Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership
Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number 1 15
15 today with our
book that is going to, explore and
talk about, one of the foundational documents
of the Declaration of Independence. We're going to talk today about
not only the Constitution, but we're going to talk about the Constitution
primarily through the lens of The Federalist
Papers. Now the edition that I have today is the Signet
classic edition, and the Federalist Papers were
essays that were written in support of the development
of the US Constitution in opposition to
people who were opposed to the development of the US Constitution,
written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,
and John Jay. The
Constitution, of course, of the United States of America opens
with the titular or the magnificent not nearly as
magnificent as the Declaration of Independence, of course, but the magnificent words,
in order to form a more perfect union. And these are the
words of men, leaders, all with their own foibles,
passions, blind spots, and talents who sought to bring to
bear their knowledge and wisdom to the toughest
organizational challenge, and I mentioned this this last year on our podcast,
that a leader can ever face. And that is the
organizational challenge of birthing a new country.
Now fundamental to the creation of any
organization is the ability to disagree with the majority opinion,
And as Dorollo has pointed out, our guest today
on several other podcast episodes that we've done with him around the Federalist
Papers, the ability to disagree with
the majority opinion and to be allowed the freedom to retain life,
limb, and property is fundamental to the
sovereignty and to the preservation of a nation-state.
However, this is not an obvious, you know, solution or
an obvious conclusion for human beings to get to, and
so we live in a world
where the history that is currently even
roiling around us is a history of people who when they
disagree, their passions
tend to overwhelm them and they begin to see disagreement as a sign
of evil, or they begin
to see the evil that they would
seek to do when others reflected back on
them And yet we still have this document, we
still have the constitution, and, of course, we still have the documents
supporting the development of the constitution even with all of our cultural
machinations and technological innovations,
that allow us to, well, that allow us to
continue to move forward even in the midst of
crises that are occurring in our present time.
And so today, we're going to talk about the supporting documents around the
Constitution, and of course, we're going to talk about the Constitution itself in the
context not only of our own time but also in the context
of the evergreen time that surrounds us.
And, of course, we're going to do this today with our recurring guest host
during the month of July, Dorollo Nixon Junior. How are you
doing, Dorollo? Doing alright,
Jesan. How are you? Great. I am
a little bit running ragged today.
I will and the reason why I'm running ragged today is because we
are in the midst of constitutional times.
I don't know if you heard, but just before we
hit record on this podcast episode for today,
July 23, 2024,
the head of the United States Secret Service resigned.
2 weeks after the attempted and
failed assassination of the
Republican presidential candidate, Donald
John Trump.
This, of course, comes 24 hours after the current
sitting president, Joseph Robinette Biden,
via tweet declined to continue
his presidential election campaign, and the
delegates for his party
lined up behind his vice president, Pamela Harris.
This is the context which we're talking about the Federalist Papers today.
Normally, like I said, we don't really contextualize
our conversations here around current events because, you
know, the puck moves quite quickly, but we are living
in constitutional times. This seems to be a moment in the republic
where, to paraphrase from that old unreconstructed
Leninist, well, Vladimir Lenin,
decades happen in weeks. Right? And so
do you have any thoughts on that? Any thoughts on the last sort of few
days as a constitutional lawyer and
as a constitutional scholar and as an observer of current
events? How do we how do we contextualize all of this inside of the constitution?
What exactly is going on here? Which, by the way, the 25th amendment has
not been triggered. The Democratic
Coalition seems to be very excited about the prospect
of an intersectional female
identifying individual being the head of their party who is
30 years younger than me. Female identifying individual.
Well, maybe about 30, 25 years younger than the
current presidential candidate on the Republican side, and they seem to be very
excited that she claims to be a prosecutor and is going to run him
down like a felon. So, any thoughts on
any of this? Well, you know, running down a
felon is usually a felony, right?
So then we would have 2 felons,
Right? Well, so on but on the last point, we'd I think we'd have one
felon because what I expect, I expect,
his, at least the felonious part of his
convictions to be thrown out, which of course would mean that
all the convictions would be thrown out. The Manhattan DA,
and of course, I'm, you know, licensed to practice law in New York. I don't
do criminal work. I do do, federal
district court litigation. I do, I've had my first appeal in the
2nd Circuit Court of Appeal, so that's actually quite exciting. But, anyway, I do handle
constitutional issues when they come up in the nature of my disability
work. Anyway, I
expect that former president Donald John Trump's
conviction with respect to the the accounting issues to
be tossed. There's an op ed
that was in The Wall Street Journal, I wanna say, a day or 2 days
after, his conviction that I think sets out,
to me a quite credible theory about why they should be thrown out, and that's
just what I expect. I don't expect it to to
last. So it won't be, you know, the vice
president running against the felon. It'll be the vice president running
against the former president, to duke it out and determine
who's, you know, going to be the better candidate. It has certainly been,
interesting times, and
it's it's I find it fascinating. You know, I find it fascinating. And
the bit that I find encouraging is, to me, it shows that our constitution works.
Our constitution has the elasticity
to handle these types of circumstances. In fact, the the framers had
the vision to anticipate these types of things.
And, you know, arguably, it's one of the reasons that we have
something like an electoral college, which no one seems to understand,
but we have one. And, you know,
the use of it to prevent faction and inflame
passions from determining who is going to be the chief magistrate of the
United States of America, the great United States of America, is
something that may play out this year in ways that it hasn't in other
years. But we should be encouraged by that rather than discouraged, and
certainly we should not give into fear.
It was a democrat who said the only thing we have to fear
is fear itself. So let's quote,
you know, that great president FDR on that one.
Okay. So so okay. So
let's wind back a couple of different couple of different spots here because
you will have people who will engage in apocalyptic catastrophic
thinking, primarily on the right, but also on the
left these days. And the biggest concern, of
course, is that the Constitution is being stretched to
its limit, right, that somehow the
constitution is being stretched to breaking. Now we've discussed the
Supreme Court decisions, that came down this year
in particular, around hobbling the
titular, and that's the second time I've used that word, this podcast, and so I'm
going to now step away from that word, 4th
branch of government. The United States Secret
Service does sit inside of that 4th branch, along with the DEA, the ATF,
the EPA, the Department of Education, and many other
agencies that are direct funded by the Congress,
in a in a congressional way. Oh, no, sorry, not in a congressional way,
through congressional appropriations, but are tasked
with accomplishing certain tasks at a certain level of, and we're going to talk a
lot about this today, competency and yet there seems
to be bureaucratic failures at every single level
and there seems to be little accountability or falling on swords.
The fact that this the woman who oversaw
this the United States Secret Service,
the first woman in its history, I believe, and a woman
who oversaw the first assassination attempt on a presidential
candidate in the last 40 years. Right? There hasn't been a
there hasn't been an attempted one since Ronald Reagan, okay, in
1982, who who infamously
said in an interview literally 24 hours after the
attempted assassination, the buck stops with me. And then when asked
by the media or by the interviewer if she would quit,
said, no, I'm not quitting. Now, 10 days later,
falls on her sword. Average people look at
that. They look at the Constitution and they go, what the? And they
literally make that sound with with a bunch of exploiters behind it. Right? Because
because in the world in which you and I live, the world outside of
government bureaucracy, if I screwed up that badly
to almost get my boss killed and the job is to protect my boss,
I don't even get to pack up my desk. It literally
happens that quick. Right? How
is it that you can say the
Constitution is working? This is I'm going to make a common person push back on
you. How can you say the Constitution is working when
people who are in these branches of government aren't even behaving
constitutionally? From what I can see in my Twitter feed, my
Instagram feed and my TikTok reels, which is where I get everything
from in 30 to 60 second soundbites. How can you say that to
me? How can you Because confident. Not
just is the the government still functioning,
but more importantly, in its functioning,
another branch was able to hold accountable
one of these executive heads, which you call, you know, the 4th department, or
part of the 4th department. One of these executive agency heads
was held to account. She was called on the
carpet as it were and, made to
answer or attempt to answer for her,
for how her agency poorly performed in
protecting, you know, the former president of the United States. And the
only bit I remember seeing, of course, in sound bite,
video bite, whatever it is, video clip. It wasn't a meme. It was actually
proper video footage, but was
was, was what I'm gonna call the count. Right?
The count of the shell casings and
how she would not disclose what the number
was. And I've just I found that baffling.
I didn't understand, you know, why it's acceptable. I don't
understand how that's not contemptuous. You may
not wanna be in court or in quasi court,
but I frankly don't see how you get away with not answering, the
questions. I mean, unless you wanna take the 5th amendment, you could do that.
You're allowed to do that. Mhmm. But, you know, dancing around in a
circle and trying to point to the director of the FBI just doesn't
seem like an appropriate way to answer the question rather than saying I don't know
or what the actual number is or I'm
gonna take the 5th amendment. I
plead the 5th. Well, got it. Okay. Not expecting
that, but that's constitutional. Fine. Okay.
No, it has ramifications, right? Sure. It would mean that somehow,
some way your own criminality may be implicated. That may have been, you know,
far worse. But it's just, you know, just a number. And what
is it? 50? 100? An
average people look at that. No idea. Well, an average people look at that. They
look at that bureaucratic answer and they go, the constitution
isn't protecting me from that because that's arrogance.
That's overweening arrogance. She's still going to get her pension at the
end of the day. She should get nothing. She should be busted down to working
it. Again, the average person goes, she should be busted down to be working as
a cashier at Walmart.
Like protect the produce aisle, Get
competent. And this is, again, where competency comes back. Get good
at doing that because you're clearly not good at doing
the other thing, which is and this is part of
what getting good is. I don't
just need you to be good at being filling a slot
for DEI, race, gender, sexual orientation.
Fine. Be competent at that. Whatever. I'll pass average
people will pass along all of that. We will go past all of that if
you're just good at what we consider the core parts of the job are. And
the core parts of the job are making sure that the Secret Service guys on
the sloped roof take the shot. That's the only
thing you have to do. To to paraphrase from a joke, which I'm sure
you've heard, you had one job to do to Rolo. One job, you
couldn't even do that.
And that is the lament, again, of average people
outside of government who have a high school understanding of the Constitution.
Right? And I'm not knocking, by the way, that high school understanding because the Department
of Education has, of course, failed to educate people on actually what's in the
Constitution because they're a propaganda arm of government. Okay, fine.
But even with that minuscule understanding, people
still know they still smell that something's not right.
Something's broken in the system. And
that brokenness is what I believe common people, average
people, the average citizens, and I don't really like
that term, but we'll use that term, the average citizens of the United
States of America, I believe are rebelling against
right now in the form of
the presidential candidate for the Republican
Party right now.
And so when when I say and I, by the way, I'm a I'm a
person who I'm just making the alternative argument because I
believe we should. That's how you get a robust conversation going. But
not because not because I believe it. Right? I believe our constitution is
actually working as well. I just believe
that we have people who are in parties who have chosen not
to follow it, which gets me to my
second area, which I would love to have you comment on in current events.
Can you explain to the listeners, you are also a
political animal, What exactly is happening
with the party that Thomas
Jefferson found? What what is happening?
It's going on over there because because
no one's seen Joe Biden And now almost what is it?
4 days? We we had a week sort of voice imprint of him,
but he's got nothing on his presidential schedule for the rest of the week. Now,
allegedly, he had COVID. Okay. Fine. Whatever. Yes. He is an 80
year old man. Okay. Fine. Whatever. But you're going to step us right.
And he wasn't going to step aside based on a previous, you
know, horrible debate performance and a number of other different things. He was going to
be obstinate and sort of sit in.
And then he he he steps aside from the candidacy via
tweet. What is going on in the party
of Thomas Jefferson? Do you have any
idea?
Oh, I guess, technically, I had no idea. Right?
Since I'm not a Democrat, that's one reason. 2,
I'm not a journalist who who pays attention
to how they work and communicate. But I do look at them and
certainly historically, you know, have examined
the formation of that party and what drove them, you
know, and what continues to drive them. And, of course,
depending on where they get their information, there are Americans who
may be surprised to learn that over the
past 200
and 31 years, I think,
something like that, or almost 230 years. I
think maybe 1795 ish,
17 96. It's around the time when the
Democratic Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson,
on principles, some of which remain
principles of the Democratic Party and some of which are now the opposite of
what that party once stood for. You know, a party that
was skeptical of central power, that
wanted to see an expanding agrarian base,
wanted local control
over and above federal control. Right? In a party that
with one very important historical
exception. A party that was open to people
irrespective of background. A party that wanted to have
the biggest tent in the room and to expand it to the horizon,
unless you were black or indigenous. So, otherwise,
you know and some of that you'll hear, you know,
carries through right till today. Okay? Certainly, a larger party party
numerically and certainly a party that doesn't seem to want to exclude
people regardless of what flag they're carrying or
banner or label or what have you. Okay? But,
the principles of decentralization, local control,
and looking out for the small farmer type, and you can read
there, the common man and the common
woman. You know, the American, capital a, who
lives throughout our country. So that means the coasts and the
heartland. Okay? Who is found in every
county in the country, and just trying to do life
and and make money and pay taxes and have fun.
That that originally was their party. And now we seem to see a
highly aristocratic cabal
seemingly organized by, among other people, you know, George
Clooney and former president Obama, the
Clintons, apparently plural. I don't understand why I saw that in one news item.
I assumed it was senator Clinton, but I what I read was the Clintons. Oh,
okay. That's interesting. Because I've only heard about one of them
recently, not the other one.
And, whoever the Pritzkers are and, you
know, Congresswoman Pelosi, that apparently it's
their show that they run the way they wish,
and now they have their candidate. And
so if you just follow the sound bites over the past
2 weeks, you can see just how the power,
in my opinion, flows inside of that entity
because you had, you you you literally you had
elected officials. Okay? Even on the federal level,
members of Congress, whomever saying, okay. He needs to step down. The
president needs to not run for reelection for whatever
particular reason. But, the turning point seemed to
be, frankly, when, you know, someone from Hollywood,
said and a particular person, George Clooney from Hollywood said, okay. This this
shouldn't happen. Like, we need somebody else. Okay. Great. And then the next bit I
heard was, I think something about,
congresswoman Pelosi, And it was you know, it wasn't even
equivocal, but
it wasn't saying outright, you know, support of
of president Joseph Biden junior. Then was
last Monday, I believe, Monday last week, the
statement that I read literally read in a British publication where,
apparently, president Obama was calling for serious
consideration about the path forward or something like that. Something
diplomatically put that you can take how you wish.
And then in less than a week, Joseph r Biden junior
is not standing for reelection. It's quite fascinating.
And then I saw at one point over the weekend, I think it was, I
heard about Pritzker first, and then I heard about congresswoman Pelosi endorsing vice
president Harris, Harris' campaign. Excuse me. And then here she
is. We're ready for sound bites.
And so that is the antithesis of
how a party of the little guy would
function. Okay? The input
is way at the top. It's a little oligarchy. Okay?
And now they have their woman who's running. Great.
And everybody, I guess, needs to get in line and do his or
her thing and which is to say
support our candidate. And so it's like, oh, okay. This is the message being communicated
to the man or woman in the street. You know? And,
obviously, there's people who don't care. Right. There's people who like her as
a candidate. There's other people who just don't care. They care about their
issues and know that whomever that party puts in that seat
is gonna make the decisions that they want. And I know on my side of
the political divide, our side, that
similarly, there are voters who don't care who is there as
long as there is dash r after their name. Right. Leaving
that, therefore, they will get, you know, the type of
decisions that they want. And,
you know, and as I think I've said before, you know, to me,
it's very straightforward to see that, you know, 40% of voters voting
on that day are gonna pull for one side only and always will, and another
40% will the other side and always will. So the real
rub, the real engagement, it's for the 20% in the
middle that you have to persuade them to show
up and vote and vote for you. All 3.
And to the extent to which you can do that, that's how
you win. That's how you get the majority of the electors.
And it plays out geographically as you know. You know? It
took me a few moments, probably a day or so, to
understand, in my opinion, to understand what,
the former president may have been thinking choosing a senator from Ohio,
okay, who's also from the same region, which is inside the northeast. You have
this whole country, but you choose someone else from the northeast. And, you
know, I care less that he's white male. I care less about It's
more he's from the same region. Right. So the
ability of that team to speak to people in Montana,
Missouri, Nevada, you
know, Washington state. That's what
was in my head. And then after about a day or so, I remembered, oh,
yeah. Isn't Ohio that bellwether where they always choose whoever ends up
winning? And it's like, oh, and he already wants to say it right there. Ding.
Got it. So Right. That is a brilliant choice. It's just it took me about
a day to figure that out. So, you know, it's it's
But but the calamari the calibrations for the minds of the
people in the middle, that middle
20%. You've gotta get people who can actually show up with a
relatively open mind Mhmm.
And have them show up and vote and vote for it. This is fun. You
know? It's one of the reasons I've done it. It's it's fun. You get to
hear where people are at. You get to see what's going on in people's lives.
I think that's that's wonderful. But,
I think at the end of this week, the the
news item should say, well, in the United States of America, we know that the
US constitution is alive and well
because this is
happening. Okay. Couple of things on that, and
then we'll we'll turn to the Federalist Papers here. Because I want to talk about
Federalist Papers number 10 because there's a couple of document there's a couple of pieces
in there that I want to bring out particularly. I believe it's,
it's, Hamilton's focus on the points that
Montanesque makes, about liberty. I'll
bring those out.
The founding fathers were not fans of party politics,
almost to a man. Now,
I get the feeling that Jefferson
created the Democratic Republican Party 231 years
ago, partially because he couldn't figure out a
way to channel those passions
that you were referencing, channel that that
energy into a into
a usable tool, because he
didn't carry the kind of stick, the kind of sort of
charismatic weight that a guy like George
Washington carried. Right. And he wasn't,
a, he wasn't an over weaning, maybe not overweening.
He
wasn't a stiff necked individual, kind of like John Adams. Right?
He wasn't that guy. Right? You know, he saw the
ability to, and I'm going to use a hard word here,
to manipulate and to move the electorate in a particular direction
utilizing parties. But he also understood that
human nature has to have passions that need to go somewhere in the constitution.
Wasn't there going to be enough of a container to sort of put that in?
Okay. Fast forward a few years,
and it feels to everyone in America, right
or left, who I talk to of the political spectrum, and even
the folks who weren't in that that center, that 20% the
20% in the middle, actually, I think it's more like 15% in the middle, who
are just, as I tell folks, checked
out of this kind of stuff on a regular basis. They just, they don't,
they don't care. They can't care enough. It doesn't it doesn't move them.
They care about other things. And I and and when I talk to 40% of
the 40 42 and a half percent of people are on the
right and 42 and a half percent of people who are on the left, they
can't possibly believe that there are people who just don't care about this. Matter of
fact, I had several conversations this weekend with folks who are both on the right
and the left, who just when I pointed that out
to them, they were literally stunned. Right.
Because of where we've sort of come with party politics, where party has
replaced, religion and religious affiliation.
Awareness as we do, whether or not an individual is a
Democrat or a Republican. I mean, you're even seeing this filter
into mating patterns. You're seeing this
being a way that people's divorce patterns are even being
tracked. Here's an interesting statistic for you to roll over reading this the
other day. Apparently,
among divorced men and divorced women, somewhere along the
range of like 57% of divorced women are Democrats,
whereas 60% of divorced men are Republicans.
So they should marry each other? Well, no. No. They already married each other
and they got divorced. That's the thing.
Right. And so and and, of course, you're seeing this
on the other end of patterns where Gen Zers, people who are in the
youngest general current youngest generation that's floating around that's in the
workforce and in the cultural zeitgeist, those individuals will
not date anyone. They will swipe left or swipe right if that
individual's political affiliation doesn't match theirs. And so
you're having a great sorting going on in America right
now. And, you know, California is doing a really
excellent job of exporting all of their center left people to other places like
Arizona, where you live, or Texas, where I live, or
Florida, where my in laws live.
And because they're the largest, most populous state in the in the in the
lower forty eight region.
And so they're exporting all their center left people, their center left voters everywhere
else. And, of course, the progressive hard left folks in that state is a
concentrated rump. By the way, Kamala Harris,
former senator from California, that
state is gone. There's no electoral landslide to
Donald Trump. It's gone. Goodbye. Just kiss goodbye. I mean, it might have been in
play maybe, but now it's just not. Right?
So you talk about parties
and we talk about affiliations. And one of the things that struck me in
listening to the Congressional Oversight Committee
grill, the now former head of the United States Secret
Service, is that all of the Congress
members, in particular Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez, but also many
others on the left and on the right, seem to be genuinely scared
that that woman didn't do her job.
And they seem to be genuinely interested
in making sure that this woman fell on her
sword. And it was almost the first time I'd seen genuine bipartisan
behavior from both parties that
almost might have bordered on legislative statesmanship
in the last 30 years.
Why does it take an assassin's near miss to
get people to straighten up
and to abandon their party politics?
Because I think that's the other thing that's frustrating the regular 15% of people that
are in between those 2 40% or 42 a half percent
halves. Is at what point do we abandon
party and really, without it being
a marketing phrase or propagandist phrase, actually come
together for the country? Where it actually means?
What's the thing? No. It's it's a very it's a very good question. It's a
very good point. And to answer
that, I think it's when we first can come together as
communities. Community is something that
is a word that needs to be used more,
but needs to be used more in contrast with actual
government created structures or governmental structures.
Okay? And does community in contrast to town,
village, city, county, state,
and country, because
community is the thing that is spiritual. It's the thing
that you know when it exists and it's strong and you know
when it is ailing and in crisis, and yet it's hard to
put your finger on it. Where does it begin? Where does it end? What
are the elements that make up a strong
community? These questions are difficult to define.
And, yet community is
essential to to healthy, to healthy human
societies. Another word, society. Another word that
is a word that defies,
I think, ready quantification.
Okay? These community and society can't really be put in boxes,
and yet they're essential to who we are. There are central ways of defining who
we are as people, but also as individuals.
Anyway,
sorry. You have to remind me of the question again. Yeah. Because I
remember the end of it. Yeah. And I got excited about community, and then I
realized, wait a minute. Now I can't remember the threat of the question. Yeah. Well,
the the the what's the point? No. No. No. No. No. The threat of the
question is, what is the thing? Why does it take
why does it take an assassin's bullet? That's Oh, that's what it is. To to
to to line us up. And by the way by the way, in Assassin's
Bullet, there was a near miss. And and in the history
of presidential candidates,
there have been something like, I think, not only presidential candidates, but also
presidents. There have been something like 4 near misses.
And this is not hyperbole. I
think if Donald Trump had died on July
13th in Pennsylvania, there would have been a state funeral, obviously.
Nikki Haley would have assumed the mantle of the
Republican Party and run for president because she had the 2nd most delegates.
And so she would have had a Democratic, small
D, and constitutional,
what do you call it, argument for getting those delegates and she would have gotten
them because the big donors back her in the party.
So talk about the oligarchy. The Republican party has its own version of that
too. And Yes, we do. And she
would have gotten the delegates, but there would have been here's the
but or maybe not but. And in this counterfactual
alternative historical timeline where Donald Trump dies, Joe
Biden is still president. Kamala Harris is still off to the
side. But here's the but small,
tiny insurrections are beginning everywhere from
militias, from people who've just had
enough. One of the major technologies of the last
100 years is the Ford F150. Like, I can put a
50 caliber machine gun on the back of a Ford F-one hundred and fifty with
6 guys and just drive around and cause trouble.
And if my vote doesn't count and to your point
about community, and they already killed the guy
after calling him Hitler for the last 8 years. They
killed Hitler, but I knew he wasn't Hitler.
Mhmm. My vote doesn't count. I am no longer invested in the
Republic. I'm no longer invested in the overall nation state
community. And sure, they're gonna send out the jack booted
troops to come in, like, come get me. But
I'm gonna bet that I'm more competent with 6 guys in the back of a
Ford F150 and a 50 cal. I'm gonna bet my
competency against those idiots who can't even holster a
weapon. Oh, I'm gonna bet my competency against those DEI
hires every day and twice on Sundays. I'm gonna bet I shoot straighter.
And by the way, it won't just be me. It'll be gangs in Chicago that
don't get paid attention to. But now it won't just be black gangs. It'll be
white gangs. It'll be folks down in Texas, where where I live.
It'll be militia members out in California that are in cells. It'll be whatever the
hell is going on in Florida. There'll be stuff going on up in Massachusetts. And
you would just see, you know, this alternative timeline. You'll just see little little insurrections
just start. And the government will further lose legitimacy. A
democratic government, small capital D, democratic oligarchal
government will continue to lose legitimacy and it will be chipped away over time and
they will become more and more desperate over the course of time
if the bullet actually not his bullet if Donald Trump
doesn't turn his head an eighth of an inch to the right, I'm sorry, to
the left. Mhmm. Mhmm. That's
that thing right there, that act. Why did
it take that act and a narrow miss like that
to scare the hell out of everybody for 24 hours?
In a way that I haven't seen people get scared since,
like, September 11th. Right. Right.
Right. It's weird. I, so, I
mean, to answer the question, so there there there
is more gravity in a bullet than even in a tax bill.
Okay? Right. A bullet is gonna kill you. A tax bill is just gonna
make you uncomfortable.
I don't know if if a draft slip, I don't know where that
falls, okay, before president Nixon, the first president Nixon,
you know, did away with that. But, anyway,
there there there's little in in in the in human
existence that has the gravity of a bullet that's flying at you. Right. And
so, that was frankly an attempt
to to assassinate the American political process. Okay? That was an
attempt that was an actual attempt. Mhmm. Okay?
And an actual threat against democracy.
Okay? Here's this man. He's loud and in
charge, as he always has been literally for
decades.
And I think, you know, his his victory in November would have been a
shoo in, but for, you know, president by
Joseph r Biden junior deciding he's not gonna run again. And so
somebody else knew that, and somebody else was willing to take action
because, apparently he couldn't live with, that result,
couldn't live with what our democratic our constitutional process,
provides for. And I've been frustrated
over the past few years watching,
democrats who, you know, are in the
legal space, who talk about constitutional issues and certainly judicial
issues as we do as attorneys. I'm just I've I've been frustrated
listening to, you know,
listening to the about face from,
well, for example, I'll give a
specific issue, and I'll try to remember the Supreme Court
case. What case is
it? I have to look it up. But,
basically, if you listen to Democrats talk about Supreme Court
precedent, about abortion, and talk about
this big case that I believe it was Justice O'Connor from Arizona,
who wrote the majority, opinion upholding some
type of federal right to abortion. And you
listen to the positions that they took about that. You know, this is the constitutional
process. This is, you know, this is the precedent, so it has to be followed.
Blah blah blah blah. Now all of a sudden through completely
legitimate constitutional processes, there's a different set of opinions
sitting on that high bench. And now you're getting decisions
coming out that reflect that, that reflect
differing judgments on the
same issues. So precedents are being overruled as has
happened, you know, throughout our history, frankly. But anyway, you
now listen to them talk about, oh, you know, the problems
in the process and how things need to be changed. And it's just like,
just because your side is losing now, because you're losing in the judgments. So all
of a sudden there's a problem with the process. We've listened to you for more
than 40 years. We've listened to you for for more
than 40 years, and you're perfectly content because you were getting what you
wanted. And we just had to sit there and and grind our teeth and
and pray and grind our teeth and know that, oh, okay.
These are our constitutional processes, and this is how
these play out. And now the tables are turned, and now all
of a sudden we're hearing them say, you know, words to the effect that,
you know, the system is broken. It needs to be fixed.
And they're not saying it needs to be fixed because we're not winning. They're not
admitting that that's what is really driving, you know,
is driving them. Now I didn't I I don't I don't have fears for
dystopian America, even if, you
know, God forbid, even if, you know, the former president, had been killed,
or you know, because we're
not, I mean, we're not through to November yet. Right? So,
I I just I don't have fears for dystopian America,
and there's a few reasons why. And some
of them is just, I think, understanding the character of who we are as a
people. There is more of a problem.
There would be more of a problem if all of
a sudden the Internet didn't work than if d
j t were assassinated. The
way in which that Aboriginal Caesar
was able to do what he did and take people's freedom
was their bread and circuses. And so as long as
Americans can get fat and turn on Netflix, it
ain't gonna happen. And it ain't gonna happen on scale, and I'm not exaggerating. And
I'm and literally, I mean that seriously. As long as those things happen, we ain't
gone anywhere. Okay? It's we went from seventies,
the revolution will not be televised to, we are going
to televise something because that's how we're going to do a
revolution. We're gonna have you sit there and suck it in, and that may have
been what they meant with that quote. Okay? But,
to me, the use of television plus the Internet
plus, you know, stuff on your phone to lull us
into a stasis where we're just existing
is necessary for someone to then snatch power. And
so I don't expect large scale
revolts. I don't. I just I don't. The only
way that happens if the is it would be if there was an actual invasion.
And, no, a bunch of broke brown people walking
from the Mexico whatever border up
to the border in my state and crossing illegally is not an
invasion. I'm talking about, like, oh, there's a 1,000 ships
on the horizon about a 100 miles from California. What is and all of a
sudden stuff just starts blowing up all over the western third of the United. That
kind of invasion. That's what I mean. When that happens, then all of a sudden
we're galvanized. And, of course, that would help make my point. Right? Because if that
happens, one of the things that's not gonna be operating is Internet because that's how
you keep a copy list with the dark Well so that you can do your
invasion. That's how Well, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Wait. Wait. Durrow. Japanese did it. Germans did it. We did it. It's straightforward. Dorollo.
Dorollo. Dorollo. So The the CrowdStrike CEO would like to enter the
chat. I
bet. I mean, the Internet we just had a large the largest IT
failure since the lights went
out in the late 19 sixties on the east coast for like 13
days or whatever it was. And we had an IT failure in
911 systems. We had an IT IT failure in banks. We had an IT
failure in airlines. We had an error. It was what
else did it impact? I mean, it impacted a whole bunch of stuff. Right? And
and weirdly enough, to your point about bread and circuses, weirdly enough,
everything just sort of
kept going underneath its own inertia. So I'm not quite
convinced of your argument that
as long as the Internet is on, everything will be fine. No. No. No. No.
So people like to eat too. So, like, we need both. Remember,
we can keep getting fat, and we can turn on Netflix. It's both. But it's
but it's important. It's both. But if but if you can only keep and circuses.
It's both. Okay. Okay. But if you can only keep the bread
going, but the circus has to go, apparently, it's
gonna be fine. Well,
my phone still worked. My phone still worked.
I could still stream stuff or whatever. My phone still worked. So it's like, oh,
I I literally went to the bank. Oh, this ATM's not working. Okay. But my
phone still worked. I I mean, I went to work that day. I got I
got stuff done. Like, my stuff worked.
It's fascinating. It's fascinating because
talk about real intersectionality. What disturbs me about
it is it
shows what's possible. That's one of the ways of putting it.
It shows what's possible when you want to.
Sorry. I was stifling a sneeze, not getting overly emotional, but it shows
what's possible when you want to take a whole bunch
of free people and just put them in the dark.
Little bit of code. Wait. What? That's it? Are you
kidding? Really? Like, this is stuff that
ought to make the CIA and MI 6, etcetera,
furious because it's if I were them, I would
be saying things like, why the heck are we out here? Right. You couldn't figure
out how to compartmentalize your own systems back home. Like, why are we out
here doing this when someone could just boop and all of a sudden
everything just the walls all collapse? We're all vulnerable? Like
Well well and this gets me to this gets me to something that you and
I were text texting back and forth about, which I'm gonna jump into here
in a little bit, because it ties into the, the woman
from the secret, the woman who's heading the secret service and that entire
operational failure all the way down. That ties into
what you're seeing with CrowdStrike and or what you saw with
CrowdStrike and our response to it. It also ties in
and by the way, there's a clear through line from the Secret Service to CrowdStrike
to the fact that your Subway sandwich, when you go to
subway is not made nearly as well as it used to be.
Mhmm. Mhmm. And it's we blame a lot of this on COVID and on the
pandemic. I think what COVID did was it gave people
more of a permission to engage in bread and circuses type behavior
rather than act as a backstop or give
less permission to that. Mhmm.
But first, before I jump into that,
let me pick up from the Federalist Papers, which, of course, we're supposed to be
reading here. Federalist Papers number 9.
Let me confirm the Hamilton's writing. So The Federalist
Papers number 9, the union as a safeguard against domestic
faction and insurrection. Speaking of insurrection
and I'm going to jump around a bunch of different places in here. I'm going
to gonna quote from The Federalist Papers number 9.
By the way, this is again Alexander Hamilton writing this, a person who was a
monarchist, of the
degree, and I quote, a firm union will be of the utmost
moment to the peace and liberty of the states as a barrier against
domestic faction and insurrection. It is impossible
to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations
of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually
agitated and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept
in the state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny
and anarchy. To de Rolo's point, those
extremes pause. Those extremes now exist on your cell phone
between tweets.
Back to Federalist Papers, and I quote, if
they exhibit occasional calms, these only serve as short lived contrast to the furious
storms that are to succeed. If now and then intervals of
felicity open themselves to view, we behold them with a mixture of regret.
Arising from the reflection, the pleasing scenes before us are soon to be overwhelmed by
the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage.
Anybody seen by the way, pause. Anybody seen MSNBC lately?
If anybody seen Joy Reid or a sheen.
If momentary rays of glory break forth from the gloom, this is back
to Hamilton, while they dazzle us with a transient and fleeting brilliancy,
they at the same time admonish us to lament that the vices of government should
pervert the direction and tarnish the and tarnish the luster of those bright talents and
exalted endowments for which the favorite soils that produce them have been so
justly celebrated. Why is Elon Musk
still getting a tax bill? From the
disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics, the advocates
despotism have drawn arguments not only against the forms of
republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty
as they have in our own time. They have decried all free government
as inconsistent with the order of society and have indulged themselves in malicious
exaltation over its friends and partisans. I believe for mankind,
stupendous fabrics reared on the basis of liberty, which have flourished for
ages, have in few in a few glorious instances, refuted
their gloomy gothisms. And I trust
America will be the broad and solid foundation of other edifices, not less
magnificent, which will be equally permanent monuments of their
errors. By the way, that is what de Rolo is hoping. He agrees with Hamilton.
Let's skip ahead a little bit. So far are the suggestions of
Montanesqu from standing in opposition to the general union of the states that he
explicitly treats of a Confederate Republic as the
expedient for extending the spear of popular government and reconciling the
advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism. Now I wanna pause here.
Most people don't know who Montanesque is. So go ahead, Drollo. Tell
the folks What was his view? Montesquieu. Was he? Montesquieu.
Yeah. So
was a French, aristocrat, debauched all the rest
of that stuff. Of course, that whole system came down. Right?
17/89 to about actually for about 10 years,
various cycles, various revolutions and quotation marks
that, only Napoleon was able to stop by pointing cannons at
people and firing. Anyway, and, of course,
Jefferson cheered at one point and probably didn't cheer at the end, though he did
end up buying some great real estate in North America from that guy who pointed
the cannons at people and yelled fire.
But, Montesquieu was a political philosopher
in his spare time, I guess. And,
studied the British constitution. Okay? British constitution is
not written, as you know. Studied the British arrangement of its
governing institutions, which is called the constitution, its body. Okay. It's corpus,
spiritual body, and wrote about
how law and power, can work and be arranged.
And so the the of the spirit
of the laws or spirit of the laws is his master work.
And, you know, one of my goals is to read it in French one day.
I actually said we were in Paris last month, and I actually saw volume
1. But, it actually you know,
I may have bought it. Bear with me
a sec because now I have to check. I know where it is. I know
Michelle. So either I bought that or I bought something else the first
volume. Oh, I remember when it was. Never mind. I remember. I also
want to read the talk views. Mhmm.
The democracy in America. So the democracy in America. Right?
Mhmm. I want to read that first. So I have that, and that's what I
bought. And that's what I'm, you know, slowly making my way through. But, anyway, back
to Montesquieu. Separation of powers, that's from Montesquieu.
Okay. That's Montesquivian, and just
how checks and balances can help maintain
order and freedom in a way that
unchecked government cannot. Okay? So for
example, in the British system at the time, meaning in
the the early the first half of
the eighteenth century, because I think I think his work came out in
17:40. But, anyway, in the early first half of the 18th century,
in order for the, the
Hanoverian monarch sitting on the British throne, to get money.
Parliament had to pass the bill authorizing the taxes, and
if the money didn't come from, and not just
that, but also the civilist, which was the actual basically, the the allowance
the allowance paid to the monarch to run his court, his
household, his etcetera. And,
if money wasn't authorized by parliament
other than from his estates, which would have been a fraction of what he
needed, there was no legitimate way to get money by the British
monarch. So this is an example of a check a
check on the monarch's ability to ruin his
populace by overtaxing them or assessing
with fees and surcharges and whatever else is
invented to take money from honest people,
honest working people. Anyway, Yeah.
Montesquieu. Montesquieu, wrote his masterwork.
It was published and English
speaking political thinkers, political scientists, others
have been talking about it since. Okay. Back to
number 9, Hamilton. Alright. It is very probable,
says he, by the way, he meaning, Montanescu from the
spirit of laws volume 1 book 9 chapter 1. So Hamilton is
clearly Hamilton clearly read Montanescu.
It is very probable, says he, that mankind would have obliged at length to
live constantly under the government of a single person had they not contrived a kind
of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican
together with the external force of a monarchal government. I mean, a Confederate
Republic. This form of government is a convention by which several smaller
states agreed to become members of a larger one, which they intend to form. It
is a kind of assemblage of societies that constitute a new one, capable of
increasing by means of new associations, till they arrive at such a degree of power
as to be able to provide for united body. A republic
of this kind able to withstand an external force may support itself without any
internal corruptions. The form of the society prevents all manner
of inconveniences. Well, if a single member should attempt
to usurp the supreme authority, he could not be supposed to have equal
authority and credit in all the Confederate states. Were he to have too great an
influence over 1, this would alarm the rest. Where he do so do a part
that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which
he had usurped and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation.
Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the Confederate states, the others are able
to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that
remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side and on the other, the
Confederacy may be dissolved and the Confederates preserve their sovereignty.
As this government is composed of small republics, it enjoys internal happiness of
each and with respect to its external situation it is possessed by means of
the association of all the advantages of large monarchies,
close quote. I have thought it proper to quote at length these
interesting passages because they contain a luminous abridgment of the principal arguments
in favor of the union and must effectually remove the false impressions
which a misapplication of other parts of the work was calculated to produce.
They have, at the same time, an intimate connection with the more immediate design of
this paper, which is to illustrate the tendency of the union to repress domestic
faction and insurrection. A distinction more
subtle than accurate has been raised between a confederacy and a consolidation of states.
The essential character of the first is said to be the restriction of its
authority to the members of their collective capacities without reaching to the
individuals of whom they are composed.
Finally, I'm going to skip down. The definition of a Confederate republic seems simply to
be an assemblage of societies or an association of 2 or more states in one
state. The extent modifications and objects of the federal authority are
mere matters of discretion. So long as a separate organization of the
member should not be abolished, so long as it exists by a constitutional
necessity for local purposes, though it should be in perfect subordination to the
general authority of the union, it would still be in fact and in
theory an association of states or a Confederacy.
Close quote.
K.
One of the things that Hamilton, Madison,
John Jay, Thomas Jefferson,
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin.
John Adams, Monroe wasn't there, though he was
much later. But all of the major founding fathers
believed Girolo. Was that and that
they just assumed was that the
Christian character of the people
that they were ruling and where rulers would come
from would be maintained over the course of time.
Governments might be transitory, but
belief in an external,
omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God,
as defined in Christian terms, would be eternal.
They did not foresee Marx. They did not foresee
nihilism in through Nietzsche. Matter of fact, I
think if you brought any of those guys forward now, matter of fact, I think
probably Jefferson would be the most hornswoggled
by Nietzsche, probably out of all the founding fathers. Not
surprised maybe, but just hornswoggled by just
how deep those ideas have embedded themselves into the
they sought to build, they assumed because they assumed Christianity would be the
bedrock and would never be taken out. And they also
assumed that competency
from such Christianity would also be
the same throughout the course of time, and that that would be
a set of assumptions that you could build a republic on and that would continue
to grow in power and depth over the course of time. Close quote. I think
that's what Hamilton, even though he was not a Christian, but Hamilton
was proposing there. I think that's an undercurrent of
assumptions that he was making even in bringing them onto Niskiyou.
Right? Those assumptions
no longer work in our times, and thus we are having a
breakdown in all
levels from the
Subway sandwich maker who doesn't
even know how to count back your change based on the digital display
they just gave you. I just had this experience the other day. I went in
to get a subway sandwich. Doesn't matter what store. I'm just going to use subway
and the kid behind the counter. And by the way, kid he's like
25. Didn't know how to count back to me the
change on the digital display. No
clue.
And then from there, there's a straight line to
again, not to harp on it, but it is the most current
thing. The United States Secret Service
can't put us countersniper on a roof because it's too sloped.
Like like
I keep harping on this. You and I texted back and forth about this. I
do fundamentally believe that we are in an incompetency crisis.
We are in a crisis of incompetence at all levels, both
horizontally and vertically in our republic right now. Mhmm.
And it is a crisis that will kill the republic just assuredly
if it's not resolved, just assuredly as the crisis of the
3rd century killed or almost killed the Roman Republic.
And I do not believe that a monarch coming along,
which I do believe is the approach of the Democrat party has, that
I think they think that a one monarch, and actually the Republican Party
too, believes that if there's just one monarchal guy who's
competent or one monarchal woman who's competent, then all of a sudden
everything will snap back into place. I think we're too far gone for that.
What parallels let's start with the let's start with the because most people don't know
about the Roman Empire and the crisis of 3rd century. You know a lot about
that. You've looked at that. What are the parallels to America today? Let's start with
that. And then and we can move outward because those people
were not incompetent. They actually the bureaucrats of the 3rd century actually
maintained Rome for the glory of Rome because they believed in the glory of Rome.
I don't believe that any of our current incompetent folks at all levels
vertically or horizontally believe in the glory of the United States. They don't have
that Christian underpinning anymore. We've successfully
thrown that away. And now we don't we don't have anything else underneath there. So
and then by the way, this is a leadership question too, but let's start with
the Roman piece. Mhmm. What are the parallels between the Roman
crisis of the 3rd century BC and America today?
So the Roman crisis of the 3rd century AD
is one of my know. Is this the one to which you're referring This is
the one that was almost a century long crisis because of barbarian invasions,
etcetera, that one? Yes. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.
Because there's something to be said for what
was happening in the 3rd century BC and the Roman Republic.
Mhmm. The road to the empire, was not a swift
road. It was a slow road, but there were certainly
mile markers on that road as the republic
calcified and then became
fragile and fractures, you know,
began to be seen. And then, of course, as usual, there's a patchwork attempt
to to fix something where in reality you need to fix the foundation. So you
have to literally recon rebuild the edifice on a
fixed foundation. Mhmm. And thankfully,
and it's really strange to say it, but,
the particular emperor who relayed so now we're
going to the 3rd century BC. BC, the the Syria excuse me, the 3rd century
AD. The particular emperor who relayed the foundation, was
horrendous when it came to persecuting Christians.
But Diocletian Mhmm. Knew how to be emperor
and actually sorted out the foundations of the empire anyway.
So in the 3rd century AD, the
Roman Empire entered into a crisis that
lasted several decades, and, there were several factors
involved. But one of the main ones that
directly, you know,
one of the main ones implied by the circumstances that directly addresses what you
raised is, you know, a breakdown
internally, a moral rot setting in internally within the
empire that led to the inability of,
the bureaucrats, the soldiers, and others to to to do their
jobs. And so, as I said, what
humans tend to do, we we wanna patch things up
rather than recognize that the type
of rot we're dealing with is in the foundation, and thus we have to
remove the structure, relay the foundation, or
repair the foundation, and then reimpose the structure on
top or reimpose an alternative structure that fits
the new foundation. Those efforts at reform
can have some success. Shut the door. Thank you.
Shut the door. Thank you. Those,
pardon me, those efforts can have a chance of
success, whereas the patchwork leads to other problems. Okay? And
so you had these, barbarian invasions happening,
goths and others who were actual goths, not, you know,
teenagers dressed in black, but, peoples who came from,
Southern Scandinavia, Northern Germany who moved around, moved to my wife's country, now country,
you know, Ukraine. Well, you know, her former
country that now is called Ukraine. That's what I mean. You know,
and and ended up coming into the Roman Empire.
And many of them are recruited to serve, you know, as soldiers Mhmm.
Because there were problems, you know, getting
competent soldiers. And that's that's usually
a major issue. One of the other major issues that was certainly systemic,
because the problem with soldiers, that's something you pay attention to at the borders.
Okay. You pay less attention to it internally, certainly where there isn't, you know, some
kind of police force. But, anyway, hyperinflation
due to massive increases in public spending
basically helped create a breakdown in,
trade. Okay. Increasing danger
to personal safety, criminality, plus hyperinflation
basically took what was a global trade economy, okay, that
relied on with economies of scale that relied on
competitive advantage, I e, I produce wine in
Italy and I sell it, to the province of Egypt. And I
buy wheat there because we make wine and they make wheat, and so we
exchange it. Okay. That ended up being replaced,
certainly going forward in time, but ended up being replaced by
a proto feudal economy where these
large landowners, okay, and you can certainly read corporations
if you wish, but these large landowners,
instead of producing the wine to then put
on ships, sent to Egypt, that was no longer secure. It was no
longer certain. And now there's issues with prices being crazy.
So what did they do? They started producing food. So now they don't have to
trade with Egypt. They're okay where they're at
producing what they need. And, well, how do you find workers? Well,
because of security issues and because of food problems,
the Roman Empire started deurbanizing. Mhmm. So
free citizens left cities for the countryside and searched their food,
Found these large landowners who, in exchange for work, certainly are gonna
give you food. Right? Now remember, hyperinflation, currency, ridiculously
debased, so now you're bartering. So, well, I have work.
I can work for you, and you can give me food. Oh, great. Does that
sound familiar? Yeah. It should. And
so the deurbanization
and this proto feudal arrangement led
to serfdom. Okay? What ended up happening
is people ended up exchanging their liberty for security and
food. Okay? So we went from bread and circuses
to surf film. Okay? And then, you know, and,
obviously, that that implicates a loss of freedom that would largely
remain for at least a 1000
years. Okay? And east of the empire would
last longer. Right? East of the empire referring to Russia, where it
would last into the 19th century.
Russian serfdom was abolished even after American slavery was
abolished. Okay? But, yeah, it
lasted, yeah, a a
long time, but at least a 1000 years for the main corpus. Okay? And it
wasn't uniform. Okay? Right. It's important studying those differences.
When when people, when
people talk about the development of human rights and, you know, when
they talk about issues of natural right and whatever, one of the
things that is not examined often enough
is, the response to the question, okay. But
why England? Mhmm.
Why did the southern portion of the Isle of Great Britain
develop these notions before everyone else and then
successfully construct institutions to govern
themselves peacefully for 800
years or more based on these notions. Why
England? And if you study England's
history on the right level, you can see
what the origins of English individualism are. And there's a book
by Alan McFarland that's basically called that the words the origins of English individual. And
it's really fascinating because, arguably, they were the first
of European societies to exit
being a peasant society. Okay? What we're talking about now is how peasant society was
created. Okay? It's created because of government
problems. Okay? Governments create
surfs. Government problems
create surfs. Okay? Because people gotta eat, as
I said. Remember? Why is the revolution gonna be televised? Because
people gotta in America, we just gotta keep getting fat and keep
scrolling Netflix, and we're good. Okay? Because if you
threaten the first of those, well, I'm gonna scroll until I'm hungry, and then I'm
like, wait. Where wait. What's going on? Now all of a sudden, I can't pay
attention to the circus because my stomach is telling me
something true. Okay? There ain't any
food. Okay? There is something rotten in the state of Denmark because
there's no bread in the house of bread. Totally in mixing metaphors and
geographies, but, Courtney, what can you say? But in all
seriousness, you know, you threaten the bread, you have one
type of problem. You threaten the circus, you have a different type of problem. Okay?
Because now people are well fed. Happy. Okay. But what are we gonna do? Oh,
we're bored. Bored free people? Mhmm.
That's not something a republic needs. Okay. Part of
the power of work, okay,
is that it takes bored people and makes them productive.
Mhmm. In our free republic, right,
we arrange that in a way where you get to choose what you do, and
you get the compensation you can negotiate. And when the government
doesn't interfere, that generally works pretty
well, certainly where you have, you know, antitrust laws that work. Because
then it's not everybody works for Amazon. Sorry. Amazon picking on you. Everybody
works for Amazon or you don't work at all and you starve. It's,
oh, there is an actual marketplace because there's goods and services that
need to be made and exchanged, and there's a bunch of us together.
We have differing skills, different mental abilities, different backgrounds, different
predilections, different things we want. So we'll end up meeting
those needs voluntarily without too much government
interference. Okay. So you said previously you don't believe
in a dystopia or you don't believe that we will we will fall into a
dystopia. And yet everywhere we look, we see
moral rot. Now you said what we you also
said when we threaten the bread, that's one
thing. When you threaten the circus, that's something else. And I
fundamentally believe that COVID was a test run
for a u a UBI scheme, which is the
you talk about how how the the Roman Empire and the
crisis of the 3rd century AD led to pro led led to proto
feudalism. Right? Uh-huh. I fundamentally believe that the people who think they're
running things at the World Economic Forum and other places
don't have a better idea than global feudalism. They don't have
a better idea than that. Mhmm. That's why you
see the bread and circuses in the United States as the distraction.
But then you also see brown people, to your point
earlier, being shuffled and moved and shunted across
borders, partially with the encouragement of bureaucrats,
who are wedded to the mystical, existential,
pagan worship idea of climate change. And so
you see those dynamics, then you see forever,
to paraphrase from people on the right in America, forever wars,
endless warfare going on where people are dying in real
material ways, which death is just as material as hunger.
And we are, of course, in the West are being asked to fund these
wars in perpetuity with no end, just Just no
because there's no endgame there. There's no endgame in Israel.
There's no endgame in the Ukraine. Or if there is an endgame,
is an end game that is so existentially horrific
that the people who have been placed in positions
of leadership and call themselves leaders are incompetent to
explain it to us. Mhmm. And I don't mean, by the
way, that they're incompetent in terms of climbing the greasy pole.
They're very competent in terms of that. I mean, they're incompetent again
at doing the core thing that's that's that's that requires
us to go along.
Instead, they'd rather just throw bread and circuses at us. Okay.
There's an idea and I did a whole shorts episode about this, called
Hanlon's razor. You've heard this. I
think I have once, and I can't tell you what it is, though. So
enlighten us. I'll tell you what it is. Hamlin's razor is the idea that you
should never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
Or or incompetence. Right? Yep. I believe
fundamentally that good Christian people, and there are many of them in the United
States, want to find the
malice behind these things when in reality, it's just incompetency.
My lovely wife is one of these folks, And she's not alone, by the way.
There's millions of people who see conspiratorial
malice, genuine evil behind these
things. And I look at it and I used to
see conspiratorial evil, but more and more I see
incompetence. Mhmm. There's, there's an
author and, researcher, biological researcher
named Brett Weinstein, you may or may
not have heard of. And he recently
hey. As COVID happened, he so he was a biological researcher. Right? Let me give
you a little background on Brett Weinstein. So he's a biological researcher, deep into
biologics, deep into viruses, deep into virology. And when COVID came
around, he started talking out loud about how this was
nonsense, what we were doing around COVID at a public policy, health
care policy level. And he got fired from his,
he got fired from his school. And because he had a little bit of a
Twitter following, he had a little bit of a Substack following, podcast
following, he was able to sort of rebuild his existence. Okay?
And he now does goes on shows like Jordan Peterson
show. He goes on Joe Rogan. He talks about what he sees. And this is
not a screaming at the sky, blue haired kind of guy. He's
not Joe Rogan. Right? He's not or Alex Jones. He's not that guy. He's very
measured in what he says, very measured in what he writes. He's even very careful
in his in his tone of voice, and I hear him talk on Joe
Rogan. It's it's like a little bit like listening to a robot, but he's very
measured because he's being careful in every single word that he says, both to avoid
libel, unlike Alex Jones, and to
not unnecessarily, to to
Madison or not Madison or Hamilton's point here to not
necessarily push the nerves of people between
tyranny and anarchy. Right? Mhmm. And
recently, particularly with the, with
the coronation of Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic party
presidential ticket, he put out something on Substack, which I think relates to
this. He said, and I quote, I don't
know what the contingencies plans were for the deep state,
whoever's really running that. But this everything
we're seeing now is what it looks like when the deep state is.
And this is the part about the competency. This is what it looks like when
the deep state is just winging it.
If that doesn't scare the hell out of you and give you a little bit
of a chill, you're not paying attention.
The people who want to bring us a new form of global feudalism
based on central bank currency and
UBI for everyone and bread and circuses everywhere and
people being moved across borders and boundaries. And sometimes they're
gonna shut you in. Sometimes the only ideas they can come up
with, the only ones that
for all of their brilliance, all of their I graduated, I climbed
the greasy pole of academic institutions, all of their
brilliance, the only idea they can come up with is a
Neo feudalism based on the Internet.
That's it. That's the only idea they can come up with. They cannot come up
with a better idea. And
that reveals their incompetency.
And this is why I say we're in an incompetency crisis, not
just in the United States, but in the West overall, which by the way you
talk about England. Why England? Well, we are inheritors of that
English tradition. We should be leading on something
new. But our crisis has
led us to putting incompetent people or people who are revealing
their incompetency at certain levels, and they are incapable of
leading. That's why I do the podcast because they're incapable of
leading. What the hell are we doing out here? We're in the middle of
an early 21st century version of the
3rd century AD Roman crisis, And my
concern is that it will wind up in feudalism, but feudalism based
on AI and feudalism based on
Netflix and feudalism based on pay no attention to the
brown people coming across your border over here who are burning your buildings down and
may potentially be sexually assaulting your women and engaged in criminality. Pay no attention
to the hyperinflation of the fact that your money doesn't buy nearly as much as
it. Pay no attention to the fact that we're going to give citizenship to these
people and ask them to serve in our military force and defend our borders against
god knows who and god knows what. Pay no attention to the the
endless wars that are going on and potential wars in the future that we keep
rattling the cages about because we wanna feel like we're masters of the universe, pretending
people to die. What are we doing?
Mhmm. And you combine all that together. And so the question is and and by
the way, I get horror, by the way, when I think about this, when I
think about Hamlet's razor, when I think about not attributing to
malice, what can be attributed to stupidity or incompetence?
That, that, that, that gives me a sense of horror because that means there is
no mind behind it. It's just people doing
stuff. Mhmm. There's a plan.
You mean there's no leadership? Right. What you're saying
is there's no leadership. It's just people doing stuff. There's no leadership
people doing. Right. It's just people just taking action, doing stuff. Oh, whatever. Just
I'll I'll just do this. Yes. Right. That's called there's no leadership.
That's anarchy.
No. It's more a listlessness as
we drift toward the rocks that are going to smash
the ship of state. Right. Anarchy is what would come
after that. But yeah. It
And I listen to a lot of stuff there. Sorry. No. That's fine.
But I agree. It's it's it's the antithesis of of leadership.
So, I wanna read
something. So my version of the Federalist Papers Yes. Was edited
by Clinton Rossiter, who was an American historian. My version is old. So
what he wrote, he wrote I'm gonna tell you the year he wrote it after
I read it because of what it says. So basically, synthesize what the
Federalist was communicating to the following propositions.
Quote, no happiness without liberty, no liberty without self
government, no self government without constitutionalism, no constitutionalism without
morality, and none of these great goods without
stability and order, period. And,
I have a a little arrow I drew, and then I said the moral
architecture of a well ordered society. That's
what stability means. And so for me, it's
perfectly accurate except that he doesn't begin with morality. Okay?
He began with something that antedated morality, but to
me, they go hand in hand. It's the function of
government to produce stability and order via
because he will because he will exploit the people
he is supposed to be protecting and whose rights he is supposed to be
vindicating rather than, doing his
incompetency crisis. Why are we in it? Because our moral
structure as a society has collapsed. Not crumbled. It's
not crumbling. It collapsed. Okay? You make
a commitment. You have no idea if anyone will see it through. Okay? It doesn't
matter if it's marriage. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, economic. I have a
family member who, lost his job recently and who was saying,
you know, originally, they told me, oh, you have this contract. It's for a year.
And then they told me, oh, well, we we made a mistake,
so you're down at the end of the month. And I said to myself, I'm
I'm an attorney, and I draft contracts, and I've advised
people on how to I've advised employers on how to lay people off blah blah
blah. That just doesn't sound right as soon as I hear it.
It's because if you have a contract, you have a enforceable commitment. It's
enforceable in court. Okay? That's the function of it. I will do
this in exchange for that. We sign, and then we're held to what we agreed
to. Right? Well, that's not happening. You
know? So he's made to just go find other work. To me that
smacks of incompetence. But to me that smacks of incompetency.
That smacks of being incompetent at a moral
level. Yeah. But I'm I'm right. So
if it's on a moral level, I would just
relabel it and I would just say, you know, this is the
antithesis of loving your neighbor. Okay? Right. What is justice
loving your neighbor? What happened to him? He's not loving your neighbor.
Okay? How do we get out of an
incompetency crisis? You gotta love your neighbor. And, yes, that sounds
corny. It is certainly basic. It works.
Okay? Because if you wanna see a stable society, and we
have enough recent stable societies,
even if we limited ourselves to the United States of America, which I
don't, We can find enough
examples of far more stable societies recently,
than our own. And when you ask yourself, well, what what characterizes
those societies? There's a variety of behaviors, but they all fall
well under the heading, well, you love your neighbor. So, you know,
take strangers. And I personally don't think that even most,
certainly not you know, I I think it's very few of these, you know,
legions of little brown people coming across the border. I
think most of them are not going to commit other crimes than what I just
described. To me, that's pretty straightforward. That's not why they're
sent here. Okay? But,
how they are received is a measure of the moral
standing and the more the morality of the society
that receives them. Do you receive strangers well or do you not? Read Deuteronomy.
It talks about how to treat strangers. I mean, you don't even have to
leave the decologue, okay, which the state of Louisiana is trying to
return to schoolrooms. Fine. Read it. My issue
not an issue. I just hope they understand
that God's words will bear witness against
them when they don't do them, when he shows up to judge
this nation. That's what I hope they understand. That's what
they're trying to put. Okay. Great. You're gonna put it on the
wall. Awesome. Just remember, you're bearing
witness against yourself. You would do better if you
tried to actually do them, And if you
did, starting in your homes, you wouldn't have to put them on the wall.
If it's in your hearts, it doesn't have to be on the wall. It's on
the wall because it's not in your hearts. It's on the wall because you're trying
to get the attention of someone in whose heart it is not. Oh, okay.
But how did it originally get your attention? Was it because it was on a
wall, or is it because of the person who taught you, because she
loved and cared for you, was patient and yet disciplined
you, and then you learned?
It's his kindness that leads us to repentance.
Not thus
said the law. That sound like you're off the list or
what? Okay.
Voting harder will not save us. Voting won't save
us. Yeah. Remember I talked about community?
Sure. The thing that is an issue, it's not
the 12 to 20% in the middle. It's community.
The whole thing is right now in play. And our ability
to foster, pun intended, to foster
and nurture and grow and protect, yes.
But, to to to
inspire vibrant,
self sustaining communities. That's the real challenge of today.
Because if we get that right, we can sort out the state. If we get
that wrong, even if the state starts functioning brilliantly
because they replace the incompetent people with robots. Okay?
Okay. If community is nonexistent because
it's collapsed, we got a problem. Okay? We got a problem. Well, the
robots the robots won't be lives on a ranch in Texas and
produces all his own food and all his own firearms and all his
own ammunition. Even that person has a problem. What happens
when your daughter then is bored and wants to go out on Friday night?
Are you gonna build a disco on your on your ranch too and then, you
know, invite whom? I don't know because there who does she have friends like that?
That whole model doesn't work. It
doesn't work. You need society. You
need community. You're part of it. Work
on fostering one relationship
at a time, you know, communities. And when you're in them, I mean, the rules
are straightforward. It's literally the second half of the deck log. So
Literally. Don't murder your neighbors. Don't sleep with their
wives. You made commitments. Good. Keep them. Keep the
commitments. Okay? But if we but if we've lost follow the
James Brown rule. Do you know the James Brown rule? What's the James Brown rule?
Do you know the do you know the James Brown the James Brown number one
law of capitalism should be the James Brown rule. Okay?
Quote, the way I like it is the way it
is. Hey. I got mine. Don't worry
about his. Is that not
the 10th commandment as it were? Or Well, it is these days.
Yes. And that is the
and I said this already, and and we got around the corner here. I said
this already. We have lost that
Christian assumption that Hamilton and Madison
and Jay and Jefferson and Washington,
even going out to people who presidents and
leaders who were not the founding fathers. Right?
Mhmm. Even a leader as and he
wasn't terrible, but many people in the modern conception
of of what a leader should be think that he was Andrew Jackson.
Even that guy from Andrew Jackson to
Abraham Lincoln to, I would assert it probably the
wheel started falling off with the wheel started falling
off of the, off of the, of the moral
cart with, with Woodrow Wilson.
But and maybe even Teddy Roosevelt there. I have my questions about
Teddy, o t r. But, the point is up
until a certain point in our history, there was
an assumption about a shared moral order. And the
constitution was built on top of that set of assumptions. Those assumptions were not
questioned. They were not deconstructed.
I fundamentally believe, because I do believe we are at the end of the 4th
turning. We've gone through the period of deconstruction. We've gone through
almost now a 125 years of
deconstruction. Mhmm. We've been in a we haven't been in
a competency crisis that has lasted 40 years or 30 years. We've
been in a competency crisis that started a 125
years ago and now is reaching its peak. It's reaching
its, apotheosis. It's it we were at the
peak of the incompetency crisis because those robots you talked about,
the AI that drives those robots isn't being created, isn't being programmed
by competent people. It's being programmed by ideologues. This is
what Elon Musk, to bring him up a second time, objects to.
His object to open AI doesn't object to them building the AI.
He objects to the fact that the AI is captured by the woke, as he
puts it, woke mind virus.
That's what he objects to. He wants AI.
He just wants it built written by built by people. He will never say
this, but he wants it built by people who have a Christian conception of the
world. Mhmm. Mhmm. That's what he wants.
Richard Dawkins just recently within the last couple of months came out and
said, you know, I think I'm a cultural Christian.
Okay, Richard. Alright then. That's that's
fine. That's fine. You you I remember I remember as the kids say
these days, I have the receipts. I have the receipts on you, Richard, from 25
years ago when you wouldn't debate Doug Wilson. And by
the way, your buddy Christopher Hitchens went and did debate
Doug Wilson and said about Doug Wilson, and I quote,
that guy is a theologian is the most dangerous Christian I know because he knows
my arguments better than I know my own arguments, close quote.
Dawkins wouldn't even go in the room with a theologian
of that caliber. So I'm not buying so much
that he's a Christian. I'm buying more so
that he looks around at what's happening in England and in Europe and may
at some point rise on the shores of America
and goes, I don't want the Islamic fundamentalists to keelhaul me.
That's why he's betting on Christianity.
Mhmm. Yep. Voting harder will
not save us. There are people who appeal to
want to appeal to the constitution. And you you you said the
constitution is still robust. It's still a robust document. It still
works.
Yep. Is the Constitution this is this is sort of our
last question. Is is is looking at the Constitution
more critically or even just using it the way it's supposed
to be used and really hewing to that, is that the
last ball work
against incompetency? Is that the last savior,
such as it were small s of the American Republic? And
if that goes, is it done? Oh,
thank god. No. No. The last bulwark is truth.
And, it's it's loss of that
where all of a sudden you you cut the anchor cords and now we're just
drifting. Drifting toward rocks and then anarchy and
oblivion. Truth. And what's awesome
is any individual who decides they want to
save our society can't. You just begin in your own life,
and, literally, you love your neighbor. And you get on your knees
before God, you recognize that you can't, that you need his help, and he
will then intervene and do what he does.
What is interesting to me is both both great
presidents, Jefferson and Lincoln, One of them, I think,
post his presidency and the other in his second inaugural. What
they were evoking wasn't a Judeo Christian framework
of rules about a society. It was the actual presence of an
actual being who is going to show up for
judgment. And what's fascinating is,
that I think each of them justifiably was afraid.
And so, anyway, anyone who
wants to reform our society can begin with him or herself
and, you know, love your neighbor, keep your commitments, build community where
you're at, and wait for,
wait for governors or to put it
differently, democrats, small d, vote for people who are gonna take
that new ethos into government. One of the most important
calls in our nation's history was Kennedy's,
the uncle of the guy who's still running for president as
far as I know and still has no secret service
protection as far as I know? No. He got that, actually. He talked to Trump
for 45. No. He he got he got that from he got that. He talked
to Trump for 45 minutes, and then Trump talked to Biden after the assassination the
failed assassination. He finally got it? RFK finally got it. Yep. Mhmm.
Oh, praise God. Because it's just anyway, but it it was scandalous. End of
story. It was just it was scandalous. For anyone
else running with the profile he had, I think it
would have been scandalous. But certainly for him, who he is, who his father
was, who his uncle was. Anyway.
But, JFK's call
to a new
commitment to serving, our
neighbors by working in government, that's going
to be needed at some point because we're going to need competent
people who care about the country and not their pension and not money and not
these things, who are going to do government work, who are going
to spend adulthoods, who are going to spend
their most fertile and productive years serving
us. Okay? And then need to be taken
care of when they retire the way we we take care of of retirees. This
is going to be needed because it's not merely a
question of new blood. It's a question of new
wine and new wine skins. That's what's coming. It's just not there yet. I
think the foundation of, stable, healthy,
peaceful communities need to be created first. You know,
it's interesting because one of the there's a crisis,
as you know, in law enforcement in strange parts of the
country, not always in the former Confederacy, but strange parts of the
country, a crisis in law enforcement when it comes to
black men and us being killed unjustly.
And so one of the solutions it only takes a
generation. One of the solutions is, hey. You know, we obviously have zero problem churning
out all these football players, who do not go to the NFL, who don't
become defensive linemen and get paid 1,000,000,
but they're still 64300 and run really freaking fast. Well, you need to
become a policeman, son. You need to become a policeman in your
community. And then when you see a large
black man, you know it means safety and security,
period. Without question. That's the first idea
everyone's mind because you're the policeman. And,
of course, this is happening. It's happening throughout the country anyway. But what I'm talking
about is a generational commitment like that,
and it's a whole new ballgame. It's a whole new ballgame.
But it will take sacrifice. Okay? There you cannot build community without sacrifice. It
doesn't happen. Just you can't build a strong marriage without sacrifice. You can't
raise your children well without you sacrificing your time, your money, your efforts.
You cannot build community without sacrifice. But
we shouldn't be surprised. I mean, god didn't build a people
without sacrifice. He sacrificed his son. So
he gets it. Build that community. Build
it where you're at. One of the advantages of people relocating
throughout the country over the past, like, 15 years,
on ideological grounds more than other grounds is that
you should now find yourself in a community you actually like and care about rather
than the one you just happen to have been born in with horrible weather, etcetera.
Build that community. Rebuild that community. Make it strong. Volunteer.
You know? Help out with Little League, with soccer, with whatever. Get to know your
neighbors. Have them over just because they're your neighbors. Be
kind, do these things. And then
when the storms come, stand fast.
And with that May God return the right.
And with that, I'd like to thank Dorollo Nixon Junior
for coming on the Leadership Lessons for the Great Books podcast all
this month. We're gonna give him the next
11 months off when history will still be
happening. And he will come back with more words of
wisdom or leaders here who are reading the great
books, including the Federalist Papers and
others. And, of course,
with that, well, we're
out.