Firing Line

I, Neil M. Gorsuch, do solemnly swear.

I, Neil M. Gorsuch, do solemnly swear.

If Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch had been around at the founding of our nation, would he have been on the side of the British Loyalists or the American Patriots?

It's fun to ask yourself that question.

We will never know what we would have done.

You don't know whose side you would have been on?

Oh, I know who I'd like to think whose side I would have been on.

Yes, I would have liked to have been a patriot, of course.

We all fancy ourselves heroes.

Of course.

Like other members of the current conservative majority, Gorsuch is an originalist, meaning he looks to the original public meaning of the 18th century texts to interpret the law today.

My job is to look at the law as written and neutrally apply it to the cases and controversies that the courts hear.

That's it.

It's an important job, but it's a limited one.

In a new book for children, Justice Gorsuch looks to the 18th century for a different purpose, to find heroes and to inspire children to be better citizens.

I wonder if you feel there is a part of teaching the successes of the American experiment to the next generation.

I hope so.

I mean, the reason why I really got into this is I've been concerned about the state of civic education in this country.

Thirteen percent of eighth graders are proficient at grade level on American history, according to some reports.

Adults aren't much better.

And Jane, just said to me, "Hey, old man, maybe you ought to do something about it."

And so I hope we've helped a little bit.

What does Justice Neil Gorsuch say now?

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by... Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, and by the following.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, welcome back to "Firing Line."

It's great to be here with you, Margaret.

Thank you.

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of our nation's independence, you have published a new book for children of all ages, "Heroes of 1776."

You co-wrote it with Janie Nitze, who's your collaborator in many of your publications, and this one has illustrations from Chris Ellison that illustrate ordinary people who contribute to this most extraordinary event in our nation's birth.

You have described the Declaration of Independence as a mission statement.

In plain words, what is the mission?

What I meant by that is the Declaration has three ideas at its heart.

That we're all created equal, every one of us, and that each of us has rights given to us by God, not from government.

And third, that we have the right and the power to rule ourselves.

And those three ideas were really radical in 1776.

And if you look around the world today, they're still sort of unusual.

But they're inspirational.

I think they're perfect ideas for us to aim at.

And are we ever going to maybe get there perfectly?

Hmm.

No.

Right?

The Constitution to make a more perfect union, to always work on those three ideas.

So yes, I think that the Declaration is our mission statement.

And the Constitution is sort of the how-to manual.

So how does the court fit into that mission statement?

Yeah, well, our job is to apply the Constitution and the laws of the United States in the cases that come before us.

That's our role.

It's a limited role, right?

I mean, in a self-government of self-rule, the idea is the American people get to decide their fate.

They get to decide whether to amend the Constitution or whether to change the laws.

And a judge's job is simply to apply those laws and the Constitution fairly to anybody who comes before them without fear or favor.

- You spend a lot of time emphasizing the humanity of the founders.

You tell stories that humanize them.

Why was that humanity an important distinction and dimension to bring on this 250th anniversary?

- We just thought that maybe missing in that whole celebration and remembrance, we're gonna forget that there were real people just like us.

And we wanted children, I know children love superheroes, right, who doesn't?

But they're real superheroes in our history that we have a lot to learn from, I think.

And if we take the time to open the pages, they have a lot to say to us.

- One that you focus on and really admire is Thomas Nelson of Virginia.

Why-- what is it about his story that speaks to you?

- Well, so like many of the signers, I mean, remember, they debated, they disagreed.

Even in June and July, it wasn't an obvious thing in 1776 that they were going to agree.

When they finally did, they signed the document on August 2nd, the room was silent.

It was gloomy, because they knew they were potentially facing hanging if they signed that document.

They were signing their death warrants.

- They were signing their death warrant.

Thank you.

But Thomas Nelson is your question.

And like several of the stories we tell about these human, ordinary people who did extraordinary things, he spent most of his fortune on the revolution, as so many of the framers did.

I mean, when they said they were pledging to each other their sacred honor, their lives, and their fortunes, they meant it.

He died so poor that his body, and this isn't in the book, they buried his body in an unmarked grave so his creditors couldn't find it and dig it up to use as collateral for his debts.

And when he died, he was asked, "Do you have any regrets about it?"

And he said, "I'd do it all over again."

- Many of the founding fathers and signers of the Declaration and Constitution actually did end up, as you describe, poorer, hunted, imprisoned, personally devastated by the Revolution.

What do you think they understood about freedom that perhaps we might take for granted today?

- They understood those three things were worth fighting for.

They were worth their lives.

Life's not easy, right?

Only 40% of colonists supported independence.

Another 20, 30% were very much against it.

They were loyalists.

And the rest stood on the sidelines.

And what we're hoping to convey to kids is life's not easy.

It's going to be hard.

Realizing the Declaration's promises in your own time is going to be your job soon.

The torch is passing to your hands.

Don't drop it.

Please.

Beyond the founding fathers, you also tell the story of children and heroic women who were involved.

I lament that I did not know the story of Mary Kay Goddard from Baltimore, Maryland.

Her name often published at the bottom of a newspaper she published as MK, so people didn't know she was a woman.

- Yes, yes.

So when the framers of the Declaration first decided to publish a document with their names attached to it, and again, remember that was one thing to say we're declaring independence, it was another thing to show the names.

They're marking themselves.

And they were in Baltimore at the time.

Why was Congress in Baltimore?

Because the British had taken over Philadelphia.

That's how things were going.

And they turned to a local printer there, local Patriot printer, M.K.

Goddard, who always, as you say, put at the bottom of the newspapers, published by M.K.

Goddard.

But when it came to the Declaration, she did something different.

She put her whole name, published by Mary Katherine Goddard.

Just like the signers.

Just like the signers, marking her.

I mean, that was an act of treason, what she did.

Think about the bravery of that.

And there are, you're right, lots of kids, too.

One we tell in the book is Emily Geiger, 18 years old.

They were seeking volunteers to pass a message from one Patriot general to another Patriot general, and she's the only one who volunteered.

She got on her horse with the message, took off, and was captured by British soldiers.

What did she do?

She memorized the message, she swallowed the paper on which it was written, she escaped from the British, rode on and delivered the message.

You and your colleagues have over the years published hundreds of books, scores of books for children.

- Yes.

- And on the 250th anniversary, I wonder if you feel there is a part of teaching the successes of the American experiment to the next generation.

I hope so.

I mean, the reason why I really got into this is I've been concerned about the state of civic education in this country.

Thirteen percent of eighth graders are proficient at grade level on American history, according to some reports.

Twenty-two percent on civics.

Adults aren't much better.

Six in ten of us might pass the citizenship exam, right?

Think about that.

I helped my wife study for it.

It's not that hard.

And Jane just said to me, "hey, old man, maybe you ought to do something about it."

And so I hope we've helped a little bit.

Justice Breyer, what your former colleague used to say, the only answer to this was to restore 12th grade civics.

Yes.

And this is one thing, if you put all of us in a room, all right, we disagree about how to interpret the Constitution, laws.

One thing all of us could agree on is the need for civic education in this country.

There are some positive signs, some green shoots, might I say.

In 2016, a survey published by the Annenberg Public Policy Center said that, well, they found actually that in 2016, only one-quarter of Americans could name all three branches of government.

By 2025, 70% could name all three branches of government.

I don't know.

Maybe it's TikTok.

Might there be something to be optimistic about?

May there be a self-awareness about our failings that we're maybe addressing?

Margaret, I'm often accused of being an optimist.

And I am.

I am.

I know when you look around today, you see problems.

I see problems with civic education.

Yes, lots of people are doing things wonderful.

Do we have our-- yes, we have our-- are we going to disagree?

Yes, we're going to disagree.

But that's the way the whole system works.

And if you look over 250 years, what we've achieved, I don't know why you wouldn't be optimistic about America.

I remember Ronald Reagan used to be very optimistic about America in 1980, and everybody thought he was crazy, right?

I mean, we had just come out of Vietnam and Watergate, and we had stagflation and all sorts of things.

And he said, "America's best days are ahead of us."

Well, he was right.

America has gotten better since 1980, and I have every reason to hope that it will be.

And I do think young people, when they're exposed to these ideas, when they're exposed to these heroes in our past, will find inspiration from them and can do great things because of them.

You know, William F. Buckley Jr.

hosted this program, Firing Line, for 33 years, and there is always something from an original Buckley program that relates to the theme that I want to ask you about.

- Okay.

- In this case, in 1973, William F. Buckley Jr.

welcomed Huey Newton, the former leader of the Black Panthers, to the program, and they talked about the Declaration of Independence and the war, the revolution, and the war against Britain.

And Huey Newton had this to ask of William F. Buckley Jr.

Take a look.

I have a friend who's almost dying for me to ask this question, if you will.

The question is, during the revolution of 1776 when the United States of America broke away from England, my friend would like to know, what side would you have been on during that time?

- I think probably I would have been on the side of George Washington.

I'm not absolutely sure, because it remains to be established historically whether what we sought to prove at that point might not have been proved by more peaceful means.

On the whole, I'm against revolutions.

I think as revolutions go, that was a pretty humane one.

Yeah, you're not such a bad guy after all.

My friend will be surprised to hear that.

I hope he's listening.

You point out in the book that it's actually hard for us to put ourselves in the position of realizing how difficult it was for the founders to decide to break away from Britain.

You saw what difficulty Buckley had in answering the question.

I think I would have been on George Washington's side, but I can't go definitively.

It's fun to ask yourself that question.

We will never know what we would have done.

You don't know whose side you would have been on?

I know who I'd like to think whose side I would have been on.

I do.

Right.

And -- but you can understand why people felt differently.

I mean, the Franklin family, as we talk about, Ben and his son, his son was a loyalist.

And that disrupted families.

I mean, we talk about disagreements today around the Thanksgiving table, but imagine the Franklin family.

He wound up having to move to England, and they didn't speak for much of the rest of their lives.

That's how disruptive it was.

Yes, I would have liked to have been a patriot, of course.

- We all fancy ourselves heroes.

- Of course.

Look, you make the point also, as you discuss this book, and even in the book, that there is no common religion or cultural heritage of Americans.

- Yes.

- We are a creedal nation.

Creedal because we believe in the creed, we believe in those three founding ideals - Yes.

- which you mentioned previously.

That sentiment, particularly as expressed by you, has received some criticism from conservative circles and drawn backlash, where people have said how wrong you could be about this.

And I wonder, how would you respond to those who say, "We absolutely had a common cultural heritage and religion"?

- Okay.

Well, first of all, did you know that there is a Catholic signer on the Declaration of Independence?

- Right.

- Charles Carroll, right?

And we were founded in a lot of our colonies for religious pluralism, right?

And the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way.

And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion.

It was about those ideas.

Is there a -- Those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all.

Is there a revisionism in, as we tell our story now, saying, "We've always been a white Christian nation"?

I just don't see it that way.

I mean, Charles Carroll, right, from Maryland, Catholic, right, when he went to sign his name, they kind of poked fun of him when he went to sign his name on August 2nd and said, "Charles Carroll, that's like John Smith.

The British will never figure out who you are."

So he added the name -- he added "of Carrollton," his hometown, so that everyone would know exactly who it was.

And America is supposed to be about those ideas.

And America is available to each and every one of us.

And it's up to each and every one of us to see that those ideas continue to flourish.

-But you refute the idea that we came from the same heritage and the same religion.

Well, I mean, it's demonstrably not true that we came from the same religion.

I mean, think about the Amish who came here in the 1600s on a handful of rickety boats, a third of them dying along the way for their freedom and populating much of, you know, into Pennsylvania and down into the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and now throughout the rest of the country.

What, they weren't part of the American experiment?

Of course they were.

The Quakers, same story.

Of course they were.

And so America was not found-- I mean, we have a First Amendment for crying out loud.

No established religion.

Everybody has the freedom of religion.

Everybody has the freedom of speech.

We are all equal under law.

Now, you cannot believe in those ideas.

Fair enough.

Then we have a problem.

But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind.

And that's what brought Jefferson and Adams together again at the end of their life, was recognizing that more unites us than divides us.

We tell the story in the book about throughout this whole process, they were dear friends.

They agreed on so much.

They knew we had to declare independence, when many people didn't.

It was controversial.

But they bickered about everything thereafter, to the point where they had second and third presidents of the United States, but had totally different visions for the way they wanted to take the country.

They stopped speaking for something like 10 years, Margaret.

They didn't speak to one another.

They became friends again later in life, as we talk about in the book, and recognized that for all their differences and disagreements, they shared more in common than separated them, their love for those three ideas.

Polls have found that Americans, particularly young Americans, are losing their faith in self-representation in democracy.

Well, now that's sort of inconsistent with what you said earlier, Margaret, about how much better civic education is getting.

No, no, no.

I said civic education seems to be on the uptick.

There are some green shoots.

And yet, there's still too high a number of young people who don't believe that democracy is necessarily the best form of government.

I agree with them.

It is not the best.

But it's better than all the others.

But what are your alternatives?

OK?

It's like the story of the bear, right?

Two hunters in the wood.

They realize they're being chased by a bear.

What does one say to the other?

All I have to do is outrun you, OK?

And I just ask you, where-- to young people, I think they're the luckiest people in the history of the planet.

Where else would you rather be born?

And what other time in history?

You have more opportunities.

You know, this country has never been wealthier or freer compared to other places in the world.

You've been given a great gift.

Is it perfect?

I am not here to tell you it's perfect.

I'm here to tell you there's a lot of work to do to make it a more perfect union.

And it's for you to do it.

But what an opportunity you've been given as a young person in this country.

We confront a major revolution in the course of human history in the new technologies of artificial intelligence.

These three ideals that you have articulated have sustained us until now, from the agricultural revolution through the industrial revolution.

And they will sustain us through what comes next.

Even through the robots?

I don't think you can aim a country toward any other ideals that are better.

I think anything that you change in those three ideas would be a retreat, not an advance.

I think Calvin Coolidge said as much.

What responsibility does the Supreme Court have to protect and preserve American democracy for the next 250 years?

Yeah, so our role's limited but important, right?

Our role is not, again, to make the laws.

It's not to change the Constitution.

That's up to you.

We the people.

Right?

Go look at the 27th Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution.

Find out the story about who did that.

Turns out it was a college student from the University of Texas.

Right?

Okay.

It's up to we the people.

But my job is to make sure that when you come to court, you have a disagreement between each other or with the government, that somebody's going to look at the law as written and neutrally apply it to the cases and controversies that the courts hear.

That's it.

It's an important job, but it's a limited one.

How does it protect and preserve democracy?

Yeah, by making sure that the laws, once they are duly enacted, are fairly applied to everybody.

And that's the genius of the Constitution.

I mean, Madison knew men are not angels.

And so if we're going to aim at those three ideas, you don't want to give anybody the power to do whatever he wants to realize those ideals.

You have to balance power.

And so I'm part of one third of the federal government.

I'm one ninth of one third of the federal government, which is one half of our governments in the country, when you remember federalism, of course.

At the end of the book, Heroes of 1776, you and Janie reflect and say, quote, "The torch is now in your hands."

What do you most hope the next generation of Americans will inherit?

And I don't mean materially.

What do you hope they will inherit morally and civically?

- Yeah.

I hope that they will explore some of the virtues of the past of some of these men and women and children, virtues of courage and sacrifice, the efforts they made to improve themselves.

I mean, George Washington wrote out the 110 rules of civility and good behavior.

Ben Franklin kept a list of 12 virtues that he worked on in a little calendar until someone suggested maybe add another one like humility.

And he said, "Yeah, I need to work on that one."

- I suppose.

- Yeah, right?

So these are people who really worked on themselves because they knew that the only way to carry forward a republic, the only way to keep it, is to be worthy of it.

And Jefferson said, you know, if you want an ignorant people to remain free, that's something that has never happened in history and never will.

And so I hope they reflect on the virtues of these people and the things they can learn from them, and then find the inspiration to figure out the Declaration's next chapter.

Just as Lincoln did in the Civil War when he condemned slavery and said, "Look at the Declaration.

All men are created equal."

Just like the women in Seneca Falls, all men and women are created equal.

Just like Dr.

King did at Lincoln's memorial down the street here, saying the Declaration was a promissory note come due.

It's up to them, just as it was those people, to realize the Declaration's next chapter.

Justice Gorsuch, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

It's a real pleasure.

Thank you, Margaret.

"Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, and by the following.

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