NYT Claims the Constitution Is Dangerous | 9⧸4⧸24
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per minute
177.21136
Harmful content
Misogyny
12
sentences flagged
Hate speech
28
sentences flagged
Summary
The New York Times continues its run of absurd articles about how the Constitution is a threat to democracy, and concludes that the founding document is also a danger to the rule of law and democracy. In this episode, Oren explains why.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:10.720
Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:00:25.260
Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
00:00:36.660
So the New York Times has continued its incredible run of absurd articles.
00:00:42.680
It started with, of course, voting is dangerous to democracy.
00:00:50.800
And now it's arrived at its inevitable conclusion,
00:00:53.040
which is the Constitution is dangerous to democracy as well.
00:00:58.260
It turns out that all democracy needs to do is obliterate everything about the United States
00:01:03.420
that you know and love and care about to finally be secure,
00:01:07.180
which really makes you wonder what the value of democracy is and what that actually means to these people.
00:01:14.840
I always think it's valuable to read into these because it makes some points that I think are important,
00:01:22.820
But I think by examining this, we can get a better understanding about what our current elite thinks about democracy,
00:01:29.380
about rule of law, about the Constitution, about the way that things should be going forward.
00:01:35.900
Before we get into all that, guys, let me tell you a little bit about today's sponsor.
00:01:39.960
Universities today aren't just neglecting real education.
00:01:45.820
America was made for an educated and engaged citizenry.
00:01:49.340
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is here to help.
00:01:51.800
ISI offers programs and opportunities for conservative students across the country.
00:01:57.400
ISI understands that conservatives and right-of-center students feel isolated on college campuses
00:02:02.460
and that you're often fighting for your own reputation, dignity, and future.
00:02:07.340
Through ISI, you can learn about what Russell Kirk called the permanent things,
00:02:11.540
the philosophical and political teachings that shaped and made Western civilization great.
00:02:16.460
ISI offers many opportunities to jumpstart your career.
00:02:19.220
They have fellowships at some of the nation's top conservative publications like National Review,
00:02:23.920
the American Conservative, and the College Thinker.
00:02:26.660
If you're a graduate student, ISI offers funding opportunities to sponsor the next great generation of college professors.
00:02:32.680
Through ISI, you can work with conservative thinkers who are making a difference.
00:02:36.580
Thinkers like Chris Ruffo, who currently has an ISI researcher helping him with his book.
00:02:41.600
But perhaps most importantly, ISI offers college students a community of people that can help them grow.
00:02:46.620
If you're a college student, ISI can help you start a student organization or a student newspaper
00:02:51.800
or meet other like-minded students at their various conferences and events.
00:02:56.520
ISI is here to educate the next generation of great Americans.
00:03:04.740
All right, let's dive right into our article today.
00:03:14.700
One of the biggest threats to America's politics might be the country's founding document.
00:03:21.280
We're really just putting it all out there, huh, guys?
00:03:23.840
We're just saying the quiet part out loud, screaming it really as much as we can.
00:03:36.420
After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he called for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles,
00:03:46.520
Just straight up first sentence or second sentence here is a complete lie.
00:03:51.980
What Donald Trump said was that if you have electoral fraud, if you have voter fraud, if you have a massive fraud,
00:04:00.720
then you're basically just terminating all the rules and regulations and articles of the Constitution
00:04:05.880
because the entirety of the Constitution is based on this idea that you have a procedure
00:04:11.260
that grants legitimacy to the rule of the current leadership.
00:04:17.480
So if you completely invalidate that ritual, if you completely invalidate or call into question
00:04:24.520
the veracity of an election on a regular basis, you make it clear that the way that people vote doesn't really matter
00:04:31.980
because ultimately the people in charge control the votes, they control what's being counted,
00:04:37.500
Well, then you've basically terminated all of the articles of the Constitution,
00:04:41.300
all the rules of the Constitution, because you are completely manipulating the process
00:04:48.460
But that's not what the New York Times wants Trump to have said,
00:04:55.580
Remember, however much you hate journalists, you don't hate them enough.
00:05:00.020
Outraged critics denounced him by threatening a document,
00:05:05.440
for threatening a document that is supposed to be sacrosanct.
00:05:10.520
But announcing his desire to throw off the constitutional constraints in order to satisfy his personal ambitions,
00:05:16.260
Trump was making his authoritarian inclinations abundantly clear.
00:05:23.780
However, we can notice that by the fact that they put sacrosanct in scare quotes here,
00:05:28.880
they are planning to do what they say Trump did.
00:05:31.480
They are planning to announce that they would actually like to throw off the shackles of the Constitution.
00:05:37.440
So, yeah, Trump is scary, but ultimately, maybe he had a point because we want to do it, right?
00:05:45.120
It's no surprise, then, that liberals charge Trump with being a menace to the Constitution.
00:05:49.880
But his presidency and the prospect of his re-election have also generated another very different argument,
00:05:55.340
that Trump owes his political assent to the Constitution,
00:05:59.200
making him the beneficiary of a document that is essentially anti-democratic
00:06:02.580
in this day and age increasingly dysfunctional.
00:06:09.760
Trump is bad because he wanted to get rid of the Constitution, which he didn't,
00:06:15.680
However, we also want to get rid of the Constitution.
00:06:19.480
In fact, actually, the Constitution is the problem.
00:06:21.680
The Constitution is the whole reason that Trump even became president.
00:06:28.980
It's the set of rules by which people become president.
00:06:33.260
That's how it lays out how the government is supposed to function.
00:06:37.040
So, all presidents have become president because the Constitution explains how someone becomes president,
00:06:45.920
We'll go deeper into this intellectually stimulating argument that they're putting together.
00:06:52.260
After all, Trump became president in 2016 after losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College, Article 2.
00:07:00.360
They're going to cite the articles so you can know that they really did their homework on how the Constitution works.
00:07:05.720
Yes, the Electoral College is there to make sure that not only the largest populated states rule everything.
00:07:14.580
If that was the case, then California, Texas, Florida, and New York would decide every presidential contest.
0.67
00:07:21.240
So, the Electoral College is there so that we actually distribute the responsibility for selecting a leader across the entire United States.
00:07:30.300
It's not just the tyranny of a few states and their interests that rule the entire nation.
00:07:36.500
He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court.
00:07:39.900
He used Article 3 of the Constitution to do the thing he's supposed to do by law,
00:07:46.800
two of whom were confirmed by senators representing just 44% of the population.
00:07:53.940
The Senate is a check on the Democratic impulse, which it was always supposed to be.
00:07:59.340
In fact, it was supposed to be much more of a check on the Democratic impulse until the 17th Amendment allowed for the direct election of senators,
0.96
00:08:09.040
which meant that no longer were senators a more aristocratic class chosen by state leadership representing the specific interests of the state,
00:08:18.340
but instead were just filtered through the exact same mass Democratic process.
00:08:23.360
But whatever, the fact that there's any vestige of resistance to complete and total raw democracy is the problem.
00:08:33.060
Those three justices helped overturn Roe v. Wade, a reversal which most Americans disagreed with.
00:08:38.800
What is omitted here is, of course, originally the Supreme Court instituted Roe v. Wade.
00:08:43.700
It created a right in the Constitution to an abortion that had never existed before.
00:08:49.740
We had to hear about the emanations of a penumbra.
00:08:53.040
That was the actual language used to justify, you know, a right to privacy was created in the Constitution,
00:09:01.300
which apparently only really applies to abortion.
00:09:03.440
And the majority of people at the time did not want this, which is why they had to do it through the courts.
00:09:10.760
So the courts were fine when they created Roe v. Wade.
00:09:13.980
And, of course, this is the favorite part about all of these arguments.
00:09:16.440
Back when the country was more conservative, back when the country was more right wing,
00:09:22.060
the fact that the Supreme Court suppressed the will of the majority and created these rights for the minority that wanted them,
00:09:36.560
They're heroes of democracy for doing this, I guess, even though it was anti-democratic.
00:09:42.400
Now that the majority of people have, after many, many decades of being conditioned by the law,
00:09:53.680
A lot of people like to say that Breitbart quote that culture or that politics is downstream from culture.
00:10:05.000
Politics is or culture is largely downstream from power,
00:10:09.040
which means law and influential institutions on top of many other things.
00:10:15.760
So after many decades of people living under Roe v. Wade, their opinion changed because they got used to that standard.
00:10:27.580
We don't need to actually think about the history or the implications of any of this.
00:10:31.260
The point is the Supreme Court is a threat to what the Democrats want now.
00:10:39.480
They don't care that they used the Supreme Court to force through the entire civil rights revolution,
0.99
00:10:45.300
to force through Roe v. Wade, to force through gay marriage.
0.65
00:10:50.100
They don't care that the Supreme Court was a specifically anti-democratic institution that they loved for decades
00:10:57.160
because they used it to force top-down these changes against the will of the majority.
00:11:02.440
Now, today, since they think they have the majority advantage, all of a sudden, Supreme Court Constitution, very dangerous.
00:11:10.440
The eminent legal scholar, Erwin Chemerinsky, maybe, worried about opinion polls showing a dramatic loss of faith in democracy.
00:11:25.400
If there's one thing you should be losing faith in, it is most assuredly democracy.
00:11:30.560
He writes in a new book, No Democracy Lasts Forever.
00:11:38.600
It is important for the Americans to see these failures that stem from the Constitution itself.
00:11:45.080
So the problem, what the, you know, the Constitution was great when it was advancing left-wing principles,
00:11:53.340
when it was advancing their political cause, now that it's putting a slight hinder on, you know,
00:11:58.880
it's slightly hindering that which the radical left would like to advance, it's got to be abolished now.
00:12:04.900
Him talking, you know, some of his background here, we'll skip all that, we don't care.
00:12:08.400
It talks about the tyranny of the minority.
0.72
00:12:18.780
In 1787, when 55 delegates convened in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation,
00:12:25.960
that's an interesting way to say that they decided to overthrow the Articles illegitimately.
00:12:30.860
They completely ignored the actual requirements in the Articles of Confederation to suspend them and install a new constitution.
00:12:40.540
Instead, they just went ahead and ignored all procedures and rule of law and came up with a new governing document.
00:12:50.220
They ended up embarking on a project that was much bigger in scope.
00:12:53.160
As Americans are taught in history class, the Deadly Left draft a new document establishing a national government consisting of three branches,
00:12:59.580
legislative, executive, and judicial, each functioning as a check on the others.
00:13:07.760
This country full of people who came from majority of the United Kingdom, what would be the United Kingdom today,
00:13:18.200
Like, this country full of Anglos was full of Anglos.
1.00
00:13:22.680
So, you know, everything they did must be illegitimate, I guess.
00:13:27.860
But they nevertheless diverged on what seemed to be an intractable issue, slavery.
00:13:31.980
Of course, this will be the only thing they care about in the Constitution is slavery, right?
00:13:41.620
So you have to go back and say, like, well, actually, no.
00:13:44.520
The problem isn't that, like, actually they skipped the steps in the Articles of Confederation or whatever.
00:13:49.500
It's just, you know, it's white people and they were, you know, the entire document is there to protect slavery.
0.93
00:13:55.500
Though several states had already passed abolition status, nearly half the delegates were slaveholders.
0.81
00:14:02.160
The Constitution was thus born of a compromise.
00:14:04.640
With the enslavers getting the better end of the deal.
00:14:07.280
To determine representation of the House and the Electoral College, three-fifths compromise allowed slave states to count three-fifths of every five people that were held in bondage.
00:14:19.780
And the Fugitive Slave Clause stipulated that even when enslaved people escaped in free streets, they would never be free.
00:14:25.760
Now, this is far from the most important thing in the Constitution.
00:14:28.720
This is, this doesn't even have any relevance to the rest of their actual objections to the Constitution.
00:14:37.840
They just put this in here to, to whine about racism.
00:14:41.860
They, like, it's just here to say, well, the document is, it was founded in the original sin, sin and iniquity that can never be washed away.
00:14:51.680
But, yeah, they'll spend the rest of the time complaining about the fact that the Constitution protects us from wild and unmitigated democracy.
00:15:00.260
But they needed to take the time to let us know that slavery was really bad.
00:15:04.900
By the way, the three-fifths compromise is a, is a protection against slavery.
00:15:10.500
It made sure that the slave states could not count all of their slave population for the full count.
00:15:18.020
But whatever, we don't, none of those facts matter.
00:15:29.640
And then they also wrote some document that the current, the current New York Times editorial page is not a fan of.
00:15:36.980
Such compromises meant that those who shared overlapping politics would still draw wildly different conclusions from the Constitution.
00:15:44.380
Yeah, it turns out actually not everyone in the country immediately agreed on everything.
00:15:49.320
Abolitionists considered the, the abolitionists, William Garrison considered the compromise so damning to make the Constitution a covenant with death, an agreement with hell.
00:16:02.560
But Frederick Douglass maintained the opposite, that slavery in the United States could only be upheld by claiming the Constitution does not mean what it says.
00:16:10.800
As the historian James Oak put it, Douglass shared Abraham Lincoln's view, recognizing the Constitution as the promise of universal freedom.
00:16:21.080
Like, they've gone back and they've looked about the fact that he was really not particularly interested in ending slavery in the Civil War.
00:16:30.260
And his plan was to more or less send the freed slaves to Africa when they were done.
00:16:42.520
They're pro-Lincoln in this paragraph, at least.
00:16:49.700
Yes, but also instructions on how to thwart it.
00:16:56.120
These glaring discrepancies between the soaring words in the Constitution's preamble,
00:17:01.040
We the People, that is a seemingly ringing endorsement of popular governance.
00:17:09.620
So, the fact that they said We the People, but they didn't immediately in slavery, I guess, invalidates the Constitution.
00:17:21.020
When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
00:17:24.620
When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.
00:17:29.700
When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.
00:17:32.380
When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.
00:17:36.100
Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.
00:17:38.700
So, download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.
00:17:41.960
Plus, enjoy zero-dollar delivery fees on your first three orders.
00:17:52.120
As Cherminsky puts it, the distrust of democracy embedded in the rest of the document,
00:17:58.200
reflecting the framers' inability to conceive of a future where women and black people could have a right to vote.
00:18:03.860
So, this is a very interesting sleight of hand here.
00:18:08.000
Democracy is what we're aiming for in the leftist theory, I suppose, here.
00:18:18.900
And so, any restriction on democracy is specifically a restriction on women and black people.
1.00
00:18:24.960
Now, obviously, these groups could not vote at the time, but even if they had been able to,
00:18:32.320
the same restrictions on democracy would still exist, just with them as actual voting blocks.
00:18:39.740
Both of those groups can vote, and those restrictions do exist in the Constitution.
00:18:47.680
The main thing is, everybody is racist, and that's why the Constitution has to go.
00:18:53.960
You might think that such disputes would have been laid to rest by a bloody civil war
00:18:58.680
and Reconstruction amendments, which were outlawed slavery and granted all men the right to vote,
00:19:04.340
Why, yes, you would think that that would put this to rest.
00:19:13.180
That's why you passed the amendments, was for this to be put behind you.
00:19:17.080
But, of course, it is against the interest of the Democratic Party, of the left,
00:19:21.820
to put any of this behind them, because the entire point is to bury us forever in this racial
0.98
00:19:29.540
Not to mention that the Constitution continued to change in the century after.
00:19:33.840
Senators would be directly elected, and women were granted the right to vote.
00:19:37.540
Yes, so you've been stripping away all of these limitations on the franchise,
00:19:41.020
and all of these limitations on democracy repeatedly.
00:19:56.680
The last major amendment was in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18.
00:20:01.020
So, the last major amendment here is language, I guess, that just means amendments that only
00:20:06.680
adjust or directly address the civil rights movement, right?
00:20:11.280
So, if an amendment does not increase democracy and reduce protections against mob rule, then
00:20:19.780
And, therefore, the Constitution has been frozen in amber, even though we did actually
00:20:25.180
In reaction to a landmark decision prohibiting segregation and bans on interracial marriage,
00:20:29.760
conservative legal scholars began to champion judicial interpretations that rested on the
00:20:38.100
All right, guys, we'll continue this article in just a minute.
00:20:42.900
We'll also talk about the amendments, which is what I, for some reason, was trying to say.
00:20:46.740
But before we do that, let's talk about job stacking.
00:20:49.160
Hey, guys, let me tell you about today's sponsor, Job Stacking.
00:20:52.640
More paychecks, less hustle, working from home.
00:20:57.220
If you're a remote or hybrid worker looking to maximize your earning potential, then consider
00:21:03.420
The program is designed by Ralph Halza, the creator of Job Stacking, to help you successfully
00:21:07.700
implement a strategy that will allow you to collect multiple paychecks from different
00:21:11.500
jobs without burning out or getting caught by employers.
00:21:15.000
Job Stacking has already helped many people double or even triple their incomes.
00:21:19.140
Luke Hill, a financial analyst living in the UK, has used job stacking to stack three different
00:21:23.600
jobs and went from making $5K a month to $15K a month.
00:21:27.060
But job stacking isn't just about increasing incomes.
00:21:29.940
It's also about helping our guys gain more independence by no longer being a slave to debt
00:21:37.660
Andrew Gustafsson, a credit analyst from Australia, is now stacking four salaries, which he has used
00:21:42.980
to pay off his personal and student debt and buy a home for his family.
00:21:47.180
If you don't currently have a remote job, no worries.
00:21:50.300
The program is also designed to help you land remote jobs so that you can go ahead and get
00:21:55.460
So if you want to double your income and stop relying on a single paycheck from a woke employer,
0.95
00:22:12.120
So a very interesting contradiction that we're going to get to here yet again.
00:22:16.340
And yeah, they can't keep the logic consistent even inside the article itself.
00:22:20.460
So they complain that the Constitution has been frozen in amber for the last 50 years,
00:22:31.320
They did note that the Supreme Court had, you know, knocked down a lot of the made a lot
00:22:38.160
of rulings on things like segregation or laws against interracial marriage, these kind of
00:22:43.180
Uh, but I remember 10 seconds ago when the Supreme Court was a problem that, uh, the existence
00:22:50.880
of the Supreme Court and its ability to restrain democracy or to make decisions against the
00:22:56.180
democratic will of the people was a huge issue.
00:22:59.140
Now it's looks like we're once again, pro the, uh, you know, inside the very same article,
00:23:04.380
uh, just a few paragraphs later, we're pro the, uh, Supreme Court, uh, overriding all
00:23:09.900
of those, the will of the people and being able to change all these things without any
00:23:15.000
additional actual alterations to the constitution, which has been busy being, uh, frozen in amber.
00:23:20.180
Uh, so all this, these complaints about the Supreme Court and its ability to, uh, defy the
00:23:26.180
democratic will of the people suddenly disappear when the Supreme Court was doing exactly what
00:23:30.520
the left wanted originalists as these scholars called themselves said that they were simply
00:23:38.580
Again, liberal critics counter that the interpretation of law, according to what the founders supposedly
00:23:43.680
wanted amounts to an end run around the protecting and promoting of multiracial democracy.
00:23:55.180
You just said that the Supreme Court is the end run around democracy and that's a bad thing.
00:24:01.860
But now when the Supreme Court is denying the will of the people and making these changes,
00:24:08.500
uh, you're in favor of these things that people are saying are overreaches and activism
00:24:17.700
You don't care about the end run around democracy when it's doing your bidding.
00:24:22.020
And very interestingly, uh, the, the whole, uh, justification for ignoring what the founders
00:24:32.080
That's all they cite that there, there's no, there's no moral argument here.
00:24:38.780
They're just saying, well, you can't think about what the founders wanted because the most
00:24:45.420
When did we decide the most important thing was multiracial democracy?
00:24:48.780
Was there a vote saying that multiracial democracy was the best thing?
00:24:52.640
Did we put together a, uh, a, a large, um, you know, more, uh, moral case for this somewhere
00:25:01.940
No, uh, did, did some authority from on high come down and issued?
00:25:06.840
Do we get another, uh, you know, another set of commandments, uh, that tell us that multiracial
0.62
00:25:11.580
democracy is the most important thing and it, uh, it, uh, supersedes all other concerns and
00:25:21.340
In fact, the, the, uh, the founders were explicitly in many cases, uh, we're wary of democracy,
00:25:32.020
And when we say democracy, uh, it's the only thing that's good, even though that's not the
00:25:36.940
intention of what the country is supposed to be.
00:25:38.920
Uh, you might want to point to issues, uh, and say, well, the constitution may have overestimated
00:25:45.240
the founders may have overestimated, uh, the ability of the people, uh, to understand that
00:25:50.540
democracy was, is, was limited, you know, specifically should have been more explicit
00:25:54.440
about that should have been something that was held to, you know, but whatever, all that
00:25:58.980
aside, uh, at no point did we like, you know, uncover some tome that says, oh, actually
00:26:05.240
multiracial democracy is the be all end all of the end moral goal of all action in the
0.99
00:26:11.640
And therefore, uh, we can just go ahead and ignore anything and everything that the founders
00:26:16.280
said, uh, previously, because ultimately if it's not multiracial democracy, it just doesn't
00:26:23.040
That's the only value that we have when people talk about the values and principles of the
00:26:28.080
United States, that's all the left means, uh, the attorney and columnist, uh, man, maybe
00:26:34.900
Madiba, uh, Denny argues that, uh, originalists, uh, canny use of apologetic, uh, or apolitical
00:26:43.060
language ensnares liberals into treating originalism as a coherent jurisprudence, even when it functions
00:26:51.180
Uh, yeah, so this is where we're going to get into, actually, let me just read this last
00:26:57.980
pair, this last sentence, and then we'll get, we'll get farther into this, uh, for, uh, far
00:27:02.340
from encouraging judicial restraint, she writes the originalism trap originalism is more effective
00:27:12.780
So, uh, there's a problem at the heart of this entire debate, uh, on originalism and all of
00:27:20.280
And the issue here is, uh, is one that the left, um, is not going to acknowledge, uh, except
00:27:27.620
when it, it advances their cause, but it is true in a sense.
00:27:31.160
So the problem that they're pointing to is that originalism is an understanding about
00:27:38.940
It's a hermeneutic for looking at what the constitution says, uh, and how it should be
00:27:43.680
understood and saying, all right, we understand this document in the context of what the founders
00:27:51.120
Now, uh, it says here that, uh, you're, you're, they're calling for an apolitical language.
00:27:57.220
And that is, it's, it's making a, it's creating a standard and the standard is what the founders
00:28:02.080
And this, uh, this standard is supposed to be a political it's supposed to be, it's supposed
00:28:09.820
We are simply referring to this authority, which is what the founders want.
00:28:13.760
We're using the founders as basically the Bible, you know, for, for, for, for understanding
00:28:18.020
this, when you, uh, when you do that, uh, it is to be fair in not entirely a political,
00:28:24.760
uh, in the sense that nothing is, is a political when everything in the foundation is up for
00:28:30.740
So simply by making the case that you should refer to the founders, that the founding
00:28:36.340
matters, that the history matters, that the intent of the people who wrote the document
00:28:40.040
matters, you are making a statement in current American politics because current American
00:28:50.420
It hates everything about our history, everything about the, the entire document, uh, or the
00:28:55.220
entire article so far has been dedicated to invalidating the constitution because it was
00:29:02.300
And so if the, if white people are evil and they're all racist and racism is the worst
00:29:07.100
thing in multiracial democracy is the only actual objective goal, which of course it isn't,
00:29:14.820
Then what we really have here is a clash of worldviews and neither of them can make an
00:29:20.320
appeal to something neutral because neither of them agree on a basis on which we could
00:29:31.720
The founders believe this is not a null hypothesis to the left is the imposition of a political
00:29:36.960
understanding and ideology and multiracial democracy is not a null hypothesis to the right.
00:29:42.860
It is not the, it is not the default good, or at least it shouldn't be some, some people
00:29:47.800
on the right have bought into this, but that, but treating that as the ultimate goal is also
00:29:55.580
So there is no, a political neutral ground to appeal to, uh, ultimately, uh, back to the,
00:30:03.880
uh, article here, it may be a measure of the current crisis, or sorry, it may be a measure
00:30:08.860
of the current crisis that even the conservative scholar Yuval Levin doesn't, uh, think originalism
00:30:16.740
Originalism is by definition a preoccupation with what judges do.
00:30:20.380
And the most urgent problem lies with the legislation that is, as he puts it in American covenant
00:30:26.360
under, uh, uh, under reactive, uh, members of the, uh, members of Congress behave like,
00:30:33.580
uh, performers or, uh, mere seekers of celebrity neglecting to do the hard work of wielding the
00:30:39.760
legislative power entrusted to them by the constitution.
00:30:42.640
So this is of course true that a large amount of the power that was vested in Congress in
00:30:52.180
Uh, it has been given away to judges and it has been given way to the executive, uh, the
00:30:58.660
Again, something I talk about at length in my book, the total state.
00:31:01.580
So there is a certain amount of truth here that the, that, uh, members of Congress are
00:31:06.640
busy raising funds, uh, and, you know, raising their profile on Twitter, but very rarely passing
00:31:15.000
And this is one of the most infuriating things I see from Republicans all the time.
00:31:18.900
We see, uh, you know, a bunch of Republican senators whining about Democrats and what they're
00:31:24.520
doing and what the administration is doing and what the government is doing on Twitter.
00:31:36.420
You are the ones who should be able to decide that they cannot do this.
00:31:41.560
You are the ones that can make all kinds of radical changes to, uh, the, the, to the law
00:31:50.020
And they just won't do it or can't do it is really the answer.
00:31:53.320
In many cases, they recognize how, uh, uh, impotent they've become in those positions.
00:32:01.280
They wield the same amount of power I do, which is just to be able to go out and tweet
00:32:06.240
That's, that's literally the most powerful thing they can do.
00:32:08.740
There's a reason that so many of these people go into media the minute they're done with
00:32:12.520
politics or are often trying to cross their media, their, their political career as media
00:32:18.440
pundits because they recognize that the actual power is in the media.
00:32:21.860
The actual power is in altering minds through the media complex, as opposed to the legislation
00:32:28.880
It doesn't really matter what you could theoretically write a law about.
00:32:32.840
If you can't get it passed, if people aren't listening, if you can't change the minds of
00:32:36.760
And so, so many of them don't even bother with the actual legislative process to anyone who
00:32:43.340
thinks the constitution has been tearing us apart.
00:32:47.280
He argues that precisely because constitution was a product of grudging and gradual compromise
00:32:54.680
The equipment of soup, uh, the requirement of super juries, which entails frustratingly
00:32:59.160
narrow majorities, he says is a good thing.
0.98
00:33:01.520
Members of Congress are supposed to build coalitions, which tends to make partisans more tolerant,
00:33:08.020
And there's a certain level of truth to this, right?
00:33:10.060
When you're, especially when your, uh, disagreements are relatively minor, uh, building coalitions,
00:33:16.020
forcing people to regularly compromise does have a cooling tendency, right?
00:33:20.940
Uh, however, as the differences have become more exacerbated, the legislative bodies are less
00:33:29.700
interested in securing super majorities, uh, through any kind of actual compromise and
00:33:36.320
instead, uh, are, are doing it by simply, uh, you know, uh, trying to manipulate elections,
00:33:41.680
trying, trying to make sure that they can just force things through.
00:33:44.040
They want to reduce the ability of the other side to hinder any of their, uh, legislation
00:33:49.480
to have any, uh, constructive input that the fact that they're, uh, so far, uh, across from
00:33:55.560
each other, the gap between these two positions is so wide means that it's very difficult to
00:34:00.400
come to any kind of real compromise on any given issue.
00:34:03.520
Like, what are you going to be like, well, you can kind of, you know, mutilate the genitals
0.90
00:34:08.400
Like, is that really a place that you can compromise on?
00:34:12.420
Uh, and so it's harder and harder to build those coalitions.
00:34:18.340
A lot of people looking at Congress today would be hard-pressed to find a glimmer of the tolerance
00:34:25.580
Even he has to admit that Congress looks dysfunctional from every angle.
00:34:28.900
But Levin's serene insistence that political frustration is healthy instead of corrosive
00:34:33.120
may have something to do with the fact that the Constitution's patchwork of compromises
00:34:36.820
happens to align with his own brand of cautious conservatism.
00:34:40.340
So the document is not a radical revolutionary document.
00:34:45.320
Uh, the Constitution, while it, you know, the America, America was founded in a revolution,
00:34:49.900
the Constitution, uh, was actually more of a reactionary compromise.
00:34:54.100
It was a way to temper, uh, a lot of what had been, uh, done.
00:34:58.320
It was, you know, they were trying to, uh, mediate things like Shade's Rebellion, uh, and
00:35:02.720
these other problems, uh, it was a consolidation of power, uh, for sure.
00:35:07.340
Uh, but ultimately it's a document that wanted things to, you know, change to take place slowly.
00:35:12.360
But the left needs the change to change to take place at a revolutionary speed all the
00:35:20.560
It's not okay to let people adapt, uh, which is itself its own problem, uh, that, that
00:35:24.920
is a major problem with conservatism, uh, that, that I would point out is this, this
00:35:29.340
general approach of saying, well, uh, social revolution is fine as long as it happens at
00:35:34.840
As, as Michael Malice says, you know, conservatives are just progressives driving the speed limit,
00:35:38.900
but the speed limit is the problem for these guys.
00:35:41.600
The fact that there's a brake pedal at all is an issue.
00:35:44.760
The only thing you're allowed to do is mash the accelerator to the floor.
00:35:48.340
That is what it means to be an American in our, the year of our Lord, 2024 constant social
00:35:55.960
So to the extent to which the constitution hinders that at all, it needs to go.
00:36:00.420
He says the presidential candidates should vie for voters in the most competitive stage,
00:36:04.620
which tends to fall near the ideological middle because it's good for both national unity and
00:36:11.560
He singles out praise for the popular, the peculiar institution of the electoral college.
00:36:18.100
The whole point of the electoral college is to force you to actually look at multiple states.
00:36:23.580
Uh, and it means in many cases, you have to, uh, debate issues in states that are down
00:36:30.960
So you can't just be radical one way or radical the other.
00:36:33.820
It naturally calls for some level of compromise.
00:36:41.840
The electoral college of course is one of the bargains the framers made in order to reassure
00:36:46.760
the slave states that they could keep their own peculiar institution.
00:36:50.840
So, you know, every, again, everything we don't like is actually there to protect slavery.
00:36:55.500
That that's the every, every time they run into something that is keeping them from completely
00:37:00.460
radically, uh, changing the United States, its origins can only be ones that were in justification
00:37:06.240
for slavery because that is the Trump card.
0.98
00:37:08.640
Anytime you say, yeah, but slavery, uh, the racism, uh, my racism is the argument.
00:37:13.760
It defeats all other arguments, uh, in, in any, in any confrontation.
00:37:17.640
And sadly, this works on a pretty regular basis on conservatives.
00:37:20.820
Uh, they tend to, they tend to agree, uh, that that is a Trump card.
00:37:24.160
Unfortunately, abolishing the electoral college has become a popular refrain among liberals.
00:37:28.520
Uh, something that the scholar, uh, the legal scholar Aziz Rana counts as one of the procedural
00:37:34.480
specifics, uh, that consumes, uh, the consume discussions about the constitution reform in his bold,
00:37:40.640
uh, new book, the constitutional bind, uh, Rana argues against his tendency to take our,
00:37:46.620
uh, problematic system as a given and then struggle to patch, uh, to patch, uh, especially
00:37:51.720
egregious leaks instead of focusing on the patchwork measure, he encourages to think more expansively.
00:37:56.660
Uh, so Aziz traditional American name, um, uh, you know, are these, are these the traditions
00:38:07.520
that he's looking at, or does he not care about revolutionizing these things because
00:38:11.300
not particularly attached to the history of the United States?
00:38:17.380
Um, interestingly, uh, you know, we, we just need to destroy all of these, you know, the,
1.00
00:38:22.180
the, the system is problematic and we just have to throw all of these things, uh, out of
00:38:28.180
We can't, we can't, uh, think about how we might, uh, you know, improve on them, what importance
00:38:33.420
they might hold maybe, maybe, you know, people in the past or people who are part of this
00:38:37.560
tradition, the people who founded the tradition might have an insight into something that we
00:38:43.740
Uh, the slavery, something slavery, slavery, bad, uh, therefore destroy all of those traditions.
00:38:51.060
If untenable Americans who are justifiably disenchanted with the constitution still cling to it in times
00:38:58.080
These defenses implicitly suggest that Americans can only effectively protect their bedrock liberties
00:39:02.780
from a, from demagogues by redoubling their commitment to the text.
00:39:10.160
Uh, we want to have liberties, uh, that's very important, right?
00:39:16.420
More liberties, more rights, more rights, rights, rights, rights.
00:39:21.920
Uh, there's a right to, uh, prisoners getting sex changes in prison.
00:39:25.900
Uh, there's a right to, uh, the, the state, uh, stealing children from their parents if
00:39:31.020
they won't, uh, let, uh, let them mutilate, uh, themselves, uh, the, the, all these rights
0.56
00:39:36.140
just exist in the constitution, except maybe the constitution is the problem.
00:39:39.740
Maybe we just, we should have all these rights free floating.
00:39:42.280
We don't need a referential text that actually, uh, gathers together all the beliefs that define
00:39:49.740
the country, uh, constitutional worship is so habitual that it's tempting to assume that the
00:39:55.040
veneration was baked into our politics from the beginning.
00:39:58.100
We run it, uh, uh, uh, situates its historic historically showing how it flourished in the
00:40:03.340
20th century, a long time, uh, alongside the country's global ambitions.
00:40:07.220
Uh, even as the United States pursued imperial projects in places like the Philippines and tolerated
00:40:13.300
racial terror and tolerate racial terror in the Jim Crow South, the constitution was offered
0.85
00:40:18.280
as proof that the country was profoundly committed to liberty and equality.
00:40:22.100
Uh, its interests are coterminous with the world's interests.
00:40:26.620
Uh, very interesting because the left wants to do exactly this, right?
00:40:31.280
So, uh, interestingly, the left wants to keep the world domination.
00:40:35.660
I'm on board with saying, maybe we should think twice about turning America into an empire.
00:40:40.980
I'm pretty on board with, with saying that's a problem.
00:40:44.480
Uh, I'm even on board with saying, Hey, maybe using the constitution,
00:40:48.280
as, uh, you know, the, the George W. Bush, Oh, we just spread democracy everywhere, right?
00:40:54.160
We just, every, every country has a George Washington and an Alexander Hamilton and a,
00:40:59.880
uh, Thomas Jefferson hiding out in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq.
00:41:03.700
And all we have to do is sprinkle a little America on them.
00:41:06.500
You know, just give them a constitution like the United States and sell from, okay.
0.61
00:41:09.820
I'm, I'm, I'm on board with, with, with understanding that.
00:41:12.760
But you notice that the left will be like, Oh, well, we shouldn't do the imperial project,
00:41:16.440
except actually we should continue exactly that NATO should exist.
00:41:19.820
You know, NATO should control the entire world.
00:41:22.220
Uh, the United States, uh, should, should, uh, regime change any, uh, place that isn't bought
00:41:28.000
into, uh, you know, the, the kind of the rainbow mafia, uh, that, you know, we, we have to go fight
0.82
00:41:33.400
wars, uh, in the middle East to make sure that, uh, you know, trans lesbian children, uh, can exist
1.00
00:41:40.740
Um, so they want to keep the part about world domination and constant, uh, rights and revolutions.
00:41:47.740
They just want to free it from the shackles of the constitution.
00:41:50.960
They just want to go ahead and discard entirely the document in which all of that was founded.
00:41:57.540
All of that was understood, um, in theory, because really they're twisting it all into
00:42:03.420
these new rights, the ones that certainly weren't built in the constitution.
00:42:06.740
So we need to jettison the document, but keep the imperialism, keep the world domination.
00:42:12.620
Originalism has gathered strength by tapping into this reverence, deploying the authority
00:42:17.440
of the framers in order to pass off originalist interpretations as the epitome of restraint
00:42:24.260
Ran on notes that originalism has allowed conservatives to undermine progressive policies while using
00:42:31.760
So either there is an objective standard one can appeal to.
00:42:36.740
Uh, at least objective inside the tradition of the United States, or there isn't, I'm
00:42:42.580
not saying there's an international objective standard here.
00:42:45.240
I have a lot to say about that and this isn't the episode to do it in, uh, but, uh, but either
00:42:51.420
there is a, a, a tradition we can appeal to that allows us to understand our identity and
00:43:01.300
Or there isn't now the left doesn't believe there is.
00:43:04.400
So it says, oh, well, no, originalism is a trying to appeal to some kind of objective
00:43:09.700
But we reject that because really the most important thing when you, like you see here,
00:43:12.940
the, the problem you notice, there's no argument against appealing to the founders other than
00:43:18.920
And that progressive policies and multiracial democracy are the actual goal.
00:43:28.680
Uh, could the nature of the American, uh, tradition, uh, itself deny the ascension of, uh, progressive
00:43:36.580
policies and the, uh, elevation of multiracial democracy to the place of primacy all by itself?
00:43:42.040
Well, no, because those are the things that the left cares about.
00:43:45.120
So we can just discard anything that the, the framers would have cared about, right?
00:43:50.160
Ultimately, according to this line of argument, the damage, uh, damages of constitutional worship
00:43:55.540
extend to the structures of the political system itself.
00:43:58.340
National politics gets increasingly funneled through the judiciary, which control, uh, which
00:44:03.780
control of the courts, especially the Supreme court becomes a way to consolidate power, regardless
00:44:10.380
Again, Republicans were making this argument forever.
00:44:14.000
The right was making this argument forever that you are, you are getting rid of this,
00:44:17.800
that you are creating the, the scenario where control of the Supreme court is the only thing
00:44:23.320
And when the left had generational support, uh, control of the Supreme court, they did not
00:44:27.860
In fact, they said, this is a feature, not a bug that the fact that the Supreme court can
00:44:33.380
smack down democracy can smack down the will of the people.
00:44:39.480
As long as it's a, you know, it's pushing the progressive revolution, the Supreme court,
00:44:44.420
and the fact that all politics was being funneled into the Supreme court was a free ride for
00:44:49.280
They didn't really have to worry ultimately about winning the election because they knew
00:44:53.460
they could always take it to the Supreme court.
00:44:55.540
And the Supreme court would functionally rewrite the law to make it progressive to, to meet the
00:45:01.700
And now that actually, it may look like there is a multi-generational conservative Supreme
00:45:07.200
court in, in a rare win for conservatives and, uh, you know, credit to the pro-lifers
00:45:13.420
because not only did the pro-life movement, uh, achieve its goals, but more importantly,
00:45:18.720
uh, its goals achieved a multi-generational win for conservatives for a very long time because
00:45:24.340
they recognize that institutions made this policy and not democracy.
00:45:28.120
And so they went out of their way to ensure that they would win in the, in, in, in the,
00:45:34.420
uh, con in the game of the Supreme court in the institutional game and stopped focusing
00:45:41.940
I mean, you still had to win democratic contests, uh, in order to appoint these justices,
00:45:46.240
but they understand that long-term actually controlling the institution was far more important
00:45:51.980
than winning any individual election, uh, or even forwarding any specific piece of legislation.
00:45:57.520
Uh, and now that they figured out that game, the left hates it and they're willing to abandon
00:46:02.820
This disempowerment of majorities, which yeah, yeah, the whole point, uh, this entire disempowerment
00:46:09.500
of majorities combined with a political gridlock and institutional paralysis outside of judiciary
00:46:21.280
I thought the, the populism that swept Donald Trump into office was a problem, but of course it's
00:46:26.560
not when we, you know, they think that populism, the popular opinion is on their side, the document
00:46:31.620
that's, uh, the supposed to be a bulwark against authority, authoritarianism can end up fostering
00:46:37.020
the widespread cynicism that helps authoritarianism grow.
00:46:40.340
Uh, so they don't know what the word authoritarianism means here, or they don't care.
00:46:46.840
Um, authoritarianism, uh, would mean that the rule of law, the, uh, procedures are being ignored.
00:46:56.000
Uh, but of course the left is the ones that would like to get rid of the rule of law.
00:47:01.160
They're the ones who are trying to destroy rule of law.
00:47:04.980
Uh, also, yes, the constitution was specifically designed to prevent, uh, the constant rule of the majority.
00:47:13.200
That is the whole point was that actually you shouldn't just be able to get 51% of people together
00:47:18.460
and they can radically and, uh, revolutionize the country.
00:47:22.240
That is not what you're supposed to do, but that's what the left wants to do.
00:47:25.900
So we need to go ahead and destroy any barriers to that.
00:47:29.320
Uh, Rana says that the urge to seek salvation in the constitution has been stunted, uh, not only our,
00:47:35.080
our political behavior, but also our understanding of what is possible.
00:47:38.300
Yes, that is the problem that the constitution limits what progressives can do.
00:47:42.740
So the, the constitution has been stunting our political behavior in the sense that we could,
00:47:50.340
It's also, it's under, it's, uh, limiting our, our understanding of what's possible in the sense
00:47:57.140
We could, we could become, we, we, gay race, communism could control everything.
00:48:01.440
And, uh, you know, so, so we need to throw off the shackles of the constitution.
00:48:05.260
Now, uh, America tends to overlook the possibilities of mass democratic politics precisely for this
00:48:11.420
reason, uh, we succumb to the conventional wisdom of constitutional worship, thinking
00:48:16.100
that political, political progress is a matter of adhering, uh, even more perfectly to the
00:48:20.640
essence of the document when the building of majorities is invariably a more complicated
00:48:27.060
So America has like a teleology, like it has a specific end point of that.
00:48:30.700
Like we are, we are trying to become a more perfect in the sense that we are trying to pursue
00:48:34.980
a specific goal, a specific, uh, understanding, a specific way of being that is immortalized in
00:48:41.340
Now I want to take a second because there's a lot of people who are going to say,
00:48:44.640
Oren, you have a problem with constitution worship and you're right.
00:48:50.520
So my problem, uh, and, and there's a small amount of overlap here, which I'll acknowledge
00:48:59.620
My problem is that conservatives also look at the constitution and say, the purpose of the
00:49:09.800
The constitution, uh, is an, is some piece of political technology.
00:49:14.800
And if we just adhere to the constitution, uh, more closely, uh, then, then this solves
00:49:22.280
Uh, the constitution, it doesn't matter what the people do.
00:49:26.160
It doesn't matter, uh, how many people we admit into this country that don't care about
0.96
00:49:30.500
it, uh, want to destroy it, have no allegiance to it.
00:49:33.260
So none of that matters because the constitution, the words as written, the procedures, uh, inscribed
00:49:39.300
therein, they all by themselves limit the government forever.
00:49:46.240
You just had to live through 2020 to know that's not the case.
00:49:50.020
The, this, now a lot of people hear me say that, and they think, oh, well, that means
00:49:58.500
Uh, the constitution is just some worthless piece of paper.
00:50:05.280
Constitution is not a worthless piece of paper.
00:50:07.880
It's not the constitution is a, uh, a formalization, uh, just writing down, uh, what the founders
00:50:19.700
believed, what the people of the United States believed, what the actual folk ways and the
00:50:26.900
Um, now that snapshot matters because it lets us know what they were thinking, what they
00:50:35.660
I encourage people actually to read the federal papers.
00:50:42.080
You can read a federal paper on the toilet half the time.
00:50:44.460
So it's not like it's a huge commitment to make your way through the federal papers.
00:50:47.760
And you can actually understand what the founders were thinking at the time.
00:50:51.460
Now, traditions, if done properly, have to deal with the current day.
00:50:58.240
And that's the problem that the conservatives have.
00:51:01.440
That's actually my problem with originalism itself.
00:51:05.740
Not because I don't think we should be looking at what the founders meant.
00:51:11.480
I think it matters what the American tradition was, but the problem with many conservatives
00:51:16.860
and many originalists is they, and the problem with some of the constitution worship is they
00:51:23.660
A thing that was captured on a piece of paper at some point.
00:51:28.320
And therefore it never changes that nothing matter.
00:51:31.580
You don't have to worry because it's locked in there, but the constitution does not actually
00:51:36.700
guarantee you anything, the constitution doesn't do anything on its own.
00:51:42.240
It's simply a manual for how the, the, this should run and a inculcation or a, um, instantiation
00:51:49.080
of the way of being of the people, their political traditions and their understanding at the founding
00:51:55.420
In order to keep that tradition alive, in order to honor that heritage, we have to actually
00:52:04.040
It has to be part of our daily life and it has to be, uh, it has to be continuously practiced.
00:52:11.500
And if it's continuously practiced over time, uh, some changes will take place.
00:52:16.720
And this is, this is ultimately where the left is correct about something about the constitution.
00:52:21.780
Constitution is a living document in the sense that constitutions don't just get frozen,
00:52:28.400
that constitutions are ultimately reflections of the way of being of the people.
00:52:32.520
And if the way of being of the people, if the, if the spirit, if the beliefs, if the, the history
00:52:38.060
and tradition and, uh, moral understanding, the religion of the people wildly differentiates
00:52:43.340
from the words written on the paper, then the words of the paper will not themselves save you.
00:52:48.000
And as we can see with the left in this very article calls to say, oh, well, uh, the original
00:52:54.860
was called to say, oh, well, actually we should appeal to the beliefs of the founders.
00:52:58.080
The beliefs of the founders matter fall on deaf ears because the left has no shared tradition.
00:53:06.720
The, the, as this article points out repeatedly, they don't hold the founders as a foundational
00:53:13.040
They don't honor the political traditions of the United States.
00:53:19.640
And well, I mean, those are just the worst things that can ever be.
00:53:22.600
And the real goal is not anything that the founders believed in.
00:53:25.820
And it's not anything that the founders wrote down.
00:53:28.160
The real goal is multiracial democracy that allows for perpetual progressive left-wing revolution.
00:53:38.880
And so all the appeals to originalism and all the appeals to a shared tradition and all the
00:53:44.720
appeals to the words on the paper, the constitution mean nothing to them because they do not care.
00:53:50.480
And they tell you specifically that they don't care.
00:53:52.380
In fact, they care so little that jettisoning everything about the constitution, all of its
00:53:57.560
institutions, all of its restraint on democracy, all of its wisdom about prudence and the application
00:54:03.320
of, of, of, you know, carefully and slowly, uh, introducing change.
00:54:08.280
If you introduced it at all, all of that needs to be thrown out the window because it's impeding
00:54:12.120
the global revolution towards progressive, uh, utopia.
00:54:17.100
Um, so yes, I do agree that constitutional worship is a problem, but not in the sense
00:54:22.120
that the constitution is bad or the constitution should be discarded or the constitution is
00:54:29.740
My point is the constitution does matter because it reflects the way that the founders understood
00:54:35.380
our political traditions and the United States.
00:54:42.140
It's not enough to simply look back at them 200 years ago and be like, oh, well, uh, it's
00:54:47.840
You know, there it is sitting in, it's in a, in a case somewhere it's protecting us, you
00:54:51.820
know, like the, like Warhammer 40k and the emperor sitting on his golden throw, it thrown,
00:55:00.420
And when it's put into action, it will look different today.
00:55:12.440
But if you simply treat it as this document that is just preserved forever in this specific
00:55:22.240
Well, obviously that can't be the case if the people diverge radically from the document
00:55:26.680
And that's the place where we are, where appeals to constitutionalism mean nothing to the left.
00:55:32.320
And so you can sit there and make all the originalist arguments you want.
00:55:35.480
You can make all the arguments about the founding fathers you want.
00:55:37.940
You can appeal to all of the traditions of the United States you want.
00:55:46.000
Reddit says the urge to seek salvation of the constitution has, uh, oh yes.
00:55:51.460
America tend to overlook the possibilities, blah, blah, blah.
00:55:56.360
Uh, we succumb to the conventional wisdom, worship, uh, the essence of the document, but
00:56:00.700
such complaints are often, uh, why we have, uh, felt held fast to the constitution.
00:56:06.340
It offered a shared language that we, uh, uh, when we couldn't agree on much else.
00:56:11.580
Sadly, that was the, the ultimate, uh, problem is the constitution became the only thing that
00:56:17.640
Americans could share, but that's not how constitutions are supposed to work.
0.93
00:56:21.560
Americans are supposed to share a culture, share a belief, share a bedrock understanding.
00:56:26.240
And the constitution reflects that the problem for many conservatives is that they invert
00:56:33.800
They think, well, we can be as radically different as we want, as long as the constitution is
00:56:38.240
there to agree on, but that's not how it works.
00:56:45.400
You share an understanding of how the, uh, the, the, the country is supposed to work and
00:56:51.640
And because you hold that tradition, you then have a constitution that reflects that there
00:56:56.740
are plenty of countries that don't have a written constitution.
00:56:58.920
We can debate the merits or, uh, or, uh, uh, problems of a written constitution.
00:57:04.060
The point being is that a constitution is not just a piece of paper.
00:57:09.840
Sometimes it is that, but it is the reflection of the understanding and traditions of the people.
00:57:14.880
You cannot have the people radically alter from those, radically abandon those, and then
0.69
00:57:19.600
expect the piece of paper itself to hold back, uh, the, the revolution, uh, that the left
00:57:24.840
is trying to, uh, create, uh, the historian Linda Colley, who has written critically about
00:57:31.180
the connection between the constitution across the world, uh, and imperial, imperial expansion,
00:57:35.960
nonetheless concludes that such frail paper creations of value human beings, uh, can inscribe
00:57:41.480
expectations that governments are at least supposed to live up to, providing something of value,
00:57:47.400
even when violated, uh, in a deep, uh, in a deeply uncertain, shifting, unequal and violent
00:57:54.200
world, Colley writes, uh, the gun, the ship, and the pen, uh, oh, and I guess that's the book
00:57:59.240
in the gun, the ship, and the pen, such documents may be the best we can hope for. Americans aren't
0.81
00:58:04.260
alone in treating a constitution as a source of inspiration.
00:58:07.220
Colley cites, uh, uh, Colley cites, uh, Olga Misk, a young pro-democracy activist in Moscow,
00:58:14.920
who in 2019 stood in the street, surrounded by a formidable men in body armor, reading
00:58:19.740
allowed passages from the Russian constitution.
00:58:22.320
Police officers recognized the text, uh, from where she was reading, and they did not move
00:58:27.740
So saying, yeah, no, I guess constitutions can have, be a rallying point.
00:58:31.780
Uh, uh, yeah, and then to just talk some more about the book.
00:58:34.760
So yeah, ultimately what we see here is that, you know, there are some valid points about
00:58:40.260
constitutional worship in the sense of assuming that the constitution can do the work that
00:58:46.040
Um, but, but the left here is calling, is calling for an abandonment of constitution,
00:58:50.180
not because they see constitution worship as like a restriction on the tradition.
00:58:54.840
And ultimately we should really live that tradition out every day and we should, we should make
00:59:00.380
Uh, and, uh, that's the problem with constitutional worship.
00:59:03.100
Their problem with constitution worship is that America has a tradition at all.
00:59:07.640
Their, their, their point is not one of, uh, you know, order of operations.
00:59:11.320
Their point is not one of saying, well, we should be more faithful to the tradition and
00:59:14.920
our, our worship of the parchment itself keeps us from being faithful to the tradition.
00:59:19.000
Their point is we should just discard the tradition entirely.
00:59:23.060
White people, racists, uh, it was all created to protect slavery.
0.98
00:59:26.540
Uh, multi-racial democracy is the only thing that matters.
0.98
00:59:30.100
Uh, progressive revolution is the only thing that matters.
00:59:32.220
And to the extent where the Supreme court and the constitution were useful to forward
00:59:36.200
those things, we supported them, but now they're not useful anymore.
00:59:43.720
And if the constitution inhibits the progress in those directions in any way, it needs to go.
00:59:49.560
Uh, and, and that's really why we continually see things like, uh, you know, uh, the,
00:59:54.620
the New York times saying, well, democracy or the elections are bad for democracy.
00:59:59.380
Constitution is bad for the United States because ultimately what they're trying to
01:00:02.640
do is say, well, democracy is really just our understanding of left-wing revolution.
01:00:12.400
Uh, the, the, the left should have the ability to, uh, pump their message through the media,
01:00:22.140
The system as much as possible, generate a majority, and then validate all actions that
01:00:28.460
And to the degree, which the constitution hinders any of that, it's an issue, right?
01:00:33.080
All right, guys, let's head over to the questions of the people real quick.
01:00:36.380
Uh, tiny, stupid demon says, I sense we have reached the point where there's not even bothering
01:00:42.680
to put the skin suit, uh, put on the skin suit anymore.
01:00:45.640
Yeah, they're really not even bothering to, uh, wear the institution like a skin suit.
01:00:50.560
They, they, they're, they're now done pretending that they even need the, the, the institution.
01:00:54.980
This is the same thing that happened with Christianity when it comes to wokeness, right?
0.92
01:00:58.620
Wokeness is most definitely a Christian heresy.
0.99
01:01:00.440
Uh, it is, it is trying to take Christian principles and completely divorce them, uh,
0.92
01:01:06.460
from biblical truth, from Christ, uh, from their grounding in reality, their, their grounding
01:01:10.840
in the ultimate truth and completely disembodied them so they can be manipulated, uh, and, and
01:01:15.700
create the world that the, the left wants to make that they want to take those things and
01:01:19.640
use them to completely remake the world in their image.
01:01:23.260
The, the, the constitution was useful to the extent where it allowed them to, uh, you
01:01:27.720
know, do, do the things they want to do when they could use the Supreme Court.
01:01:30.440
To ram through and through, through and manipulate things that was useful, but now that it's
01:01:34.080
a problem or a hindrance to the, the, the right has figured out the game.
01:01:36.940
Uh, the most important thing to do is to just throw that skin suit aside.
1.00
01:01:43.940
Uh, you know, we're, we're done with tying this to anything, uh, any actual tradition we've
01:01:50.660
Uh, and the revolution is the only thing that really matters.
01:01:53.000
We're done with the pretense of tying this to any core values of the United States.
01:01:57.480
We're just going to call the United States evil.
01:02:00.560
We're just going to denigrate white people.
1.00
01:02:02.300
Uh, everything about the United States is founded in slavery.
01:02:10.280
Uh, tiny stupid demon follows up with the correct sequence is politics.
1.00
01:02:16.620
Uh, culture is downstream from power, actual power, power is downstream, uh, of nature or
01:02:23.700
Again, uh, I think that there's a, uh, I think they're reducing things to, uh, you know, politics
01:02:30.900
is just, uh, culture or culture is just politics or it's all just power is a problem.
01:02:36.720
Um, these things matter and we should look at the connections that they have, but there
01:02:42.760
There is a little bit more of a back and forth here.
01:02:45.080
Ultimately, I think power matters a lot more than conservatives understand.
01:02:48.780
Um, and because they, they, uh, don't get that, uh, they, they thought that culture was, uh,
01:02:55.020
this organic thing that was, uh, altering their politics, but that's not the case either.
01:03:00.060
Uh, so it's, it's a little more complicated than maybe one slogan lets us, uh, understand,
01:03:05.140
but ultimately I think a lot of the things that you're saying there are correct.
01:03:11.280
Uh, Wolfbane says politics is downstream from culture.
01:03:13.760
Culture is not downstream, uh, from one river, but the intersection of three rivers.
01:03:18.780
Two rivers, philosophy, education, and generational experience.
01:03:25.540
I think there's a couple more rivers there though, that you have the problem with.
01:03:28.560
Uh, we're assuming there that all culture is organic and some culture is organic, uh,
01:03:32.900
but especially with the mass man and mass, uh, uh, mass information propaganda, uh, actually
01:03:38.620
culture is highly, uh, influenced by a lot of, uh, straight propaganda media, you know,
01:03:44.820
social media, these things are wielded, uh, even financial incentives.
01:03:48.780
Uh, can, can heavily alter culture again, uh, all of these things interact.
01:03:58.780
Um, but all of those things that you're talking about do matter.
01:04:01.580
And those things are all heavily influential when it comes to formation of culture.
01:04:05.900
However, I think while those things, uh, you, you, you left out religion, maybe you're
01:04:11.560
I think that itself is also, uh, more of a problem, a lot more to say about this.
01:04:17.100
I'll probably try to do more episodes expanding on this.
01:04:19.720
Cause I think we, we should probably better understand, uh, the, the more of a spiderweb
01:04:23.980
configuration here, uh, that we have rather than, uh, just, just one direction or one,
01:04:30.940
But, uh, uh, the, the points you're making are all, uh, relatively true there.
01:04:37.420
Uh, Tom, uh, sorry guys, this is a little small today.
01:04:44.560
Uh, Thomas minus curious, maybe sorry if I got that wrong.
01:04:48.300
Uh, you haven't found a way around the fact that we haven't found a way around the fact
01:04:51.500
that the majority believes whatever the oligarchs pay them to believe that undermines democracy.
01:04:56.660
Uh, the problem with, uh, democracy in the age of the mass man is that the oligarchs will
01:05:02.640
always manipulate, uh, what the masses believe.
01:05:05.180
Again, I lay this out in my book, the total state, uh, in, in much more thorough detail.
01:05:09.300
Uh, but Gatano Mosca makes a, an excellent point about how the United States came, became
01:05:15.820
And his point is that every one of our institutions, all those evil branches and separation of powers
01:05:21.340
that the left hates so much, they were predicated on the idea that power came from different
01:05:26.780
parts of society, that there are different social spheres.
01:05:29.560
Uh, some of them are aristocratic, some of them are mercantile, some of them are the peasantry,
01:05:33.620
some of them are, are, are religious in nature.
01:05:36.000
Uh, all of these things, uh, check and balance each other and kind of limit things to some
01:05:40.060
extent because the power comes from different areas.
01:05:42.300
But once you turn all of these branches and all of these institutions into things that are
01:05:46.720
simply, uh, dictated by democracy, uh, then oligarchs and their ability to manipulate
0.99
01:05:50.980
information through the media end up ruling the day, which is why the left wants to destroy
01:05:55.080
all of these things, because that is what they are counting on.
01:05:57.920
They control the media, they control academia, they control the consistent making apparatus,
01:06:02.300
and therefore they want to get rid of all other forms of limitation, uh, all other social
01:06:08.360
The only authority rests in democracy, multiracial democracy, apparently most importantly, uh,
01:06:13.780
to the point where you're allowed to disassemble everything about the traditions or heritage
01:06:17.980
or understanding, uh, of, of the past in the United States, because ultimately the only thing
01:06:23.480
that's allowed to influence any politics is mass democracy.
01:06:30.000
Roman Hank, I, I see I've, uh, I've triggered a 40k nerd out here, uh, with, with this reference.
01:06:35.400
The zinc strategy, gene stealer tactics, slim, best, uh, slimish ambitions, uh, enter the
01:06:41.840
institutions, delicately synthesize it into a tool, uh, for their aims.
01:06:46.200
Uh, yes, they have, they have the, the ability to hide amongst the population and corrupt them.
01:06:50.720
Uh, uh, that's not going to make a lot of sense to people who have never, uh, nerded
01:06:53.940
out on Warhammer 40k, but, uh, I give it what you're saying, man.
01:06:56.960
Uh, and then, uh, perspicacious heretic says, I don't get why people speed speed limit is
01:07:08.120
The, the, the, the most powerful conservative argument we've, we've written it down somewhere.
01:07:13.620
And, and, and somehow that still seems to be the majority of, of conservative commentary.
01:07:18.900
Oh, look, it's written down in the constitution.
01:07:23.180
As you, as you point out there, no, you actually have to care that you have, you have to care
01:07:27.400
about, um, the reason that the rules are enforced, the reason that the tradition existed.
01:07:31.860
If you don't, then as we see in this article, uh, the left just spends all its time saying,
01:07:35.880
well, everyone who wrote this down was a racist, a sexist, uh, you know, they were all
01:07:40.280
white and so their opinions simply don't matter and they can be discarded.
01:07:44.040
All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.
01:07:50.540
If it's your first time on this channel, make sure that you go ahead, subscribe, click
01:07:54.080
the bell notification, all that stuff to let YouTube know.
01:07:56.260
You actually want to watch the channels that you are subscribed to.
01:07:59.780
If you would like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that you subscribe to
01:08:03.380
the or Mac entire show on your favorite podcast platform.
01:08:05.920
That way, when you are working out, mowing the lawn, doing your chores, you can listen
01:08:10.220
to this and if you do subscribe, make sure to leave a rating or review.
01:08:14.340
Also, if you'd like to pick up my book, the total state, you can do that on Amazon, Barnes
01:08:21.040
You should be able to pick it up or order it there.