Victor Davis Hanson interviews historian Arthur Herman about his book “Founders’ Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump,” linking the Founding Fathers to later American business and technology founders and arguing they drive American exceptionalism through risk-taking and innovation. Herman describes a recurring cycle in which founder energy becomes institutionalized and bureaucratic until crises like the Civil War and World War II spark renewal, and he ties recent political turbulence and Trump’s rise to a similar governance crisis and a push to reinvent government around founding principles. They address attacks on wealth and “robber baron” narratives, the role of patents and the pursuit of happiness in enabling entrepreneurship, the outsider traits common among founders, and a shift from globalization to an innovation-first model amid regulation, censorship, and antitrust pressures.
