Thomas Ricks
speaker
222 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 4 Jul
Thomas Ricks’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Absolutely.
And to the degree that I think we don't recognize, we're not even equipped as a society generally to recognize, they took their inspiration to a surprising degree from the ancient world.
For them, remember, they didn't have rock stars, they didn't have movie stars, they didn't have sports athletes.
Their idols and their role models were the great philosophers and political figures of ancient Greece and Rome, especially Rome and especially the decline of the Roman Republic, the people who tried to stop the decline.
So Cato, Cicero, a few other people around them, and then some of the philosophers and generals.
They would find it surprising.
But remember, it wasn't everybody then.
It was elites.
There were a tiny number of colleges in America, six or seven or eight at various times during the pre-revolutionary period.
And there were a tiny number of people who had graduated from high school, let alone graduated from college.
Most people who got an education were white.
Most people who got more than a year of education were white males.
And even then, typically they got one or two years.
So they really didn't know the classical world, but at the same time, they didn't have much of a political voice.
But the people who...
led the revolution, the people who designed the country after the revolution, were indeed steeped in this ancient world.
To them, ancient Roman history especially had the urgency of front page news.
Because as they designed the country, they didn't have a lot of examples.
They were trying to design a country that wasn't going to be a monarchy.
And they didn't have a lot of historical examples.
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