New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez declared an emergency to ban the carrying of guns, both concealed and open carry, in the state's largest city, Albuquerque, as well as the surrounding counties. She cited a public health emergency, and invoked the emergency power granted to the governor under the Public Health Act.
00:04:27.720But that made people very angry on the Internet at me.
00:04:30.760So what we're going to do is we're going to jump in.
00:04:33.420I'm going to go through some of this thread.
00:04:35.600I'm going to explain the state of exception, how this happens, why we need to understand this specific aspect of constitutional order and political power.
00:04:47.200Because if we don't understand why this is happening, we don't really have an understanding of how we could push back against it.
00:04:54.380You can be really angry about some of the truths contained here.
00:04:57.740But being angry at them won't help you when it comes to actually combating this stuff.
00:05:03.020You're just going to angrily yell into the void.
00:05:06.380So I want to talk about how this works, why it works.
00:05:09.140But before we do that, guys, let's go ahead and hear from today's sponsor.
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00:10:11.640And the rules of the system cannot, by definition, include those exceptions.
00:10:14.780So a lot of people, especially conservatives, really like to think that the constitution is just kind of this perfect machine.
00:10:28.540It's, it's, it's, it's carefully manufactured by the founders and it's set in motion and it's, you know, it's always balancing itself.
00:10:36.400It's all, it's got all the right aspects.
00:10:38.020It understands everything about kind of human nature.
00:10:41.780And so it will always fix itself in kind of in perpetuity.
00:10:45.540It will always apply exactly the same way all the time.
00:10:48.100Like basically they see the constitution is just this amazing piece of political technology that kind of just solved governance forever.
00:10:56.400But that's the wrong way to understand constitutional government.
00:11:00.960Constitutions are really a reflection of kind of the traditions and folkways of the people.
00:11:06.460They're, they're a formal instantiation of the beliefs of the people and the way that they would naturally govern themselves.
00:11:13.960So the constitution does not create the country, the constitution does not create the people, the people create the constitution, the country creates the constitution.
00:11:25.600And so because of that fact, no constitution will ever be perfect.
00:11:30.060It will never, you know, figure out everything that's going to happen forever in human history.
00:11:47.180Human nature will have eternal truths about it, which is where we can draw many of our understandings of law and the way constitutions and countries should be formed.
00:11:55.320But it will not, it does not mean that humanity will always be exactly the same.
00:11:59.580The fate, the problems that it always faces will always be the same.
00:12:02.060There will always be unpredicted eventualities that will always happen.
00:12:07.000And by definition, no system can predict exceptions to that system.
00:12:12.520Like just that's, that's what that means, right?
00:12:15.400If you have a system and there's an exception to it, that exception has to be outside of the system.
00:12:19.660And so that's why you have leadership roles.
00:12:22.080Like anybody inside, you know, a bureaucracy or anything else that operates on a set of rules understands this, right?
00:12:28.800You have, you know, a set of systems and they might be really resilient.
00:12:33.060They might be very, very well thought out.
00:12:34.720They might be very carefully set up and they have a flow of procedure, but inevitably something, no matter how good that system is and how often it can kind of return answers for whatever you're doing, eventually a question is going to come up that that system is not prepared for.
00:12:49.760And in that moment, that's when you need leadership, right?
00:12:52.740Leadership is just an eternal fact of human existence.
00:12:56.220You will always need leaders because there will always be something new.
00:14:18.500That does not mean that's not, does not mean that's just a truth in which humans exist.
00:14:22.860We have to look at the reality around us.
00:14:24.820We want to be able to solve the problems that we are facing.
00:14:27.620Frankly, the constitutional crises that are coming quick and, you know, very often in our current scenario.
00:14:34.580And so when we're looking at this, I want us to understand that, again, we're working with what's true and observable, not what we would like to be true or what we hope to be an eternal truth or a truth that we want to strive after, right?
00:14:48.400Because what we're doing here is a mechanical understanding of kind of how this works.
00:14:53.700So, some systems attempt to prepare for this eventuality by having procedures for entering the state of exception.
00:15:03.580Ancient Rome had an office of dictator that could be assigned to solve a specific crisis with sweeping powers, but only for a limited time.
00:15:12.640So, can a constitution prepare for everything?
00:17:52.580That's actually one of the reasons that Cincinnati, Ohio, is named after Cincinnatus.
00:18:00.060And it's actually an ode to George Washington, who is seen of it having done a similar thing, right?
00:18:04.580George Washington, you know, he steps down after two presidential terms, basically could have been dictator for life, basically could have been effectively king just by a different name.
00:18:14.980But, no, he says, it's more important for me to hand over power, create this precedent that people will follow all the way up to FDR.
00:18:46.700You start getting people like Caesar, who are named dictator for life, breaking the meaning of the office, right?
00:18:54.260And so the tradition, the restraints on the office eventually fall away, right?
00:19:01.560And those people start disrespecting what the purpose of the office was.
00:19:05.840However, that's not because the law really changed.
00:19:11.360It's because the traditions of the people fell away and they were less resistant to the idea of a dictator, right?
00:19:18.540So it didn't really matter that the kind of the law or the regulations of Rome limited the power or the scope or the continuation of dictatorship because the people were no longer willing to enforce it because the elites of the society were no longer ready to enforce that restriction.
00:19:37.440The ability of the dictator to use the state of exception grew and grew and grew until basically it just became de facto king, right?
00:19:46.500Even though the Romans said they'd never have a king again, it basically became a de facto king, right?
00:19:53.120And so, again, the constitution, the formal legality of the thing, less important than the actual way in which the people are willing to express their restrictions, put their own beliefs above kind of the power and will of their leader, right?
00:21:01.200We like to talk about how nobody is above a law.
00:21:03.380But the truth is that actually we enter into a state of exception far more frequently than we're comfortable with.
00:21:11.080And again, lying about that point to ourselves, demanding that that not be true, does not change our reality, right?
00:21:19.300So if we, again, want to understand what's happening to us and why, we need to talk about what is real, what is true, what is observable, and what is happening.
00:21:29.320And not the way that we think things should be.
00:21:31.380Now, we can have the way that we think things should be inform our next steps, but they should not blind us to the realities around us that should also inform our next steps, right?
00:22:20.800And whether you're the GOP or the Democrats and you see these people as, like, the leaders of your party, the best exemplars of your party, they're also the people who broke the Constitution in half most often.
00:22:33.840They're the people who are most willing to have an imperial presidency to ignore your constitutional rights, to remake the country in their own vision.
00:26:00.240They still hold him up as this, like, scion.
00:26:01.960If anybody else had literally just gulagged all of the, you know, kind of Asian Americans, some of the German Americans in the United States, that would probably be a problem, right?
00:26:11.760But it's FDR and he's kind of part of this post-World War II lionization of the United States.
00:26:17.700So the fact that he kind of did this thing that would otherwise be, I mean, if Trump or Bush or somebody did that, that would be the worst war crime that ever happened for hundreds of years.
00:26:27.300But now we just kind of, you know, stick it in the lower part of the history stack when we teach about FDR and World War II.
00:26:35.340But either way, the point is, like, these guys just violated, you know, the Constitution pretty blatantly with large amount of support from the population and a large amount of praise through history.
00:26:46.760So once again, you can say, shouldn't have done that.
00:26:50.020All of this should have been constitutional.
00:26:51.860All of this should have been done formally.
00:26:53.620All of this should have gone through, you know, the different legal routes and there should have been legislation, should have been due process, there should have been court hearings.
00:28:02.480In a moment of crisis, we prefer strong leaders who take decisive action and we kind of go back and justify the things they did afterwards.
00:28:11.620That's just the true thing about us, right?
00:28:13.360Lincoln, FDR, Biden had to imprison their political opponents slash inter-immigrants slash jail journalists, right?
00:28:21.660And if you don't think that history will look back at Joe Biden imprisoning Donald Trump as favorably as it does FDR imprisoning people or Lincoln imprisoning people, a little less with FDR again because the ethnic component, the racial component has suddenly made that a less popular move.
00:28:42.120But if you think that history will not look back on some of those actions and praise them, then you haven't paid attention to history.
00:28:50.220If you think there's just an inevitable arrow of history, well, everyone will look back and see Joe Biden or at least Joe Biden's administration.
00:28:57.500I don't think Joe Biden makes almost any decision.
00:28:59.480But if you don't think that history will look back and see the imprisonment of all these people as justifiable, I think you might be not paying attention to the reality of politics.
00:29:10.320I think you might be leaning too far on what you want to be true or what you hope to be true or what you're taught should be true as opposed to what's actually happening.
00:29:19.260Doug Mackey is going to be in jail for 10 years for making a meme probably, right?
00:29:24.640We just had Owen Schreier from Infowars.
00:30:25.240Like, all these people who are being put under the thumb of the regime, they're being told to sit down because, you know, they're going to have to face this legal defense.
00:30:35.560They're going to have to go through all this.
00:30:36.860And even if they win these cases, which is no guarantee that they will, they'll still basically have their lives and their finances destroyed.
00:30:42.860And so you have to understand that, like, even if for a moment that, you know, the Constitution wins, if the majority of the process is still owned by your enemies, it can lose.
00:30:53.660Look at the masterpiece cake guy, right?
00:30:55.940He's won multiple, you know, Supreme Court cases at this point.
00:49:47.080It's the actual beliefs of the people and their willingness to fight back.
00:49:49.880So in the case of New Mexico and this gun, uh, or not confiscation, but gun ban, uh, in public, people are willing to fight back.
00:49:57.720And when it came to the pandemic, most people just weren't.
00:49:59.700Um, and you know, the, the places that they did fight back, their rights are preserved and the places they didn't fight back, they weren't right.
00:50:05.880And that's how the state of exception works.
00:50:09.540Um, our regime now governs in a near constant state of exception using almost any excuse to circumvent the, the formal procedures and protections of the constitution.
00:50:21.480Again, this is not something I like to be true.
00:50:24.300This is not something I want to be true, but it is just is true.
00:50:27.140As we can tell, uh, you know, the government used, uh, you know, these, the pandemic restriction or the pandemic excuse and the state of exception to invoke this stuff.
00:50:37.040They're trying it again here in New Mexico with this gun ban.
00:50:41.820They're going to try it with all kinds of stuff that they do with civil rights stuff that works real well.
00:50:45.920Even the right loves to just fold constitutional rights like a table when it comes to civil rights law.
00:50:51.400If you tell, uh, the right that something is a civil right, uh, they, they will burn constitutional rights, uh,
00:50:56.860to the ground, uh, even, even people who are, uh, uh, uh, kind of the most active and vocal on the right will pretty much, uh, concede immediately if you invoke that one.
00:51:05.880But either way, the point is that our government is always existing in the state of exception at this point, which is why it feels less and less like we're actually governed by the rule of law and the constitution.
00:51:16.640Code would be the easy example, but we can see how the system is looking to bring back emergency powers for almost any reason.
00:51:22.340New strains of the pandemic, climate change, civil rights, war on terror, big one, obviously with 9-11 yesterday, domestic extremism, threats to democracy.
00:51:29.860You notice they're saying that all the time, right?
00:51:33.220If you don't think you're not going to get states of exception due to the threats of democracy, well, great, because that's already happened.
00:51:38.460Again, the political opposition of, uh, you know, the, the, the head of political opposition in the biggest party, uh, in the United States, uh, is, is already been indicted multiple times, uh, through, purely for political reasons to shut down their ability to run against the current regime.
00:51:55.440But we have people in jail for making memes.
00:51:57.220We have people in jail for using their free, outspot free speech outside the Capitol.
00:52:02.740Uh, we are in a scenario, uh, where they just use this phrase, threats to democracy, and then they just invoke the state of exception and they do whatever they want.
00:52:10.520And, uh, you know, again, terrible, but true.
00:52:13.960Any excuse to enter the state of exception and wield emergency powers, because to be frank, Americans don't really care about their rights very much and will allow the government to violate them for almost any reason.
00:52:25.240Uh, the reason, the question is not, will my government attempt to enter a state of exception during an emergency?
00:52:30.460They will, and there can be justified reasons for doing so.
00:52:35.040So people might not like that one a little bit, but there are certain, uh, there are certain rights that might need to be, uh, you know, suspended for a certain amount of time, right?
00:52:43.460There are just certain things that are happening that you might have to step in, right?
00:52:48.980So if there's a fire in the area, it's going to burn down everything and you've got to create a fire break.
00:52:53.500The only way to create a central fire break is to knock over somebody's house.
00:52:58.840That's a violation of their property rights, right?
00:53:01.020But if you don't do that, thousands and thousands of other houses, uh, will be burned down.
00:53:06.080Uh, thousands of lives could be lost, property damage, everything else.
00:53:09.000Now, hopefully, you know, you've got, uh, you know, you've got, uh, these, uh, you know, you've got the fifth amendment.
00:53:14.660Uh, you know, you can invoke, uh, the right of, uh, why I'm having a hard time remembering the thing where the government seizes your property.
00:53:23.000Anyway, uh, someone will remind me in the chat in a moment, uh, but in imminent domain, uh, yes.
00:54:10.460And are they, uh, ruled by leaders that, uh, share the same culture, history, and moral vision?
00:54:17.780So here's the thing, guys, people who have the same experiences as you speak the same language, as you grew up in the same places, as you share the same religion, as you have the same history, as you watch the same TV programs, read the same books.
00:54:31.160They are more likely to have continuity of tradition.
00:54:35.620They are more likely to stand up for certain things that your culture holds valuable.
00:54:41.800So if you have a culture full of people who share those values and share them very tightly, you are far more likely to push back against the state of exception.
00:54:51.680State of exception is far more likely to be limited than it is when those things don't happen.
00:55:08.220When there's a strong history, strong belief of the people and the ruling class about how that office should be used.
00:55:15.860Even in a moment where the people asked Cincinnati, they're remembering of this history, they're remembering of the standard lapse, and they asked Cincinnati to become king.
00:55:26.460He turned them down because he still believed in that principle and that renewed their faith in the principle, right?
00:55:32.080So that reciprocal relationship between the ruler and the ruled sharing the same principle of governance and how the state of exception should be used held it in check.
00:55:40.720When did the state of exception become more powerful?
00:55:44.280When did the dictatorship become more powerful in Rome?
00:55:46.340As the society expanded, as it became an empire, as more and more people who were not interested in the traditions of Rome, who had not had a long history of Rome, who were not part of the founding of Rome, who did not have any family ties to the traditions and religions of Rome, started becoming large parts and influential parts of the community.
00:56:04.580And when that became the case, dictators gained power, dictators were able to expand the power they had, the length they could hold it until they just basically became, you know, Augustus basically assembles the principate and he's an emperor, a king and all but name.
00:56:19.420They call him first citizen, but he's the king, right?
00:56:22.840And so it's about your society's willingness to push back against those things.
00:56:28.180That's what actually creates that resistance, just like in New Mexico with the sheriff saying no.
00:56:34.580And all these gun rights, you know, people immediately filing lawsuits.
00:56:39.460That is the kind of action that pushes back against the state of exception.
00:56:43.340But if you don't have that, if you have lost that, if you don't have that will and that continuity of moral vision, then nothing will stand against it.
00:56:52.480And finally, emergencies will always occur, exceptions will always arise, and someone will always hold power to suspend norms.
00:57:00.480Question is, are they bound by something far more powerful than the rule of law, a sacred duty to their people and the well-being of the nation?
00:57:09.520The question is, do you have a Cincinnati?
00:58:20.940That's not how constitutions really work.
00:58:22.500So if we care about protecting our liberties, if we care about predicting or protecting our traditions, protecting our moral vision, we have to start understanding that this is the truth about how constitutions.
00:58:38.340Until we understand that, conservatives are just going to sit around pointing and sputtering, going, you can't do that.
01:00:08.640By them, again, sad that this is what it takes.
01:00:11.120Sad that they didn't feel like this about schools or didn't feel like this about shutting down businesses, didn't feel like this about shutting down churches.
01:00:20.620There's a lot of places where you hope this would have already come into play.
01:00:25.420One that popular opinion is on the side of the right, on the side of people who are going to be pushing back against this.
01:00:29.700And I think it is a mistake for them to put that on the board because then that could set a precedent where they kind of lose the ability to exercise the state of exception in that way.
01:00:57.140I mean, yeah, that's a great question, right?
01:00:59.060I saw that change today, making it difficult to see who, quote, tweets things, makes it easier to hide certain groups and their activities kind of on the platform and how they drive engagement, especially when it comes to witch hunts.
01:01:12.120I agree that that's a problem that you have to go through.
01:01:15.620You can still see it, but you have to go through a lot of menus.
01:01:18.380It used to be an easy one click away thing.
01:01:20.440It was at it was obviously hidden for that reason.
01:01:24.000He'll probably say it's to avoid brigading on all sides.
01:01:27.140But you're probably right that it's there to protect certain organizations or groups more than others.
01:01:32.760That said, Elon is still bringing a lot of heat against the ADL.
01:01:36.780I'm not ready to throw everything away yet at this point and say that he's not, you know, he's not on the side of trying to push back against these organizations.
01:01:45.760But it does feel oftentimes like Elon is speaking out both sides of his mouth or he's taking actions in two directions, you know, kind of simultaneously.
01:01:53.200So I will pretty much always my my Elon opinion is pretty much always the same.
01:01:58.540He's probably not on our side, but he's probably more of an ally than an enemy.
01:02:24.460The main problem here is a lack of deterrence over suspending rights.
01:02:28.340Leaders should be terrified of population backlash to the state of exception instead of leaders actively seek them out because our people are docile and submissive.
01:02:36.780And, yeah, that's that's really a good way to kind of, you know, encapsulate everything I was saying there in a longer way.
01:02:43.500Right. At the end of the day, it's not it's not pieces of paper.
01:03:16.640Again, the Cincinnati example, they'll be limited by their own understanding.
01:03:21.140However, if your leaders are just totally against the interests of the people, which our leaders pretty much are, then they will push as hard as they can over and over again, as you just pointed out there.
01:05:08.760Again, you really the problem the right has is that they have a regime complete problem.
01:05:17.620Every every branch is captured in some way.
01:05:21.940Every institution is captured in some way, which is why it often feels like the right is just playing whack-a-mole because they get the presidency and they say, OK, we're going to take this action.
01:05:29.360And then they try to hit it, but everything slips through their fingers and then they get a hold of the Supreme Court and they're like, OK, we solve that problem.
01:05:36.240We're going after all the Supreme Court stuff and they get some things.
01:05:39.220But at the end of the day, they're still being ignored, being sidestepped, that kind of thing.
01:06:24.380So many people constantly just like, well, we have to have all these enemies on the right.
01:06:28.820We have to have all these people that we constantly disagree with.
01:06:31.320We have to push back on everything that isn't 100 percent in line with our conception or our doctrine, because if we don't do that, then something bad might happen.
01:06:40.260And while you're busy arguing about that, left just runs over you.
01:06:44.100And until the right is willing to say, OK, we will secure power and then we will decide how it will be used instead of vice versa, they're going to constantly run into this problem.
01:06:57.000Horus Lupercal, Warmaster of the Evergreen Terrace for $199.
01:07:01.960I thought the discussion on rights was NRX 101.
01:07:07.120And like I said, I've kind of I didn't delve too deep into kind of a larger understanding of rights because, you know, we only have so much time.
01:07:15.620I've talked about this in some way before.
01:07:17.520Maybe we'll get deeper into that in a different video.
01:07:19.920But I didn't want to make this a four hour stream.
01:07:22.020So I just kind of laid out the basics on this.
01:07:24.100Again, there's a larger question of kind of rights and what they mean.
01:07:27.120But I just wanted to put this in a framework everyone could understand, even if you don't, you know, if you're not following kind of the counter enlightenment all the way down, at least even if you're you're kind of a surface level conservative, you can still understand state of exception, how it's working and why there needs to be a better grasp of constitutional government.
01:07:47.100If you actually want rights that you believe that you have to be protected.
01:08:06.140We are rolling from one state of exception to the other.
01:08:09.620You'll notice that the war in Ukraine has become another center around which the state of exception is exercised.
01:08:16.120All of a sudden, you know, disagreeing with the war machine, disagreeing with certain narratives about, you know, the use of the military or the exercise of power across the world, the maintenance of the empire.
01:08:29.820All of a sudden, those are all threats to democracy or whatever.
01:08:33.740They were constantly searching for the next state of exception.
01:08:36.660And the reason is our shared values are breaking down.
01:08:39.500And the more your shared values are breaking down, the more you need to exercise the state of exception because you need to circumvent any of the processes that would slow down your political will.
01:09:24.500But the truth is that our government actively kind of suspends rights and suspends due process and suspends normal procedures all the time.
01:09:33.820And what you should really, instead of being, you know, super defensive about that fact, you should be angry.
01:09:40.700But you should aim your anger at like understanding how and why that happens and spotting it rather than just being angry that someone pointed out that that that's.
01:09:56.740Like I said, I knew that this was a controversial topic.
01:10:00.240I know it's a topic that gets a lot of people fired up, especially people who might be a little less familiar.
01:10:06.380With some of the arguments from kind of my corner of the right and my sphere.
01:10:10.400But I wanted to do a longer extreme that would kind of break that down, help people to understand this.
01:10:16.200I don't think that understanding this truth is incompatible even with a conservative understanding of rights in many ways.
01:10:26.940I think it's incompatible with some of the conservative understanding of constitutions and how they work.
01:10:31.600But I don't think it's incompatible with, say, something like the Bill of Rights.
01:10:36.640So I wanted to go ahead and kind of lay that out.
01:10:41.300So a broad case that everyone could grasp.
01:10:44.040And then if you want to go a little deeper, there are plenty of videos on here on my channel about Carl Schmitt, state of exception, concept of the political, the sovereignty, friend and enemy distinction.
01:10:56.860All right, guys, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up.
01:10:59.560But before I do, of course, please make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to the channel if you've not done so now.
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01:11:27.500It's been amazing how many people are doing that.
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