Hello, everyone. Welcome to this podcast introduction to this week's Thomas Jefferson. This one features my friend Dave McCandry and we've been talking kind of giving a report card on the enlightenment and you know this was unrehearsed David. I thought it was a really rich and interesting conversation.

I hope you agree that this really amounted to something trying to assess where we are and using some practical situations of Brittany Griner and the Trump January six situation and so on that trying to say, well, even in Russia.

With all of its terrible problems, the enlightenment sort of held she was not killed or tortured. We don't think she was returned in an exchange that she had an actual trial that that this is the triumph of the enlightenment, however, imperfectly it's embodied in Russia.

Yeah, I thought we did indeed cover a lot of ground play starting with that episode. There was a certain floor of a custom behavior that that the Russian government put in government.

Subscribe to that previous versions of governance of of that landmass might may not have subscribed to, although it's a pretty pretty low floor nonetheless.

On the other hand, it speaks highly to our ethical values. And the I think ultimately something we get we lose sight of the value and meaning of citizenship in an enlightenment republic is something to be treasured.

And there's a situation in the Iliad where Diomedes and another he's Greek and the Trojan counterpart meet in the exchange armor because they turned out that their fathers or grandfather's were guest friends and that means they can't fight so they exchange armor.

And I think it's glucose trades his gold armor for bronze. And so it's a mismatch. And I think this happened here too. You know, there are plenty of people and I think they have a point of view that say letting that spy go who was an arms merchant.

To help Russia be the kind of the military bully that it is releasing him for what a ball player is is not equivalent enough to be justified, but I look at it in exactly the opposite way and I wonder how you look at it.

I think it's a monument to America that we were willing to take the worst bargain from that point of view from a geopolitical point of view because we care so much about an innocent or seemingly innocent citizen who's been unfairly incarcerated in an in an autocratic country.

It made me feel glad to be an American and I get it that that was a pretty big exchange and we may it may come back to haunt us in some way, but what do you think?

Well, it wasn't a fair trade in the sense of proportional balance, but it was at the same time it wasn't fair trade in that we got one of our one of our citizens back.

You know, you always have to worry about negotiating and situations like this. I think Brittany Griner herself has an interesting opportunity here for she more than any other individual imaginable could me what better proponent play can you imagine being an advocate for the release of that other fellow that's held in captivity over there.

Then if Brittany Griner were to make it a cause, I mean, it would it would that would truly be an exciting moment in American history, I think.

I hope she does it. I hope that this has a that I'm not saying that she becomes more mature. I think that's unfair. I hope that this deepens her character.

If I were in this situation and and I was going to be languishing that Russian gulag for 10 years in my country found a way to get me back, I would get down on my hands and knees and kiss the tarmac when I got home and say thank God for the enlightenment, thank God for the United States of America.

It just seems to me that that this is a great moment for her and for this country. And I know that some people say, well, yeah, but she kneels during the national anthem and she's been an outspoken critic of American policing and so on.

I get that, but I don't think that her duty now is to conform. I think her duty is to is to find greater depth.

Yes, I think there's great power in gestures and her comportment with the with the national anthem is a gesture. Some people would agree with it, some wouldn't, but it's customary in the sporting world as you would be familiar with clay.

If somebody dies to put the initials of that individual on their on their sleeve or on their somewhere on their uniform or their helmet, if in the case of a football player.

So I think it's Mr. Shean who's still in captivity. I think that's his name.

The specific guy is named Whalen.

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