More Than Medicine
More Than Medicine
MTM - Interview with Joe Wolverton : The Founders Recipe
Joe Wolverton takes us on a remarkable journey through the forgotten intellectual foundations of America's founding in this compelling conversation about his book "The Founder's Recipe." As a constitutional attorney and scholar for the John Birch Society, Wolverton shares the fascinating personal story that led to his discovery of 37 critical thinkers who profoundly shaped the minds of Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and their contemporaries.
The genius of Wolverton's approach lies in his metaphor: just as his grandmother's banana pudding required specific ingredients to achieve its remarkable flavor, the founding generation's exceptional character and courage emerged from a specific intellectual diet now largely abandoned. When we wonder why we don't see leaders of similar caliber today, Wolverton suggests we've been "substituting salt for sugar in our cookie recipe" - fundamentally altering the educational foundation that once produced such remarkable individuals.
What makes this conversation truly eye-opening are the specific examples Wolverton provides. Thomas Jefferson reading Roman history in Latin at age nine. A fourteen-year-old Jefferson writing in his diary that it was time to "put away childish things" and prepare for important work he felt God had for him. These anecdotes stand in stark contrast to our current educational outcomes and cultural expectations. Most surprising to many listeners will be Wolverton's revelation that the Apostle Paul was the figure most frequently quoted by the founding fathers - underscoring how deeply biblical thinking informed their understanding of liberty.
The Founder's Recipe isn't just historical recovery - it's a practical path forward. Wolverton describes teaching these materials to students who became so passionate they voluntarily continued classes through summer break. His conviction is simple yet profound: "If we read what they read, then we're liable to do what they did - throw off the chains of tyranny and protect our liberty for posterity."
Join Wolverton's free webinar on May 15th at 8:00 PM Eastern to learn more about these forgotten influences, and consider reading The Founder's Recipe to recover the intellectual foundation that might just help us reclaim the revolutionary spirit of liberty our founders intended.
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Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, dr Robert Jackson, and his wife Carlotta and daughter Hannah Miller. So listen up, because the doctor is in.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctors, rusty, dusty, scrapbait. Well, I'm delighted today to have as my guest Joe Wolverton, who has been with us previously. He's online today, Joe, welcome to More Than Medicine.
Joe Wolverton:Well, thank you, doctor. I appreciate you having me on again. It's been a while.
Dr.Robert Jackson:It has been, and I'm going to ask you to reintroduce yourself to my listeners. Tell them a little bit about yourself and your family and what you do. Who's your mama, who's your daddy, and are they rich like me? You know how that song used to go.
Joe Wolverton:Well, I'm from Memphis, tennessee, where I still live.
Joe Wolverton:Well, I live out in the country near Memphis now, but family from here for a long way back. I was a constitutional attorney focusing on Fourth Amendment issues, helping people sue the government when the government illegally and unconstitutionally searched and seized their property. And then I now work for the John Birch Society. I am their constitutional law scholar, which means anything that comes out from the John Birch Society regarding the Constitution it goes through me to make sure it's accurate, and so that's an important job to me. I took it as a great honor that they hired me on to do that. I was the first one they hired to do that in their long, rich history, so I was very humbled and grateful for that, and they've also. We've had a change in leadership past six months or so and they asked me to take charge of the publishing arm of the John Birch Society, which is known as Western Islands, the John Birch Society helping people, helping educate people, because ultimately that's the goal of the John Birch Society is less government, more responsibility and, with God's help, a better world.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Education is our greatest strategy and truth is our only weapon.
Joe Wolverton:That's right, and so making sure that everything that we put out is true. Everything that we put out, you know, obviously glorifies our father, and everything that we put out helps people come to value liberty the way our fathers valued it and to be able to give an answer to anyone who asks why we care so much about the Constitution and about liberty. And that's what they've hired me to do and I'm grateful to be doing it and that's my full-time job, although, as an attorney, they occasionally, you know, want me to look over contracts and that sort of thing. They've asked me to do that just to their previous guy is getting up and has an age and has retired, and so they've asked me to do that. But typically, day in, day out, it's mostly making sure our books that we publish are squared away and say the right things and in the right way, and making sure that the things we talk about regarding the Constitution are accurate and are inspiring, and that sort of thing.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Let me say that's an important job and it's been very valuable to me because probably 43 years now I've been reading the literature of the John Birch Society and reading their Every Other Week magazine. And people ask me all the time say, dr Jackson, how do you know all this stuff? And I immediately say to them that I read the New American, which used to be the Review of the News way back when I first started, and that's how I stay constitutionally grounded and that's how I know the truth about the issues that are going on in our world. And I tell them immediately you should be reading the New American and you should be reading the books produced by the John Birch Society. That's how you will know the truth of what's going on in our world today. And I appreciate what you do and what the John Burke Society does to keep folks like us accurately informed.
Dr.Robert Jackson:So that's my little plug for what you guys do.
Joe Wolverton:Well, we could use the plugs. It's interesting that today, some, you know, more than 60 years after we were formed people, especially young people, we have found quite a growth among the uh younger, uh males. They seem to be turning toward uh the constitution and toward uh conservatism more, and we found quite a quite an audience, quite a new audience there, and we're we're enthused by that, encouraged by that and uh. So we've, you know, we've gotten in the habit of really taking advantage of social media, for example, trying to find them where they are and share these things with them, and we've, you know, planted a lot of or I guess you'd say poured a lot of old wine in new bottles, and we're very happy about that.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Well, that's what you have to do, because, I'll tell you, most folks don't read a book anymore. They look at social media, and they get their information in small snippets, and so you have to give it to them in those new bottles nowadays. All right, well, let's turn to our subject for the day, which is the Founder's Recipe, and I was intrigued by that title, and I'd love for you to talk to us about that today. So I'm going to turn it over to you and I ask my listeners to give you their kind attention.
Joe Wolverton:Thank you, doctor, I appreciate that. Well, yeah, the Founder's Recipe, that's kind of. You know, I've written I don't know five books or so, but the Founder's Recipe is the one that really is my favorite and really the one that I put my heart and soul into. It's basically what it is. I don't know if we've talked about it before, but I was the first person on either side of my family to go to college and you know so I didn't really have a. I wasn't really prepared for what happens when you go to college and I was a good student in high school but I found it all very easy.
Joe Wolverton:So, anyway, when I went to college and I found myself a short dog and tall cotton, I asked when I told one of my professors, I told him I said I really appreciate what you're teaching and everything I said, but I just I have to drop out because I'm just not up to the level of these. You have my classmates. They know more than I do and, for example, I told him I said, you know, I've never even heard of the Federalist Papers and my major was political science, with an emphasis on the founding of the republic, and so I was really, you know, at a disadvantage to not know at all even what the Federalist Papers were. And so this professor, dr Dick Vetterly, who was also a member of the John Birch Society I didn't know that then but he told me well, you're not dumb, you're just ignorant. And he's like, we can overcome ignorance if you want to put the work into it. And I told him I did, and so he handed me a copy of the Federalist Papers and he said take the index, and you know this is the years way before the Internet.
Joe Wolverton:And he said take the index here and go to the library and look up everything in the index that you don't know what they're talking about. If it's an entry in the index that's unfamiliar to you, write it down and then go find out what that thing is. Go look it up, find out what it is. Long story short, I started to make this list of names that the Founding Fathers in their writings, because once the Federalist Papers, if it mentions somebody, then I go and read about it and then I go and try to find where the Founding Fathers mentioned them. Like I say, back then it wasn't that easy because there was no Internet. I had to go to the section of the library that had, you know, the multi-volume collection of James Madison's writings, or Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Jefferson. So eventually it was a remarkable thing, and I do believe it was, you know, obviously the Lord leading me to this, that's right.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Providential, yes sir, yes sir, you know. Obviously the Lord leading me to this, that's right providential, yes, sir.
Joe Wolverton:And so I started to find these names that kept being repeated over and over and over, and I went and took them to my professor. Lo and behold, there were several of these names that he had never even heard of, which was surprising. He called another professor in and I shared with him, and anyway, this became this list of, of these men that were often regularly, repeatedly quoted by the founding fathers, who most people, including professors of American history and and political science, had never heard of these names before. But they were men that were, you know, immeasurably influential on our founding fathers.
Joe Wolverton:And so I the reason it's called Founders Recipe, by the way, is when I was little, my nanny would make my mom's mom, my grandma on my mom's side, would make this banana pudding, and my dad could eat a whole you know nine by 12 pan full of it, and we'd go see her. And so one day I asked my dad. I said how come you don't ever eat banana pudding, except when we go to nanny's house? And he's like, cause she makes it better than anybody ever did, and I said, well. I said, well, mom can make it, he's like, your mom's a great cook, he's like, but she can't make it the pudding like your nanny does.
Joe Wolverton:And so it came to my mind. I thought well, even when I was little I don't know, I was about eight years old, I guess when this happened I said, well, if mom had the recipe, she could do it. And so when I was putting this together, it came into my head that these men that the Founding Fathers were quoting, they were like the ingredients that went into creating a James Madison or a Thomas Jefferson or a George Washington. And so it's like the problem that we have in America and we've had this problem for over 100 years now is we have been substituting salt for sugar in our cookie recipe and wondering why the cookies taste so bad yes, that's right we don't, we don't have, we wonder why there hasn't been a generation like the founding generation, but we don't do the things they did to educate themselves.
Joe Wolverton:and so my whole point was I want to bring these 37 men, I want to bring them to the people again and I want I believe I really do believe, and the proof's been in the pudding is that if we read what they read, then we're liable to do what they did, which is throw off the chains of tyranny and protect our liberty for posterity, as they expected us to do. And so in this book, the Founder's Recipe, you find, so to speak, the 37 ingredients that went into making the education of our founding fathers. Most of these names are completely unknown to even, like I say, to even professors of American history today. And I just go through one, through 37, and I share in the book. I tried to make it.
Joe Wolverton:You know, people want something attractive. They're more likely, you know, they say you can't judge a book by its cover. But I found that to be untrue. People like books that look nice. And so I tried to make the book look attractive and it's in, you know, full color and everything, kind of a coffee table book.
Joe Wolverton:Look to it and anyway, and share a little biography of each one of the men that were so influential, a list of the books. They wrote, a quotation that the founding fathers repeated from that person, and then I share selection from the writings of that person. And, you know, you come to find out that there were, you know, certain groups that they, you know the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, the Bible and the Europeans. Those were the groups that went into making our founding fathers who they are. That's the recipe, and so I just share selections from their writings and I share a little section about where you can find them referred to in the writings of our fathers, our founding fathers. And, yeah, so we go through that.
Joe Wolverton:And I'm telling you, Doctor, it's been a miracle in my life, this Founders Recipe. It's one of those things when God deals in a certain way with me. I recognize his hand very quickly because it's as if I can't remember how it all started, you know, like when it became a book, how I you know all of these things just so quickly came together, came a book, how I, you know all of these things just so quickly came together. And instantly when I started to teach this subject. I was asked to teach it in a at a university there in Arizona, and then at a high school as well, and I began teaching the subject and these kids just get fired up.
Joe Wolverton:I mean because this because this is stuff that no one, no one today, has read. We're talking and I do the challenge I do it in my classes that I teach on this, and then I give webinars. I'm giving one at the end of, or, I guess, the middle of next month. I'm giving a webinar. I'll share with you the link. I'll send you the link and you can share it with people if you want to it's free a free webinar and uh, anyway, I make the challenge when I teach the founders.
Joe Wolverton:I make the challenge and I say take, take these names and see if your local american history professor, if any of them, recognize more than more than you know eight names off that list, I'd be shocked. And if they do recognize it, can they tell you anything? This person said anything, this person wrote? And the answer is going to be no. And you know there's so many examples, doctor. I mean, it just shocks me because when you read these things that these people wrote and that the founding fathers quoted so often and that are so completely unknown to us today, it really does fire you up. It's one of these things that people are like. Why? Because we just passed the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, that's right.
Joe Wolverton:And people always ask, well, what made them start shooting? People always ask, well, what made them start shooting? Well, when you read the things that they read and realize how important these things were, these things all teach I mean, we're talking ancient Greeks, all the way through the 1750s that these men read they all teach the same thing that your liberty is a gift from God, that you have an obligation to protect that liberty, that, since it is a gift from God, only God can take that from you and he doesn't take that from you. Therefore, any man who tries to take that from you is putting himself above God, and you are under a sacred obligation to have no gods before the real God. Therefore, if a man exalts himself to a position of taking from you what God himself would not take from you, then you must resist that and if necessary, you must resist it with force of arms.
Joe Wolverton:The preferred way is to try and convince this person that it shouldn't be done. But when you've tried and tried, as our fathers did for over a decade, tried to convince the government of England that they were doing wrong, well, eventually, when that other side decides that they're going to enforce their will upon you tyrannically, at the point of a gun. Well then, you are as our fathers believed. You have an obligation, a duty as a Christian to manfully resist such efforts to deprive you of your life, your liberty and your property. And so they went forth, that's what you know, those 50, well, it was 49 dairy farmers and one good preacher that stood out there at the pre-dawn hours on April 19, 1775 and faced off against one of the world's mightiest and most professional and well-trained armies.
Dr.Robert Jackson:That's right, but they did it, that's exactly right.
Joe Wolverton:And this is the thing. When you read this Founder's Recipe and you read these things that the Founding Fathers read, you come to understand that the big problem why we don't have that generation today is because we don't understand liberty the way they understood it to not having a fullness of liberty. And we've not been taught the truth for over 100 years in school that the Constitution is misinterpreted, misrepresented and none of it Since the federal government took control of the management of curriculum of public school.
Dr.Robert Jackson:None of us have been taught the truth. There's been a terrible rewriting of history.
Joe Wolverton:Oh, absolutely. And none of us have been taught the truth. And when you, I'm telling you it changed my life the moment I first saw a teenager get choked up, reading these things that our fathers read and then getting fired up and saying why aren't we doing anything? I mean, you had these kids, honestly doctor, the first time they. They came to me at the end of the school year and asked if we could continue class through the summer. Oh, my goodness, and I mean I'd never done that in school, I boy. I couldn't wait for summer to start, and so these kids would come by, come to my house every week and we'd still have the class.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Oh, my goodness, and we would keep reading these things. You've got to be kidding me.
Joe Wolverton:I'm not kidding you at all. They came dutifully every week During the summer we continued having class. And to the point where Liberty Fund is a publisher, a book publisher that publishes the books of a lot of these guys and just a small operation in indiana, and to the point where these kids were buying these books so much. These guys were like we want a liberty phone, like you know, we want to show gratitude to you. They sent me a copy of all the books they published for free how about that? And help move the needle back toward individual liberty and away from authoritarianism.
Joe Wolverton:It's reading the words that our founders read, because you just don't understand it, because we've never been taught it and doctored. There's not been ever a single person, I've never encountered a single person that reads these things and doesn't have their mind just blown by the fact that you instantly understand why the government and the deep state, so to speak, why they have kept us from reading these things for so many years now. Because, if you can, you imagine if you've got a seven-year-old like we've got you know now. All our founding fathers were homeschooled until they got you know up age close enough to go to, if they were going to go to college, which most of them didn't. But if you went to college, you know if you're going to be a lawyer, a doctor or a preacher. You went to college.
Joe Wolverton:And so at that age 16, you know around there, 15, if their parents had means they would provide a tutor to prepare them to go to college. But for the most part they were homeschooled. And you've got Thomas Jefferson and we're fortunate to have the journals and they called them commonplace books of most of our founding fathers, most of our founding fathers. And you notice that at eight, nine years old, they're reading the history of Rome, the history of Greece, the Bible. Every one of them testify about how, every night, their father would bring all the kids together and every night, religiously, literally religiously, would read an hour from the Bible to his family. And that makes a difference when you're, from cradle to grave, being taught these things. They stick with you.
Dr.Robert Jackson:That's right. Let me tell you a story. I teach third graders in Sunday school, okay, and my third graders most of them cannot read yet right and I and I have them read from the bible on sunday mornings, and a good two-thirds of my class cannot read the bible. They just can't. They're not capable yet, and well you see, and it's it's the vast difference now from then.
Joe Wolverton:Oh yeah, but I'll tell you what they do.
Dr.Robert Jackson:When I ask them what they do with their time, they play video games. They all play video games endlessly. Oh, that's so neat and I challenge them to read the Bible and they look at me like I can't do that. That it's like physically I'm not capable to do that.
Joe Wolverton:Once. It's that Isaiah that says I cannot read a sealed book, you know, and the book is sealed because of ignorance and that's just a shame and it's really my testimony that that's going to come down on the head of parents who have failed to educate and prepare their children the way they ought to. But the thing is, when you read these things and you've got a, you know the journals of a, a nine-year-old, james madison, who's making notes in latin, you know. And so we've got nine-year-olds, like you say, who can't read. And our founding fathers were reading the history of rome in latin at nine years old.
Joe Wolverton:Yes, and you've got, uh, thomas jefferson. I love one of his diaries that we have. He was 14 years old and he writes that it's time for him to quit being a boy and become a man and to put away childish things and to quit playing cards and quit going to games with his friends and to settle down and do what God has for him to do. He said I feel like God has an important work for me to do and it's time to grow up. He was 14. Yes, you know, today we have 40-year-olds who buy video games and sit around all night playing video games.
Dr.Robert Jackson:I got patients. That's all they do with their life and they're adults. They're adult men, right.
Joe Wolverton:And they play video games. Their wives come in disgusted with their husbands, do nothing but play video games all the time. Yep, it's a shame, but I'm telling you this, people, and you know I I'm fixing to come out. You know I say fixing to. It's going to be a little while, it'll be several months you know that's a true southernism when you say fixing to oh well, that's who I am.
Joe Wolverton:I can. I can't get away from that. I don't want to get away from it. Yeah, I guess in about six months we're going to come out with the second edition of the Founder's Recipe, which is's in full color and it's it's, you know. Uh, I don't know how I pay. I think it's something like you know, 200 pages, 300 pages, and so we're gonna make it a little smaller. Just do like the top 10 influences. Make it in, uh, you know, smaller, make it more affordable, because I want to get it into the hands of everybody and right now it's printed through amazon, so you, they take their cut and and, uh, you know.
Joe Wolverton:so this webinar that's coming up and I'll send you the information. That's really important because at the webinar they will. If you attend the webinar, you get a huge discount on getting the book, and so that's a big deal and and uh, and this webinar is free.
Dr.Robert Jackson:All right? Well, let's listen, we run out time tell tell my patients, tell my, my patients, I'm sorry. Tell my listeners first of all, how they can get a hold of the book and then, second, how they can attend the webinar okay.
Joe Wolverton:So, uh, if you go to, um, if you want to get the book, you can go to amazon and just put in my name, joe wolverton. Uh, and one of the books there is the founder's recipe. I will warn you, don't get the kindle version. They've messed up somehow in the kindle version, so, uh, get the paperback version. Um, so, and it, it goes on sale pretty regularly through amazon because as long as it breaks through the top 200 or whatever they'll, they'll put a discount on it. So it stays pretty regularly up there and pretty good discount through Amazon, because as long as it breaks through the top 200 or whatever, they'll put a discount on it. So it stays pretty regularly up there and pretty good discount. And so that's that. Go to Amazon and just put my name, joe Wolverton, and the founder's recipe will be one of the books offered.
Joe Wolverton:And the webinar is coming up. I will let me see here. I don't know the exact date off the top of my head. Let me get you the exact date here. Uh, it is, it is may 15th at eight o'clock eastern. And, uh, I can send you if you want to. I don't know if you have an email list or what I can send you a link to it that I don't know if you have an email list or what. I can send you a link to it that people can sign up.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Send me the link and we'll put it on our website.
Joe Wolverton:Sure, I'll send that to you, but you could also just go to. If you go to jbsorg and look for Freedom's Voices, freedom's Voices, and you find that tab, the Freedom's Voices tab, then you'll find me listed under there and it'll have a list of my upcoming presentations, and that's one of them. On May the 15th at 8 o'clock Eastern, and they usually last about an hour and I share some of the selections. I share stories, you know, our founding fathers, how they were influenced by these guys, and, like I say, we we're out of time and but I'm never out of out of words to say about these guys. So, yeah, if y'all want to come by and get the book, and and just, you know, I've, I've made it as as accessible as I can because, boy, we, we, you know, we really do have a lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding, but we don't have to stay that way. We are blessed, most of us, with a mind that is capable of understanding. We can read, and there's not easy things, but nothing worthwhile is easy.
Joe Wolverton:That's right, and so you take these words. I'll tell you. I'll just give you a little sneak peek. The person most often the number one, number one person on the list is St Paul the apostle. He is the most often quoted person by the founding generation.
Dr.Robert Jackson:Uh, I was going to ask you that question. Who was most quoted? So you answered my question.
Joe Wolverton:Paul is the most quoted. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the Spirit of freedom.
Dr.Robert Jackson:That's right. How about that? Wow, all right. Well, you're listening to More Than Medicine, and my guest today is Joe Wolverton, author of the Founder's Recipe, and I hope you'll get a copy of his book and I hope you'll attend his webinar on May 15th. Joe, thank you for being on More Than Medicine. It's been a delightful discussion.
Joe Wolverton:I hope you'll come back and be with us again on another occasion, as often as you'll have me, doctor, I sure appreciate the opportunity to talk about these things.
Dr.Robert Jackson:All right, Thank you, sir. Well, we'll be back again in a week and until then, may the Lord bless you. Real good.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry, dr Jackson's books, or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, instagram or their webpage at jacksonfamilyministrycom. This podcast is produced by Bob Slone Audio Production at bobslone. com.
