Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

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.