The Ancient Ideas That Built America | Thomas Ricks
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What ancient ideas influenced America's founding principles?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stove podcast. There has never been a better time for people to read the book of today's guest and to listen to this conversation. As soon as I read it, I reached out to have Tom Ricks on the podcast because this is exactly connected to what we talk about here at Daily Stoic. The book is First Principles, What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country. It's really about the Greek and Roman philosophy, Stoicism, Epicureanism, what ancient Rome taught Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and John Adams, what it taught them, the good lessons they took from it, the flaws inherent in some parts of the system.
This is a conversation I was so excited to have. I'll just give you General James Mattis' blurb of the book. Thomas Ricks knocks it out of the park with this jewel of a book. On every page, I learned something new. Read it every night if you want to restore your faith in this country. So please listen to this conversation with the great Tom Ricks, but read First Principles, What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country. We talk about stoicism. We talk about America. We talk about right and wrong. We talk about justice. We talk about power, talk about a lot of great things. Be safe, everyone. Be smart and do the right thing. So you titled the book First Principles, and I think it's a great title because essentially, correct me if I'm wrong, but the premise of the book is what did the people who created this country believe and where did they get those beliefs from?
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.
It's interesting, too, because I've got to imagine that for a good chunk of American history, that set of shared first principles would have almost been so obvious as to not be noticeable because everyone shared that sort of classical understanding. And then today, it's hard to notice because... People don't have the familiarity with these ancient teachers to notice, you know, a lot of the allusions and the nods, the subtle quotations and the influences. That you would even have to write your book is almost a bit of a commentary in and of itself.
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. But you're right. We're left with a country nowadays where if you take the dollar bill out of your pocket, there's Latin on both sides.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What ancient ideas influenced America's founding principles?
0:00–7:00
2
How did the founders view the teachings of ancient philosophers?
7:00–8:17
3
What role did Stoicism play in shaping American values?
8:17–29:08
4
How did Washington and Jefferson differ in their philosophical influences?
29:08–30:25
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Daily Stoic
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