And we are back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.

I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections Correspondent at The Federalist, and your experience

Sherpa on today's quest for knowledge.

As always, you can email the show at Radio at the Federalist.com.

Follow us on X at FDRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your

podcast and, of course, to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is

Matthew Spalding, Vice President of Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andal

Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.

Matthew is also author of a new book, The Making of the American Mind, the story of our

Declaration of Independence.

It's a different view than Ken Burns or the history channel's leftist prism of the founding.

Matthew, thank you so much for joining us today on the Federalist Radio Hour.

It's great to be with you.

Absolutely.

This is, I think more than anything, it is a book about sacrifice and unity and what all of that meant to the founding generations

as we talk about the making of the American mind. Let us begin with the minds of the people

who made America, the founders. What were these people like? Obviously, they were very dedicated to a principle,

and that principle did not come without cost for these people. Right. I know that's,

actually, your opening thoughts there, a nice setup, setup because what I wanted to do you know we

oftentimes you know the concept of the American founding the American Revolution obviously is an

important point of a part of us we talk about it a lot there are lots of books written on it

I wanted to take a bit of a different tact if you will will, which you kind of picked up on there,

...