The initial event of the Pearson-Eby Liberty Academy (PELA) welcomed author and President Emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) Larry Reed to deliver the organization’s first lecture.
The mission of PELA is to educate and equip the next generation of leaders in a deep, academic grounding in the principles of liberty and constitutional governance. Lectures will be scheduled throughout the year around the state to fulfill the PELA’s mission.
Reed is a renowned lecturer on the issues of America’s founding and preserving our hard-won liberty. His book A Republic, if We Can Keep It, is a variation of the response Benjamin Franklin gave to a questioner who asked what the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had accomplished: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Among the topics covered by Reed:
On Franklin’s wisdom:
“We’ve given you something, a framework, for governance. that should guarantee more people, more freedoms than anybody ever had before, but take it from there, not only expand it when you can, carry out its principles to the fullest extent, but by all means, I think Franklin was saying, make sure that these principles live in your hearts. Because, ultimately, they are scraps of paper. We’ve written some stuff down, and now it’s on paper. ?Well, big deal. Paper doesn’t always last very long. But principles can, but only if people take them to heart, if they embrace them and say, ‘Wow, I believe this.’”
On theologian N. T. Wright’s comparison of an open, as opposed to a closed, mind:
“The purpose of an open mind is like the purpose of an open mouth; that it might be shut again on something solid.
He went on to say, ‘Yes, we must be free to ask questions. But when we hear a good answer, we must be prepared to recognize it as such. And not be so keen on keeping all the questions open that we shy away from an answer, just because we like having an open mind.’ That is the way to intellectual, as well as spiritual starvation.”
Larry Reed on the true beginning of the American Revolution, celebrating its 250th anniversary this year:
“If there was a starting date for this transformation, maybe it was 1760. Because that was the year George III ascended to the throne in Britain. And he ended the long-standing period of what the colonists called salutary neglect, which meant, for decades, the mother country sort of left us alone, and we managed to build our own institutions and think of ourselves as, yes, British colonists, but we are also a distinct people. We believed in the traditional rights of Englishmen. And when George III began to end that, they began to treat people in America differently than Englishmen back home, as if we were second-class citizens, through things like taxation without representation (you can thank the Parliament for that), as much or more than the king. Then the colonists, who were becoming increasingly principled, said, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not right.’ And coming as they did near the end of the so-called Enlightenment, they were increasingly interested in things like individual rights, individual liberties. They were far less likely, in 1776, than they were in 1760, to say, whatever the king says goes, because they had come to embrace the principles of liberty that they thought George III and the Parliament, increasingly, were violating. So, our Founders would say the revolution first occurred in the minds of American colonists. And then, finally, circumstances and personalities came together in such a way that, by 1776, we’d had enough of British rule, and we were determined to get rid of it, even at the cost of the war.”
On the Founders’ guiding principles:
“One of the principles is liberty. Often on people’s lips for centuries, but this was the first time that a society rose up to achieve it by dethroning a monarchy, and instead, putting the people in charge. Socialists love to say, work for the people. Well, this was the first time, really, when a new system, as it turned out, really WAS for the people. It was set up by, and of, and for, the people. It dethroned the monarchy. When you think about it, liberty is a darn important thing, isn’t it?
“A second principle that our Founders would say they adhered to is that individuals have rights. That wasn’t universally held. over the centuries. For most of the time, in most of the world, before the Declaration of Independence, people thought, if they thought anything at all about rights, they tended to think of them as, well, they’re what the government gives us. They’re what the emperor tells us. But America’s Founders said, ‘No, no, no, no, we’re dethroning the monarchy. Rights don’t come from the king, or the parliament, or government in any form.’ They claimed, and you could disagree with us, of course, but they claim that rights come from our Creator.”
The influence of the Roman Republic on the Founders
“The ancient Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC. Pretty much the same way that America was founded. It was founded in a revolt against monarchy, against the concentration of power in the hands of one person. Rome had had a succession of seven kings, and by number seven, they had gotten fed up with that. They were tyrannical, megalomaniacs, and they finally rose up and overthrew the Seventh King, and, of course, immediately the issue was, well, what do we do? What do we do in place of the kings that we hated? And they set up this amazing thing called a republic, as Americans would do all those centuries later. And interesting to see what the features were. The core of the Roman Republic concept was the dispersion of power. Right from the top, the Roman Republicans said, We don’t want one man rule anymore. But we have to have somebody in it that kind of runs the show. So we’ll put two people at the top. And they call them consuls. But they also say there’s still the danger that one or both of these guys will accumulate power, get drunk with it and threaten tyranny over the people. So what do we do to make sure they don’t do that? They put term limits in place. They said the consuls could only serve one year, and then they had to get out.
“But they did more than that. The ancient Romans said we’re going to have to have some legislative bodies. Because we don’t want all power to be exercised by two guys. So they created a Senate. And its members will be made up of people who can trace their lineage to the earliest of Romans when the city was founded in 750 BC. So that becomes a body of largely noble representatives of noble families. And they also created elected representative assemblies. It made government more responsive, it made more people feel more involved. ?It wasn’t just a noble who told you what to do, but, you know, you could run for office and vote for those who represented you. Well, all this that we take for granted today was new when the Roman Republic was experimenting with it.”
The importance of character in the leaders we choose:
By character, I mean that cluster of virtues that are time-honored. I think, as a Christian, I would have to say, also, God inspired and God mandated. Things like honesty, commitment to the truth. And I think you will not find, throughout the course of history, any nation that lost its character and kept its liberties. That’s how important the connection is between liberty and character. A nation that loses its character will ultimately lose its liberties. It will descend into chaos. Dishonest people will lie, prevaricate, and timid people will never speak truth to power. You know, you’ve got to have a strong character to emerge from this dangerous world as a free and prosperous people. Nothing else will suffice.”
The next PELA event, as all are, will be free of charge and will be on February 28th in Johnson County. Rachel Ferguson, Director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University in Chicago, will speak on “Why Freedom?” For time and location, go to Pearson-Eby.org.