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The Declaration of Independence at 250 w/Dorollo Nixon, Jr. and Jesan Sorrells
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In this special 250th anniversary episode, Jesan Sorrells and Dorollo Nixon, Jr. dive into the enduring leadership lessons from the U.S. Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers. They debate whether the U.S. is now in its “sixth republic,” explore the generational and ideological shifts shaping America’s future, and analyze how the founding document’s principles, evidence, and vision still frame leadership in a turbulent political climate. The episode also discusses how changing expectations of government, evolving party structures, and generational archetypes will impact the next phase of the American experiment.
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In this special 250th anniversary episode, Jesan Sorrells and Dorollo Nixon, Jr. dive into the enduring leadership lessons from the U.S. Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers. They debate whether the U.S. is now in its “sixth republic,” explore the generational and ideological shifts shaping America’s future, and analyze how the founding document’s principles, evidence, and vision still frame leadership in a turbulent political climate. The episode also discusses how changing expectations of government, evolving party structures, and generational archetypes will impact the next phase of the American experiment.
- Book Title: Declaration of Independence
- Author: Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers
- Guests: Jesan Sorrells (Host), Dorollo Nixon, Jr. (Guest)
05:36 Discussing America's founding ideals
16:02 Reflections on the American Republic
17:57 Debate on America's Christian roots
24:23 Post-Civil War Changes
31:40 Discussion on a Sixth Republic
35:11 Discussing America's new secular cycle
41:43 Understanding Marxism and Modern Socialism
45:28 Shift from Production to Discussion
54:31 Discussing socialism in American politics
55:43 Discussing political extremism and consequences
01:02:13 Discussing socialism vs. capitalism movement
01:07:09 Struggles of democratic leadership
01:11:33 Comparing vision and embodiment
01:16:47 Discussing political strategies
01:26:50 Discussing Articles 6 and 10
01:31:32 Discussing generational archetypes
01:37:01 Analyzing crisis-driven constitutional change
01:41:47 Third-party dynamics in US history
01:45:02 Concerns about immigration and integration
01:50:01 Influence of Wendell Berry
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- Opening theme composed by Felipe Sarro - Bach - Silotti - "Air" from Orchestra Suite No. 3, BWV 1068
- Closing theme composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet) another business book, Leadership Lessons From The Great Books leverages insights from the GREAT BOOKS of the Western canon to explain, dissect, and analyze leadership best practices for the post-modern leader.
My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number
194. So I'm going to
read a little bit of the introduction to the edition
of the book we are going to read today.
And. Well, I
wanna. I wanna make some points that are from
this particular introduction that I think are relevant
for our conversation today.
This book that we're going to cover today is the culminating work
of the author's long career. It was published in
1862, when the author was 60. An instant success
with the public, the book has stood since then as a masterpiece of fiction, both
for the emotional intensity of its dramatic story and for a richness that
defies any simple description. Undoubtedly, readers
come to the book for the deeply engrossing characters and stay on, as
the author himself predicted, for the wider social and
historic panorama. The political timing
of the publication of this book was auspicious. Isolated by
exile from the empire of Napoleon iii, whose authoritarianism was
relaxing as his effectiveness and popularity were waning,
the author found a ready audience for his progressive,
politically progressive fervor. Despite his long
list of works in poetry, fiction and drama, the author had been most widely known
before this novel as a public figure, defender of the national conscience.
And now homesick for his home country, but unwilling to accept
the amnesty offered by the emperor he despised, he was eager
for a chance to remind his home country of. Of his presence.
A friend reported to him that all of the major. All of the people
in the major city that this book is focused on were
raving about the book during its publication.
As for the critics, the author clearly took it
as a compliment that his liberal views had enraged the reactionary, the
conservative, Catholic and the Bonapartist journals. The
gratifying enthusiasm of the younger critics, however, was not unanimously sustained. For the
book had appeared outside of its time when he began
writing it in 1845. The romantic traditions of intense sentiment
and crusading idealism were prevalent.
And I'm going to down a little bit. And
yet, rising above the fluctuations of literary criticism, the book has always
retained a powerful hold on the public. And writers have continued to turn to this
author and. And this book for inspiration. Diverse authors
such as Arthur Rambaud, Stephane
Mallarme and Paul Claudel were influenced by this giant
of romanticism. Andre Gaday called him the
greatest master of images and sonorities, of symbols and
language forms in all of French
literature. Close quote.
As for me today on the show, my interaction
with this book is very
interesting. My engagement with this book is very interesting.
And you know, the reality is that my engagement with
the books and the topics that we cover on this show covers,
ranges, covers and ranges all over the place, right.
Sometimes I've seen the movie, right, that the books that we are covering
come from. Sometimes I've been to the theater show and sometimes I've even watched a
trailer for the movie based on the book before even reading the book. And
sometimes I come to some books virginally. I have no previous knowledge of the author,
the book, or even any derivative works generated from the book.
And this is how most people are these days and how most people have approached
books through the long 20th century,
from movies to musicals. The book we are covering today has never
been out of print since it was Originally published in 1862,
which it stands alongside another book that we covered, last Episode,
Ben Hur, as never being out of print. It
has inspired people to act in ways that they never would have before. And it
meets criteria in that it activates readers,
it inspires conversations, and it generates a need for
action from folks. And the
author, who we'll talk about in a little bit and who was just mentioned there
in the introduction, I think I suspect probably
did all of this intentionally.
Today we are going to begin our conversation
about a massive book and we are going
to try to glean what we can from it and
apply it to our real lives. This book lies
at the headwaters of the most popular and highest grossing stage musicals
of all time. It has been turned
into movies, it has been turned into a television show.
It's been everywhere. And again, this book has never been out of print. It's
original publication in 1862. Today we're going
to be covering. Whoop, there we go. Victor
Hugo's Les Miserable.
Leaders, let us take to the barricades.
The only thing we have to lose is our
cowardice.
And joining me on this journey today and back for the first
time this season is our co host who's a
little jet lagged and she's joining us from her vacation at an
undisclosed location, which will remain undisclosed, but she is. Jet lag folks.
Libby Unger. How are you doing today, Libby?
Good. Bonjour.
Well, let's lay out. Okay, yeah, let's go ahead. Let's get into
it. So talk to us, I about
this book. Talk to us about the impact of this book. Talk to us about
what this book means for you. It means to you.
You have a lot of familiarity with this book. You go to
France, you, you are native, you're not native, but you're a French
speaker. Talk to me about, talk to
us about this book. What does this book mean to Libby Unger?
Your introduction and discussing,
you know, how you come about, you know, books in
particular, you know, intel like re. Re
rereading this and preparing for
was more the. The stage version of Les Miserable
Miserables and the soundtrack to it
and going back to the revolutionary times,
you know, of France and. And such.
That appeal, the artistic appeal was. Was
embedded young around this book and the value in it
and then
semi awareness of the French history.
But it wasn't until I started preparing for
this in. In detail and the questions you teed
up around made me really think more about
like the history of France, you know, from you know,
their, their revolution to their final, you know, to the
current republic. I mean I really was
unaware of the detail and how
fraught with wars, you know, France was.
You have the two different monarchs that this,
that Hugo dealt with plus the two different
Napoleonic regimes. I, you know,
honestly I just had broad strokes of a French Revolution and
Napoleon and a king and you know, know a few of those
but not the details and the, and
that each generation, you know that
was born, you know, 1790 on.
Was fought with. Was fraught with a war. Yeah. For the
monarch to ret you to get back in power. Napoleon back
monarch Napoleon. And then you finally get the
republic that was somewhat modeled after the US
but yeah, I'm actually
looking forward to the topics that you've teed up to start to
start talking about the heroism and the moral.
The characters that bring up different moral.
Issues for us to be concerned about as well as models for us to think
about. So yeah, I'm excited for it. I
do have the same. Did you have the same. Aha. With respect to
history? I know you're more of a history buff. Yeah, no, that's.
Yeah, that's a great question. Yes,
I did. So one of the big things that kind of
jumps out to you at the beginning of Les Mis is. And
I'm going to kind of shorten it here when I refer to the book.
But the big thing, one of the big things that jumps out to you about
this book right from the get go is
how much of a handle Victor Hugo has on to your point, French
history. Like he has a handle on exactly
the path of development.
Right. Because he,
he's surrounded by it. Right. He's surrounded by people who remembered,
you know, Napoleon who remembered that history. And so the.
Those stories in that lived history from probably would have been
parents and grandparents for Hugo and people
in his, in his neighborhoods and in his communities. That's one of the very
first things that jumps off to you, jumps off the page to you as you
read Les Mis. The other
thing is you begin to realize and, and this is really what came home for
me just how,
just how scared everybody else of the European continent
was of France at that time.
And it's easy to kind of not easy
as an American. And, and this is, you know, the
250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This year
we will be talking about the Declaration and the independent Declaration of Independence in the
Constitution with our De Rolo Nixon. That's going to be coming out on,
on July 1st, ahead of July 4th. And I will very specific
things to say about, about our Constitution, our Declaration of independence at
250. But it's
easy to be sort of as an American to kind of look at the French
Revolution kind of like Thomas Jefferson did and either fall in love with it
and then wonder at its excesses at the end, the Reign of terror and all
of that, or to take the view
that the British did, which is, which was
at the time. You keep that crap over there. We don't want to hear you
keep it across the Channel. And don't you dare go come over here. We'll come,
we'll come over there and do with you. Right. That's how. Right. Which
we. Which they did. Exactly. But don't you dare bring that garbage over
here. Don't you run that up here.
And so it's easy to take either the American perspective or the British
perspective, but to absolutely understand from a European
continental perspective how powerful that revolution
was and how much it rattled the cages of everybody on that continent.
That jumps off to you. That jumps off the pages to you of Les Mis,
Rob, because Hugo knew, he understood all of this.
And it's fascinating to sort of realize that
the, the, the potential, I think
the potential in the next 25 years for the French to run that continent again
is, is right there. It's right there. The English
aren't going to do it. The Germans have been denied
and who else is there? The Spanish are in, are never. They've never been interested
in running the continent. They've just never been interested in being in charge. And
the Italians, God bless them, they don't have it in them.
So who's left? Well, it's the French. And so
it's going to be interesting to watch I think over the next 25 years
some of that, that
not fear, but Some of
that, yeah. Well,
I guess maybe fear is a good word. Some of that fear will I think
begin to drip back into, into folks
on the continent. I don't know if I have a good hold on this, but
it was something that definitely jogged in my brain reading Les Mis, reading this
book. It
as you see some of the European trends, you know,
they've been trying to infiltrate the US over the last,
you know, couple of decades or more. But
I never had a full appreciation
for the empiric nature
of the French until
you see, until just going into greater detail about,
you know, those 100 years, you know, 1780s
to 1880s
and then seeing your, the history over the last couple
decades, you know, the more liberal
progressive thinking that's coming from, you know, you,
Europe entering, you know, entering our
ways and.
Does make me think that they, you know, they're almost like
the Chinese to some degree, that they have a long term
perspective of where they sit in history,
you know, so it, it, it'll be if
it, it is interesting. Economic
security is one of the key, key themes
that I see as to how
you gain power or you fight off,
you fight off invading resources through economic
security and that when there's economic
instability, that's when these,
the monarchs and dictatorships, you'll come in.
And someone who has a long view of history
knows that if they create insecurity,
that creates room for that new
leadership to come in. And now that
it sounds, you know, if you were living back
in the times of the mid Middle Ages and the revolution
and the enlightenment, etc. That's not far fetched to think
about because poverty and economic
insecurity was the way of the world. Correct? Right. It
wasn't until industrialization and the US
kind of dominated around, you know, and creating economically
independent and viable industries and
countries that we stopped seeing more being so prominent.
So it's very interesting
that over the last 15 or
20 years divisiveness and ins
and trying to create economic instability
is being introduced into what was a stable
system. And you have to wonder if it's being done intentionally
because that's the only way the empires
can take back their power.
Well, and you, you. Well, let's. Let me. There's several things
you brought up there and I want to hit on all of them and I
think Les Mis hits on all of them. Let me do, let me go back
and start. Oh my gosh, this book hits on all of it. And the poverty
piece is one of the other things that really jumped out to me. But I
want to, I want to keep my powder dry on that for just a second
because that's, I think, critical to understanding this book.
So. Yeah, so
Victor Hugo, right? Let's talk a little about him. So he
was a. Just like the author of Ben Hur, Lou
Wallace. He was a
romantic writer, capital R
romanticist. And there was something that occurred to me
actually on Saturday, which I'll tell talk about a little bit,
but he was. We, we in our Post World War
II consensus, we don't understand what the power of
romanticism and we don't understand anymore
sort of how that, that deeply impacted
authors such as Hugo and Lew Wallace. He
was born in 1802, so talk about, you know, the revolution literally
occurred like the French Revolution literally occurred like
what, 10, 15 years before he was born.
So he was born in 1802. He died in 1885.
He was a giant of French letters.
Not only did he write Les Mis, he also wrote
the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which, you know, the, the
publication of that book actually encouraged
the French to, to restore that cathedral because it became such
a, such, such a tourist magnet.
He wrote poetry, he wrote essays, he was a playwright,
he was a journalist, he was a politician,
and he was a human rights activist. Now when we talk about human rights
activism, I don't want, I don't want the listeners to think of this in
terms of the kind of human rights activism that
we see in our time. This wasn't cynical
activism on, on, on Hugo's part.
He wasn't trying to grift or hustle. He actually believed
that just like folks coming out of the French Revolution
believed that you could remake the world, you could actually have
utopia on earth, and that it was
within human beings hands in the 18th,
sorry, in the 19th century to be able to do that. He
genuinely believed that. And that came about because of his
romanticism. He wrote plays like
Cromwell and dramas Hernani. He produced more
than. I didn't know this until I went and looked at his Wikipedia profile, but
he produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime
and was an abolitionist around
slavery and around capital punishment. There have been
accusations of racism thrown at Hugo, but they don't
stick because he actually like moved his position around on a lot of
things, in particular in relation to the
French shenanigans in Algeria. Algeria
and in, in Northern Africa during his time.
And I'm just going to quote directly from here. His opposition to absolutism and his
literary stature established him as a national hero. Hugo
died on 22 May, in 1885, aged 83,
he was given a state funeral in the Pantheon of Paris, which was attended by
over 2 million people.
That's ridiculous. 2 million people showed up for a writer.
Hemingway, eat your heart out. At that time, which 2 million
people? Yeah, the population was what?
Yeah, like Paris, right? Yeah, you know, significant.
Significant. The dude was just.
He breathed hard and, like, the French moved.
You'll never see a guy like that ever again in letters. That won't ever
happen again. Like, the twilight of the writer started occurring at the
end of the 20th century and. And the
sun. I won't say the sun is set on the writer, but.
But the kind of discussions we're having right now around writing and around the art
of writing. One of the things I've postulated on the show about the
death of the novel, I do actually think the novel's dead. I
actually do. I don't think writing's dead. I don't think the book is
dead. But I think the novel as a thing that a
book delivers is dead. I think that's
DOA now, because you can do so many other different things. You can go watch
the book or see the streaming show or nowadays, dump the
thing into the AI and generate something that looks just as good. And so
the novel, the fictionalized account of.
The fictionalized account that draws emotions from people
and drives them to action, the kind of thing that Hugo
loved and was romantic about.
I kept thinking about Hegel reading about
Hugo. And it's similar from
both. From a writing perspective. I know Hegel
was not a fiction writer, but, you know,
poet, you know, political.
They both recognized what motivates
humanity and what demoralizes
humanity. And that was what was coming through
from a Hugo perspective is his own
ability to evolve and then sacrifice
for what he knew was right. You know, that's what
Les Mis is all about with the different characters, is about
the power of redemption and doing what's right.
Just at a human level, even if it may cost you power.
I'm. Power and prestige. Yeah,
yeah. But it just about. But what I really loved is the whole story is
about redemption. And if you
believe in someone and you tell them that they can
redeem, like the bishop did,
right, that the right soul, the
right person will receive that and say, I need to do the.
I need to pay it forward and do the right thing.
And that is a reflection, I think, of the. Of
Hugo's belief in the redempt, you know, in the evolution and
redemption. Redemption, redemptive
ability of a Human. Hegel's kind of that way
too from a self evolution
perspective. And we like to see
people or I know I'm inspired by those who
choose the do the hard thing because it's the right
thing. And that is what movements will.
Populist movements will come behind.
Yeah. And that
his characters, the characters in Les Mis are fully formed
people. They're not even, even Javert, even the
villain. Right. Is a fully formed human
being. Yes. Not a, he's not a one dimensional
avatar standing in for something else. And this is another
reason I say the novel is probably not. Probably is.
Is. Is. Is is. If not dead on life support.
Because we don't have writers who see people as
fully formed multi dimensional
individuals running around in the world. Instead writers. Now that's why we
have to go back to historical. The Mark Andreessen
philosophy is. I don't read anything recent. I, I read what's
endured. But the, the piece I,
I hit, I, I finally realized like what it was about
both Hagel and Hugo that
resonated with me in particular is they kept trying to find,
they kept trying to meant what they said.
Right. Like first believed in the monarch
and you know, and was willing to take compensation
for his riding with the monarch. And then the monarch disappoints and
so then he's pro Napoleon and believes Napoleon is going to
do the right thing for their French. And then he's disappointed,
you know, and he tries to put his, you know, belief
again into those big institutions. They all fail
him, you know, which we all, you know, if you're awake
at all, you realize the institutions are for the betterment of the
institutions and not the individual. And so
you ultimately need to go within and say what is the right thing
to do from a moral perspective and
live that way. That's what Hagel did. That's what Hugo's message
was. And you know, and you know me, that's my message from
a leadership perspective as well. Well, and I think so
to your point, like I said, I was, I
was having a conversation today with somebody else, business conversation. And one of the points
that I made to him is that
we used to have people. That applies here. We used to have people who,
who spoke with and led with
moral authority. Right. We talked a little bit about this on our Malcolm
X episode probably a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. Now
one of the fascinating things about Malcolm X is you could disagree with where his
morals came from, but he had moral authority. He spoke with moral
authority. Matty Ross, the Character in
the Charles Porter's book True Grit.
If you watch the Joel and Ethan Cohen
remake of True Grit, the way that character is portrayed in
there is a lot closer to the Matty Ross of the book than in the
John Wayne movie. Right, The John Wayne Matty Ross, but the girl
in the John Wayne version and the, and the girl in the Joel and
Ethan Cohen version, Maddie, both of them have
rock ribbed morality. They speak from. They speak with moral
authority. Right, they act with moral authority. Malcolm X
acted. Exactly, exactly.
Malcolm X, you know, spoke with moral authority.
Matty Ross speaks with and was written as a character with moral
authority. And Victor Hugo, to your
point here, Victor Hugo wrote as a
romanticist who was in love with, to your point,
institutions. And I love how you frame this. The institutions meant what they
said, but someone had to be the moral authority behind that.
And so he turned his pen to basically,
basically forcing the institutions to be the thing they said they were going
to be. And you see this also in Ben
Hur. So Lou Wallace, when Lou Wallace writes about
Masala and he writes about Judah Ben Hur, the reason why
Judah Ben Hur is on a mission of revenge that
winds up in a chariot race to kill Messala, to kill the Roman.
The reason why he's on that mission is because
he believes that the Roman Empire did him wrong
and someone should tell them no and, and someone
should draw a line. Now, what's interesting about Ben Hur,
which you don't see in this book, because Victor Hugo, and we're going to talk
about the bishop here in a minute. I'm glad you brought that up. We're going
to talk about the bishop here in a minute. But in Ben Hur,
there ex. The. The characters experience what in biblical terms is
called a theophany. That's when God basically, or the divine
reaches into history and says, hey, I'm here, and then steps back out.
Right? And so Lou Wallace structured the interactions with Jesus
as this theophany that was happening, happening about four or five times
in, in the book. Hugo does exactly the same thing,
but he does it with, and this is the key difference. He does
it with social reform. And he believes that
social reform is the way in which
romantically held social reform, by the way, is the way in which
you will establish moral authority and to your point, get
the institutions to what they. To live up to what they say.
And I think this is hugely important for leaders to understand. And it runs
across numerous books that we've covered on this show.
And there's also A sense of heroism here, which I want to revisit sort of
at the end that goes along with this and I think is missing from a
lot of human rights activism in our time. There's no heroism involved in
it. It's more like trolling or gaslighting or
just, you know, throwing grease in. Or not. Sorry, grease. Throwing sand
in gears to. To make a problem. Not because
you actually want to see things change. Although people mouth the words of wanting to
see things change, but they don't actually romantically believe it. And
this is the disjuncture that I think, you know,
Les Mis lays out so. Lays out so so nakedly.
Right. As a book. Yeah. It's not just the
vision statement, it's the actual embodiment of the
vision. Correct. And you know, it's not
just virtue signaling and then patting me on the back
because I say the right thing. It's actually
demonstrating that what you state is actually going to be
the good thing. Right, right, right.
And do good for society. Right. Well,
and the French also, because they had the revolution, they had this idea
and this is the part of the other part of it that rocked the continent.
They had this idea that. And this is hugely important in the
America. America. Sort of. Not sort
of. America's Constitution and Declaration of Independence
allowed us to avoid the excesses of the French Revolution. Because that could have
very easily happened here. Yes. Oh my God.
It could have very easily happened here. Because our passions are the same as.
The same as. French Republic. Yeah, exactly.
Know what? Do you have a republic if you can keep it. Right. Okay.
What the French Revolution proved
in very naked stark terms was that.
And this is where liberty and egalitae and fraternity come
from that if the king,
who is set up as the avatar of God on earth can be gotten,
then everything's open to everybody. If we. The second
they beheaded that king like that was it, game on.
And that's what all of the rulers of Europe got. They got that
viscerally. That was the message that they sent out.
And then to top it off, which
Victor Hugo talks about this, we're going to talk about Napoleon today. Then to top
it off, you have Napoleon, which. That's a whole other kind of. I mean that's
a. That's the second half back half a conversation. That's a whole other kind of
thing. I'm fascinated by Napoleon. That dude was real
interesting. But you. That
was like a one, two punch to the continent of Europe. And
I don't think the European. I don't think European powers have
ever really fully recovered from that. They haven't.
They're still struggling. Yeah. That America or the
US benefited from not having their history,
you know, because we did kind of Greenfield what a republic
was, you know. No kidding,
right? Yeah, yeah.
Let me, let me go into, let me go into Les Mis here. I want
to bring up the point because Libby, we talked about the bishop and this is,
this is a good time to sort of bring this up.
So the impact of
religion on the French mindset,
specifically Catholicism on the French mindset.
And I'm talking the pre. Well, no, even down to today, but the
Pre World War II French mindset, the. The
19th century conception of Catholicism, the 19th century
conception of religion and the.
And religion as an estate in France re. I mean,
redounds through this book. And so I want to
bring up some ideas here. I want to point
out some things about monsignor
bienvenue, chapter 12, book one of
Les Miserables.
And I quote, there is almost always a squad of young abbes around
a bishop, just as there is a flock of young officers around a general. By
the way, one other point just want to make if you read this book, the,
the turns of phrase in here are amazing. Victor
Hugo, again, amazing writer. It flows really
fast. You'll be. You'll be 50 pages in. You won't even realize where the time
went back to the book.
They are what the charming St. Francis de Saul somewheres calls white
billed priests. Every profession has its aspirants who make up the
cortege of those who are at the summit. No power is without its
worshipers, no fortune without its court. The secrets of the future
revolve around the splendid present. Every capital, like every general,
has its staff. Every influential bishop has his patrol of undergraduates,
cherubs who make the rounds and keep ordering the bishop's palace and who
stand guard over the monsignor's smile. To
please a bishop puts a foot in the stirrup
for a sub deacon. Each must make his own way. The
apostolate never disdains the cannocate.
And as elsewhere, there are top brass in the church. There are rich miters,
there are bishops who stand well at court, wealthy, well endowed, adroit, accepted in
the world. Knowing how to pray, no doubt, but also knowing how to ask favors
with few scruples about making themselves the viaduct of advancement for a whole
diocese. Hyphens between the sacristy and diplomacy.
More abbes than priests, prelates rather than bishops. Lucky are they
who get near them. Men of influence as they Are they reign
about them, upon their families and favorites. And upon all these young men
who please them. Fat parishes, sinecures, archdeaconates,
chaplaincies and cathedral functions. Steps towards a
bishop's dignities. In advancing themselves, they advance
their satellites. It is a whole solar system in motion. The rays of their
glory, their retinue purple, their prosperity scatters its crumbs to
those behind the scenes. In the guise of nice little promotions. The larger the
diocese of the patron, the larger the curacy of the favorite. Or for the
favorite. And then there is Rome. A bishop who could become an
archbishop. An archbishop becomes cardinal, leads you to the conclave.
You enter into the rota. You have the pallium there you are an auditor,
you are a chamberlain, you are a monsignor. And from the
grandeur to eminence there is only a step. And between eminence and holiness
there is nothing but the smoke of a ballot.
Every cowl may dream of the tiara. In our day, the priest is the
only man who could regularly become a king. And what a king. The supreme king.
So what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary. How many blushing
choir boys, how many young abbes have the ambitious dairy maids pail
of milk on their heads? Who knows how easily ambition disguises
itself under the name of calling, possibly in good faith, and deceiving itself
in sanctimonious confusion.
Monsignor. Beyond venue, a humble, poor private person was not counted among
the rich miters. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests around
him. We have seen in that in Paris he did not fit in. No glorious
future dreamed of alighting upon this solitary old man. No budding ambition was
foolish enough to ripen in his shadow. His cannons and his grand vicars were good
old men, rather common, like himself, and like him, immured in that diocese
from which there was no road to promotion. And they resembled their
bishop. With this difference that they were finished and he was perfected.
The impossibility of getting ahead under Monsignor Bienvenue was so plain
that, fresh from the seminary, the young man ordained by him procured
recommendations to the Archbishop of A or of Auch and left
immediately. For after all, we repeat, men like advancement.
A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor. He
is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of
the articulations necessary to advancement, and in fact, more
renunciation than you would like. And men flee from this
contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monsignor
Bienvenue. We live In a sad society, succeed.
That is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging
corruption.
Damn.
Unbelievable. Look,
I was listening to Orson Welles on the Third man the
other day. I love that old radio show. And he was running
around trying to be a.
Some type of. He's trying to scam some people, of course, because
he's hustling. And he was portraying himself not
as a religious person, but as a, like a, like an Amir or like a
viceroy or some, some sort of royalty. Right. Something with a sir on
it. And then like some little kid basically upends
his entire scam and it turns out that this little kid is actually an earl,
which is great. It's a great. It was a great little thing.
And, and so we've covered the Third man on this show earlier this, this, this
season. You should go check out that episode if you haven't listened to that already.
And one of the lines in it at the end when Orson Welles does a
little wrap up, he says, as Harry Lime, he
says, the wages of sin are not nearly high enough to justify the overhead.
And, and as I read that piece,
great line that. Oh my God, it's so good. Wells was so good.
I think of the bishop here. And not because the
bishop was sinful, actually, the way Victor Hugo sets up the
bishop. He's the only more
genuinely moral man in the
entire corpus of the book. Yeah.
Monsignor Bienvenue. Is the.
Is he the. How would you frame this, Libby? Is he the pebble that pushes.
That pushes Jean Valjean down. Down the, down the.
Down the mountain? Or is he. Or is
he the. The hand that pushes him? Is he the pebble or the hand?
Yeah, it's the hand. It's the slight. Okay. You know,
adjustment that's just needed to put you on course.
You know, he had two paths to take. Right,
right, right. And he just eased him to the right
versus Right. Right. Yeah, right. And
the soft touch. Just a soft touch. And he did it in. But he couldn't
have done it without having the moral authority. And he. And he sets
up the bishop because this is what I mean. He sets up the monsignor. This
is who he starts with. He opens the book with Devon Senior, like you would
think the book would open with Jean Valjean and Javert and
Fentin and all these characters and their tragedy and da, da, da. No,
he starts with the moral authority. He starts with
the moral guy. And you know, he,
he ab. To his point about abnegation, he totally
and completely. He makes him
not Right for this world. That's what it is. Like he made the bishop. Right.
Not right for this. And that's the only
way, I think Hugo could
justify, I guess, that morality.
Because all these other characters are, to his point, they're
ambitious and scheming and
grasping. Even Jean Valjean scheming and
grasping. Right. Even cassette. Right. Like
scheming and grasping. Right. Grabbing for something, whether that's love
or attention or whatever their
perspective of legal righteousness is. I'm looking at you, Javert.
But like all these other characters are grasping and scheming and ambitious. But not the
monsignor. He doesn't want
anything. And you can't do anything with a man like that.
No, that's the problem. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's why
they try. Yeah. You know, they don't want
someone who believes in, like, life after death, who isn't a fear,
who isn't afraid of death, you know, who isn't afraid of having
nothing. Right. Because, you know, because you can't control that person.
Right. But I think
you would have a. Yeah. Without. Without the
decision to.
To get, you know, to give Valjean, you know, the candlesticks and,
you know, and all that. You wouldn't have that decision point
so clearly demarked. It wasn't even decision point, it was an action.
You know, you saw Beljan just starting to, you know, well,
you believe I'm a thief. I'm a thief. You know, I have no other
choice. You've given me. You've given me no other choice. You know, and we hear
about this for, you know, low income, you know, low income, you
know, people, when. People when no one has a belief in you
and you're told you're a thief and you're not, you know, and
just, you know, 20 years for, you know, in prison
for taking. Stealing a slice of bread. And then,
yeah, it was a five year sentence that turned into 20 because you kept trying
to escape, you know, and then afterwards,
you know, you hear this with convicts now, you know,
afterwards you have a yellow card that says, I'm a thief. I'm a
thief. And everyone just treats you a
certain way until that one person
doesn't and sees the glimmer in you and sees the hope
and gives you the chance to redeem yourself and, you
know, and not even with him, but just in life. Yeah,
I talk a lot about small moments can change
the trajectory and it's in another person's life,
and this is an example of that. Except my moments
are even smaller. It's giving a person, you know,
someone who maybe is in line in front of you at the grocery store who's
being extremely mean to, to those around them
and you just give them a smile, maybe let them go in front of you
and you have no idea why that person is the way they are.
It could just be they've had a really bad day or they were just
fired. But by showing them a
moment of grace, you might knock them out of their
moment and they return to who they,
you know, who they are in their soul for the remainder of the
day. And that may be that they treat their children that,
you know, better at the end of the day than they would have if they
come home still angry and feeling like the world is out to get them.
But regardless, you know, this is one of those small
moments where someone saw him as other than a
thief and gave him the grace
to show him, you know, that, you know, to show,
show him grace. And with that he made the decisions to invest
and build a business and then give, you know,
help others to prosper as much as you can
in those days. But it's still that same idea, so
small without this moment of grace. And it is interesting that
has to be given by someone of the church. But if that,
it probably has the most power because you can make the
assumption that they had no alternative, you know,
agenda. Yeah. To use all of our common
vernacular. Right. Yeah. Yeah. In ways that
things are being positioned nowadays, like he was giving grace, he did the right
thing. And for the rest of his life he did the right thing
because that's who, who he was, you know, like he wouldn't
let someone hang wrongly for being thought of, of being
him, you know. Right. Yeah. But, well,
that whole tussle that he goes through, that long dark
night of the soul, right. Where he's, you know, trying to decide what is he
going to do. The way Hugo describes the,
that moral not dilemma,
that moral wrestling, it put me in mind of,
put me in mind in the book of Genesis when Jacob
wrestles with the angel. Right. Or, or in
some cases, you know, depending upon what your, what your translation of
the Bible is, you'll see that he wrestled with God or he wrestled with
Jesus. Right. You know, it was Jesus. Anyway, so he's
wrestling and it, it put me in. Or Jean
Valjean's wrestling put me in mind of that
moment. And I do think. No, I think I don't. So Hugo,
you know, knew the Bible, he knew all the corpus of that and
how that impacted and engaged with
literature. He also knew classic literature. He knew all of the things, right?
And so he brought all of that to the table here in Les Mis. But
then he turns it into something
very specific and very,
very French in a, in a, in an environment
where. And this is the other thing. Now I want to talk about poverty in
an environment where poverty that we
can't imagine is just the standard.
Exactly. Yeah. Like, so the
Thenardines, right? The, the, the,
the family that Fentine leaves cassette with.
Unbelievable to me. Like, I, I'm reading this and I'm going.
I mean, I know these things happen today. I'm not naive.
But it wasn't, it's not the norm today. It's not the norm today,
right? Like if, if you're reading this. And actually it's interesting. So as I
was reading this book because it's taken me a few months to sort of
go through it. Started reading this back in February,
in, in March, I went to a, went
to a speech and debate tournament. My daughter is involved in speech, debate. I went
to one of her tournaments and one of the parents there
is from France and she saw me
reading Les Mis and she came over
and she was like, oh, yeah, I read that. I did the audio version of
that book because I couldn't, I couldn't read it. And I was in my car,
whatever, and I, and she's like, I'm from France.
And then she's like, that book is amazing. And so we had a whole hour
long conversation about the book and I asked her this
question. I said, as a French speaker and as a person, you
know, French native, what does this book mean to you? And
she said, this book is the history. It's part of the history of our country.
It is the history of our country. And she said, she was, she's in
her, she's in her 60s. She said that the way
that, the way that the poverty and the social
climate is, is, is structured. She said, oh yeah, we learned about all this in
history. I mean, that's just the way things were,
you know. And she said it so casually.
And I was struck by, as I often am when I talk to people
from other countries who are not Americans, who are now, who have now
chosen to live in America. And then we wind up talking about French politics. By
the way, she's not a fan of the current prime minister and is very
desirous of voting against him, but she's like, I have to go back to France.
I have to live there for like three months so I could vote. And she's
like, it's not worth it. Like, just leave. She's like, she's just trying to get
her family out. She's just leave. Man's an idiot. Just go. Anyway, point
is, I'm struck once again by
how,
How the things that, that folks from other countries
just casually accept as the way of life.
We've basically said we don't have to
do that and so we're going to go off and do something different.
You're also seeing this with like the Europeans that are coming over and folks from
other countries as well that are coming over to the, the World cup venues
now with the FIFA World cup going on. Oh my God, this is like the
World Cup. Honestly, like this is the
best thing that could have happened to America at this
time in a while. Like not like
Europeans and folks from all over other places, all over the world
are coming to America and interacting with Americans and, and
seeing that it's not all of what you see on TikTok videos
and nonsense from the media. Like
80% of the people in America are not what you see
online. You know, like
I watched, I mean I'm not watching any of the games. I saw a game
in a restaurant and one of the venues was Philadelphia and I was sitting
there with my wife and I was joking, I was working with my wife. I
was like, oh yeah, it's Philadelphia. Philly fan gotta like, Philly fan gotta like put
on a show now because Philadelphia is
the worst sports city. Yes, I did say it. Sorry to all my fans
of Philadelphia, but it is the worst sports city on the east coast. Yeah. Bar
none. Like it beats Boston by a country mile
because intellectual enough to make that
this Philly fan don't care. I mean the story. Yeah,
yeah. You know, like it's, I think it's one of two.
Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Eagle Stadium is one of two stadiums in the NFL where there's
an actual like jail. What's the
other one? I think it's the Raiders. Raiders. I think it's the Raiders. Yeah, I
think it's the Raiders. The Raiders is the other one. I might be wrong on
this. You can, it can be fact checked on this. But yeah, Philly has a
lockup like of course. And nobody,
nobody goes, oh no, that's weird. That's out. No, no, that actually that
tracks, that tracks with that town. No, that's fine. But, but you know, you
see the World cup venues and you see these international players
and these international visitors and America is
just being America. We're just hanging out Doing the thing we've always done.
And they are here finding out on a visit
we're not what their politicians tell you, what the
media tells you. But I actually think it's analogy also
for the big US cities and people who live in those cities,
if they were to actually start participating beyond their,
beyond where they live, they might actually see how great America is
too. Exactly, exactly, exactly. It
is super fabulous. And it's always takes those
wake up calls, you know, for people to go, oh my
gosh, like if I actually just get out of, you know,
the news and the politicians that go travel and talk to people, it's
like, wow, the world isn't, you know, isn't even half as
bad. Or, you know, you could, you
could, you could read Les Mis and watch how Hugo
describes the grinding poverty that creates the tragedy
and go, oh my God, yes, we have poor people in this
country, but we would never, I won't say we
would never. The level of outcry that
there would be if we had
a situation like what happened with Fantine, like her
entire arc of her life. The level of
outcry against that would be
unbelievable if that were happening now. And
I'm not saying that, that we're better. I'm saying to Libby's point,
it's just, it's about, it's about the evolution of civilization. Evolution of civilization,
yes. Right. But, yes, but what I actually found really interesting when you
were conveying what the woman who left her country
and came to the US was saying is like, well, that's just the
way it is. It also reminds me, you know,
that's, you know, the French history is, that's
the way it is. But there's a level of kind of
acceptance that's okay. And you know, and
I want to double click on that from a nuanced perspective because I
remember when LA was starting to seek crime rates, you know,
rise quite a bit. And this was
like 2021, 2022. And one of the famous actors
is like, it's a city. Like, that's what happens,
you know, so when you have extremely low expectations,
you start to dismiss, you
know, the things that need to be hap. You know, expectations
for people. That's what I think about like these, you know, the homeless
issue and, you know, and that I
bring up a lot in California because to
me it's immoral to allow
like, you know, people to live like that for their own,
you know, for their own being. It's not a gift to them
because they want to just be Partying and living outside.
It's actually
inhuman to not wish better conditions for them,
to not provide better conditions for them and to ignore,
you know, that we can actually help them
by, you know, by bringing them inside and cleaning them and
giving them proper food and helping them with mental issues and that
type of thing. So it's just kind of this.
It's just kind of the laissez faire
taken to a far extreme because you don't have higher
expectations of humanity.
Well, let me. Okay, let me ask you this question.
We just watched the LA mayoral race occur.
Yes. And I'm not going to get into
the race itself. I'm not going to get into any of that. That's
not the thing that we do on this show. Going to worry about it. Right.
Instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask this question,
out of the candidates who won
the race for LA Mayor, not the run the
race, run the primary to run for LA Mayor, out of
the candidates that are in that. That democratically
controlled city. Okay. Who is
going to have the moral authority to say,
as Hugo has done in Les Miz through his characters,
that this cannot stand is. I don't see Karen Bass
doing that. No, you see,
you see talking points
sure. Don't reflect what would actually
help individuals like affordability. Like, I
hear affordability. Right. But I don't tell you,
I don't hear a recognition of what's causing it to not be
affordable. Right. Being addressed. It's more
about we'll just tax more so that we can
buy versus we have building codes that are
extremely expensive. Like, you know.
Yeah. There's one famous podcaster, Adam Carolla, who is
why it's showing the rebuilding of a home down on the beach.
And that home was on stilts, just like Venice's
for, you know, for 70. It was on stilts for 70 years. And the only
thing that took it out was a fire, but not the water
and all that. And now that home has to be
built. The foundation for that home costs
like a couple million dollars. And it's all pillars
that are, you know, pillars that are being steel pillars that
have to go into the ground. And then, you know, there's things that they're concerned
about from a rain from a water perspective, which I get. But it was
good enough from a safety perspective with the pillars
with the wood pilings. So when you
don't hear. When you just hear talking points, which is what.
When I watch Hugo's evolution,
it's the difference between you Know, the monarch and
Napoleon keep saying, this is what we're going to do for you, but not
delivering. When you have basins, when you have base needs that
need to be met and they keep promising, but they're not who
goes, like the government isn't going to be the answer.
And when I listen to, and you know, the
single government that's controlled, been controlling that state, hasn't
addressed all of their solutions,
don't actually seem to address the actual problem.
And then you have another candidate whose solutions actually
are getting to the root causes like mental illness, you know,
and building codes and, you know, the
things that are actually, you know, building codes and not enough people to
help with inspections. And, you know, so
that's. That to me, is
moral authority because, you know, because
you're actually getting to the solutions that are going to solve
problems. And when you see the person who has solutions that
address a root cause and then.
They're challenged by the power structure,
you do have to ask, you know, who has the moral
authority? It's the person typically who's getting pushed out.
Right. Who's losing everything but still wants to speak.
Well, well, you brought it up, you brought it up earlier. And I think it's,
it's worth repeating yet again that institutions should do what they say they're going to
do. Right, Exactly. And, and someone, not someone.
One of the things in democracy, small D democracy,
is all of the people are
responsible nominally for ensuring that
the institutions do well. All the institutions do what they say they're going to
do. Now, in a republic,
which is what we have in the United States,
we vote for people,
and then those people are the ones that are supposed to make the institutions
do what they say they're going to do. Now,
the people that we vote for
have to have some kind of moral weight. There also
has to be consequences for
failure. And the frustrating
thing, for many Americans over the last 25 years, regardless
of who I talk to, left, right or center, the main
frustration, politically left, politically radically considered, doesn't matter. The
number one frustration is that there are no
seeming consequences for failure.
So if, if your,
if your city has a fire
that could have been prevented if the fire hydrants had water in
them, right. There should
be a penalty, there should be accountability
for that failure. Exactly. I'm going to scale this
up even further, actually. I'm going to use another example.
If you are a politician
and you decide that you're going to comment on
something in the culture and Your
commentary is 180
degrees, as my mother would say, from sideways,
which means it's not relevant. For those of you in Rio
Linda, you, you. There should, there is going
to be. There should be a consequence for that. I'm not
saying that your right to speak should be abrogated. I'm not saying
you should be. Shut up. Yeah, I agree there should be. Right. But there should
be consequences for that. I'm going to scale it up a little further.
If you go to Congress and you were a
$15 an hour barista and after a term
in Congress, one term, you come out a millionaire,
right? There should be consequences for.
There should be accountability for that. I don't get to start at,
at $15 an hour and a year later make a million dollars.
That's not how things work. So
what the frustrating thing is is that there seems to be no consequences for failure.
And Hugo in Les Mis
lays out what the consequences for failure are. He lays out,
and we're going to talk about Napoleon now. He lays out what failure actually
looks like and what it actually means to experience those consequences
and how wide ranging they are for society in our
time. I think for leaders, we have to
realize that at a certain point
the laws of physics just work like the laws of
reality just are what they are. Well, and
this is what, you know, and as you were speaking, I was really thinking about
this really clearly. Like, you know, when
you've scaled up and everything's centralized,
there's op. There's opacity, and it's harder
to trace where a breakdown in moral
authority is. You know,
so there's the. I care about affordability, I care about
affordability. Yet we're not seeing affordability right
addressed, you know, and that's for the common man, the middle class,
you know, lower middle class, middle class and upper class.
And you know, we have to. And one of the reasons we
haven't seen consequences for actions is
because we haven't. You know, in theory, folks are saying
our vote matters. We're
told it is. But there's so much opacity
to the system that I can't, I can't
trust that your moral authority is actually
translated, that you actually have deserved moral authority.
You're telling me every vote matters and
you're counting them all fairly and
everything is legal. You know, there's.
There's too much opacity in the system
and too many places for that trust to break down.
And I mean by that with yoke, you know, if let
make it very, very simple. Decentralized accountability.
Yeah, we all vote the same day. We show our id.
There's two people watching the system,
watching people take their votes, take the id. That to me is
a demonstration that those who are
saying democracy matters and your
vote matters. It's visible to
me that it does because of what I
see, my reality, what
I see, not what I hear. And so
we've seen now we're, now we're told
the system is fair even though you can,
in California you can receive
votes up to 20 days after the election
as long as it has a written post date on it, not even
a
UPS or use United States Postal Service stamp on it.
If it's believed that that date may be correct, then you can accept
it. So you put, started to put
too many barriers to my trust
in the way and that's why you start to get a populist uprising
is because you no longer are deserving of the moral
authority that you want were because reality
is no longer lined up with your words.
Correct? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And,
and you know what we,
Populism is a dirty word these days, right. Just like
nationalism is a dirty word, you know,
but it's only a dirty word to people
who in power who have benefited from the
opacity, they've skated by on accountability,
they've gotten paid and not just paid in money. They
get paid in status and in attention and in power
and in influence. Money is like the least
worrisome thing. Honestly, in tribalism,
identity is the number one thing that we can control.
Yeah. When you talk about cults, identity is the driver
of cult like behavior, Right? Exactly, exactly,
exactly. And, and so, you know, and then when
you question the opacity or you
question the lack of transparency or you question the accountability,
you are then put in the box of,
and I'm going to use this term, an election denier or, or,
or you're shuffled off to the darker corners of the
Internet where all the crazy people hang out. Because who couldn't
possibly believe that our, all of our elections are free and fair.
But watch what, but watch what is happening. A person who
has courage of their convictions and is saying
something that will ostracize them for society,
right? Like yeah, yeah, people are saying
things that could have them lose their jobs, can have them lose their position
in their community. You, that's
why a populism resonates is because
there's so much sacrifice that comes with like
skating things that could get you jailed or lose your
job, that type of, that type of thing. The reason
why, you know,
the reality star resonated
is because he was Actually talking to the things that we saw every day
that everyone was telling us doesn't exist.
And we're working on it. And this is how
wasn't translating where these ephemeral intellectual
ideas that weren't translating into reality. And then you had someone who was
actually dealing with the things that talking about the things that we
saw every day that we'd been hearing for five,
10 years were supposed to be addressed and weren't. And he
actually seemed to have solutions that a practical
mind said, yeah, that would work. Right. You know, those who
live in reality. And so the
moral authority, you know, like the, the
religious individual, the bishop, was actually
acting in reality because he understood human
motivation. Yes. And he
understood how shame
could turn someone and continued shaming of someone
could turn them down a path into a life of crime
versus a moment giving someone grace
could create the goodwill and the desire
to help and do good. That's much more
powerful than anything else. You know, so
understanding human nature,
authority is really, is very important because it's not the
vision statement, it's the actual
operating and living by the
principles that you purport to be true. You purport to be true.
Yep, absolutely. Yeah. My. It.
Yeah. And Hugo, and as what I.
Hugo learned this and he could speak to it so beautifully
because he'd struggled with every stage of
this himself. Yes, yes, yes. Well, and
he. This is why
I, you know, I said this already, but I'll say it again. His characters are
fully realized. They are three dimensional. Even
the Thenardines who are, who are sort of sub villains,
you know, they are fully realized. Fantine is fully
realized. Cossette is fully realized,
the Monsignor fully realized.
Even the, even the
young man who were the
group of girls that Fantine was a part of, and then the young
men that were their lovers and they're cavorting around or whatever. And then of course,
you know, he knocks Fantine up and then disappears into the night. Does
the Johnny Appleseed move. Even that guy is fully
realized. Like he gives, he gives him a beginning, a middle and an end. And
actually the end is that he became like some low level mayor in some town
or whatever. And, and
there's no castaway characters in this book.
Every one of them is so tightly written and so, so fully
realized. And I think they're fully realized because we're going to
turn the corner here and talk about Napoleon and then wrap up, at least for
today, but they're fully realized because I
think Hugo as a romanticist,
and I say this on the show as myself or I
tagged myself with this. He was a fan of human beings. He actually
liked people. He actually thought people had potential.
He did. I, I see. I. He did. And I think that I, I agree
with you. Okay, so we have Javert, who believes in the letter
of the law. Of the law, yes. Right. We have
the, the Thenardier,
a criminal. And I'm going to be a criminal, you know, and even though you
thought I was a good man, you know, and I benefited from it, I'm still
going to be a criminal. Right. And then you have Jean Valjean, who actually,
in my mind, he start. He did a crime out of love,
right. Like for his sister because he wanted to feed her and her family.
He did a crime out of love in the. Yeah.
And I don't believe you should, but when you're looking at the
pyramid of, you know, Maslov pyramid of needs, if you don't have that
base level met, like, people have to eat, you
know, yes, things are going to happen. But he
was like, well, maybe I'm not love. This is, this is Libby's
interpretation. You know, when he's told over and over and over again he's a criminal
and he's going to have this scarlet letter for the rest of his life.
He's like, they keep telling him, no love, no love, you're a
criminal. He's like, well, then I act like one, you know, kind of like, you
know, defiantly. But then someone shows grace. He's like, I
can see that love. You know, those are my interpretations of
the, of the bishop, but I can see that love,
and you have it in you, and I'm going to help you by doing the
right thing. And so that's what drives him,
you know, Valjean, through the rest of the, the rest of the book
is, you know, I'm going to do the right thing. And he does do the
right thing, and it's kind of out of love and, you know,
getting him out. Out of those base needs
by building a business and being able to support himself and
to help others so that he's not having to act out of base.
Base needs. Base needs. But he's the most human
and redemptive character that I think, you know,
Hugo's using as a model of even though we've sinned. Even
though you've sinned, you can redeem yourself and make the right
path. Make the right choice and make the right choice. Yes. And it's. And
it's human beings that have to be involved in relationship with each other in order
just realize that we're flawed. But you don't have to accept that moment of
flaw. And you know, if small moments are big, you got to
continue to move forward and redeem yourself. Yes, absolutely.
Okay, let me, let me go to something that was that
I just, just absolutely struck me
in. Well, one of the many things that struck me in this book.
The.
So we go to cassette, the book one.
So the chapter on cassette
starts out with a. Probably
the, the best description I had ever read
of the battle at Waterloo,
exactly what happened there. And it opens
up with what you see on the way from Nevillier
Hugomont, talking about the doors and
the orchard. And then June 18, 1815,
I, I, I read these chapters
and then he goes into a. The quid obscurum of battles.
I'm just reading the chapter titles. 4 o' clock in the Afternoon.
Napoleon in a good Mood. The
Emperor asks the guide La Costa a question, the
Unexpected and the plateau of
Mont St. Jean. And then finally wraps up with
Bad guide for Napoleon, good for Bulow
the Guard and of course the catastrophe.
Now these chapters, these 14
chapters in the first book cover
about 40 pages
and he sums up the entire battle of Waterloo.
And he sums up Napoleon
in the 15th chapter, Cambrone.
And I'm going to, I'm going to read from this and then we're going to
talk about. About a man. I'm fascinated by Napoleon.
Napoleon Bonaparte. Out of
respect to the French reader, the finest word perhaps
that a Frenchman ever uttered cannot be repeated to him. We are
prohibited from applying the sublime to history at our own risk
and peril. We violate that prohibition. Among these giants, then
there was one titan, Cambrone. To speak that
word and then to die. What could be greater? For to accept death is to
die. And it is not this man's fault if in the storm of grapeshot
he survived. The man who won the battle of Waterloo is not
Napoleon put to route nor Wellington giving way at 4 o', clock,
desperate at 5 not blue share who did not fight. The man
who won the battle of Waterloo was Kim Roning.
To burst out with such a word at the thunderbolt that kills you is
victory. To give this answer to disaster,
to say this to destiny, to supply this base for the future lion.
To fling down this reply to the reign of the previous night, to the
treacherous wall at Hugomont, to the sunken road of Ohain, to Grouchy's
delay, to Blucher's arrival to be ironic in the sepulcher,
to act so as to remain Upright after falling, down after
falling. To drown the European coalition in two syllables
privies that the Caesars were already privy to. To make the last
words the first by associating it with the glory of France. To close
Waterloo insolently with a Mardi Gras, to complete
Leonidas with Rabelier. To sum up this victory in one supreme word
that cannot be spoken. To lose the field and to recover history after
this carnage, to have the laugh on his side is
immense. It is an insult to the thunderbolt.
It attains the grandeur of Eschylus.
This word of Cambrones, by the way the word was merde has
the effect of a fracture. It is the breaking of a heart by
scorn. It is a surplus of agony and explosion. Who conquered
Wellington? No, without Blue Share he would have been lost. Blusher.
No, if Wellington had not begun, Blucher could not have finished. This Cambrone
coming at the final hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal
particle of war, senses a lie within a catastrophe
doubly bitter. And at the moment when he is bursting with rage, he is offered
this mockery life. How could he restrain himself?
They are there, all the kings of Europe, the fortunate generals, the
thundering jupiters. They have 100,000 victorious
soldiers. And behind the 100,000amillion. Their guns, with matches
lit, stand open mouthed. They have the Imperial Guard in the Grand Armee
under their feet. They have just crushed Napoleon. And Cambronne alone
remains none. But this earthworm is left to protest. He will
protest. So he looks for a word as one looks for a sword. Froth
comes through his mouth, and this froth is the word.
Faced with this prodigious and mediocre victory, this victory without
victors, the desperate man draws himself up. He suffers his enormity,
but he recognizes it's nothingness. And he does more than spit
on it. Overwhelmed in numbers and material strength, he finds in his
soul a means of expression, excrement, we
repeat. To say that, to do that, to find that is
to be a conqueror, the spirit of great days.
Enter this unknown man. At that fatal moment, Cambrone finds the word
for Waterloo as Rouge de Isle finds the Marseille.
Through an inspiration from above, a breath from the
divine maelstrom passes across these men and they tremble. And the one
sings the supreme song, the other utters the terrible cry, this word
of titanic scorn. The Cambrone throws
out, not merely at Europe in the name of the empire,
that would be but little. He throws it out at the past in the name
of the revolution. It is heard and men recognize in Camerone
the old soul of the giants. It is though Danton was speaking,
or Clebert roaring to this word from
Cambron. The English voice replied, fire. The
batteries flared, the hill trembled. From all those brazen throats went forth a
final terrible vomiting of grapeshot. Vast clouds of
smoke, dusky white in the light of the rising moon, rolled away. And when the
smoke settled, there was nothing left. That formidable remnant was
annihilated. The guard was dead. The four walls of the living redoubt had
fallen. Hardly could a quivering be detected here and there among the corpses. And
thus the French legions, grander than the Roman legions, expired
at Mont St. Jean on ground soaked in rain and
blood in the somber wheat fields. In the somber wheat fields at
the spot where today, at four in the morning, whistling and
gaily whipping up his horse, Joseph drives by with the mail from
Neuve.
I am a fan of military history. I've read quite a bit of it.
I have never read. I had never read before. I read
this, something like that before. If. If
the. If. And you know what. And I'll tell my story now about Les Miz,
the movie. So this is my story.
When the movie came out with Anne Hathaway a few years ago
and Russell Crowe. Pleasure there. And
I can't remember who was the guy from the Greatest Showman. What's his
name? Wolverine. Wolverine, that guy? Yeah. I
can't think of his name. I can't think of his name right now. It doesn't
matter. But he was Jean Valjean, right? Okay. Big to
do about this movie. My wife was like, oh, we should go see this.
Like, okay, I get in
there, I get my tickets. I, you know, get into the theater. I,
you know, put my seat back and.
And. And Russell Crowe starts singing.
And two hours later I wake up and the whole thing.
And
so when I picked up the book, Les Mis, my wife, remembering this, of course,
asks me, how long is it going to take you to get through this book?
How long are you going to go in this book before you give up? Like,
well, I'll just keep going until, I don't know, until I stop. I don't know,
until the book stops or whatever. And
it is moments, and this is the reason why I bring this up. It is
moments like Waterloo, the description of the Battle of
Waterloo, how he breaks that sucker down over 15 chapters.
That's what I wanted to see in the movie. I
wanted to. That. That's what I wanted. That's it.
That would have. I would have. I Would have stayed awake for that.
Yeah, none of that's in the movie. Instead, we get a whole bunch of other
different things, which is fine. I'm gonna get to something else here. At the end
of our episode here, which actually, like I said, kind of. Kind of opened a
door for me in my head based off of a. Off of
a song that was in. That was from the movie that I heard. I
heard this weekend at a. At a. At a recital that I was at. So
that description, though, of Cambron and the.
And the end of Waterloo, he. How he breaks down the
battlefield and breaks down what happened there.
It was a stunning, stunning
achievement by someone who I don't think ever fired a weapon
at anybody in anger, like, ever. Right.
The familiarity that Hugo had with
Napoleon and how Waterloo was such a
disaster for not just Napoleon, but
I think it was a disaster for the French mindset as well,
that they didn't really fully recover from. And actually being a person
who believes that World War I is the headwaters for all
the nonsense that happened in the 20th century, I now understand
at a deeper level why the French felt
so compelled to continue to throw men into the Western Front
during World War I. Just unbelievable,
the numbers of Frenchmen that died in the Western
Front. And they wouldn't stop throwing those men in there. They
wouldn't. They could have just stopped. They could have just not sent any more men
to the front, but they couldn't do it, because they had
to. And I think this is not. This is not putting something on the French
military mind that wasn't there. They had to erase the shame of
Napoleon's defeated Waterloo. And you would
think that because Waterloo happened, what,
1815. Yeah, so it's 1815. Right.
Battle of Waterloo happened at 1815. You're telling. And
80 years, 90 years later,
they're still dealing with the shame of that. And so they just throw people into
World War I. They just throw the men into the mall. And it's because of
what happened at Waterloo. And that. And that really came home to me with Hugo's
description of what happened. And he doesn't
go into the psychology of Napoleon, thank God. He doesn't
psychologize the trauma. He just says, this is the thing that
happened. He dramatizes it and he
romanticizes it, of course, because he's a romantic romanticist
and a romantic writer, but he doesn't. He doesn't
psychologize it. He doesn't. He doesn't try to. Like.
He doesn't try what a modern novelist would try to do. He doesn't try to
make. Make Napoleon, what do you call it, acceptable
or make his actions understandable.
He doesn't judge Napoleon as being problematic. He just says,
no. I mean, like, these are the vagaries of history. So we were going to
have a battle here, and the thunderbolt's going to fall here.
And the beginning of the decline of the French.
Not even decline. The end of the French Revolution was
at Waterloo. And this is what he wants you to feel. And so it's amazing.
This is just an amazing chapter to me. But what is what
happened from a Napoleon perspective? You
know, for 10. Yeah, for the, what, 15 years
before that, 20 years before that. Yeah. That led to that
culmination.
You mean before Napoleon? Well, no, part of his. As
part of Napoleon's reign. Why would it end like that?
Oh, well, because you have the dynamic
of the French people, which Hugo is definitely
clearly on board with. You have the dynamic of the
institutions, the estates. Right. The first estate, the second state, third
estate, the fourth estate. Right. Which is, of course, their class system,
which they sought to. To, you know, paper over.
But then the. The third leg of that
chair is Napoleon himself. And
so one of the reasons I'm fascinated by. By
Napoleon is because of the ego on that man. Yeah, that's what I
was. I wanted to get. Yeah, the ego on that man was
incredible. Like,
I. I will often say that the things that we
like about people are also the things that.
Or the things that people are good at is the things that often upend them
at the end of the day. Right. So, you
know, my grandmother warned me years ago, God rest her soul, but she warned
me years ago, your mouth's gonna get you in trouble. And she was right. She's
exactly right. My mouth gets me in trouble all the time. Grandma was exactly
correct. But my mouth is also what makes me money.
Yeah. You know, so
you got to take the bitter with the sweet. Right.
Napoleon. What made Napoleon able to see
how the armies of Europe could be fractured and shattered
and could be brought to heel? The thing that
made him see that was also the thing that led to the defeat at Waterloo.
It's the same thing. It was the thing that led to him making a
mistake going into Russia. Like, you don't go into Russia. Everybody knows
this. You don't. You don't go to Russia in the
winter. Sorry. No, no, never,
never. Everybody knows this. This is. This is
not anything unusual. They knew this even then. But
his ego, his ego said, I am Napoleon.
And Napoleon was the first sort of example
of, well, you see it in the picture
of his, of his crowning as emperor where he takes the crown
from the Pope or from the, from the bishop or whoever it is that's going
to crown him and he puts it on his own head himself.
I mean, there you go. That's, that's the guy in a
nutshell. Like that's all you need. And then, but
there's going. And the thing is the knock on effects from that,
it is a thunderbolt. So you're gonna, you're gonna ride the lightning with that guy.
And for a while there, for 15. Yeah,
for 15 years, it was worth it. It was worth it for the French to
ride the lightning like that.
But then. Yeah, it's just, it was hubris ultimately that took them
down and then weakened. The result of the people.
Yeah, it was hubris. It was a fair bit of
narcissism, you know, on Napoleon's part.
I also think that the French people fell in love with Napoleon's ego.
So it's not Napoleon the man.
And, and at this point in, at this point in world history, I mean, 200
years later, he's become a symbol of things. Right? So
he's no longer a human. He was no longer fully, he's no longer a fully
fleshed out human being. He's. He's a symbol now. But
to get to be a symbol, you have to have
an entire group of people. To point about tribalism earlier, you have to have an
entire group of people just fall in love with that, with that, that thing.
And Hugo was in love with. Hugo was in love with Napoleon too,
you know, until he wasn't. Until he wasn't. And then.
But he still wasn't able to look at him clear eyed, you know, because it
comes with all that. Napoleon came with all that baggage. Right. Yeah.
And I get it, you know, was he a military
genius or was
he a person who took advantage of circumstances?
Well, I can tell you from my study of military history and from sort
of what I've looked at over the long course of time.
Most people, most commanders who are considered
geniuses, quite frankly, it's a combination of,
of incredible skill,
focus, ego's in there. And,
and nobody likes to hear it, but it's true luck, right?
Opportunity. It's opportunity. Opportunity favors the prepared mind.
Correct? That's right. Right. So it was just the right time in history.
Right. And you can't,
I mean, you wouldn't really want to replicate a guy like Napoleon, but you
can't. Anyway, Hitler tried.
Yeah. And that didn't work because his ego was.
Was pushed a different direction. He was being pushed by different. His not being pushed.
He was seeking to mold different historical forces.
You know, the.
The. The other piece about
this is Waterloo is presented as a
tragic event. And the
thing that run the line that runs through all of Les Mis
is tragedy. And it's
not tragic in terms of the way we think of. Like,
as I said before, we try to psychologize the tragedy
in our time. Hugo's not doing any of that. He's merely
presenting it as it is and just saying, yes, this is the tragedy.
Here you go. And that's. And that's. And that's why this book will continue to
be read for, like, another 200, 300 years. Because
unlike the Greek, he's what. What Hugo is doing in the
best way is doing
what the Greek classicists do when they present a tragedy. This is
just the way life is. And who can you appeal
to? There's no one to appeal to. This is just life.
And we are consistently, because of our Christianity
in America, that's the thread that runs through all of it. We're
consistently trying to find someone to appeal to for the tragedies
of life. So we talked about homelessness earlier, right, in terms of a
political problem.
Now let me talk about it in terms of a human problem. Some
people are homeless because of tragic circumstances in their
lives. And even if
they had different circumstances, which, by the way, we can't make different
circumstances for them, but we want to, but wanting isn't
enough. Even if they had those different circumstances,
there's no guarantee that their life still wouldn't be a tragedy. This is
the lottery winner who actually wins the lottery and then a year later is
broke. That's because their life is tragic,
and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a series of bad decisions. Yeah,
sure, yeah. And those. And those bad decisions create the
tragedies. And until that
person decides, like
Jean Valjean did, decides
with grace or not, we would love it to be with grace. But until that
person decides to make a different choice,
it's going to continue to be a tragedy. So there's a great character in the
great American television show of the last, like, 25 years, the
Wire. There's a character in there, a drug addict named. Named
Bubs, right? And Bubs
is a drug addict. He's an informer to the cops.
And, you know, they. They.
Bub's arc is one of redemption. He has a
redemptive arc.
But there's A great line he has. I can't remember what season it's in. It
might be in season three of the Wire where he says,
I believe it's to the female cop, if I remember correctly, who's trying to help
him, try to start him, trying to show that grace. Right. Like the monsignor.
Yeah. Bubs. Bub says it's a long way from heaven to here.
And that's true for a lot of people.
Like, if I'm poor,
I live in the same town as people who are rich.
So I can go across the tracks to.
I can't attend that school, but I can go across the tracks to a school
where rich kids are attending and stare through the bars.
No one's going to stop me. We. We have that freedom of movement. Now.
Are the cops going to come along and rouse me? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Are they
going to come along and hassle me? Sure. Yeah. But I can go see it.
I can go see the vision of that. But how
many people cross the tracks one way or another to see
the vision? They don't. That's.
Now, we in our country, in our time, we look at that
as the fault of reality, and we are seeking to remake
that through all of our politics and our arguments and our culture,
because we think that's not fair and that's not nice and that's not
right. And our biggest sin these days is to not be fair or nice
or right. But that's actually not
what Hugo thinks. I don't think. I think. Hugo thinks.
Isn't it a tragedy that you don't go across the tracks and
that's a period at the end of that sentence.
Well, there's. There's just themes of. About personal
accountability, choice and. Yeah, choice and
redemption. And, you know, you can
grow up in a family of criminals and where that was
accepted and say, I'm just a criminal, so that's going to be who I
am. Or you say, I don't want to live that life, and I want
to live, you know, a more moral, empowered life.
You know, it's the same thing as, like, a child who's born to.
Yeah. Whose father was an alcoholic. And you have
two children who are born to families with abusive, you know,
alcoholic fathers. One says, I have no choice but to be
exactly the same way. And the other says, I'm going to do everything in my
power to not be that person. And, you know, the
person who says, I'm going to do everything in my power not to be that
person, you know, tends to have a Better life
because they make sets of decisions to not be the
same as the. To accept a
certain way because it's been pushed on them. And then another.
Yeah, that's. That was the story arc that valjang
could have taken. He could have said, well, I'm a criminal. I'm just going to
be a criminal. Or he said, no, I know that I have that arc of
love. I'm not going to be a criminal. I'm going to do everything
in my life to live a virtuous life. You know, so
what? Well, this is the other. What our country was founded on was the
empowered, accountable individual who
could create their own reality. Right. And,
you know, and we're trying to be turned into. Well, you
can't control it, so we'll turn to others to help you
to live a better. A better life as we dictate, as opposed to just
giving you a place of personal accountability and
choices that can actually help you to live
an empowered and thriving life. Well, and, and, and
Hugo, he as a more Christian right,
as a. Well, and as a romantic. He.
Is a romantic. That is the classical liberal view of life. It is
the classic. Yes, it is the classic. Yes. No, you're right. It is the classical
liberal view of life. And a. A
romantic who is in love with human beings, things exactly as
people, knows what they're capable of, that you can thrive no matter what has
happened to you. Cosette could have also, you know, said,
you know, I'm just going to be a hooker. I'm going to be a criminal.
I'm going to eop. No, she didn't accept. Yeah, well,
she was given opportunities and she took advantage of those opportunities. Right, Correct.
Right. A full life. Well, and let me be very
clear here. Hugo believed in changing the changing of economic.
I agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That the economy
had to be better. I mean, this is the other theme with the poverty piece
that runs through Les Mis is the grinding
poverty that is causing people to make these decisions has
to change. And that's in the best sort of line
of thinking from the French Revolution on through Hugo's
life. Now, on the one hand, he did
see tragedies as being periods at the end of the sentence.
He also held intention. This idea that you're talking about,
Libby, of the ability of human beings, if they've ever are given different
economic circumstances, to actually triumph. Now, he didn't have a
solution as to where those economic circumstances or those economic changes are going to
come from. He wasn't a socialist in the way we Think of a
socialist today. He wasn't that person. No, he was a
cat. It was, it was capitalism. Right.
Purest form. Right, Right. Is to do trade.
And you know, you can start at small trade
candlesticks for your machinery. Right. Or build
a, or build a factory in a town that pays people more than like 3
cents. Okay. But you do have to, like, you do have to start with that.
Maslow's pyramid of needs is. You have to first start with
just giving people the basics, you know, food, housing, clean water.
Right, exactly, exactly. Oh, my God. Yeah. The, the filth of
these that is described in here again, shocking
conditions. Right. To someone reading this book in, in
our time, Hugo, though, while he healthy's intention,
ultimately was an optimist. I love the line that he said on August 3 in
his last public address talking about the 20th century. He says, in
the 20th century, war will be dead. The scaffold will be dead.
Hatred will be dead. Frontier boundaries will be dead. Dogmas will
be dead. Man will live.
That's optimistic. Yeah, that's optimistic. Now he
was, he was. If we look, if we look at the 20th century, just in
aggregate, he was not correct. Dogmas
did survive because they're going to. Because you can't kill an idea.
The scaffold not only is not dead, the scaffold is used for a whole variety
of different things that Hugo would find abominable. I think
hatred will be dead. Well, there's a few million, there's 100 million
dead people in, you know, from communism that would probably have something to say
about that. Frontier boundaries will be dead. He's
absolutely true about that. We, with the Internet,
we have, we have pushed the frontier boundaries. Who's absolutely correct about that?
Um, war will be dead. No, war is a condition of the human
heart. And as long as there are human beings who want to
take stuff that other human beings have, we're going to have all this, but
staying with all that. But Hugo was optimistic.
That's what romanticism gives you. He was.
Well, but if you compare, but on a relative basis,
like it's been periods of less war and less
death. Yes. As we had more economic prosperity
move throughout, across the globe. Yes.
You know, so there's a pregnant. And there's also
some sort of expectation that
it's been set somewhere that there isn't going to be tragedy in life. Like life
isn't going to be easy. And that's that false promise
that people give. Like it's,
it's about your ability to weather
downturns. And still be positive and look
at the how to turn them into something that you can
work with as opposed to allowing it to bring you down. Yeah,
there's always going to be tragedy, but
there's also going to be love. And there's also going to be, you know,
happiness and goodness, too. It's your choice if
you're going to allow the tragedy to weigh too
down or to just find a way to move through
it. Right, exactly. And that's where
Cassette really becomes an interesting character. Right. As we.
As we turn on this. So we're not going to cover the whole.
The whole book today. We're not going to get anywhere close. So I want to.
I want to pause there on that thought because I was going to do another
section, but I think I want to summarize here and wrap
up. Livy's been
very gracious to us with her time, and she's, like I said before at the
beginning, she's a little jet lag. So I want to give her the opportunity to
go catch some Z's. And I think we've covered a lot of
waterfront here with what Hugo is doing and what the book is
doing. Strongly recommend you go out. You pick up. You pick up Les
Miserable. The Signet Classics unabridged version, which
is the version I have, is
1459 pages long. That's
1459 pages. So it will take you a year probably,
if, depending upon how fast a reader you are to go through it, but it
will not be a waste of your time. It will be amazing. And
by the way, then you'll go and see the musical and you'll go
watch the movie, and these things will be a lot more resonant for you as
it was for me. So I'm going to wrap this up by saying this.
I was at a kid's recital. Well, not kids recital. I was at a recital.
So my children go to music school, Right. Because we homeschool our kids and we
want to give them music. We send
them to a local music school and we have one in our town. It's great.
I'm glad we have it. And I'm more than happy to give them my $300
a month for my two kids to go learn music. And every
so often they'll have recitals. So they have one in the spring, they have one
in the summer, and they have one in the fall. Okay. And most recitals
are okay. They're fine. It's like going to think of, think of every kid's
recital you've ever been to at a public school. It's kind of like that.
If you have nieces or nephews or cousins or you've ever been invited to one,
you'll know what I'm talking about. And there are people
at all kinds of different talent levels at this school doing all kinds of different
instruments, playing all kinds of different instruments. And, and they, they teach everybody. They teach.
They even have like a baby toddler class, right? Like a little
Beethoven class all the way up to
70, 80, 90 year old people going and taking guitar lessons and
learning how to play Smoke on the water and stuff because they always wanted to
do it. Okay, so at this recital, there
were about, oh, 25 people that were
performing at the recital and again, kind of all over the map, right?
And the last lady, the second to the last lady who performed, this woman
was probably in her 60s and she
came up and she did a. Her instrument is her voice. So she came
up and she's saying she sang the song from
Les Mis, I have dreamed a dream.
And I was not
expecting this at all. This was totally like,
oh, this is out of the blue. And so
I was listening to her song and I want to, I want to. I sent
myself an email because I made a note about this because it opened up a
door in my head as she was singing and having read the book and having,
you know, knowing I was going to come on the podcast with Libby today and
knowing we're going to be talking about this, it kind of opened up a door
in my head and, and the, the
epiphany that I had was this. I'm going to just, just read it directly.
Unlike contemporary social reformers, I want to close with this idea.
Hugo saw the ability to be heroic
despite your circumstances, whether that was poverty or gender or
ethnicity. Wallace and Ben Hur observed the
same thing in people. This is the spot where Ben Hur
and Les Mis cross over. And it is a real
shame. I think, that the theophany that overwhelms that point in
Ben Hur and the social reform message that overwhelms the point in
Les Miserables have blinded people to those
larger. That larger idea, the idea that you can be
heroic despite your circumstances. The
theater and film adaptations of Les Miserables, I think, miss this
point as well. But we as leaders cannot miss this point.
Coming out of the chaos of the fourth, turning into the next social, cultural,
an economic high in the west, we are looking
for heroes. We are entering an
age of heroes, I think. But we must defeat the forces
of vulgarity and Commonness and
banality. We have to overcome our circumstances.
And those forces do have a head start. They really do,
and they insist on themselves. I mean, we saw this in the mayoral election in
la. We see this in our public life
all the time. But we must be heroic. And I think this
is the larger message from Les Mis and the larger message from the books we
covered this month on the show. We must be heroic in spite of our
circumstances. Not because of them and not in opposition
to them, but in spite of them. And this
is the thing that unlocked in my head when I saw that woman heroically
belt out. I have dreamed a dream. And it.
It absolutely blew me away. I mean, my wife was gonna cry when
she was sitting there. The woman hit. The woman hit. And then. And then.
Here's the end of that story. Here's the close of that. She walked off the
stage, got the. Gave him all little medals for performing. She got her little medal.
She walked off the stage. She walked out. I didn't even see that woman in
the parking lot. I didn't see that woman in. In the. In the lobby afterward.
That woman dropped the mic and beat the street. She
was out. Stunning performance.
Absolutely amazing and heroic. Was she
real? If she wasn't real, I
would have had to make her up.
Great. Final thoughts, Libby, as we close. Oh, yeah. I think
you. I can't be anything that you've just said. It's just
beautiful, right? Just.
It's. It's. Yeah, it was heroism.
This is what we need. We need more heroism. And everybody has the
opportunity to be a hero. Everybody does.
Just everyone has the opportunity to continue to evolve and
to grow into better versions of themselves. And as you do that,
you're modeling, you know, virtuousness
to the rest of the world. So it's in our small moments every
single day that we give hope to others, whether it's acknowledged
or not. That's right. Yeah. That's the story.
That's the story. Well, we will. We will have Libby back. We will. We
will. I want to talk about cassette. I want to talk about what happens with
the barricades in the back end of Les Mis. We will
revisit this. This is going to be one of those
books,
Monte Cristo, not probably a little bit later on this
year. So once again, I would like to thank Libby Unger for coming on our
show today. Thank you. With that. Well, thank you. You're welcome. That. Well,
we're out
and.