How the Founders’ View of the Pursuit of Happiness Defined America

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This content is brought to you by Travelers. Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute. A Series on Civic Engagement. Slide: How the Founders' View of the Pursuit of Happiness Defined America. Logos, Citizen Travelers (Service Mark), National Constitution Center, and Travelers Institute (registered trademark), Travelers. 

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JANICE BRUNNER: Hello. I'd like to welcome all of you who've joined us today. I'm Janice Brunner. And this discussion is part of our Citizen Travelers at the Travelers Institute series. For those who aren't yet familiar, Citizen Travelers is our nonpartisan civic engagement initiative. Started with the principle that for over 160 years, Travelers has thrived because freedom, the rule of law and economic opportunity are foundational to our way of life. We are conscious of our role in preserving our democratic system and take seriously our responsibility to pass it on to future generations. 

One of our amazing partners in this endeavor is the National Constitution Center, which brings together people of all ages and perspectives across America and around the world to learn about, debate and celebrate the U.S. Constitution. If you are not yet familiar with the NCC, I urge you to check out the fantastic resources available on their website as well as their museum, which is just steps from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell in historic Philadelphia. I am certain that their high-quality programming and exhibits will inspire you to learn more about our country's history and the issues of the day, as they have me.

We are delighted to have with us today, Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, to discuss his new book, The Pursuit of Happiness. The book is a fascinating read that explores what the founders really meant when they defined the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. I loved that by exploring the meaning of the pursuit of happiness through the lens of the founders, the book outlines a path for not just being a good person, but also a good citizen. What's more, I wish I had this book when I was in school as I feel like it does a wonderful job of taking the reader through an amazing amount of history and classical literature in such a delightful and relatable way that it makes it all seem so very current. There are some beautiful passages in this book that reminded me how timeless the work of the ancient philosopher is and inspired me to delve further into the reading list at the back of the book.

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Slide: About Today's Webinar. This webinar is supported by Citizen Travelers, the civic engagement initiative of The Travelers Indemnity Co., for informational and educational purposes only. The nonpartisan views expressed by the speakers and/or the National Constitution Center and its employees are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Travelers or any of its employees. Travelers disclaims responsibility for any publication or statement by any of the speakers and/or the National Constitution Center. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. 

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With that, I would like to formally introduce you to Jeffrey Rosen and tell you a little bit more about him. 

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Slide: Speakers. Pictures of Janice and Jeffrey. Text: Janice Brunner - Group General Counsel and Head of Civic Engagement, Travelers. Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO, National Constitution Center. 

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As I mentioned, Jeffrey is the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast featuring constitutional debates. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He was previously the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a staff writer for The New Yorker. In addition to The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, Jeffrey Rosen's other books include The New York Times’ bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law, as well as biographies of Louis Brandeis and Howard-- sorry, William Howard Taft. 

Jeffrey, thank you very much for being here with us today, particularly on this monumental day for the National Constitution Center, which is hosting tonight's debate. 

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The slide disappears. Jeffrey joins Janice on a video call. 

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To start us off, Jeffrey, can you tell us a little bit about how it is to be at the National Constitution Center today, and then, for those who haven't read the book, can you talk a little bit about the book and what inspired you to write it?

JEFFREY ROSEN: Thank you so much, Janice. And welcome from the National Constitution Center. Yes, indeed, it's such an honor for the NCC to host the presidential debate. It was quite a production getting into work this morning because the entire area of Independence Mall in Philadelphia is sealed off by the Secret Service for blocks all around. But I'm here in the basement offices right now. Upstairs, the networks and the Secret Service is getting the place ready. And it's just so meaningful that here, in Philadelphia on Independence Mall, the birthplace of American democracy, Independence Hall, the place where the Declaration and the Constitution were drafted, and the National Constitution Center across the Mall with the greatest view of the Hall in America, it's just the perfect place for the debate. And we're honored to be hosting it. 

And Janice, thank you very much for the nice words about the book. I'm so glad you found it meaningful. And I'm so inspired by the Travelers’ nonpartisan civic engagement initiative, which is such a great way of inspiring all of your colleagues and great Travelers staff members to learn about the Constitution, to learn about the Declaration, to learn about American history, and to engage in the exciting project of lifelong learning that the founders thought really defined the essence of the pursuit of happiness.

So let me tell you how I came to write this book and how it changed my life, how it changed my understanding of how to be a good person and how to be a good citizen. And then, I'll really look forward to a conversation with you and all of your great Travelers colleagues.

So it was during COVID that a series of unexpected synchronicities led me to read the books of moral philosophy that inspired the founders when they talked about the pursuit of happiness. I noticed that both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, when they were young, had made a list of 13 virtues for daily living. And these virtues included temperance, and prudence, and order, and resolution. And Franklin suggested that every night we make a self-accounting and put an X mark next to the virtue where we fell short. He tried this for a while. He found it was really depressing because there were so many X marks. And he gave it up. But he thought he was a better person for having tried. Jefferson offered his list to his daughters. And they included virtues like silence, think before you speak, and resolution, resolve to do what you ought and do what you resolve.

What I noticed during COVID is that both Franklin and Jefferson chose as a motto for their projects a book I'd never heard of called The Tusculan Disputations by the great Roman moral philosopher Cicero. And Franklin's quotation was, "Without virtue, happiness cannot be." And Franklin and Jefferson had a longer passage from Cicero that he would send out to anyone who asked him when he was old, what's the secret of happiness? And the passage said, "He who has achieved a tranquility of soul, who is neither unduly exuberant or unusually despondent, he is the calm, self-mastered man of whom we are in quest. He is the happy man."

So I thought, OK, I've got to read this Cicero book because it was so important to both Franklin and Jefferson in defining the pursuit of happiness. But what else to read? And then I found this amazing reading list that Jefferson would send out to anyone who asked him, later in his life, how to be an educated person. He would send this to sons of his friends who were going to law school. He'd send them to older Americans. And the list is striking, both because of its breadth and the range of books that it recommends, and also the schedule that it recommends. And that's what really caught my eye.

Jefferson says you've got to get up before dawn, read two hours of moral philosophy. Then, you can have breakfast. Then, political philosophy, and history, and law. Then, lunch, then science, like astronomy and natural sciences. Then, dinner. Then, you're allowed some Shakespeare and poetry for light entertainment. Then, to bed. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, no break. OK.

So I don't really know what got over me. But it was COVID. We all had more time. I felt I've got to read the books, especially if moral philosophy that were on the reading list because they included both that Cicero book, The Tusculan Disputations, and then other Stoic and ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophers. Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Seneca's letters, Epictetus, as well as Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, and Francis Hutcheson, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui.

So it was a gap in my education. It was obviously really important to Jefferson and to the Framers of the Constitution. It was COVID. So I did what Jefferson recommended. I got up every morning before dawn. I read for an hour or two, depending on when the sun came up. I watched the sunrise. I found myself writing these sonnets to sum up the wisdom that I'd read, which I know seems extremely weird. But then I found out lots of people in the founding era also wrote sonnets about this great philosophy, including Phillis Wheatley, the first great Black published poet, and John Quincy Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. It was something that a lot of people did back then. And that's what I did for a year.

And what I learned changed my life. I found that for the founders, as for people throughout human history from all wisdom traditions, happiness meant not feeling good, but being good, not the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but the pursuit of long-term virtue. And by virtue, they meant the classical virtues of temperance, prudence, courage and justice. And the ones that Jefferson and Franklin expanded to include, other virtues like prudence, and order, and cleanliness. Basically, virtues for daily living that have to do with self-mastery, self-improvement, character improvement. Today, we call it being your best self or even emotional intelligence.

And in particular, the literature and the wisdom often talks about using your powers of reason to moderate or modulate your unreasonable passions or emotions so you can achieve that calm focus and calm self-mastery that defined happiness for the founders. That distinction between reason and passion comes up all the time in the ancient and Enlightenment literature. And the founders going back to Pythagoras, who it turns out not only invented the triangle and the harmonic system, but also the distinction between reason, which he placed in the head, and passion or emotion in the heart, and desire in the stomach. And he thought we have a responsibility to use our reason to moderate or modulate our desires and emotions, not that we should lack emotion by any means. But we should temper unproductive emotions like anger, jealousy and fear so we can achieve productive emotions like prudence, temperance, courage and justice so that we can constantly become more perfect, more able to be our best self and to serve others.

Today, if you had to sum up the classical definition of happiness in a single sentence, it would be being a lifelong learner, really just using every moment of the day, so you avoid those unproductive distractions that lead you to stop tuning into the present moment and using it as intensely and as well as possible to be more perfect. And that is what the founders had in mind when they talked about happiness. It really is a form of impulse control.

And some of you may have heard of the famous marshmallow test that researchers at Stanford did years ago in the 1970s. They would offer young kids, 5 years old or something like that, one marshmallow if they insisted on having the marshmallow immediately or two if the kids could wait for 15 minutes. And it turned out that the kids who could wait did better later in life. They had better outcomes in school and in their jobs.

And it's that idea of resisting immediate gratification so you can reflect and serve your long-term best interest. That's the definition of virtue. You see that in the Christian literature, in the Enlightenment literature and the Stoics, in the legal literature, and in the literature that led to the American Revolution. Just all that idea of reason over passion, impulse control, being your best self, self-mastery. So that was the definition.

And then, I set out to see how the founders applied that lesson, these virtues, in their own lives. And the book is really a series of portraits of the founders to tell their stories and show how they did and didn't live up to their ideals. And the stories are often extraordinarily inspiring. Some are striking. But they're all surprising. And the most surprising thing is how constantly the founders talked about their efforts to master their anxieties, to be better people. They were candid when they fell short of their ideals. And some of them recognized their hypocrisies. But they're very self-aware in this lifelong project of moral perfection because that's really what it was. They felt that they had a responsibility and a duty to become as perfect as possible.

So let me just tell you a few stories. And then, we can have a conversation about all this. John Adams and Abigail Adams are a great example of this because they actually dated using this Pythagorean system of self-accounting. They read Pythagoras. He has something called the Golden Verses where he recommends that every night before bed you've got to account for your virtues. And Adams and Abigail decided to make a listing of each other's faults, which is not a great dating strategy and can be kind of risky when you're meeting someone for the first time. But that's what they did.

And Abigail is quite generous about John's faults. She says, well, you're so brilliant that some people find you intellectually intimidating. And he says, OK, well, your faults are that you should practice the piano more and read more. Plus, you're pigeon-toed. And she takes this with great good humor and says, I'll try to read more and practice more, but a gentleman shouldn't comment on a lady's posture. They overcome all that. They get married, and they have one of the great romances, intellectual and epistolary friendships in all of letters. It's incredibly moving to see their intimate conversation over the years.

And Adams has some of the same capacity for friendship and growth with two other great figures, Mercy Otis Warren and Thomas Jefferson. Mercy Otis Warren, Adams commissions to write plays about the Revolution, satires on the British. And he calls her the poetical genius of the Revolution for her incredible poems and plays, including The Adulateur was one of the most famous ones.

But they fell out over politics. She's an Anti-Federalist and a partisan of Jefferson. She, in her multivolume history of the United States, the first comprehensive U.S. history written by a woman, the great Mercy Otis Warren, accuses Adams of being a monarchist and says he's vain. And he writes back, how dare you say that Adams is vain? Adams is not a monarchist. He talks about himself in the third person, kind of proving her point. So they kind of fall out. But they make up. That's the thing about Adams. He's so relatable, and he wears his heart on his sleeve.

And after they make up, she says, I've just got one favor to ask. Some guy has taken credit for my play, The Adulateur, in the Boston Athenaeum, and put his name on the title page. Can you certify that I wrote it? And Adams says, absolutely. You're the only genius who could have written this play. He rides into Boston, strides into the Athenaeum, and on the title page of the play crosses out the guy's name and says, this was written by Mercy Otis Warren. And you can see that today if you go to the Athenaeum. And you'll see Adams' testament to their friendship and his capacity for forgiveness.

And then, there's his amazing work on the Declaration, and then falling out, and then reconciliation with Thomas Jefferson. After writing the Declaration together, they fall out in the first great partisan battle of American history, the election of 1800. Jefferson narrowly defeats Adams. And the first political parties are formed in their names. The country almost rends apart in civil war. But after Jefferson's presidency, they too make up. And then, they have one of the great exchanges of letters of all of American history. I urge all of you who are listening, check out these primary sources. And read them yourself because they're so inspiring. And you'll find them easily online.

And what do Adams and Jefferson want to talk about when they're old? They want to talk about books. They're just constantly reading and growing because ever since they were kids, they have those reading schedules. And Adams is so excited when he learns that Pythagoras, the founder of Greek moral philosophy, might have traveled to the East and read the Hindu Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita. But he's not sure whether a guy called Joseph Priestley has lived long enough to translate the Bhagavad Gita and write a comparison of the moral philosophy of the Gita and the Greeks. Jefferson says good news, he lived. I'll send you the book. I mean, it's so moving to see how eager they are actually for access to books.

And then Adam says, this is great. I think this will show that the East and the West share the same moral philosophy and understanding the pursuit of happiness, which Adams sums up in the phrase “Renounce and enjoy.” Renounce attachment to external events that you can't control. And enjoy eternal salvation and happiness. And Gandhi quotes the same phrase. Isn't it amazing to see how ecumenical Adams is in his reading? And also his really thoughtful, able ability to distill the common lessons of the East and the West exemplified in the Stoic dichotomy of control.

The Stoics say, don't focus on trying to control stuff you can't, which is other people's thoughts, and actions, and emotions. Only focus on your own thoughts, actions and emotions, which are the only thing you can control. And that intimate wisdom, which mirrors that of the Buddhist literature as well, we are what we think. Life is shaped by the mind. Adams finds a connection to the East and the West. So it's very, very moving.

And Jefferson, at the end of his long life, says to Adams, I've thought about this. And I've become an Epicurean. And by Epicurean he means not hedonism, which is the way that Epicureanism was caricatured by the enemies of Epicurus. Instead, the Epicureans believed not that we should totally overcome pleasure the way the Stoics think, but we should rationally contract our desires so that we can meet them, so we can be self-mastered and composed in the way that Cicero said. You know, extraordinary, these great men, former presidents, they're readers, and they're learners. And it's very inspiring.

That leads to the subject of Jefferson and slavery, which I talk about candidly. How is it possible that Jefferson and the other enslavers from Virginia, who insisted that slavery violated the Declaration of Independence, themselves owned slaves? What was striking to me is that they didn't even try. And I found this amazing quotation from Patrick Henry, another Virginian, who had just given the “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech outside the Virginia legislature. And he said, "Is it not amazing that I, myself, who believed that slavery violates the Bible and natural law, myself owned slaves. I will not justify it. I won't attempt to. It's simple avarice or greed. I can't do with the inconvenience of living without it."

Wow, I mean, it's a shocking quotation. But it's also a deep moment of candor and self-awareness. He knew it was wrong. But he liked the lifestyle and didn't want to give it up. And all of the enslavers from Virginia were the same in that generation. None tried to justify slavery as a positive good as some of the next generation before the Civil War did. They thought it was immoral, deeply wrong. Jefferson said, "I tremble for my country when I think God is just." He expected divine retribution for it. But they liked the lifestyle and didn't want to give it up. They didn't want to inconvenience themselves. And it's really striking that they put it in those classical terms of avarice or greed as opposed to industry and self-mastery and extending the blessings of liberty to all.

So that's Jefferson. And important to acknowledge that in this crucial respect, he fell so dramatically short of his ideals. Contrast Jefferson with the great George Washington, and if Jefferson becomes smaller, on close examination, Washington is greater. And his power is his self-mastery, his ability to control his temper. He had a fierce temper, which Ron Chernow, and his great Washington biography, which I also recommend to you, thinks he might have got from his mom, who was hypercritical. And Martha Washington was always nagging him. So to control himself, he learned to have this granite imperturbability and would never show emotion. The few times when he lost his temper in public are famous because people had so rarely seen him unmastered.

But one of his greatest moments of self-mastery was at Newburgh in 1784. The soldiers are rebelling because Congress won't pay them. You can't raise taxes under the Articles of Confederation, so there's no back pay for the soldiers. And they're thinking of mutiny. And Washington mounts what he calls the Temple of Virtue, which is this wooden platform. He has performed for the troops Addison's Cato, a play about classical virtue. And then he goes to read the speech imploring the soldiers to find prudence and temperance to wait to be paid. And then, he assures them they will be.

But he can't read the speech. So he puts on his reading glasses. And he says, "Forgive me, gentlemen. I've grown old in your service. And now, I've grown almost blind." And the soldiers weep. They've never seen the great Washington confess weakness before. But this remarkable, self-mastered, but also candid confession of his own frailties makes him appear all the greater. And it's the key to Washington's towering moral authority. It's what makes him the central figure at the Constitutional Convention, which wouldn't have happened if he didn't show up. The fact that he was there and everyone knew that he would be the first president is what gave the-- made the convention work. He didn't say much. He never did. But he's always self-mastered.

And that leads to our-- the learning about the Constitution. And I read the Federalist Papers, which are the newspaper essays that Madison and Hamilton wrote to defend the Constitution, in a totally new light after reading this moral philosophy. The Federalist Papers are a manual for public happiness. And they tell citizens how to keep the republic-- and this is really important for all of our civic engagement work and our thinking about ourselves as citizens. And I've thought about myself as a citizen in a different light.

Madison thought just as we have a responsibility to use our powers of reason to moderate our passions and emotions in the constitution of our mind, so we should try to strive for the same harmony in the constitution of the state. And that's why separation of powers is so important. The executive, the Senate, the House are separated to mirror the faculties of the mind with the executive reason, and the House's passion, and I think the Senate is desire. They really thought of those kind of parallels.

And the founders thought that personal self-government is necessary for political self-government. In other words, unless individual citizens take the time to master their unproductive emotions, not to engage in their angriest, most partisan behavior, to try to own the libs or own the conservatives or to tweet your anger immediately. But instead, you think before you speak, you think before you tweet, you try to achieve conciliation and moderation. You listen to the other side. And you perhaps change your mind. Or at least, you open your mind to positions you don't agree with. Then, they think the republic will fall.

And at the end of their lives, the founders are not sure whether or not the experiment's going to work. Washington's afraid of faction. Jefferson properly fears civil war over slavery. Only Madison's a little more optimistic because of a new media technology, the broadside press. And he thinks that citizens, if they take the time to read arguments like the Federalist Papers and newspapers, can discuss them among themselves and with their representatives, and reason can slowly diffuse across the land. He thinks the fact that America is big is a plus because it'll be hard for mobs to organize quickly. And by the time they do, they'll get tired and go home. Madison is very afraid of mobs. It was the mob riots in Western Massachusetts called Shays's Rebellion, where debtors are mobbing the federal courthouses that led him to call the Constitutional Convention. Madison says, "In all large assemblies of any character composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Even if every Athenian were Socrates, Athens would still have been a mob." But he's hopeful that this new technology of the broadside press will slowly allow reason to diffuse across the land, avoid mobs and ensure the triumph of reason over passion. And that's the definition of a faction, any group that is motivated by passion rather than reason, devoted to self-interest rather than the public good.

All right. I'll wrap up by saying it's obvious that we're living today in a world that looks very different from Madison's hope of the republic of reason. We are more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. And we are seeing on social media posts based on passion travel further and faster than that based on reason. And yet, I want to end on a note of hope and optimism. We are living at a time when all the books of the world are free and online. And it just blows my mind that I was able to write this whole book just at home on my couch because I could just read the books for free online. Think of Adams and Jefferson, so eager to get access to books. And for us, they're just waiting. All we need is the discipline to read them.

And if there's a takeaway from my project, it's this. And I want to share it with you. It's that I found-- I rediscovered the transformative power of deep reading. I'd gotten out of the habit of reading books that were not related to my immediate deadline or whatever I had to do for work. And just that unusual project of taking a half hour or an hour in the morning to learn and grow in unexpected directions from reading books for their own sake changed my life. And I've tried to keep up the habit.

I have to fess up. I'm no longer getting up for the sunrise every morning. But I try to. And whether or not I catch the sunrise, my rule is I'm not allowed to browse or surf until I've read for a half hour or an hour. And it's a habit or a practice. But I'm keeping it up. And it's just great. You learn something every day that you read. Just this morning, I came across this great book by Edmund Morgan on the birth of the Republic, 1763 to 1787, which tells the basic history of the ideas that sparked the American Revolution in such a clear way that I can't wait to share it with you and with kids across the country for the NCC. And I've become an evangelist for the transformative power of deep reading. And there we go, Janice. What do you think?

JANICE BRUNNER: I love that. First, I have to just say, you were much more productive during COVID than I was. But most people will probably say that. But I love the focus on lifelong learning. And I think you've called this a self-help book. And it's so true. It's so great the way everything weaves together. And it's very inspiring to think-- and I think that goes to what the founders-- one of the things I think that came up as I was reading it or even as you were just talking, was like, wow, how can I possibly-- this is a very high standard. How can I meet it?

But I think one of the things you emphasize in the book that-- that’s really important, and that you've said before is it's not the actual end goal that you're searching. It's the practice of doing the reading of engaging in this kind of self-mastery that is actually the pursuit. You say it much better than I do, but can you expand on that a little bit?

JEFFREY ROSEN: No, you said it beautifully. And that's exactly right. The goal is not the attainment but the pursuit itself. The quest is the journey. You never expect to achieve moral perfection. Only Jesus or Socrates or Pythagoras or a handful of the greatest sages throughout history can actually be perfect. But it's becoming a little more perfect every day and just using every moment of the day that you can as productively as you can. And it turns out you feel better too.

Jefferson has this great line, “I've given up newspapers for Tacitus, and I feel much better.” And it's really true that when you read a book, as opposed to just surf the blogs, you feel better. And that's that idea of happiness as virtue. It's not some unattainable standard of literal perfection. I mean today we'd call it mindfulness or there are all sorts of adjectives that we have. But it's all in the quest. And that's why the phrase is "the pursuit of happiness." And it's so cool.

With word searches now, you can search the original documents because they're all online. And I just search for "the pursuit of happiness." And that phrase is everywhere. It's not some secret phrase that Jefferson pulled out of nowhere. It's in all of the sources. I'll quickly say, David Kane asks in the chat that he was taught in high school that the pursuit of happiness, happiness was a euphemism for property. And I had thought that too, David.

But what I learned is that for Jefferson, property is an alienable right, whereas happiness is an unalienable right. He's getting all this from John Locke. And in the famous Second Treatise, John Locke talks about life, liberty and property being natural rights. But it's in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding that Locke says that the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right. When we move from the state of nature to civil society, we alienate or surrender certain rights in order to get greater security and safety of the rights we've retained. Obviously, property has to be alienable because you have to exchange property to give it value. And the government has to be able to enforce contracts.

But happiness is unalienable because it's rooted in our reason and our conscience. And I can't alienate or surrender to government the power to control my conscience or my thoughts because I can't entirely control it myself. It's my thoughts are the product of my reason. And I can't alienate my reason to a tyrant or a dictator. It's inherent in who I am for a human being. So that's why Jefferson properly said life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is unalienable rights all carefully reading Locke. And it's just one of the many things I discovered just by going back to the primary sources.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's amazing. I think going back to the primary sources is a great piece of advice, which is so hard to do today. I mean, we've become stuck in this cycle of the quick click. And the quick-- I think that's part of this concern that a lot of people have about social media and misinformation. You talk a little bit about social media in the book and just love for you to expand on that a little bit here. I think there's one quote about what would the founders have thought about social media in your view?

JEFFREY ROSEN: Well, obviously, it was Madison's nightmare. It's not a partisan comment that the tweeting president is a Madison nightmare because Madison says explicitly that the president should never communicate directly with the people. That could lead to demagogues like Caesar on horseback who persuaded the people of Rome to trade their liberty in exchange for cheap luxury. And I quoted that amazing passage where he is talking about the new technology of the broadside press. And he imagines a class of enlightened journalists and statesmen he calls the literati will help citizens read the primary sources, sum up the arguments, provoke thoughtful discussions, and will allow reason to prevail.

And that's obviously the opposite of the world of Instagram and X, or whatever it's called, just because the whole business model of social media is the opposite. It's enrage to engage, whereas the virtues are all cool, and temper, and have second thoughts, and be prudent, and so forth. So that's why it's so important, I think, just to have self-regulating habits. It's an addiction. I'll just speak for myself. Just I can be addicted to these screens, just constantly checking email, checking the blogs, checking social media, just setting aside some time in the day. And for me, I'm not allowed to check until I've done my reading has been really helpful.

JANICE BRUNNER: I think that's great. I've started deleting a couple of my apps until the weekends, which it's amazing how productive you can be when you're not doing the scrolls. So it's just, like you said, and sometimes even just taking a breath. These ideas are-- this is the first time I've heard in a while some of the virtues kind of enumerated-- temperance, humility, industry, frugality, sincerity, tranquility. Like, those words aren't in common parlance today. And how has it been? I know you've done a lot of book tours. You've been across the country talking to people about the book and its principles. What's been the response? And what have you learned from those meetings?

JEFFREY ROSEN: The response has been incredibly moving. A lot of folks have shared their own morning reading journeys. We're all addicted to these devices. Everyone knows it. So people share their stories and their efforts to carve aside time for deep reading, for prayer, for creative work. I've had some really moving experiences. A guy in Elkhart, Indiana, reached out. And he persuaded a thousand people in Elkhart to sign up for an over-50s club of lifelong learners he calls the Owls. And 500 of them met in the local church. And he and I talked about The Pursuit of Happiness. And we had a conversation about it. And there's such a hunger in America for lifelong learning, free from partisanship. We don't talk about politics, but just to learn about history. And people share their stories after.

A similar experience in Cookeville, Tennessee, in the local church where the citizens in the church working with the local bookstore made an altar of Franklin's 13 virtues, prudence and temperance, and put them all up there. And we had another discussion. And everyone's got their own story. But we're all seekers and learners. And there is such a hunger for rising above all the noise and the distraction and the partisanship. And it's just moving. People are also just writing from around the country and saying how they were inspired by various founders to try to be better and what those examples meant to them.

So it's the most meaningful book I've written as a result. And it's just wonderful to be able to connect to learners and readers across the country.

JANICE BRUNNER: I think that's great. I mean, one of the things I think that comes up a lot, when you get into-- when you talk about civics or when you talk about within the civic engagement circle, so to speak, is what binds us together versus-- in this country. And really what is something that unites us is this founding and the Constitution. And so the fact that people are kind of across the country are coming out to engage in understanding, what does the Constitution say? What did the founders think when they wrote it? And acknowledging, obviously, that nothing is perfect but that is something that I think we can all do together.

One of the things that we're looking forward to, which I know we talked about on the pre-call, is the America's 250, which in 2026, this celebration of who we are as a nation. And I know-- I'm sure the National Constitution Center has a lot in the works. But to me, this book is kind of a precursor to that, in a way. And that's why I think it's so valuable.

JEFFREY ROSEN: Well, it is a really important time, as you say, to learn about our founding principles, which do continue to unite us. And we're doing some great stuff for America's 250. So first of all, on Constitution Day next week, we're launching a new Constitution 101 course with Khan Academy. Khan, they're the leading provider of math and science videos for kids. This is their first civics project. And the NCC and Khan have done it together.

And it's amazing. We've just brought the greatest constitutional scholars and historians in America from all perspectives, liberal and conservative, to teach high school kids the Constitution for free. And Travelers friends who are watching, check it out. It'll be live on the Khan website and on ours. And I learned so much from these brilliant minds. And I know you will too. And I think you'll enjoy it because it's so exciting to learn about the Constitution.

And then, we're going to create a new civic tool kit with the core principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution-- liberty, equality, democracy, separation of powers, federalism and natural rights-- with links to the primary sources, which are so important, and videos with great scholars, and materials for discussion. So that-- I would love it if lifelong learners across the country organize discussions in their own community about what these ideals mean to you. And what are the grounds for debate? The point isn't to agree about what liberty and equality and democracy mean, but to learn about the big areas of debate over time.

And my next book, which will be out in time for 2026, is how the battle between Hamilton and Jefferson has defined all of American history. And it's amazing as they're like golden and silver threads that kind of frame all of our great debates. And their initial battles between national power and states' rights, and democracy versus rule by elites, and liberal versus strict construction of the Constitution turns out to define our political parties from the beginning, as well as our economic, intellectual and constitutional debates. So it's been really exciting to trace that through American history. And that's just one of the kind of materials that we'll be putting on the civic tool kit and trying to share across America.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's amazing. I wonder how do we come back to-- one of the things, I think, about the founders, and you know so much about this, they were great debaters. So they were able to debate with-- I mean, even just the fact that they even came up with all of this. There was some monster debates to get to where-- to get to the final outcome. And how did they do it and still come together at the end? And do it in a respectful way to get to the end result? I don't know if you've learned any-- I mean, I guess it's the virtues. They all practiced the virtues ultimately. But I'd love it if you'd speak to that a little bit.

JEFFREY ROSEN: Yes. I mean, of course, debate was at the essence of the Constitutional Convention. And the delegates are motivated by this common fear of mob violence and Shays's Rebellion. But they disagree very strongly about basic principles of government, in particular, this big division between national power and states' rights. How do you create a government strong enough to achieve common purposes, to pay the war debts, and to achieve security, but also constrained enough to protect liberty?

And that's the Hamilton-Jefferson battle. Jefferson sees an antithesis between liberty and power and is so afraid of concentrated, centralized government that he wants to have local government at the smallest level so that you can have pure democracy on farms, which is why he's totally agrarian. And Hamilton thinks that a strong central government is necessary to achieve public credit to have a flourishing economy and wants to structure the whole Federalist Party around the need to give confidence to government in order to achieve common purposes. And that just continues through the foundation of the political parties ever since, as well as these other really important debates that I mentioned about who should have power. The urban and financial interests or the agrarian and rural interests? Or how much democracy should we have? Should it be direct and pure democracy? Or should it be filtered and have rule by elites?

The point is that these are legitimate debates. Far from being a sign of dysfunction, it's the centrifugal force between the ideals of Hamilton and Jefferson that have allowed the center to hold and allowed pragmatic compromise. It's only when the ideals are taken to extreme that violence results or when the principles become totally divorced from politics, and people are guided purely by partisanship that violence results. And violence is present throughout American history, both obviously in the Civil War, but in the insurrections at the time of the founding, and after the Civil War, the resistance to Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement, and labor unrest. It's not always a feel-good story.

But what is so inspiring is the fact that the debates, and ultimately the Constitution, structures all of these struggles and that over time, the arc of justice does bend upward, as Martin Luther King said, and the ideals of the Declaration and the Constitution have prevailed.

JANICE BRUNNER: Inspiring. I have so much more to learn after this conversation. But I'm inspired that I have a method to do it by reading the book. So I would love to do some audience questions. We have a few that were submitted in advance that we can start with. And then, I know there's many in the chat. So feel free. I mean, that you can see as well. We, unfortunately, we won't get to all of them. But we can try.

The first one I wanted to ask because I thought this was an interesting question. And you touched on it a little bit. "How did the founders’ idea of happiness compare with Buddhist and Hindu ideas of happiness, which is the aim of these religions?"

JEFFREY ROSEN: I just love that question. And I found it extraordinarily exciting that John Adams, of all people, noticed the connection between Pythagoras and the Bhagavad Gita, because Ralph Waldo Emerson noted it as well. And I noticed it when I read the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita does say that phrase "renounce and enjoy" that Gandhi used to quote, is like the Stoic dichotomy of control. Renounce the attempt to control external events or other people's thoughts and emotions and enjoy eternal bliss. And that is the connection. That's why Adams was so eager to see whether Pythagoras actually traveled to the East.

Now, it turns out it's probably a legend. He didn't actually travel there. But he may well have read the Gita. And whether he read it or not, the lesson is centrally the same. And it's very ecumenical. And then, Adams sums up his mature spirituality in a phrase that he attributes to the hymn of Cleanthes which is "Love God and all his creatures. Rejoice in all things," which sounds very much like the Gita and the Dhammapada as well.

It's just because they're so learned. And they're so intellectually curious. And they're so-- they're spiritual questers too. It's really important that these are-- the pursuit of happiness is a spiritual quest. It was for the Stoics and the Greek philosophers who saw us as having not only a right, but a duty to align with the divine harmonies of the universe. And that's exactly the same way that the Eastern traditions phrased it too. So there's something really ecumenical about it and exciting to see those connections.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. That's great. I think it's so nice to go back to this idea of lifelong learning. The second question I have is from-- it says, "The pursuit of happiness," and I think we touched on this a little bit. But it says, "The pursuit of happiness, when written in the Declaration, did not include everyone. How do we ensure that it does today?"

JEFFREY ROSEN: The central shame of American history were the initial compromises over slavery. What's so striking, though, is to see that enslaved people and excluded people throughout history have always invoked the Declaration and urged America to live up to its best ideals. You see this with David Walker and Prince Hall during the founding era. David Walker invokes the Declaration and calls on Jefferson not to be a hypocrite. He said, you wrote in the Declaration "all men are created equal." And you, yourself, owns slaves. Make real the promise of the Declaration.

And then, we see Frederick Douglass, the great Frederick Douglass, just towering, inspiring genius who had initially thought that the Constitution was a proslavery document, but then reads Madison's notes, which are published in 1840, which reveal that Madison had refused to admit into the Constitution the idea of property in men. And Douglass then decides it's a glorious liberty document. And it's a libel on the Framers to say that they were trying to enshrine slavery. And once again, invoking the Declaration, he calls on America to live up to its best self. So do the women at Seneca Falls in 1848 in their Declaration of Sentiments quoting the Declaration, so do immigrant groups, and other previously excluded groups, labor groups, and populist groups throughout American history. And then, of course, there's King on the Mall saying that the Declaration is a promissory note. And it's now time to make it a reality.

So this is our story. It's everyone's story, regardless of where you come from, or your race, or ethnicity, or gender. Justice Ginsburg used to use a phrase that the Constitution is always becoming more embracive. And when I asked her what she meant by that beautiful word, she said, embracing the left-out people, not just grudgingly, but with open arms. Beautiful phrase. And that's been the story of American history. For all the blood, and the riots, and the violence, and the compromises, it is an uplifting story of a more embracive Constitution and an ever more expansive conception of we the people.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's very beautiful. Thank you for that. The other question-- next question we have is, "How should or could this topic be incorporated into our educational system, perhaps in a broader course on happiness?"

JEFFREY ROSEN: We're trying some exciting projects at the Constitution Center, including, well, we're going to launch a podcast series on the virtues and the founders that we hope will be for adult learners. And then, we're working with partners, like Arizona State University, to create a free online course. And my instinct, and of course we're just trying it out and would love suggestions from listeners who have ideas, but is to focus on particular founders and particular virtues just because the best way to learn about history is through stories.

And when you see how people have applied it in their lives or not, it's a really engaging way to go. And I'm really an evangelist for lifelong learners, which is why I'm so glad that, Janice, you've convened this great group. And the comments in the chat, that people are finding this meaningful or useful. So if anyone who's listening wants to convene reading groups, the way that guy in Elkhart, Indiana, did, and you can get a group together, let me know. And maybe we can send out resources by Zoom or otherwise.

I think-- I was just out at Chautauqua, which was founded in the 19th century. And their mission is self-mastery through lifelong learning. I just love that because that's the definition of the pursuit of happiness. And in the 19th century, groups of citizens, they would call them Chautauqua groups, would get together and have these reading groups for lifelong learning. So with the NCC, we're trying to create an easy-to-use curriculum of discussion questions and so forth that might help people adapt this material. And suggestions [AUDIO OUT] welcome.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. I hope people will take-- please anyone who has suggestions, either-- you don't have them now. You can always send them to citizentravelers@travelers.com. And we'll make sure that Jeffrey gets them because I think that's a great idea. This whole exercise of Citizen Travelers, I think one of our main pillars is learning and that the more you learn, the better informed you are to make decisions to become an active citizen. And also not to-- again, we talk about misinformation, but it's much easier not to fall for the click or the tweet or the blog or whatever if you are informed on a subject in a very nonpartisan way. Plus, I think learning is just fun. I mean, that's the key, right?

JEFFREY ROSEN: That's the key. I mean, it's true. You have a civic responsibility. A duty is the sort of stern word that I use. And no one wants to eat their spinach and be told they have a duty to educate themselves, although we do. But it's fun. And it feels-- and it ultimately feels good. That's the brilliance of the wisdom. Happiness is-- for the founders was not immediate pleasure but long-term virtue. It was being good, not feeling good. But ultimately, when you are a reader, you'll feel better too.

You know how you feel, like totally wasted time when you've just binge-watched some nonsense? And you just feel better when you've read the book because it opens up new worlds. It seems so kind of either obvious or radical or you can't believe it. Because why should I do this? But I think the older you get, the more important it is. And it's tough when you have kids to do this, young kids to do this morning reading of course. And when you're working, it can be more challenging. But you can carve out the time. A half hour a day, think of it. We all know we're not using every moment well, the way Seneca and George Washington told us we should.

And then for retirees, it just gives a sense of purpose to life. How could you not want to be a lifelong learner when you've retired? It's just the best way you can cultivate your faculties and learn and grow. So it's very exciting to do it all together.

JANICE BRUNNER: And that's another point I think that I've heard you say in other talks, which we didn't have a chance to talk about, was like the checklist. So even the exercise of setting the goal-- and this is like, again, going back to the self-help, it's interesting. Setting the goal, you may not always meet it. But actually setting it, like I have on my little Apple watch, my goal for steps, and I don't always meet it. But the fact that I know that it's there, but I don't think we've talked about that on this call, the checklist. Can you just talk about that very briefly? Yeah.

JEFFREY ROSEN: Yes, the Franklin checklist. I actually tried this years ago not knowing it came from Franklin. A rabbi in Washington, D.C., recommended that a friend and I try basically a Hebrew version of Franklin's 13 virtues. There's a Hasidic rabbi in the 18th century who loved Franklin and translated the virtues into Hebrew. So not knowing it came from Franklin, we tried it. It's called Mussar or character improvement. Basically, like Franklin, we found it’s incredibly depressing because you got to put an X mark every time you lose your temper in the temperance box. And if you're like me, you have a lot of X marks every night.

So I think it's—but we’ve thought, like Franklin, thought it was useful for having tried because it makes you more self-aware. It just makes you mindful. So you might enjoy trying it. And you can find the Franklin chart in his autobiography. And I should say also, a bunch of folks in the chat have asked for Jefferson's reading list. And I chatted back to some individuals. There are really two reading lists.

One, his letter to Bernard Moore, which has the schedule. And then his letter to Robert Skipwith has the full list of books. I have the top 10 books at the end of the Happiness book. But you can find all of these online if you didn't get my chat. But what I'm saying is you may want to try the Franklin system just out of curiosity. And maybe it'll work for you. And there are other ways of doing it too.

But for me, it is all-- the takeaway, as I said, is that it's all about the habits. And it's all about the schedule and having a particular time of day when I do my deep reading is good. And then, that just makes you much more mindful about time, about how you're using your time every day. And then, when you are sweating the small stuff, or who moved my cheese? You kind of feel out of alignment. And you try to get back into that state of calm, self-mastery and tranquility because you feel like you've got to be using your time well. So ultimately, once I internalized it, it was much more of a feeling than a kind of enumeration of a checklist. But there are all sorts of ways to do it and try them out.

JANICE BRUNNER: Sounds good. We will do it. I'm going to end with the last question that is in the chat. And also, we had another question about this too. "Everyone loves to talk about Hamilton. Have you seen it? And what are your thoughts on modernizing American history to increase accessibility and understanding?"

JEFFREY ROSEN: I saw it. I loved it. It's marvelous. Anything that excites kids or people of any age to learn about and love American history is great. And it's really striking. The Hamilton-Jefferson book traces Hamilton and Jefferson's reputation throughout history. And it really is like the stock market. When one is up, the other is down. And there have been a few other Hamilton booms. He crashed after he died because the Federalist Party is dead. And he's viewed as an aristocrat. And everyone's a Jeffersonian, including Lincoln, all honor to Jefferson.

Then the Civil War, Jefferson's down because Jefferson's led to secession. And there's a Hamilton boom in the Gilded Age that culminates in this bestseller by a woman named Gertrude Atherton, who writes this adventure novel about Hamilton, which is like the Hamilton musical of his day. And he is embraced by everyone and by all the Republican presidents like Coolidge and Harding.

Then, the stock market crash comes and Hamilton crashes. FDR resurrects Jefferson with chutzpah, is the only word for it. Although Jefferson's Mr. Limited Government, FDR reincarnates him as the prophet of democracy, and builds the Jefferson Memorial, and puts his name on the nickel, and can't have enough Jefferson.

And then the evidence of Jefferson and Sally Hemings comes out. It's proved by DNA in 1998. And Jefferson crashes. And then, comes the musical. And Obama debuts the musical at a White House poetry jam in 2003, seven years before the musical opens or thereabouts, and invokes Hamilton to justify a health care reform. So what I'm suggesting is there's some connection between the politics of the time and who's up and who's down. But pop culture has had a huge amount to do with it throughout history. And I say hooray for the Hamilton musical.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's a great note to leave on. Thank you so much. You have definitely contributed to our lifelong learning today and inspired us to keep going. So we can't thank you enough for being here with us today. And good luck with the debate tonight. I hope everybody will watch and continue their lifelong learning of being an informed citizen. And with any luck, we'd love to have you come back as well too. We're waiting anxiously for your next book. So thank you.

JEFFREY ROSEN: It would be an honor to come back. Thanks to everyone in the chat for their great, engaged questions. And really look forward to returning. Janet, thank you so much for convening this great group. And everyone, happy reading. Happy learning.

JANICE BRUNNER: Thanks.

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Text: Citizen Travelers (Service Mark) At The Travelers Institute. A Series on Civic Engagement.