The lives of these men are essential to understanding the American form of government and our ideals of liberty. The Founding Fathers all played key roles in the securing of American independence from Great Britain and in the creation of the government of the United States of America.
On this episode of New World. The lives of these men are essential to understand the American form of government and our ideals of liberty. The founding fathers all played key roles in securing American independence from Great Britain and in the creation of the government of the United States of America. And now the life of Samuel Adams. When you go back to the beginning, you realize that Samuel Adams was almost born to be a rebel and a troublemaker. In college, he was reprimanded for missing morning prayer. His senior year, he was caught drinking on campus, a much more shocking event back then, although his father owned a brewery, so maybe drinking on campus this wasn't all that surprising. He was born to a very wealthy and religious family on September twenty seventh, seventeen twenty two. He was the tenth of twelve children. We tend to forget sometimes both how many children colonial family said, and also how many they had lost. Only Sam ladamson. Two of his siblings made it past childhood. That's three out of twelve. Nine did not survive childhood. His father, Sam Ladams Senior, was a deacon of the Congregational Church, ran a brewery and was deeply involved in politics. Remember, by the way, that back at a time when we did not have clean, drinkable water, beer really matters and its very significant fact. Guinness Stout was one of my favorite beers. Was actually invented in Ireland as a health drink because it was better for you than either hard liquor or water. The founder of Guinness Stout actually got an award for doing something involving public health. So when you talk about people brewers, it's a much different world. In the eighteenth century. Sam Adams is growing up and he loved politics. Now, I think that's a key part of this. You know, this is a guy who likes people, He's involved with people. He's also pretty well educated. And when he was young he attended the Boston Latin School, which has historically been a remarkably good school. He learned Latin and Greek. He attended Harvard College at the age of fourteen. He earned his undergraduate degree in seventeen forty and a graduate degree in seventeen forty three. This is this smart guy and a pretty learned guy. Although unlike John Adams, his central impact in history is not because of his calculated writing and his calculated capacity as a literary person, but rather because he could really organize and arouse people. Now, his father attempted to establish a land bank in Boston. He was popular in the colonies, but the British Parliament opposed it and ruled the bank illegal in seventeen forty one, which led to the Adams family going bankrupt dealing with the lawsuits that followed, and that may have been part of why you begin to get the strong sense in Sam Adams that the British Parliament is anti American. He writes his Master's Thesis on quote whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved. Notice, he's intellectually laying the base for the principle that in order to protect Americans' rights they may have to, in fact, to use his language, resist the Supreme Magistrate. Of course, the Supreme Magistrate automnly is the King, and he's questioning in his Master's Thesis whether England really legally has the right to impose taxes on the colonies. Part of what's happened, of course, is when the English win the French and Indian War, or the Sevent Years Wars it's called in Europe, and the French are driven out of Canada all of a sudden, the Americans aren't faced with any kind of significant threat, and at the same time, the British have this huge debt they've run up in fighting the Seven Years War, which was a genuinely worldwide war started by the way by George Washington as a very young man in western Pennsylvania. They want to raise taxes at the very moment that the Americans think, hey, everything's worked out fine, we don't need your protection and we don't need to give you money. So Sam Adams, in that sense, coming off the grievance of the British Parliament, having destroyed his father's family wealth, decided that he would in fact become more and more militant in favor of freedom. Now, when he did graduate, he was going to practice law, which his cousin John Adams does do brilliantly. But his mother was against Sam Adams becoming a lawyer, so she convinced him to become a clerk at accounting house Centsia Bank. His father tried to get his son into business by giving him a thousand pounds to start his own business. But Adams was a businessman. He lost the money because that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to focus on politics, and while he's working at the brewery, Adams, at the age of twenty six, and a group of his friends started Quote the Independent Advertisers, a newspaper where anonymously they questioned England's rule and demanded more rights for the colonies. Paper lasted about a year. The first edition of the paper was published in Boston on January fourth, seventeen forty eight. The first edition started with the following quote, upon the encouragement we've already received and agreeable to our printed proposals, the Independent Advertiser now makes its entrance into the world, And as it will doubtless be expected upon its first appearance, that we should more fully explain our design and show what the public may expect of it, We would accordingly observe that we shall be no means endeavor to recommend this out paper by depreciating the merit of other performances of the same kind. Neither would we flatter the expectations of the public by any pompous promises which we may not be likely to fulfill. But this our reader may depend upon that, we shall take the utmost care to procure the freshest and best intelligence, and publish it in such an order as that every reader may have the cleanest and most perfect understanding of it. And for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with the geography of foreigner parts, we may insert such descriptions as may enlighten them. Therein now, part of what they're saying is Boston is a great port. People are showing up in Boston. Ships are coming into Boston from all over the Atlantic, and what they want to do is they want to get the news before anybody else print it, so you can learn what's happening around the world. Because of that now, he also makes a political commitment in this very first newspaper. He says, quote, as our present political state matter for a variety of thoughts of peculiar importance to the people of New England, we propose to insert everything of that nature that may be pertinently and decently wrote for ourselves. We declare we are no party, neither shall we promote the private and narrow designs of any such. We are ourselves free, and our papers shall be free, free as the Constitution we enjoy, free to truth, good manners, and good sense, and at the same time free from all licentsious reflections, insolence and abuse. Now notice here, because this will come up again and again, and Sam Adams is one of the people who is a great propagandist. The emphasis on free, the word free. We are ourselves free, our paper will be free, free as the Constitution we enjoy. I notice he's already claiming that there's a constitution, and in British tradition it's unwritten but understood. Free to truth, good manners, and good sense, and at the same time free from all licentious reflections, insolence and abuse. So think about that. In this one paragraph that comes back to the word free again and again. And he asserts that there is a constitution, which is why when the British Parliament begins to impose taxes, they are violating an already existing constitution. The Americans, in their view, do not have to fight for liberty. They are born into liberty. They are born into a constitution. Now, as an activist and somebody who was very good at working with people, in seventeen forty seven, Adams is elected to his first political position as one of the clerks of the Boston Market, where he served for nine years. A year later, seventeen forty eight, both his parents died, leaving him with their estate and in charge the family's brewery business. He was also left with the numerous lawsuits connected to the land bank that his father had tried to establish. Adams just not a good businessman. He's unable to make ends meet. He loses the brewery business. The government foreclosed in his family's estate, but Adams used his ability in writing to threaten potential buyers and was able to keep the estate while the government was trying to sell it. People just wouldn't buy it. In seventeen forty nine, Samuel Adams married Elizabeth Checkley. According to adams quote, she was a rare example of virtue and piety, blended with a retiring and modest demeanor and the charms of elegant womanhood. Three years as junior, Elizabeth was the daughter of Samuel Checkley, his pastor at the Old South Meetinghouse. The couple had six children, only two of which reached maturity before Elizabeth Adams passed in seventeen fifty seven due to complications of childbirth. After her death, Adams immersed himself in politics. He worked briefly as a tax collector in seventeen fifty six, but since he often failed to collect the required taxes and was leaning with many who could not pay higher rates, he was fired and held liable for the lost income. Once again he's angry at the government. However, this gave him the change to establish connections which served him in the future. He went his second wife, Elizabeth Wells, in seventeen sixty four. Wells was the daughter of his good friend Frances well, a successful Boston merchant. The couple had no children together, but she embraced her step children as her own and supported her husband throughout his political career. In seventeen sixty four, the British government, trying to pay for the debts that have build up, passed the Sugar Act. As a member of the town Meeting, Adams was vocal against the Act. On May twenty fourth, seventeen sixty four, he wrote to the representatives of Boston, quote, for if our trade may be taxed, why not our lands? Why not the produce of our lands and everything we possess or make use of this We apprehend annihilates our charter right to govern and tax ourselves. It strikes at our British privileges, which, as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our fellow subjects who are natives of Britain. If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves. So here you have already in seventeen sixty four. The core argument. The argument is we are British by definition, we are part of the British Constitution. The British Constitution, of course, goes all the way back to the signing of the Great Charter the Magna Carta, and therefore people are not allowed to be taxed unless they give their approval. And so they see this as an assault on existing rights. They're not claiming new rights. They're claiming that their rights go back in history for hundreds and hundreds of years, and it is the government which is assaulting them. A year later got worse. The British government passed the Stamp Act again an effort to get money to pay off all these various debts. Adams at that point took the streetsed his political party, the Country Party, with two opposing parties, North Boston and South Boston, led by John Hancock and James Otis, to form the Sons of Liberty. Noticed again the language the Sons of Liberty. Adams wrote Instructions of the Town of Boston to its representatives in the General Court in September seventeen sixty four, and he's really laying out their argument. They are alarmed and astonished at attack called the Stamp Act, by which a very grievous and we apprehend unconstitutional tax is to be laid upon the colony. So notice they are literally arguing that they already have what they called are invaluable rights and liberties, and so they see this as an attack on existing rights. They're not arguing for new rights. They are defending what they see as old rights. That rebellion led to the Stamp Act Congress, where all but four of the colonies demanded that the King repeal the tacks. This worked, The British gave up in seventeen sixty six and never collected the taxes. Adam was elected that year In seventeen sixty six to the House of Representatives as a clerk. As clerk, he was responsible for basic record keeping and communicating with the colony's agent in London and with other legislative assemblies in other colonies. This is where he met John Hancock for the first time. Although most representatives did not receive a salary adam as clerk did and had a steady income, this allowed him to focus even more on politics. In seventeen sixty seven, Parliament approved a series of taxes on items imported in the colonies, known as the Townshen Acts. This act also created an American Board of Customs Commissioners to enforce collection, which established their headquarters in Boston. It's almost as though the Parliament is so desperate for money, and their reasoning is pretty simple. They had fought a large war against France in part to protect the Americans. They borrowed all this money in order to wage the war to protect the Americans and the Americans and other beneficiaries of having Canada to the north be a British colony. So why weren't the Americans grateful and generous? And apparently in Parliament they just couldn't get through their head. How much this was infuriating and alienating the Americans. When news of the Towns and Acts reaches Massachusetts in the autumn of seventeen sixty seven, Adams immediately employed the Boston Town Meeting to organize protests in boycotts. In January seventeen sixty eight, he motioned the General Court to draft a petition to the King urging that he respects the charter rights of Massachusetts. Notice they're not creating rights. They want the King to respect existing rights. The motion faced opposition from rural town representatives who aligned with the Parliament, so Adams waited until the end of the legislative session, with many of those who opposed departed back home before putting the motion forth. It easily passed. So here you see him maneuvering thinking, becoming a pretty effective politician. The General Court sent the letter the petition with the letter to other colonies. It was known as the Massachusetts Circular Letter, which Adams was one of the authors alongside James Otis. The letter read quote, the House of Representations of this Province have taken into their serious consideration the great difficulties the must accrue to themselves in their constituents by the operation of several acts of Parliament imposing duty and taxes on the American colonies. So they are really into this issue of the Constitution, which they assert already exists, and they are really into the concept that the British Parliament is now usurping their powers and threatening them in very very serious ways. And they assert, quote, in all free states, the Constitution is fixed, and as the Supreme Legislative derives its power and authority from the Constitution, it cannot overleap the bounds of it without destroying its own foundation. That the Constitution ascertains and limits both sovereignty and allegiance. And therefore His Majesty's American subjects, who acknowledge themselves bound by the ties of allegiance, have an equitable claim to the full enjoyment of the fundamental rules of the British Constitution. That it is an essential on all trouble right in nature, and grafted into the British Constitution as a fundamental law, and ever held sacred and irrevocable by the subjects within the realm, that what a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give but cannot be taken from him without his consent. That the American subjects may, therefore, exclusive of any consideration of Charter rights, with a decent firmness, adapted to the character of free men and subjects, assert this natural and constitutional right. So they're saying, we literally have under natural law, we have achieved this. This is the forerunner of what Jefferson will write in the Declaration of Independence when he says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unevable rights, among which your life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, that's exactly what Adams is beaten to drift towards. That these rights existed outside of any kind of specific contract. They are inherent their part of being British. And the result was that they had put together a real opposition. There was a threat to the core of the British system. Lord Hillsborough, who's the Secretary of State for the Colonies, received the letter and then ordered that the letter be taken back. Hillsborough threatened them said if they refused, he would order Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard to dissolve the General Court. Despite that threat, the legislative voted to refuse to rescind the letter by ninety two to seventeen. Governor Bernard, in response, dissolved them. They did not reconvene for another year. In other words, faced with a direct order from the British government, by ninety two to seventeen, the legislatures are voting to defy the British government. Now this is the beginning of really moving towards a serious confrontation. Troops arrive in Boston on October first, seventeen sixty eight, and while they're arriving, Adams is authoring over twenty newspaper articles, usually under the pen names Index and Candidas, using the pseudonym Index. In the Boston Gazette in December seventeen sixty eight, he writes, quote, will the spirits of the people is yet unsubdued by tyranny, on awed by the menace of arbitrary power, submit to be governed by military force. No let us rouse our attention to the common law, which is our birthright, our great security, against all kinds of insult and oppression, the law, which, when rightly used, is the curb and the terror of the haughtiest tyrant. So he's really putting together the core argument about the nature of freedom and the idea that freedom belongs to you. It's not given to you by the government. Freedom starts with you, and then you may loan part of it to the government, but the center of us always you, the individual citizen. And Adams advocate that Boston merchants just refused to import all British goods for a year. They didn't get one hundred percent support for it, but they got enough that all of a sudden, the British merchants are complaining to Parliament that the alienation is getting to be expensive to them. And so where the British Parliament had thought, oh, this would be pretty easy, they'll obviously have to pay the taxes. What this discovering is every time they take a step to oppress those who are angry, there are more people angry, and so there's a whole process underway here in which people are gradually banding together to oppose what the British are doing. Adams wanted to extend it beyond one year, but it just wasn't possible. On February twenty second, seventeen seventy, when harassed by a mob, a minor customs official named Ebenezer Richardson accidentally shot and killed eleven year old Christopher Cedar. Although probably an accident, Adams used this as an opportunity to call out the presence of British troops. Adams organized a public funeral that was attended by over two thousand people for this young eleven year old, whod been killed. By March fifth, seventeen seventy nine, British soldiers faced off a mob of several hundred angry citizens. They fired into the crowd, killing five and wounding six citizens. That began to be the Boston massacre. On March sixth, Adams led a committee to demand the removal of British troops in an emergency session. After Adams addressed the assembly, they unanimously voted for removal of the troops. Now this is a real, I think significant repudiation of the British ability to extend power. Governor Hutcheson understands how big a threat this is. On the same day, writes to William Dalrymple, the commander of the military, quote, I am sensible. I have no power to order the troops to the castle, but under the present circumstance of the town and the province, I cannot avoid in consequence of this unanimous advice to the Council designing you to order them there, which I must submit to you. Lieutenant Colonel Dalrymple agreed to this and ordered the troops to Castle Island in the Harbor. So the American citizens feel like they're winning. The soldiers involved in the shooting were arrested and waited trial. But it's fascinating. This is a great story in American history because they wanted a fair trial. Even Samuel Adams, who was one of the hottest and most aggressive of the Americans, knew that it had to be a fair trial. And of course most attorneys did not want to defend the British, so Adams got his cousin John Adams and Josiah Quincy to defend them. It's a brilliant move. John Adams is a great lawyer. At the time, I think hurts him sum in terms of the people of Boston. But they made the argument that the soldiers were only firing out of self defense and there wasn't their fault that they were there. They'd been ordered to go there. So of the soldiers only two were found guilty of manslaughter. Adams actually opposed the court decision and really was on the side of the American revolutionaries. In April seventeen seventy, in an effort to find a middle ground, Parliament repeals all the towns in taxes except one, the tax on tea. In the late spring of seventeen seventy one, news came that Parliament would no longer allow the legislature to pay the governor's salary, but instead the governor's salary will be paid with revenue from the t tax. At that point, people began to get really upset. By the autumn of seventeen seventy two, news broke the judges of the Supreme Court would like the governor not be paid by the legislature. Now what's happening is the British Parliament is gradually creating a class of people whose loyalty is to London and who are prepared to impose on the people of Massachusetts. Now Adams when they learned that the judges as well as the governor are going to be paid directly from the tax, writes an article on the Boston Gazette under the name Valerius Publicola. He writes this quote to what a state of infamy, wretchedness, and misery shall we be reduced if our judges shall be prevailed upon to be thus degraded to hirelings, and the body of the people shall suffer their free constitution to be overturned and ruined. Let not the iron hand of tyranny ravish our laws and seize the badge of freedom, and the murderous rage of lawless power be ever seen on the sacred seat of justice. Now, by the way, it's interesting, I want to the paper in which I realized that reforming judges was the number two demand of the colonists, after the right of taxation. They were so angry at the way that the judges had become creatures of the state against the people, that much of what we see in the Constitution in limiting the judges is a function of what they had experienced under the British where the judges became the tools of the king against the people. By late seventeen seventy two, Adams is writing a pamphlet The Rights of the Colonists, And again this really is a precursor to Jefferson. Listen to it. Quote among the natural rights of the colonists are these first a right to life, second to liberty, third to property, together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of rather than deductions from the duty of self preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please, and, in cases of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to and enter into another. When men are enter into society, it is by voluntary consent, and they have a right to demand and insist upon the performance of such conditions and previous limitations as form an equitable original compact. Now notice Adam is going all the way back, basically making the argument which John Locke had made at the turn of the last century in the sixteen nineties, and that is that our rights are natural. They are inherent in the way that God and Nature operate, and therefore they are not a function of the state, but rather, the state has to be seen in the context of these natural rights. And this begins to be an enormous division, because if you are the British king, you can't accept the idea that their rights outside your kingship. Historically, in the Middle Ages, power came from God through the king down to other people. What they're now saying is no, no power comes from the God to us. It's a natural right, there's a natural liberty, and then we loan the king power. Well, this is a radical violation of the system that had been in operated throughout the Middle Ages. And so the result is you begin to see Samuel Adams I think as a real precursor of what Jefferson will write in the Decoration Dependence, laying out a doctrine even says at one point talks about life liberty and property. Property becomes life fluting in pursuit of happiness. But pursuit of happiness in the eighteenth century Scottish enlightenment is actually means virtue and wisdom, doesn't mean hedonism and getting drunk. So they're talking about you have a right to seek a better life, the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty. It is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. Now, look, this is a head on collision that's coming right down the road, and Adams is right in the middle of it, and he is describing the base of freedom as it has existed in America ever since, and that is that your rights come from God, that the government cannot infringe on those rights, and that only those things that you're willing to delegate the government can belong to government. In the middle of all this, an East Indian ship, the Dartmouth, arrived in Boston. Adams wanted the ship to return without paying the importation duties, something that was required by law, held a meeting where, according to a letter he wrote to Arthur Lee on December thirteenth, seventeen seventy three, at least seven thousand men, many coming from outside towns as far as twenty miles away, gathered to support Adam's petition, but Governor Hutcheson refused to make the ship return. Faced with this, a group of men disguised themselves as Indians and in less than four hours through all three hundred and forty two chests of tea into the harbor. This was the famous Boston Tea Party. We're not really sure if Adams was one of the Indians, but we are sure that he was instrumental in publishing what happened through all the colonies and using it as one of the reasons for colonists to fight for independence. Well, the British government goes nuts. They passed the Intolerable Acts of seventeen seventy four, closing the Boston Port until the colony paid for the tea. They dumped into the harbor, requiring all colonists to house British soldiers in their homes, and made it so the British had control of locally appointed officials. They basically are trying to take over and create a dictatorship based in London. That just leads Stephen Moore in ten argument. Adams in June of seventeen seventy four drafts the resolves of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and makes the case for the rest of the colonies that we are now being oppressed and they're coming for you next. Now. The British are very serious about this. They send General Thomas Gage as military governor, They send four thousand troops into Boston, and Adams doesn't back down. In fact, in June seventeen seventy four, Adams chairs a committee in the House of Representatives which had left Boston to go to Salem to be able to meet, and they propose electing individuals to represent Massachusetts at a Colonial Congress set to meet in Philadelphia. Both Sammy Adams and his cousin John Adams were elected delegates, and to this particular thing, General Gage, with the British back home putting real pressure on him to end the rebellion, I didn't want to arrest Sadams because he felt this would lead to a backlash. He tried to prevent the provincial Congress from getting military supplies. That led to each side attempted to capture local gunpowder Soores. Then, on April fourteenth, seventeen seventy five, a letter from the Secretary of State ordered Gage to disarm the militia and arrest the leaders of the rebellion, which was namely Samuel Adams and John Hancock. A second Continental Congress was deemed necessary in May of seventeen seventy five. Just a month later, Adams was selected as a delegate. However, in April, before departing, Adams and John Hancock attended a session of the provincial Congress medium conquered fifteen miles northwest of Boston. Since they were aware of the order to arrest him, they decided to stay in Lexington at the home of Reverend Clark instead of Boston. Because of a very real risk of arrest, Gage orders a column of troops to Conquered to seize and destroy a suspected cache of munitions. March, the soldiers would go through Lexington saxely. Not clear nowadays whether Gage knew that Adams and Hancock were there, or whether or not he is even going to try to arrest him. Despite this, fearing capture, Joseph Warren dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawls to warn the delegates to leave, and on April eighteenth, seventeen seventy five, Paul Revere won on his famous ride, sparking the beginning of the Revolutionary War. The British troops arrived in Lexington the morning of April nineteenth, just as Hancock and Adams escape. Less than a month after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress took place. In an April three, seventeen seventy six letter to Samuel Cooper, Adams wrote, it's not America already independent, why then not declare it? Can? Nations at war said to be dependent either upon the other, and so Adams is really working the concept it's time to declare independence. He's very much in favor of a resolution to declare it, and ultimately he's one of the people who's enthusiastically signing the Declaration of Independence. And again he's basing all of this on natural rights and on the sense that all we're doing is defining what we already have, and it's the British King who's trying to take it away from us. We're not trying to establish it. We already have it, but the British King now is trying to steal it. It's I think a very significant moment once they had won the war. Adams supported a state constitution, but he wanted to limit the power of the government. He did not go to the Constitutional Convention of seventeen eighty seven because he was afraid that a stronger government would infringe on the people's liberties. He rejected the very concept. He attempted to re international politics as a candidate for the oath House, but was defeated by Fisher Aims, who was an avid supporter of the constitution. He went on to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, under Governor John Hancock, and when Hancock died in office, Adams assumed the governorship. Then he was elected to three successive one year terms as governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He officially retired in seventeen ninety seven because he is unable to write due to the fremers in his hands. He died on October second, eighteen o three, at the age of eighty one. In eighteen nineteen, Thomas Jefferson wrote of Samuel Adams quote, I can say he was truly a great man, wise in counsel, fertile in resources, immovable in his purposes. Although not a fluent elocution, he was so rigorously logical, so clear in his views, abundant in good sense, and master always of his subject that he commanded the most profound attention whenever he rose in an assembly. And of course, as I have pointed out, Jefferson in many ways was deeply shaped by adams understanding of natural law and of the role of God in giving us our liberties. Because sam Adams was so eloquent and defining the rights of Americans, because he was so consistent and persistent in arguing and fighting for those rights, Because he was able to talk in a common language which allowed everyday folks to understand it and to decide for themselves where they were in this great struggle. He really is one of the heroes around whom the American system is built. I'm not sure that we would have gotten nearly as far towards freedom and liberty without Samuel Adams. I am sure he managed to help people all across the colonies come to an understanding that there was an irreconcilable difference between a British king who believed in the divine right of kingship and Americans who believed that that divine right led to sovereignty for the individual, not for the state. And I think Samuel Lettams has to be considered one of the genuine immortals who shaped freedom and on whose shoulders we today still stand. Thank you for listening. You can read more about Samuel Adams and get links to my other founding Father's episodes on our show page at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Gingrish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.