flexible. and medvedev said, i understand. i'm sure he told vladimir putin, well, my god, i would think he would want to give that message to our allies, since he could be more flexible, not those people who are opposed to us. and number one, he should give that message to the voter. he would have lost, of course, and no one seemed to -- the majority i should say -- but the majority of people heard it and said oh, god, and vote fold him anyway. wow. telling an adversary, and that's a word i can use to describe russia, an adversary that he can be more flexible after the election. wow. bruce hershonsohn, people will be listening to this and saying he's just a 1980s warmonger, defense guy, the

world's changed, we don't want to go to war anymore. >> no, i don't, and so we won't, and the world will change, and the world will change for the worse. it will change because -- and i know, because i've seen this in foreign countries. they look at the united states or have looked at the united states in the same way thatted old u.s. western movies -- you see the cavalries was coming, and everyone said the cavalry was coming, we're going to win after all. that's what people in foreign countries thought of the united states when they were -- when they really had it by a totalitarian, or a foreign power, they said, the united states is going to come in here. look, i'm one of them. vietnam -- i never thought for a second we could lose. never did. and the people there didn't either. but by god, what happened, it was the 94th congress

incidentally that did this. they were the ones who destroyed everything that we did. our military never lost one battle in vietnam. i'm just talking right now wherever my mind happens to go from your questions, but yes, people will look at the united states, and they'll also look at iraq. what president bush did in iraq, i think that any american would have done if they were president of the united states and had the information he had. people say, well, the cia told him all wrong well, perhaps, but so did the mi 6 of great britain, which blare gave him the information. so did the german -- security -- very long name that i just can't pronounce, with about 18 syllables, so did the french. so did amazingly enough, so did

putin. he was in office, remember he was in office as president, then prime minister, then president, and the u.n. had 17 resolutions against iraq that they disobeyed. who wouldn't do that coming right from 9/11 where every one of the united states seemed to think, you know there are times when you better take -- you had better do those things that are necessary to do before a tragedy rather than after a tragedy. i've had people say, well, maybe what we need is another 9/11. no, it will just be another month of people understanding, and then we'll all go back to the things we did before. >> what's the absolutes in your view? >> solution is a strong leader. >> who? >> i don't know.

a strong leader who understands the tradition of presidents post world war ii. by tradition, i mean all of them, republicans, democrats, two exceptions, maybe i can say -- two exceptions in carter and obama. president carter did abandon good friends of ours, the president of el salvador, so mossa, the president of nicaragua. we got the sand firstas in a war that killed 70,000 in central america. he abandoned the shah of iran, and in his place the ayatollah comenu, and then in -- but not to the extreme numbers and consistency of president obama. somebody who's lived out in southern california for most of his life, what's the effect of hollywood on public policy?

is there an effect? >> you know, i'm not so sure it's on public policy. certainly it's an effect on policy with a lot of people in the country. there's an effect. the main thing that they're able to do is get a lot of money for a candidate, because their names are stars, and so people want to see them. in terms of really changing policy? perhaps with individual people within an administration, but very few. by and large it's what the president wants done, and that's as it should be, but as it should be the people should understand what they're voting for. boy, work for a congress marsh or someone who wants to be a senator. if you want to change foreign policy, remember what you're doing when you vote for president. that's what you're doing. he doesn't need to make speeches, as we've heard

president obama make, any number of times, pleading with the congress to plead give him the health care, whatever it may be, but he doesn't need to do that for foreign policy. he just does it if he wants to, and he doesn't juan to. >> is there a cadre of hiding in hollywood -- >> yes, not as hidden as they were once. generally what is the way it works, if you are a star who brings in a lot of money for a picture then you don't care what you are. if, however you're a guy or gal who's working their way up in the system, they care very much what you are and they don't need you. the people would always say to charlton heston, you're so blessed conservative, yet you get the terrific roles. of course he does. he brings -- i used to say

millions, now we change it on a "b" a billion. he was a great actor, a great man, and a successful man, and people wanted to be as successful as him, and they wanted to have the kind of gross numbers at their films, but someone starting out can't, and they're smart to just sort of not make a big deal out of it. wait until they can get up to a position where they can really make changes. >> the last time california voted for a republican president was 1988, i believe, george h.w. bush. >> yeah, i think you're right. yeah, you are right. yes. i didn't think of it in those terms. generally california really goes to the liberal end on most of the national offices. members of the house, members of

the senate, president, vice president, it just does. even in the state legislature it's a very -- it's a very liberal state politically. >> >> is that trend continuing? imts i think so. it certainly has been until you can see it stop. it would be dangerous to think no, it isn't continuing. it certainly has been. >> in your view, what's the conservative argument to make that end? >> against that? >> the conservative argument, what would be the conservative argument to put an end to california's democratic nomination. >> like a movie, it takes the right cast of characters. it just takes the right people. that's all. you can say all you want to, one things that's dangerous that i think is happening with the republican party right now, really dangerous, is this -- what i would call string of isolationism that's coming back.

they would call it libertarianism, but by god, there is a lot of isolationism using the same excuses that were used by republicans before world war ii. oh, no, we're for free trade, and certainly if anyone bottom bards us, but we have no business being in whatever -- whatever country may be mentioned at the time. i hear that and god, wow, no, it is -- we are the only nation in my lifetime, maybe in anybody's lifetime, that has consistently risked our lives for the liberty of strangers, and i like that about us. i like it a lot, because no other people will do it. you asked the question a while ago, and i think i got on a

different track or a wrong track, and there is a waiting line right now to take our place as leader of the world. a waiting line. in it is russia, and the people's republic of china, and jihadists, and the u.n. even the eu. there's a line of people who are waiting, and one of them will take it. right now i would say putin has an inside track right for you at this moment. maybe the jihadists, i don't know, but we are at war, and we better realize that. we're at war against the jihadists, and they declared war on us on 9/is 1 and killed our people. until we win, we have the risk of losing. >> finally, we haven't talked about the mideast, but the president reesely diverted into saudi arabia on his trip to

europe. >> he did. >> i want to talk about the middle east situation as far as israel and saudi arabia and some of those other countries. >> yes, i would like to do that. saudi arabia could have been or covert and overt friend in the coalition that would include the united states, israel and any number of sunni gulf states, because they despise what's going on in iran. they're not pleased with iran the shias anyway, but they despise it. if they do, they'll get the bomb. you can count on that and i can understand that. so what is going on is a speech that president obama gave on israel, in which he started by saying the borders should be based on the 1967 lines. do you recall that? he said that that's what the borders should be based on between israel and palestine,

talking about palestine as though it's a nation. do you realize what he's saying? he is saying before you won the war, israel, it would be like saying to david cameron on saying to us, we want to go back to the 1775 lines. i hope you understand. yes, of course that is what we should do. or mexico, we would be sitting in southern california, we would be sitting in northern mexico if we went back to the lines preceding the u.s. sbl mexican war. too bad that that's how borders come about, by winners and losers, unless there's some gee on graphical r&÷.÷áentiti". and they won a war. they sure didn't want to have. do we have the time for me to

just tell you one quick -- it's called an openings, and people say -- and president obama uses that word all the time, an occupation, the occupiers. how did any people be occupied, when they never had the land to begin with? they didn't. it sounds as though the war was over the west bank and gaza. at that time skrorden had already seized and taken the west bank, and called it the west bank, because that's how it got its name from jordan's invasion and seizure. egypt already this gaza. before that the british this hem. before the british, turkey had them. before turkey, it was the crusades. before the crusades it was rome. i'm back in biblical times. i don't know what happened before then, but they never had it.

so how can someone by occupying their land. what do you mean, their land? there is no such thing as their land. palestine was a -- always considered an area, like we say scandinavia. there's no country called scandinavia, but there are a number of countries we consider to be in it. palestine that was considered as jewish as it was arab. it was when i was a kid. that's the way it was considered. that's all. but it isn't it. one thing happened in that war that i think is worth knowing about. israel was very concerned it was going to be oyes two fronts, the western front, egypt, analysis sear was already sending tanks, but it was -- they thought they could win a two-front war. they didn't think they could win a three-front war against jordan

as well on the east. so the prime minister at the time, talked to our ambassador and said we could talk to king hussein, because we don't have diplomatic relations. could we use your offices or maybe the ambassador to jordan's offices, the u.s. ambassador, to guarantee -- israel guarantees we won't take anything that jordan considers its territory, including their west bank, and even referred to the term west bank, which no was really referred to as judea or is a is a maria. so a am bass dar contacted the secretary of state, the secretary contacted president johnson. he want going to have an ambassador do this. he was going to send the undersecretary of state to talk to king hussein. he talked to him, head israel

guarantees it won't touch one bit of territory if you just sit on your hands when egypt and syria are at war with israel. israel guarantees it, he said president johnson wanted me to tell you that the united states guarantees that israel won't do it. at that time of history king hussein was not as strong as he was in later life. he became a very strong guy. he was weak, and he went to his other arab leaders, including nasser, the president of egypt and he said nothing doing. i'm sure they were more articulate than i am. he said no, you go with us. the war started, israel attacked egypt and syria, just like that. ruined the air forces totally. they didn't touch jordan that first day, but jordan sent in its tanks across the west bank into israel proper, and they

attacked jordan. that's how israel got what is called the west bank. over the next several hours we're going to feature programs normally seen weekends on c-span3's american history tv. coming up a look at how alexander hamilton and john adams gave and took advice in their personal and public lives s followed by hamilton's ideas about honor and politics. then a discuss about pennsylvania's whiskey rebellion and other local uprisings again the federalist led u.s. government in the 1790s. giving and receiving advice was so highly valued by the founding fathers that they emphasized the concept numerous times in the letters they wrote. author william chrystal applied

their advice to the present day. he talked about advice from the founding fathers at the fraunces tank museum for about an hour. >> a delight to be with you again. i love this place, even though we're not technically in fraunces tank, i love the sense of history. so many incredible things happened. if you know the story of the american revolution, you realize this is where general washington said good-bye to me have his principal senior officers. this is 9 place exactly a week before colonel bure and general hamilton faced one another in a duel at the society of cincinnati met, and they sat next to one another. can you imagine with all of this impending, and bure was somewhat sullen that night. hamilton was animated, apparently quite animated,

induced to sing his favorite song here, an old marshal song called "the drum" which is a fascinating song. i love the way it ends. it's with hamilton really singing pay ones to this country and the fact this country would live forever. the tavern an incredible place. it's fun for me to be in and among a group of people that know a lot about american history as well.x0i that doesn't happen very often. you all know the same problem, and when people find out you're interested in history, they sort of look at you like, what's wrong with you? why can't you get a life and do something useful? i always enjoyed reading history. and quite by accident, i became a scholar performer of john adams and then later alexander hamilton. yes, iç wear a wig and tights,n

unusual thing to do, but it's a great, great medium. you can get people who hate history really involved, and whatever you might sacrifice in terms of accuracy, you more than make up for in terms of audience participation and involvement. i've been to prisons. i've been to schools that feel like prisons, and it's incredible. it's just amazing how excited people get when they actually have a chance to talk to a founding member of the this country. but that's not why i'm here tonight. you heard in jennifer's introduction that my wife janney and i are coming out with a book called "founders advice." i know this has been done before. secretary bennett did it a number of years ago, but what he did -- i have a background as a historic, but i'm married to a woman who was in business. she was in washington, d.c. working for a defense contractor

and had the opportunity to go to seattle to work for a small start-up company that had not yet gone public. microsoft. and when she started with microsoft it was such a small company they could have employee meetings in a small auditorium, a lunchroom. and she had the opportunity to listen to this man time and time again named bill gates, who didn't talk about making good products and capturing market share, but he talked about changing the world. i think for her that was such a heady experience, and the experience of being in a company like that at that point in time was so remarkable that she began to really take an interest in the whole idea of success. what's succeed? how does it happen? what do successful people perhaps have in common that maybe some of the rest of us don't have in equal measures? so with her background and mine, we reasoned that maybe we might

like reese's peanut butter, and find a way to merge our interests, but perhaps it's even more important than that. some of this stuff is just downright timeless. when you see some of the advice that these founders are giving, and it's most poignant, i think usually when it's to a child or to a grandchild, you realize that these are -- these are the kind of insights that they probably didn't go around sharing with the rest of the world. that's why we have used the word secret. one of the definitions of secret is something shared by the initiated. in a sense these are initiated insight. these are the prime things that the older generation found useful, either because they did them or because they failed to do them. and that they want to do give to their offspring and their children's offspring in the

hopes that an opportunity in life to be incredibly successful. they gave advice a every topic you can imagine. how many of you believe in giving advice, by the way? how many of you are debt-said against the whole idea of advice? they sought it in no uncertain terms. we're like the founders in a lot of ways. we share a lot of things in common, but one thing that was incredibly different from us as a people, not you as a group in this particular room. they thought you should learn more about life from the ancients than you could by reading modern things. and a huge part of their education was determined by how well they knew various and sundry ancient writers.

a good education in the time of someone like thomas jefferson consisted of earning latin and greek, you're better hoff if you can learn hebrew along the way and you read ancient texts, just as the original authors wrote them. the more you master these ankle texts, the more educated you were assumed to be. i had the opportunity a number ofiers to be at the boston public library in coakley square, and to hold john adams' copy of cicero's oration in my hand, which was really need. every time he read that book, it was a lifelong favorite. every time he read it, he wrote his name in it. his name was writtening six times. all that he did throughout his life, all that he read, and his bribe rather is massive. he went back again and again to the original text that meant so

much to him. the founders learned enormously from the ancients, not just about about war and politics -- by the way, have enough you read or dabbled in plutart's lives. quite a number of you aj!l֖zmri that was sort of the poor man's classical education. if you didn't have the opportunity to read all of these great ancient works in the you could with a translation of ply tart, lives of eminent greeks and romans, you could real about these incredibly successful people, and also a fee rep rho bates as well. and also occasionally showing how you could ruin your life by doing something that wouldn't be useful or constructive at all. the thing that's amazing is that

these lessons stuck. they were incredibly important general george washington said good-bye to his senior officers here, was called during the revolutionary war the american fabius. anyone know who fabius was? go to plutart's live and read about fabius maximus. he was a roman general, who was considered successful, because he managed to ultimately win a war by never fighting a major pitched battle with his opponent. he avoided fighting major battles against alexander the great, because he knew if he did like the other roman proconuss who tried it, you would be defeated. he also avoided a major encounter until he got an opportunity to strike, perhaps not decides i have beenly, but to strike meaningfully. that was the model that george

washington used during our american revolution. we did not have an army that was sufficiently strong to be able to fight the british. so we only did it -- well, actually washington broke his rule a time or two, and it was fearly disastrous when he did, but primarily that was the rule of thumb, to behave an fabius, avoid major encounters, keep his area intact. then when the opportunity presented itself, to strike, and of course he did though decisively with the help of the french d. more than help -- with the incredible strength of the french flef and the french army down at yorktown. absolutely amazing. a military strategy in the 1700s being guided by a roman who lived well, well in the ancient past. the foundersxzx vz incredibly important, i mean, to the founders the ancients were incredibly important. that's one way we're different.

i think el can read anch -- how many of you have been forced during your education to read plato or cise rachlt o or any number of people. did you find there was benefit in there? to the zg that we're opened and with we believe that perhaps, certain short of things are natural laws and that they recur, anyway, to that degree, i t benefit in the past. in any case, the founders dud and a lot of their advice really sounds like the advice of ancie ancients. but not all of it. a lot of it is incredibly personal. one of my absolutely favorite lettertion is a short one written by jon jay to his son in which he sends him a few seeds and tells him to plant these seeds at his uncle's estate. and then he says, you know, whenever i walk around my place,

i'm sensible of the fact that i'm walking under trees that my father planted. something as simple as planting trees, that's the degree to which their advice extends. the founders are extraordinary. you have one of these, if you don't, raise your hand we can get one to you. but it's hard to talk about a book that isn't finished yet. but one of the wonderful things and i think we made our basic selections. one of the wonderful things that comes from living where i do, about an hour and a half from richmond, virginia, is that i get to go over and visit the house of chief justice john marshall fairly often who was an extraordinary american, not as well known as he ought to be. how many of you know something about chief justice marshall?

i think and without him, he's really the one that initiated the whole idea but judicial review has kept us more cognisant of first amendment rights of anything else that would have happened. chief justice marshall writes this incrediblebly beautiful letter to his grandson and i don't know -- how many of you have had a chance to read it yaet. well, we're sitting here. and he makes the plea for reading the ancients that you might expect him to make given what i said to you. but perhaps more importantly, he has this woerndful section on how to become i good wrib. how many of you have been school teachers in your life? any of you? a few of you?

you've read this as well? how do you become a good writer? do you have to have 0 students in a class and do this in front? no, you can do it yourself. you find an author you find to be a good writer and he named someone that he thinks that might be to his grandson's benefit and sit down with it and then read it, adjust it. read it until you digested it and try it in your own words and after you have written it in your own words, compare it with the original. if it doesn't measure up do it again. a great platform for self-learning it's an amazing thing. it strikes we as timeless. i'm not a teacher but it strikes me as a timeless thing if one could still learn to be a good wrib using this particular formula. marshall was an incredible man. he was well, as joseph story

said in the introduction written here, he had such a commonness about him he never intim dated people. except for one. intimidated people. one called him the gloomy malignanty. if any of you have been to monticello, marshall get back as his cousin by calling him the lama of the mountain. in any case, marshall was extraordinary in not giving offense. he was so common they tell this wonderful story about him. he's in some kind of farmer's market in richmond and a woman has just bought a chicken. it's just been killed and she offers him a quarter to take it home. and he does it. he takes the quarter and takes the chicken and follows her to her house, presents it and goes back. the chief justice of the united

states supreme court. he was a very common man but an extraordinarily gifted human being and this letter to his grandson, what you know about marshall, is an extraordinary look at how a successful machine built his own life. even though he had some formal education he nonetheless, developed himself. that's one of the secrets that the founders are built around. developing themselves. one of the ways the founder's different from us enormously is that they loved to use guilt. how many of you were raised with equipment? how many of you use guilt? you're in good company. founders absolutely love guilt. i'll read a couple of things. i have to put on my grasses here.

here's a couple of wonderful examples of equipment. dr. benjamin rush, the philadelphia physician and extraordinary man, was considered in some circles, to be the one responsible from saving philadelphia from yellow fever during one of the outbreaks. benjamin push was a great advice-give and an inventive letter-writer. he had a son that was studying medicine, away at school studying medicine. and expected has son to be regularly in touch with him. well, it appears that after asking for a pair of boots, his son somehow fell out of communication with his parents. so that when the boots arrived, they arrived with this note. my dear son, herewith, you'll so

so receive your boots. they will serve to keep your feet and legs warm during the winter and secondly, to remind you that you have a father and mother in philadelphia who have never forgotten you far a whole week since you came into the world. oh, feet. james. i never knew an instance of a man becoming respectable or even wealthy in the profession of medicine who was deficient in punctuality, in letter-writing. you have parents who have never forgotten about you for a whole week during your life. but i think in the guilt school, nobody beats abigail adams. she mastered it. in a letter written to her son, john quincy, when he was in europe with his father. in 1780, abigail said, you need to attend constantly and

steadfastly to the precepts and destructions of your father. both side, will, i hope, have a doour influence upon your conduct. for as dear as you are to me, i had much rather that you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed or any untimely death crop you in your infant year, rather than see you an immoral prolivegate or a greatle graceless child. abigail had high expectations. both parents didn't. we have a couple of letters from her in our book and we have a couple that john quincy wrote in reply. so you can see the effect of all of that guilt. on a child. and, of course, john quincy is an incredible overachiever.

at 14, he goes to russia as the secretary ofá4qu our delegation serves in congress for sometime. serves as a cabinet member and, of course, becomes president of the united states. and the most extraordinary thin about john quincy then is what happened after he terms the term as president. he becomes a member of the house of representatives and serves 30 years in the house. i don't think it would have been quite as profitable as it is now. he didn't sook fame and forge. he just wanted to serve the people of the united states of america. he does it extraordinarily well. he does things that i think he deserves our eternal thanks for. he defends some of the would-be slaves who were accused of rioting and the riot as they

were being taben to this yes against their will. he successfully manages their defense. he is a life-long opponent of and extraordinary human being. and dies pretty much in the south. as a member of congress. he learned his parents' lessons well and one of the appendixes that we have in this book we're doing is advice that he gave to his children. it's kind of collected. it's pretty long. it's pretty detailed about what sort of education they need and what sort of people they need to bec6oçly we've used the word "secret." and i just like to ask any of you if you could think of one secret that the founding fathers might have believed was absolutely essential.q# what would be a secret piece of

advice you might give somebody that you loved? any ideas? actually, i think what i'll do is i'll share ben franklin's list of virtues with you. george washington carried a list of 110 virtues around with him when he was a young man and worked practicing them but he was not so systematic as benjamin franklin. franklin came up with a list of 13 virtues. initially it was 12. but he determined that each and every week he would practice one of them every day and of course, keep a record when he was successfully doing it. 12 virtues initially. let me name them for you. would you like to hear them? the first is temper ans. silence, speak not but what may benefit others or yourself.

avoid trifling conversation. order, let all your things have their places. let each part of your business have its time. resolution, resolve to perform what you ought. perform without fail what you resolve. frugality. make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. that is waste nothing. industry, lose no time. be always employed in something useful. cut off all necessary actions. sincerity. use no hurtful deceit. think innocently and justly and if you speak, speak accordingly. justice, wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

moderation. avoid extremes. forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. cleanliness. tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. train killity. being not disturbed at trifles or accidents, common or unavoidable. number 12, chastity. rarely used but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness whether injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. he worked at these so regularly and so well that he told a quaker friend of his and he told him how extraordinarily able he

was able to practice these 12 virtues and his friend said, n benjamin, you need another one. humility. imtalt. -- imitate jesus a. -- they knew if we wanted to be successful it wasn't enough to have a dream but we also needed to have a plan and we needed to work at the plan in order for it to comebility. to some work all the of the time and frankly, all of them did it. but if though all had one secret, what, per chance, doxxxq think it might be? what did they aim at, perhaps, more than anything else in their own lives as you think about them as a group?

probably not giving you enough hints. you have a thought? apply yourself to your studies. absolutely. that's incredibly important to them. what do you think they would claim is the chief reason for being here? serving others. if you read the piece on the back page there, which i think if you all looked at that as well. how many of you know about him? he was from elizabethtown. across the river. elizabeth today. he was an extraordinarily capable human being and was one of the founders and he was a trustee of princeton, even though he had not tended it and later became a founder of princeton, theological seminary. he was 5u8z a they vout member of the presbyterian church. part of the congregation in elizabeth that had so many

revolutionaries in its fist. people who made great contributions to the country and this was written to the sun of one of those people. it's really wonderful. you read through what he says we're supposed to do. be a citizen of the world he's telling us. and the more you do that, you're going to realize that even as you go about doing your regular business, that the great obligation we have is to those who were in distress and the happiness of mankind at large. there goes that word happiness. it really is a recurring word in that period of time. of course, thomas jefferson uses it in the declaration of independence. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which is really a twist on john locke who uses life, liberty and property, when he's writing his thesis.

happiness. happy is huge for us but we don't always know what it should look like. a wonderful letter that i'll share part of with you is by someone named phillip schuyler. and here again, is that a familiar name to some of you? several of you? one of his descendants sitting in the back there. like hamilton, a fifth grade grandson of alexander hamilton which would make him the frit great grandson of phillip sylar. he write this is incredible letter to his son to whom he's just given a part of his estate and explaining how things are going to be shared and what will happen when something happens to him and to his wife.

and what he has to say in here is pretty interesting. happiness ought to be the aim and end of the exertions of every rational creature. and spiritual happiness should take the lead. in fact, temporal happiness without the former does not exist except in name. the whole idea of happiness was an incredibly powerful philosophical strain that runs through this generation. and they had so many different ways to address it, so many different ways to work at it, but they all believe that that was the chief aim of human beings. that we need to be happy people.

they decide that happiness is best achieved by working on your relationships with other people and by doing everything you can to benefit those who are in need of assistance. many of them do it in very consciously religious way. others do it in ways that aren't particularly religious at all but are philosophically clean. but happiness is our chief end in the minds of the founders and all that we do for ourselves and for others is designed to achieve it. let's suppose you're within a year of your death and someone asks you for a letter of advice for a child, who is yet to be born or has just been born, what would your letter look like. let me share with you what thomas jefferson wroet under those circumstances. this is one of the most amazing letters that i think he wrote and he was an incredible letter

writer. i'm not going to read the whole thing to you but this is written to someone named thomas jefferson smith. this letter will to you, be as one from the dead. h the writer lg will be in the grave before you can weigh it's councils. your aaffectionate and fun father favorable influence on the course of life you had to run. and i, too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. few words will be necessary with good dispositions on your part. and your god, reverence and cherish your parents, love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself. be just, be true, murmur not at the ways of providence. so share the life into which you entered be the portal to one of bliss.

as if to the dead, it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. farewell. extraordinary as that is, jeffer song includes a log of cannons for observation in practical life. decalog meaning there are ten of them. number one, never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. two, never trouble another for what you can do yourself. number three, never spend your money before you have it. number four, never buy what you do not want because it is cheap. it will be dear to you. number five, pride costs us mother than hunger, thirst and cold.

number six, we never repent over having eaten too little. number seven, nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. number eight, how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened? number nine, take things always by their smooth handle. great image. number ten, when angry, count ten before you speak. if very angry, 100. a letter to someone just born. i think the founders realized that a lot of what they said and did would be recorded for posterity. a letter like that i don't think

jefferson might have the knowledge that it might see the light of day or continue to be an fruns to people but they believed that advice was a benefit. they all gave advice certainly and a number of them, a number of them really thought advice was worth taking. one of the reasons that arex an der hamptalexander hamilton sai didn't take advice. the wisest of men may profit from it. lesser minds certainly need it. advice, one of the things hamilton thought was to great about federal washington was that he would seek the advice of those around him. and then he would think about what needed to be done. he would then resolve slowly as hamilton put it, but resolve surely. they believed that advice was absolutely essential to the world as they know it. and we live in a time today that's conflicted on the subject

of advice. and have any of you ever heard the saying advice is a form of abuse? ever heard that one? that one came to me not too long ago. i don't think i was giving any advice at the time. but i think for some people, the idea of o'learning that way from others incredibly unuseful thing. but i think hampton is closer to being right. who among us can't benefit from advice? part of hampton's genius when he was a young person studies at king's college not far away, was he would listen to other people. there was a little group that they had for self improvement. it was their own private group. it wasn't a college group. and this little group would present papers to one another. there would be bits of advice offered on how to make them more

acceptable, better. and hamilton wrote some of the most incredible political pamphlets of the time, using that group. how many of you are in business? how many of you participate in mastermind groups? we think of it as absolutely essential and really successful people gather together to share advice and information with one another. i think highly functional people and the founders were among the most highly functional people in the world realized that the best advice you can go to the will only make whatever decisions you need to make better than they would have otherwise. i encourage automatic of you to rethink the subject of advice if

you think it's abuse. guilt might not be out of the realm of possibility. jefferson said to his daughter, martha, i will love you if you learn to read in the original language. you won't love me if i don't? it was the world in which they live. but advice was critical to their world view and a how many of you would in the think a letter like john marshall's has a place in front of young people who have their lives ahead of them? there's certain things about it that are dated but an awful lot of what he's saying is absolutely wonderful and useful and if you increase looked through the lives, i'll tell you what, get ahold of it and just use some of the sued anymores that hamilton used and write it politically and look them up and hamilton references. see who they were and what they did in the society in which they lived and you'll understand our

political climate in this country, perhaps, even better than you would have otherwise. absolutely essential in the world of the founders. optional in our own world. advice is not a bad thing when you think it's the truth and you think it's beneficial to the people with whom you share it. as i look back on my own life i rue having to learned these things later in life. if i learned them early on it would have made a big difference. absolutely essential. i'm going to quit talking and i'd beñr happy to answer some questions that you have. a have a lot more letters that i could share with you but i think you get the flavor of the advice and you understand that the whole thing is about happiness. ask me anything you want. thank you.

this was also considered about the society of cincinnati, which is the organization formed after the revolutionary war of officers who had served in the continental army. and it's hereditary society. hampton, represents his an zest store alexander hamilton in the society of cincinnati. only one hamilton, right? >> so it's kind of like a backup plan when the older one back fired? >> i think the episcopal church has a societity like that. it was considered a dangerous thing by certain people after the war. of course, thomas jefferson was

really fearful of the society of cincinnati. he was fearful of any organization and he didn't like the military but he was fearful of any organization that seemed to him to be elitist and he thought become an instrument which would undermine the liberties of the american people. this was a great roman and we remember him because at that point in history he was the only one having put together this big army and won this major campaign, left it and went home and became a farmer again. and, of course, washington is often considered to be like that. a lot of parallels made. he probably could have taken svfr country. i think the army loved him. he was off limited politically. one of the reasontion that hamilton was hammered so much

during the washington administration when he was the secretary of treasury was because you couldn't attack george washington. he was off limits. even if you didn't particularly like him you couldn't say anything negative about him because he was the symbol of america. the symbol of cincinnati. the noble virtuous person who does what's best for all of the people. so, so site of cincinnati, that's one of those examples. here again, here's a warm biography of them. >> there's like three missions. one is to keep the relationships together but the second one was to never let the people forget what they fought for so it's kind of like the lessons learned from the war to promote those thing and the third thing was to take care of the widows and the children that were -- had no money. >> a