The American Miracle | Stephen Meyer with Michael Medved
Stephen Meyer acts as host and quester to discuss Michael Medved’s latest book, The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic. Topics includes the settling of North America and the momentous Constitutional Convention. The series of “happy accidents” is strongly suggestive of providence, “divine favor,” as many Americans have perceived today and in the past. Medved makes a couple of additional provocative points. First, that seeing “design” in your country’s history, or you own marriage or your life, is healthy and beneficial. He discusses his own marriage in this context. Second, that it keeps front and center in your mind, as a citizen, that America’s “miracles” are not meaningless accidents but instead are arranged to serve a goal: “serving the world” by rescuing it from evils including Communism and Nazism. He understands that mission as being still before us today.
An Observant Mind
Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and bestselling author. His daily three hour show reaches 200 stations across the country and an audience of more than 4 million placing him, for nearly two decades, on the Talkers Magazine list of the top ten political talk shows in the United States. Born in Philadelphia, Michael attended public schools in San Diego and Los Angeles before starting Yale at age 16 as a National Merit Scholar. He majored in American History and graduated with honors, before attending Yale Law School, where his classmates included Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Video
Show Notes
- 00:00 | 2019 trip to Israel
- 01:45 | A series of unlikely events and the evidence for providence in American history
- 03:00 | A geopolitical thought experiment
- 04:15 | Anomalous America
- 04:45 | Fortuitous events at the settling of America
- 05:30 | Blown off course, from Manhattan to Plymouth Rock
- 08:10 | Meeting Squanto, the sole survivor
- 10:00 | If it was a Hollywood script, no one would believe it
- 11:30 | Dan Brown, Jeremy England, and interpreting life’s events
- 14:05 | The salutary benefit of perceiving higher purpose in our lives
- 15:00 | The Bedford Falls Experiment with respect to the world
- 16:00 | An “assembly of demigods” and the unlikelihood of the Constitutional Convention
- 17:45 | Back from the brink of dissolution after a cool breeze and a determination to pray
- 19:40 | Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer’s unlikely walk
References and Resources
- Dan Brown’s Origin
- Jeremy England, “Dan Brown Can’t Cite Me to Disprove God” at The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 12, 2017)
- “An Assembly of Demigods“
- James Madison’s Notes on the Constitutional Convention