00:16:20.700For law is an agreement and a pledge, as the sophist Leifron says, between the citizens of their intending to do justice to each other, though not sufficient to make all the citizens just and good.
00:16:36.620and that is and that this and that this is fact is evident for could anyone bring different places
00:16:43.480together for instance enclosure uh megara and corinth in a wall yet they would not be a city
00:16:49.700even if their inhabitants intermarried with each with each other uh though this inner community
00:16:54.960intercommunity contributes much to uh make a place one city so it says just because you would put a
00:17:01.540wall around these two different peoples it doesn't make them one automatically right like that in
00:17:06.520and of itself does not make them one even if they start to intermarry which is a critical part
00:17:11.120he'll get to why that's so important later on but even if they did that that would not be sufficient
00:17:17.040to make them one people one nation besides could we suppose a set of people to live separate from
00:17:24.760each other but within such a distance as would admit of an intercourse and that there were laws
00:17:32.000subsisting between each party to prevent their injuring one another in their mutual dealings
00:17:37.880supposing uh supposing one a carpenter another a husbandman a shoemaker and the like and that
00:17:44.880their numbers were 10 000 still all they would have together in common would be a terror a tariff
00:17:51.060for trade or an alliance for mutual defense but but not the same city so again he's got this
00:17:58.000thought experiment of you know okay let's say we had this situation where uh they were like
00:18:04.160living separately from each other you had these people and they were all doing their jobs you
00:18:08.280know one's a carpenter one's a husband one's a shoemaker they technically have like these laws
00:18:13.600between them but would that be enough to be a city right like would that ultimately create a
00:18:18.360city and he says nope again that doesn't count and why not because their mutual intercourse is
00:18:24.180not near enough so it's not just the geographical location for even if persons so situated should
00:18:31.280come to one place and everyone should live in their own house as in a native city and there
00:18:36.500should be alliances subsisting between each party to mutually assist and prevent any injury being
00:18:42.800done to the other still they would not be admitted to a city to not would be admitted to be a city
00:18:49.660by those who think correctly if the if they preserve the same custom when they were together
00:18:55.240as when they were separate so i said okay we have this thought experiment where we have all these
00:18:58.920disparate people they're living far away from each other is it just the geographical area if
00:19:02.680we take people in a wider geographical area and still put them under the same you know law and
00:19:08.460the same protection does that make a city no okay well let's imagine if we took those people and
00:19:12.680collapse them back into the geographical uh city like they are still inside the wall they're all
00:19:19.080living next to each other a house. Same scenario. They share the same market. They share the same
00:19:23.940protection. Does that make them a city? Again, no, not enough.
00:19:49.080It is evident then that a city is not a community of place.
00:28:56.980They're a slave to their passions, a slave to their drug, a slave to themselves.0.51
00:29:01.640So they're incapable of living in the way that men ought to.
00:29:06.080And so therefore, a state that orients itself in a way that allows people to do heroin and
00:29:10.960enslave themselves, well, that's not the type of living individually he's talking about.
00:29:16.360that that that's that independent life he's talking about there is not one of oh well you
00:29:22.980have the complete freedom to just go do heroin and be addicted to it for aristotle if you have a
00:29:29.660a virtuous community oriented towards that ordered liberty it's going to be one that recognizes that
00:29:37.280allowing that behavior is deleterious not just to the individual but to the community as a whole
00:29:42.620And they're going to curb that behavior in some way. A lot of libertarians will say, oh, well, that's the state imposing some kind of restriction, restrictive morality, using the power of states to compel people and their behavior. And yes, it is.
00:29:58.580For Aristotle, that's not a violation of liberty. That's ensuring that your society is oriented towards liberty. And so that's a distinction we have to grasp, is that a society that is ordered correctly is going to place restrictions on people, because it's going to have a shared orientation towards the good.
00:30:23.220Now, ideally, and this is, I think, something that Bertrand Juvenal does a good job of describing in his book, Sovereignty, ideally, if you have a shared vision of the good, then the government should be able to govern less.
00:30:39.360The government that governs least is the government that is over a group of people who share so much in common that the government doesn't need to step in.
00:31:21.680If I have a virtuous society where everyone is pursuing the same common good, then I don't really need the government to step in and tell me not to do things.
00:31:31.140Because actually, my virtue, my religion, my tradition, my heritage already tells me not to do that.
00:31:39.660And I worry more about violating those things than I do like the letter of the state's law somewhere.
00:31:46.060violating those cultural norms those shared orientations towards the good what men ought to
00:31:53.360be doing is worse than violating the law from the state and so the state doesn't need to have
00:32:01.320very much in the way of enforcement of laws because ultimately everyone is already kind of
00:32:08.300automatically living in that way the generations and generations and generations of tradition
00:32:15.240religious belief they ultimately have already inculcated those values to the level where i
00:32:21.840would not violate them even if the law allowed me to so i don't need a law that tells me hey don't
00:32:28.420do this because i would never do it because it would bring so much shame on me that i would be
00:32:33.040ostracized from the community i would be considered less than i'd be considered unmarriageable or
00:32:40.840someone who you couldn't be a friend with or someone you couldn't hire and so i don't need
00:32:45.580the law to unfortunately we can kind of see this a little bit uh in like the perverse version of it
00:32:52.520when it comes to something like wokeness right a lot of wokeness was not written down a lot of it
00:32:58.600was don't get me wrong there were a lot of crazy laws that got passed or that somehow were inferred
00:33:06.040from things like the Civil Rights Act.
00:33:07.980But ultimately, a lot of woke morality was just there.
00:35:51.140Even if you're equal in family and freedom, that doesn't mean that you are equal in representation
00:36:00.260in the government. And so who should have the greatest power in society? The virtuous.
00:36:08.480That's who should have the greatest power, not just those who happen to have the same status
00:36:14.440with family or money or freedom, but those who display superior civil virtue or those who excel
00:36:23.280them in wealth but are below them in worth. It is evident from what has been said that in all
00:36:31.320disputes upon government, each party says something that is just. All right. So I want to
00:36:40.320also talk a little bit about how aristotle later on in book three goes about saying how you're
00:36:48.880going to have these different forms of government and again it's going to be virtue oriented
00:36:53.460so aristotle says that what kind of government you end up choosing is often or you know is kind
00:37:01.780of chosen for you is going to be based on how many virtuous people are in your society
00:37:06.600So if there's just one virtuous person, if your society in general has not really been very virtuous, and there's only really one person who is continuously virtuous, well, then you're going to make that person your leader.
00:37:22.660now again we think of purely christian virtue here in many ways but aristotle was talking
00:37:29.740about a much wider understanding of virtue uh on which things like martial prowess is going to be
00:37:36.740key so when he's talking about virtues that you need as a nation he's going to be thinking very
00:37:43.240much about the military aspect of that something that probably we don't think much about today
00:37:49.100but is absolutely critical he's also thinking about obviously wealth and other you know the
00:37:55.540accumulation of wealth the accumulation of power all these other things
00:37:58.820excuse me still getting over that cold it's been sticking with me uh but so so when he's talking
00:38:07.620about virtue he just doesn't mean like you know the different virtues that are listed in the bible
00:38:12.940he's also talking about again combat uh you know money making these things and so uh you know
00:38:20.400they're and they're not all equal uh either but ultimately he's saying that if you have just one
00:38:26.060guy who's kind of more virtuous than everyone else uh often through military means uh then he's going
00:38:31.420to be the one that's going to rule everybody and that's going to be okay because people are kind
00:38:36.180of normally going to acquiesce to the fact that this guy is virtuous however if you start to see
00:38:40.860like a whole class of people who are building up virtue if your society is continually producing
00:38:46.340like a certain class it's not everybody but you know people within a certain uh zone maybe uh
00:38:52.700people who all uh kind of make enough money or are born into the right families that kind of thing
00:38:57.420there's certain strains and families he's not he doesn't think any of that's dangerous it's you
00:39:01.880know that's a very common belief at the time that certain families are going to produce uh more
00:39:06.560virtuous people and i think there's you know a lot of truth to that though we can of course think of
00:39:10.720lot of ruling families that ultimately degrade into something terrible but he says if you start
00:39:15.940to see that rise in kind of certain families or certain classes they're going to be in higher
00:39:21.520virtue well then they're not going to allow just a king to rule over them right and so they're going
00:39:27.560to want to participate they're not going to be okay with just being shut out of the government
00:39:32.300so if more people become virtuous then the type of government you have is going to change and you
00:39:36.880might move from something like the rule of one, like a monarchy, to the rule of a few, like an
00:39:42.700aristocracy. And if it goes further, if the common people start to acquire more virtue than they
00:39:49.380might ultimately kind of lobby for the idea that they should be in charge. And so again, the type
00:39:56.800of state you're going to have, the type of government that is going to run that state is
00:40:01.680going to be highly dependent on who is virtuous and who is not and conversely if you begin as a
00:40:08.580nation that is very virtuous and therefore maybe you start in a constitutional form of government
00:40:14.460or you know an aristocratic government but your virtue wanes over time then you're eventually
00:40:21.800going to end up with the rule of kind of one guy probably because you've lost that ability to
00:40:26.360produce a wider societal virtue and so the number of people who are eligible to run and eligible to
00:40:32.460operate the society shrinks and so you're going to reduce that number slowly but surely and so we see
00:40:40.960this play out again in classic cycles like that of ancient rome rome starts with a king it becomes
00:41:13.600but then you had enough of the djinns, enough of0.96
00:41:16.480the patriarchs of the different tribes and families who
00:41:19.540became virtuous and they said we should have the right to rule ourselves we don't need a singular
00:41:24.080king anymore so they run an aristocracy run by kind of the senate and then the people demand
00:41:33.260more they think that they are virtuous enough where they should have more of a say and you see
00:41:38.240a lot of the elites appeal to the desires of the people to have more of a say so they start doing
00:41:44.200land distribution you have the the tribune of the plebs who are able to you know veto things on
00:41:50.680behalf of the average person but then the people become you know kind of weak and they become0.97
00:41:57.800dependent on the government a lot of slaves get brought into rome we see the deterioration of
00:42:05.220that system and eventually we see the return to monarchy through the emperors because of that
00:42:12.380degradation over time and so the shifts are natural and we're seeing i think a lot of this
00:42:18.600in america america of course began as a monarchy yes america began as a monarchy remember
00:42:25.700the the american nation the american people pre-exist the american state the united states
00:42:33.900of america comes after the formation of america as a people so we begin as a monarchy under the
00:42:40.680king but we're pretty distant you know we're starting under a monarchy but even then we're
00:42:47.140pretty independent from the monarch because of just the distance required it was impossible for
00:42:52.680the monarch to directly govern america as he would his closer nation and so america begins
00:43:00.640under a monarchy but quickly starts to develop that independent virtue the americans have to
00:43:06.740to develop the independent virtue because again there's only so much that the english that the
00:43:12.040the you know the uk can ultimately do to help the americans america kind of has to do its own thing
00:43:18.340it has to carve its own existence out of the wilderness and has to solve its own problems on
00:43:24.260a regular basis and so this is why americans got in the habit of self-government because we had
00:43:30.780these different state legislatures who had to handle their own problems and couldn't always
00:43:33.900appeal to the king and that built virtue in them because they had to they had to be the ones that
00:43:39.040were ultimately making the decisions and they lived or died on it remember lots of americans
00:43:43.420died on their way to being virtuous so we see that transition and america breaks away and insists on
00:43:50.340becoming a republic a aristocracy of sorts because remember most people could not vote when america
00:43:58.340was founded and that was intentional the the uh the franchise was heavily restricted on purpose
00:44:05.940and then over time we open up the franchise we move further away from being an aristocracy and
00:44:15.760move closer towards being a actual democracy all under constitutional rule remember these aren't
00:44:23.100just hard and fast categories Aristotle himself notes that some of the best governments out there
00:44:28.200a mix of this many many of the ancient greek thinkers believe that the mixed government was
00:44:34.640the best government that had uh you know elements of monarchy and democracy and aristocracy and so
00:44:41.500when we formed our constitution that's kind of what our branches are representing there right
00:44:45.740you have the executive who's kind of like the monarch in fact alexander hamilton believed that
00:44:50.400the executive should just be elected that he should be like king for life and then we elect
00:44:56.080the next one when he dies so the executive was definitely originally envisioned as kind of a more
00:45:01.340monarchical version and then you have congress but that's split in two and the senate is definitely
00:45:09.280the aristocratic house it's selected not by the people but by the states and their their aristocracies
00:45:16.140and everybody gets an equal representation in there for the states and then you have the house
00:45:22.180and that one's more of a pure democracy those are elected by the people of the states and it's
00:45:28.080apportioned by the number of people living in the states and so this creates a scenario where we
00:45:33.080have the rule of the one the rule of the few and the rule of the many all inside the same
00:45:38.800constitution but over time we move away from that balance and we weigh everything on the side of the
00:45:47.300democracy that's what democrats want to do right now right if they win the election they want to
00:45:51.860get rid of the senate they want to get rid of the supreme court effectively by packing it with
00:45:56.200people who are going to be loyal to them they want to get rid of the electoral college all the
00:46:00.580aspects that kept us closer to an aristocracy and they want to go pure pure democracy because
00:46:05.400the country they can just bring in as many people as they want they can brainwash them
00:46:10.320with the media they can you know give amnesty to all the illegals and then they win the pure
00:46:15.980democracy contest because there's no longer any kind of aristocratical aspect of the government
00:46:21.400to you know be in their way so they understand this shift in their favor so again aristotle
00:46:30.260giving us that vision of what a nation is that the economic zone is necessary but not sufficient
00:46:38.260that the mutual protection is necessary but not sufficient that the geographical location
00:46:46.620living together is necessary but not sufficient none of these things that a lot of people are
00:46:52.660currently trying to say make you american actually makes you an american and their attempt to you
00:46:59.520know turn these bonds into global citizenship is also rejected because aristotle points out that
00:47:05.120just because you happen to share this between multiple nations you had a treaty of mutual
00:47:09.900defense or of trade that would not make you a nation right so what is a nation a nation does
00:47:16.940have a common defense it does have a common economy it does it is people living the same
00:47:20.840geographic area but ultimately it is a series of families who are intermarrying again very important
00:47:28.380for aristotle he thinks citizenship is built on intermarriage he believes that social cohesion
00:47:34.040is built on intermarriage and all of these people are oriented towards the same vision of the good
00:47:38.680They have the same understanding of what the good life looks like, and they are willing to make laws to increase the virtue of the people in pursuit of that goal.
00:47:50.760They're not just doing whatever they want.
00:47:52.680They don't just have ultimate freedom.
00:47:55.140A real nation, a real people cares about the virtue of the people and is writing laws to orient them that direction.
00:48:01.860they also share clubs family meetings meals all you know amusements all those things that make
00:48:10.040culture what it is song dance plays sports holidays these are the things that bind us
00:48:18.300together it's no it's no surprise that we've been trying to destroy those common things
00:48:23.840as much as possible in order to destroy our common understanding as a people
00:48:28.840And then once you have that system, once you have that, or I should say, once you have that city, that nation, that people, sharing all of those traits, that orientation toward the good, the families that are living together and intermarrying, that they're doing all of these cultural events together.
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00:49:19.760Then the virtue of the people and how many virtuous people you produce will decide heavily what type of government you get.
00:49:27.380If you're only producing a few, one or two truly virtuous people, then you're going to get a monarchy ruled by one. If you're producing a class of people or a set of families that are always virtuous or mostly virtuous that stand above everybody else, you're going to get an aristocracy.
00:49:48.140and if you see common virtue arise you're going to see more and more people believe that they
00:49:53.400should be a part of the ruling and you're going to get something closer to rule by the many but
00:49:59.020all of that is again contingent on virtue because aristotle says that if you don't have a virtuous
00:50:05.940king then you get a tyrant if you don't have a virtuous aristocracy then you get an oligarchy
00:50:11.120If you don't get a virtuous polity, then you get a democracy. And those all have negative connotations. The difference for Aristotle is whether or not your government is virtuous, whether it's oriented towards the common good or your own personal good, your own selfish good.
00:50:29.200and that's what aristotle thinks matters the most so when we're looking at what a nation is
00:50:35.420keep in mind that the common shared understanding of the good and the orientation to collectively
00:50:42.480increase the virtue and the pursuit of that good is actually the binding agent that makes you a
00:50:49.260people a nation a state that's actually what creates real civilization and all the other
00:50:57.120functionary you know economic here you purely utilitarian stuff it matters it's necessary
00:51:04.180not enough all right guys uh we are pre-recorded today because i'm traveling to dallas remember
00:51:11.780i'm going to be on the desk with the guys at the blaze doing election coverage so if you want to
00:51:17.680watch that you need to again head to that blaze tv uh dot com slash oran so you can get the free
00:51:22.940trial uh and you can hang out with us tomorrow uh but i'm looking forward to that uh that means
00:51:28.740of course we can't take any uh questions because we're pre-recorded sorry about that but i will be
00:51:34.240back uh live on wednesday probably breaking down even more the election results with matthew
00:51:39.940williams the prudentialist so make sure you're coming back for that it'll probably be a late
00:51:43.700night stream so you don't know if you're i should say like a an evening stream so if you're somebody
00:51:47.700can't normally catch uh the like 3 p.m eastern stream and you want to catch the show live
00:51:52.840that might be your uh your opportunity because we'll be later in the evening when more people
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00:52:13.880the algorithm magic thank you for watching and as always i'll talk to you next time