The Auron MacIntyre Show - November 15, 2024


Is It a Republic？ Can We Keep It？ ｜ 11⧸15⧸24


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour

Words per Minute

179.04298

Word Count

10,907

Sentence Count

580

Misogynist Sentences

8

Hate Speech Sentences

14


Summary

In this episode, Oren explains the difference between a republic and a democracy, and what it means to be a republic, and why it's important to keep America as a republic in the current state of the union.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:02.320 Rocky's Vacation, here we come.
00:00:05.060 Whoa, is this economy?
00:00:07.180 Free beer, wine, and snacks.
00:00:09.620 Sweet!
00:00:10.720 Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:00:14.760 And with live TV, I'm not missing the game.
00:00:17.800 It's kind of like, I'm already on vacation.
00:00:20.980 Nice!
00:00:22.240 On behalf of Air Canada, nice travels.
00:00:25.260 Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
00:00:27.320 Sponsored by Bell. Conditions apply.
00:00:28.580 See AirCanada.com.
00:00:30.460 Hey everybody, how's it going?
00:00:32.240 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.
00:00:34.100 I am Oren McIntyre.
00:00:36.980 So we had to hear a lot about our democracy, our sacred democracy.
00:00:42.320 The place, you know, where all of the magic, the authority of the people is concentrated.
00:00:48.700 This is what matters.
00:00:49.840 We need to abolish the Electoral College.
00:00:52.360 We need to completely, radically change the Senate.
00:00:55.520 We need to expand the Supreme Court.
00:00:58.860 So ultimately, democracy can reign supreme.
00:01:01.860 Now, a lot of people figured out that our democracy actually means the institutions the left control.
00:01:08.640 So when they're very concerned about our democracy, the democratic process, that's not really what they mean.
00:01:14.500 They don't mean the will of the people.
00:01:16.280 They just mean the experts we've approved and the institutions we control putting out the information that we believe to be correct.
00:01:24.620 It is the bureaucracy, in many ways, that is our democracy.
00:01:30.220 But at the same time, the response you get from a lot of people on the right, a lot of conservatives, is, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:01:36.420 We're not a democracy.
00:01:38.040 We're a republic.
00:01:39.240 Right.
00:01:39.680 That's a very different thing.
00:01:41.460 We're not a democracy.
00:01:43.020 We're a republic.
00:01:43.980 It says so in the Constitution.
00:01:45.700 It's a republic if you can keep it.
00:01:48.040 Right.
00:01:48.360 The Benjamin Franklin quote that is so popular.
00:01:52.840 But what is the difference, right?
00:01:54.940 If you watch Fox News coverage of the election, it was our democracy 2024, basically.
00:02:01.300 There's, like, you know, democratic process.
00:02:03.120 They use democracy in it.
00:02:04.180 So even news outlets that are kind of leaning to the right talk about democracy as if it is the guiding principle.
00:02:11.820 And let's be honest, even though a lot of conservatives throw around republic, it's a republic, they can't really tell you the difference.
00:02:19.380 You know, I was a school teacher.
00:02:20.700 I taught the different forms of government.
00:02:22.180 When we taught the different forms of government, the only difference in the text between a republic and a democracy was that a democracy was a direct democracy in the sense of all the people voted all the time on every issue.
00:02:37.920 And a republic was one that has representatives.
00:02:40.860 It's still a democracy in every sense, except you don't have the people voting directly on each issue.
00:02:46.260 You send representatives and they vote on the issues.
00:02:50.160 But that's not exactly correct.
00:02:53.120 If we look back at the different definitions of republics throughout history, this isn't even approaching a correct understanding of what republics are.
00:03:02.180 And yet, if you talk to the average conservative or even many conservatives higher up on the food chain, the political establishment or the commentariat, you'll get basically the same answer.
00:03:12.020 If you ask them, okay, what's a republic, they don't really have any different answer than they get taught in high school.
00:03:19.080 And so today I wanted to break down what a republic actually is.
00:03:23.220 Let's look at antiquity.
00:03:24.700 Let's look at the founders.
00:03:26.560 Let's look at everybody in between and say, what are the different things that make up a republic?
00:03:32.480 What makes it separate from a democracy?
00:03:34.140 Is there any difference between a republic and a democracy?
00:03:37.140 And if that's the case, does America qualify in its current state as a republic?
00:03:43.540 And if so, can we keep it?
00:03:45.400 And if not, can we go back?
00:03:47.020 What would that take?
00:03:48.400 We're going to get to all that, guys.
00:03:49.580 But before we do, let me tell you a little bit about today's sponsor.
00:03:52.580 Hey, guys, if you're looking to break into the world of fully remote jobs, I want you to listen closely.
00:03:58.360 There's a new job stacking program focused solely on how to land remote jobs, even if you don't have any remote work experience.
00:04:06.140 The new remote work mastery program is designed to get you to successfully implement the strategies that allow you to leverage your current skill set, whatever that happens to be, into a fully remote role.
00:04:17.560 No need to learn any new complicated skills like coding or finance.
00:04:21.440 This is all centered around what you already have experience with.
00:04:25.860 There are a lot more remote job opportunities in today's marketplace that go beyond the typical IT job set.
00:04:31.740 The job stacking team will walk you through the entire process of identifying suitable remote positions that adjust to your experience, optimizing your resume, and acing your job interview so that you're set up for success in the world of remote work.
00:04:45.680 So if landing a remote job is something that you're interested in, go to jobstacking.com slash master remote and schedule a call with Rolf today.
00:04:54.660 All right, so let's start from the beginning.
00:04:59.680 What is a republic?
00:05:01.800 What's a republic?
00:05:03.240 If you look at the definitions online or in a dictionary at this point, the modern definitions, if you even go to Wikipedia or something like that, which isn't an official source, but it's what a lot of people, you know, this is the popular understanding.
00:05:17.700 That's what we're working with here before we get to the technical.
00:05:21.080 If you look at these definitions, almost uniformly, it says a republic is a state that is governed by the people or in the interests of the people.
00:05:31.380 It often talks about representation in there, that people are represented, and many of them sneak in that these people have been elected or selected by the people, though a decent source will note that in many republics, that is simply not the case.
00:05:47.720 There are people who represent the public, but that doesn't mean that they've necessarily been elected.
00:05:52.780 Now, in modern terms, in a liberal modern republic, that is the understanding, but that is not the understanding throughout history.
00:06:02.420 In fact, if we look at the different terms that are even thrown around today, it can't exactly be right.
00:06:08.260 Think about it.
00:06:09.360 You've got Plato's Republic.
00:06:11.360 Well, that's a system where the philosopher kings rule, right?
00:06:16.620 And then you've got like a United States-style republic.
00:06:21.400 You've got republic, you know, the USSR was a republic.
00:06:26.240 The Roman Empire is a republic in those senses, right?
00:06:30.380 And so in a lot of ways, there have been many different states that claim to be a republic, but have vastly different ways of ruling their government.
00:06:41.720 Now, just because you call yourself a republic, I guess, doesn't mean that you are one.
00:06:45.880 But the point is that even in those that we think of as more credible, like not North Korea, but, you know, some of these other states like, you know, Plato's Republic and the Roman Republic and the United States Republic, they have very, very different forms of government, very different ways.
00:07:02.700 They select their leaders, and so the term is not very clear in that sense.
00:07:08.780 If you look through the literature, people will claim that, say, you know, the different Phoenician city-states under the Persians might have been republics, or the Israel under the Judges might have been a republic.
00:07:23.660 Really, the most common universal definition of republic is simply a state that is not a monarchy, which really tells you how ubiquitous monarchy has been throughout history, because in many cases, a republic is simply something in opposition to a monarchy.
00:07:43.340 It could be an Islamic republic. It could be a Christian republic. It could be a liberal republic. It could be a classical republic. Just things that aren't kingdoms, really, things that are not monarchical are, in some ways, a republic.
00:07:58.220 Now, I don't think that that is specific enough for our understanding here, but just to give you kind of the breadth of the issue that we're looking at, so many different types of governments have been called a republic throughout history, and I think this adds to a large amount of confusion when people are attempting to try to parse what a republic is.
00:08:18.800 All right, so if a republic isn't just like people being elected and then representing you, what is a republic? Well, let's go back to the basics. Let's go to the fundamental categories of government under Aristotle, right?
00:08:35.260 Aristotle gives us this idea of three basic forms of government, which kind of break into six forms of government, depending on if they are for or against the good.
00:08:46.380 So the three different types of government are rule of one, the autocracy, rule of a few, the oligarchy, and rule of the many, democracy, right?
00:08:59.240 You have these three types of governments based on how many people are ruling. These are your three most basic categories. One, many, or all, right? Or one, few, and many, sorry.
00:09:12.060 And so those are your three basics. Now, Aristotle then breaks these into whether or not those governments are ruling in the service of the people, sorry, in the service of the general good, or if they're running for self-interest.
00:09:28.200 So if you are ruling for the good and you are one leader, then you are a monarch. But if you are ruling for your own interest and you are one leader, then it's a tyranny.
00:09:42.120 Secondly, if you are ruling for the interest of the whole, but it's in the hands of a few leaders, that's an aristocracy.
00:09:50.100 But if you are ruling in the interest of your own class instead of the general people, and it's a few leaders, then you have an oligarchy.
00:10:01.000 And finally, if you have the rule of the good, you know, for the good, for the whole, the public interests, and it's a lot of leaders, then it's a polity.
00:10:12.280 And then if it's rule for the, you know, for their own interests, and not for the good, and it's many leaders, then you have democracy.
00:10:22.700 All right. You're going to notice that nowhere in here is the word republic, right?
00:10:28.560 As we understand it, the res publica, the public affair or public issue, which is kind of the etymology of the republic.
00:10:37.000 Now, the government that Aristotle probably would have pointed to, that would have been what we are thinking of or aiming at, is the polity, right?
00:10:46.780 The polity, and this is what Americans think of probably when they're thinking of a republic, though they may not think of exactly where it came from.
00:10:55.280 The polity is the kind of fusion between oligarchy and democracy.
00:11:00.120 It's not completely the rule of the few, but it is not completely the rule of the many.
00:11:07.600 It definitely isn't a monarchy, so that's out, right?
00:11:10.480 It's definitely not rule of one, but it's fusing aspects of the rule of the few and the rule of the many, leaning towards democracy, leaning towards the rule of the many.
00:11:22.500 And for Aristotle, this is what he calls one of the constitutional governments, right?
00:11:27.480 The governments that are mainly led by constitutions, though you can have constitutions and monarchies and these things, and we'll get to that, like, what does a constitutional monarchy count as, right?
00:11:39.140 Is the UK a, is it a republic? Is it a monarchy? We'll get to that in a second.
00:11:42.980 But the point is that the polity fuses the many and the few, and it does so with the need to try to mix the concerns of all the different classes of society.
00:11:58.620 It wants to mix the interests of the rich with the interests of the poor.
00:12:03.160 Or it really is often called the rule of the middle, right?
00:12:07.560 The rule of the middle class is ultimately what comes to dominate in a lot of these polities.
00:12:13.640 And so the idea is that if you can bring these interests together, you have a mixed constitution, right?
00:12:20.440 You have some of the authority of an executive that would exist in a monarchy.
00:12:24.880 You have some of the authority that would exist in an aristocracy.
00:12:29.100 And then you have some of the authority that would exist in the democracy.
00:12:32.560 When you mix these all together, you kind of get the polity.
00:12:35.360 And this is what a lot of people are aiming for when they think of as a republic, is this mixed constitutional government with elements of different aspects of your society all brought together under one banner.
00:12:48.460 That's what you're trying to do.
00:12:49.840 And if you think about the Roman Republic, this makes perfect sense, right?
00:12:53.120 They don't have a king. The Romans got rid of the king.
00:12:56.180 When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
00:12:59.180 When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.
00:13:04.260 When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.
00:13:06.940 When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.
00:13:10.660 Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.
00:13:13.280 So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.
00:13:16.860 Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
00:13:20.560 Service fees exclusions and terms apply.
00:13:22.860 Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver.
00:13:25.180 But they kept the idea of a consul, right?
00:13:30.880 Someone who's still got the executive power.
00:13:33.100 In fact, they had two consuls.
00:13:34.660 So there was never usually one guy in power unless it became a dictator, which was a real office in Rome.
00:13:39.300 It wasn't just some pejorative for a tyrannical ruler.
00:13:43.260 It was an actual official office.
00:13:45.000 But usually they had two consuls, and those consuls were kind of the combined executive, but they were looking to check each other.
00:13:52.920 So you had the executive power, the rule of kind of the one, though split between two.
00:13:57.760 And then you had the Senate.
00:14:00.460 And the Senate was a body that was all about your hereditary clientele, right?
00:14:07.480 Like, these are the people who were the patrons.
00:14:10.440 They were the ones who were the patrician class.
00:14:13.400 They, the senatorial class, were old families, you know, brought down from the original tribes of Rome.
00:14:19.480 These are people who could call on a long and storied history of being part of the republic.
00:14:25.640 And so they exerted the aristocratic or the oligarchic, you know, power.
00:14:31.700 Remember, oligarch is just means rule of a few.
00:14:34.060 The good version is aristocracy.
00:14:35.640 The bad version for Aristotle is oligarchy.
00:14:38.340 But don't let that confuse you.
00:14:39.600 We're just, when we're talking about the oligarchic power here, we're just talking about the rule of a few.
00:14:43.160 And so they are going to express that rule of the few inside the mixed constitution.
00:14:48.020 And then finally, you have like kind of the general assemblies.
00:14:52.000 And those are the ones that are exerting the will of the people, right?
00:14:56.720 So you have that mix of all of those.
00:14:58.860 And inside the Roman Republic, there were different times when power was concentrated differently.
00:15:04.340 The Senate, it was really the primary power inside of Rome.
00:15:09.840 And so in many ways, you could call Rome an aristocratic republic.
00:15:13.560 And that wouldn't be a contradiction because inside of every republic, and Alexis de Tocqueville makes this point in democracy in America, that inside every republic, there's no true mixed constitution because some entity is going to have more power.
00:15:32.280 One class, one focus is going to have more power.
00:15:35.140 So throughout most of Rome's history, you could have said it was, or at least Rome's history is republic, you could have said that it was more of an aristocratic republic, as where perhaps you could say that America has been more of a democratic republic.
00:15:49.440 So the word republic doesn't necessarily eliminate the role of democracy or eliminate the presence of necessarily an aristocracy, especially if we understand it in kind of this polity definition that we get from Aristotle here.
00:16:05.640 So this is kind of the basic way we would understand where America lies inside this.
00:16:13.640 When we say it has a republic, we're talking about having a mixed government that certainly features democracy as one of the inputs in, but also has aristocratic restrictions inside it in its system and executive action.
00:16:30.100 So all of these are kind of part of the system that is taking place.
00:16:34.260 I want to get a little deeper into what these different sections look like.
00:16:40.060 And more importantly, what would qualify people as a citizen in a republic?
00:16:44.700 What gives a republic its specific character?
00:16:47.220 I want to touch on Machiavelli.
00:16:48.420 I want to talk on, you know, Madison and Hamilton.
00:16:52.080 But before we get to all that, guys, let me tell you a little bit about ISI.
00:16:55.780 Universities today aren't just neglecting real education.
00:16:58.500 They're actively undermining it and we can't let them get away with it.
00:17:01.540 America was made for an educated and engaged citizenry.
00:17:05.240 The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is here to help.
00:17:08.040 ISI offers programs and opportunities for conservative students across the country.
00:17:13.220 ISI understands that conservatives and right of center students feel isolated on college campuses and that you're often fighting for your own reputation, dignity and future.
00:17:22.740 Through ISI, you can learn about what Russell Kirk called the permanent things, the philosophical and political teachings that shaped and made Western civilization great.
00:17:32.320 ISI offers many opportunities to jumpstart your career.
00:17:35.420 They have fellowships at some of the nation's top conservative publications like National Review, the American Conservative and the College Thinker.
00:17:42.500 If you're a graduate student, ISI offers funding opportunities to sponsor the next great generation of college professors.
00:17:47.940 Through ISI, you can work with conservative thinkers who are making a difference.
00:17:52.420 Thinkers like Chris Ruffo, who currently has an ISI researcher helping him with his book.
00:17:57.440 But perhaps most importantly, ISI offers college students a community of people that can help them grow.
00:18:02.860 If you're a college student, ISI can help you start a student organization or student newspaper or meet other like-minded students at their various conferences and events.
00:18:12.360 ISI is here to educate the next generation of great Americans.
00:18:15.340 To learn more, go to ISI.org.
00:18:18.820 That's ISI.org.
00:18:21.680 All right.
00:18:22.600 So I'm going to be drawing from one of my favorite thinkers and one that may not expect to be a big source on this topic, but actually is quite helpful, has quite a wealth of knowledge on this.
00:18:36.880 I'm going to be talking about Machiavelli.
00:18:38.940 And most people think of Machiavelli and they think of the prince and they say, oh, well, Machiavelli, he talks about how monarchs can keep power and how they should be feared and instead of loved and all of these things.
00:18:51.020 And so that's what he wants, right?
00:18:53.200 He wants a monarchy.
00:18:54.660 He wants one strong man to rule.
00:18:56.980 Actually, that's not Machiavelli's actual preference when it comes to governance.
00:19:02.520 In fact, most people just read the prince and move on.
00:19:05.720 But two of Machiavelli's books, especially this one, we have Discourses on Livy that you should definitely read.
00:19:13.860 And then this one's a little more, if you want war tactics, you know, his art of war.
00:19:18.000 It's not Sun Tzu.
00:19:18.860 He's got his own art of war.
00:19:20.540 But that one also has some insights.
00:19:23.060 It's mostly war tactics, but it has some insights when it comes to the role of republics.
00:19:28.220 And so I'm going to take a look at what Machiavelli said about what makes a republic.
00:19:34.180 What are some of the key aspects?
00:19:36.160 Because you will see many of these aspects reflected in our founding fathers.
00:19:42.080 If you look at the writings of Madison and Hamilton, in many ways, they reflect some of these understandings of what a republic is.
00:19:49.880 Because, of course, Machiavelli is a big fan of the Roman Republic.
00:19:53.500 That's what Discourses on Livy is all about.
00:19:55.940 It's him working through the Roman historian Livy, right?
00:19:59.100 And he's looking at all these different things that happened through Roman history and, you know, explaining why lessons we can learn from them.
00:20:06.620 And Rome was, of course, a republic that's for a large amount of its time.
00:20:10.360 That's the period he's mainly drawing on.
00:20:12.280 So a lot of our lessons are on what we should do as republic.
00:20:16.240 So if you want to read The Prince, then that's great.
00:20:18.540 But that's just his advice to kings.
00:20:20.720 When it comes to his advice to republics, that's Discourses on Livy.
00:20:24.440 It's a longer book, but it is much more about the idea of what you should do as a republic.
00:20:30.860 What defines a republic?
00:20:31.820 What makes a republic?
00:20:32.640 These things.
00:20:33.080 So the first thing that he focuses on is virtue.
00:20:39.540 He says that the thing that distinguishes a republic from a monarchy is that the people can rule.
00:20:46.160 And in this sense, he doesn't mean like mass democracy all the time.
00:20:49.460 In fact, almost everybody in both the ancient world and, you know, from his time kind of the late medieval early kind of heading towards the Renaissance, you know, anyone at that time would have looked at our system of democracy and been like, that's insane.
00:21:09.240 In fact, in the Athenian democracy, which is what a lot of people like to point at, you know, say, oh, we're modeling off of ourselves off the Athenian democracy.
00:21:18.740 But in the Athenian democracy, it's not like you could just walk into Athens and suddenly be a member of Athens.
00:21:25.900 You didn't just become a citizen and you could start voting all the time.
00:21:30.080 In Athens, the reason democracy was given any kind of weight, the only reason anyone thought democracy had any validity was literally that the people were the, you know, were the instantiation of kind of the soul of the Athenian identity.
00:21:45.520 The fact that they were related, that they had this history and this heritage and this tradition together, that they shared this culture embodied the actual spirit of Athens.
00:21:57.500 And so that's what gave them the authority, is that they were grounded in a very real sense, in every sense.
00:22:04.820 And that really gave them authority to speak then into kind of the Athenian law.
00:22:10.620 The idea that you could just raise your hand and pledge allegiance to Athens or something or, you know, just have like a provisional ballot for Athenian democracy would have been insane.
00:22:20.620 That would have made no sense to them.
00:22:22.360 They'd be like, oh, you'll be overtaken by foreigners.
00:22:24.760 In fact, that's literally Aristotle's point and several other ancient thinkers' points when it comes to membership inside a democracy.
00:22:34.380 But back to Machiavelli's point, you know, he says virtue is key, right?
00:22:40.260 That's what gives people the ability to govern themselves and not need a king.
00:22:44.080 If the people aren't virtuous, you need a king.
00:22:46.200 He's got to organize everything for you.
00:22:47.740 And that doesn't mean the king is perfect, but it just means he has the ability to exercise self-control.
00:22:52.900 Remember, especially in Machiavelli's understanding, he's not thinking about Christian virtue.
00:22:57.140 He's really thinking about ancient virtue.
00:22:59.360 So it's not, oh, the king needs to be virtuous in all the ways that we think of in a Christian sense today, but more, you know, perhaps the Aristotelian understanding of virtue, the self-control, having continents, having, you know, finding the mean.
00:23:14.080 These things are critical.
00:23:16.040 Things like charity wouldn't really have ranked on his understanding.
00:23:19.640 But he says the people need to be virtuous because they have to be able to govern themselves, right?
00:23:24.500 That's really critical that they have to be able to govern themselves.
00:23:28.380 And that was what Aristotle said in this chart that I still have up, right?
00:23:32.560 He's talking about the difference between the governance is can you rule in the public interest or are you so morally weak that you have to rule in your own interest, right?
00:23:42.800 And the problem with a democracy is it's ruled by the many that is ruling in the interest of the many.
00:23:48.600 So literally democracy is terrible for the simple fact that it is ruled by a lot of people who aren't virtuous making decisions in their own self-interest.
00:23:59.460 The same can be true of a tyranny or an oligarchy, right?
00:24:02.540 Those are ruled by a few or rule of one where they are only ruling in their own interest.
00:24:07.860 They are not virtuous.
00:24:09.120 They are not lurking out.
00:24:10.640 So in all cases, looking out for the people.
00:24:12.880 So in all cases, rule of the virtuous is best, right?
00:24:17.940 That's the primary thing you want is you need rule of the virtuous.
00:24:21.620 If one is virtuous, then you get a benevolent dictator.
00:24:25.040 You get a benevolent monarch, right?
00:24:26.980 That's better than democracy because it is ruled by someone who is virtuous, even if it's only one person.
00:24:34.400 And if you have a class of people who are virtuous, a rule of a few, then you get an aristocracy.
00:24:40.860 And if you have a rule of many who are virtuous, then we're heading towards what we would call a republic, right?
00:24:46.980 Now, republics tend to have membership by one people because you have to be looking out for the people, for the best.
00:24:55.240 So you need to have a general understanding of who you are serving.
00:24:59.000 If you don't have a specific people in mind, then you cannot be serving their interests.
00:25:04.560 You can't be serving a public interest when there is no recognized public.
00:25:08.560 So you need to have an understanding of who is the public in this scenario.
00:25:14.060 It can't be everyone.
00:25:15.980 That doesn't work.
00:25:17.020 And that's never how any of these republics has ever been ruled.
00:25:20.680 Another thing that Machiavelli identifies as critical to a republic is the rule of constitutions and institutions, right?
00:25:31.340 These tend to cover more weight when you have or bear more weight when you have a republic.
00:25:39.040 It's not the rule of men, as many people like to say.
00:25:42.880 It's the rule of law.
00:25:43.960 Now, obviously, men are still enforcing the law.
00:25:46.700 And this would be the first thing that Machiavelli or John Adams or James Madison would have told you is that you have to have virtuous people implementing those laws.
00:25:57.040 So, yes, you can have the rule of law in the sense that we are referring to the authority of the law as opposed to the authority of the king.
00:26:03.720 So we are referring to the authority of the institution, whether it be a constitution or law, as opposed to the authority of the monarch.
00:26:11.280 However, if you don't have virtuous people enforcing those laws or those institutions, then they just don't matter.
00:26:16.980 You don't get rid of the need for virtue by spreading the responsibility out among institutions and constitutions and laws.
00:26:26.020 And that is a huge flaw that we have forgotten in the United States and most Western republics or democracies at this point.
00:26:35.380 We've forgotten that it does not matter.
00:26:37.960 You can't just put laws in place, put constitutions in place, put institutions in place and just have them run themselves.
00:26:44.540 That's not how it works.
00:26:45.820 If you don't staff these things with virtuous people, if you don't have virtuous people running this stuff, then it doesn't matter if you invest the power in all of these other institutions, they will fail.
00:26:57.220 It's not the institution or the constitution that guarantees the freedom of the people.
00:27:02.280 It is the virtue of the people that guarantees their liberty.
00:27:06.240 You have to be free in the sense that you are free to pursue the good and the good as understood by your common bonds and common people and common identity.
00:27:16.600 Without those things, none of it makes sense.
00:27:19.460 None of it works.
00:27:20.540 It doesn't matter.
00:27:22.060 Part of this virtue for Machiavelli specifically, but for all of these people in general is actually the willingness to have a self-sufficiency on a certain level, right?
00:27:37.520 So what makes a person virtuous and worthy of citizenship in most republics is twofold.
00:27:45.940 One, the ability to sustain yourself.
00:27:49.540 So it's, I have self-responsibility.
00:27:52.200 I can feed myself.
00:27:53.420 I can feed my family.
00:27:54.500 I can protect myself.
00:27:55.580 I can protect my family.
00:27:56.980 I am a self-sustaining individual.
00:27:58.960 So it's not somebody who is dependent on the state, not somebody who is a warden of the state,
00:28:04.060 but somebody who is able to care for themselves and others, all of the things that are under their authority,
00:28:09.860 they are able to take care of and also combat.
00:28:14.320 The, you know, Aristotle literally says in most constitutional governments, it is the people who are armed who are considered citizens.
00:28:22.340 So the ability to bear arms on behalf of the nation is critical to your role as a citizen in any of these countries,
00:28:33.080 any of these republics.
00:28:34.560 This is echoed again by Machiavelli.
00:28:37.620 Machiavelli is like main point.
00:28:39.100 If you want to read all of his work, you can read the art of war.
00:28:41.560 You can read discourses on Livy.
00:28:42.940 You can read the prince.
00:28:44.100 The, the common theme throughout all of them, uh, is, uh, mercenaries are bad, right?
00:28:49.580 Like that's like, like he's got plenty of other points.
00:28:51.940 Uh, but his main point is that, is that mercenaries are bad and you need citizen soldiers.
00:28:58.340 In fact, Machiavelli specifically says, you do not want standing armies in a republic.
00:29:02.940 He says, you don't want standing armies in general, but he says, you don't want standing
00:29:06.840 armies in a republic because, uh, standing armies mean people become specifically dependent
00:29:13.640 on the state and its ability to wage war.
00:29:15.960 It encourages you to go out and fight wars on a regular basis.
00:29:19.580 It separates military service from citizenship that destroys the character of the republic.
00:29:24.940 And so republics are, are places where literally service guarantees citizenship, which is why
00:29:31.940 people who are reading starship troopers or watching the movie.
00:29:34.960 Yeah, I get it.
00:29:35.880 Paul Verhoeven wanted it to be fascism.
00:29:37.900 Ha ha ha.
00:29:38.800 Very clever media literacy.
00:29:40.200 The whole point is they are just aping the understanding of citizenship that came from
00:29:45.100 antiquity that came from Machiavelli and ends up coming from the founding fathers, which
00:29:50.640 I'll talk about in a second.
00:29:51.580 Okay, but being willing to defend the country, to take on that personal responsibility is
00:29:57.260 key to maintaining a republic.
00:29:59.760 So if you are a citizen of a republic, you can take care of yourself.
00:30:05.040 You can feed yourself.
00:30:06.800 You can feed your family, anyone who's under your authority.
00:30:09.180 You can take care of, and you can step up and defend the republic when necessary, which
00:30:14.020 is why for most of Rome's republican phase, entering into the military was a privilege that allowed
00:30:22.900 you to ascend the social ladder.
00:30:24.720 The poor who couldn't afford their own equipment could not join the military and therefore could
00:30:30.460 not ascend the social ladder of leadership.
00:30:34.100 Combat military service is what showed that you were a citizen worthy of elevation.
00:30:39.620 If you were too poor to buy your own equipment, if you were too cowardly to involve yourself
00:30:44.060 in military service, then you simply were unworthy of leadership inside the republic.
00:30:49.300 And if you were a class that could afford more, you know, the equestrian class were those that could
00:30:55.680 afford a horse and therefore, you know, our idea of knights come from this.
00:31:01.140 Roman knights goes into the Middle Ages.
00:31:03.120 The people who were on horses were knights, right, in the armor of the idea that we even
00:31:07.920 call things equestrian is tied to the horses, tied to that class.
00:31:11.180 This is all part of what makes a republic a republic.
00:31:14.680 And again, Machiavelli says the same thing.
00:31:16.560 If the thing that keeps your, uh, your republic virtuous keeps the citizens inside your republic,
00:31:23.240 republic virtuous is their ability to make war.
00:31:26.800 Is their ability to personally invest themselves in the defense and wellbeing of your nation.
00:31:32.220 And unless you think that that was an outmoded idea that had lost any kind of gravity by the
00:31:38.280 time America was founded, you can read the federalist papers and in the federalist papers
00:31:43.600 in at least two, uh, but I think there's more federalist papers.
00:31:47.260 I think it's like, it's somewhere in the fifties.
00:31:49.460 I've got it cited, uh, but I didn't write it down right here.
00:31:52.300 So I'll, I'll have to do that later.
00:31:53.860 But in the federalist papers on multiple occasions, you will see, uh, Hamilton, uh, arguing, uh,
00:32:01.960 that the, you know, the, the states had clauses in their state constitutions, uh, that said,
00:32:08.420 we will not have standing armies.
00:32:10.560 And so, uh, they were very worried because like Machiavelli, they believe standing armies
00:32:15.820 allowed for the centralization of power, the, the desire to build empires, uh, the constant
00:32:21.140 need to use military might.
00:32:23.020 And so they were very wary of the idea of having professional soldiers and standing armies.
00:32:27.300 And they built that right into the state constitutions.
00:32:29.460 And they were worried.
00:32:30.800 Many of the anti-federalists were worried that Hamilton and Madison and the rest of these
00:32:35.420 federalists, they were going to try to build like a new King with a standing army that was
00:32:40.020 going to control the United States.
00:32:41.360 And so Hamilton, uh, here doing a little bit of Machiavellianism, because he would eventually,
00:32:46.120 uh, end up helping to build a standing army for the United States.
00:32:50.140 But Hamilton in that moment argues while he's trying to argue for the constitution and why
00:32:55.400 it's not a problem, he says, Oh, don't worry.
00:32:57.820 The whole reason we have, we're going to have like this, this, uh, constitution that gives
00:33:02.860 power to the federal government to have the state militias work on their behalf is so that
00:33:07.260 we don't have a standing army.
00:33:08.720 So I need you to sign onto this constitution that gives the government, the ability to
00:33:13.980 like levy taxes and have an army temporarily and draw on the state militias.
00:33:18.020 But I only need that because that's going to prevent us from having a standing army.
00:33:22.200 So Hamilton, even though a little, you know, uh, well, not a little, a very duplicitous here,
00:33:27.140 uh, ends up, uh, deceiving people into thinking he's against the standing army by saying, Oh,
00:33:32.400 well, I respect your worry about standing armies.
00:33:35.580 And so I'm going to talk about in the federalist papers, how this constitution is going to prevent
00:33:40.800 standing armies.
00:33:41.720 And this is actually why the second amendment is so confusing for a lot of people, because
00:33:47.100 the language of the second amendment actually makes that understanding clear, right?
00:33:51.320 Well, of course you need to be armed because you're a citizen of a Republic and a citizen
00:33:55.620 of a Republic is naturally going to be a minute man.
00:33:59.240 He's naturally going to be a citizen soldier, soldier, a militia member.
00:34:04.220 Now we have moved well beyond that in the United States.
00:34:06.980 We have a standing army, we have a professional army that is constantly maintaining empire,
00:34:12.020 doing exactly what everyone who's worried about standing armies said they were going
00:34:16.120 to do.
00:34:17.020 And, uh, and so, uh, we've, we've kind of left that behind, but we still like our second
00:34:21.560 amendment.
00:34:22.140 That's why the second amendment is so weird.
00:34:24.020 That's why a lot of people end up arguing over it.
00:34:25.920 I think it's very clear that the founders intended people to be able to defend themselves,
00:34:31.700 uh, with, with, uh, firearms.
00:34:34.280 But the second amendment is also there to make it clear that we are going to have a militia
00:34:38.600 built up of people who own firearms so that we don't need to have an army.
00:34:42.640 That was the whole point of the second amendment was yes, to protect your right to, to bear arms,
00:34:47.720 but also because you're supposed to bear them on behalf, behalf of the state when it's required,
00:34:53.740 that's what makes you a Republic.
00:34:55.740 And this was the Jeffersonian vision, right?
00:34:58.680 The, the farmer who's the citizen soldier, right?
00:35:01.920 That was his understanding, every man will own a plot of property that he will sustain
00:35:08.440 himself and his family on that will give him dignity as a farmer.
00:35:11.860 By the way, this is why, uh, so many, uh, throughout antiquity and middle ages, uh, believe
00:35:18.320 that landowning was more important than say making money.
00:35:22.100 Uh, this is why a lot of people, including, uh, Jewish people in a lot of Europe were banned
00:35:27.740 from, uh, being farmers because that was dignity reserved for the people who were of that land.
00:35:34.540 Right.
00:35:34.940 And that's how many ended up moving into things like shopkeeping and finance that ultimately
00:35:40.300 ended up becoming more powerful.
00:35:41.620 But like, this was, this was the inborn idea of like, what made you a citizen?
00:35:46.020 You own the land.
00:35:46.960 You were part of the family family.
00:35:49.100 You could protect your family and provide for the family.
00:35:52.180 You could also provide for the security of the Republic.
00:35:55.780 So the membership in a Republic is based on the idea that you are self-sufficient and that
00:36:02.140 you are willing to step up and defend the state.
00:36:04.460 This is something completely lost, completely lost to Americans today.
00:36:09.260 Right.
00:36:09.700 And I say, this is someone who did not serve in the military, though.
00:36:12.380 I have lots of family and friends, uh, who did my, my father was in the military.
00:36:16.620 I lived on military bases.
00:36:17.840 I have the highest respect for people who have, but I'm not saying this like to grant
00:36:22.160 eyes myself.
00:36:22.800 I have not been in military service.
00:36:25.020 So by this, by this definition, I would not be a citizen in a Republic, uh, or at least,
00:36:30.320 you know, as we understand it right now.
00:36:32.220 And so this is important to understand this distinction, because what we're going to get
00:36:36.140 to, what we're really going to hit is this break.
00:36:39.140 Right.
00:36:39.580 And this is what people don't think about.
00:36:41.540 This is what I've been harping on for a long time.
00:36:43.980 And people don't think about it is scale, right?
00:36:47.580 Can republics scale?
00:36:49.900 Well, that's the question that you should really be asking when people ask, are we a
00:36:53.860 republic?
00:36:54.980 Because what people want to do is say that this form of government can just be applied
00:37:00.320 to anything.
00:37:00.960 We can turn anything into republic, but that is not what the vast majority of people believe
00:37:07.000 throughout history, including the, you know, the classic political philosophers and the,
00:37:12.220 even the, in many of the enlightenment philosophers, they did not believe that you can just take
00:37:16.380 the Republic and slap it onto anything because a Republic has to be a, again, a unified good
00:37:24.220 and unified understanding of what makes you a citizen, why you're involved.
00:37:28.980 It's not just anybody can come in and vote at any time.
00:37:31.820 Again, the United States didn't allow that, you know, there wasn't, oh, well, just anybody
00:37:35.900 walks in and can vote.
00:37:37.100 That was not the way that the United States was set up.
00:37:39.340 It's not how the Athenians were set up.
00:37:41.040 It's not how the Romans were set up.
00:37:42.960 That's not how any of these republics worked throughout history.
00:37:46.260 But today we're like, well, you know, if you come in, you're here for, I don't know,
00:37:50.720 five years, maybe then you can vote or maybe not.
00:37:53.620 Maybe you just show up and we say you can vote because that's what the democratic party was
00:37:58.060 pushing for.
00:37:58.820 But the idea that universal suffrage is part of a Republic is just not true.
00:38:03.780 In fact, it was warned against multiple times across pretty much every philosopher who talked
00:38:09.280 about this because that was very much against the idea of what the Republic would be.
00:38:14.460 A Republic is not a place where just everybody votes all the time like that.
00:38:18.580 And it's not even a place where everyone votes for representatives.
00:38:20.900 And then those representatives vote all the time.
00:38:23.380 No, there are very different and important selection criteria, many of which include being
00:38:29.140 the head of a household, owning property, being willing to fight on behalf of the state.
00:38:35.860 These are all things that were key aspects of citizenship in a Republic across all of time.
00:38:43.660 But we've eliminated basically all of that and just reduced it to living in a state,
00:38:48.380 you know, for a set number of years, living in a country for a set number of years.
00:38:52.640 That's all it takes.
00:38:53.660 And that just would have not been made sense to anyone, including our founding fathers.
00:38:57.920 That would have just been ludicrous.
00:38:59.960 Now, the problem of scale when it comes to republics is many fold.
00:39:04.320 First, the problem of scale when it comes to republics hits you when it comes to service
00:39:10.240 in the military, right?
00:39:11.580 You are simply not going to get every male to be involved or be eligible for military
00:39:17.660 service as you expand out.
00:39:20.080 That's not going to be the case.
00:39:21.760 Now, a lot of people would say, well, look, Oren, it's the modern world and we simply have
00:39:26.660 to have standing armies today.
00:39:28.740 So the classical definition of republics is just dead no matter what.
00:39:32.860 Maybe you're right.
00:39:33.580 I'm not sure.
00:39:35.140 I'm not sure if that's true.
00:39:36.120 I'm not sure if well-organized militias are completely out of check.
00:39:39.160 But it's certainly if you want to be a geopolitical power player who's going around and just knocking
00:39:43.980 down anybody who disagrees with you, making sure that all your trade routes are secure
00:39:48.840 24-7.
00:39:49.960 If you want to make sure that you have geopolitical influence in every sphere of the world all of
00:39:55.780 the time, if you are looking to maintain an imperial presence, then yeah, you have to have
00:40:01.640 a standing army.
00:40:02.340 And this is something that Machiavelli and again, Alexis de Tocqueville in this case actually
00:40:07.840 warned about is the imperial democracy, that imperial democracies are going to waste themselves
00:40:14.620 relatively quickly because they have to constantly expand and they tend to only be interested in
00:40:21.220 the enrichment of their citizens rather than virtue.
00:40:25.120 And so they quickly trade virtue for enrichment, which means they start to see specialization.
00:40:30.900 They start to see stratification inside their society.
00:40:34.320 And all of a sudden you're in the scenario where you're not a group of equals working together
00:40:41.380 towards a common good, but many different interests, a lot of which are aligned with foreign powers
00:40:46.060 or based on, you know, working, you know, with powers outside of your country and you end up
00:40:54.160 just shattering the unified identity and the virtue of your republic.
00:40:59.020 So that's one problem of scale, the constant need to conquer, uh, the, the maintenance of
00:41:04.300 a standing military.
00:41:05.120 These are all things that were warned about, uh, when it comes to all of these political
00:41:10.180 philosophers throughout history, if you want to maintain a republic.
00:41:12.960 So if you want to keep a republic, one thing you really don't want to do is turn into an
00:41:16.840 empire because that's going to kind of doom you to de Tocqueville specifically talks about
00:41:21.760 the scale.
00:41:22.460 There's just too many people.
00:41:23.940 If you expand, the larger a republic gets, the harder it is for it to have a unified vision,
00:41:29.520 a unified understanding that's critical.
00:41:32.380 Another thing that people, uh, recognize was critical to a republic actually is religion.
00:41:39.020 Machiavelli is famously not a huge fan of Christianity, but even he understood that you
00:41:43.080 need to have a religion that binds things together.
00:41:45.820 Now he was pretty cynical about that religion.
00:41:47.840 He said, well, you just need it because it's the only thing that can compel people to do stuff
00:41:52.300 that's not in their own self-interest and we need it to like make people obey orders and
00:41:56.460 pay taxes and stuff.
00:41:57.940 Uh, but maybe they believe it.
00:41:59.360 Maybe they don't like he, he had that very cynical view, but either way, he recognized
00:42:03.660 the critical importance of it.
00:42:05.680 Alexis de Tocqueville again said religion was a critical aspect of the United States, binding
00:42:10.180 it together.
00:42:10.980 Obviously our founding fathers, John Adams, and the famous quote about a moral and religious
00:42:15.600 people.
00:42:16.120 They all knew that this was critical, but the farther you expand, the harder it is to share
00:42:20.700 this stuff now, something like Christianity, you know, it's, it's a pretty broad faith.
00:42:24.800 It can, it can, can expand out to some extent, but if you're trying to bring in a bunch of
00:42:28.500 cultures with a bunch of different religions, if you want to bring Hindus and Muslims and
00:42:32.480 Jews and everybody in and say, well, let's all be part of a Republic.
00:42:35.720 Uh, actually no, like that, that's not how it works.
00:42:39.160 Uh, you can have a tolerance for religion, you know, religion inside, like in, in like a
00:42:44.080 Lockean sense.
00:42:44.820 Okay.
00:42:45.120 You can be any kind of like Christian Protestant you want to be, maybe even we'll expand it to
00:42:50.120 all Christians, but certainly not to, you know, uh, religions outside of Christianity
00:42:54.880 and it's, and it's different variants.
00:42:56.860 This would simply not engender the unity and the identity necessary to maintain your status
00:43:02.580 as a Republic.
00:43:03.820 Uh, the other problem with scale just becomes the representation, right?
00:43:07.900 You have a hard time, uh, identifying men of merit and elevating them as you get larger.
00:43:14.180 Too much of the job of selection is put into institutions and abstract categories rather
00:43:21.240 than looking at what actually selects for greatness.
00:43:23.960 So one of the problems that we just run into over and over again with a Republic, if you
00:43:28.860 want to maintain it is scope.
00:43:30.840 And so the last thing I want to talk to you about is like, okay, is America Republic?
00:43:34.640 And can we, if so, can we keep it?
00:43:38.120 And if not, can we get back to it?
00:43:39.620 So just going through some of the basic requirements we've laid out is America Republic.
00:43:45.680 Well, uh, does it have a limited franchised based strictly on like land ownership and willingness
00:43:52.420 to bear arms for the country?
00:43:55.220 No, right.
00:43:56.700 It does not.
00:43:57.900 Uh, you know, is it a mixture of the interests of all aspects of society?
00:44:03.480 Well, we could certainly say it was at the beginning and I want to be clear.
00:44:07.060 America was a Republic at the beginning.
00:44:09.080 It absolutely was founded as a Republic, uh, a democratic Republic.
00:44:12.660 It was certainly, uh, have, uh, heavily weighted, uh, on the democratic end of the Republican
00:44:20.120 formula, but it was a Republic.
00:44:22.040 Uh, you know, people were required to own land.
00:44:24.320 They were required to, uh, share, you know, kind of the same faith.
00:44:27.780 They were required to be able to, uh, basically wield, uh, firearms on behalf, weapons on behalf
00:44:34.260 of the nation.
00:44:35.960 These are all things that were true of America, but it's simply not true now.
00:44:40.340 Right.
00:44:40.860 So we simply don't have those things.
00:44:42.560 Uh, do, do we have a mix of interests, uh, like are required in the Republic?
00:44:48.220 Well, again, we used to, but, uh, as I laid out in my book, the total state, Gatano Mosca
00:44:53.600 pointed out why, no, actually we've dissolved all of those interests.
00:44:57.900 We've dissolved the idea because, and, and this might have been, you know, I think that
00:45:02.600 a lot of the founders, what the founders did was good and correct.
00:45:05.940 But I think one problem in maintaining a Republic that America probably ran into is our dissolving
00:45:12.260 of social class, right?
00:45:14.160 Now the dissolving of social class is deeply ingrained in the American experience.
00:45:18.140 And at first that seems like it should help a Republic.
00:45:21.720 Again, Aristotle, uh, talks about this.
00:45:24.340 He says that, uh, removing the differentiation between classes as much as possible, uh, helps
00:45:30.320 for the maintenance, uh, of many of these governments.
00:45:33.300 Machiavelli believe that actually the citizens should be relatively poor, but the public should
00:45:38.080 be relatively, you know, kind of the public treasury should be well-funded in a Republic
00:45:42.820 that keeps there from being these kind of like social clashes constantly, uh, class divisions.
00:45:47.580 But ultimately there is a recognition that there are natural hierarchies and orders inside
00:45:53.260 of society, and this will create social classes and those different social classes pushing
00:45:57.940 against each other is what makes a polity, which makes a mixed government work, right?
00:46:02.780 That it's the fact that the, you know, the poor are not always in charge and the rich are
00:46:06.760 not always in charge and the religious are not always in charge, but like the merchants and
00:46:11.380 the atheists aren't in charge.
00:46:12.820 Like you have this mixture, you know, I shouldn't say atheists there cause they, nobody liked
00:46:16.780 the atheists, including John Locke, secular interests.
00:46:19.040 Uh, you know, these things are, are in tension with each other.
00:46:22.420 They're pushing against each other.
00:46:23.560 That is the actual interest set against interest that Montague was talking about, uh, that,
00:46:28.580 you know, was talked about in, in, in Matt by Madison and federalist 51 that these interests
00:46:33.400 would check interest.
00:46:34.260 That's what they're talking about.
00:46:35.560 But because we dissolved all that down into mass democracy, oligarchs rule, because really
00:46:41.320 mass democracy is just manipulation by people who have the most money.
00:46:45.080 And so if you're in that scenario, then kind of money power rules the day, whoever can buy
00:46:50.320 enough, uh, you know, uh, advertisements and move enough people with monetary incentives
00:46:55.260 ends up winning.
00:46:55.840 And in case you have any question of whether or not we're in that position, uh, we literally
00:46:59.680 had, uh, one side, the democratic party, which was funded by like George Soros and a ton
00:47:04.980 of oligarchs, uh, squaring off against, uh, the Republican party, which was led by Donald
00:47:10.760 Trump, who is a billionaire, uh, who is heavily financed by, uh, Elon Musk and a cadre of his
00:47:17.600 friends, including like David Sachs and these guys.
00:47:19.860 So it really was a clash of oligarchs.
00:47:23.320 That's kind of where we are right now.
00:47:25.140 And so is America a Republic?
00:47:27.800 Well, do you need to be a landowner capable of sustaining a family to vote?
00:47:31.840 No.
00:47:32.120 Uh, do you need to have a long history, uh, and tradition and religion tied to the United
00:47:36.980 States to vote?
00:47:38.720 No.
00:47:39.420 Uh, do you need to be able to bear arms on, uh, on behalf of the state, uh, in order to
00:47:45.400 vote?
00:47:45.740 No.
00:47:46.560 Uh, okay.
00:47:47.360 Do you, um, have a mixture of interests that are well represented inside your constitution?
00:47:53.560 Uh, no.
00:47:54.600 Uh, do you have a virtuous people who have proven themselves to be capable of self-governance
00:47:59.600 and therefore able to rule by selection of, uh, uh, representatives that really show their
00:48:05.280 interests and fight for the common good?
00:48:07.580 No.
00:48:09.100 So like by every metric, you know, we're not a Republic.
00:48:13.220 Um, we were a Republic, but we aren't now.
00:48:16.120 And that's hard for a lot of people to hear, but it's just true.
00:48:19.300 And I don't like that any more than most people don't like it.
00:48:23.340 Uh, you know, but, but, but it is just objectively true.
00:48:26.600 If you go through any of the requirements for actually being a Republic, if you're not just
00:48:31.280 using Republic as some quick retort, uh, that is ultimately interchangeable with democracy,
00:48:35.940 but if you actually treat it as a category of governance, uh, defined by multiple political
00:48:41.740 scientists and philosophers throughout history, then no, we just don't qualify as a Republic.
00:48:47.300 Um, so if we aren't a Republic, could we become a Republic again?
00:48:53.520 Yes.
00:48:54.580 So Machiavelli actually outlines, uh, the way in which, uh, this is maintained.
00:48:59.600 He says over time, and this is not an idea that is unique to him.
00:49:03.260 Joseph de Maistre says this lots of political philosophers say this.
00:49:06.920 I'm just keeping in, uh, you know, in, in the Machiavelli strain, since that's where
00:49:10.940 I've been through most of this talk.
00:49:13.040 But the, uh, you know, the, the, uh, thing he notes is that governments over time shift
00:49:18.780 and change, right?
00:49:19.720 The, the people and the, and the virtue of the people shifts and change.
00:49:23.060 Uh, and so people might have been virtuous enough for a Republic at one point, and then
00:49:28.400 not become virtuous enough for a Republic at another.
00:49:31.560 And it's very clear that we aren't virtuous enough in the United States to maintain a
00:49:36.020 Republic.
00:49:36.380 And so we aren't one.
00:49:37.880 And it's really that simple.
00:49:39.480 Like if you want, if you, if you, if you're trying to speak with anyone on this issue,
00:49:43.420 especially conservatives who are like, no, of course we're a Republic.
00:49:46.340 We're a Republic.
00:49:46.840 You're like, okay, well, what's the main thing to maintain a Republic?
00:49:49.780 Uh, okay.
00:49:50.360 Like virtue, belief in God, these things.
00:49:52.100 Are we a nation that does that?
00:49:53.660 Are we virtuous?
00:49:54.480 Do we, well, no.
00:49:55.440 Okay.
00:49:56.320 So that that's just a basic, like, okay, if we need this to be a Republic and we don't
00:50:01.380 have this, are we a Republic?
00:50:03.720 No, pretty simple.
00:50:05.800 However, can you become a Republic again?
00:50:08.380 Well, yes, you need, but you need to be virtuous again.
00:50:11.360 Right.
00:50:11.760 And, and there's a lot, there's a long road to that.
00:50:14.740 And a lot of cases it's believed that you need some time under the rule of a King in order
00:50:20.400 for the people to return to a place of virtue.
00:50:24.380 Machiavelli puts it a little differently.
00:50:26.060 What he says is virtue is part of a community.
00:50:29.020 And that's a reference back to Aristotle.
00:50:30.640 You can only be virtuous in community, but to create a community, you often have to do
00:50:36.640 non-virtuous things, things that are, that would not comport with the behavior of a virtuous
00:50:41.980 man.
00:50:42.280 So not, so, uh, unvert, unvirtuous things have to be done in order to create a society that
00:50:48.380 allows for virtue.
00:50:50.540 And so he says, you know, if you have a Republic and the virtue is waning, if the constitution
00:50:55.860 is losing its control, then you might have to take measures that work outside the constitution
00:51:02.420 that, that are extra constitutional or extra, uh, would not be considered virtuous, but you
00:51:08.120 have to take those actions to return yourself to a place where you can once again, be ruled
00:51:12.460 by these things.
00:51:14.000 Now that's not very specific, right?
00:51:16.200 That, that could be very different in all kinds of different environments.
00:51:20.280 Uh, but let's look at a couple of things that we would need to do this, right?
00:51:24.020 First scale has to be a huge part of this.
00:51:27.540 Again, we can't have a Republic and maintain a globe spanning empire.
00:51:32.680 Just everybody throughout history recognize that's just not how it works.
00:51:36.780 So if you want a Republic again, if you want to be governed as a Republic in the way that
00:51:42.100 the founders wanted you to be, then you have to abandon this idea that you're going to rule
00:51:48.660 the world and that you're going to have an influence all the world and that you're going
00:51:51.220 to have this huge military that's wielded.
00:51:53.500 Whenever you feel like you've been slided somewhere, you want to keep markets open for
00:51:57.340 some kind of company.
00:51:58.180 Like you just can't do that.
00:52:00.040 You can't get yourself involved in every conflict in the middle East and favor certain countries
00:52:04.920 over others and have special relationships that require you to run to their aid every time
00:52:09.440 someone, you know, is mean to them, like these are not behaviors that a Republic can maintain.
00:52:15.000 You simply can't do that anymore.
00:52:16.960 There's a real question.
00:52:17.920 If you can even maintain a Republic over a continent, which is what America is now, right?
00:52:22.760 Even if we withdraw all of our, uh, longstanding commitments in other places, and we, we really
00:52:28.700 focus just on the nation, we're still huge.
00:52:31.200 We're still a massive nation.
00:52:33.000 Uh, that's a lot, a lot of people in that, you know, shouldn't be here.
00:52:36.420 And, you know, many of them are, are now, uh, you know, citizens.
00:52:39.980 So what are you going to do?
00:52:41.080 Right?
00:52:41.480 So you, you have to shrink your ideas down, but even then you're facing a very difficult
00:52:45.640 moment.
00:52:46.160 So how are we going to turn into a Republic again, if we're going to do it at all?
00:52:50.500 Well, you need to shrink down your focus and you need to greatly emphasize a shared religion,
00:52:57.560 a shared identity, and a shared civic duty, right?
00:53:02.340 Not because people have to, not because you're conscripting people, right?
00:53:07.720 Like that is Machiavelli's point.
00:53:09.940 Again, conscripts are not what you're looking for.
00:53:12.180 You're looking for people who want to fight for your country because the honor and the
00:53:18.340 duty are what they care about.
00:53:20.180 Uh, to take a Chesterton quote, Rome was not, uh, uh, people did not, men did not love Rome
00:53:26.780 because it was great.
00:53:27.620 It was great because men loved her.
00:53:29.800 You have to have a group of people virtuous enough who care about your country enough
00:53:35.180 to sacrifice just because it's the right thing to do just because defending their families
00:53:40.180 is honorable, just because granting that service to the common cause is at an admirable thing.
00:53:46.900 That is what God wants them to do, or what they see as important to their personal honor.
00:53:51.360 That is what you need.
00:53:52.680 And you simply can't have that unless you have a unified vision of like who you are and
00:53:57.140 where you're going and what you want to do and what morality you share.
00:54:01.040 These are not things that can be constantly up for debate.
00:54:03.620 You cannot have a constantly shifting and moving understanding and definition of who we
00:54:08.000 are as a people and what we believe and what, what is the higher good and what, you know,
00:54:13.180 you can't have these things and then ask people to sacrifice and have virtue, uh, based around
00:54:18.740 them, they either, they, they have to be a fixed point that people can aim towards.
00:54:22.880 If they want to become virtuous, I am virtuous because I act for the good of Americans and
00:54:30.380 for the American ideal and the Christian faith that they follow.
00:54:33.340 And because I am willing to defend my homeland and my family, like these things have to be
00:54:38.920 tied to real things.
00:54:40.120 They can't just be like, I believe in an idea and like, no, that, that can't work.
00:54:44.140 That's, that's not going to allow for the level of virtue and the level of sacrifice
00:54:48.920 that you're trying.
00:54:49.600 You also frankly have to restrict the franchise.
00:54:51.940 You can't just give it to anybody who walks in the door.
00:54:54.700 And even if people have lived here for a certain amount of time, if they're not investing in
00:54:58.660 the community, if they're not, uh, you know, owning property and maintaining property and caring
00:55:03.660 for the people under their authority and being willing to defend and be personally responsible
00:55:09.000 for the protection of people, then you have to put restrictions on voting.
00:55:14.620 And that's going to sound again, you know, the leftists run around and that's fascism.
00:55:18.660 That's fascism service guarantees citizenship.
00:55:21.240 That's fascism.
00:55:22.060 Nope.
00:55:22.500 That's, that's actually just what it means to be in a Republic and a self-governing people.
00:55:27.200 And you don't like, I'm not making this up.
00:55:29.900 Like this is tied to every one of these political thinkers who had any interest in what a Republic
00:55:34.580 actually was.
00:55:35.400 So if you want America to be a Republic and it just isn't one now, but if you want it
00:55:40.520 to return to being a Republic, you have to consider these issues and none of them are
00:55:45.340 easy, right?
00:55:46.300 Walking, walking away from empire is not easy.
00:55:49.320 Telling people that they have to care about the United States, that they have to have a
00:55:55.160 shared identity, a shared religion, a shared understanding of the good, that they have
00:55:59.320 to prioritize the good of the, of the nation over themselves.
00:56:04.600 The people over themselves that they, you know, if they want to be involved in politics,
00:56:10.280 they need to prove themselves say in military action or by demonstrating leadership ability
00:56:15.900 and the ability to care for their community and to cultivate a piece of land or, you know,
00:56:21.120 watch over a family.
00:56:22.640 Like people are not going to like any of this, right?
00:56:25.240 Like this is an easy way to get called a, you know, racist, fascist, whatever.
00:56:28.780 But this is what is identified as being the things that make it a Republic.
00:56:35.620 And if you're actually interested in what a Republic is and you actually care about maintaining
00:56:40.580 the system of government that you claim to say is so much better when you say we're a
00:56:45.260 Republican, not a democracy, you need to think about these issues because saying, oh, well,
00:56:49.520 this can, you know, this idea of a Republic can just apply to 350 million people.
00:56:54.240 And eventually the globe, because everyone's actually an American, if they've ever eaten
00:56:58.160 McDonald's or gone to Walmart, like you can't keep that conception of the United States and
00:57:04.140 call it Republic.
00:57:05.120 You can't do both.
00:57:06.460 You can keep the modern conception of the United States, or you can discard it for a Republic
00:57:10.560 and return to a Republic.
00:57:13.020 You can't keep both visions in your head.
00:57:15.040 And that is as hard for conservatives to hear as it is for the most wild leftist, because
00:57:20.120 at this point, most conservatives do define their country, let's just be honest, as a
00:57:25.060 mass democracy, they might say, oh, it's a Republic, but like outside of keeping the
00:57:28.840 electoral college or something, they don't think about what that means, right?
00:57:32.820 Yeah.
00:57:33.020 You should keep the electoral college and the Senate and stuff, but there's a lot more
00:57:36.320 to it.
00:57:36.720 And if you don't address these issues, if you don't address these issues of identity
00:57:40.460 and religion and virtue and scale and military service and everything else that made a Republic
00:57:46.000 what it is, then you just don't have a Republic.
00:57:48.520 And if you don't fix those things, then you're never going to have a Republic again.
00:57:52.120 And none of those are easy and none of them are an easy sell, but guess what?
00:57:56.260 You've been ruled by like globalists elites who completely don't care about your country
00:58:00.420 and wouldn't sacrifice anything for this country ever.
00:58:04.000 How's that going for you?
00:58:06.140 Is that good?
00:58:07.200 You enjoying that?
00:58:08.280 Or do we need to return to something that ties the good of the leadership and the good
00:58:12.960 of the people together?
00:58:13.800 We don't have to have a monarchy to do that.
00:58:16.120 We don't even have to have an aristocracy to do that.
00:58:18.280 We can form a polity.
00:58:19.880 We can, we can form the constitutional Republic, but we aren't one now by, by pretty much every
00:58:26.040 definition necessary.
00:58:27.920 And if we want to return again, we need to seriously rethink what we're doing.
00:58:31.760 All right, guys, uh, let me switch over to the questions of the people here real quick.
00:58:39.520 Uh, Jeff says, uh, uh, anti-Rushmore for us presidents to send to the crystals.
00:58:50.840 Ooh, uh, what are the four worst presidents?
00:58:55.060 Um, it's gotta be Woodrow Wilson is on there for sure.
00:58:59.800 Um, people are not going to like this, but I'm, I'm, I'm going, uh, Lincoln and FDR.
00:59:07.980 Uh, um, obviously, uh, those won't be popular picks, but they, they definitely brought us
00:59:14.480 to this current state.
00:59:15.540 Um, and then, uh, we'll just, we'll throw in Biden real quick or somebody, uh, but I'll
00:59:22.580 have to think about that a little more.
00:59:24.320 Uh, tiny stupid demon says, uh, yes, there is no tech, technical array, uh, arrangement
00:59:29.880 of government government that escapes the need for those in power to be virtuous.
00:59:34.660 Everyone needs to return their shopping carts.
00:59:36.840 Yeah, exactly.
00:59:37.620 That's why I kind of did the shopping cart nationalism in a way that's a little bit of a precursor
00:59:41.760 here, right?
00:59:42.200 If you don't have a society in which people return the shopping cart, you can't have a
00:59:47.960 republic.
00:59:49.080 That's really all there is to that.
00:59:51.140 Uh, and then, uh, Robert Weinsfield there just with the super chat.
00:59:54.680 Thank you very much, sir.
00:59:56.100 All right, guys.
00:59:57.140 Well, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up, but thank you everybody for watching.
01:00:01.640 If it's your first time on the channel, make sure you go ahead and subscribe on YouTube,
01:00:05.720 click the bell notification, all that stuff.
01:00:07.540 So, you know, when the streams go live, of course, everything also ends up on rumble and
01:00:11.960 odyssey, if you prefer those platforms.
01:00:14.580 Uh, and then if you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, then you need to go to Apple or
01:00:19.840 Spotify or wherever you get your favorite podcasts and subscribe to the or Mac entire show that
01:00:24.300 has actually been growing quite a bit.
01:00:25.900 Thank you very much.
01:00:26.740 We're going to go well beyond a million, uh, downloads, uh, you know, this year, which
01:00:31.240 is fantastic.
01:00:32.100 So thank you for continuing to make that a success.
01:00:35.000 And of course, if you would like to get my book on this topic, uh, you know, touches
01:00:39.220 on a lot of these things, though, not everything here, but touches on a lot of the issues we
01:00:42.960 touched on today.
01:00:43.540 Of course, you can grab my book, the total state on Amazon, Barnes and Noble books, a
01:00:47.780 million, or be virtuous and order it from your favorite local bookstore.
01:00:51.280 Thank you everybody for watching as always, I will talk to you next time.