Most people don’t equate the combination of a nation’s laws and its politics as one subject. But when you combine those two with some interesting stories of American history, you get something very unique. A sometimes-complicated story told in a way that’s easy to understand, while the subject matter stays relatable.
That’s the premise of a new program on KEDT-FM called The History of Our Freedoms hosted by Dr. William Chriss, local attorney and historian. Each two-minute episode focuses on areas of American history where constitutional law plays a major part.
Here, we speak with the program’s creator, Dr. William Chriss, and how this timely series came about, and why you should tune in.
LON GONZALEZ: We are speaking to Dr. Bill Chriss or Dr. William Chriss.
DR. BILL CHRISS: Dr. Bill Chriss is good.
LON GONZALEZ: Dr Bill Chriss is good. And Dr. Bill Chriss has started a new program on KEDT-FM called "The History of Our Freedoms." Let's go back to the beginning of this. First of all, we know that you are a historian, and I guess it's this love of history, especially the history and the history of laws in the United States, that kind of intrigued you. And of course, in your profession, being an attorney, kind of all comes together, but you decided to kind of push it a little bit further. How did that come about?
DR. BILL CHRISS: Well, yeah, it's an interesting kind of set of serendipitous events. I was, you know, I am a lawyer, and I practiced law for a — very still practice law — but I spent a lot of time being a lawyer, and that just wasn't enough for me. I've always been a big history buff. And I've always been a lifelong learner and a believer in lifelong learning. So I think I was a graduate student continuously for about 20 years in the early part of this century to 21st Century and when you when you're doing advanced degrees, as I did, and I have done several, what you're supposed to do is, actually they're called research degrees, right? So if you're going to get a PhD, you have to research something, and your research is kind of not worth much if you don't find something to dig into that nobody else has dug into. So all these graduate students, and I don't— you could be a chemistry graduate student, you could be an engineering graduate student, geology, whatever. In my case, it was history and before that political science, and before that theology, and after that English literature. So I've done a bunch of them. You know, there's a lot of graduate students out there, and it's a real grind to try to find something that somebody else hasn't already looked up or written about. And so in my case, I decided to do legal history when I was a student, because I was in a group of historians who didn't know much about law and and and so when I'm practicing law now, I limit my practice to appellate law. Most of what I do, or most of the time people call me, it's when they need some somebody to do some lawyer stuff who has a real appreciation of history. So, so I'm one of those guys, like they say in football, I'm, I'm, I'm too slow to be a wide receiver and not big enough to be a tight end, so I'm kind of an "inbetweener."
LON GONZALEZ: Interesting, so this particular love, you kind of meshed them all together, and, and, and you're bringing all of these very interesting stories. Our first broadcast was, of course, was Washington's message to Congress, which was very unique, and I don't believe a lot of people really understood what Washington was trying to say as he left and talking about partisanship and "factioning," as he called it. And how does something like that kind of, you know, you're presenting it to the general public who has a specific view of George Washington, and then you hear him, in his words, say, this is not a good thing.
DR. BILL CHRISS: Yeah, I love Washington, and I've always loved the founders. I got started in academia early, you know, as a student, I got started really with a love for political science, which is why you see me on TV commenting on elections. And whenever something weird happens, you know, they call me and go, 'Hey, will you explain this?' So I've always loved that. And when I got into political science, I really liked constitutional law, and I really liked studying the founding of our country, and how amazingly unique with all of their faults. Those guys were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and so on. And then I, you know, as I got deeper into being a student and a teacher, because, you know, the best way to learn is to teach. I started realizing that's really more history than it is political science, although political theory enters into it, and then the business of being a trial lawyer helps a lot, too, because what you're really doing as a trial lawyer, regardless of whether you're defending someone accused of a crime, or you're dealing with a tort, or, you know, somebody gets hurt, something like that. What you're always doing in jury trials is you're explaining to ordinary people concepts that may be fairly complex. And so the most effective lawyers are the ones who can boil things down into understandable bite-size pieces, and it's not because ordinary people are not smart. In fact, they're very smart. That's what our whole system is based on. It's that everybody has a little different piece of the puzzle and and in order to put those pieces in the right places, we all need a little extra information that's beyond our particular expertise. And so what I really have always enjoyed doing is learning a bunch of stuff and then communicating it to non specialists who are smart about something else in a way that they can understand and use in their own lives. And Washington is just a tremendously fascinating figure way beyond this business of, you know, chopping down the cherry tree and say, the stuff we learn in elementary school.
LON GONZALEZ: So with all this knowledge and, and even more, you've combined a lot of different subjects together, political science, history and constitutional law, and it all comes together in a very special way that you put it together. Now, how much time does it take you to put just a single two-minute segment of information concerning all of these issues and try to make sense of it and make sense of it for the listening public.
DR. BILL CHRISS: That's a really good question, Lon; and people who are not involved in academic writing and teaching, probably it's something that they're not too familiar with. Really, the thing that takes the most time, and as you know, I've been involved in radio is my first job, right? I was 15 years old when I started radio announcing. And so what's really interesting about doing what we're doing here, Lon is the thing that takes the most time is distilling really complex ideas into digestible, bite-sized pieces and and so my, my mentor in history is guy named H.W. Brands who's twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and is a, you know, a really impressive guy. He's one of those guys that the President invites him to the White House to tell him, 'Hey, explain to me Benjamin Franklin or whatever.' And, and he always taught us all good writing is rewriting, and so the thing that takes the most time is not getting the idea, not accumulating the information, not deciding what you want to talk about. It's it's actually cutting down what you have to say into its most elemental form so that you can fit it within a two-minute or three-minute sound bite. That's the really interesting and fun part.
LON GONZALEZ: And apparently you seem to be having quite a bit of fun, because you have certainly put out quite a few programs for us already. And of course, there are some that are waiting to be heard at this point in time, and all are very different. So obviously there's, there's just tons of research on your part as to how all of these — because they're not all going to focus on the founding fathers — they're all going to several of these topics that we've recorded already, include things like the Underground Railroad, Watergate and things of that nature, because it's basically a mosaic of all of these situations happening within the realm of our country, and all the legalities and combining it with history, and it all comes together in its own special way.
DR. BILL CHRISS: Yeah, well, you know, you can't interpret things out of context, whether you're talking about a sacred text like the Bible or the Quran or whatever, or whether you're talking about the United States Constitution. The United States Constitution, you can carry around in your back pocket. It's, it's only got, it's only got seven articles and 27 amendments and it's not that long, right? You can put it in a little book and stick it in your pocket, but boy, we sure have had hundreds of years of arguments in the Supreme Court and elsewhere over what those sentences mean. And in order to understand what those sentences mean, you have to understand where they came from and what the historical context was in which they were written. And the other thing that I think people lose sight of is Americans understand that our Republic was founded in 1776 and the Constitution was written in 1787 but as I said, it's been amended a bunch of times, more than 20 times, all the way up to and including the end of the 20th century. So, you can't just talk about the context of 1787 or 1776 you have to talk about the Civil War, because some of our most important amendments were adopted then. You have to talk about the Progressive Era in the early 20th century, when we finally accorded women their right to vote in federal elections. And that's the beauty of constitutional law, is that constitutional law really is constitutional history,
LON GONZALEZ: And the program itself is called 'The History of Our Freedoms.' Do you think that people tend to take their freedoms for granted sometimes?
DR. BILL CHRISS: What a great question. I've thought about this from time to time for a long time, obviously. I think people, I think it's, it's it's kind of an interesting problem. It's almost like you'd sort of like for people to take their freedoms for granted. Because I think we take our freedoms for granted when they're not in danger, when they're not being infringed upon, on the other hand, when things get tight, or when the government's doing weird stuff, or when we have to face an external threat of some kind. Hopefully they'll never be a, you know, alien invasion of extraterrestrials or anything like that. But it's, it's in those it's in those tough moments when people realize, oh, man, you know, I hope they don't take my rights away. I hope that that I don't have to worry about, you know, being picked up off the street and and thrown in some foreign prison or something. Or maybe it's an economic problem. Maybe, maybe the economy is not doing so great, and I'm less secure about my belief about my personal future, in the future of my family. That's when people start thinking about their rights. We tend to take them for granted as long as they're not being infringed, or at least we don't think they're being infringed. So it's, it's like everything in life, it comes and it goes and round and round we go, you know. And one of the things I like to say is that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.
LON GONZALEZ: Dr. Bill Chriss, we appreciate your time and talking about this wonderful program and how you all put it together, The History of Our Freedoms, which airs on KEDT-FM Monday mornings right about 7:45 right after another wonderful program called 'Bird Note.' And we are looking forward to the next episode and many, many more. And we appreciate you coming into the studio today talking about it.
DR. BILL CHRISS: Hey, my pleasure. My pleasure, Lon. As you know, I've been a supporter of the station for many, many years, and it's my pleasure to to lend my meager talents to what this station is all about, which is educating and enlightening the public.
