America’s Sanhedrin
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Summary
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died, and the notorious RBG is set to be replaced by Amy Coney Barrett. Before we crank out the popcorn, it s important to take a step back and examine the true nature of the Supreme Court. What does this institution, a priestly order of conformist yet immensely powerful midwits, tell us about the nature of our government and who exactly is in control?
Transcript
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It's Sunday, September 27th, and welcome back to the McSpencer Group. We are not subject to
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judicial review. I'm joined today by Mark Brahman. Main topic, America's Sanhedrin.
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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died, and the notorious RBG is set to be replaced
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by the glorious ACB, jurist Amy Coney Barrett. Barrett's nomination will, no doubt, send many
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into hysterics, and the affair will be enveloped in dirty tricks, smear campaigns, and intrigue.
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But before we crank out the popcorn, it's important to take a step back and examine the true nature of
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the Supreme Court. What does this institution, a priestly order of conformist yet immensely
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powerful midwits tell us about the nature of the American government and who exactly is
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in control? All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Mark is along with me on this one, and
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I think you'll see why shortly. Mark, how are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for inviting
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me on. You kind of are reluctant to come on this because you feel like you're not following.
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Could you detect that? You're like, okay, if you want to, we can do a podcast. I mean, if you want
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to. I mean, I... No, no, no. I'm always happy to do a podcast. I just hope that I'm, you know, I can
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contribute something valuable. I think we... Yeah, I think we will once we... This is the thing. I think
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you were a little bit timid to go on here because you're not following day-to-day politics,
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and I'm not following day-to-day politics in the way that many people are who are true junkies.
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But I'm following it enough to understand what's going on. And I think what we can add is different
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than what other people can add. If for other people, this stuff is their life and they can give you the
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ins and outs and who said what and, you know, who's screwing whom and all these, you know, nuances and
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rumors and whatever, I think we just want to kind of just take a stand back from that and look at
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what's really happening with this. And then also, I think even more importantly, look at how battles
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over the Supreme Court are indicative of this just kind of flawed, fundamentally flawed American
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system. At least that's my take on this matter. But let's go. I don't think I need to catch everyone
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up to speed too much on the Ginsburg situation. So, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, God rest her soul, she has
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passed. She's now lying in state in the U.S. Capitol. And she was one of the nine Supreme Court justices.
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So, there are three branches of government, a legal judicial branch, the Supreme Court on top,
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the court that has the final say on, you know, many legal cases. But I think their real power is in
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what's called judicial review. That is their ability to judge whether a piece of legislation is,
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in their eyes, constitutional. Then there, of course, is a legislative, the congressional branch
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where laws are initiated. And there's, of course, the executive branch, the president, the man who
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executes the law, the kind of bureaucratic system that gets it done. And this is supposedly,
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from what we've been told in middle school, this is supposedly just a brilliant apparatus, couldn't
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be perfected on. Amazing mechanism of checks and balances where no branch becomes too powerful and the
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other branches can overrule it. Well, I think that's a lot of hokum, but I think we'll get to that a little
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bit later. But there are some interesting politics about this. And so, just four years ago, Antonin Scalia,
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who was a famous conservative judge, you could say libertarian in some ways, but also was
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someone who was integral in the kind of unitary conception of an executive and certainly was
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integral in granting George W. Bush war powers and so on. He was also a big Catholic. We are in a
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situation where, I think it's six to three of Catholics and Jews. There is not a wasp on the
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Supreme Court. So, this remarkable trend will continue. And I don't know if we have anything
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to say about that. I don't even quite know what to make of it, to be honest, other than there does
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seem to be attended. I mean, the Jewish interest in law and just basically being high IQ and successful
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and so on, that doesn't terribly surprise me that Jews are overrepresented. The Catholic aspect is
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interesting. I think it probably has something to do with this Catholicism that infects the conservative
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movement, which really, ever since the mid-century in William F. Buckley, has been, to a very large
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degree, a Jewish and Catholic movement. There were kind of older versions of the right previous to
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National Review and so on, but it's definitely kind of Catholic-tinged American conservatism that has
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won out and that is still winning out to a very large degree. It's remarkable. I don't quite know
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what that means about Catholics, but it probably doesn't mean anything good.
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Yeah, and I don't think that that's very threatening either, the fact that there are
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or to the current establishment. The fact that there are two Jews on there or even one Jew on there
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and the rest Catholics is pretty meaningless. And I mean, at this point, if it were eight wasps and
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one Jew, it would be pretty meaningless, right? It operates on the basis of consensus and precedent.
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And the Supreme Court on so many issues will just slowly edge their way towards something. If the
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overwhelming majority and elite opinion believes that a runaway slave who gets to the North must be
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arrested and returned to his master, the Supreme Court will determine that that is in the Constitution
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somewhere. In 2020, the Supreme Court will discover that transsexual rights are part of the civil rights
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movement. Ginsburg actually had a famous decision on marriage. And she actually put this, you know,
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marriage has traditionally been, you know, with a, has been about a dominant male and subordinate
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female. And now we're moving beyond that. And this is all part of the Constitution and this, you know,
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check that we haven't yet cashed at the basis of American history, which is this, you know, dream of
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equality, this injunction towards equality that we're inching ever closer towards. So, I mean, the,
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the whole legal profession, again, is a kind of, it's like the ultimate midwit profession. It's about
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being smart, you do your homework, you cite your work, you, you know, use evidence to support a case,
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etc., an argument. But it, it's ultimately just kind of slowly moving with the tide of elite and
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majority opinion. And just kind of, you know, use interpreting this text and kind of digging
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something out. And I would say this for both sides. This is not a, a, you know, an insult towards
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liberal jurist or whatever. It's, it's pretty much the entire profession. But anyway, I, there's,
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you know, there, there've been some, some, you know, a tumult going on. I don't know if we need
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to go into this too deeply, but after Antonin Scalia died in 2016, the Republicans were in charge of the
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Senate. They actually increased that lead in 2018, but they were in charge in 2016. And they made up
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this precedent of, I mean, I guess it's kind of a rule, but it's just a thing they did that
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President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, who are Merritt or Merrick, I can't remember Garland.
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And from what I've read, he's a, you know, a liberal jurist, but, you know, kind of a neocon as well.
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I mean, you know, what's really the huge difference here? He was by no means some like left-wing
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fanatic. And he's the kind of person that I, you know, wouldn't be surprised if, if conservatives
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liked on many issues. But they decided they wanted their own guy in there and they made up this
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justification of, we won't do that. And in a lame duck term of a presidency, the American people have
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to decide, which again, you know, fair enough, but that's really not what the court is about on its own
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terms. The court is about not letting democratic opinion decide anything. It's about looking, you
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know, just, you know, overruling or overseeing legislation to see if it's constitutional or not.
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So, I mean, the whole thing was, was bullshit. I mean, they did it for political reasons and,
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you know, might as well just admit it. And then now we get to this point where we have a, you know,
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all but identical situation in which a justice dies and they are not waiting. And a lot of people
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thought they were going to, in their words, cuck and not, you know, follow the rules. And Lindsey
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Graham would be like, well, God, you know, dagnammit, I said, I wouldn't do this in four years. And well,
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I won't. But no, they, they are just simply going to go forward with it. They have the votes
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to, um, uh, to endorse or confirm, uh, anyone that Trump nominates. And, um, I, I think they're
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going to do it. Um, unless there's, you know, some new drama that occurs, uh, they're going to do it.
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Um, I, I don't even know quite what this means. I, I don't, I don't know. I mean,
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whether they're going to overturn Roe v. Wade or, or all of this stuff, I maybe, um, I, I think that
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would create a situation that is somewhat similar to where we are now, where abortion is available
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across the country. I mean, I can't imagine that most States would make abortion illegal. Um, but
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there would be some States that would, and we saw, we saw a battle, I think it was in 2019
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in which Alabama made some strong noise, uh, about making, uh, abortion effectively legal and in all
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but a few circumstances. Um, but you know, right now in many of these States, um, access to abortion
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is very difficult. And many of these state legislatures have, you know, kind of effectively,
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uh, banned abortion to a large degree, if not totally. Um, but it is not illegal. So I, I think,
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you know, we would probably, even if they overturned what Roe and the federalist society were,
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you know, slapping each other in the back and breaking out the champagne and, you know,
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Mitt Romney, I guess would crank out a diet Coke or something, go wild. Um, I don't think anything
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would change that dramatically. Uh, but go ahead. Yeah, no, it, it goes to like, um, the sort of the
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old debate in the, uh, alt-right or the, uh, dissident right or whatever we're calling it now,
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but back when it was called the alt-right, that was, uh, one of the debates is, uh, is abortion
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even a bad thing? Like having abortion available is, is that ultimately a bad thing? And there is some
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evidence that it's had a, dare I say, eugenic effect, uh, to one degree or another. And it's kind
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of disproportionately affected certain, um, disadvantaged populations. You could say that,
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um, uh, you know, that, uh, probably our, our society is in better shape now, um, as a consequence
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of abortions being legal in a lot of ways. Right. Um, so.
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Particularly the South. Ironically, the Republican party, they run on abortion every year. Uh, but then
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they, uh, they might be outvoted if abortion weren't available. I mean, it's a weird thing.
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Um, I mean, it's a religion, it seems like it's a religious question ultimately too, as well.
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Um, but even there things are ambiguous because the Southern Baptist convention in 1973 endorsed
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the Roe decision. And they said, um, we, you know, we understand a right to privacy and we're not going
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to fight this issue. Uh, and it was really the development of the religious right and particularly
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a Catholic led religious right, weirdly, at least intellectually led religious right that they
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adopted this issue in the late seventies. And then by the eighties, they had turned it into this hot
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button issue that it is today. Um, in which, um, I, I think George Herbert Walker Bush was, uh,
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pro choice in 1980 or something like that. Then he changed, I can't remember the exact details,
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uh, similar, uh, story with Reagan. Uh, and, but by the nineties to be a pro choice, like an, a openly,
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uh, you know, I support a woman's right to choose Republican was very difficult. And by the,
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you know, W years, those people were exceedingly rare. Um, I think a lot of people probably have,
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you know, ambivalent views on this, like you and I do, uh, of, you know, well, it's not something I
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like, but to make it illegal is almost worse than, um, having it, um, you know, exist right now.
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And we're just going to kind of, you know, not address this issue. Abortions have been going down,
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um, due to a number of factors due to the fact that people are having less sex, which is,
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also kind of sad. Yeah. You can, and you can actually pregnancies are going down. Yeah. Go
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ahead. You can make an argument for, um, uh, or rather against abortion, uh, from a racialist
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position in the sense that, yeah, I mean, if, because really what we're concerned with ostensibly
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is white births. So if there are no abortions, more white people will be born and it doesn't
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really kind of matter how many non-whites are born, for example, you know, so I, you, I,
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you can make that argument. Um, I don't really, I share your ambivalence. I don't have a, I mean,
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the problem is the real problem with the society is the society doesn't have a kind of direction.
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It does have a direction, but it doesn't have a desirable direction from our position. Right.
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So all of this stuff is sort of kind of random and it's not like, it's not kind of, um, you know,
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these policies are not directed toward a goal. They're just sort of policies, um, that are part
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of this generally bad direction, um, that both parties are moving in. Yeah. And I, I, in terms of
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abortion, I mean, I, I think that you, you could definitely, you could make a racialist case for,
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to be pro-life, no question. Uh, you could definitely make a traditionalist case in the
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sense of, um, you know, first off on, on a, based on a notion, even if you made, if you made a mistake
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or something bad happened to you, um, you know, the child did not make that mistake. And so you,
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you are punishing him for, you know, uh, under your own discretion, uh, for something that he has no
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control over. And, and that, that's a reasonable argument. Um, you could also say that you could
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make a kind of rad trad, uh, argument and say that all these women out there are, um, they,
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you know, they're, they're aborting their babies left and right and get, you know, going into careers.
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And if only, you know, if only we made that illegal, then they'd stay home and have,
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you know, productive families and so on. I'm not sure I buy any of that though. Um, I, I,
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I think the, the kind of higher IQ, the, the kind of women that we would want to have children to be
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frank, uh, I think are fairly good at using contraception and avoiding things like, you
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know, getting raped or knocked up, you know, by an unknown man or, or, or what have you, uh,
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they avoid those kinds of things, um, much like they generally take care of themselves throughout
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their own, their entire lives and they kind of live in bubbles, um, to a large degree. So I, I,
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I think the, the types of people who are, are, are having abortion are not those career gals that
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you think of. It's, it's something very different. And, um, I, I don't know. I, I think these,
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these women, I mean, I'm sorry to be just totally brutal and, you know, Malthusian or something here,
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but, um, those women who are bragging about their abortions and, you know, like, yeah,
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I had a, an abortion and I'm proud or so on. I'm, I'm not exactly that saddened by the notion that
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those types of people are not reproducing, you know? I mean, I, you know, it's one thing to,
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for this to have happened to you and for you to kind of make a tragic choice or something.
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Uh, it's another to make that part of your identity and think it's wonderful and not see
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that you are, you know, ending life. And, um, I don't know. I, I, I think the, the, the kind of
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spiteful mutant thesis, uh, seems to apply here. These are, are really bizarre people and they have,
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uh, really profoundly disordered minds and, um, they're going to pass on those kinds of things
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if they have children. I mean, I know this is kind of brutal, but, um, Ed was even talking to me
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a little while ago about, um, this irony of banning abortions in Ireland, where, uh, you now have
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these, you know, ridiculous governments in charge and, um, you know, how many of those spiteful
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mutants might not be walking amongst us if abortion were legal in Ireland and not insignificant
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amount. Yeah, no, I, I, I don't disagree. I mean, to some, I mean, there is a kind of,
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there's a genetic question with some of these people. Um, but there's also a cultural, a larger,
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broader cultural question where to one extent or another, everyone is sort of suffering from a kind
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of mass, uh, psychosis as it were. Right. Uh, in the sense that, you know, sort of the ideas that we
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hold, um, are, I, you know, you and I believe them to be very sound and rational and fair and humane
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ideas. Um, but they're, they're sort of roundly, uh, villainized by just about everyone else. Right.
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Yeah. So, you know, there's that. And, um, so some of these people, uh, some of these mutants,
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as it were, might have been relatively healthy psychological people under different, uh, cultural
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conditions as it were. I agree. I agree. Um, well, anyway, I don't, I, and I'm, I'm a little bit
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ambivalent myself. I won't make a strong prediction. If this, um, justice gets in, whether they will
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overturn Roe or not, I'm curious about that. I could see someone like Roberts going the other
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way, but I would say this, that even if it were overturned, um, again, I think effectively we would
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be in a very similar situation where we are today and where we are today is where abortion access to
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abortion is, is quite difficult in many States and it is legal and available, uh, and safe, you know,
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in most areas of the country. And I think actually it would just remain like that if Roe were overturned.
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And this is one of those things where the conservative movement, I mean, how many billions
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have been dedicated to the federalist society and, you know, grooming all of these, you know,
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potential Supreme court justices, you know, we've got to get our man in the white house so we can
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appoint this judge to overturn Roe and, and you do it and you're kind of ruined by your success and
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sense of like, well, nothing's really changed. Actually, we haven't fundamentally changed.
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We haven't won the culture war. We haven't fundamentally changed the environment by doing
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this. And I, I think this is again, one of those kinds of conservative false victories if they do
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get it and they might, I think it's actually reasonable to say that, uh, if Trump wins, um,
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a second, well, if Trump appoints a justice and if Trump say wins, or for some other reason,
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the conservatives are kind of, you know, feeling themselves and they bring up a case that would
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directly affect Roe, um, it is very possible that that could happen. But what I really wanted to talk
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about, um, and why I wanted to have you on is, is the kind of like, what is the Supreme court? What is
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this thing that is, has so much power and that we, you know, how many votes do the Republicans get
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every year just on that basis of the possibility that they could appoint a justice? One of these
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nine, nine humans have this much power and they're appointed by political parties, but they're kind of
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non-partisan, at least, at least ostensibly. Um, what does this kind of situation, um, and their,
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their, you know, their job is not to actually make political decisions and make policy. Even the
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most liberal justice won't, will say, we're not here to make policy, even though they have had
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tremendous effect on actual policy. But, um, you know, what is this kind of situation remind you of
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and, and, and how is it problematic? And I, you know, I was thinking about this, um, the other
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night of, of, you know, who is sovereign in the United States. And, and I'm using a, you know,
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Schmittian conception of that in the sense of who ultimately decides who in exceptional matters
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decides who kind of makes the rules and breaks the rules and doesn't just follow the rules. And in the
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United States, unlike say Prussia or a, you know, uh, tribe in Africa or something, um, this actually
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is, uh, dubious. It's in dispute. We don't quite know. I think if you ask the average, your average
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Joe on the street, who's in charge, he would say the president. Well, that's not exactly correct.
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If you look at the actual mechanism of government. So the, all legislation that is all laws originate
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and are initiated by the Congress. And so the president doesn't actually have an agenda or a
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group, you know, a, a big host of laws. He might talk about those things, but those aren't ultimately
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his. And those come from Congress. He has the ability to veto them, which is a kind of kingly
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like ability. Um, I believe the, uh, queen still has that ability in parliament, doesn't she? And
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the parliament still kind of is, is almost kind of confirmed by the queen. Um, she, she can veto
00:25:06.420
legislation, although she doesn't use that power. Well, the president does use that power and the
00:25:10.420
president can veto law. So you could say he's sovereign, but, uh, Congress can override a
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veto. So Congress can just say, no, we're doing this to the president. So the president really
00:25:22.460
isn't in charge. The president is the ex executor of laws. He's the, he's not a lawgiver. Uh, he's a law
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enforcer and the lawgiver in, in that kind of, you know, traditionalist sense is the Congress. Um,
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in terms of war making and foreign policy, the president has a great deal of power. Uh, it's,
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he is the commander in chief of the military, uh, you know, as the executive. Um, so a non-military,
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usually a non-military person is in charge of the military. Of course, Washington was a military
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person and other examples, Eisenhower retired officer, but a civilian is in charge of the military.
00:26:01.300
Um, and particularly in the 20th century, the president has had a great deal of just unilateral
00:26:10.880
power. I mean, the last time, I mean, Congress, um, uh, apparently Congress is supposed to be the
00:26:20.500
one declaring war, but that actually hasn't happened since the second world war. And in between that,
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we've had situations like the Korean war in which that war was authorized by the United Nations,
00:26:32.020
uh, and Truman executed it. So that, that was a kind of tossing over or move, tossing sovereignty
00:26:40.840
over to another entity. Although I've not seen anything, we've seen a few instances like it.
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We haven't seen anything on that scale like it, uh, since, uh, what usually happens is that, um,
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Congress passes the buck and the president engages in foreign policy adventures. The president does
00:26:58.640
have powers to engage in adventures with some oversight, but to engage in adventures on his
00:27:03.400
own, particularly in an emergency. So the president is largely sovereign. The Senate will, um, uh,
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I think they can confirm treaties and diplomacy basically, but the, you know, we, we know that the
00:27:16.600
president does have that charge, but at the same time, I think you could make a very good case that
00:27:22.800
the Supreme court is the sovereign entity in the United States. And the reason I would say that is
00:27:30.540
that while a presidential veto can be overridden by democratic means, um, a, a SCOTUS decision cannot.
00:27:42.780
And the sense, uh, Marbury Madison, um, in like 1803, uh, so very shortly after the constitution was
00:27:53.300
ratified in the articles, the declaration articles of, um, confederation were, um, nullified, uh, the
00:27:59.900
Supreme court has had the ability, at least they don't always use it, but they have the ability to
00:28:05.200
simply say no to any legislation and say, this is not con constitutional. And as we know,
00:28:12.780
um, times change, opinions change, the elites change and decisions change and precedent, you
00:28:20.640
know, the, the, it's kind of like group think, uh, where everyone's just battling to, to, to cover
00:28:26.360
their ass effectively and not be the one who tries to change the paradigm. But then once the paradigm
00:28:31.220
changes, they kind of all get in line with it. And the Supreme court is like, like that, but the
00:28:36.320
Supreme court has judicial review. They can just veto a law effectively. And also as we've seen in,
00:28:43.920
um, the year 2000 and other times, uh, the Supreme court can, I mean, again, I, these are exceptional
00:28:53.380
cases, but again, it's the exception that proves who's sovereign. The Supreme court basically can,
00:28:59.020
uh, has been known to determine who becomes president. I mean, you could really strongly
00:29:04.160
argue that, uh, if, if the Supreme court had been made up in a different manner, that Al Gore would
00:29:10.960
have been president in 2000 and probably not much would have changed to be honest. I'm not even sure,
00:29:16.360
you know, our destiny would go a different way, but that they had that power actually justice
00:29:20.880
Ginsburg herself dissented in that, uh, decision, uh, Bush v. Gore, uh, in which they, I, I, if I remember
00:29:27.540
correctly, they cut off, they cut off the manual recount in Florida and Bush was president, boom,
00:29:33.380
rubber stamp. And so the Supreme court ultimately has power over, uh, the president and thus war
00:29:42.100
making and foreign policy making, uh, decisions, even though they don't always use it, they do have
00:29:47.660
that power. And so you could strongly argue that the Supreme court is sovereign. And so what does that
00:29:54.340
mean? That means that we don't have a sovereign entity who is either, you know, has, has that by
00:30:02.900
right or birth or, or, or by democratic will, uh, we have a sovereign entity at the very highest level
00:30:10.360
that is a bunch of lawyers arguing about this text and they are a priestly class and they dress like it,
00:30:22.260
uh, uh, in these big black gowns that are solemn, uh, but are highly reminiscent of priest and they
00:30:34.280
are, their holy book is the constitution. And much like any good priest, you can kind of read what you
00:30:41.680
want within reason to the constitution that they are engaged in exegesis. And this is what the justices
00:30:48.720
will all say, whether they're liberal or conservative, they'll say, I'm not the batter here. And I'm not
00:30:53.640
the pitcher. I'm the umpire. I call balls and strikes. And, but that's, that's kind of the story they tell
00:31:00.580
about themselves in reality, even though they do it kind of in exceptional instances and they do it
00:31:06.520
glacially slowly, they change policy. They, they are, they aren't law givers, but they're kind of law
00:31:14.020
interpretive. They fetishize this holy text from years ago that is called the constitution in this
00:31:22.740
sense. And so we have a kind of priestly order at the very top of American government. And it's not
00:31:32.360
quite the deep state. It's not the military industrial con complex. It's not big finance, but
00:31:38.040
to underestimate its power is pure folly. It is extremely powerful. And just the fact that that
00:31:47.380
is considered a branch of government and the fact that we have this priestly order, um, you know,
00:31:53.240
at the very top of American government, I actually believe is, is extremely problematic from our
00:32:00.240
standpoint. Um, and I think it also kind of reveals something about the nature of American government.
00:32:08.040
Yeah, well, I, I agree with what you're saying. Um, you know, I think that, uh, there is in,
00:32:17.280
maybe you had the intention of me bringing up this, uh, parable in the Hebrew Bible, but one of the,
00:32:23.660
uh, one of the ways it seems that Yahweh triumphs over other gods or false idols in the Hebrew Bible
00:32:31.200
is the scene at, uh, Sinai where, um, uh, Aaron has, you know, melted all these golden rings into a,
00:32:40.680
uh, false idol, a golden, the golden calf, right? The famous golden calf. Now I, I argue that that is,
00:32:47.760
that represents a kind of Aryan, um, figure, right? It's, or at least at the very least, obviously it
00:32:53.280
represents a non-Jewish idol, right? Right. So it, in the gold may signify a kind of solar identity
00:33:00.660
and Aryan identity. So this golden calf has been erected, but it's, it's, uh, overturned or usurped,
00:33:07.380
um, by these laws effectively, right? Because what ultimately replaces the golden calf,
00:33:13.600
it's the 10 commandments that are brought down, uh, from the mountain. And I, I argue that that is,
00:33:20.940
that parable exists, uh, to show that law is a kind of will to power, right? So in other words,
00:33:28.040
if you, if you have a people, uh, who have these sort of tribal gods and are worshiping answer,
00:33:34.960
ancestors, for example, or it's a kind of ancestor worship, you know, that, that, that was going on in
00:33:40.220
a relatively healthy way in this country. Uh, I, I, I'm not going to say until recently,
00:33:45.000
I mean, it's been a kind of slow and steady decline, but we've seen all these kinds of
00:33:48.700
idols very explicitly knocked over recently in our country that the, whether they're civil war
00:33:54.140
monuments or whatever the case may be. Um, and so it's a similar thing that's happening in the sense
00:34:01.940
that, and Solzhenitsyn talks about this too, this legalism, the danger of legalism, but law becomes a
00:34:08.800
kind of will to power. And I think that Jews identify it as a will to power. And that is the
00:34:13.920
meaning of that parable is that they understand it as a way of usurping, uh, these tribal gods or
00:34:19.800
these ancestors, which is probably a kind of, uh, a more generic and easier way to understanding it,
00:34:24.960
understand it. It's a way of, uh, basically disrupting the tribal, uh, identity of the goyim,
00:34:32.480
as it were, right? Or it's a way in, right? It's a way to, it's a way to assert this, uh,
00:34:38.640
invisible God, Yahweh, as the God of Israel, right? Because that's what's happening in that
00:34:44.220
parable. Um, so it's a will to power effectively. And it's a will to power, um, that is especially
00:34:50.560
one that is, um, uh, that Jews are able to, um, use, uh, because it's kind of, it fits their
00:34:59.620
skill set as it were, uh, in a very close way. Um, because they're very verbally gifted people
00:35:06.660
and they're, they're the people of the book, right? And they're the people of the Talmud
00:35:11.520
and they're the people of like, sort of making these fine distinctions in laws. That word,
00:35:17.360
uh, that adjective, uh, Talmudic is a reference to making these parsing fine distinctions, right?
00:35:24.080
Um, and so they are in a, you might even argue that they're in a way a kind of erasive lawyers
00:35:29.300
to some extent or another, right? Um, so that, that is a kind of advantage to them. I, I mean,
00:35:37.260
I think that the, there are a number of ways that the pagan religion, you know, from my analysis
00:35:42.620
appears to address problems like this. And one of them was, uh, the concept of, uh, nomos
00:35:48.200
in Greece, which means law. Nomos means Greece, but they, nomos was also a God, right? So the nomos
00:35:55.620
was also this God named nomos, right? But the nomos was also Jupiter. Like he was a form of Jupiter
00:36:02.540
or Zeus, right? So you couldn't, so already the law has a kind of racial ancestral character
00:36:09.960
where, you know, and Zeus is even in, in the Hebrew, uh, the words for Zeus mean justice,
00:36:17.180
right? So he's a God of justice and he's a judge on some level, right? Um, and so the whole character
00:36:25.560
and we talk about the spirit of the law, I mean, literally the spirit of the law is this kind of
00:36:30.760
homage to this ancestral, you know, Jupiter, uh, who is a kind of avatar, who is exactly a kind of
00:36:37.780
avatar of, you know, Aryans or the white race. Um, so I think that that is a kind of helpful, uh,
00:36:45.100
mechanism that they developed in, uh, in the ancient world. Um, and then nomos became an idea
00:36:51.240
that was discussed by the sophists in Greece, right? So you see how this, it becomes undermined
00:36:56.280
eventually. Um, and how, you know, through, uh, philosophy is one way, but these things,
00:37:03.320
these, these sort of religious structures that the ancients developed, they had, you know,
00:37:08.040
they, these problems, they had already encountered these problems and these were some of the solutions,
00:37:11.580
uh, they came up with is what I would argue. And I would give you one more example of this,
00:37:17.480
which is, I think is a, it's, it's an even better example. Well, you have Apollo who's the god of
00:37:21.880
truth, right? So on some level, Apollo represents truth. And what is Apollo? He's the hyperborean.
00:37:28.000
He's a symbol of the Aryan race. So truth becomes synonymous with sort of, I would argue with racial
00:37:35.460
survival and racial success. So even the definition of truth itself, right? So when pilot in the new
00:37:42.700
Testament, in that famous line, the new Testament, when he says, what is truth, right?
00:37:47.180
I think that that's also signaling that like the Romans had basically lost a sense of truth.
00:37:52.560
They'd lost what truth is. There's another deity, uh, that the Romans worshiped called, uh,
00:37:58.740
Veritas. Her name is Veritas. And which means truth in Rome, uh, in Latin rather, it means in,
00:38:05.480
it meant truth in ancient Rome. And, um, she was understood as either descended from Jupiter,
00:38:12.920
which would make her a daughter of Jupiter, right? Um, or she's descended of Saturn, right?
00:38:18.800
Who is a Semitic God, right? And that's a kind of important distinction distinction because it,
00:38:23.660
it reveals that there were actually kind of two different truths in the sense that, uh,
00:38:28.000
and there, you know, I think you understand what I'm saying, but the idea that truth becomes
00:38:33.360
embodied in effectively something that represents a kind of racial ideal or type gives us a direction
00:38:40.880
or gives us a, an actual kind of, uh, palpable and tangible notion as to what truth is, you know,
00:38:47.820
a truth is survival. It's continuance. It's, it's our race. Truth is our race, right?
00:38:59.500
There's just nothing you like you, I don't know. I mean, we, I think we, this, this came about
00:39:05.400
in an, an, an, an, an, that sentiment came about, uh, about 20 years ago. And it is somewhat
00:39:10.620
unfortunate context of the Iraq war and, and, and nine 11 and all that kind of stuff. But the,
00:39:15.860
the constitution is not a suicide pact, which, uh, it, you know, was declared by, uh, you know,
00:39:23.720
a bunch of conservatives who wanted to go to war in Iraq, but just because they declared it,
00:39:28.880
uh, doesn't mean it's the sentiment itself is actually wrong. And of course, any good sentiment
00:39:33.360
can be abused and misused, of course. Uh, but that basic notion that there is no law above our
00:39:41.900
survival and our flourishing, just simply put, um, I don't think that is a, that's not a Judaic
00:39:49.760
sentiment or a Christian sentiment. I mean, in the sense that there are laws above your survival.
00:39:55.440
And in fact, you, even if you do not survive, if you are, go extinct, those laws will remain.
00:40:03.240
Uh, it is a kind of reversal of the way that a Roman would understand these things.
00:40:10.780
Yeah, no, I, I agree with that. I mean, though, I think that, um, you know, I mean, obviously they,
00:40:17.240
I think that they have intelligently, they have a kind of cynical way. I mean, cynical is one way of,
00:40:22.340
uh, thinking of it, but they have a sort of practical and realistic way of looking at some
00:40:27.080
of these, um, these constructs that we often lose sight of, right? So people, there is this whole cult
00:40:34.540
around the constitution, for example, right? And that, that's a common, and those are some of the
00:40:39.420
most ostensibly conservative people in the country are these constitutionalists, right? But so you see
00:40:44.960
exactly what's happening. I mean, they, they basically accepted the, the two tablets from
00:40:49.660
Moses and they're worshiping this, the law as it were. Yeah. Right. Well, it's, it's like a lot of,
00:40:56.300
many people are proud of the so-called separation of church and state, which isn't quite constitutional.
00:41:03.840
I mean, there, there are, um, uh, laws about establishing a national church and so on. I think
00:41:10.360
the separation of church and state might come from a letter of Thomas Jefferson, if I'm not,
00:41:15.280
you can correct me if I'm wrong. Uh, but this, you know, there, there shall be no established
00:41:20.140
national church and that, and that's, you know, understandable. You're creating a new country.
00:41:24.800
There are, you know, there are Quakers, there are Puritans, there are some Catholics, there are some
00:41:29.300
Jews around. I mean, you, we're not going to have one national church, um, again, an understandable
00:41:36.120
sentiment. Um, but I think it's taken in this, in this false way, which is that religion and the
00:41:44.980
state should always be separate. And that is an anti-traditionalist view. But I, I think beyond
00:41:51.200
that, I, I think it's a anti-human view. Um, religion and your national order are always going to be
00:42:00.020
combined. And, you know, these goofy conservatives, as much as we want to make fun of them who kind of,
00:42:06.180
you know, talk about God and country and, you know, uh, Jesus and the constitution, all that kind
00:42:10.960
of stuff. I mean, okay, we can smirk a bit at that, but, uh, they are getting at a fundamental
00:42:18.580
traditionalist worldview, which is that the state and the religion are one and they reinforce each other
00:42:25.020
and God is on your side and you, your people as articulated by the state will triumph with God on
00:42:33.320
your side. And that actually is a natural and healthy view. That is the view of all humans up
00:42:39.480
until fairly recently. So, uh, it is an evolved view you could say. Uh, but then I, I would say that
00:42:46.480
the, the whole doctrine of the separation of church and state is a false one. And you hear this from both
00:42:50.760
sides. So even, I remember it was Rick Santorum was saying that, you know, um, you know, combining
00:42:57.720
church and state is bad for the state, but it's also bad for religion. You know, we need to have
00:43:02.900
our own kind of private personal God and sphere of, of religion. But I, I think that is a naive view.
00:43:10.100
Um, we, we don't have a separation of church and state. We simply have a different type of church
00:43:17.100
within our state. And that church is, um, you know, diametrically opposed to previous ways of doing
00:43:26.720
things in Europe. And it is basically creating this, um, you know, Judaic textural exegesis system,
00:43:38.740
uh, in which the constitution are the stone tablets or the Holy book. And we have these priestly
00:43:46.500
midwits interpreting it for us. And they have the final say. So on, on one level, we live in a
00:43:54.120
theocracy, but it is a theocracy of the constitution of, you know, natural rights and enlightened humanism,
00:44:01.560
you could say, but that is how our system fundamentally functions. And we, and we have
00:44:07.000
to understand it on that basis and not just go in for the slogans of, you know, Oh, we have separation
00:44:13.980
of church and state in this country or something. We don't. And we never have.
00:44:18.440
Yeah. You know, I mean, it actually reminds me of something too, is that, um, you're right. I mean,
00:44:24.380
politics are effectively religion, right? So, um, and, or they're part of this sort of larger kind of
00:44:31.140
religious culture as it were. Um, and they're, they're, uh, they're, um, indistinct from it. So
00:44:37.620
they're just part of that fabric. Um, you know, one, one sort of, uh, comparison that comes to mind
00:44:43.500
is that in Greece, um, when the Athenian theater developed, it was a kind of break from earlier
00:44:51.860
cults, right? Because it, it evolved from a cult. It, it evolved from like these, um, uh, you know,
00:44:58.540
these dying and rising cults. Like, and in, in fact, the, the, yeah, yeah, it's, it was called
00:45:04.580
the Dionysia. So it was a, it was a form of worshiping Dionysus, right? But what happened
00:45:12.040
though, is that religion changed on some level with the development of the Athenian theater,
00:45:16.280
it became in some way less formal and less serious, but simultaneously, it also became
00:45:23.140
more cunning and more enthralling, right? Um, in the sense that people,
00:45:29.820
people ostensibly were not taking it as seriously as they would take a, you know, an earlier religious
00:45:37.160
cult or a religious initiation, but I don't think that's the case. I think that they were as
00:45:41.840
enthralled as we see in the media today, we see in Hollywood, for example, uh, which I think is a
00:45:46.640
kind of continuation of the Dionysia. We see a similar kind of cult thing happening where we have
00:45:52.040
people who are, uh, who are getting their sort of morals and their, their identity from these TV
00:45:57.740
shows. Right. These are the parables that kind of inform them morally. Right. I think that that's
00:46:03.840
very clear. So the idea of the cat lady with, you know, the bottle of wine watching, you know,
00:46:09.160
whatever her favorite TV show is, she's being sort of taught what to think about everything
00:46:14.440
effectively by watching those TV shows. So that becomes a kind of more cunning and effective way
00:46:20.500
of religion than a person going to church where it's kind of explicit, like, oh, you know,
00:46:25.220
you have to listen to these commandments. It doesn't, doesn't it kind of appeal to the vanity
00:46:29.080
in the same way that entertainment does. Right. Where in the sense that they don't feel like
00:46:33.580
they're being told what to think, but they are being told what to think. Right. So, and, and I think
00:46:38.580
that that, so I think you can draw a similar comparison to politics in the sense that, you know,
00:46:44.440
sensibly there is this division between, uh, uh, church and politics, but there isn't, it's, you know,
00:46:50.480
the culture is kind of woven into one sort of a larger cult as it were. Um, and the Supreme Court
00:46:57.380
justices will go with the flow, you know, they'll go with the flow of academia. Um, you know, famously
00:47:04.940
in, um, desegregation cases, uh, they were calling upon, you know, the latest in social science and,
00:47:12.120
you know, how black children are, they prefer a white baby doll or something. I think that's what it
00:47:19.900
was. It was a footnote, but it was, they were clearly justifying, um, you know, judicial decisions
00:47:26.360
on the basis of, um, elite academia. And they, they just kind of go with the flow of the larger church
00:47:34.540
and they will, you know, they will determine these things. And I guess the alternative,
00:47:40.040
because again, we're just complaining about something, but, um, the alternative, I, I, I would
00:47:45.640
say it is an executive who can take responsibility for his actions, a, an executive who will ultimately
00:47:56.500
wear his power on his sleeve. And, you know, this is again, someone who would be demonized as,
00:48:05.580
you know, a dictator or whatever. Uh, but someone who ultimately has to take responsibility for
00:48:12.280
decisions and does not claim that he's acting on the basis of some holy text or some new interpretation
00:48:18.340
that he's, he's come up with, uh, but someone who simply acts. And, um, that is a real alternative
00:48:28.400
to this system. And that is the type of system that we have in every other way of life. In the military,
00:48:37.000
there isn't a Supreme court. I mean, I mean, there, I guess there kind of is in the actual
00:48:41.860
Supreme court, but no, there are generals and officers. If your football team is going poorly,
00:48:47.580
the coach, whether he's really to blame or not, maybe is, maybe isn't he, he kind of is symbolically
00:48:54.980
beheaded. So to speak, he leaves, you do this in all forms of, uh, corporate society,
00:49:02.280
which are corporations are not democratic institutions. They have to be legal of course,
00:49:07.140
but they, they don't have some, you know, magical priestly class determining what they do. You know,
00:49:14.240
is this new product constitutional or not? No, they just simply act and people have to take
00:49:20.800
responsibility for their actions. Uh, and that is just a more honest way as particularly as opposed
00:49:27.160
to the American system where no one takes responsibility at some level. And it's all of
00:49:33.360
these, you know, this churn of new representatives churn of presidents, uh, you know, whether the
00:49:39.560
president is more powerful than say the media or the military industrial complex or big finance
00:49:45.180
or the Supreme court is questionable. And you just have this, this, so these so-called checks and
00:49:51.000
balances are just this kind of infinite way to pass the buck and cover your ass.
00:49:55.460
And no one is really in charge except again, ultimately this group of midwits who are
00:50:04.940
interpreting legal documents. And it's just, I don't know. I, I, I mean, I, I don't want this
00:50:12.060
to sound too dire, but I, I, until we can move beyond this kind of thing, I don't, I'm not sure
00:50:20.320
whether the world we want is really possible because we, we, we, we want a, we, we don't just
00:50:27.580
want, you know, white people, you know, in America, like, um, you know, keep our, you know,
00:50:32.900
demographics 60% white. That's great. Let's keep it. You know, that's not the ultimate end of what
00:50:38.420
we want. And we don't just want, you know, the end of, you know, anti-white slander and,
00:50:44.300
and Hollywood and academia or whatever. That's, that would be great to end. No question,
00:50:48.180
but that's not ultimately it. I mean, we, we do want a different way of being a different
00:50:52.820
way of life. And that would, that would entail learning from the past mistakes of creating a
00:51:00.920
system like this and creating a better one. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I, I, and I think that
00:51:07.660
that should be our focus, but at the same time, um, there is certainly with, even within this system
00:51:14.000
as kind of fettering as the system is, as you've described, uh, there are opportunities,
00:51:19.280
uh, for someone in the position of Donald Trump to, to cause a lot of mayhem, which he had,
00:51:25.500
he, he sort of failed to do effectively. Right. Um, so the, the, you know, a lot of hysteria,
00:51:31.520
but he hasn't actually like fundamentally, you know, uh, gone after anything or changed anything
00:51:40.580
fundamentally. Sure. Yeah. And it's a lot of heartache and liberal tears, I guess you could
00:51:46.380
say. But what you're describing though, becomes sort of his, uh, that becomes his alibi effectively,
00:51:52.040
like the system becomes his alibi and, you know, and we still blame him because we don't think
00:51:58.060
that the system, you know, we do actually, even within the system, a strong man could, you know,
00:52:03.200
the golden calf could usurp, uh, could you serve the tablets? Yeah. You know, I mean,
00:52:09.420
that's, sure. Um, anything is still possible on the political level. Um, we just, so far,
00:52:16.900
we haven't seen people that are willing to kind of take those steps. Um, and maybe in some cases
00:52:22.060
it's because of a lack of, uh, sort of, um, you know, profundity, right. Or a sense of history
00:52:28.860
or a sense of, um, you know, what are they actually doing? I mean, what is Trump actually
00:52:33.440
doing? What is his legacy going to be? Yeah. Can you stand outside it? I mean, I've, I, I,
00:52:38.640
I've joked on Twitter, but I, but I, I was serious. You know, you have all of these liberals
00:52:43.460
freaking out about Donald Trump, you know, nullifying the election or some, you know,
00:52:47.780
somehow staying in office and whatever. And, you know, I, they, they see that as like an evil in
00:52:54.160
itself. It's fascist, but it's kind of like, okay, let, let's take this thought experiment and ask
00:53:01.600
what, what would he actually do if he did that? My guess is that he'd do the same stupid crap that
00:53:07.480
he's been doing for the past four years that even if he did something that dramatic,
00:53:12.460
and I don't think he will, by the way, but, um, even if he did something as dramatic as nullify
00:53:17.280
an election, we just still be in the same position where we are right now, where, you know, we have
00:53:23.420
these other forces that are more powerful than he is. And, and he can't take a step back and think
00:53:29.720
outside it and, and think that there could be something better.
00:53:35.360
Yeah. I mean, we've seen no evidence that he would do anything interesting. Um, I think that,
00:53:40.980
you know, and I actually don't know if we've actually talked about this, but, um, I mean,
00:53:44.540
it's just a sort of ongoing phenomenon that I'm sure that you've talked about. Maybe we've talked
00:53:48.780
about it offline and I'm sure you've probably touched on it on, uh, other episodes of this show
00:53:54.140
with other guests, but, you know, there is a kind of, uh, and I guess, uh, um, uh, Dutton makes
00:54:01.060
this point actually that, uh, religiosity increases during times of stress, right? And I think that
00:54:06.820
we've seen that, um, in the, uh, former alt-right or in the dissident right, where we've seen people
00:54:13.220
like the, we've seen the rise of the, uh, um, the tradcasts, for example. Um, no, I mean,
00:54:19.760
which I think is an actual kind of real phenomenon, you know, it makes sense that they're, they're
00:54:24.140
like a lot of one, at least kind of at first glance, you know, what's going on here, all
00:54:28.760
these zoomers adopting Catholicism with, with what's, what is that? Sure. But it does make
00:54:34.920
sense that there were all these kind of young kids in the sense that that's a time when people can
00:54:39.040
really be formed or impressed at a certain point, you know, at a certain formative stage of their
00:54:44.680
life, they can actually be turned in this direction or that. Whereas, I mean, the average
00:54:49.360
person, and I think that there are certainly exceptions, and I think that you and I would
00:54:52.640
count as exceptions to this, is that you and I, I think, have probably changed a lot over our lives.
00:54:58.960
Like, we've had multiple stages of kind of change and growth, as it were. And a lot of that is us
00:55:04.640
sort of reacting to our times, um, and kind of getting over our times, I would say, right? And
00:55:11.340
looking, you know, trying to think beyond our times, as it were. Um, but I think that most people
00:55:17.140
are basically fully formed on some level at the age of like 25 or 26. Yeah. Um, this is an idea
00:55:23.880
that actually, that a friend, uh, gave me, but I think it actually kind of rings true that most
00:55:28.240
people are kind of just fully formed and like in their mid twenties for a number of reasons, you know,
00:55:33.380
they're getting married, their, their career is on its track or whatever the case may be.
00:55:37.080
And they're just who they are going to be, you know? And so I think that that, so it makes sense
00:55:43.960
that we see a kind of radical, a religious radicalization at that zoomer level, you know,
00:55:50.700
and I don't, I don't know what the numbers are. I suspect it's not even that really that larger
00:55:54.880
percentage of zoomers that are going in that direction, but. Oh no, not a large percentage
00:55:59.140
of zoomers, but it's interesting that it's a large percentage of the alt-right.
00:56:02.460
Yeah. And it, it, it has a, um, it does feel like it's where the conditions have become
00:56:11.500
medievalized on some level, right? Where people are really like, it does feel like there's a kind
00:56:16.820
of spiritual desperation as it were in the DR where people are really kind of like looking for
00:56:21.620
something and afraid of being deceived or whatever the case may be. And, um, and so, but it's a,
00:56:29.780
it's a real phenomena, um, where people are lost and, you know, it's a kind of, it's a kind of dark
00:56:37.020
time in a lot of ways, you know? And I think that that really, I think that the future, uh, belongs
00:56:43.120
to those who kind of can keep their, you know, it's sort of like the Kipling poem, those who can kind
00:56:48.280
of keep their heads as it were, and remain sober through this kind of crazy period. I mean, it's a,
00:56:54.620
Gibbon describes this as well, uh, in, uh, uh, the, the, what the decline of Rome, he describes how,
00:57:01.940
um, superstition becomes rife, like during this decline period where all these sort of weird
00:57:08.760
cults pop up and people are just kind of going crazy effectively. And I think that we've seen
00:57:13.080
that in our own lifetime. We've seen this like in the various sort of like sex that even developed,
00:57:18.120
you know, of people that even we know, and some people who we like, um, are kind of like going in
00:57:24.960
that direction effectively. You know what I mean? Uh, they're becoming more religious as it were and
00:57:29.980
things and what, whether something is true or not, it's, it's no longer really the question. It's kind
00:57:36.180
of like, what is going to kind of like take away the pain as it were, right? What is the opiate that's
00:57:42.340
going to just kind of like make it go away? And what, can I just kind of fix myself on this thing
00:57:47.000
and just, that's it. You know what I mean? Um, so, but because, you know, it's unpleasant to,
00:57:53.360
to do what we, you and I do, which is kind of walk through the, the valley, the shadow of out
00:57:58.960
or the shadow of darkness as it were, you know what I mean? So it's better to kind of go to sleep,
00:58:06.500
I think on some level. Yes. Speaking of that, it's getting late. Um,
00:58:13.920
thanks for being on. And, um, yeah, I, I, I hope we were able to get at something. Cause I mean, I,
00:58:23.700
I, I think that's what we can add that others can't, which is that, you know, if you want to
00:58:30.360
just follow the horse race, you can go elsewhere. There are people who are better at that than,
00:58:33.720
than we are. But if you, if you want to take a step back and think about what's going on,
00:58:37.160
that's what we do. All right. Talk to you soon, Mark. Talk to you soon. Bye.