00:00:30.000hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining me this afternoon i've got a great stream with
00:00:43.240a great guest that i think you're really going to enjoy before we get started today i just want
00:00:47.760to remind you that frontier magazine issue six is out it's a beautiful magazine you know we've got
00:00:53.000all this ephemeral content stuff that gets thrown away it's all digital but frontier is a beautifully
00:00:57.880crafted magazine this episode or this edition is about nixon maxing they're talking all about the
00:01:03.600legacy of richard nixon and you'll find a whiskey review from yours truly in there as well if you
00:01:08.940want to get this you can't just go out and buy it you have to become a member of blaze unlimited so
00:01:12.920head to blaze unlimited.com slash oran use the promo code frontier 40 to get 40 dollars off your
00:01:19.660subscription and if you're one of the first 50 subscribers you're also going to get all of the
00:01:23.400issues one through five so you haven't missed anything so head to blaze unlimited.com slash
00:01:28.620or and use that promo code frontier 40 for 40 off today well guys there has been a recent
00:01:36.500controversy over the phrase the common good all of a sudden out of nowhere it suddenly became a
00:01:42.780dangerous and dirty word signaling the rise of socialism or maybe using communism on the right
00:01:48.640We had all of your standard establishment organizations from the National Review to Ben Shapiro freaking out about the idea that people would use the phrase, the common good.
00:01:59.320But of course, this is actually a phrase with a lot of history behind it.
00:02:02.900You can find it all the way from philosophers like Aristotle, all the way into Catholic theology, even Protestant theology, and of course, our founding fathers.
00:02:12.320So why are people panicking about a phrase with this much context and this much history?
00:02:17.320Joining me today is to discuss, this is Matthew Peterson. He is a fellow at the Claremont Institute, and he usually has another 15 irons in the fire as well. Matthew, thank you so much for coming on.
00:02:29.040Thanks for having me. It's good to discuss this issue, maybe in a better way than it's been discussed by many online.
00:02:36.160Well, I know that you've written about this extensively, actually shockingly extensively, kind of thinking about this issue. So I thought that you would be a good person to dive into this because, I mean, on the surface, you hear the argument, right? Well, common good. That sounds collectivist, right? This is the dichotomy that we have kind of framed the entire discussion in. We have to be either individualists or collectivists.
00:03:06.160At some level, you get it. Communism is bad. Socialism is bad. I don't think anyone here is standing for either of these political ideologies. But the problem is, I think, this deeply ideological thinking.
00:03:19.780One of the things I love about Russell Kirk is the first thing he explained about conservatism is it shouldn't be ideological. The point of conservatism is to avoid ideology. It's to think about the good of the people and what they want, about preserving their way of life, their traditions, who they are.
00:03:36.760You could say it's standing up for the common good. And so when we think about this idea, we don't just want to frame it in this individualistic versus, you know, collectivist mindset. We need to understand that there's something else behind it. So can you give us a basic frame when we're discussing the common good? Are we just discussing social justice or some other oddly defined term for a government power grab? Or are we talking about something else?
00:04:04.240we are talking about something else and the problem as you stated is that when you use these
00:04:11.760words now it's certainly true that they've been co-opted by the left but i think the larger truth
00:04:18.800is that everyone has an impoverished understanding of what the common good is because we see things
00:04:24.960in this individualist versus collective binary and we know that uh we don't want to be collectivists
00:04:31.400We know that communism doesn't work. It folds the natural rights of individuals and their dignity into one mass that must do this and that in accordance with what the rulers want.
00:04:45.780But the mistake here is that this language is much older than the left. It's much older than communism.
00:04:53.700and it in fact refers to something completely different and the right if it's going to win
00:05:00.340I've said this for decades needs to recover the language of morality and justice you know
00:05:05.640Hamilton said justice is the end of government you're always going to pursue justice and you'll
00:05:11.020you'll collapse everything in the pursuit of it that's the goal of government and justice is the
00:05:14.820right ordering between individuals in a sort of harmony so you know first like what the common
00:05:22.120good is not. When you say common good, I get it. You hear the word, sometimes you reach for your
00:05:28.300wallet, right? It's like, who's going to take my stuff in the name of the common good? But of
00:05:32.080course, everyone argues for what they want because they say it's good. But the common good actually
00:05:36.600means is not an alien thing outside of all the individuals that we have to worship and sacrifice
00:05:42.600to. It means something that's actually good, but good for you and me together. That's as simple as
00:05:51.000it is. And for centuries in the West, all these traditions, all the traditions in Western
00:05:57.160civilization, you know, Catholicism, Protestantism, you know, different philosophers, they always
00:06:02.620acknowledge that the goal of government is something that's actually good for all the
00:06:06.300citizens, God forbid, you know. So the first thing to realize when you say common good,
00:06:11.500you don't mean something alien that's out there that's not your own good. You mean something
00:06:16.040that's actually good for both of us. Yeah, so we're looking at a category that encompasses
00:06:23.500the individual, but also the rest of society and finding ways that we can cooperate in which
00:06:30.080we can cultivate this good for each individual that then constitutes the collective. We're not
00:06:37.340just searching for the collective corporate body's good apart from the good of the individual. We're
00:06:43.980not just looking for the good of the individual and ignoring its impact on the corporate body
00:06:48.480and your neighbor those around you we're finding that which is commonly good for everyone and this
00:06:54.440is i think a very difficult mindset again for the modern you know conservative because they've been
00:07:01.560trained on this idea that all attempts to find a common good are inherently socialist collectivist
00:07:07.660There is no way to search for a shared good. There is only the individual good. But I think this is disastrous for a couple of reasons. If you, as a father, as a husband, as a member of your community, search only for your own good, you are not living a virtuous life, right?
00:07:28.480A virtuous life is held in concert with others.
00:07:38.340But ultimately, we have to live in this way.
00:07:41.480And that means that we have to care about not just our own good, but the good of others.
00:07:47.140Because if you're a father who only cares about your individualistic good, you're a failure as a father.
00:07:51.400If you're a husband who only cares about your individualistic existence as a husband, you failed there too.
00:07:57.260And so even in the most basic of relations, because what is the city before it's a city? It's the family, right? It's the collection of families, the tribe that creates the polis, that creates the body that we are then trying to find the good for.
00:08:12.040And so intuitively, even as Christians, people who value a family, value the well-being of children and the community, we know we can't live for our own individualistic good by itself.
00:08:24.760Now, as you're saying, if we have lined our kind of selves up properly, then our pursuit of individualistic virtue will then also lead us to a more virtuous community, a beneficial community for everyone.
00:08:37.900But when we break things down to that just pure individualism, that's the problem. That's why it used to be the focus, the unreducible unit of politics was the family. But we've turned the irreducible unit of politics into the individual. And I think this is where the idea of the common good then just kind of detonates.
00:08:58.880Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
00:09:01.080And I think that it's really important that we recover this understanding because it actually is common sense.
00:09:09.020But you're right. This framework has kind of been imposed.
00:09:11.880This ideological framework has been imposed on people so they don't see the common good for what it is.
00:09:16.640So, you know, we give some more examples. It's a sort of good that doesn't diminish when shared.
00:09:22.960So, you know, goods like material things, the more we share them, the more they diminish.
00:09:28.000Um, there's only so much pie that we can, you know, put around the room.
00:09:31.420When we talk about common good, like the true end of government or the end of your life
00:09:35.160or the end of the family, we mean something that's actually good for you.
00:09:38.860So when you take the father example, um, you know, one of the examples, one of my, uh,
00:09:44.520you know, favorite, uh, authors on this topic speaks of is, um, the peace in the family.
00:09:49.940You know, God forbid, if you had a good Thanksgiving once, you know, where the family all got together
00:10:16.400sure, you sacrifice for the other person,
00:10:18.580but you also know that ultimately that is good for you.
00:10:21.520Your happiness is found in making that other person happy
00:10:24.840or sacrificing for your kids, you know, the good father says, I'm happy to do this because
00:10:29.640I do it out of love for them. And ultimately it's good for us. And it's good for me too,
00:10:34.160in some way. And you know, at the simple level, though, a common good is like a joke. It's too
00:10:40.120good to be, not to share. Right. And so you both partake in the joke and laugh together. And it's
00:10:47.260even better with other people. Right. And so this extends through all the goods of political life.
00:10:53.920I mean, the local community wants to ensure, should want to ensure the good of the family all the way up through government.
00:11:01.160They should want to ensure the good of the family because they know that that's good for everyone together, for all the families together and for the entire tribe or nation.
00:11:08.880And when you go to the highest level, it's really peace and justice are the two common goods that all non-corrupt nations are seeking.
00:11:18.740And that means, you know, the right order of relations between us and enjoying sort of the fruit of that harmony of everyone, you know, having their different roles and jobs and working together.
00:11:30.160And that doesn't mean central planning. You know, that doesn't mean government overreach. Those are all separate questions.
00:11:37.500You first have to understand what is the goal. And, you know, this can be hard for the right because we know that often government fails.
00:11:45.080We know there's a real problem with the structure of our government now. We know that there's an unaccountable bureaucracy and so forth and so on.
00:11:51.520So, you know, it's true a lot of times that, you know, the government says, I'm here to help you and that you should be scared at those words, as Reagan said in the 80s.
00:12:00.680But it's also true that, of course, the fundamental role of government is to actually help us.
00:12:05.580Otherwise, why do we have it? It's OK to say that.
00:12:08.060You're not a communist, right, if you acknowledge that government does, in fact, exist for a good reason for actual goods we need and share.
00:12:17.400And we're so we're so much in the minority position as sort of materialistic culture where everyone's just thinking of material goods where we can't wrap our mind around, you know, what a common good is.
00:12:27.320But it's something that we know and experience all the time.
00:12:30.240And the ultimate example of this, I think it's easier for anyone who's Christian, but everyone can understand it.
00:12:36.820The ultimate example of this is the mystery of why people would give their life for their country or their family or a friend.
00:12:44.320Because if you think about it, right, when it comes to the individual good, it doesn't make any sense at all.
00:12:48.780You can't say it's good for me to die.
00:12:52.820But if you think about how I'm connected and I partake in common goods, there are all kinds of people who, you know, I'm sad I only have one life to give for my country.
00:13:27.760But then again, I have a heart for people on this
00:13:29.620because they're used to only the left using this kind of language.
00:13:32.980right yeah i think that there is a little bit of alistair mcintyre's like collapse in moral
00:13:43.120language here right where you know you you've so thoroughly uh been disconnected from the
00:13:49.320tradition that you're still using the words uh you know in a sense but they're they're in no way
00:13:54.360connected to the original meaning you know you might as well be trying to explain science when
00:13:59.200no one has studied science for 500 years you might know what the word photosynthesis means
00:14:03.160but you might be applying it to a cat because you just have no connection to the actual reference
00:14:08.220where it was created and so we have this moment where i think for a lot of people because the
00:14:14.040ideology has been so thoroughly kind of layered on they can't make any connection to the actual
00:14:20.640words you're saying they just hear the trigger word and it's time to have the emotional reaction
00:14:24.440which as you said i get to some extent as you say when you hear that common good thing you
00:14:29.060start you know making sure your wallet's still in your pocket and that's that's a certain level
00:14:33.400of understanding there but we have to grasp this i think because one of the problems that we have
00:14:39.600faced is that people have conflated for instance the state and the nation right and that the the
00:14:46.040power of the government itself is the same thing as the existence of a collective identity so if
00:14:53.160we're agreeing in the existence of a collective identity and interest we must be also agreeing
00:14:58.580with an overbearing and very powerful state because those those are one in the same.
00:15:04.620But that is not true. Right. Like the nation and the state are not the same thing.
00:15:09.100The nation is the people and the state should serve the nation.
00:15:13.840But ultimately, you know, just because you identify as of a collective good for the nation,
00:15:19.420for the people, for the body, does not mean you are then saying and then the government should do everything for these people.
00:15:27.200right this is not one in the same there's also the confusion over the idea that any existence
00:15:33.960of the government is itself the evil right that's kind of the the modern take that conservatives
00:15:39.300have have adopted almost a libertarian sense of you know the state must be done away with it must
00:15:44.760be eliminated there is no good that ever comes from a state uh the state the existence of the
00:15:50.200state is a problem and so we should work as hard as possible to eliminate the state now i agree
00:15:55.900that generally it is true, especially for Anglo peoples, that the state that governs least does
00:16:02.140govern best. That if, especially with our approach, our way of being, our understanding, it is best
00:16:08.680for people such as ourselves to pursue a lifestyle in which we live in virtuous communities that are
00:16:17.800largely autonomous and only need the state to step in for larger issues. I think that is actually
00:16:24.600the way we should be governed. However, we've obviously not ended up in that state, despite
00:16:29.780saying we're committed to small government. In fact, we have the largest government we have ever
00:16:34.560had, more or less, while talking endlessly about the need for smaller government and individualism.
00:16:40.840So obviously, the just desire for individualism does not seem to create small government. In fact,
00:16:46.240it seems to create the opposite. Yes, yes. So the founder, the founding generation would say,
00:16:53.540I think, to a man. I mean, they all understand this as sort of a principle of political philosophy,
00:16:59.320almost like a math equation, that when you get rid of any state or any overarching authority,
00:17:07.480and you have a sort of anarchical situation, first off, it never lasts very long. Because
00:17:13.940what happens is people are so in pain and can't stand it, that they go to a strong man or one
00:17:21.620person to rule them. So, you know, the example would be was when you're in an anarchic situation
00:17:26.740and there is no overarching, you know, state, there's no overarching government or regime.
00:17:32.780What happens is, you know, Saddam Hussein comes into power, right? Or a strongman comes into power
00:17:38.280and people will gladly, this is what Americans need to realize, people will gladly go for that
00:17:43.880person because it's better than the alternative where everyone's fighting and warring all the
00:17:47.540time, and you don't want that, and he keeps the peace. Take Putin in Russia, right? I mean,
00:17:52.380everyone's warring, you have oligarchs, and you immediately go to one guy. So the libertarian
00:17:57.980impulse to say, we don't need this overarching governance, well, it leads to tyrannical
00:18:03.800government every time. And it's clear in reverse, right? You take Assad out of Syria,
00:18:10.820or you take Hussein out of Iraq, and these are very unpleasant people, and they do some bad
00:18:17.520things, but you take them out and what happens? So all the religious people start fighting each
00:18:21.840other, you know? And if you were a Christian in Syria and you had to vote on who was, you know,
00:18:27.340becoming president, you would vote for Assad, even though he's a bad guy. Why? Because you
00:18:32.820don't want your head chopped off by radical Muslims, right? So this is not, this shouldn't
00:18:39.100be complicated. So the first thing is, no, it's good that there is governance. There's always
00:18:43.860governance something that you always need rule and political community and that's a good thing
00:18:48.420but then the next step like you said is exactly like what you said it doesn't mean therefore that
00:18:53.620the state engineers all these things and so there you can go way back uh way back to uh ancient greek
00:19:00.580philosophy and uh someone like aristotle the idea that he had in his head was not that uh first off
00:19:07.620it's all government should seek the common good and a good government a non-corrupt government
00:19:12.980aims as its end as the common good of the citizenry or whoever's part of the community.
00:19:18.680So either one person rules in his conception of few people or many. And if the many, the few,
00:19:24.980or the one are not ruling for the common good, but for the sake of themselves and their grubby
00:19:29.120friends, you have a corrupt form of government. But the way that the government rules is law is
00:19:36.920sort of indirect. So the way I'd put this is, you know, people say when you talk about the common
00:19:41.860good and the government getting involved, they think you're going to make authoritarian law
00:19:46.660that tries to reach in the soul of each person and form them the right way. But that's not how
00:19:51.720law works. Everyone in Anglo-American cultures understood this very well. Law works indirectly.
00:19:58.280It's more like bumper bowling. The bumpers you put on the side of the bowling lane to make sure
00:20:03.320the ball goes in the right place. You can't go over here. You can't go over here. So in that way,
00:20:07.220I'd say even traffic law legislates morality because, and is there for the sake of the common
00:20:12.660good, because traffic law is there because we value human life. And so we need to make up some
00:20:17.040rules that are sort of arbitrary. It doesn't matter which side of the road, you know, the
00:20:20.240cars drive on, but you have to have some rule to avoid people killing each other. And you want to
00:20:28.000instill habits that, you know, keep people safe on the road. That's not tyrannical at all, right?
00:20:33.940And you're basically trying to, what Aristotle's conception is, you're trying to instill habits so that, like you said, the people don't need the law, right?
00:20:42.360They need it to the least extent possible because they're living peaceful, good lives and they're in harmony with each other and they can work things out, as Christ said, you know, try to do that outside the court first with each other.
00:20:53.820So the goal is almost that people are living lives where they don't they don't need law and the law is there to try to shape habits and guide them and push them in the right way and sort of say you can't go over here and you can't go over here.
00:21:06.600And a wise ruler knows, you know, if you just make a ton of laws about everything, it's not going to have an effect anyway.
00:21:13.800And that you do a lot of damage by by overreach.
00:21:16.700But that doesn't change the goal that we're talking about here, which is, in fact, you know, not just the maximize the economic good for each individual, you know, like some sort of GDP maximizer.
00:21:30.140It really has to be the good of the people.
00:21:32.380And one thing I really that really gets me on is over the last, you know, 10 years of Trump, there's been all these moments where people who call themselves conservative commentators will just say, no, it doesn't matter if the rulers or government cares about people.
00:21:46.700i think it does you know actually you know yes yeah i i have had that too people will come after
00:21:55.400me and say what you want you want the the leader of the country to care about you yeah man like
00:22:01.220actually i i don't want to be ruled by people who hate me i've i've had that experience and i don't
00:22:05.760think that works out well and actually i want to bolster both of your points there because i think
00:22:09.480they're excellent so as you say aristotle the really interestingly the you know a lot of people
00:22:15.040focus on systems right how do we tinker with the system we're political scientists well aristotle
00:22:20.300explains you know the three main types of government the one the many uh and the few and he
00:22:25.820says uh yeah all of these systems have their ups and downs but you know what really matters
00:22:30.020if those people are ruling for the good of the collective or against the rule of collective
00:22:35.640there's a good form of aristocracy there's a bad form of oligarchy there's a good form of monarchy
00:22:42.380there's a bad form of tyranny there's a good form of the republic there's a bad form of democracy by
00:22:48.620it's the family and friends event at shoppers drug mart get 20 off almost all regular priced
00:22:55.780merchandise two days only monday august 10th and tuesday august 11th open your pc optimum app to
00:23:02.380get your coupon shifting simply the orientation of the rulers as to whether they're ruling
00:23:10.680for the collective or in their own interests we can alter whether or not this is a good government
00:23:16.280now he might still have a preferred form of government a benevolent monarch but ultimately
00:23:22.100the the question is not which is the form of government it's is it seeking the common good
00:23:28.040or your own individualistic good and then the second part of that is you know when you're
00:23:32.920talking about the laws there is kind of that bumper right like as that as that guiding force
00:23:37.120rather than the top-down control of everything that happens in society.
00:23:41.620Ironically, it is the removal of the idea of the common good
00:23:45.440that creates then the obsession with, like, positivistic law
00:23:50.500that attempts to completely alter human nature
00:23:53.820and govern from the top down and becomes tyrannical.
00:23:55.980Because if you recognize a common good,
00:23:58.380you recognize what is essentially a natural law
00:24:04.260then you are simply using the law to guide people down that path that leads them to virtuous and
00:24:11.700happy life in that order however if you throw out the idea of the common good then there is no actual
00:24:18.840like real basis for law and law is whatever we make it and this is what creates positive
00:24:24.360positivistic law because now my law is no longer bound by the common good it can be whatever i
00:24:30.360need it to be to construct the society i want to construct that it's a tabula rasa from which i
00:24:36.220create a society out of nothing but that's not reality reality is not that we step into this
00:24:43.200magical veil of ignorance or you know the state of nature and we construct reality upon our
00:24:49.800principles no what happens is god has made a order and we find ourselves embodied in that order and
00:24:56.540And so the purpose of law is to, again, guide people through that order in the best way collectively, not to sit there and try to rewrite the human because there is no existing order for us to discover.
00:25:09.200Yeah, exactly. And this is a very important point. It's a very important point because it's it's what we're wrestling with and what good people on the right, you know, regular people are wrestling with because these concepts have been sort of hidden from them.
00:25:22.920and this ideology has been kind of imposed on them in the way they see the world.
00:25:27.060But the actual world that you see is already given to you.
00:25:32.080So like you said, first off, there's a certain order in nature that's just there from God.
00:25:38.280And then there's particular situations you find yourself in, in particular times and places, right, with particular peoples.
00:25:44.760And you have to take all of that into account when you're a prudent lawmaker or founder.
00:25:50.100And, you know, the founding generation of America and the early republic, they just they had a keen understanding of this.
00:25:55.420And this is also why for the founders, rights were not opposed to the common good.
00:26:02.740So for a lot of modern scholars, for understandable reasons, they look at the modern conception of rights, individual rights, and say, you know, they really come from the government.
00:26:11.840Right. There's no common good. There's no higher purpose.
00:26:15.100And so government just issues lists of rights.
00:26:17.880But for the founders, these were things that you couldn't really list out. It was just by nature. There are certain limits to what you can do to human beings or should do to them. And there are certain rights and duties that they have, but from nature, right? Not from government. And so allowing people to do this.
00:26:36.220And even for the ancients who who didn't have the same notion of right, perhaps they were very big, like people like Aristotle, Aquinas, these big figures on private property being a thing because they knew that this is good for people to have.
00:26:52.380Right. And it correlates with the common good. It was it was because there is a common good for human beings that we share in and we're made a certain way.
00:27:00.020It's good for us to have and cultivate our own property like that's a good thing.
00:27:06.220So, you know, it's impossible to argue for rights in the modern context unless there are natural rights that are that are within the context of and part and parcel of a common good or public good.
00:27:20.120That is at least the founders understanding.
00:27:22.000So I think they would look around and say, now, look, if you don't really believe that justice is a thing, you don't really believe that peace, you think this is all like spooky, airy stuff, you know, philosophy talk, and you don't think that stuff is real.
00:27:33.340well then you can't have a republic like you can't do this you you have no idea what you're
00:27:38.100even aiming at uh and and uh again i think the goal for a lot of us is to explain these aren't
00:27:46.260scary concepts this is very normal and it's it's at the heart of the american nation and what
00:27:53.040people are doing now is just uh you know sort of using these words as like calling them bad words
00:27:58.600and then throwing around guilt by association and the problem is like there's all kinds of debates
00:28:02.940We can have a policy. The problem is, it's just really dumb. You know, it's like not understanding what the point of government is.
00:28:10.140And look, you can say, oh, this is too philosophical. But figuring out what the point of government is, you know, the purpose of going to be philosophical, yeah, is kind of a practical thing that we need to figure out.
00:28:22.140yeah it's interesting you know a lot of people forget that when plato is constructing the perfect
00:28:28.240republic you know in theory it's highly communist you're sharing wives you're sharing property all
00:28:34.560of these things but then he pulls back and says but that is not the nature of man right like that
00:28:40.320is not actually how people live their lives so when it's theoretical yeah here's the communist
00:28:46.000construction here's what you could do but in reality when we have to deal with the real common
00:28:50.140good of the city, when we actually have to, you know, put rubber meets the road, that doesn't
00:28:54.520work. So then we have to understand, you know, how does this emerge inside our society as we see it
00:28:59.880now? And another thing that I think a lot of conservatives misunderstand when discussions
00:29:05.180of the common good occur is because they have the ideological lock-in that big government is just
00:29:11.580bad all the time, that any use of government power is always bad no matter what it is.
00:29:16.160They don't grasp the idea that actually, in some cases, the exercise of government power might reduce the overall existence of government power.
00:29:26.700So, for instance, blue laws taught us all that there is a day in which we honor God, that there is nothing else that happens on this day.
00:30:59.460Ultimately, men have to be willing to commit violence or acts of force to enforce.
00:31:05.100you know if you just you know you go to the law of the jungle and say oh we're all going to trade
00:31:10.460stuff what immediately happens is some people say okay i'm going to be in charge i'm going to take
00:31:15.340this stuff from you by force and i'm going to you know i'm going to uh defraud you uh i'm going to
00:31:21.460find all kinds of ways to set up my own mafia and uh this is what human beings do there's no free
00:31:27.740market unless there's enforceable rules the free market only exists within a centralized order
00:31:34.260that it enforces rules and those rules shape the contours of the market so it's the same kind of
00:31:41.260principle where you really don't that and this is the founders are very aware of this the federalist
00:31:46.560when they argued for the passage of the constitution itself um they argued that it was necessary to
00:31:52.400defeat licentiousness or the contempt of just restraint now licentiousness didn't mean just
00:31:57.980say everything's sexual right uh i said to my wife when i was working on my dissertation she's like
00:32:03.240What are you doing? I'm like, I'm thinking about licentiousness, but it's it's for work.
00:32:07.480But licentiousness means, you know, liberty gone wrong.
00:32:11.080And they thought the Constitution was necessary and centralized power.
00:32:15.980A federal government was necessary. George Washington, the first thing he says when he goes after the after the revolution is we need one unitary federal federal head.
00:32:24.980And the reason you need that is because if you don't have it, you won't have freedom in the best sense, in the good sense.
00:32:41.540You want to place concenters where they use it.
00:32:45.200You want to center some power in the government for the sake of encouraging and allowing that freedom, that virtuous freedom to be rightly used and people to enjoy it and to live good lives.
00:32:58.080And so there's just no way around this.
00:33:00.260And it's odd to me how, I mean, I agree with libertarians on some policy issues, you know, but when we say libertarian, I mean, this sort of philosophy in the deepest sense, it kind of plagues the right.
00:33:16.180And we got to just think more rationally and root some of this out because you cannot say, as you're saying, that government is, you know, the source of all evil.
00:33:24.660Well, no, government can be corrupted. It needs to be drastically reformed in this country.
00:33:28.660But you're going to need a government and the government exists because some order and rule is good, actually, and gives us, you know, the common good.
00:33:38.160It provides for it and allows us to flourish. And if we don't understand that, we're not only going to have problems in understanding things,
00:33:46.660but we're going to have problems in defeating the left because they're going to use moral language that will make sense to millions of people.
00:33:53.100yeah that that's a great point right like that ultimately if you are completely
00:33:58.300devoid of moral messaging and the other side isn't they're going to win at the end of the day
00:34:04.240because people do want that like that is something that they want out of their society and denying
00:34:11.300that does you no good and i will to defend our libertarian friends i will you know make their
00:34:16.600point that they usually make in this situation which is while we would label many of these kind
00:34:21.680of neocons or the you know people who lean libertarian in these certain situations uh what
00:34:28.160they really mean by their libertarian attitudes is that they would be shocked shocked if the
00:34:33.520government was to say pass a blue law but if the government's gonna you know charge you 35 to 40
00:34:39.480percent in taxes to pay for a foreign war when your ancestors literally revolted over like five
00:34:45.100percent in taxes but would have been in favor of blasphemy laws then something has gone wrong
00:34:50.780Right. Someone is not actually standing on the principles of the founders. And so we should not let people claim those principles when they do not hold them. But one thing I also want to touch on while we still have time is I think one of the big reasons that people push back, especially conservative incorporated type people, establishment conservatives.
00:35:11.160The reason they push back against the idea of the common good is because if we recognize the common good, then we have to recognize that it exists in service of a particular people.
00:35:23.760The existence of the common good can only be recognized.
00:35:27.380We're also recognizing that we're talking about specific people in a specific community with specific interests and a specific way of life.
00:35:34.660And the neocon project, you know, this project is one of a global liberal order. The idea that every people conforms to the same way of being the same life, the same traditions, human, humans are interchangeable widgets across the board, we can install democracy in Afghanistan, because all men were created equal, right?
00:35:57.580These are kind of the ideas that have been spread. And I think that it is very difficult for people to then look at that and say, OK, no, we should have a common good and we have to recognize that it serves Americans, specifically Americans. It only applies to Americans.
00:36:17.360You can't just take this ideology and cut and paste it onto Canadians or Indians or people in Sri Lanka.
00:36:26.780And if we acknowledge that there's an American way of life, then we will acknowledge that some people are not Americans.
00:36:32.400And that is the taboo because America is a propositional nation.
00:36:37.220It's a collection of ideas, not people.
00:36:39.240and if if the common good comes from the nature of the people instead of being a ideology we force
00:36:45.400onto individuals then it kind of collapses the entire globalist liberal project yeah i think
00:36:53.380increasingly um and one thing we should maybe talk about another time as well is that there's
00:36:58.800people on the left and right who are just hiding the fact that they're for empire yeah and it'd be
00:37:05.060better if we had more honest conversations like you could there's a way to deal with dumping you
00:37:10.540know tens of millions of random people into one place out of a bucket and uh and make and keeping
00:37:16.560them all from fighting and destroying the civil order though that's the natural result of just
00:37:22.600randomly mixing up all these peoples who are different throwing them in one place
00:37:25.800is not order it's usually decay decline uh it's how Rome ends but there's a way to do that and
00:37:31.980that is that you crucify a lot of people on the way to Rome when you just declare yourself an
00:37:35.100empire. And, and, uh, so the left is basically doing this in places like California where I am
00:37:41.500now. Um, they have an empire, right. But they don't want to announce it as such. They're still
00:37:47.120afraid and they don't want to fully enforce it. Right. Uh, to keep the peace. They're more like
00:37:51.760fending back, uh, you know, the masses who might overthrow them. I think there's quietly afraid at
00:37:57.240any time. And then the right wants to talk about this sort of, you know, propositional empire where,
00:38:03.740yeah, you can export American government, Republican form of government all throughout
00:38:07.960the world. But they're not really, they don't use the words to be more honest about what exactly
00:38:15.480they want to do. It's just, you know, democracy will naturally happen. No, it won't actually
00:38:20.400happen. You could ask anyone in Iraq, anyone, a taxi cab driver, anyone on the street in Iraq
00:38:26.600before we went there, is democracy possible here? And they would have laughed in your face
00:38:31.080because they knew it was not. They knew that they would all start fighting each other
00:38:34.740and there would be war. So what do we make of that? What do we do about that? Well, the first
00:38:40.540thing I think is to really claim the proper grounding in America, which is that the American
00:38:47.400founders would have profoundly disagreed with this idea that you can just export Republican
00:38:54.300government. And so the distinction here is that you can absolutely maintain that at a fundamental
00:39:01.480level, human beings are equal insofar as they're human. And that as humans, there's certain,
00:39:08.120you know, universal traits that make you human as a species. And so you can't treat people like
00:39:14.920animals, right? And that people are called to something higher, human beings. So you can,
00:39:21.380you can maintain a fundamental understanding of human quality. But none of them thought that that
00:39:26.140meant that everyone can have the Republican form of government that they established, because they
00:39:32.040knew dang well, and they would just say, you need a people who is religious, and they meant Christian,
00:39:37.480you need a people who, you know, has all these traits and qualities that it's and they all said
00:39:42.140it's a very difficult thing to keep and maintain. And according to the measure of, you know, what
00:39:47.700they say was necessary for Republican government, you could already say it's not possible anymore
00:39:51.620here. Maybe they would still, some of them would still fight for it. Maybe some of them would say
00:39:56.000you're already an empire. I don't know what to do. But we can't play this game where we allow
00:40:00.940people on the right or left to say that they represent the founding because they do not.
00:40:17.700the Optimum app to get your coupon. That's such an important point. And, you know, the simple fact
00:40:28.320is you can read the letters of the founders. I believe, you know, I'm trying to remember all of
00:40:34.020the founders who said it, but there are multiple founders. I think Madison is one of them in their
00:40:38.160letters who say you cannot import a bunch of people from Europe who are used to monarchies
00:40:44.200because they will bring their belief in monarchy with them they will not become republicans
00:40:49.300they will turn you into monarch monarchs right like so even early on they said look if you
00:40:55.640import even people from europe like forget forget bangladesh like just just people who who are two
00:41:02.220countries over that will ruin our republican form of government because they will not share
00:41:06.840our belief in the republican virtues that ultimately make this function so yes christianity
00:41:13.580but also just you can't even have immigrants who are Christian from monarchies because they'll go
00:41:19.520with the monarchy and they'll abandon your Republican form of government. They said this
00:41:23.080explicitly multiple times across multiple founders. So we don't have to speculate on this.
00:41:28.460This is not like we're just pulling this out for our own talking points. Like evidence is in the
00:41:33.780actual words of the founders. And I think it's just, and also to your point about empire, you
00:41:40.400There are ways to make empire function, but every empire that has really functioned has understood that the principle is you basically let the different nations, the different peoples, rule themselves as much as possible.
00:41:53.620And then you put somebody over them, a governor or some kind of person who then kind of administers that area for the empire, and then they kick everything up to the empire.
00:42:06.380no empires thought that they could ideologically control every single human being inside the empire
00:42:13.420and if you want to see a model of how that has already failed just look at the soviets right
00:42:18.300they went through this they tried to create the binding ideology and force every and annihilate
00:42:24.280the cultural differences and force everyone to adopt the same thing and that's where neoconservatism
00:42:29.080came from it came from trotsky it's trying to make the same thing for america to manufacture
00:42:34.320the same ideology that they could then spread in the same way that communism is spread but it
00:42:39.640failed and so when you try to do the same thing you're going to lose so yes there is a way to
00:42:43.980operate empires correctly but as you say when you deny that you're an empire then you're in the
00:42:48.380worst of all possible worlds because you can't operate yourself as an empire because you won't
00:42:53.060acknowledge it so you're not embracing the idea that peoples are different nations are different
00:42:57.900and you must rule them differently but under the head of the empire but you're also not able to
00:43:02.220function as a republic because you've expanded well beyond the capacity Republican government
00:43:05.860can provide, and you no longer have a collective spirit of the nation that allows you to rule
00:43:10.420in the common good of those people. And so we've just embraced the worst of all possible worlds
00:43:14.800in this search for something we don't even understand. Yeah, I think, you know, let me put
00:43:21.280it this way. I spent three years evaluating these Teaching American History grants the Department
00:43:27.480of education was putting out. So I spent three years traveling the country and testing, you
00:43:32.980know, thousands of students and teachers learning American history. And this is, you know, 10, 15
00:43:38.920years ago, 15 years ago, at least now. And let me tell you, talk about a black pill, right? I just
00:43:46.640remember realizing we're not going to get out of this for a long time if we get out of it, because
00:43:51.860we're not teaching any of that and so any of this talk about you know we can just uh import millions
00:43:57.780of people and uh somehow assimilate uh you know everyone magically this is a long process we're
00:44:04.180not assimilating the american people the american citizens are profoundly divided on very serious
00:44:10.660questions like what the nation is what citizenship is what men and women are what the family is
00:44:15.060uh you know and everything else so we we cannot we're not in a position to be talking about
00:44:20.580assimilating people, which would only happen slowly over time. As we've learned, we should
00:44:25.520learn from the last century and also from the founders, as you point out, you can't just
00:44:29.920mix everyone up and have this globalized thing unless you declare empire, right? And you start
00:44:36.280getting serious about it. But Americans don't really want to do that. We see that it's failed.
00:44:41.800So yeah, this is an enormous problem. And I think the focus should be, look, we need to stop
00:44:48.380importing people. We need to figure out for ourselves what we're teaching about ourselves
00:44:53.840and figure out who we are and what we're about and sort that out before we do any kind of outreach
00:45:00.120or mass importation. It needs to be mass deportation. Let's lock the borders for a while
00:45:06.940and let's get our own stuff together. I think that's just logical for either side. Let's
00:45:13.100actually figure out, but we're not going to do any of that if we don't think that a common good
00:45:18.060exists or matters for a political community. Yeah, you can't assimilate people if you're not
00:45:26.880catechizing your own population, because then what are they going to assimilate to, right? What are
00:45:31.680they going to know is the American way of life and the thing that they should be adopting if your
00:45:37.520own people are not familiar with, aware with, believe in their bones, the very things that
00:45:43.100you want these people to assimilate to. And so, yeah, it's very, very obvious that this has to
00:45:48.180happen. And this is why every argument about H-1Bs or some guest worker program or something,
00:45:54.760it's just disastrous nonsense. Look, I don't care. I know the economy matters, but it's not
00:46:00.120going to matter if you don't have people who actually care about the country. If there is
00:46:05.320no longer a nation, then the economy operating in and of itself does not do anything for the
00:46:11.320people that doesn't mean you should be blind to economic concerns but even the you know now we
00:46:16.680have to constantly fight over gdp as some kind of real indicator of prosperity we have this debate
00:46:23.440going on right now on on twitter between different factions of the right as to whether or not you
00:46:29.900know grocery prices have gone up or not and a lot of people are breaking out charts saying oh well
00:46:35.660Well, of course they haven't. See here, I know that a collective price has gone down.
00:46:40.200But any person who has lived in the United States who has actually gone grocery shopping for the last 10 years knows that food prices have skyrocketed.
00:46:50.200But these people who go do nothing but DoorDash and Uber Eats and have someone order their steak for them while they're working in any given occupation, they have no clue.
00:47:00.500So they just look at abstract data and say, look, GEP's up, stock market's up.
00:47:05.780Someone told me grocery prices are about the same, so it's all fine.
00:47:18.900They can only grasp their isolated experience, and they can only view the world through completely inaccurate data that has been massaged to produce the outcomes that they're looking for.
00:47:29.300Yeah. And this happens over and over again with economic issues. Here's something else, Lauren, about this is that the founders, when they speak of economic issues, they never speak about a divorce from politics and morality.
00:47:44.720Again, they use moral language. They talk about justice. Noah Webster says that monetary policy is directly tied to the virtue of men.
00:47:52.600I mean, because if you are in debt, that's a problem.
00:47:58.860And so the idea that, you know, we can just talk about GDP or whatever number makes us feel good about the economy overall and not talk about the fact that most Americans are in debt and have enormous credit card debt.
00:48:11.720The founders would be like, what are you talking about?
00:48:13.340Government exists for the good of the people.
00:48:15.580And this is screwing over the people so they can't live decent lives.
00:48:20.340And, you know, cost of housing, same thing.
00:48:22.400So this is very, very important stuff. And there's no, this isn't socialism, you know, to talk about it and talk about what policies would actually help people. But you have to understand that your job really is to provide for the common good of the people. And you need to understand what that means, what those goods are.
00:48:41.680And that we could, here's the other thing. I wonder if we're so impoverished, we don't know how good we could have it. We don't even understand how awesome it would be if we had a proper country. And we don't see, we're so broken. We don't see that, no, this can actually be an amazing thing. You can be truly patriotic. You can actually participate in civic life. These things are possible and they make you happy.
00:49:07.960And I wonder if we don't even conceive of how good it could be if we embrace these concepts and acted on them.
00:49:18.200That's exactly right. And obviously, we could talk about this for a long time.
00:49:21.820I already went longer than I told you we would. So we've got a few questions from the audience.
00:49:25.440And I want to make sure that we get to those without locking you here too long.
00:49:28.940So, Mr. Peterson, fantastic speaking with you, as always.
00:49:33.120If people want to find what you're doing, what's going on, you know, your work, where should they be looking?
00:49:39.560The best place is on X at DOCMJP, at DOCMJP.
00:50:17.060All right, let's go to the questions real quick.
00:50:19.440Alex Roberts says, trying to talk about critiques of modern capitalism with older people 100%
00:50:24.560of the time leads to me being called communist democrat with libertarian uh theory thrown in my
00:50:30.760face it's obnoxious i just pray for everyone's needs yeah there is look we're all good anti-communists
00:50:38.380here you know i i i'm adopting the franco you know stance on communism wherever i am there will be no
00:50:44.680communism right but that doesn't mean that there is no possible downside to unrestrained capitalism
00:50:51.900even adam smith recognized this right like the father of capitalism knew this was the case so
00:50:58.300it is okay to discuss these issues without then you know swearing yourself to on a copy of the
00:51:03.960communist manifesto but there is an understandable knee-jerk reaction to that and so you just need
00:51:10.380to defuse these issues right like you you have to come at them with the right way if you walk up
00:51:15.300to an older person older conservative and you say i think there are some problems with capitalism
00:51:19.740they're immediately just going to assume you're communist because their entire life that's the
00:51:23.100only people who have ever had anything like that you have to couch it more in the idea of look i
00:51:28.340obviously oppose communism but we do need to look at some of these aspects of our system because
00:51:33.280i want to have kids i want to have a family and you know if the system cannot is preventing me
00:51:39.280actively from doing that is that really capitalism is that what we want to call capitalism because it
00:51:44.000might be something else. Yeah, I think it's like how to make capitalism better. It's how to make
00:51:52.120things better. Because what the critiques many times are, of course, they're not pro-communism,
00:51:59.120but smart critiques are about how do we make this system work better for everyone. And
00:52:04.460they are pro-innovation. They're pro-business. I mean, we want creative, innovative people to be
00:52:13.600successful. We want people to be successful by actually being able to work hard and build things
00:52:19.240like that. We want that. So that's the goal. So you have to make clear that, you know, the goals
00:52:23.760align. And then I would not refrain then from, in that context, then talking about, you know,
00:52:31.860the very real problems that have cropped up in the road. And one of the things is too,
00:52:37.240one of the problems is they don't realize the capitalist system in their head from, you know,
00:52:41.260whatever the monopoly looking guy from back in the day like that hasn't existed for a while like
00:52:47.180the best capitalist you know the guys who are uh you know like the tech right guys like
00:52:53.560they understand this they know that you know a lot of these big corporations or whatever are
00:52:58.660uh you know have all kinds of problems and that the system is has all kinds of problems and so
00:53:04.580you can kind of get your boomer uh grandparent or uncle this way and uh you know find some common
00:53:09.840ground first but i admit it's very hard yeah build build that always try to build those bridges guys
00:53:16.520like just always remember these people are on your side they're the people you're trying to win over
00:53:20.260uh you know don't you don't have these conversations to scare people or look radical
00:53:24.780find that common ground first and once they understand you share values they're far more
00:53:29.560interested in hearing what you have to say uh philosophical thirst firm says commonwealth is
00:53:34.420apparently communist and the kingdom of heaven is apparently integralist yes we have heard uh
00:53:40.280many many a scare of the integralism which you know i find kind of funny because i'm obviously
00:53:44.540not a catholic and you know god bless them but i think the integralists are like five guys in a
00:53:49.540room uh you know it in academia you know there is no integralist movement there is no no deep plan
00:53:55.840of the catholics you know subversive as i think they might be uh to ultimately implement their
00:54:00.480integralist uh kingdom so i think people just need to calm down yeah i mean it's it's uh it's
00:54:07.360remarkable to me how a lot of these critiques like conflate all these different people who are
00:54:12.740idiosyncratic you know thinkers uh i find them interesting you know i have lots of integralist
00:54:18.420friends and i find them interesting um but the idea that this is some you know big scary movement
00:54:23.940it's just kind of crazy like you can just argue with people and read what they write and go back
00:54:28.980and forth and i think it's pretty transparent you know a lot of times what's going on it certainly
00:54:33.380isn't scary but the idea that you know kingdom of heaven or you know the idea that saying for
00:54:38.360instance like aristotle says about kingship if you do have someone who has more virtue than
00:54:43.060everyone else combined then obviously the best form of government would be to make that virtuous
00:54:47.720wise person like in an extreme to compare to everyone else make them in charge uh you know
00:54:53.600guess what christ is king like if there's god god is king like i'm a communist like what are we even
00:54:58.740talking about? And Commonwealth is just this rich Christian word. So you also have to realize a lot
00:55:07.460of these people have bad motives, right? The actual commentators are playing a political game
00:55:13.080where they're trying to smear people. And people should really chill out with following people
00:55:19.040online and assuming that they're all just of goodwill. Yeah, I'm sorry. I love Chad Pecknell,
00:55:27.460but i don't think he has the uh juice right now to you know introduce the pope reich like i just
00:55:32.740don't think that's coming guys like uh i just think that anyone trying to sell you this uh
00:55:37.220idea is kind of uh yeah i think chad's a great guy uh and uh i like him a lot but the idea that
00:55:44.420he's part of some uh you know kind of conspiracy to um yeah exactly to do what like make the pope
00:55:51.940the temporal ruler of america i don't i mean what are we talking about here
00:55:55.540it's crazy uh matt gates says i'm sort of envious of the chinese system where capital is
00:56:03.620subservient to the state capital has always dominated our country but lately capital has
00:56:08.360completely neglected the people that it rules over yeah i'm not looking to adopt the chinese
00:56:14.380system anytime soon um but you know there are people who have pointed to the idea of a chinese
00:56:20.600convergence the idea that i mean let's be honest the chinese are not communist they're fascist
00:56:25.200right because because they know that that's the version that works um and so they've they've
00:56:29.860taken this corporatist collectivist understanding of capitalism and uh you know just given it a
00:56:34.860veneer of communist uh kind of ideology uh but ultimately that that's really the system that
00:56:40.800they've created um it might even work for the chinese in a way that it won't i don't think
00:56:45.360would ever work for america uh but i just don't see us adopting you know that system i think we
00:56:50.800We really are just different peoples, and I don't see us, you know, even if you might see some upsides of the functioning of the communist system, don't forget that, you know, the one-child policy has screwed their demographics even worse than ours.
00:57:02.480So, you know, they're not exactly in an easy place either.
00:57:06.000Yeah, I think you want to be really careful of being envious of the Chinese system.
00:57:10.220They have a lot of problems, a lot of problems.
00:57:13.100And when you look at our system, it's sort of like, who's capital?
00:57:18.100Because on the one hand, you have, you know, amazing innovation that does power the economy, provides people with jobs, provides us with leadership in the world.
00:57:28.200And it does make our life better. Like those aren't just boomer tropes. Like that stuff is true.
00:57:33.080On the other hand, you have, sure, a lot of corruption and et cetera.
00:57:36.940But I can think of a lot of founders or business leaders who are, you know, more on team who go like, well, what are you talking about?