697. Why Was Moral Character So Important to the Founding Fathers?

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. You know, we do a lot of, there's a big spread of topics we do for this show.

And I love that, right? Because the name of it is The Way the World Works, and it's because we're talking about the way the world works, whether that's American history, whether that's economics, whether that's what I'm going to talk about today, which is about character and founders who exhibited good character. And so we talk a lot about personal responsibility and, and, you know, I've talked about how to make yourself feel more grateful and how that can impact, you know, your life and those around you. And I think sometimes people might wonder, why in the heck are we talking about that on a show where we just talked about the founding fathers last, last week? And it's because living in a free society, individualism means personal responsibility.

It means you have to make yourself in a good state as an individual so that you are, you are ready to live in a society without, you know, all these government restrictions so that you can, you can have something to, I don't want to say something to offer to your community because I don't think necessarily you, you owe things to others. I'm sounding like Ayn Rand here, but, but you, you do owe, you do owe others mutual respect. You do, you know, we should be creating value for other people.

And how do we do that? How do we learn personal responsibility? I think it starts with building good character. What does that mean? We all know what character means when we talk about storybooks, right? That's going to be the person who this, the story is about the people, the players, that's what they call them in plays. That's what Shakespeare called them.

But that's not what we're talking about when we talk about building character. When we talk about building character, we're talking about building morals, building, building virtues. So, and it's not just like, oh, I should be a nicer person.

Oh, I should do this. I should do that. It's about building self-control.

It's about building integrity. Some might say civil virtue, moral independence. These are some things that, that come to mind and we'll go into those in a minute.

Self-control is probably a self-explanatory, but the cool thing about this, this episode in particular is easier to tie back to, again, the history lessons we talk about because our country was actually founded by men who very strongly believed in the importance of building character, especially if they were going to be leaders of the first truly free country or, or mostly free country. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So at its core, you know, good, good character is kind of the, the essence of self-government.

You need to have the ability to restrain your, you know, your own appetite, your impulses, your passions, and even, you know, your ambition and to, to make sure that you are a person people are going to want to live in a free society. You don't want somebody to see you and be like, this is why we need laws. This person right here is why I think we need a government, right? You don't want people to say that.

So as I mentioned, self-control is a big one. I kind of already explained that that's, that's being able to control your, your emotions. We've talked about that many times, being able to control your, um, again, your vices, uh, vices is like a vice would be maybe eating too much junk food could be a vice or, you know, for, for adults, when you think about laws built on vices, it's like smoking would be a vice, right? It's something that isn't great, but shouldn't be regulated by the government, right? It should be regulated by you.

You should be able to control those vices. And then you have integrity. And when I think of integrity, the first thing that comes to mind is keeping your word, doing everything you promise to do.

And that's honestly the heart of like contract law, which was a lot of, um, consent, uh, you know, rule by consent or living in a community by consent. And it all kind of starts with that. Do what you promise to do.

If you are somebody who says you're going to do something and doesn't do it, you're not going to be somebody people want to live in a free society with. They're just not. And you can go to the mountains and live by yourself, but I will tell you this, it's probably going to get a little lonely.

I think you might get a little lonely after time. I'd be great for the first little bit, but after a while it's like home alone where it was fun for a day when he was left home alone. And then he's like, wait a second, robbers are after me and I'm kind of lonely.

And then another big one is moral independence. And that's the courage to do what is right. Even if that means standing alone.

One thing that I think makes our founders and even, you know, the courageous heroes that, that are mentioned in the title twins book, that's what makes them so extraordinary is their ability to say, this is morally wrong. I'm going to stand up to it. And that may mean I'm risking my reputation that may mean I'm going to lose all my friends or worse.

That may mean that me, that might mean I'm going to risk my life. That might mean that I lose my life for this. So that, that to me is honestly one of the most important things, billing, being willing to stand on principle.

Now my favorite founding father is John Adams and he was really big on character. And you know, it's funny. I don't always agree with John Adams philosophically.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson far more. The reason that I relate to John Adams so much, the reason I love him so much is because he did have a good, strong moral character. For example, at a time when the founders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson knew that slavery was incompatible with individual liberty.

They knew it, but they couldn't give it up. They were men of their time. They were, they were men who understood, but couldn't live out what they knew was right.

John Adams, his wife, they never owned slaves because they understood that that was incompatible. So I, I, I look at that as it's, that's standing on moral character. That's just, it's, it was an incredible thing to do at the time.

And I like that we have them as examples. John Adams believed that the law should be kind of a last line of defense because if people lacked virtue, if they lacked character, then no piece of paper with the law was going to save anybody. It wasn't going to restrain them.

So you had to have people who had some sort of moral grounding. Now in this day, a lot of people associated that with religion because that was, that was where they got their virtues or got their morals, but it doesn't have to be, you know, you can have this belief, you know, don't hurt people, don't take their stuff with or without that. The next founder I want to talk about is George Washington.

And let's look, when we talk about him and, and character, let's think about it in terms of leadership. Now, there was one thing I'm reading a biography about him right now that is just terribly interesting. But one thing that I was learning about him is he was not a particularly well-educated man.

And so for him, building character and, and seeking knowledge was very important because he felt he had something to prove. And that's not a bad thing. That's, you know, ambition in the best possible way, because he was taking on positions of leadership, you know, mostly in the military and then later the first president of our country.

And so he understood that for him to be a truly great leader, he needed to be armed with the, the skills, the education, the knowledge to do that and the, uh, the routine, the discipline. And so he was famous for constantly wanting to self-improve for constantly implementing these new areas of self-discipline. He was also famously known for trying to instill those, uh, you know, strict disciplinary rules to other people, but he was also a general.

So that makes sense. When you think of a military, you think, Oh, they kind of have to be disciplined. That's their whole thing.

So he was very big on that. Sometimes I think people didn't love it so much because he was very strict. He ran his house very strictly, but it was because, because of that, because he wanted to improve himself.

He knew discipline was a way to do that, a way to show you had this strong character. And so George Washington is going to become an amazing leader because of this. And also he had this, this desire for individual liberty above all.

And so he did eventually become president, but he didn't want to be, he didn't want to be, he didn't want to run for office. He didn't do that, but the people asked him to. And so he did what he thought his country needed.

I'm careful when I talk about that because I don't like that's portrayed sometime as, Oh, the common good. And I don't ever like saying the common good. Cause usually when you hear that it's lumped in with communism and socialism and we know that that's not great.

But in this incident, he wanted to be a good leader for his brand new country. And so he stepped forward because that's what he thought the people needed and wanted. But here's the difference between common good and communism and this kind of common good.

He did it voluntarily. And that's the, that's the key there. Ben Franklin was also really big on, on this enlightenment idea of building strong character.

And he actually famously had these 13 virtues and that included temperance, that included silence, that included frugality. And it's funny when I hear the silence part because Ben Franklin was notoriously kind of loud and boisterous and kind of a, kind of a, um, he was the life of the party. We'll say that.

So I'm like silence. Well, you were not silent all the time, but okay. And these are good things to live by, I guess.

And this thing I love, I will, I have mixed feelings about it, but I think I love it. He used to track his daily failings in a journal. Like this is what I failed at today.

Now we've talked about failure being great. Many, many episodes, especially if you're an entrepreneur. Do I think we need to hone in on failure constantly and be like, Oh, I'm so bad.

I'm terrible at this. Blah, blah, blah. No.

But I love that he did it daily to just be like, okay, this is where I fell short today. I'm going to try to make that better. And I think that is so great.

So he did that because he believed in this discipline and he didn't, he didn't believe that the goal was being this like morally perfect, better than everyone, you know, kind of mentality. But he just thought, I'm going to try better. I'm going to try better tomorrow and the next day and the next day to be the best possible version of myself that I can be that day.

And so Ben Franklin was real big on that. Thomas Jefferson believed that character was built through education and moral reasoning, which is if you've ever read anything about Thomas Jefferson, that is so just spot on for him. You know, Thomas Jefferson and a lot of the other founders believed in this concept of like a natural aristocracy and an intellectual aristocracy.

And what I mean by that is that people who were who studied and who gained a sense of moral reasoning were going to rise to a position where they were able to be leaders or they were able to be, you know, even just philosophical leaders, they were able to put forth these writings that would help shape minds and hearts as well. And so that's what Thomas Jefferson did. And when I say education, I do not mean public schools.

Those didn't really even exist at the time. There were some colonies of Massachusetts earlier on actually had compulsory schooling, but that's not what he means. He means education in the sense that we here at Tuttleton's believe in gaining knowledge, gaining practical knowledge, moral reasoning, things like that.

And so Thomas Jefferson was just, you know, a bookworm. He was constantly reading. He studied Locke.

He studied Blackstone. And he was trying to build his character through making sure that he understood these these kind of dense concepts at a time and that he could instill those to others. But all of these men, if you look at everything, it's all the sense of discipline.

It's all the sense of I'm actually going to spend time to do something that I think is going to make me a better person. And by being a better person, however that may be, they all had a little bit of different areas. By doing that, I'm going to be able to create value for other people, which is, again, the staples of a free community.

And so I love that. You know, we've talked about before Jordan Peterson, who talked about that you need to clean your own room before you can take on bigger projects or even think you can give input on how to change the world. And that's so true.

And we have, you know, Tuttle Twins, 12 rules boot camp based off Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life book, which is really good. I think this is so good if we're talking about character building and and becoming better people. So maybe as a family, maybe sit together at dinner.

Maybe I don't know if you guys do like a family night, whatever it is you do, maybe think of ways that you can help build character. And you're not saying you all have to point out each other's moral failings, daily failings like Benjamin Franklin did. But talk about how to keep yourselves accountable, how to really put that discipline forth.

Also remembering that the best form of discipline is going to be self-discipline. Because if you're constantly doing something just because you don't want to be punished or looked down on by other people, that works. Incentives work.

But there is something really truly magical and very important that happens when you find that that power of self-discipline within yourself and you're able to make those changes. So character matters. Character is important to the founding.

It's important to everything you will do in your life. And people do not forget people who have a strong character. They remember that.

So keep this lesson with you and discuss it as a family. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.