University of Dallas panel explores American exceptionalism through a Catholic lens

In a standing-room-only event, college students lined the walls of a large room at the University of Dallas to hear three Catholic academics and an apologist reflect on what makes America exceptional in a celebration marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

Liam Ritter, a junior and the founder of the university’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, which hosted the discussion, told EWTN News that the March 4 panel of speakers served as the capstone of three days of celebrations at the university.

The panel was comprised of University President Jonathan Sanford; Trent Horn, staff apologist with Catholic Answers; Burt Folsom, distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College and economic historian; and Susan Hanssen, associate professor of history at the University of Dallas.

‘We have a population of people who know what is at stake’

In response to Ritter’s question, “Why [is it] that our political regime has been so stable for so long,” Hanssen recalled America’s first immigrants.

“I think the first thing that makes America exceptional, and its political regime exceptional, is the fact that America was first populated by people who fled the rise of the modern nation state and totalitarianism … and so we have a population of people who know what is at stake in political liberty,” she said.

“Theyʼve seen what happened to their ancestors,” she continued. “They remember the stories. And America has been blessed in its political constitution with the regime of liberty, which has made possible the flourishing of subsidiary communities and societies.”

Hanssen said we should not take for granted today that we still “have a free people.”

“We need to listen to our latest immigrants … those who have fled Venezuela, those who have fled Iran, like my uncle, a Persian Jew, who refuses to call himself Iranian because he associates modern Iran with the regime of the Ayatollah.”

‘Get married, have children, raise them well’

Sanford said that though we are a nation of immigrants, “there won’t be enough to pull in to make up for” the continuing demographic decline.

“Get married, have children, raise them well,” he said to chuckles from a receptive audience, which was mostly composed of college students.

He encouraged the students not to focus on “one big step,” but rather, to take smaller steps: “Get up early. Pray. Exercise. Go through the day in an ordered fashion, give Caesar what is Caesarʼs, and God what is God’s.”

“Do the little things thousands and thousands of times,” he said.

“In order to exercise liberty properly,” he continued, one has to ask, “How should I live my life?” and then rely on the institutions that “help you do that.”

He called the family the “foundational institution” of America. “Recover the family,” he said.

In addition, “we need to see those institutions that mediate the virtues — schools, universities — that embrace fully the idea of what [the virtues] are.”

Horn also encouraged students to focus on family relationships, telling them “get off the phones and the internet. They’re killing all of us. They’re rewiring our brains.”

Of people currently in their 20s in America, “one in three will never have children,” he lamented, implying too much technology use is partly to blame.

The Catholic Answers apologist pointed out, however, that though the Second Industrial Revolution “broke the family” by encouraging workers to move away from their homes and families to pursue careers, the internet “post-Covid,” in the age of “Zoom and telecommuting … might be good” because many people no longer have to choose between a job and staying near their extended families.

“Maybe tech can help build up family networks,” he said.

‘The greatest outpouring of economic development’ in history

Ritter told EWTN news that he chose speakers who could address “the wonderful things the U.S. has contributed” to the world because “a lot of young people don’t have appropriate gratitude for the country.”

Ritter asked Folsom, a historian who focuses on economics and industrial affairs, about what the professor believes the U.S. has contributed to world economics and world innovations.

Folsom said that the generation after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1905, was responsible for “the greatest outpouring of economic development … in world history” and “gave us the rise of an America that became a world power” by World War I.

He listed inventions that facilitated the rapid development of industry and infrastructure in the country during the Second Industrial Revolution, including the typewriter, the telephone, adding machines, the light bulb, electricity, factory-produced cars, and recording devices for music and movies, among other innovations.

Through the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, “the founders gave us the freedom” to develop these technologies, he said. “We had amazing infrastructure that allowed people to produce, and not have government get in their way.”

The professor said the post-Civil War period could be eclipsed in the present day “because with artificial intelligence, this generation may yet be able to come up with more.”

‘A responsibility for this political regime of freedom’

At the conclusion of the panel discussion, Hanssen called the feeling in the room “electric, it’s teeming with patriotism. This isn’t a normal college campus.”

Referring to Sanford’s earlier admonition to ”get married and have kids,” she said: “I agree, be fruitful and multiply … Preach the Gospel, and baptize in the name of Jesus, but also, go into politics!” she exclaimed.

She encouraged the students to develop “the ability to love something so much that you would die for it: God, family, country.”

“Recognize what is at stake. We have a responsibility for this political regime of freedom, to the immigrants who come here … to our children… to preserve the rule of law.”

She concluded to loud applause: “So family; yes! Faith; yes, but to the barricades, ladies and gentlemen!”

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