The U.S. government is sending billions of dollars to Ukraine to fight a war that could have been fought by other countries. Is this something the United States should be getting involved in? Or should we focus on the Middle East?
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00:00:30.160Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon.
00:00:33.300I've got a great stream for you today.
00:00:36.000So, I'm doing another one of those news roundup streams.
00:00:39.240People seemed to enjoy that last time, so we're going to try that again.
00:00:42.820Now, today, I want to talk a little bit about the war in Ukraine.
00:00:47.200I've kind of made this joke a number of times.
00:00:50.520Every time a new spending bill comes up, we discover another couple billion dollars to ship over to Ukraine at any given moment.
00:00:59.520That we're kind of in the looting the treasury phase of the empire.
00:01:02.860I want to talk a little more about that as we've discovered the United States is funding even more of the Ukrainian government and the nation of Ukraine than we thought before.
00:01:12.240I also want to talk to you a little bit about the Canadian parliament standing up and cheering on a guy who fought on the Nazi side in World War II.
00:01:21.720I want to talk to you a little bit about the epidemic of immigration in New York and some of the response that is happening there.
00:01:30.560But before we get to all that, guys, let's go ahead and hear from today's sponsors.
00:01:35.460Vladimir Putin called the U.S. dollar's drop in dominance objective and irreversible during the recent BRICS summit in South Africa.
00:01:43.500As Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa formally agreed to use local currencies instead of the U.S. dollar.
00:04:30.140But the question, of course, is, is this the United States problem?
00:04:33.460Like, is this something the United States should be provoking a nuclear war over?
00:04:38.360Is this, you know, Russia is not some third-rate country.
00:04:41.780It is not some small little group of terrorists in the Middle East.
00:04:45.840This is a massive country that has a huge arsenal, that has world-ending technology.
00:04:52.600Is this really something that we need to be getting involved in?
00:04:55.920There's a separate question of whether something is wrong or people shouldn't be doing it
00:05:01.140or whether there's a morally reprehensible part of this as opposed to is it the United States duty to then go and intervene in every way possible?
00:05:10.500And I think a lot of people will also point out on the other side that NATO has more or less boxed Russia into this situation.
00:05:17.940The constant decision to expand NATO has kind of put Putin up against the wall here.
00:05:24.180I understand people who make that argument.
00:05:26.780Again, I think it's a difficult thing because a lot of people have a hard time understanding that other nations would have their idea of kind of how foreign policy should be run.
00:05:37.560That's the nice thing about having a global empire, right?
00:05:39.760You can kind of dictate to everybody, at least you think you can dictate to everybody, how they're going to run their nation, how they're going to operate things.
00:05:47.620But it turns out that's not always the case, that especially these larger, more competent forces do have a certain sphere of influence that they're going to kind of project.
00:05:58.680Whether you think these empires should have that or not, right?
00:06:01.320Whether you think America is the only nation or the coalition of nations around America and NATO are the only people who should have a prerogative on that or whether you think that other nations will naturally project that, other empires will project that.
00:06:14.360That's something that's kind of up for debate.
00:06:16.380But the question then becomes, again, do we have to step in in every one of these situations?
00:06:21.600Regardless, I don't think there's really an appetite for an active war in the United States.
00:06:25.940But despite that fact, it seems like we're doing everything short of getting involved in that war, right?
00:06:35.820It seems like we've got advisors over there.
00:06:37.620I'm sure we do at this point, to be clear.
00:06:40.260Like, it seems like we're doing everything that we kind of do in places like Vietnam and other places before we step into a hot war.
00:06:47.480We're putting ourselves into a situation where something like that could develop.
00:06:51.260But whether you want to speculate on whether the United States is trying to provoke a war or whether it's trying to kind of entice certain types of behaviors, what's undeniably true is that we are sending massive amounts of money.
00:07:05.080We're depleting our own military stockpiles of ammunition.
00:07:07.520We're sending all kinds of aid over to the Ukraine.
00:07:12.660We've known that it went beyond just the military aspect.
00:07:16.300We're not just sending bullets or even medical aid or that kind of thing.
00:07:21.280But we've been propping up the country.
00:07:23.100We've known that the United States has been funding the bureaucracy of Ukraine for a long time, that we're paying the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats over there for a very long time.
00:07:33.560And on top of that, now, with this 60 Minutes report, we also learn that we are funding small business development.
00:07:42.020We're buying seeds and we're funding farmers.
00:07:46.500We're paying all the first responders.
00:07:48.960Now, I mean, I guess some of this, you could say, is related to the war effort, right?
00:07:52.200They're digging people out of, you know, rubble from Russian attacks, that kind of thing.
00:07:57.000I guess that makes sense to some degree, but you're basically funding all of the nurses, all of the paramedics, all of the firefighters across the country.
00:08:07.900Basically, the United States is just taking all of its tax dollars and is just dumping them directly into the Ukraine.
00:08:14.700And again, it seems, you know, people are starting to notice this pattern.
00:08:17.940As soon as we wrap up one 20-year conflict in Afghanistan, you know, where we've poured billions and billions and billions of dollars through defense contractors and everything else,
00:08:30.300we suddenly find a new place where we need to put another, you know, 100, 200, whatever billion dollars into these kind of programs.
00:08:39.580Very convenient that we kind of always have to be engaged in this kind of foreign aid or this direct military intervention, depending on the scenario.
00:08:48.260We always seem to have to get involved in something that allows our leaders to functionally loot the treasury.
00:08:55.360And this is a big problem for the right in particular, because the right wants to talk about fiscal responsibility, right?
00:09:04.020They want to talk about how we need to limit government programs and we need to have small government and we need to avoid government spending.
00:09:11.360And look, there are areas where that's absolutely true, right?
00:09:14.320There are certainly a massive amount of our money is funneled through these programs as a patronage network for the Democrats for the left, right?
00:09:25.340It's paying off all these woke people.
00:09:27.060It's paying off all these people who are Democratic voters.
00:09:29.880It's funneling money from red states, from Americans who probably would be voting for, you know, the Republicans and instead sending that money to the Democratic donor base.
00:09:42.220But Republicans are just as susceptible to this kind of spending, right?
00:09:47.260For the most part, you've got guys like Mike Pence out there saying, no, how many more tanks can I get to Ukraine?
00:11:34.700You know, sometimes there is a defense contractor or sometimes, you know, there is a, you know,
00:11:39.420a military operation or something that is based in a red state or in a red area.
00:11:44.420And so some people are benefiting from that.
00:11:47.780But as with the left directly funnels their patronage into neighborhoods, average people who would vote for them, who will who they get represented.
00:11:56.740They have a very direct patronage relationship with their voter base.
00:12:16.780Hey, we're out there funding Ukrainian businesses.
00:12:19.420Oh, well, wouldn't it be nice if my business was getting funded?
00:12:23.240Would it be nice if I could start a business with the funding from the GOP?
00:12:27.720Wouldn't it be nice if my farm was getting backed up by this?
00:12:31.260Would it be nice if my neighborhood could hire more for first responders or that, you know, the nurses and the paramedics and people living in my neighborhood could more easily afford a home because they're being subsidized.
00:12:43.580So if we're going to spend this money, why not spend it on people in the United States?
00:12:47.500Why not take it directly to specifically if you want to do the patronage thing?
00:12:52.100If you actually want to do good politics, why not take it directly to the neighborhoods where this would be spent and people would vote Republican?
00:13:04.420Why not make the housing more affordable?
00:13:06.800Why not make it so that people can have families, have kids?
00:13:10.120Why not make it so that more people can get involved in something like paramedics or being first responders in the neighborhoods where they work?
00:13:17.440Why don't they fund that kind of stuff in red areas?
00:13:21.080And the answer seems to be, well, we'd rather ship it overseas.
00:14:02.620This is a dangerous place to be for a country where you don't care about your fiscal policy, where it is just a spending bonanza no matter what, where you're just going to blow out the spending in all situations.
00:14:14.120That is a dangerous place for your country to be.
00:14:17.360But that's kind of the problem, right, is where we're at.
00:14:19.480It's because everyone's coming to the conclusion, okay, well, no, this is going to happen no matter what.
00:14:23.520So if this is going to happen no matter what, I might as well win.
00:14:27.660If we're going to loot the treasury, I might as well secure the bag for me and mine, right?
00:14:32.700And so a lot of people are looking at this situation and saying, okay, how can I at least get my portion of this?
00:14:40.800If we're going to run this down, if we're going to print all the money, if we're going to borrow to oblivion anyway, then at least let my neighborhood benefit.
00:14:48.160At least let my people in my area benefit from what's going on rather than watching all the money get, you know, shoveled into either foreign spending or war spending or then get looped back into, say, Democrat neighborhoods, you know, funding that kind of stuff.
00:15:05.020Why can't we have positive projects that are going to benefit red neighborhoods, red America that are going to better their lives?
00:15:13.800And again, it's not a good place to be.
00:15:16.460You don't want to be in this scenario where you're just spending money no matter what, where you're willing to go ahead and put yourself out there.
00:15:24.520But if you're going to loot the treasury, if we've decided to do this anyway, then why don't we at least benefit from it?
00:15:31.840I think that's the question that a lot of people are asking.
00:15:33.960It gets harder and harder to watch people pour over the border, to have all this spending going on in Democratic neighborhoods, to ship all this money overseas, but then still watch quality of life in America decline, still watch all of these costs spiral out of control in America.
00:15:50.840And, of course, inflation is the number one attack on responsible people, right?
00:15:55.500And I think it's pretty clear for a lot of people that red states are generally people who are more responsible with their money.
00:16:02.440They're more likely to not be on government assistance.
00:16:05.180They're more likely to be working hard, taking extra jobs, putting money away.
00:16:09.980And if the government is dedicated to an inflationary policy, if they're going to destroy the dollar at every opportunity, then that's just hurting people who are responsible.
00:16:18.860Are you paying down debt like a sucker?
00:16:20.980Are you are you, you know, squirreling money away at every opportunity?
00:16:37.080You know, we've ensured that your your responsible behavior is not going to pay off in the long run, but there's really nothing you can do about it except defect.
00:16:47.380Right. Just find a way to secure those sweet payoffs, which is why it's hard for people to get angry a lot of times about stuff like the proposed, you know, Biden paying off the student loans.
00:16:58.960Like, yeah, it's it's certainly a payoff to his patronage network, but he's just securing money for people who vote for him, you know, which is just something that the right is not willing to do.
00:17:11.460And since we since both parties are completely unwilling to show any restraint in their time in office, just in different directions, more and more people are asking, OK, but why don't I benefit from that?
00:17:22.960So speaking of spending a lot more money, let me go ahead and bring this up real quick.
00:17:29.080So I've done a couple of videos here on kind of the immigration crisis.
00:17:33.340I think at this point, we're all pretty aware of the fact that immigration is out of control in the United States.
00:17:41.360However, the New York City is getting hit harder than it's ever been hit before.
00:17:46.720And all of a sudden sudden people are starting to realize in New York City that this is a huge problem.
00:17:51.860Right. The New York mayor, Eric Adams, he had a sanctuary city in New York.
00:17:57.160He said, oh, yeah, no, we care deeply about all these migrants and, you know, no, no human being is illegal and all this stuff.
00:18:03.740But all of a sudden kind of the fall out of that is hitting New York and they're having serious problems.
00:18:10.180So recently here, we learned that over a billion dollars is going to be spent on hotels to house illegal immigrants in just the next in the next few years.
00:18:20.240Of course, that's a massive thing. Right. That's a giant budget outlay for the city of New York.
00:18:27.100That's a huge imposition on their infrastructure. And this is obviously going to have a big impact on them.
00:18:34.180But again, there's the amazing thing about this, like the thing you really need to grasp through all this is even though like New York is now starting to see this problem,
00:18:43.760you're starting to have protests about illegal immigrants coming in.
00:18:47.360You're starting to see the issues as many of these immigrants have to be housed in these hotels.
00:18:52.420Massive amount of money that could be spent doing all kinds of really important things for New York are instead spent on illegal immigrants.
00:18:58.920And again, we can kind of feel this this feeling of looting the Treasury.
00:19:03.480We don't care about the citizens that are already in New York.
00:19:06.540We don't care about people who are already Americans.
00:19:09.220We don't care about people who are struggling in the United States.
00:19:12.900The far more important thing is to spend massive amounts of money facilitating the importation of people who are not supposed to be here and making sure that they have a comfortable situation or sending all that money to a foreign country to fund the retirements of bureaucrats there and and
00:19:29.900stimulate their economy to stimulate their economy and make sure that they have enough, you know, farm equipment or equipment or whatever.
00:19:35.540But like the one thing we can't do is spend American tax dollars on Americans.
00:19:40.720The one thing we can't do with an American military is defend an American border, right?
00:19:45.160Like the one thing America is not allowed to do is is protect itself and prefer itself.
00:19:52.540And that's why America doesn't feel like a nation for a lot of people.
00:19:56.340It feels like a tax farm for a global empire, right?
00:19:59.580You can spend money on illegal immigrants.
00:20:01.740You can spend money on foreign nations, but you can't spend money on bettering the lives of the American people.
00:20:07.340You can send the American military's ammunition overseas to go, you know, defend Ukraine.
00:20:14.580You can deploy American military all over the world anywhere except the place where America is currently being invaded.
00:20:22.540And that seems to be true of all Western nations, that Western nations are just not.
00:20:26.720They can send their militaries anywhere else except the one place that American military and other militaries were designed to defend in the first place.
00:20:34.760The whole point of having a military is to secure your borders.
00:20:37.680That's what a military's first job is, is to make sure that your country is protected from foreign threats, to make sure that your borders are not being violated.
00:20:46.880That is like job one of any military, but we're not allowed to do it.
00:20:50.720And on top of that, we're spending over a billion dollars in places like New York to house people who have basically been shipped in on purpose.
00:20:57.560But the amazing thing is that none of this will change the Democratic voting pattern, right?
00:21:04.280All of these people in New York are still going to vote Democrat.
00:21:07.220All of them are still going to go ahead and secure the Democratic majority.
00:21:11.840And the Democrats are going to continue to do open borders.
00:21:15.860So they're actively going to support a party that is facilitating the very problem that they are complaining about that is destroying their city.
00:21:26.320With New Yorkers at the end of the day, liberals at the end of the day, what's far more important to them than the well-being of their country is being able to call their opponents a race.
00:21:53.800Than it is to actually think about the well-being of the cities they live in, the country they live in.
00:21:59.020They'd rather be able to declare someone a conspirator, an agent of Putin, than notice the fact that their own cities are falling apart due to the very policies they support.
00:22:09.540So even though their direct experience, I know, so there's a big controversy with a lot of Republicans or a lot of people on the right where, you know, DeSantis and Greg Abbott are sending these people deeper into the country.
00:22:20.780And it's it's riling up Democrats because they have to deal with the illegal immigrants.
00:22:25.340They're not just concentrated in Texas and Florida anymore.
00:22:28.400On one hand, people are like, oh, well, great that these you know, that these that these liberals are getting what they deserve.
00:22:35.600They're getting what they should expect from illegal immigration.
00:22:39.060They're actually having to feel the consequences of their actions.
00:22:43.320Like you do see them send the military to clean out Martha's Vineyard.
00:22:47.200And you do see Eric Adams, who's been talking about the importance of sanctuary cities for forever, start to complain about the migrants there.
00:22:56.520But does the hypocrisy actually change anything?
00:22:59.620And the answer seems to be, unfortunately, no.
00:23:01.700So at some level, there is some utility in kind of sending these people to New York or sending these people to different places and forcing the hand of Democrats.
00:23:12.220Like I can see the PR utility of this.
00:23:15.420But on the other hand, at the end of the day, these people are not changing their mind.
00:23:38.440Eventually, maybe there will be some changes, but they never laugh because really, these people are spiritually blue.
00:23:45.780They're spiritually left whenever whenever for a moment, the consequence of their actions fade for a little while.
00:23:52.540They're going to go back to this to this understanding of the world.
00:23:56.880And so even though I think it's kind of hilarious, the schadenfreude of watching these people deal with the illegal immigrants, I'm somebody who lives in Florida.
00:24:04.180I live in Florida my whole most of my life.
00:24:06.620I've had to deal with this kind of thing my whole life.
00:24:09.200So this is not new and it's kind of funny to watch all these states that ignored this problem and mocked this problem and didn't care about this problem or were counting on this problem, you know, to impact red states and kind of destroy the voting base there.
00:24:24.960It's fun to watch them kind of suffer a little bit from this.
00:24:28.960It's perversely fun to watch them suffer from this.
00:24:31.620But really, at the end of the day, they're not going to change their voting pattern.
00:24:35.100And that's something that people need to realize, though.
00:24:37.320I think, again, there is there is some political utility enforcing the point.
00:24:42.380I think eventually some of the stuff does coalesce into people observing some of the problems with what they've been supporting.
00:24:48.900All right. So another thing that happened here recently, which I think is kind of perversely hilarious, is the Canadian Parliament stood up and they cheered a guy who actually fought as part of a Nazi unit in World War Two.
00:25:07.280So Justin Trudeau, you know, they're cheering Zelensky, they're cheering the Ukrainian war effort.
00:25:16.220Russia is the bad guy, you know, which, funny enough, is something that, you know, the right was saying for a very long time and the left hated.
00:25:23.180But, you know, the Russians are the bad guys.
00:25:25.700And so anybody who's ever fought Russia, we hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:28:01.580Like, they don't think about the fact that there are two evil countries over here, at least, in World War II.
00:28:09.360And so the fact that a lot of people in places like Ukraine, like Romania, like some of these other countries, you know, decided to pick up arms and fight against Stalin didn't mean that they were devotees of necessarily this ideology.
00:28:28.480Like, just because someone happened to say, well, Stalin is killing people in my homeland, he's doing terrible things, I don't want him to control my homeland, and therefore I'm going to join whatever force I can to fight against it.
00:28:41.940Especially when they're a young person, right?
00:28:43.880You're, like, 18, 19, someone's doing something terrible to your country, you know.
00:28:48.100And so that doesn't mean, like, everybody was ideologically aligned just because they happened to want to fight somebody who was, you know, doing terrible things to their homeland.
00:28:58.180Again, I'm not excusing this guy's behavior one way or another.
00:29:01.440I don't really know his personal story all the way through.
00:29:04.440So, you know, I don't know what beliefs he held or anything like this.
00:29:08.080But it's just that there was a moment where a lot of people were like, ah, see, the progressive Canadians are the real Nazis.
00:29:14.980I think that's the wrong tack to take with this, right?
00:29:20.260And so I think just having this kind of really black and white, no, you know, low resolution understanding of what somebody in that scenario would have kind of felt and what kind of situation they'd be in is a little short-sighted.
00:29:36.160That said, I think the part to really take away with this is how much the left doesn't actually care about this.
00:29:43.040The kind of really interesting dynamic of this is that the left has really made, you know, Canada and the United States and many other countries have basically engaged in a project of denazification.
00:29:54.380That's how they've run their countries.
00:29:56.800And so even though all of the people who are opposed to them aren't Nazis, even though they aren't, you know, national socialists from Germany or something, that's still how they treat them, right?
00:30:07.940You've seen Joe Biden directly use this language behind the presidential seal.
00:30:13.280Oh, my opponents are semi-fascist, whatever that means.
00:30:16.760He's just calling you a fascist, right?
00:30:18.520Like he did that in front of a blood red, you know, background, you know, so guys like Joe Biden use that language.
00:30:24.860The left is constantly talking about how, oh, it's okay to punch a Nazi.
00:30:27.860Oh, all these people are fascists or proto-fascists.
00:30:31.220Justin Trudeau uses that language, too, when he was talking about the truckers and other protesters and opponents, that they embrace this ideology.
00:30:37.720The left have this constant, you know, cartoonish idea that there's this undercurrent, this specter of neo-fascism sitting somewhere below all of their countries.
00:30:47.720And that if in any moment progressives don't have total control of the United States or Canada or wherever, then all of this will surge back and it'll suddenly conquer the country.
00:30:57.180Right. That's a pipe dream. It's not even close. Right.
00:30:59.540But they really do believe this. I want to be clear.
00:31:03.480I know if you're on the right or you're a conservative and you're like, they can't really believe this.
00:31:08.440Right. They watch the left, you know, debank these people, imprison these people, cancel these people, make sure they can't get jobs.
00:31:15.160Clearly, they can't actually believe that people are really, you know, seriously devoted to this ideology somewhere.
00:31:23.420The left have all the control. The right have basically no control.
00:31:26.660They can't really believe that this is like resurgence somewhere, but they really do.
00:31:31.080I've talked to these people, guys. I've looked them in the eyes. Trust me, they are true believers.
00:31:35.540OK, they really think that this is just sitting below the surface.
00:31:39.360But at the same time, when somebody who is actually part of a Nazi unit is stood up in front of them, they'll cheer for that guy.
00:31:50.020As long as he fought the current enemy, the current bad thing, which is Vladimir Putin, even though Vladimir Putin and Russia are like not connected to this at all.
00:32:00.900Right. They're still going to pretend like it's the same thing, that this is the new fascism now.
00:32:05.620Like, right. And so this guy who is actually fighting on behalf of a fascist force or a national socialist force, we can parse the details.
00:32:13.880But anyway, someone who's actually involved in the ideology that they pretend to be scared of, you know, or at least fighting for the forces that they pretend to be scared of.
00:32:23.780So they they'll clap for this person. So the question is, did they really ever care about this?
00:32:29.460Were they ever really worried about this? And I think the answer is yes and no.
00:32:33.580Like they really do believe that this ideology is bubbling somewhere, but it's really only a stand in for what they actually hate, which is just kind of conservative Americans, people who are opposed to the globalist regime, who are opposed to kind of this rapid progressivism.
00:32:50.140And that's the real that's the real stand in. That's what it really stands for.
00:32:54.800And so that's what they're actually against. If it's convenient to cheer for a guy who happened to fought on the side that they pretend they hate.
00:33:01.800Well, that's not a problem because the current thing is the most important thing.
00:33:05.740All history kind of begins whenever they want it to. That's kind of the beautiful thing about them controlling history. Right.
00:33:12.640They just kind of mash it all together. They pick the pieces out that they like or they don't like.
00:33:16.720And then they just go ahead and rearrange it and vomit it back into people who don't know anything about history.
00:33:22.820And then they end up with this. You know, that's why they can end up cheering for this guy and think that that somehow is connected to their current opposition of, quote unquote, fascism, because they don't even understand what that word means.
00:33:34.320They don't even they don't even connect the ideas.
00:33:36.740They understand the differences and they don't want to. It's not about the differences.
00:33:40.640They don't actually want to understand the nuance. They want to stand the history.
00:33:44.000They don't understand the political, you know, theories or connections or anything.
00:33:47.740It's not about knowledge. It's about hatred. Right.
00:33:50.120They just want to have something a bludgeon to beat their opponents with.
00:33:54.020And that's really what this is all about.
00:33:56.780All right. So I want to go ahead and bring up one more thing here, which might be a little more controversial with some conservatives.
00:34:05.320But I think it's important to get to. So a recent poll came out.
00:34:10.640And that recent poll was talking about the Electoral College. Right.
00:34:16.460We got Frank Luntz. Now. There's a lot you could say about Frank Luntz.
00:34:21.220OK, and you can a lot you can say about the methodology of of polling.
00:34:28.740I think polling has proven itself to be very unreliable here recently.
00:34:34.500That's a lesson that even the Republicans seem to have forgotten.
00:34:37.980Trump was supposed to have like no chance of getting elected.
00:34:41.420The polls were all wildly against him, you know, and then he got elected.
00:34:45.860And then the second time he was also supposed to have no chance.
00:34:49.180And obviously it came down to a very tight election.
00:34:53.720We can get to the details of that, I guess.
00:34:56.420But the point is that, you know, that polling is not always reliable.
00:35:01.180And a lot of these polls are meant just to push an agenda.
00:35:05.940Right. The polling is there to drive an agenda, not to measure and reflect the actual kind of state of the political body.
00:35:16.120But, you know, before we talk about this, I want to say all of that because I'm somebody who wrote stories when I was a journalist about polls.
00:35:21.640I would look at the methodology of polls.
00:35:36.500And so I want to talk about this a little bit.
00:35:38.040So Frank Luntz, you know, brings up this poll and it says 65 percent of Americans want presidential elections to be cited by a nationwide popular vote.
00:35:45.760So 33 percent want to keep the Electoral College.
00:35:50.480And I wanted to explain to people kind of what's going on here, because a lot of conservatives love to say we're a republic.
00:37:15.840And I think that that's difficult for conservatives to hear.
00:37:19.660But I think it's really important because the problem is not just that we aren't a constitutional republic, but it's that I think conservatives have onboarded many of the assumptions of mass democracy.
00:37:32.580They've assumed many of the things about mass democracy are true, and they've kind of imported that into their understanding of what a constitutional republic should be and what the American identity should be.
00:37:45.260And because of that, that's kind of warped their understanding of what a difference even could be.
00:37:50.740Because if you ask most conservatives, okay, what's the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic?
00:37:56.120And they're like, oh, well, we're not a democracy because it's not just the popular opinion, right?
00:38:07.580We have people between us and the actual lawmaking process.
00:38:11.820So their idea is basically the only form of democracy is direct democracy where you step in and every single human votes, and then the majority of that is the winner, and that's what the law is.
00:38:25.880But basically, almost nothing has been a direct democracy like that.
00:38:29.680There have been very few one-to-one, every citizen votes, and the majority of the vote is hands down the win.
00:38:38.080Across history, that has been basically a non-existent.
00:38:41.280It's only existed in very, very small, maybe a city-state at most can do this.
00:38:46.080Anything larger has never been able to have a direct democracy.
00:38:50.140So under that definition, all democracies basically were constitutional republics.
00:38:54.600But I think that's a bad way to understand it because I don't really think that explains what's going on.
00:38:59.720So what most people don't understand about constitutional republics and democracies, they don't understand,
00:39:07.980is like once you embrace the kind of the idea of mass democracy, once you've taken on board the legitimating arguments of mass democracy,
00:39:17.400you're always going to move further and further towards kind of that popular will, that mass democracy,
00:39:24.920and farther away from a constitutional republic.
00:39:28.800So, for instance, the dialectical energy is always towards the removal of restrictions and the expansion of benefits, right?
00:39:39.440So if you look at a situation where you're debating something,
00:39:44.260it's always easier to tear down the restrictions and give away free stuff or give away rights or give away benefits.
00:39:51.980That's always where your political energy is going to be because the people who support the way things are already there, right?
00:39:59.260So like if you want to drive a wedge, if you want to create disagreement,
00:40:02.940if you want to take an opportunity to rule in a place where like you have a democracy,
00:40:08.680where you have a voting mechanism, then the political energy will always be kind of in this direction, right?
00:40:16.680I say here in the thread, you know, the dialectical energy always moves in the direction of removing restrictions and expanding benefits.
00:40:22.800There's always a political incentive to expand the franchise and remove barriers to the popular will.
00:40:28.540Like once you have embraced the idea that the people know best and popular will is what actually legitimates action,
00:40:34.900then you're never going to have a situation where you move closer to restriction.
00:40:39.760You never have a situation where you take away benefits or rights or privileges or anything.
00:40:45.880You're only going to get more political energy by moving towards those things, never wait for them.
00:40:51.800So for instance, right now, conservatives believe that allowing illegal immigrants to vote or getting rid of the electoral college is a crazy idea, right?
00:41:09.640But they don't really have an argument against it because they've already bought into the logic of mass democracy, right?
00:41:16.760They say they don't like that stuff because it's new and it's different, but they don't ever really put forward a substantive argument as to why you can't do those things because they've kind of already embraced a lot of the logic behind them.
00:41:30.560So the U.S. has like vastly increased its franchise throughout the years, right?
00:41:37.260And on top of that, they've also done things like remove the distinction between the Senate and the House of Representatives by enacting, you know, the direct election of senators.
00:41:49.020We've also changed the way that the electoral process works for presidents by putting in, you know, the idea of these presidential primaries.
00:41:58.120And so what used to be distinct bodies of government, distinct branches of government that were selected in very different ways are more and more selected exactly the same way through popular will.
00:42:10.680Gaetano Mosca talked about this and he said, this is why the United States became an oligarchy.
00:42:14.820Because he said, you know, the thing about separation of powers that we like, you know, Baron Montesquieu came up with the idea of separation of powers or he was a big proponent of it.
00:42:24.940And he's somebody that the founders really thought about as somebody that Madison really thought about when he was shaping the Constitution.
00:42:31.280And what Montesquieu was talking about when talking about separation of powers, we just think, oh, you break it up into three branches and then the power of the government isn't unified in one place.
00:42:39.100And that's what limits the power of government.
00:42:40.420But actually, and this is something that Gaetano Mosca talked about, people who understand Montesquieu that way misunderstand the point.
00:42:49.100They think that Montesquieu is just saying, oh, well, if you break it into three branches as if three is the magic number, then you'll stop government from, like, becoming tyrannical.
00:43:00.420It's not about three or five or seven branches.
00:43:02.880There's not something magic about the tripod of American politics, you know, breaking it into three parts.
00:43:09.980What's important, the key thing about divided government that tends to limit tyranny is that it represents different social forces.
00:43:19.260It represents different spheres of influence in society.
00:43:22.880So for Gaetano Mosca and for Montesquieu, the different branches are supposed to represent different types of political forces.
00:43:31.840So the church, the aristocracy, the monarchy, the people, the merchant class, the military, they're all represented in these different divided parts of government.
00:43:44.880And because these different social forces have different collective understandings of the good, they have different collective ideas about what will benefit them, they have different incentives, the government never becomes tyrannical in one direction because they're always working against this, you know, each other, right?
00:44:04.120And this is what they talked about in Federalist 51, right?
00:44:07.440This is what Madison was trying to talk about when he said that, you know, these different opposing forces will gridlock the government and keep it from becoming tyrannical.
00:44:15.780But the problem is that we kind of melted those divisions, right?
00:44:20.860Because America doesn't really have a central church.
00:44:23.580We don't have, like, a Catholic church and a pope.
00:44:25.900And because America is military, is subservient to the civilian sphere, we've always had a civilian control of America.
00:44:36.840And because we got rid of the aristocratic notion for the most part in America, we got rid of the class system and we don't have a monarch, then we kind of melted down all that stuff, right?
00:44:47.060Even the more aristocratic elements like the Senate, like the Senate being selected by the state legislatures, like the parties selecting presidential candidates rather than a democratic process.
00:45:00.660Those elements were melted down, too, because the voice of the people, the voice of the people, popular will, the voice of the people, right?
00:45:06.580All of that ended up getting melted down into one thing.
00:45:11.220And so now popular will is the only thing that legitimates the Congress, right?
00:45:16.700Both House and Senate, the president, and increasingly even the Supreme Court.
00:45:22.940You now see the Democrats trying to dismantle the Supreme Court because they can't directly control it democratically, right?
00:45:28.020And, of course, this also means the Electoral College because the Electoral College is another one of these barriers to the popular will.
00:45:34.580And so all of these things are being melted down and they're being put under the same force of popular will.
00:45:39.380And the great thing about the popular will is the Democrats are very good at controlling it, right?
00:45:43.500They control all of the consensus-making apparatus in the United States.
00:45:55.040They control television programs, movies, music.
00:45:58.100They control all of these cultural elements that influence public opinion.
00:46:02.180So if public opinion is the only thing that decides anything in our government and the Democrats control all of the outlets that manipulate public opinion, they can control all of the government.
00:46:13.580And this is why Moscow said America turned into an oligarchy because this is the only thing that now matters for all of our different forms of government.
00:46:21.600And the problem is that largely conservatives agree with this idea, right?
00:46:25.440The conservatives aren't arguing to roll back the franchise from anybody, right?
00:46:29.900They're not arguing to return senators to, you know, the selection of senators to state legislatures.
00:46:37.300They're not looking to devolve any of this power back to these other spheres of society.
00:46:44.560And because of that, there is no really opposing force to the popular will, which is controlled by the Democrats.
00:46:51.100And so you have this problem where these institutions like the Electoral College are going to fall because really Republicans don't have a good argument against it.
00:47:00.920Yeah, they can just say, we don't want to lose elections, right?
00:47:03.820We could because of the currently the Electoral College favors us.
00:47:08.080And so, yeah, we don't want California and New York to like run the country.
00:47:12.620But really, outside of that, they don't have a good argument because they agree with all of the mechanisms that the left is purporting.
00:47:23.660Same thing is going to happen with illegal immigrants voting.
00:47:27.160No, I don't think they're actually just going to pass a bill where illegal immigrants can vote.
00:47:31.000But what they're going to do is eventually they'll get amnesty because the Republicans are squishy and they're going to give up on this, especially when there's a vast, you know, when you have tens of millions and millions of tens of millions of people in the country illegally who have been here for decades, who have been part of the country for decades.
00:47:49.740Eventually, they're going to wear these people down and they're going to give in on this.
00:48:06.640And the problem is that really, again, conservatives don't have an argument against this, because if conservatives aren't willing to say deport all of these illegal immigrants, the only thing they have left to do is assimilate these people.
00:48:18.700And by definition, for conservatives, political participation is assimilation, right?
00:48:23.880Like popular government in the United States is their idea of like civic nationalism.
00:48:29.180And so if you're going to push this, the only thing they can really do is extend these voting rights to these people.
00:48:35.080And so eventually, like democracy will just eat all of these limiting institutions because it has to.
00:48:42.520Because even in the conservative ideology, it has to.
00:48:45.600And this is a real problem for conservatives because they don't their ideology of like what makes somebody an American and what defines the American experience is directly counter to their current interests and their current goals.
00:49:00.500And so like they don't have any way to really argue against this.
00:49:03.900Most conservatives who would quickly snap back, oh, well, this is a constitutional republic would be totally opposed to moving the United States back towards a constitutional republic in the first place.
00:49:15.240What they're really talking about is democracy.
00:49:18.060What they usually just support is democracy.
00:49:21.300And so when there are all these calls about saying, well, you know, all this stuff is an attack on our democracy.
00:49:26.900It works because, well, really, at the end of the day, conservatives agree that that's kind of the situation we're in and they support all the tenets of it.
00:49:35.520And so you end up in a really bad situation for many conservatives.
00:49:39.860All right, guys, we've got some some super chats stacking up here.
00:49:54.920Listen to people defend this degenerate.
00:49:56.760Sure, he shouldn't be canceled, but there's other news to people.
00:49:59.840I mean, yeah, and I already talked about the Russell Brand situation.
00:50:03.180I feel like I've kind of already said my piece on this.
00:50:05.040Look, Russell Brand, he seems a little bit like a sex pest, right?
00:50:10.740Like he seems like the kind of guy who would go around.
00:50:13.140I don't know what the validity of these charges are, and I don't think that anyone should anybody should have bring any kind of consequences to this guy because that because these charges are anonymous and they don't have any kind of legal backing or anything.
00:50:27.660There's been no proceedings for any of this.
00:50:29.400So I don't think he should be canceled.
00:51:02.440I think the real problem is that just all of our current elites are globalists.
00:51:08.000The very idea of nationalism terrifies them.
00:51:11.300The fact that Trump said, I'm a nationalist, the fact that MAGA was kind of openly nationalist, that was terrifying to them, which is weird because when you run a country, but you're against the idea of countries, that's interesting.
00:51:26.200Why is that true of both sides of our political divide?
00:52:14.080But, you know, consequences of what you went for.
00:52:17.640On the other hand, I don't really think that, you know, the popular will is always correct.
00:52:23.740And I think there is, you know, a lot of these people are misled about what's going to happen.
00:52:28.840I just feel bad because it's like, I don't, I don't, I'm not always up for this.
00:52:33.240Like, well, we should just leave people to the consequences, leave people to their own devices.
00:52:36.840I think in some ways it just means that the people in New York aren't really capable of self-government, it seems, right?
00:52:44.800Like, progressives are not very good at self-governance.
00:52:47.400They will vote to destroy their own civilization.
00:52:51.020And as long as it's attached to our civilization, that's a problem.
00:52:54.000So, you know, I'm for, you know, separating, you know, so that we don't have to feel the consequences of blue cities.
00:53:01.560Well, I don't want to give them all cities, but the consequences of kind of blue voting or for just, you know, saying, okay, if you move to these certain zones, you just can't be trusted to run your own policy.
00:53:12.840You just need to revoke home rule from a place like New York City because they just don't seem capable of not destroying their own place where they live.
00:53:28.860Did you see a load of dentists and engineers enriching a small Italian island base money?
00:53:34.400Yeah, I mean, if you guys haven't seen, there's an island next to Italy there or it's an Italian island where just large amounts of African migrants are coming in.
00:53:44.740It seems like there's not basically any restriction kind of what's going on there.
00:53:49.860I know many European nations have run into this problem and there just doesn't seem to be any kind of will.
00:53:54.960Well, even in Italy, where they elected somebody who was supposed to be scary and far right, there doesn't seem to be really any willingness to kind of stop what's happening there, even by people who are supposed to be right wing.
00:54:07.480Let me get some water here real quick.
00:54:08.620And so, you know, so that seems to be the case is, unfortunately, even people who are campaigning as right wing, who the left are pushing as scary and far right, don't have kind of the wherewithal to stop this invasion, which is bad news.
00:54:28.160Because, like, that's what we're hoping for in America, right, that we elect somebody super based and they kind of stop this immigration.
00:54:36.520You know, I mean, to be fair, Trump did seem to do that, you know, sorry, did seem to do that to some extent.
00:54:44.840You know, the amount of immigration did drop, he did take, though it was not enough, it was not sufficient, we didn't get the big beautiful wall we were promised, it wasn't finished.
00:54:55.920He did take steps that were meaningful that did reduce immigration.
00:54:59.520So there is a blueprint, there are directions you could take in America.
00:55:02.800Hopefully we don't end up in the situation like Italy did, but people are pouring across the border right now, so it doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.
00:55:12.280Scott Lemons here for $5, thank you very much.
00:55:15.480McIntyre Sulla 2028 campaign donation.
00:56:21.880So in theory, right, if you're a proponent of democracy or the popular will, if you think that's a good thing, in theory at least, the best usage of it would not be for the goal of democracy.
00:56:36.580It would not be for the virtue of democracy.
00:56:39.800Democracy would be valuable because it would allow the virtue of the people to be reflected, which is why I think our founders were pretty clear about the fact that our system would only work for virtuous people, right?
00:56:52.960If you have a virtuous people who is capable of self-government, who can impose these limitations on themselves, then that will be reflected in their voting, will be reflected in the democratic aspects of their country.
00:57:05.580Though, again, remember, the founding fathers only made one half of one third of our actual system really democratic.
00:57:14.820The Senate was selected by the state legislatures.
00:57:18.000The president was selected by Electoral College.
00:57:22.080There wasn't a lot of direct democracy in our Constitution and our original idea of what the United States would be.
00:57:28.360But what democracy there was would have reflected the virtue of the people.
00:57:33.680But now democracy itself has become the virtue.
00:57:36.460Just there's a participation is the only thing because we can't really ask virtue of the people anymore because we've destroyed our traditions.
00:57:44.740We've destroyed our connection to the past.
00:57:47.280We've destroyed our religion, these kind of things.
00:57:49.380And so there's no longer any kind of this natural virtue that would kind of arise and be reflected in this democratic process.
00:57:58.760So now we just turn the democracy itself into virtue.
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