Bumbling leaders push socialist ideas in American education

We're going to run the educational gamut. We're going to California. We're going to go to Virginia. We're going to Pennsylvania. We're going to get to Michigan.

I hope we're going to get to all these places. And on top of that, I hope we have a history class. today. I'm planning on a history class. I am planning on getting to the North Dakota signers of the Declaration.

Look it, through the month of July, this has been our history class. focus. The signers. Who are the signers? Who are these men?

We need to know who they are. We need to know what made them tick. What did they stand for? And what did they endure? What did they go through?

Because they were willing to sign away their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. And the past couple of days, I haven't made it back to history class, so hopefully today we can correct that. But first, before we get into any of this, I have a political question, maybe observation, I want to put out there.

And it is this. So we're watching the Republican National Convention unfold before our very eyes. Of course, Trump has chosen J.D. Vance. And the other night, Trump comes in.

You know, it's a beautiful entrance. Lee Greenwood is singing, and he's kind of singing and giving a monologue simultaneously.

And his song is playing in the background.

I can imagine being in the room would have been moving for the Trump faithful, being there in the. of course, he's got the, you know, the white ear bandage on and it's, you know, all of. it's just a moving moment. Here he is. I think he came in.

Well, yeah, he came in Monday night. And, you know, here he is 48 hours later, after an assassination attempt. I just, just moving. But he's standing next to J.D. Vance, they've made the announcement.

And Vance is smiling and Tucker's there and Donaldson's on the other side of him. And I just thought, I had this thought, I wonder what Ron DeSantis is doing right now. Right now, in this moment, what's DeSantis doing? And what's DeSantis thinking? Because that's DeSantis.

I mean, if DeSantis doesn't decide, listen to whoever he was listening to, if he doesn't decide that to run for president,

and in Trump's mind, break loyalty with him. I mean, that's probably DeSantis up there. DeSantis is probably the vice president.

And, you know, maybe DeSantis didn't want to take that road.

But once Trump's elected, and he's going to be elected, there's no way around it. Once he is our next president, and J.D. Vance is our vice president, in four years, J.D. Vance is going to run as an incumbent, essentially. I mean, he's part of the ticket.

And I just, I feel like that. maybe, maybe DeSantis just positioned himself on the outside. looking in. I just wonder, well, what in the world's going through his head? Because if he stays loyal to Trump and doesn't run, you know he's his pick.

I mean, the way he has governed the state of Florida, beautifully, I might add.

He's the VP, hands down. That's what I think. I think he is the VP, hands down. But he makes some decisions, alienates himself, you know, creates this rift between the two.

And you just don't do that. I mean, if you want to be on the ticket, you don't do that. I don't know. Am I in left field here with this observation? No, I'm not.

You think I'm spot on? All right. You think it's odd that I would just bring it up now? Well, I mean, I care about this sort of stuff. And I think about this sort of stuff.

I'm thinking, what is DeSantis doing right now? We're watching J.D. Vance smile and, you know, stand next to Trump. And you know, he's being well received. Everybody likes him.

And I just thought that could have been DeSantis. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Could have been DeSantis. And then, on the other side, you know, we've got Biden giving these press conferences. This interview with Lester Holt.

I don't know if you saw it, but

you know, when Holt asked him about his rhetoric, did you see that he instantly deflected to being out in rural areas and getting the middle finger from middle school kids? Well, that's not the point, Biden. That's not the point of Lester Holt's question. That's the way the American people are responding to you.

Holt is talking about you and your rhetoric, not how the people are responding to you, but the cluelessness, my friends, the cluelessness here. And it, I don't know, look, I'm not saying the Republicans are perfect because there's a lot of clueless Republicans. And I'm the first to admit it. I guess I'm not the first, but I'll get in a line of people that are willing to admit that there are clueless Republicans out there. And a lot of them do not have our best interests.

They're in it for their own well-being. They're in it for their own fame or fortune or whatever, whatever you're going to be in it for.

I believe that there are a lot of them that aren't in it for the country.

But what I always say is when you look, when you take a step back and you look at the two parties,

mostly, mostly the Democrats, are clueless. And mostly they make policy decisions that are destructive. And when they say and accuse the Republicans and whoever, independents and others, of doing something, then it's important that you look at them, because they're probably doing that very thing. And, you know, when they, you know, for weeks and months on end, would say that all Donald Trump wants to do is to destroy democracy, then instantly look at them.

And yesterday I was talking about this person on TikTok, this girl who was flying off the rails and just crying and, you know, having a nervous breakdown, a panic episode because of the two millimeters. If it could have gone the other way, then all of her problems would have been solved in her mind. And she was deranged. She looked deranged. She seemed deranged.

And, you know, because all Trump, in her words, all Trump wants to do is destroy democracy.

And these people don't have the ability to tell you why. They don't have the ability to say, here's why he's going to destroy democracy and start listing things. Whereas we can list the policies that they're enacting that clearly show how they're destroying democracy. Now, I use that term because they use it. Again, I shouldn't use it.

I shouldn't fall into the trap of using their vocabulary. I'll scold myself for this later. We don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic, a constitutional republic at that. There are some democratic values.

There are some democratic processes that we go through. But we're not a democracy.

And so there's no destroying of democracy here. There would be a destroying of the republic.

But again, you look at Trump's policies, and not a single policy has been destructive. Instead, they have been uplifting. They've been supportive. They've been beneficial to the country and to her citizens. But when you look at the policies of the Democrats, this whole open border fiasco, where you've got millions of undocumented illegals pouring into the country, and then this vote last week to make it sure that only citizens vote in our elections, you've got this vote in Congress.

And pretty much 100%, not 100%, but close to 100% of the Democrats voted against this. And then it doesn't. The Democrats in the Senate don't. They don't vote for it.

And their policies are destructive. They are out to destroy the country. I don't know how you can't call it any other thing, in that they're out to destroy the country. Yesterday, we talked about the miracle in Mississippi and what's happening there.

People are calling this a miracle. What's taking place in Mississippi? because their literacy rates are just improving to a great extent. I mean, off the charts, what's happening. But it's not a miracle.

What Mississippi has decided to do is get rid of the socialist whole word method or whole language method, or in the article, what they call balanced literacy. We instruct with balanced literacy, and it makes it sound so nice. It makes it sound so thorough. I mean, it's balanced. It's got the word balanced in it, so you know it's balanced.

And it's got the word literacy in it, so you know that there's literacy going on. And neither of those things are happening in the way that students have been taught to read. And this whole balanced literacy process came to us because of socialists, because of John Dewey, the socialist. And we talked about Dewey yesterday. And I read to you from an article called Who Killed Excellence by Samuel L.

Blumenfeld. This was an Imprimis article from the 1980s, where he details and describes the whole word method. And why Dewey wanted this incorporated? Because he wanted to destroy individualism. He, Dewey, and his ilk were working on a curricula at the University of Chicago that would teach the students to be socialists.

That was their game. He said the students are never going to be socialists because of their rugged individualism. It's because we believe in individualism in this country, and that's got to go. We have to exchange that for collectivism. And the only way we can introduce collectivism is if we, it's not by introducing collectivism, by the way.

Dewey was smart. He understood what was at stake. He said the first thing that we have to do is, and these are my words, we have to dumb down the literacy rates. We have to soften the literacy. that's being taught to students.

They're being educated to read too well. And that's where we have to begin. We have to exchange this idea for high literacy rates, and we'll just teach the kids how to socialize. We'll teach them how to be social. And then we will be able to incorporate socialism for the collective, for the state, not individualism for the person.

This was a full-on frontal assault on self-government, full-on. And so here we are, and we find ourselves, decades later, our literacy rates are in the toilet.

We're not teaching students how to think anymore. And we're doing what Dewey had envisioned. We're teaching them what to think. We're teaching them how to look at people and what to think about people. And we've incorporated a bunch of other garbage.

We don't teach actual history anymore. We teach theories, critical theories, which are also socialistic, communistic in their foundation, where they criticize the foundation at truly what's at the heart of a Judeo-Christian society. A Judeo-Christian society that not only has the authority to govern itself, but has the ability to govern itself. That has been under assault by Marxists, by communists. And they're the ones who who create these policies that are hell-bent on destroying the country.

So this, when I was reading this article to you the other day, I quoted from, oh, what was the author's name? His name was Flesch, I think it was. Yeah, Robert Flesch, Flesch, F-L-E-S-C-H. So he writes this book in, I think, 1955.. And the book's entitled, Why Johnny Can't Read.

And he details what the, what I'll call the Marxists, he details their program and how they're going to thwart our reading. In 1981, he writes a follow-up book entitled, Why Johnny Still Can't Read. And there he says, 25 years ago, I studied American methods of teaching reading to elementary students and warned against educational catastrophe. But now it's happened. So it took 25 years.

This guy's warning, warning, warning, warning. But he's saying, look, we're here, we're in this moment, we're at an educational catastrophe. This was 1985.. I think it was, I'm sorry, 1981..

And so here we are, 40 years later. I mean, we've almost doubled, we've almost doubled the initial time frame, where he said, hey, I started complaining about this 25 years ago. Now we're 40 years beyond that.

So in this article, Who Killed Excellence? And I read this to you yesterday, but I just want to point it out again.

At the moment, and this would have been, now. this article was written in 1985.. So when he says at the moment, he's referring to the 80s.

Every state legislature in the nation is grappling with an education reform bill. Not one of them has addressed this basic problem, primary reading instruction. Not one of them. They didn't look at it. They didn't look at what the socialists had incorporated and brought into the American education system.

They did not look at a solution for the problem. They started looking at solutions for the symptom. And that's it. They were studying the symptoms.

He continues, the trouble is that most would-be reformers are convinced that merit pay is what's going to fix the problem. Higher pay for teachers, that's what's going to fix the problem. Longer school days. He points this out in the 80s, longer school days. And then yesterday, I brought this up to you, that in Philadelphia, they are testing a full-day, full-year school.

And I didn't read this, but I'm going to today. I want to point it out to you. Philadelphia Mayor Cheryl Parker announced last week that a pilot program to extend school hours on weekdays from 7.30 a.m. until 6 p.m. is underway.

They're going to offer it to schools for six weeks during the summer break and all the way through spring and winter break. So it's almost as if it is, it's, listen, we want your kids when they're on break. This is the pilot program. The program, geared to children from kindergarten through eighth grade, will be offered at 25 schools in Philadelphia starting this school year. Ms.

Parker, Philadelphia Mayor, stressed that the program will not be mandatory for teachers or students. And it will not change the school calendar. It will, however, be available for those who wish to take advantage of the extended time. And here's her quote. We want to make sure that there are no excuses that our children in the Philadelphia School District, regardless of their socioeconomic status and or zip code, that they get access or that they get access to the high quality and enrichment, all right, she's, I don't know if this is a typo, if this is her speaking, they get access to the high quality and enrichment programs that are not traditionally offered during the school day.

Her solution is the problem.

I'm just going to read her quote again. So you, so we're all on the same page. She wants to make sure there are no excuses. The children in the Philadelphia School District, regardless of their socioeconomic status, regardless of where they live, regardless of their zip code, she wants to be sure that there's no excuses, that they all get access to the high quality enrichment programs that are not traditionally offered during the school day. High quality enrichment programs that aren't offered during the school day.

They're such high quality. And if there's such enriching programs, my first question is, why aren't they being offered during the school day? All right. It's not about more time being spent, you know, for additional stuff. In classical schools, we refer to it as much, not many.

Much, not many. Depth, not width.

More time at school is not the solution. How about time better spent? That is the solution.

You know, if there are these high quality enrichment programs, how about spend the school day actually better? And let's plug in some of these high quality enrichment programs. All right. She said the extra time will be used for enrichment programs that look different from traditional school. Those activities will be determined by the interests of the students.

But some activities may include sports, the arts, learning how to play chess, financial literacy, learning how to code, or tutoring opportunities.

How about, instead of these enrichment programs determining the interest of the student, how about you actually teach them how to read? How about that? How about if you truly wanted to?

fix the problem in Philadelphia, I mean truly, if you just wanted to get down to the nitty gritty and you wanted to get to the bottom of things,

you would follow Mississippi. You would follow the miracle in Mississippi. You would say, what miracle are they doing down there? That's what I want to do. And you would get rid of whatever program you're using, whatever whole word, whole language, balanced literacy, whatever you're doing, get rid of it.

And you start teaching your lower elementary how to read by using phonics. And in a decade, once those lower elementary students have made their way up and have graduated, and you've had a whole crop come through, you will see changes. And this isn't a sprint. This isn't an overnight fix. This isn't something we're going to fix over a summer by extending the school day, by creating a summer school program or making the day go till, what is it again?

730 to 6 PM. I mean, it's almost a 12 hour work day here, almost a 12 hour day.

The human body needs a rest. The human body needs, I mean, the human mind, these kids can't, they can't handle this. They can't endure this. But what this basically has become is an extended babysitting service, because we, by we, I mean the state, we want your kids all the time. And we're going to take your kids all the time.

under the guise of educating them and giving them every opportunity. We want to make sure that there are no excuses. Our children in the Philadelphia school district, regardless of their socioeconomic status and zip code, that they get access to the high quality enrichment programs that they don't get at school.

And if they're so high quality, if they're so enriching, why aren't you giving to them at school? And you should, again, the high quality enrichment you should be giving them?

is teaching them how to read. And you need to go through phonics. The program, the article says, could boost student academic outcomes and reduce delinquent behavior, according to the mayor. It could? It could boost student academic outcomes?

Well, I can tell you right now, mayor, it's not. It's not going to boost student academic outcomes. I don't know, maybe it may reduce delinquent behavior, because, you know, the kids are busy, you know, at the extended day. boys and girls club. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the boys and girls club.

And if you've got adults there tutoring and mentoring,

but you need to teach them actual academic outcome stuff. And the way you go about it matters.

Teaching with phonics matters.

But that's not the only reason. Philadelphia is piloting the program, according to the mayor. It will also help working parents. And there it is, there's the rub. Look, we know it's tough out there.

We know it's tough to make ends meet. I mean, we know that Biden has destroyed the economy so much that not only are both parents working, but both parents are working two jobs. So leave your kids with us. It's fine. Leave them with us.

I mean, we'll take them. It's not a big deal. We will continue to educate them in socialism and in communism, where they're going to be Marxists by the time we're done. You don't have to worry about that. It'll be fine.

They'll be well looked after, well taken care of. We're going to do it. Parents can drop their children off before the school day begins, including during the spring and winter breaks. This program, as Parker said, is well suited for children who don't go on family trips over the summer or don't have a lot of plans outside of school. It's well suited for these kids.

We'll take them. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about planning family trips and summer vacations. Just bring them to us.

The program is a partnership between the city of Philadelphia and the school district, Longer days. This is what Blumenfeld is saying in the 1980s. This is what legislators, instead of looking at the actual problem, one of the things that they want to do is have longer school days.

Issue more homework. Let's give the kids more opportunity to do homework, more competency tests, and compulsory kindergarten. This is in the 1980s. I'm looking at another article here. This is entitled California Bill Would Make Kindergarten Mandatory for Children.

I want to dive into this article, but I'm looking at the clock and I see we're up against it. Let's pause here for this break. We'll go to California on the other side. My friends, you are listening to The Dean's List on America Out Loud Talk Radio.

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That is absolutely a good thing. americaoutloud.shop, or click the banner at americaoutloud.news. All right, let's dive into California. So 1985,.

before we get to California, 1985, Samuel Blumenfeld is saying, look, if politicians would just get to the heart of the matter, and just look at reading scores, look at literacy, and look at the fact that our kids don't know how to read. Their literacy scores are in the toilet. Let's look at this. Instead, Blumenfeld says, we're going to have politicians that are going to want to extend the school day, which is what we're seeing in Philadelphia. And we're going to have politicians that are going to want to mandate kindergarten.

And I'm holding here in my right hand, this article entitled California bill would make kindergarten mandatory for children.

A California bill is proposing, or the California bill proposal would potentially cost $100 million annually. And this is according to fiscal analysis by the State Assembly Appropriations Committee. Existing law in California currently requires full-time school attendance for children between the ages of 6 and 18.. If this bill is passed, this is Assembly Bill 2226, it would go into effect for the 27-28 school year.

This is what the bill's author, Democrat Assemblyman Al.

Muratasuchi, I don't know. Sorry, Al, I might be destroying your last name. My apologies. He's the bill's author, and here's what he said. We know the achievement gap is present before children attend first grade.

To fully realize this goal, we must ensure that all children attend kindergarten to build the foundational skills and knowledge necessary to support their ongoing academic and social emotional success.

He said, California is making strides toward increasing early educational skills for young children through programs like Transitional Kindergarten and the California State Preschool Program, which assists preschool-aged children transitioning into kindergarten.

Okay, so you are going to make it mandatory for 5-year-olds. Look, I'm just telling you, right now, not all 5-year-olds are ready. They're not. And for you to make it mandatory that all 5-year-olds go to kindergarten when some of them aren't ready yet, they're just not mentally there. This is not an answer.

I'll tell you what you should mandate. What you should make mandatory in California is phonics instruction. That's what you should make mandatory, but this year, California lawmakers failed to pass that bill. I mean, that bill was on the table. It would have required phonics, what they're referring to as the science of reading, which is phonics-based curriculum in all schools.

Right now, districts, they can require it locally, and they should be doing this locally. School boards should be getting in touch with the Reading League out of New York. This is the non-profit that advocates this phonics-type instruction. They say that 60% of U.S. 4th graders are not reading proficiently.

But here in California, oh, you've got to mandate kindergarten. I mean, that's the problem. We know the achievement gap is present before children attend first grade.

According to a June Education Committee analysis, the proposed law here in California would extend also to charter schools. Parents would still have the option to enroll their children in a private school or homeschool, according to the bill. Well, of course, here's what you do. Your child's not ready. You enroll them in your homeschool, and then you just let them be.

I mean, that's the answer to this.

Parental Rights Advocacy Group. Family Protection Ministries originally opposed the bill, and here's what their Executive Director, Nathan Pierce, had to say. We removed our opposition to the kindergarten bill due to the exemption for students attending private schools and a campus school or homeschool. She's like, all right, we're not going to oppose this as long as we still have the right to say we're going to enroll in a private school or a homeschool. I mean, that's the answer.

I mean, there's no opposition as long as you have the right to enroll in a homeschool. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but what happens when that right is gone? Then what are you going to do? See, these types of legislation, they need to be dealt with at the heart. They need to be nipped in the bud.

Nip it in the bud, as Barney Fife would tell Andy. Nip it in the bud. It's got to go. Let's not even have it.

The bill passed the Assembly in May with a vote of 61 to 11.

Bill Asale was one of the 11 Republicans who voted against it. He told the Epoch Times that his primary reason for opposing the bill was for financial reasons.

In May, the Assembly Committee on Appropriations estimated the bill would potentially cost $100 million annually, and he cited the state's nearly $15 billion budget deficit and said it's a bad time to pay for more services that the state couldn't afford. A Republican Assemblywoman, Diane Dixon, also opposed the bill. She said we should not be prioritizing taxpayer dollars for spending at a time when the state made brutal cuts to critical programs. You know what? Look, if you're going to spend the money, spend the money on something that is proven, something that we know will actually work, spend it on phonics.

Spend it on what they are calling the science of reading. I mean, it's hooked on phonics.

Let's just go back to the basics. Let's, my friends, let's go back to a classical education. That's what we should be.

I was about to say there should be laws passed all over the country that we have to educate classically. I don't think that's the answer. I don't think we should be passing laws that you have to educate in this way or that way. Look, I think classical education is the answer, but I think in some situations there might be students that benefit from a different type of education, as long as the foundation is there. I think phonics should be part of it.

I think phonics should be, I think there should be a law that says kids have to learn reading through a phonics-based program because that is proven. That's going to increase literacy skills. Is that what we want? I mean, we have to ask ourselves this question. Is that what we want?

Do we want our students being literate? I think the answer is yes. We want them being literate, so let's mandate the very best programs that we know of. Right now, we know it to be phonics. It's not this whole word garbage.

I mean, it's been proven to water down intelligence, but they do it anyway. They do it on purpose because they want intelligence watered down. They don't want kids thinking for themselves.

I'm going to climb off the soapbox here. There's other stuff happening. Michigan is giving away free community college tuition. Gretchen just signed that bill into law. I don't know.

There's other stuff going on. I'm up against it, up against the break. Now, here's what I want to do. On the other side, I want to get to North Carolina. We're going to go to history class on the other side of this break, and we're going to talk about the three signers from North Carolina.

Who were they, and why are they important, and why do we need to know about them? Why do we need to know who they are? This is a part of proper history. Again, next to phonics, actual history needs to be mandated. We need to make laws that, yes, we're going to teach phonics.

We're going to teach true, actual history. Those are the things that I think should be mandated. All right. We're going to pick that up. on the other side of this break.

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All right, welcome back to history class on the Dean's List. This is it. We're going to dive in today. It's been a few days and we need to take this opportunity to go after it. And there's a couple of reasons why we do this, specifically why we are doing or researching or learning about the signers of the Declaration.

Number one, it's just important that we know who these people are. Number two, it was John Adams who said to us, to his children, to those who would come after him, whether his children or not, he said, posterity. You will never know how much it costs the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.

And we find ourselves at this point where he says, I hope you will make a good use of it. You're never going to know how much it costs the present generation to preserve your freedom. And I hope you make good use of it. And we're at this place where we need to make a good use of it.

When, after the Constitution, after the Convention, the Constitutional Convention, Franklin is met in the streets by a woman of Philadelphia and she says, Dr. Franklin, what do we have, a monarch or a republic? And he says, you have a republic if you can't keep it.

We have to make a good use of it. These guys fought to create it and to preserve it, and they passed the baton on to us, I mean, through generation after generation, and here we are, and we have to make good use of it. And I think part of making a good use of it is knowing who the men were who signed it. If, you know, Adams said, we're never going to know how much it costs the present generation to preserve our freedom. Well, let's start learning about it.

Let's start learning how much it cost them. Let's learn who they were. Let's learn what they went through. It was William Ellery from Rhode Island. He showed up to the Convention.

late. Governor Ward, who was one of the delegates from Rhode Island, passes away. And he passed away in March of 1776.. Ellery shows up in May, right when the debate is getting hot.

And Ellery signed the declaration, voted for it and signed it. And often he would say this, I was determined to see how they all looked as they signed what might be their death warrant. I placed myself beside the Secretary, Charles Thompson, and eyed each closely as he affixed his name to the document. Undaunted resolution was displayed in every countenance. I love that.

Undaunted resolution. That's what these men were made of. Once the decision was made, because not all of them voted for independence, some of them still wanted to try to resolve the dispute with the crown. Many of them did. But when it was determined that this was the will of the people,

and they were going to put their name to the paper, they did it with, according to Ellery, undaunted resolution. They all signed.

Well, with the exception of Dickinson, he did not sign. Now, I believe he would have. But when it came time for them to sign in August, the people of Philadelphia had already removed him. Right, because they, you know, Philadelphia, I'm sorry, Pennsylvania, the people from Pennsylvania had already said, you're not going back. Otherwise, he probably would have signed because he ended up signing the Constitution.

I mean, he was back in at that point. But he did not sign the Declaration, and he was one of the major oppositions to John Adams in that Second Continental Congress, who was against the Declaration. But these guys that signed, they did so, in the words of Ellery, with undaunted resolution. So let's find out who they were. There were three of them from North Carolina.

North Carolina plays a very pivotal role in all of this, because it was the one state that was on the fence. It was six to six. Now, we talked about Delaware. Delaware was in the column for independence, but Cesar Rodney had to ride all night to get there, because there was three delegates from.

Delaware. One of them was for independence, the other was against independence.

And then there was Cesar Rodney, who was also for it, but he was not present at the convention. He was back at home, taking care of business.

And it was.

McKean, Thomas McKean, who gets a letter to Rodney, and he says, you've got to get here. It's just me and George Reed, and I'm for independence. George Reed is not. You've got to cast this deciding vote. Rodney rides all night.

But it was North Carolina who was on the fence. And the reason North Carolina was on the fence, they had three delegates, a man by the name of William Hooper, a man by the name of Joseph Hughes, and a man by the name of John Penn. Well, Hooper and Penn are both for independence, but they're not at the Congress. during July, when this vote's about to happen. They're out, again, taking care of business.

These guys had to,

you know, it wasn't like. this was their full-time job. They still had stuff going on that they had to leave and tend to things. Joseph Hughes remained. He remained back in Philadelphia.

He was in a lot of committees. He was also part of the Provincial Congress back in North Carolina, as were Penn and Hooper, William Hooper and John Penn. And William Hooper and John Penn are back in North Carolina, but Hughes was not. And the reason he gave was it just, it was going to be too much on him to travel. He just said, I'm going to stay in Philadelphia.

I'm going to do my committee work here.

But he, and he was in a lot of committees. He was head of the Naval Committee. Matter of fact, it's Hughes, Joseph Hughes, who's considered the first secretary of the Navy.

So he's very much involved. And he's been involved through the whole process. Hughes and William Hooper were both nominated as delegates to the first Congress. They're both nominated as delegates to the second Congress. And it's John Penn who joins them in the second Congress.

All three of them had to eventually go back and tend to, after they signed the declaration, all three of them have to go back and tend to their family. William Hooper, his estate in North Carolina was destroyed or wiped out. He had to rush home and make sure his family was safe. Once Joseph Hughes signed the declaration, he immediately left to return home to tend to his family, to make sure they were safe. John Penn, after he signed the declaration,

and he also does the same. In 1780, he's part of the group that is harassing Cornwallis on his march up into Virginia. And once the British lose the Battle of King Mountain, Cornwallis retreats. And John Penn is very much involved in that. And he and his men, his backwoods, men, North Carolina, are literally harassing Cornwallis from the woods on his entire march, which finally he just gives it up.

Once the British lose the Battle of King Mountain, Cornwallis returns. Not only did these men sign the declaration, but they engaged the British in battle. They engaged on the front lines. They engaged out from the woods in guerrilla-style warfare.

Because, according to Ellery, in their eyes, was undaunted resolution.

But again, let's go back to July or to June. Joseph Hughes is the only delegate there in Congress. William Hooper and John Penn are not there. Joseph Hughes writes a letter. I think this is maybe February.

I think February.

Yes, February 1776.

. Hughes writes a letter to Samuel Johnson, who is the president of the North Carolina Provincial Assembly. In the letter, he says that William Hooper, while he was returning from a visit to Massachusetts to see his and make sure she was safe, Hooper sent him a letter from New York, which, in Hughes's words, painted things in the strongest colors, he said.

It was Hooper who went on to say that he had furnished himself with a good musket and a bayonet.

Hughes also sends Johnson, who's the president of North Carolina Assembly, the pamphlet Common Sense. He sends him one copy because he didn't know if Johnson was in the camp of independency or not. That's what they called it. John Penn was in the camp of independency, and John Penn was very fond of common sense. Hughes agreed to send copies to North Carolina and let the council decide what they were going to do.

North Carolina is the first county to authorize her delegates to concur with the delegates of the other colonies in declaring independency, in their words. This is a letter that they sent to Congress on April 12th.

Johnson, in this letter, explains that the House had passed the motion and had signed approval, and so they're on board. Hughes, Joseph Hughes, reports back to Johnson on May 16th that he had received the letters and the independence resolution, which he said he laid before Congress at the earliest opportunity. However, interestingly enough, the Journal of Congress at the time shows the new instruction from North Carolina was not laid before Congress until after that letter. It wasn't laid before Congress until May 27th.

There are some interesting things here about Hughes. He was definitely on the fence.

It was during these lead debates that finally Samuel Adams took the floor. Here's what John Adams writes in a letter to William Plummer in 1813..

He says this. Every member of Congress did on the 4th of July 1776, in fact, cordially approve the Declaration of Independence. The measure had been upon the market for months and obstinately opposed. from day to day. Majorities were constantly against it.

For many days, the majority depended on Mr. Hughes of North Carolina.

While a member of the Congress, Samuel Adams, one day was speaking and reading documents from all the colonies to prove that the public opinion and the general sense was indeed in favor of independence. Mr. Hughes, who had hitherto constantly voted against it, according to John Adams, started suddenly upright and, lifting up both hands to heaven, as if he had been in a trance, cried out, it is done and I will abide by it. I would give more for a perfect painting of the terror and horror upon the face of the old majority at that critical moment than for the best piece of Raphael. That's what John Adams said.

So it was Samuel Adams in the end who convinced Hughes, listen, this has got to be your vote, because this is what the people want. And the people of North Carolina already said they wanted it. And Hughes was holding back. He was willing. He didn't send a letter, by the way, to Penn.

He didn't send a letter to Hooper and say, hey, we're going to take this vote. No, he was willing to cast the vote for North Carolina. But he was convinced otherwise by Samuel Adams to cast the vote for independence. And he did.

And in doing so, after the vote, he went and took care of his family. And he was one of those members that signed with absolute resolution. in his eyes. These men lost much.

The cost to them was great, according to John Adams. And what are we going to do to preserve it? What are you going to do today to preserve freedom? What are you going to do today to keep the republic? That's the question I'm asking.

And the answer, I hope, is everything you possibly can. OK, that's all the time we have for today, America. Thank you for joining me. Encourage your friends and family to get on the dean's list. Let's unite to renovate the age.