Americans should be able to criticize the founding fathers — learning more about history reveals nuance and mistakes, but questioning them doesn't mean renouncing the American experiment; it means being honest about it.

6:42the time to reflect on Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Look at them, warts and all. And I thought it was a brilliant series. I really loved it. So uh a good a tonic a tonic for all. It's so great to have you back on the show. This is the kind of this is the kind of commentary we want. No, but also the I will say that I admire uh any

7:05country or or populace that is self-critical. That is one of my favorite qualities. Um and I do think there's a notion sometimes these days in the United States and we've had it before in the late 60s and early 70s that to love America you have to love everything about it and if you have any qualms at all you should leave. I I think that's just not in the American

7:29spirit. And so we should look at ourselves uh critically and see what we love about some of these founding fathers and what we find deplorable or sadly uh you know lacking. Well, because the sense that I have uh obviously as a non-American is that um the founding fathers I mean in the case of Washington and Jefferson are literally etched on a mountain and are going to stay there for

7:547 million years. that these are such giants and they played such a crucial role in establishing the American Republic and establishing American ideals that for almost two centuries perhaps it was considered the wrong thing to do even to to contemplate the fact that they might occasionally have toes of clay but that that has changed recently so much so that in fact there's a kind of culture war isn't there that

8:18that on the extremes there are those who say you should never say anything negative about the founding fathers at all and on the other extreme they're kind of genocidal slave owners who should be completely cancelled. To what extent are those extremes polarizing the kind of more centrist opinion in America? >> Well, first of all, I have noticed that um we just marked the 250th and it's it's ongoing, but um I was I believe I

8:44was 12 or 13 the bsentennial. We had the bsentennial in this country as led by the great Gerald Ford. And I remember that very clearly. There was a mania. Um it was sort of just it felt very much like kind of an undiluted joy about the bicesentennial. You know, the the tall ships came into Boston. I believe the queen visited. I mean, it was just everyone I think felt unified and good

9:13about it. Uh now we have the 250th and there is something interesting that's happening which is some people I think felt that the Trump and the administration kind of grabbed the 250th and made it more about their movement which meant that people maybe who weren't part of that felt left out or felt like they didn't want to participate. We're in a moment right now. We're clearly in a moment in this

9:43country and I think it's very hard for some people maybe to just say um I'm really excited about our 250th uh when our current state is so divided. So yeah, it's a little it's a little strange I think at the moment. And do you think that um the fact that there are people say on the left who will say they should all be cancelled, they were all slave owners, they deserve to be