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The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers - What Lies at the Bottom of Our Constitutional Order w/Dorollo Nixon
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Jesan Sorrells and Dorollo Nixon, Jr. examine the foundational debates framing citizenship, rights, and law in the United States through readings from The Federalist Papers and recent (2026) Supreme Court case analysis. They discuss the evolving meanings of “a more perfect union,” birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, Fourth Amendment protections in the digital age, and the challenges of culture and authority facing contemporary American leadership. Supreme Court rulings on mass migration, surveillance, and biological reality take center stage as turning points shaping the future of the republic and the prospects for building strong, resilient communities.
- Book Title: The Federalist Papers
- Author: Alexander Hamilton (and others)
- Guest Names: Jesan Sorrells, Dorollo Nixon, Jr.
05:31 Founders' views on human nature
11:34 Birthright citizenship and legal debates
20:44 Discussing elite influence on legislation
26:21 Justice Jackson's modern writing style
30:38 Discussing Virginia Convention Amendments
35:27 Discussion on privacy rights
43:59 Justice Frankfurter's memoirs discussion
49:47 Discussing crime and lack of protests
52:08 Artificial intelligence and tech giants
01:01:16 Judicial tenure and good behavior
01:03:43 Discussing Supreme Court cases and biological reality
01:08:41 Worldviews and legislative influence
01:16:14 Christian communities and leadership dynamics
01:22:57 Social media spectacle and republic concerns
01:29:37 Building Community and Support Systems
01:30:40 Discussing what America is not
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- Opening theme composed by Felipe Sarro - Bach - Silotti - "Air" from Orchestra Suite No. 3, BWV 1068
- Closing theme composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast, episode number
196, with Dorollo Nixon.
In 3, 2, 1.
Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and
this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast,
episode number 196, And
96. We are wandering
delicately through a very, very hot summer where I am
living towards our big 200th
episode. Here we still are in the month of July,
though. And, before we get to that big 200th episode, and,
well, we're going to pick up kind of right
where we left off with a reading today
from the Federalist Papers. Number 23,
written by Alexander Hamilton. And I
quote, the necessity of a Constitution, at
least equally energetic with the one proposed, to the preservation of
the Union, is the point at the examination of
which we are now arrived. This inquiry will naturally
divide itself into 3 branches: the objects to be provided for by a federal government,
the quantity of power necessary to the accomplishment of those objects,
the persons upon whom that power ought to operate.
Its distribution and organization will be, will more properly claim our
attention under the succeeding head.
The principal proposes to be answered by union are
these. The principal purposes to be answered by union are these:
the common defense of the members, the preservation of the public peace, as well as
against internal, uh, convulsions as external attacks,
The regulation of commerce with other nations and between the states.
The superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign
countries. The authorities essential to
the common defense are these: to raise armies, to build and equip fleets, to prescribe
rules for the government for both, to direct their operations,
to provide for their support. These powers ought to exist without limitation
because it is impossible to foresee to define the extent and variety of
national exigencies and the correspondent extent
and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.
The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason,
no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to
which the care of it is committed. This power ought to be
coextensive with all possible combinations of such circumstances.
and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are
appointed to preside over the common defense.
This is one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced mind,
carries its own evidence along with it and may be obscured but
cannot be made plainer by argument or reasoning. It
rests upon axioms as simple as they are universal.
The means ought to be proportioned to the end, The persons
from whose agency the attainment of any end is expected
ought to possess the means by which it is to be attained.
Whether there ought to be a federal government entrusted with the care of the common
defense is a question in the first instance open to discussion, but the moment
it is decided in the affirmative, it will follow that the government ought to be
clothed with all the powers requisite to complete execution
of its trust. And unless it can be shown that the
circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within
certain determined limits, unless the contrary of this position can be
fairly and rationally disputed, it must be admitted as a
necessary consequence that there could be no limitation of that
authority, which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community
in any manner essential to its efficacy. That is,
in any manner essential to the formation, direction or
support of the national forces.
But of course, as Hamilton himself even pointed out,
we're going to disagree even about
that. In the course of the last
250 years as a nation, We the people
of the United States have argued, fought, disagreed, and
clashed over what exactly the opening lines of the US
Constitution, which Hamilton was seeking to defend there in the
Federalist Papers, and which the Anti-Federalists, who we're
also gonna talk about today, were seeking to
knock down. These terms, right, the opening
lines of the US Constitution, we've been arguing over what these actually mean.
And just so that you have a reminder, here are those opening lines. We the
people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union. The sweep of such a
statement is breathtaking in its assumption that perfection can be
formed, achieved, and at the furthest end assured
for posterity. But the founders
who put together the Constitution, some of whom also put together the
Declaration of Independence, believed
exactly that. Hmm.
As Hamilton talked about in that example that I read from the Federalist Papers about
national defense, to get to perfection, we need to tacitly agree
on some foundational precepts, not only about reality, but
also about the nature of agency, autonomy, coercion, freedom,
and in the last order, responsibility and accountability.
Those areas don't determine where rights come from. They
emanate from an Almighty God. But those areas do
determine just how far fallen human beings can advance who are tragically flawed,
deeply sinful, and fundamentally in rebellion
against all manner of circumstances and
realities. The reason the US
Constitution and the arguments around its meaning matter is because the founders
understood the fundamental psychology that theology and orientation of
other humans in a way that other revolutionaries who have followed in their
significant wake, from Rousseau to Marx
to Lenin to Pol Pot to even Saddam Hussein, have
missed and will always miss.
I quote from the second generation of founders,
the great Henry Clay, this piece.
To keep in mind as we have our conversation today.
Nothing human is perfect. Do not reject the practicable
in the idle pursuit after the unattainable.
Let us imitate the illustrious example of the framers of the Constitution
and always remember that whatever springs from man partakes of
his imperfections. Close quote.
Leaders, today we are going to talk about how to
create a more perfect union, not only
through partaking of imperfections, but also through
clashes and compromise.
And we are going to do this today through the lens of, as we usually
do during this time in July, like we did last year, we're going to do
this through the lens of looking at some Supreme Court
decisions that recently came down. And we're going to talk about
how these interact with ideas that were explored in the Federalist
Papers and in the Anti-Federalist Papers with
our usual guest in the month of July. Uh,
previous guest, by the way, on this show, Libby Unger, said, and I
quote, I don't wanna be on in July. That's
DiRollo's month. So we
give it to, and we open with And we welcome back to the show,
after talking about the Declaration of Independence, a good friend of the show,
our co-host today, DeRollo Nixon Jr.,
Esquire. How you doing today, DeRollo?
Oh, no audio.
Excellent, excellent, excellent. Yes, doing great.
Happy to be here. Happy to be here.
So let's talk a little bit about the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship. Let's
open up with that one. The Supreme
Court came down in Trump v. Barbara
that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or
temporarily present are, quote unquote, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and
are citizens of birth under the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause.
This one created a lot of consternation, Darrell,
because it is, it is about the franchise and how the franchise
spreads and opens in ways that even Jefferson could not have
predicted, nor Hamilton, nor John Jay, nor any of those guys.
Right. And so, The Civil War,
which of course instigated the creation of the 14th Amendment, because
after you win a civil war, what to do with the loser's property, which is
now no longer a property, but is actually now going to be, going to be
looked at as human beings, really does begin to
sort of shift around your conception of what the franchise actually really
means, not only at a psychological and at a cultural level, but also at a
political and social level. And so The 14th
Amendment did little at a cultural level, but at a
political level, it created this whole new
band of people called citizens that, again, had previously been
property. However, citizenship is not
merely a political act. It's also a cultural one. And
some people in our country, some parties in our country get that. Other
parties in our country seem to not understand the question. So
talk a little bit about birthright citizenship.
Talk a little bit about anchor babies for those of us who don't know what
that means. And what exactly will the Supreme
Court's— where exactly, in your opinion, as a barrister
of the court, where will the Supreme Court's
decision ultimately lead? Because I have some thoughts on this myself, but this was a
big one from the Supreme Court this session.
Oh, let's try one more time.
Can you hear me now? Yes, go.
Y-M-C-A. Yeah, that one I figured out. That was because I turned
my head, because my
laptop, uh, included
non-directionally sensitive mic
likes to do funny things, and DeRollo likes to talk with his hands.
And be loud. So, yes, Trump v.
Barbara. It's an interesting decision.
Interesting in the Chinese sense, right? May you live in
interesting times. It's an interesting decision. Yeah.
It did have a clear majority, barely, that basically said
birthright citizenship, that that rule was
ancient. That it was still in vigor in the United
States, and that it encompassed people, including the
children of illegal immigrants,
regardless of duration. My understanding is also regardless of duration
of the illegality. And so 40 years here, for
whatever reason, came as babies, then they meet, have a kid.
That child is a citizen, meaning the child
who's DNA has been here for almost half a century,
as well as
tourists, right? Birth tourists, mothers, as
I know Justice Alito addressed in his dissent, who show up
lawfully, right? But in his view, not subject to the
jurisdiction of the United States, and then have, you know, a child
and then turn around and go back to pick a country. He picked one.
I'm not going to, you pick that country, uh, because it could be any country.
It's irrelevant. It's that the mother was lawfully admitted into the
United States as a tourist, and so it's a temporary stay.
Um, there's zero intention, at least
without subterfuge, there is zero intention of remaining
permanently, right? Mm-hmm. Or the tourist visa would not have been granted.
And so there you are, and then she shows up. Hi, by the way, I'm
9 months pregnant. Bada bing, there you go. Let's go back home because now
you've got your citizenship and we can go. You know, we have our birth certificate,
we're outie, you know, and it's just like, no, no.
What surprised me the most in terms of arguments that I did
not expect was Justice Kavanaugh's, right?
Mm-hmm. Who agreed with the result because he thought
that the executive order went too far based on what Congress had
passed in 1940 and then in 1952,
and that apparently the executive branch always cites when it's doing enforcement,
or related immigration activities.
Okay. Section 1401, I believe, of
8 USC. So the U.S. Code, Title 8.
And so he believes that all Congress needs to do is
change the law. And changing the law is obviously much
easier than changing the Constitution. It was designed to be difficult to change the
U.S. Constitution. So I find it interesting that for him, And
of course, you know, with the way the votes came down, you
know, one more justice on the
side of, yeah, birthright citizenship, for
whatever rationale, should not expand to include people
who are not here lawfully or
who came here under different auspices,
you know. Mm-hmm. I think he would be in favor of that. And so,
you know, that's, that's kind of exciting. It's kind of
exciting. One of the things that I thought is,
that is pregnant in the circumstances,
right, is that we're in an era of mass immigration. Mm-hmm.
It's a 21st century phenomenon. And Europe, of
course, has been swamped with mass immigration for
decades. And the United States had a
moment when we were, and thankfully under President
Trump, lots of that has diminished, right? Mm-hmm. But there was
mass— what do they call it? Mass migration. Excuse me, that's the word, mass
migration. Because migration just means movement of peoples, right? It's the
movement of some set of people. And
they're not necessarily coming over through the
lawful points of entry. And so that's why I like migration better,
because, you know, very many people do and very many people don't. Great.
And so, um, the use of mass migration
as a cultural force to
basically drown a host culture, Mm-hmm.
I just think is, is not just true, but you can
find historic examples that show that. And so,
you know, I don't, I don't know what he's saying. Certainly on this show, nobody
is saying, hey, you oppose this, you're racist.
No, no. Yet, you know,
race doesn't play into it in the sense that
it doesn't matter where the origin of the mass migration was
and thus what the people look like. It's if you look at the host
culture, the host nation, And then you watch what
happens when all of a sudden there's all of these people coming
over the border. It's just like, this is how you can lose
your identity. It's how you can lose your, the integrity of your
culture, right? And so I think
those of us who love America and
love our culture recognize that we've been welcoming of
immigrants from the beginning. And of course there's an asterisk
and then there's a footnote there. Right. And I know some of the
justices dealt well with both of those points. Okay.
The asterisk refers to, well, if you look at the First Immigration Act from
1790, it literally was limited to freeborn white persons. Mm-hmm.
Right. So we've always welcomed immigrants. We have not always welcomed immigrants from everywhere.
We have always welcomed transatlantic immigrants coming over the North
Atlantic only. Got it. Okay. At the same time,
there's a footnote because that was not occurring. And I know Justice
Alito dealt with this. That was prior to the
age of mass migration. And not just that, prior to the age
of modern or contemporaneous— no, not
contemporaneous, modern global tourism
on the cheap, you know, something that didn't really start until the 1970s,
right? Deregulation, certainly in the United States,
deregulation of Air transport is what
produced the environment we have now, where if I want to go to Paris from
Phoenix, Arizona, and I want 2 stopovers, it's not even
going to cost me $500 one way. Wonderful. Yeah, that didn't exist,
you know, prior to the 1970s. It cost a lot of money. And
certainly prior to air travel, ship, shipborne travel costs
a lot of money. There weren't that many tourists. There weren't that many de Tocquevilles,
right? Right. Yeah. And the Crèvecoeurs, there
weren't that many of them. You know, there were many more Thomas Paines. Okay, he
was going one way and that was it. And he was intending to remain
and get enfranchised and do his thing. And that's a, that's a beautiful thing. And
I think our country is better because of it. But anyway, that's what the footnote
is about. You know, this is prior to modern
global tourism, let alone, you know, this
era of mass migration where whole populaces
are trying to move like Les Helvètes did. Yeah.
in the Gaul that Julius Caesar was about to conquer.
And he put a stop to their migration. Right. So, so
every country in the history of the world has determined who gets to be in
their borders and who doesn't, who gets to be, to your point about Rome,
who gets to be Roman, to your point about Germany, who
gets to be German. Every country in the history of the world has gotten, has
had the opportunity to decide who gets to be a member
of that nation state. And that was back when we had a more
robust, particularly at the elite levels, a more robust
appreciation for nation states and for,
quite frankly, nationalism. Ever since World War II,
there has been a declining interest among the elites who make our laws
and who determine our policies. You talk
about the US Code. The elites who put together that code,
maybe not in the 1940s, maybe not in the 1910s, maybe not
even the 1920s. The elites 100 years later in
2026, they don't view nationalism in the
same way that you and I do who actually live on the ground
in nation states with specific cultures, with a
specific mindset, with a specific set
of variables that we can identify as being
Italian or German or, or, or
English or Canadian or, or, you know, United States of
America. Right. And America gets
hoisted by its own petard because in the early part of the
20th century, we decided, thank you, Emma Goldman,
that we were going to be a nation of immigrants because of that damn,
the damn wording on the frickin Statue of Liberty that, by the way, is not
in the Constitution and is not in the Declaration of Independence. It's not in the
founding documents. It's not part of the founding documents. It's part of the— it's a
freaking thing etched. I've seen it on the Statue of Liberty. I've been there.
It's at freaking Ellis Island. It was one moment in time. And yet we are
hoisted by our own petard consistently because of that language
by elites who
look at one mass of people in one country as the
same as another mass of people in another country.
That's the problem we've got to fix, is the elite thinking
and the capture of the institutions, right, that
these people are engaged in. Because just, just one Supreme
Court ruling— and this is where you get to Brett Kavanaugh now—
Brett Kavanaugh knows that changing the law is easier than changing the Constitution
because the elite capture all the way up and down the
block, even in the United States. Is too hard to
overcome to change the Constitution.
He believes it would be easier to change the law. Me personally,
and this is where I, I, I will now reveal what I'm thinking about this.
When I heard about this, this decision, I, I immediately thought, well,
the Supreme Court continues its path
that it has been on for the last, I would say, 5 to 10 years
of kicking things back to the legislature. And literally saying
to the second branch of government, stop being social media
influencers and fundraising honeypots and do your—
pardon my word, pardon my use of the term— do your friggin job.
Stay in Washington, D.C. where it's 110 degrees and
legislate. Stop sending us up this
garbage to deal with. The Supreme Court has been consistently saying
this in ruling after ruling, except for cultural ones. And we'll get into that
later on here today. But it's been saying that pretty much in ruling
after ruling. You see this in, in West
Virginia versus Chevron last year that we talked about with the
EPA. You're seeing this now with the 14th Amendment, with the 14th Amendment,
Trump v. Barbara. You're seeing that with this. They are yelling at the
legislative body to do its job. And yet
we're all on Mitch McConnell death watch.
Like, that's our greatest thing to do. Or like, what is— I know Marjorie Taylor
Greene isn't in the Congress anymore, but like, what's— who's doing what on
Instagram? Ooh, who did Nancy Mace burn on Instagram?
Ooh, Thomas Massie really got a good one on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
This is what we're— or Graham Plantner with his Nazi tattoo, like, on—
in friggin', you know, Maine. This is the garbage that the legislature is
consumed with. So I guess the question becomes really for for
us, not at a cultural level, although there's a lot of cultural
stuff in there. At a legal level, how do we change
the law? How do we get the legislature to pay attention enough, get its
head out of Instagram and start being
an actual legislative body? How do we return to that?
As a person, as a person who's ran for a legislative body, DiRollo,
I put that to you. How do we return to that? Because that's the only
way we're going to solve this. birthright citizenship problem.
I think Kavanaugh's right. It may not be the only way to
solve the citizenship issue,
but, you know, it would certainly be
easier getting the institutions out of the
hands of—
they're not out-of-touch elitists,
right? They know what they're doing.
It's disingenuous to represent them that way. They're not out of touch. They
believe they have the right to tell us how to— how we're going to live.
They're in touch with the wrong things. Yes. And they, and they don't, they don't
have a problem making the decisions that show that they could care less
about our liberties and our rights. And so I
don't believe that changes until, one,
we found new institutions on Older
principles that have, you know, stood the test of time. 2,
we then begin to be selective in whom we elect,
right, to choose non-elitists. I'll give a little
microcosm of how it could look that would be really strange when you think about
it and kind of scary. But I mean, I think liberty is worth it.
If you look at statistics on
where Supreme Court justices went to college,
right? And/or to law school.
There's an enormous amount of them who went to Harvard, Yale, and
almost nowhere else. And so can you imagine if
you had a president, and let's make it
not so contentious, in 15 to 20 years, and his
or her job was, you know, included nominating, say,
5 justices. Okay. Because at that point, it's possible
that several of them could, could have died or could die. So
imagine if that president said, I'm going to
intentionally select people who did not go to Harvard or Yale,
who never taught at either of those.
Here we go. And then we'd have someone from UC Davis, someone
from Emory, somebody from University of Michigan or wherever, and all the—
or from Rutgers, you know, my law school. So then it's like, okay,
Now, I had to put that plug in. Now it's like, okay, you know,
how would our jurisprudence depart from
its current, you know,
sclerotic trenches, you know, where even
the mud is frozen? How could it get out of there into living
channels again? Right. Where
there's a relatability, a vibrance, a
relatability by the average citizen and a vibrancy to the decisions that makes sense. Okay.
My worry about reading somebody like Justice Jackson's
opinions, okay, somebody like her whose politics I disagree
with, whose cultural and
social framing of the American experiment I disagree with, right,
is when I read her writing, the way
she writes and the types of works she
cites, that it's very contemporaneous. Okay, so
in other words, It seems more living versus somebody
where I understand what he's writing, and I won't name the justice. I
understand what he's writing about because this is what I do for a living, right?
I'm a federal trial lawyer. I deal with this stuff. You know, in fact,
I have a motion I have to defend against where it's going
to turn on, you know, what Congress decided, you know, in 1945 and
then later on in 1989. And it's just like, this is— 1988, excuse
me. This is, this is what I do for a living. So
I understand this. But the problem is, if I leave my office and walk down
the hall, and the woman who's working there in the HR
company, right, if she doesn't understand it, now we have a problem.
Okay? Because then if she does not
understand justice where I agree with the views, but does understand justice
where I think that her whole point of view is
off, then only one of them she's going to be listening
to because she can't understand the first person, you know. And
so I think about that. But, you know, it's part
and parcel of the same type of thinking which
says, oh, entrenched elites, how do we get rid of them? They're in our
institutions. So found new institutions.
And then actively make choices to deselect the elitists and then
to select the people who aren't elitists. And of course,
it's going to take some flexibility. It's going to take some
tolerance, right? But, um, I don't
see another way other than a mass revival. I
don't see another way to— which I can't procure.
Um, so other than that, I don't see a way
to have the elites owning and running our
country, right? Begin to say
every single one of these citizens has the same rights and liberties,
and my job is to defend them. Okay,
great. So how do we do that? There's
certain things to do that could
help the process, or they could just, you know, carry out
that mandate. And I just don't— I don't see that happening.
Without, you know, reseeding,
replanting, and growing healthy trees,
right? Because a good tree, as you know, is known by
its fruit, because a good tree can only produce good fruit, and an evil tree
can only produce evil fruit. So now we have an evil tree producing evil fruit.
Okay, cut it down and burn it and found some new trees, and
then we're gonna have a nice forest where things function the way they do. Yeah.
You know, for the— Well, let me, let me— okay,
so that's a good, that's a good segue into this next piece. So there was
another, uh, decision
that came down this summer from the Supreme Court,
um, Shachry versus the United States 609, right,
where the court held something. And I'm going to go to this
because this, this relates directly to to something else that did not
exist in the, in the 18th
century. It goes directly to,
well, something else that didn't exist in the 18th century that we're dealing with now.
So it's not just mass migration. It's also, it's also our technological
wizardry that is killing us. So there were
several proposed amendments, right, by the Anti-Federalists, additions
proposed to the US Constitution by the
Virginia Convention. And it was a proposed Bill of Rights on June
27th, 1788.
And there were a few of these that I think would jump out at you.
For instance, the Virginia Convention proposed that there should be an
amendment that stated the following, that there are certain natural rights of which
men, when they form a social compact, cannot deprive or
divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment
of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing, and
protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and
safety. They were not Marxists, by the way,
folks. Second Amendment that was
proposed, that all power is naturally invested in and consequently
derived from the people, that magistrates therefore are their
trustees and agents, and at all
times amenable to them. Speaking of DiRollo's last point
there. And then this other amendment, which
relates directly to what we're about to talk about,
that every free man— this is from the Virginia folks— that every free man
has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches and seizures
of his person, his papers, and property. All warrants,
therefore, to search suspected places or seize any
free man, his papers, or property without information on oath
or affirmation of a person religiously scrupulous of taking an oath
of legal and sufficient cause are grievous and oppressive,
and all general warrants to search suspected places or to apprehend any
suspected person without specially naming or describing the
place or person are dangerous and ought not to be
granted. Close quote. That's from the Virginia
Convention, which of course this wound up
The language pared down quite a bit, but this wound up being the 4th
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
We have moved in the last 250 years to more and more of a
surveillance and data, data gathering, data tracking
panopticon, an environment that Thomas Jefferson
and Hamilton and Madison and Jay
at all would not have recognized. Matter of fact, they'd be shocked. at how much
we allow surveillance in our lives.
And this development, of course, metastasized and accelerated with
great haste between the twin monoliths of 9/11 and, of
course, your
friend and mine, that pandemic called COVID.
From license plate cameras to stoplights to apps in your phone needing
access to your camera and your microphone, for some odd reason to work,
we have surrendered more and more freedom of movement in favor of the freedom to
be quote unquote safe. Artificial
intelligence applications, of course, push this fact to the next logical level
and guarantee, or virtually guarantee, without robust
protection, that the citizens of the United States will wind up losing all of their
Fourth Amendment protections, or at least only keeping them if they
behave quote unquote correctly. as defined by elites
who are, to DeRolo's point, I'll grant him
this, who are focused on other things and fighting
other battles, not the ones we're fighting and
not the things we're focused on. So the
recent Supreme Court decision, Chatterjee versus the United States, the court
held that, quote, an individual has a reasonable expectation of
privacy in records about his cell phone's location. And the police
intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information,
even though for only a limited time. And by
the way, those are the 2 most important words, even though,
and, and from a third-party tech company. Now,
by the way, close quote. By the way, I was not a lawyer. I
never went to law school, but I do have a shockingly high level of reading
comprehension. And I do understand that, as I said,
even though and, and both separated by a comma, interestingly
enough, as DiRollo once told me, commas do make a difference,
does have incredible meaning and impact, this Supreme Court
decision. Matter of fact, I believe this decision is a
fundamental miracle in our time that is going to go
undiscussed and unrecognized.
I was shocked. when this came down.
Like, I thought, holy heck.
And I'll give a little background of the, of the story. So apparently, or the
case. So apparently an individual was not pulled
over, but there was some sort of legal incident with an individual. And
the individual's cell phone data was, was
desirous to be scraped by the local police.
And they, of course, went to Google and told Google, hey, unlock this
person's phone and scrape their information. And the person
sued them. And this went all the way up to, to the
Supreme Court, resulting in, resulting in this, this
conclusion, this case. Like I said, monumental,
because in my adult time, in the time that I've been adult, I turned
21 2 weeks after September 11th. In the years
since I have been an adult, there has been more and more
encroachment by And again, this is where the
comma and the and is important in this decision. Third-party
tech companies just working for the
government and pretending that there's some penumbra of
protection of Fourth Amendment rights of the individual, when in
reality that, that veil has long since
been shredded. There is no Fourth Amendment protection if the local
cops I read a story the other day about how local
cops, not in the area I live in, but somewhere in Texas,
were, were, were using license plate cameras to like go stalk
and harass people. This is happening.
This is a fundamental Fourth Amendment violation. And that's why this
decision is so tremendous. So, DiRollo,
how could people build on the miracle of this decision from the
Supreme Court and put more of the state back in the box on the Fourth
Amendment? And also put those private
organizations back in the box, too, because they like them and their 400
lawyers in a basement somewhere in Menlo Park are parsing
through this, trying to find ways to just continue giving information to
the government because the government is actually— the federal government is actually their
biggest, in some cases, their biggest customer
for data on you and I. Go ahead, Dorollo.
Yeah, no, it's a great decision.
There have been inroads made against the Fourth Amendment for
way, way, way, way, way too long on one side, on
one side. And then it was taken and people just ran with it. I mean,
that's how you got Roe, was abuses of the Fourth Amendment.
And it's tough in a sense when
you recognize here's a principle, or it must be tough because I've never been a—
well, have I been a judge? No, I've only had one quasi-judicial job.
where I was on a zoning board of appeals. But it's tough where
you can see the principle and you can see what you want to
hold, but the law is telling you otherwise. And so your
job then is to scream about it and then uphold the law.
And so it's tough. And so that was the position that Mr. William
O. Douglass— Mr. Justice William O. Douglass found himself in, in Griswold v.
Connecticut. I believe in 1965, when—
and Griswold Douglas, excuse me, he was a— he was a— Mr. Justice Douglas was
a real liberal. Okay. A guy living however he wanted,
like Walt Whitman. Okay. And that was
that. I mean, brilliant. Columbia Law School. That's probably
school number 3, right, for Supreme Court justices. But anyway,
Connecticut passed a law that prohibited even married couples
from using contraception or something like that. And on
constitutional grounds, though the document does not
mention sex or sexual relations, on constitutional
grounds, using the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court
overturned that. And Mr. Justice Douglas wrote that opinion, and that was the road
to Roe. And Roe would follow in less than 10 years based on the
same notion of privacy that can't be touched.
What bothered me on the other end, which is where we started, is that they
were actual tangible aspects of privacy that the amendment protects,
and they were just being ignored. Right. And
for me, the big— the real edema started
with the drug war. Right. Because that was the
justification for all of this increase in policing. And that was
also, you know, what the need was for. That's what created—
I mean, you've heard of the expression hot pursuit. It's coming out of the
jurisprudence where there's no warrant,
but you're chasing somebody. Oh, okay. So how
far can we go? Right? And it's just like, let's back up. Why are you
chasing somebody? Oh, it's because it's about drugs. Oh, okay. So
this is, this is what we owe our weakened— in
the contemporary context, what we owed our weakened
Fourth Amendment protections to was the
drug war. Okay. But anyway,
How do you build on this? Well, here's why.
Here's why. Because the drug war is now defunct. Like, right or left, I don't
care who you are. The drug war is now defunct. It's done. And
there's no— there's nobody who's reasonably— there's nobody
who's reasonably saying this is— no, I'll back up. I'll back up a step
even further. When the states are
legalizing weed, The drug war is over.
But that's just weed, you know, like— Doesn't matter. Drug war's over. What's gonna be
next? Is it gonna be heroin? I don't care. I do not care. It's
over. It's done. Let's all just declare that we lost and let's all just go
home. Sorry, Richard Nixon. It was an interesting
idea. And maybe when you— if you spent more time protecting cultural
morality around Christianity rather than worrying
about the federal government coming in And failing to recognize that there would be
secular people following you, maybe you would have had a better shot. But
you didn't. You just assumed that Christianity would just keep
going and Christian moral compass would just keep going. And that— have
you looked at the population of Colorado lately? That is not a
correct assumption. That is fundamentally incorrect.
So the drug war is
over and the Christians lost. The Christian worldview lost. It
lost on drugs. I don't know. You know, there's ways to fix it,
but it's not going to be in the law. It's going to be in the
culture. So let's declare the drug war officially done.
Let's put Fourth Amendment violations, search and seizure,
people's papers. What is it when they, when they
auction off, you know, the drug dealers' stuff that they find?
Asset seizures, asset forfeiture. I hate asset forfeiture. And
yes, I'm using the word hate. I very rarely use that on this show. I
have extremely strong opinions about asset forfeiture. I think it is fundamentally
a black eye on the republic
because you're in essence penalizing a person twice. First, you're
penalizing them criminally, which I'm all for. Fine, you want to give somebody—
and we could talk about maximum minimums and drug laws and that kind of stuff,
whatever— but you've already penalized them criminally.
And now you're going to penalize them civilly. And they can't even
defend themselves in that, in an asset forfeiture situation.
And by the way, this has nothing to do with whether or not I'm pro-drug,
anti-drug, any of that. This is just a violation of Fourth. I look at this
again as under the, under the entire tearing of the veil of
the Fourth Amendment. We have now wound up in this space with
asset forfeiture that now leads into a place where if
I don't take the COVID jab because some state doesn't
like it, they can seize my children and my property,
or even worse, we'll get to this in a
minute. If I don't agree that men can be women,
they could take my children away from me. As I'm looking at you, California.
That law passed. But we'll get to that in a second.
How do we put— how do we use this ruling? I keep going back to
this. How do we— because I think this is the beginning. This is like the
Chevron doctrine that got overturned. This is the beginning of
something, I think. Unfortunately, we have a legislature that doesn't legislate.
So how can we build on this?
Willing to— you can hear me, right? Yes. Excellent. You have to find a state
that is willing to recognize that people,
even potential criminals, have the right to
be secure in their persons, in their phones,
in their non-digital papers. Mm-hmm. And
that you just get probable cause, get a warrant. Great. That if you
back up, you will accomplish more and you will
accomplish— you can have
significant achievements that are defensible in
detail rather than just defensible in terms of numbers. Oh, I
took 1,000 perps off the streets, that, that's not
really meaningful without understanding how you
trampled on everybody else's rights in order to do that, right? That
there's some percentage of them that may not even be guilty at all, right? And
yet here they are because of what you guys were doing. Or is that just
tech manipulation? I don't know.
But I have a quote, and that's why I got up before. I haven't— being
an attorney, I have the memoirs of
former Justice Felix Frankfurter
in my office. And so towards the end of chapter
5, it's called Reminiscences.
Reminiscences. Felix Frankfurter Reminiscences.
What's tripping me up about the word is that there's a related word
that former General Douglas MacArthur used, right? I think
his is Reminiscences or something. Yeah, exactly. So this is what
he says towards the end of— at the end of chapter 5. He's
talking about his former boss who was the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York. And so that's the chief
federal prosecutor for Manhattan and the Bronx. That's what it means. Okay.
And it's interesting because he talked in this chapter, talked about immigration, talked about habeas
corpus. Okay. Talked about things that are still relevant today. Just
like they were relevant 400 years ago in England, you know, they're still
relevant today. Can the government arbitrarily keep you in
behind bars? Okay, but for how long? Like,
that's literally what they were dealing with then, what we're still dealing with more than
100 years later, right, from Frankfurter State. But this is what he said
about Henry L. Stimson. Okay, and I underlined it because
it stuck out because of my views on the Fourth Amendment. Okay.
He was rather austere is a little too strong. I'm sure
he must have had a good deal of influence on the exactions I make of
my young men, what my standards are. This was an incredibly
effective and wholly scrupulous man. When he
went out to raid a place with a
search warrant, not only wouldn't he do it
without a search warrant, But he'd send youngsters like me or
Tom Thatcher, with whom I shared a room, later Judge Thatcher,
to see to it that the raiding officers kept within the
limits of the search warrant. Hmm. Quote,
I'm quoting, but now I'm going to emphasize, okay, no
wiretapping was allowed during his whole
regime, period.
There you go. And so, yeah,
and I just, I wrote at the bottom of that page integrity, right?
This was a federal prosecutor who did his job, who did his job,
you know, with great integrity and
who knew here's a line and you don't cross that
line. More importantly, He knew as a
government official, here's a line beyond which we don't have
authority, we just have power. And that distinction has been
lost, right? So they have the power.
So the tech companies have the power to get this information.
They have the ability— they being the government— have the ability to ask,
hey, can we have this data? And because the tech companies aren't
necessarily run by patriots, I'll just leave that there. They have zero
problem turning over this data in whatever form and on whatever
volume. Right? Oh, it wasn't just one guy's data. It was a
million people's data. Yeah, but they were able to search and find this one
particular guy. Right. So it doesn't matter then. Okay. Mm-hmm. And
you knew that they would be able to do that anyway. But
that, you know, that there were scruples and that they
recognized, you know, U.S. Attorney Simpson did
that. Look, here's what we can't do. We can do
our jobs, we can get our wins, we'll have some losses, but we can still
get our wins. And do what we need to do
by keeping within our constitutional authority. Moreover, our
country's mission, okay, as this
arc of freedom, as this place where men can be
free, meaning they can exercise their liberties and own
property, and to do that under the
law is enabled and
encouraged and strengthened when we do this. And then when we
don't, I mean, are you really safe? I mean, were you going to be
mugged in East Germany? Were you going to be mugged in East Germany in
1970 when every other person was, was
informing to the Stasi? Right. Were you going to be mugged? Probably less
than Chicago. I don't want to live in Chicago. I'd
rather live in Chicago 7 days out of 7 than East Germany. Period.
Okay. Free and safe. Safe and
safety. But what does safety mean? You know,
what does safety mean? How safe are you
when the government has all the cards, when they have all the power, when they
can cancel you and take your property and take your kids
and keep you in jail on whatever pretext?
It frustrates me that people will
go— they will go to the mats to show up
and disrupt ICE. But they won't go to the
mats and show up and protest New York City just
releasing criminals left and right like it's normal. Like, oh,
this is your second murder this month, great, here you go on bail, whatever. And
it's just like, why aren't you showing up for that? Where are the protests
for that? And what will it take to get you there? Will it take
that it's somebody you love who's murdered, and then will you all of a sudden—
will the light bulb go on? That would be tragic. In several senses, if that
were the case. Um, but what would be more tragic
is if it never goes on, if the light bulb never goes on and you
just stay in the dark, totally comfortable
doing your thing and not understanding, hey, you're living in a
matrix and the reality is something else.
And, uh, you had a moment when you were exposed to the
reality and you just called it a glitch and you just kept going.
Hmm. And it's like, no, no. I mean,
what's that movie? I'm gonna find— I'll find it while you're
talking. Um, but
it's about— it's about somebody who got canceled, but this is
like 15 years before it was a thing. I think it's
a late '90s movie about, uh,
cancel US movie.
Where actress
canceled internet?
Nope, that's not even close. Oh yeah,
come on, Netflix must own that
algorithm
search. Speaking of the tech company, well, okay, so that's,
that's the other piece of this. So the tech companies, right?
Netflix, Amazon, um, Facebook,
Google, um,
the combined worth of which is well over that of a small
nation-state. Um,
they are worth trillions of dollars in the open market.
Their executives— go ahead. Got it.
Okay, what is it? The Net,
1995, y'all.
1995. It's 31 years old this year.
Starring the lovely Sandra Bullock. Sandra Bullock with that
girl from the bus, the movie about the computer with the girl from the bus
as what's his name said on— Frank Costanza
said on Seinfeld when he was going to open up a tech company in his
garage and get George to work for him.
That's right, he's gonna sell computers.
And George was like, you're gonna compete with Apple and
IBM and these big companies? Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, look, I, I, I,
I hate to say this, none of this is new. It's
just the technology has gotten better. And my concern with these
big trillion-dollar companies is they are
now all developing artificial intelligence. And
the thing that is being offered to us, the thing that is on
offer from these toys, is that we
will all be able to sit around and be, to your point earlier,
we will all sit around and be able to be safe. There will be universal
basic income that will come to us just magically out of the sky.
And all we have to do is interact with the
magical dictionary machine, the magical predictive
dictionary machine that will give us everything. And there
are enough— pardon my use of the term, folks, not anybody who listens to
this show, not anybody who's on this show, talk about other people—
there are enough fools in the world who will believe this. There's
never been a shortage of fools who believe that nonsense.
I think Fourth Amendment violations get to be more—
I think one or two things will happen. I think they will be harder to
identify. And I also think that they will be tougher
to stop when, when, when, because
right now artificial intelligence is in its early adopter era. Most
average people aren't interacting with AI in any
kind of meaningful way. And it's being imposed as a top-down
fiat from these organizations rather than as a bottom-up organic
thing the way the internet was. And top-down fiats and innovation never actually
work. They get abandoned unless, of course, there's a,
there's a pandemic or a war or
some other kind of thing that forces people to give up
their rights. Um,
I'll just ask you this follow-up question. Thoughts on AI? How does AI interact with
this? Do you— am I seeing this correctly, or am I totally out
the wazoo on this one?
Oh, oh, start again. Can you hear me?
Yeah, go ahead. Excellent.
YMCA, We Will Rock You. I'm just, you know,
songs from the '70s. Any of them? Yeah. You're gonna start off with
Bobby Blue Bland in a minute, and we're gonna all be in trouble.
Yes, AI can take it to a different level. And then what happens when,
you know, municipalities start adopting it to do other things? Like, what about when
it's just profiling people with data that municipalities collect? And
it's like, I know they made a movie about this. I think it starred Tom
Cruise, but where we're going to figure out in advance who's going to
commit crimes. Minority Report. Yep. And then it's like, all
right, so here we go. Boom. Um, pre-crime. Pre-crime. Yep.
Right. Because AI is that smart, right? Um, now there's
one really cool thing about it, and, um,
I'm trying to find a good reference, so I apologize for not having
it, but any Christian
What am I saying? It's 2026. Christians believe that God
is a Trinity— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I was going to refer to the
arguments people used to have, and it's like, stop, Derulo, it's 2026.
Less than 1% of people even know what you're talking about in that regard. So
just say it, say it. All right, so Father, Son, Holy Spirit. There's a,
there's a tech anti-Trinity, and all I
can remember is something like tech will save you as the
false savior, and I can't remember the other parts. But what
I like, in quotation marks,
meaning I don't really like it, I think it's horrible. It's just that it's
going— our giving ourselves this tech as if it's our savior is going
to bring humanity to a place where
humanity is then actually ready to recognize, wait a minute, that
was all a lie. And now we're worse slaves than we were before. We
need an actual savior who can come in and liberate us from this. Yeah. And
then it's like, there you go. So I can see it coming, you know, where
it's like, oh, but the tech is going to save us, you know, save us
from environmental disaster, from this, from whatever, you know.
And it's just like, stop, you know, read the Bible,
stop. Um, so on the environmental aspect,
I stopped my research right when I would find passages.
And the one that's of course coming in my spirit is from
I think it's from the Epistle to the Hebrews, but it talks about how the
Son of God is upholding the entire
universe with his word. And it's like, okay, I don't have to worry about the
earth if the entirety of creation is being upheld by a
word. A word. That's power and that's
authority. A word. Got it. Okay, so you're over
here trying to do your crusade to do whatever,
and of course Let me back up. I like recycling. I love
conservation because I love, I love the earth. I love hunting.
Okay. So it's just like, I understand that there are processes to follow
to better take care of the earth. And not just that, when you're abusing the
earth, you're actually sinning against the earth's creator, period. Okay. These are
Christian ideas. They're not new. Right. Go ask a farmer,
hey, what happens if we put all this crap in the water? Oh, that's horrible.
So what do you— right. They get it. They get it. Hunters get it. Hikers
get it. Campers get— we get it. Okay, I don't want to go camping in
the woods and here's your trash because you couldn't figure out how to use a
receptacle and recycle. I get it. Okay.
But, um, as you delve
more deeply into the enviro— and then sometimes literally
enviroterrorism, right? Just the way things go. Um, there's
something that is theological at its base. Oh yeah.
They're mislaying. Okay. Oh
yeah, where, uh, their theology is wrong. That's the problem, right? Or even
more accurately, their theology is satanic, and therefore they are
saying these things and doing these things that are negatively
impacting Imago Dei, but also the earth.
That's some of the irony of it, you know. It's just like the earth is
fascinating, like the human liver. Um, which of course you don't hear U.S.
doctors saying this, right? The, the human liver has this tremendous capacity to
heal itself. Oh yeah. It's kind of scary. Uh, and
the Earth has an even greater one. Just leave her alone, as it were, for
like 50 years and watch what happens. And so it's just like, oh, how do
we fix this? Leave it alone. No, just don't touch it. Just leave
the Earth alone and watch what hap— oh, look, renewal.
Uh-huh. Because there's something operating there.
a principle and things that are actually doing the principle
that will teach you if you're humble enough to listen. And if you're not, then
you're, you're going to be doing your crusade. Yay! You know, and it's just like,
no, you're doing your crusade, canceling investments,
um, creating state mandates to do things, you
know, doing an energy moratorium in a state that has tremendous
problems with energy infrastructure. That's you, New York. Right.
And it's just like, no, no, no, no, no.
When we look at all of these things, there's, there's one
other case I'd like to talk about
today, but I want to open up before we want to sort of introduce that
with some ideas that Hamilton has in the Federalist Paper number
78 about the
judiciary department and specifically about the character, I
believe it is. of the judiciary.
And I quote, we proceed now to an examination of the judiciary
department of the proposed government. In unfolding the
defects of the existing Confederation, meaning the Articles of Confederation,
the utility and necessity of a federal judicature have been clearly pointed
out. Is the less
necessary to recapitulate the considerations there urged as The
propriety of the institutions in the abstract is not
disputed. The only questions which have been raised being relative to the manner of
constituting it and to its extent. To these points, therefore, our
observations shall be confined.
First, as to the mode of appointing the judges, this is the same as that,
as with that, uh, as of appointing the officers of the Union in general, and
has been so fully discussed in the 2 last numbers that there is nothing that
can be said here which would not be useless repetition.
Second, as to the tenure by which the judges are to hold their places,
this chiefly concerns their duration in office, the provisions for their support,
and the precautions for their responsibility.
According to the plan of the convention, all judges who may be appointed to the
United States are to hold their offices during good behavior,
which is conformable to the most approved of the state constitutions.
and among the rest, that of this state. Its propriety, having
been drawn into question by the adversaries of that plan, is no light
symptom of the rage for objection which disorders their
imaginations and judgments. The standard of good behavior for the continuance in
office of the judicial magistracy is
certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government.
In a monarchy, it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince.
In a republic, it is a no less excellent barrier to the
encroachments and oppressions of the representative body,
and it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government to
secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration
of the laws. Whoever
attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive that in a government in
which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its
functions will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution,
because it will be the least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
The executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The
legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the
duties and rights of each, every citizen are to be regulated. The
judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the
purse, no direction either of the strength or the wealth of society.
And can take no active resolution whatever. It
may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely
judgment, and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive
arm, even for the efficacy of
its judgments.
I would agree with Hamilton, but
In our time, over the— actually, over the last 100 years, and
specifically with all rapidity up through the
last 50 years or so. And DiRollo mentioned
Griswold versus Connecticut. That was the first
Supreme Court decision. Then following on to
that with Roe v. Wade in 1973, and
then Obergefell in 2015.
Then now the most recent case that we're going to talk about, West Virginia versus
BPJ. The Supreme Court, the judiciary,
has been asked with increasing fervor to take up cases about the
nature of biological reality itself,
which are cases that the Supreme Court have
nothing and should have nothing to say about.
Such cases would perplex and mystify the founders, from John
Jay to Patrick Henry, because while they may have disagreed
about the nature of rights and the distribution of state power,
they didn't disagree about the nature of biological reality itself.
Both John Jay and Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson at all
would have been stunned to hear
us arguing about whether or not a man can be a
woman, a woman can be a man,
or whether men and women are interchangeable people,
interchangeable entities. They would find
such an argument, such discussion, to be the
sign of pagan perversion.
And that's not me being too harsh in my language.
But because we live in pagan times and because Christianity is
the long, drawn-out retreat from culture is what
Christianity is in right now. The moves
that cultural progressives, not political, but cultural
progressives, have made utilizing the
judicial and legal arm of the Supreme Court has turned
the court into an arbiter of reality itself, a
role that it was never meant to take on. By the way,
this is a place even Jesus was hesitant
to tread. If you don't believe me, just look at Luke
12:14.
So if we're going to have arbiters of reality
itself, whether that's biological reality, Well, let's
keep it to biological reality. We're going to have arbiters of biological reality
who are going to be fundamentally pagan or progressive in their mindsets and
rarely Christian.
How do we— well,
first off, what do you think of this case? And then second,
am I correct in, in, in seeing the the
path from Griswold v. Connecticut to, to this case,
West Virginia versus BPG. Am I correct in,
in, in my analysis here of the Supreme Court being asked to step in
and determine things that it was not meant to determine? And then finally, I guess
the third question is, just like with the Fourth Amendment,
how do we put this genie back in the box? How do we prevent cultural
progressives— prevent, Yeah. How do we dissuade
cultural progressives, whether on the political right or the political
left? How do we dissuade them from bringing nonsense like this
to the court? I don't think we
can dissuade them. So I—
Because this is
nonsense. Like, it's nonsense. But what is
nonsense? The idea that a man could be a woman, or
the idea that somebody thinks that
he's a woman and he's really a man, or— but what part
is the nonsense? The nonsense is that
whether or not they are a man or a woman, whether or not they have
a problem negotiating reality, whether or not they have a mental
illness, whether or not they have gender dysphoria,
none of that should be arbitrated by the law.
The law has nothing to say about— should have nothing to say about any of
this. This is a cultural issue at best.
The law as an arbiter of reality at
that level should have— should
always stand mute and should say, let the culture figure it out. I don't
know. You people figure it out. We have nothing to say on this.
Right. But once the legislature steps
in and then takes a position, then there can be lawsuits arguing that the position
is illegal. legitimate or— Oh, I would go even to the legislature. Yeah, I would
go to the legislature. I would take the legislature out of it too. But I,
but, you know, I get it. Like, there's steps in the process. Yes. I would
even start with the legislature. But that's where I was going. I wouldn't start
with the legislature. Well, so we went down that route and got them to
change. I'm okay with that. But here, here's, here's
why I think the legislature is necessary. Okay. Because I
used to think they weren't in the sense that This is a cultural issue,
so just let— leave the culture alone, let the culture figure it out, right? And
then what I noticed is basically every other
worldview, every other religious position
eventually tries to co-opt power to then enforce on a populace
its own worldview. It is axiomatic that that's what
worldviews do. To put it in more
relatable terms in a contemporary, in a contemporary context,
Okay, if I'm going to form a running club
to run on roads and not run in the woods,
right, I'm going to select people who want to run on roads and
not in the woods, and I'm going to deselect people who say, no, you should
really be running in the woods. No, we're a road runners club. If you don't
like road running, then don't join our club, right?
So to be a little more blunt,
Every other worldview is trying to use government to force their views on everybody else.
That's why the legislature matters. That's why you need people in
the legislature who share your worldview so that they can say, you're not doing
that. We're not passing a law that does this. We're— or we're
passing a law that says this because this is nonsense and it
needs to stop. Okay. Well, Ms. Ketanji Brown
Jackson was asked in her Senate Subcommittee
confirmation hearing. Uh-huh. Can you
identify— can you define what a woman is? And
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, and
I quote, I can't do that. I don't know
what a woman is. Okay. So we've
got a— we've got a Supreme Court justice. And by the way, I
don't think she's the end of the argument. I don't think she's the period at
the end of the statement. I think she's the beginning of an ellipsis
that's going to extend out over the next couple of
generations. Because
the character of the Supreme Court justice
is now in question. You were talking about education earlier.
You're talking about Harvard, Yale, Columbia, maybe on the outside,
Princeton. I don't care about your fancy schools. I care about your
character. And Ms. Ketanji Brown Jackson may have
graduated from a fancy school, God bless her, just like
Brett Kavanaugh did, just like Justice Alito did.
But your character, your
character actually influences you
quite deeply on these
questions that are coming before the court about biological
reality. By the way, the feminists all didn't
like Brett Kavanaugh because they thought he was a rapist
and they protested against him. Is that really
why they did it? Well, that's what they said. And I can only go on
what people say. I don't know what's in people's hearts. I'm not— who made me
the arbiter between you and reality, right? To paraphrase from Jesus,
I'm not that arbiter. I have no idea. I only know what you came out
with, what fell out your mouth. So
we are in character arguments around these
people, but we don't even have a definition. Talk about worldview. We don't even share
a worldview about what appropriate character is. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Real problem when we're asking them to arbitrate
whether or not a man could go into a woman's restroom or whether or not
boys can play women's girls sports or whether girls can play boys
sports. But only because
of their view of jurisprudence, right? What does the law say?
The law right now doesn't say anything. The law is— the law is in some
cases, in some municipalities, the law is mute. In other municipalities,
the law is yelling about all kinds of things. Remember I mentioned California
previously? If I get a divorce, if I were—
if I were to get a divorce in California,
Okay. And my wife decided that my son— my
ex-wife decided that my son had a
desire to transition from being a son to being
a daughter. And I objected to that and
attempted to take my child under a shared custody agreement out of the
state. There is a law on the books in California. This is the screaming example
of the legislature. Where if I take
that child out of state, I could be tracked down
by the state and prosecuted and dragged back
to California along with my child, who will then continue to be transitioned.
What the hell?
Which is why my problem starts with the legislative body. But at the end of
it winds up with— you wind up in the judiciary and the character of the
judiciary used to be a bulwark against stuff like this. And by the way,
I agree with West Virginia versus BP. Right. I agree with
the Supreme Court ruling, but that doesn't mean that
next year there won't be a similar ruling on a— or not
similar ruling, but an opposite ruling that will show a remarkable
lack of consistency, as is usually present in the common law.
Because there's nothing in the Constitution about, about, about biology.
There's nothing in the Constitution about gender. They wouldn't have understood the question.
Oh, can't hear you.
No. Yeah, go, go. There you go.
YMCA. We will rock you.
So there are several reasons, in my opinion, why the founders
would not understand the case. Okay. The
transformations within the American Republic
to get a form of government that we now have would be something that I
think that would stop most of them in their tracks. They would not—
maybe Hamilton excepted— wouldn't be able to comprehend the
massive scope, right? And the depth
to which government monitoring and analysis,
data collection and response occurs every second
of 2026. Now, the narrower reason why
U.S. government policy— or sorry, the narrow reason why federal courts
were revoked, right, was Title IX. Mm-hmm. And so that's what I meant with
Congress taking that step and then producing this.
Um, the statute, right, which is now then
going to achieve certain things for one part of the
population only. Okay, fine. Um, and it's just,
um, I don't, I don't know.
Um, so the fundamental problem I have is that I just can't, I
can't see it operating otherwise unless we
Christ followers just abandon government, meaning
we're just gonna let you do whatever you want. We recognize from Romans 13 we
have a duty to submit to what you're saying, and so we will, but we're
just gonna let you do what you want and pray for you all, and we
will go on with the actual work of advancing the gospel and
focus on that. And you guys, you're gonna do whatever, and God will deal with
you, and we're just gonna do what we're doing, and he's gonna deal with us,
and that he's with us and not with y'all. Boom, you know. And so then
I would expect persecution with the gospel
actually going out, and then there's much more real
fruit. Okay, but it doesn't end there. Okay, because eventually we get,
in my opinion, we get right back to where Britain,
not England, but Britain was in the 5th and 6th centuries. Okay,
where Christian communities ended up having
either creating Christian polity. So now we have a leader who
shares with the, um,
with the body of people over whom he's responsible a worldview,
right? Or that's not shared, but the leader says,
I will protect you guys and your right to live the way you want. And
so they say, this contract we can deal with, right? That's where Britain was in
the 5th and 6th centuries. And so it's just like, um,
I think that abandoning politics moving forward eventually
would get around to that point where it's like, hey,
Christian communities are going to start to then recreate or,
or re-erect, right, leadership that
shares the worldview. Okay. And so,
but again, it's, it's, to me, it's axiomatic
that individuals and communities, all of whom
have the particular worldview they have, that they want to see
leadership who share that worldview. And that they will use,
you know, political authority and governmental power to
enforce their worldview. I mean,
no one is here arguing for the liberty of child marriage. Nobody.
Right. Because it's offensive to our worldview. That's
why. Yeah, well, but you know what? That's why we want the legislature saying you're
not doing that. That— but that's why. That's why. It's because
that's our worldview. Now, somebody shows up from a different culture with a
different worldview where that's okay and survives being chucked into
jail once we figure out what he's actually doing, right? Because it,
you know, ain't no woman advocating this. We know that. So this dude, right,
if he survives not getting chucked into prison— and he wouldn't survive prison, we know
that— if he survives getting chucked into prison because of his current
status quo of how he's living, right? Right. if he's
honest and courageous, would advocate for a change in the law to allow for
his worldview. It's totally normal. Okay. We used to have a system
where they recognized, just like Frankfurter's old— Justice
Frankfurter's, you know, old boss, right? Here's where
our authority ends, and then all we have is power. Okay.
The notion that you have authority without power, okay,
or that you can have power without authority, I would argue that those are
Judeo-Christian notions, and that the other worldviews do
not make that distinction. Therefore, the pagan doesn't
see that, and therefore there are
no limits to how far they will go. There are none.
There's no horizon. They'll just keep going because there's no distinction
between power and authority.
None. You know, I don't, I don't expect them to stop. Yeah. You know,
I mean, we're gonna have a court case that's, that's arguing about whether or not
there's an actual court case, you know, and it's just like, and not like
jurisdiction, but literally in terms of like ontology and, and where it's
crazy, right? But to them, it,
it makes sense. I mean, we will have lawsuits run by
dogs soon. Run by
dog, by canines, by actual dogs. Okay. in an animal rights suit.
That's what we will find. And we will see humans who will say,
I've got to confer with my client. And literally, they'll turn to the dog. Literally,
I'm not even making this up. This is going to happen. Watch. It will happen
in 10 years. Watch. You will see a suit where it's a dog plaintiff
and there's a human who purports to represent the dog and purports to
take direction from a freaking canine.
Because Imago Dei has been so Um,
uh, dishonored, has been so, um,
not brutalized but just trampled upon. Yeah,
um, that, that's what we should expect, you know. We should expect
that and not just protests and SPCA and their
enforcement actions, not just that, but literally there's gonna be a lawsuit run by a
freaking dog, not a lawsuit run by a trust
to which you know, that actually owns the property,
right? Yeah. So, or the dog is the beneficiary of the
trust. And so the trust is, you know, in— the trustee is
therefore filing suit on behalf of the beneficiary. Like, okay, fine. That
I could understand. But that's not what we're going to be dealing with. Watch, you'll
see. We will be dealing with—
what the heck is this? We will be dealing with— pardon me. We will be
dealing with that. And but that's why— that's where I see
In its root, that's how I see that those set of behaviors
happening. Okay. That because there's no distinction between
power and authority, I have power. So here's how I'm going to use it.
Hey, I can still use it. So I'm going to keep going. I can still
use it. I'm going to keep going. They're actually listening because that's one of the
secondary causes, right? The fact that the legislature has been asleep for
20-something years is a secondary cause. It's not a primary cause. Primary
cause is this worldview thing. Secondary cause is legislature won't do its job.
I mean, you know, they can write laws that aren't general. They can write laws
that are highly specific. Here are the only circumstances when you can actually
file suit, and this is the court you have to file it in. And this
is like, they could be that, but they don't. I don't know why.
Like, remember, um, Dodd-Frank?
Mm-hmm. What is it, like 2,800 pages or something? What is
in there? Right. No one knows. No one knows. This is the
Affordable Health Care Act. Like Nancy Pelosi's famous phraseology,
we have to pass the bill before we know what's in it.
She said the quiet part out loud, Ms. Pelosi. She must have started going crazy
back then. Like, or crazy. Sorry, the Alzheimer's started
kicking in then. Like, you know, so like,
It is things like this that, that
have thinking people
worried or concerned that even on the 250th anniversary of the United
States of America, that we might not get another 250 years,
that we might crack apart. It's things like what Dorollo has just said.
Right. And it's not just— it's not just the spectacle.
The ridiculous spectacle of the dog and the lawyer.
It's the number of people who would support that spectacle
on in Instagram comments and in Reddit posts
and all over in the very online places, TikTok reels,
right? Who would come out of the woodwork and say, "I love that little
doggy," or "How could you hate that little animal?"
Or Dogs, human rights
are dog rights. I'm looking at you, Peter Singer.
The full-throated end of that is the
dissolution of the republic. It's chaos, right?
It's a Hobbesian Leviathan moment.
And this is what people are afraid of.
One of the reasons I do this show, one of the many reasons I do
this show, other than to talk to interesting people like, other than to talk to
interesting people like, like DeRolo, is
I do this show because
I believe fundamentally that the republic can be saved.
As long as we are having these kinds of conversations and talking in these kinds
of ways, the republic can be saved.
And I believe that something has shifted in the republic. I believe it shifted
a couple of years ago when Donald Trump almost got shot in Butler,
Pennsylvania. We've decided that we weren't going to go
down the road of civil war and cultural dissolution,
as many of our enemies, both foreign and domestic, would like.
Instead, we have decided to ride the lightning with the system that we have, flaws
and all. And remain in the posture of working towards, though
by no means attaining, a more quote unquote perfect
union. And by the way, I don't think this is anything new.
I actually got a magazine at this antique store,
came upon this the other day called Forward
Magazine. Dorollo will like this. From— he knows nothing
about this— from July of 1925. I paid $2
for it. It. Volume 3, number 12. This was a magazine
that was established for the benefit of the employees of Montgomery Ward
and Company. And it's one of those magazines that,
um, the periodicals, as they used to call it back in the day, that
was internal to the company's workings at Montgomery Ward. And it
has all kinds of interesting things in it. It has pictures, it has,
uh, it has dog world in it, it has, uh, It has
verse. It has inspirational,
inspirational little pithy quotes, and of course, updates about all the
employees of Montgomery Ward in 1925.
Oh, by the way, it also has reports of how much money
Montgomery Ward was making back in the day. By the way, in 1 month they
made $9 million. They
weren't a small organization. By the way, hired men and women,
black and white. On the back of this particular
magazine, there is this quote. Well, not this quote. There's
this piece from a sermon given by
the Reverend G. Ashton Oldham.
And I don't know if it was given in 1925. I don't know. But it
was reprinted on the back of this employee magazine.
Imagine, if you will, the employees of Google seeing something like
what Mr. What Reverend G. Ashton
said here. And it ties up everything that we've
said together today. And I quote, America
first, not merely in matters spirit
material, but in things of the spirit, not merely in
science, innovation, motors, skyscrapers,
but also in ideals, principles, and character.
Not merely in the calm assertion of rights, but in the glad assumption
of duties. Not flaunting her strength as a giant,
but bending in helpfulness over the sick and wounded world like a Good
Samaritan. Not in splendid isolation, but in
Christlike cooperation. Not in pride,
arrogance, and disdain of other races and peoples, but in sympathy, love, and
understanding. Not in treading again the old, worn,
bloody pathway, which ends inevitably in chaos and disaster,
but in blazing a new trail along which, please God,
other nations will follow into the New Jerusalem, where wars
shall be no more.
Someday, some nation must take that path unless
we are to lapse once again into utter barbarism. And
that honor I covet for my beloved America.
And so in that spirit and with these hopes,
I say with all my heart and soul,
America first.
DeRolo, any other thoughts as we close out today?
Can't hear you.
Oh, there you go. Got it
now. It's worth the fight.
This republic is worth the fight.
There are probably other
nations who are involved in a republican, small r, project.
where it would be also worth fighting, you know, for them too. But
certainly America's worth the fight. And I think it
will take a fight. I think it will be a fight to make it another
250 years, but it's possible. It's not, you know, not impossible.
I don't think we've either crossed a Rubicon or entered
or crossed the Schwarzschild radius, and now we can't get
out of the black hole. I don't think we're there yet. I don't think we're
there yet. So But we'll see, see how much time God gives us.
Yeah, it— I found out in research that
one of the best quotes of Thomas Jefferson is actually on, in
truncated form, on his memorial. So it's like, to me, it's telling that it's in
DC on the memorial. Hey, look at what
Jefferson said. Oh, okay. So like,
it's there. You've been warned. It's there. We've been warned. It's there. It's like, okay,
great. Forgive us, Lord, how we do this. What do we do?
Love our neighbors, build community,
reseed and refound institutions, and try to move forward. I
think it takes more than— the conversations are essential, but we also
need to take the, the truths we discern,
um, and create a plan and then carry it out, you know, where
we will then have 1,000 points of light
throughout our, the fabric of this nation where it's like, look, you know,
we're refounding liberty, we're rebuilding, you know, not
just government of the people, by the people, for the people, but life where
what this man was calling for, or woman was calling for, the author, we would
see where Americans will know, no, I live in a community where if
I have a problem, people will help me. And they don't have to look like
me. And they don't have to believe like me. But because of this thing that
we share called America, they're going to help and
not harm or not just be indifferent.
Oh, you're dying. We don't care. What? No.
That, that, that's not America. You know, that's, that's
just, that's not America. So there we go.
And with that, well, we're out.
Wait.