From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

Rogers and Hammers, I really did put it all together, just integrated everything into one seamless piece.

And that became the template for musicals written ever since. They all bore the imprint of Oklahoma.

This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

That was John Steele Gordon, author, historian, and also nephew of Oscar Hammerstein.

We talk later on in today's program about Rogers and Hammerstein

and the American Musical. First, we're joined by Dr. Wilfred McLeay. He is Victor Davis-Hansonshire

in classical history and Western civilization here at Hillsdale College. Dr. McLean, thanks for

joining us. Thanks, Scott. It's always a pleasure to be with you.

Talking today about a report you authored for the American Enterprise Institute, you can find

it at AEI.org, restoring civics in higher education. We sometimes spend time talking

about K-12, but this is, well, higher.

Higher education.

What's the connection between an educated citizenry and self-government?

Well, I just have to supposedly higher.

I actually think, just for what it's worth, that this kind of education on the particularly secondary school level, primary and

secondary levels, is probably more important, more formative than higher education.

But yes, I think it's important on the level of higher education too.

And as your question, the connection between civic

education and self-government. You can't have a people that are capable of governing themselves

if they don't know anything about the rules of the game or have any kind of commitment to the polity such that they would

forego their individual ambitions, pleasures, whatever, for the sake of the whole.

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