Dave Does History – Habits of the Heart

Transcript from Bill Mick Live – Hour 3
Originally aired on 92.7 FM WMMB May 13, 2025

Bill Mick

If it’s hour 3 of a Tuesday morning, it’s Dave. Does history on Bill Mick Live? Dave Bowman has been with us all day going to take it. Hand it over to him in a minute. Let him take us in. This is our first in a series, Dave, if I understand this correctly, this is going to March us right up to July 4th of 1776, when next July maybe.

Dave Bowman

Yeah, if everything goes according to plan, we’ll be wrapping this up the week of July 4th, 2026, which is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Think of this as.

Bill Mick

What that tells me is this is a long slog to get there. It didn’t happen overnight, right?

Dave Bowman

No, it did not. And we’re going to talk about that. Think of this as Constitution Thursday, but for the Declaration of Independence.

Bill Mick

Oh, I really like that idea. Renewal by Anderson bringing you this first hour of the show. You can link up to everything Dave’s doing on the show page today at billmick.com. Hit the show page entitled This morning, gainers language, Trump and Dave, Dave being Dave Bowman. Dave, what are we doing here today?

In the 1840s There was a young historian. Who was curious about some things that there was a renewed interest in the American Revolution and what had caused it and. The people who fought there. And by the 1840s, of course. Most of the people who had actually been there were already gone. There were a few left, including a guy by the name of Captain Levi Preston. Who was a 91-year-old veteran of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and this historian sat down with him and and and asked him. He was really digging for, OK.

Bill Mick

Oh wow.

Dave Bowman

Why did you? Levi Preston. Go to fight the British. I don’t think we comprehend sometimes. The impact of. That think of this in terms of. I don’t know the University of Alabama’s ROTC department. Taking on the first Marine division, the 33366 Tactical Fighter Wing from Hill Air Force Base and the 7th Fleet. We’re talking about. Amateurs taking on the world’s most powerful military. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that next week, but. Why? What? What motivated you to?

Now the historian. Guy by the name of Melon Chamberlain. Had come to expect some certain answers because there’s an intellectual aspect to the American Revolution that we talk about all the time: the Enlightenment, the philosophers. The issues that were involved and he began to ask the captain a series of questions. Was it the Tea Taxe? Is that what made you go fight the British and the captain’s answer surprised him. He said “No, I Had never drank tea anyway. I Prefer coffee? Well, was it the Stamp Act? I never saw any stamps, so I don’t know anything about that. Was it the writings of of Locke and the other Enlightenment philosophers? And he was surprised to learn that Levi Preston, along with most of the founders of this country, had never even heard of John Locke, let alone Enlightenment philosophy. They had no clue what they were talking about. Well then, what caused you to go fight the British? His answer is one that should be written down. While it has been written down, this one should be on all of our minds. He said simply. We had always been free. And we meant to be free always. They, the British, didn’t mean that we should. Now it’s a short statement, but it carries in it the entire freight of the American experience. What did he mean by free? Was it the same thing we mean today? If the answer, if we’re honest with ourselves,  the answer is no. And therein lies the crisis at the heart of our Republic. As we head into the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. To really understand. What he meant, we have to look at what was. Going on, if you’ve looked at. Go look at the United States Army seal. Go look at. A flagpole in front of your local place. You will find symbols there. That you don’t necessarily recognize, but they are known as liberty symbols. Things like Phrygian caps, the little red caps that you see on the army seal liberty poles. You ever notice how most flag poles have that little round ball on top of them?

Bill Mick

Why?

Dave Bowman

Because it symbolizes something and it symbolizes the idea, the concept of liberty. And liberty and freedom. While in our dictionaries have become. Almost synonymous. Were not to people like Captain Levi Preston or others of that era. The two words have distinct meanings. They have distinct ideas behind them. And it’s why, if you look at many of the drawings, many of the portraits, many of the reports from that era, you will find this emphasis on liberty not. Freedom. When we go to understand the difference between the two, we. Have to go way.

Bill Mick

Back.

Dave Bowman

You can even go back to the Book of Genesis, Bill, and there you meet a guy by the name of Joseph by remember him.

Bill Mick

Sure.

Dave Bowman

Sold into slavery by his brothers. But eventually he finds favor in the House of Potiphar, and he is given control over the household. He manages the estate. He has the trust of his master in a practical sense. Joseph is a free man. He can move about, he can make decisions. He can exercise authority. But he does not have liberty. He’s still a slave. He may be entrusted with responsibilities, but he is not free in the truest sense of the word. That Captain Preston met his status can be revoked at any moment. And when he is falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, what happens? He’s thrown into prison without trial or appeal. It’s a perfect illustration of freedom and how freedom, defined as an ability to act, can exist without liberty. Defined as the possession of rights and of self sovereignty. It’s this distinction that matters because it cuts to the heart of why there is an American Revolution. Why is there an America? The founders were not simply seeking freedom. From British interference, they were pursuing liberty, a permanent condition grounded in law, morality and dignity of the individual. They wanted the society in which no man could be stripped of his. Status by the. Whim of a ruler. Joseph Story reminds us that freedom without liberty. Is an unstable situation, much as Captain Preston found himself on the morning of April 19th, 1775. It can be revoked at any moment. It depends upon the goodwill of those in power. While Liberty is grounded in justice, it presumes that individuals are not merely subjects. But they are participants in the moral and political order. And that difference, my friends. Is the foundation of America.

Bill Mick

We continue in 60 seconds on WMB. Dave, as you talked about the difference between freedom and liberty, reminded me of something my father used to say. And it and it kind of conjoins the two. But he said some freedom isn’t the freedom to do what you want to do. It’s the freedom to do what you ought to do. The idea that rights come with a responsibility.

Dave Bowman

Well, and that’s kind of the definition, although it’s more the definition of liberty, but it demonstrates. That we in our language today have conflated the 2 words to us. They mean literally the same thing. And in fact it’s only in English if you if you do an entomology study, you’ll find that it’s only in English that the 2 words actually do have different meanings. Now. Politicians today don’t understand that just for fun. I over the past two weeks in my copious free time. Did a study of the three political. Candidates for presidency for the Presidency in 2024. And their use of the word freedom far far outweighs their use of the term liberty. And usually when they use the term. Liberty. It’s in the context of civil liberties. In other words. Liberties that the government has given you.

Bill Mick

Mm-hmm.

Dave Bowman

It’s never the actual definition of the word. Before we understand what they actually meant by that word of the founding. We’ve got to recover those mean. In a modern conversation, we tossed them back and forth. They’re senates. Politicians will wrap them in flags. Protesters shout them from megaphones. But they do have distinct histories. Freedom. Is northern German, northern European, Germanic. It stems from an ancient word that’s related to beloved or friend. And it indicates someone who is connected to a family or a tribe by birth. In the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon cultures. A free man was someone who belonged to that society. He was not a servant, not an outsider, not a stranger. But he was part of the group. It was not. Abstract it was local. It was inherited. It meant mutual protection, shared obligations and a rooted identity. You are free because. Your people were free. Liberty, by contrast, comes from the the Greco-roman tradition, and it means release from slavery, from debt, from domination, to be at liberty is means that you cannot be dominated by another person.

No leader can decide your fate. It literally means self determination. Which is what Joseph did not have. And it’s what Captain Peterson and those who went to Lexington and Concord meant to have. They meant for us not to be free. We meant to be free. We mean to decide for ourselves what we will be.

Bill Mick

It’s a long March to July 4th of 1776, and Dave Bowman takes us there as we continue. Dave Does History right here on 92.7 FM WWMB we pick it up in moments. Stay with us.

LINER

All the way from Silverdale WA, here’s Dave Bowman on Bill make live.

Bill Mick

It’s Dave, does history and we’re taking a look at why we marched to July 4th of 1776. Dave, you’ve done a good job defining freedom and liberty, but that’s not all of the story. What?

Dave Bowman

Do you got? No, it’s not in in. In the 1830s, as I said, Alexis. De Tocqueville comes. To the United States as a Frenchman. And he writes his very famous book, Democracy in America, which which is what drives Mellon Chamberlain to start studying this stuff. There’s this very. There’s this really. Desire to intellectually understand things and a lot of these historians are stunned. To discover that very few of the things that we think. Caused the American Revolution the Stamp Act, the tea tax, the Intolerable acts are really what’s involved here. What’s really involved here is this concept of American liberty. Which de Tocqueville notes in his. Book. Is not just a legal system. Now you can define liberty as the rule of law, but it’s more than that. In America, it’s a lived experience. It’s passed on from generation to generation. He actually will refer to this in French. As a more of the heart, more being a French word, that means literally a habit of the heart. It is something that is so ingrained in Americans that we just naturally carry it out. It sounds quaint to us today. But he’s not talking about mottos or civics classes. He’s talking about our customs, our instincts, our everyday choices that shaped how we saw ourselves and see ourselves today. And our role in the Republic, how often do we lament that loss? Of civic engagement today. Could it simply be because we’ve lost? That habit of the heart. These are not abstract principles. They are gut level convictions and that Americans have the founders. And let’s be clear, we’re not talking about George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton. We’re talking about Levi Preston we’re talking about. Charles Holt. We’re talking about Ebenezer and Isaac. We’re talking about all those people who actually went and fought the British or actually carried this stuff out those finders. Did not spend their time reading. Philosophical volumes. Most of them had never heard of John Locke. Their understanding of what liberty was came from the daily life of their people, the rhythms of how their local governments worked, the moral obligations that they had to their new. And the stories that were passed down from their fathers to their sons. From the village green, the church Pew. And even the jury box. This is the understanding that they had of what liberty meant. And it’s why Captain Preston says they meant that we wouldn’t be free in the sense of liberty.

Bill Mick

And. He said something key there, Dave and I think it is and something that is lost in large part is our obligation to our fellow man to to our other Americans here.

Dave Bowman

That’s a big part of liberty. It’s a big part of the American understanding. That we have a cultural. Moral obligation to our fellow. Country. And that really has been. Lost.

Bill Mick

Have we lost that sense day of obligation to each other? Are we more self focused than the founders might have imagined?

Dave Bowman

I think we have. And I think that it’s because as we were talking about. The dilution earlier in the shell of of the culture. We have lost that mindset. It’s here in America that those two words, liberty and freedom, libertas from the from the Latin, freihut, from the from the German, really become. Both Ying and Yang in a lot of ways, they’re they’re different meanings, but they can’t function without each other. Not properly. You can have freedom without liberty, but you can’t and, and you can have liberty without freedom. But if you really want to have a society that. Works. They have to work together. And it was that understanding in our culture that gave it staying power, it’s what drove men like Levy price Preston. To to go to conquer. When liberty, though, becomes a legal abstraction. And this is I think where we are. It can be revised. Dictionaries can change the meaning, it can be ignored. Our politicians used to regularly you go back to read their speeches. In the old times and in the past days and compare them to modern speeches, politicians today do not talk about liberty. They they number one. They don’t understand what it is. But number 2, they certainly don’t talk about it. And if they do, they talk about it.

Bill Mick

Mm-hmm.

Dave Bowman

In terms of. Civil liberties. They talk about it. In freedom from this. From saving democracy and those sorts of. Things. They never talk about. That responsibility that comes with. It it becomes, it should be woven into the fabric of our daily life, and in fact in the founders generation it was. It’s something that they grew up with. They breathed in. They learned by example. Which is a big part of our issue today. And it becomes self reinforcing.

Bill Mick

Mm-hmm.

Dave Bowman

When that fabric gets torn, though, liberty can become a little more than a slogan. The American colonialists, in essence, were trying to preserve that liberty. They weren’t dreaming of a utopia. They were defending what they already had a deeply ingrained way of life that assumed personal responsibility, local accountability and moral restraint. They believed in liberty not as a novelty, but as an inheritance, a habit of the heart, a sacred trust. This is in reality, bill. This is why it makes liberty so hard to export. You wanna know why nation building doesn’t work? Because you can’t impose it with a tank. You can’t encode it into a constitution and. Then just call it a day. Liberty has to be cultivated. It has to be modeled. It has to be lived until it is. That habit of the heart. Second nature. And like all things in culture. It’s vulnerable to erosion, can be lost in a single generation through apathy, moral decay, forgetfulness. And this is the real threat to American liberty, not some foreign power. But our own disinterest in maintaining the conditions that liberty requires. One of which is that society. That is bound to itself. It’s free. And so it’s united, it’s it’s joined and yet at the same time it is self determining in its in its direction where it’s going to go, what it’s going to be we decide that. And in 1775, there was a open realization. That the King of England, King George the third, meant to decide for us. What we would be and many people Captain Lovey Pearson among Peterson, Pearson among them. Decided that he meant for us not to be and we meant to be. And in those simple words. Are the source. And the cause? Of the American Revolution and what will eventually lead to those words being written down on a piece of paper saying. This is why you should pay attention.

Bill Mick

Fighting for something very different than they were experiencing as citizens of the Crown, and we continue with Dave, does history in moments on Bill McGraw.

LINER

Have something to add to the conversation? Call Bill now, 321-768-1240.

Bill Mick

Renewal by Anderson, our our sponsor as Dave Bowman brings us, Dave, does history taking a look at the March to July 4th of 1776 started well before that and it starts with these concepts of liberty and freedom that aren’t exactly the same thing. And we seem to have lost some of that along the way. OK.

Dave Bowman

They are not the same thing and yet. Without each other. They’re incomplete, each of them. The Declaration of Independence, which will be written a year from now, in our in our story. Is full of soaring rhetoric. We love most of the Declaration of Independence, at least the parts we read. But if you read it in the context. Of one of the founders. The people who were there. It’s not a license to do whatever you want. It’s a call. Exactly. It’s a call, though, to ordered liberty. The founders believed that free to be free was to be self governing self determined.

Bill Mick

Which is Alex interpreted today.

Dave Bowman

And that that begins in your heart. And murder of the heart. It means ruling your passions, governing your households, serving your town, defending your land, submitting to laws that you had a hand in making. It was a call to duty, not a cry, to indulgence. It means self restraint. Self rule. Duty to the community. Well, this is, you know, a question that I used to get asked a lot, is how come I’m not a member of the Libertarian Party?

I actually ran this experiment Once Upon a time. Summarize to me the libertarian parties philosophy. What’s mine is mine. Do you know that in the in the tall mode? It actually says that anybody who says that what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours. Is equated to the people of Sodom. Because you don’t understand the concept of ordered liberty. That’s what Captain Preston is talking about. He’s talking about. He’s not talking about tea, he’s not. Talking about philosophy. He’s talking about something that’s lived and felt the instinctive belief. That men have a duty to live free and ensure that their children would. Be free after the. That’s what drove them to go and face down British regulars. It’s not theoretical. It’s ancestral. The declaration asserts that all men are created equal, and they’re endowed with certain unalienable rights. But the founders did not believe that those rights existed in a vacuum. Rights have responsibilities to claim liberty while abandoning those responsibilities. Is to invite rule. They understood something that we seem to have forgotten, that unrestrained freedom. That is freedom that is disconnected from virtue. Quickly becomes *******. And the people that cannot govern itself morally will soon be governed by force. I think that today we’re in danger. Of forgetting that if we haven’t already. Too many Americans believe today that liberty just. Means do whatever I want. Which the Scriptures also talk about in the book of Samuel, Right? Every man did what was right in. His own eyes.

Bill Mick

Yes.

Dave Bowman

No consequences. No no responsibility.

Bill Mick

It’s not, not it’s libertarians today. That’s exactly it. The end result is chaos, and no law. I’m gonna be responsible. I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna harm anyone else, and no one else is gonna harm me and it ends up being a Society of chaos. It it destroys your society and the people that will not govern themselves morally, as I said, will be governed by force.

Dave Bowman

If you don’t have consequences and no responsibility. It’s not liberty. It’s narcissism dressed up in patriotic clothing. Liberty, if we rightly understand it, demands limits, it demands virtue, it demands sacrifice. And if we think of it only as a shield for our own desires. We will soon find it powerless against our own vices. And when that happens, we won’t need tyrants to enslave us. We’ll already be enslaved. From within. But the tyrants won’t. Have any problem at that point? Stepping on us anyway. Now we’re going to start a study over the next year, we’re going to talk about how we got from that concept, that idea of liberty. To those words on the page 250, well, 249 years ago right now, but 250 years ago. But as we do that, let’s remember that liberty is not preserved by the government. It’s preserved by our hearts. And our habits of those hearts trained in virtue, it’s passed down by parents who live it by citizens who demand it, and by institutions. That reflect it. We always meant to be free. We meant to be free always. It’s a habit of the heart. And if we’re to be worthy of that inheritance that our founders left us, it must become for us a habit of the heart as well. We have to teach our children that liberty is earned, not assumed. That freedom is maintained by responsibility, not removed from it. That the right to speak freely, worship freely, assemble freely. Those are only protected when we use them wisely. Liberty, to endured, must be practiced in little ways, and the courage to speak truth. Humility to obey rightful authority. The discipline to raise moral children. And the willingness to sacrifice for the good of the home. We’re not born knowing how to live free. We learn it or we lose it. The habits of the heart have to be. Taught. Cultivated renewed in every generation. And we also need to remember that our founders did not shed blood so that we could be comfortable. They shed blood so that we could be worthy. And if we fail to pass on that vision? Not in our textbooks, but in our habits. We’re going to lose more than our. Liberty. We lose the ability to recognize what we have lost. And I I think that’s where we are now. We don’t even know what liberty means. And so, because we don’t know what it means, it doesn’t bother us that our politicians don’t talk about. And yet. If you go to 1775 and look at the illustrations. Look at the symbols in our country on the the United States Army seal. Look at this. You will see symbols of liberty. They’re called liberty poles, not flag poles. They’re called liberty caps. Liberty was what was engraved on their powder horns bill, not freedom, liberty. Because that’s what they were fighting for, the right to determine for ourselves who and what we would be. You can have all. The debates and discussions you want about what caused the American Revolution was it taxes, was it gun control? Was it taxation without representation? In many ways, it was all of those things, but all of those things matter. Because we believed in liberty. And because that liberty. Was the habit of our hearts.

Bill Mick

And we’ll pick it up in 60 seconds here on Bill McCloud. Oh Galley electric, one of our sponsors here on Bill Mick Live. You Floridians know hurricane season is just a couple of weeks away. You prepare for it before it ever hits, and now’s the time to reach out to a galley electric for a Generac home standby generator. Not only are you buying this from a service disabled, veteran owned business, you get the benefit of a 10 year Generac extended warranty. And 4G LTE service plus your first maintenance visit at no cost. So terms and conditions apply. You’ve learned all of that and set up your appointment to see what kind of generators right for you when you call or galley electric at you get that Generac home standby generator from Ogalla electric to find it at eg-electric.com.

Dave, let’s get to some calls as we consider what’s going on with freedom and liberty as we head to 1776, Mario, you’re up first on this Tuesday. Good morning.

Caller Mario in Cape Canaveral

Good morning. Great discussion. One of these days we’ll have to talk about the Statue of Liberty. But for now, what I’d what I’d like to know is, well, I I’m looking at the at the the founding fathers were products of the Enlightenment. And all of their thinking, the fundamentals, the foundations of their thinking were enlightenment and Christianity and and and biblical the. But John Law was it was a deep, wide contributor. His influence on the Enlightenment was extreme. The. You you could almost say that John Locke was the father of the Enlightenment. And so our founding fathers would. This thinking was very much founded in John Locke.

Bill Mick

OK, Mario, thank you. Let’s go next to check in with Gary in Palm Bay. Hey, Gary. Good morning.

Caller Gary in Palm Bay

Yes, Sir. Good morning. Good morning to you both. You know, Dave, you’re you’re talking about freedom and liberty, and I have a a connection to that. As Bill knows, I was a military broadcaster for a FRS and AFN stationed in West Berlin 19841990. And I saw the word wall come down. And I I remember the East German citizens saw this live press conference where filter subotsky, the East German spokesman said our people can now go across the the wall and he course he screwed that up because he going crunch. Hold them. But we’re gonna discuss it. And he announced it, as had already been happening. And like several 1000 E brothers, came to the wall to try to get across the West Berlin. And they said, well, we’re not going to shoot. Our citizens let them. Go and a lot of them were interviewed by West German media and they said, you know, we’re we’re not coming over here to leave East Germany. We’re coming over here. You know the. And our our possessions, our apartment, our our job is still at explored. We’re just coming over to take a look, but they never had that freedom to do it before. And then they did. And then, of course, a couple of months later, East Germany went away and the whole thing came back together again. It was just one Germany again. And that was a. An example of freedom and liberty.

Bill Mick

Very good, Gary. Thank you. I appreciate that. Look, let’s go to Mac who is in Melbourne. Hey, Mac. What’s up?

Caller Mac in Melbourne

Yeah, like an essential conversation this morning, guys, and thank you, Dave for all your good, your voice. I I I don’t know what are you familiar with with and also about name Michael Novak by chance.

Bill Mick

Dave, you’re familiar with Michael Novak.

Dave Bowman

It’s possible I I have a whole bibliography and hundreds of books.

Caller Mac in Melbourne

He wrote a book he wrote a book about 30 years ago called The Spirit of Democratic, that he was listening to the conversation this morning. He’d be up cheering. He came out with a sequel called 30 Years later. I would encourage you to get, get a copy of that book and the. In the follow up, there’s 30 years. Later revisited, because everything you’re saying. But this self restraint, more moral compasses and so forth that led to the creation of what we’ve got in this country or had seen Michael Sport that really recommend you reading that and putting in as part of your study upcoming. So God bless, take care and good luck to you.

Bill Mick

Thanks, Mack. We appreciate that up. Last William in Melbourne. Hey, William. Good morning.

Caller William in Melbourne

Good morning. I got a question for Dave. A comment I would like to know is this is what the government’s doing now is writing all these new laws and taking away our liberties.

Bill Mick

Not sure what the question is lying in that, but yeah, I see liberty is taken away in many laws that are written day in the Declaration of Independence, and we’re not there yet.

Dave Bowman

We’re gonna get there eventually. There are 27 grievances listed by Jefferson against the King of England. It’s not all. The list there was there were three or four of them that were actually removed, but in those 27 grievances. You were to go read those today? And then go read your newspaper. Go read your go. Watch your local news. Open up your Internet. You’re going. To be appalled. Because the same things we were complaining about then are the same things that are happening now. And the reason is is because we have not guarded our hearts, we have not. Made liberty our habit of our heart, and we have allowed the government. To become what it was all those years ago, we’ve allowed liberty to be confused with license and become flattened.

Bill Mick

Dave, that’s a great start to where we’re going next July and I appreciate that renewal by Anderson made this hour possible. Stay with us on the journey every Tuesday in this 8:00 hour on Bill. Mick live wide open Wednesday tomorrow. Thanks to renewal by Anderson for this hour of the show.