we claim the exact same, right, and you try to brand us as rebels. You can’t have it both ways. Either your rebels. Or we’re or or or we we’re. All rebels, or none of us are. Considering the structure of the declarations argument. Jefferson begins with those first principles, equality, natural right, government by the consent. It’s a locking in foundation. But then he pivots to history. The long train of abuses that proves the design. This is wig logic. English logic, it’s. Parliament’s own argument. And then he turns to the judgment and wins. Such a design is evident. The people not only have the right. But the duty to throw off such government. The same exact conclusion that Parliament had once reached in 1688. By using the very words of the Whigs, Jefferson is binding the American cause to English tradition. He’s saying, in effect, we’re not inventing revolution, we’re not borrowing it from the French. We are walking the same path. You walk down, we are the real Englishmen. We are defending real, true English rights. It matters because Jefferson’s declaration was meant to do more than just declare independence. It’s meant to persuade. It’s meant to influence. We need allies. We’ve got to explain to them why we’re doing it. We are. We need legitimacy in the eyes. Of our own people. Many. Of whom still think of themselves as loyal subjects of the Crown.

Bill Mick

Well, wait a.

Dave Bowman

Minute. Remember that Parliament is what we are supposed to be rooting for. And by burying the American case. In the English history. Jefferson gives it credibility. He shows that resistance to George. The third isn’t just a radical break. It is the very definition of English liberty. The irony, of course, is that George the third. It really isn’t James. The second English historians will remind us of this, that he wasn’t. He wasn’t trying to impose Catholicism. Although if you recall, there was some argument that with the Quebec. Act he was trying to. He didn’t dissolve parliament. He didn’t necessarily ignore laws. In fact, that was part of our complaint is that he didn’t ignore the laws that we thought were unconstitutional. He was, in fact, more limited by Parliament than the Stuarts have never been. But that hardly mattered because the pattern was the same. Taxation without representation, standing armies and peace type governors ruling without assemblies, charters revoked trade restrictions. Petitions ignored each grievance on its own might be tolerable and might be sufferable while evils are sufferable.

Speaker

Well.

Dave Bowman

But taken together. They form a pattern. A long train of abuses and usurpations. That point to a single design. That was locked argument. It was Parliament’s argument and. Now it’s our. Argument and that’s why that phrase is more than just rhetoric. It’s at the heart. It’s the hinge between the English and the American revolutions. It’s the thread that connects the reader side of Charles the 1st. Exile of James the 2nd and the Declaration of Independence from George the. It turns the preamble into a transatlantic echo chamber. Bouncing the words of the Whigs. Right back at them and reminding them that tyranny is tyranny no matter what century, and no matter what continent. When Jefferson wrote that line, a long train of abuses and use of patients, he’s not merely accusing George the third. He’s accusing Parliament of betraying their own.

Bill Mick

Right.

Dave Bowman

Of of forgetting their own words. And he was telling the world that America had not invented liberty, but inherited it. And that the revolution of 1776? Was the rightful child of the revolution. Of 1688.

Bill Mick

We continue in a minute on Bill Mick Live. Dave, you know what I like about this is that. Jefferson used as precedent of English history to justify the US making these claims and breaking away not as rogue. Colonists, but as Englishmen themselves, and we have a right to this because it’s what you’ve done. It’s what we’ve done. I think that was brilliant.

Dave Bowman

It’s an amazing example to me of if you know your history. You know your arguments. You want to know why you study? History. That’s why it doesn’t have anything to do with repeating the past. It has to do with understanding why things happen, and this is my concern today is. How many people, even in this audience? Could even give you a general outline of why the English Revolution occurred, the Glorious Revolution. Of 1680. And yet our own country’s founding. Is literally steeped in that and we have so little understanding of it.

Bill Mick

Well, and that’s why I think what you do with us here on these Tuesdays. Is so valuable because it’s a look that we didn’t get our history classes in school. We didn’t get if we pursued it any further, we’re getting it now and we’re getting a look that. At least for me, makes me appreciate. All of this history so much more. And Dave, I appreciate all the work you’ve put into it because I know it’s it’s a love of yours, but it’s also a labor that you have to go. Through to get there especially.

Dave Bowman

This morning, it’s. Hot and and and we’re just scratching the surface. There’s so much more out there that you could you could read, study and and get to know and begin to understand why is there a United States? Well, it it starts long before. 1760.

Bill Mick

Yeah, it sure does. And we will continue further with Liberty 250 next week at our 8:00 hour on a Tuesday. That’ll be our first day back next week after the Labor Day holiday. Thank you to McPherson Financial Group for bringing you this hour tomorrow, a wide open Wednesday. Take us where you like, Dave. Thank you. We’ll. See you next week. See you then.