NYT Claims the Constitution Is Dangerous | 9⧸4⧸24
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per Minute
177.21136
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
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So the New York Times has continued its incredible run of absurd articles.
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It started with, of course, voting is dangerous to democracy.
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And now it's arrived at its inevitable conclusion,
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which is the Constitution is dangerous to democracy as well.
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It turns out that all democracy needs to do is obliterate everything about the United States
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that you know and love and care about to finally be secure,
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which really makes you wonder what the value of democracy is and what that actually means to these people.
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I always think it's valuable to read into these because it makes some points that I think are important,
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But I think by examining this, we can get a better understanding about what our current elite thinks about democracy,
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about rule of law, about the Constitution, about the way that things should be going forward.
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All right, let's dive right into our article today.
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One of the biggest threats to America's politics might be the country's founding document.
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We're really just putting it all out there, huh, guys?
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We're just saying the quiet part out loud, screaming it really as much as we can.
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After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he called for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles,
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Just straight up first sentence or second sentence here is a complete lie.
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What Donald Trump said was that if you have electoral fraud, if you have voter fraud, if you have a massive fraud,
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then you're basically just terminating all the rules and regulations and articles of the Constitution
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because the entirety of the Constitution is based on this idea that you have a procedure
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that grants legitimacy to the rule of the current leadership.
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So if you completely invalidate that ritual, if you completely invalidate or call into question
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the veracity of an election on a regular basis, you make it clear that the way that people vote doesn't really matter
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because ultimately the people in charge control the votes, they control what's being counted,
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Well, then you've basically terminated all of the articles of the Constitution,
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all the rules of the Constitution, because you are completely manipulating the process
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But that's not what the New York Times wants Trump to have said,
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Remember, however much you hate journalists, you don't hate them enough.
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Outraged critics denounced him by threatening a document,
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for threatening a document that is supposed to be sacrosanct.
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But announcing his desire to throw off the constitutional constraints in order to satisfy his personal ambitions,
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Trump was making his authoritarian inclinations abundantly clear.
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However, we can notice that by the fact that they put sacrosanct in scare quotes here,
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they are planning to do what they say Trump did.
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They are planning to announce that they would actually like to throw off the shackles of the Constitution.
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So, yeah, Trump is scary, but ultimately, maybe he had a point because we want to do it, right?
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It's no surprise, then, that liberals charge Trump with being a menace to the Constitution.
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But his presidency and the prospect of his re-election have also generated another very different argument,
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that Trump owes his political assent to the Constitution,
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making him the beneficiary of a document that is essentially anti-democratic
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in this day and age increasingly dysfunctional.
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Trump is bad because he wanted to get rid of the Constitution, which he didn't,
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However, we also want to get rid of the Constitution.
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In fact, actually, the Constitution is the problem.
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The Constitution is the whole reason that Trump even became president.
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It's the set of rules by which people become president.
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That's how it lays out how the government is supposed to function.
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So, all presidents have become president because the Constitution explains how someone becomes president,
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We'll go deeper into this intellectually stimulating argument that they're putting together.
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After all, Trump became president in 2016 after losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College, Article 2.
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They're going to cite the articles so you can know that they really did their homework on how the Constitution works.
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Yes, the Electoral College is there to make sure that not only the largest populated states rule everything.
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If that was the case, then California, Texas, Florida, and New York would decide every presidential contest.
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So, the Electoral College is there so that we actually distribute the responsibility for selecting a leader across the entire United States.
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It's not just the tyranny of a few states and their interests that rule the entire nation.
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He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court.
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He used Article 3 of the Constitution to do the thing he's supposed to do by law,
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two of whom were confirmed by senators representing just 44% of the population.
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The Senate is a check on the Democratic impulse, which it was always supposed to be.
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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,
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which meant that no longer were senators a more aristocratic class chosen by state leadership representing the specific interests of the state,
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but instead were just filtered through the exact same mass Democratic process.
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But whatever, the fact that there's any vestige of resistance to complete and total raw democracy is the problem.
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Those three justices helped overturn Roe v. Wade, a reversal which most Americans disagreed with.
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What is omitted here is, of course, originally the Supreme Court instituted Roe v. Wade.
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It created a right in the Constitution to an abortion that had never existed before.
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We had to hear about the emanations of a penumbra.
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That was the actual language used to justify, you know, a right to privacy was created in the Constitution,
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which apparently only really applies to abortion.
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And the majority of people at the time did not want this, which is why they had to do it through the courts.
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So the courts were fine when they created Roe v. Wade.
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And, of course, this is the favorite part about all of these arguments.
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Back when the country was more conservative, back when the country was more right wing,
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the fact that the Supreme Court suppressed the will of the majority and created these rights for the minority that wanted them,
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They're heroes of democracy for doing this, I guess, even though it was anti-democratic.
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Now that the majority of people have, after many, many decades of being conditioned by the law,
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A lot of people like to say that Breitbart quote that culture or that politics is downstream from culture.
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Politics is or culture is largely downstream from power,
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which means law and influential institutions on top of many other things.
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So after many decades of people living under Roe v. Wade, their opinion changed because they got used to that standard.
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We don't need to actually think about the history or the implications of any of this.
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The point is the Supreme Court is a threat to what the Democrats want now.
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They don't care that they used the Supreme Court to force through the entire civil rights revolution,
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to force through Roe v. Wade, to force through gay marriage.
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They don't care that the Supreme Court was a specifically anti-democratic institution that they loved for decades
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because they used it to force top-down these changes against the will of the majority.
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Now, today, since they think they have the majority advantage, all of a sudden, Supreme Court Constitution, very dangerous.
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The eminent legal scholar, Erwin Chemerinsky, maybe, worried about opinion polls showing a dramatic loss of faith in democracy.
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If there's one thing you should be losing faith in, it is most assuredly democracy.
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He writes in a new book, No Democracy Lasts Forever.
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It is important for the Americans to see these failures that stem from the Constitution itself.
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So the problem, what the, you know, the Constitution was great when it was advancing left-wing principles,
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when it was advancing their political cause, now that it's putting a slight hinder on, you know,
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it's slightly hindering that which the radical left would like to advance, it's got to be abolished now.
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Him talking, you know, some of his background here, we'll skip all that, we don't care.
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In 1787, when 55 delegates convened in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation,
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that's an interesting way to say that they decided to overthrow the Articles illegitimately.
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They completely ignored the actual requirements in the Articles of Confederation to suspend them and install a new constitution.
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Instead, they just went ahead and ignored all procedures and rule of law and came up with a new governing document.
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They ended up embarking on a project that was much bigger in scope.
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As Americans are taught in history class, the Deadly Left draft a new document establishing a national government consisting of three branches,
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legislative, executive, and judicial, each functioning as a check on the others.
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This country full of people who came from majority of the United Kingdom, what would be the United Kingdom today,
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Like, this country full of Anglos was full of Anglos.
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So, you know, everything they did must be illegitimate, I guess.
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But they nevertheless diverged on what seemed to be an intractable issue, slavery.
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Of course, this will be the only thing they care about in the Constitution is slavery, right?
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So you have to go back and say, like, well, actually, no.
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The problem isn't that, like, actually they skipped the steps in the Articles of Confederation or whatever.
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It's just, you know, it's white people and they were, you know, the entire document is there to protect slavery.
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Though several states had already passed abolition status, nearly half the delegates were slaveholders.
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The Constitution was thus born of a compromise.
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With the enslavers getting the better end of the deal.
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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.
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And the Fugitive Slave Clause stipulated that even when enslaved people escaped in free streets, they would never be free.
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Now, this is far from the most important thing in the Constitution.
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This is, this doesn't even have any relevance to the rest of their actual objections to the Constitution.
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They just put this in here to, to whine about racism.
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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.
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But, yeah, they'll spend the rest of the time complaining about the fact that the Constitution protects us from wild and unmitigated democracy.
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But they needed to take the time to let us know that slavery was really bad.
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By the way, the three-fifths compromise is a, is a protection against slavery.
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It made sure that the slave states could not count all of their slave population for the full count.
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But whatever, we don't, none of those facts matter.
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And then they also wrote some document that the current, the current New York Times editorial page is not a fan of.
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Such compromises meant that those who shared overlapping politics would still draw wildly different conclusions from the Constitution.
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Yeah, it turns out actually not everyone in the country immediately agreed on everything.
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Abolitionists considered the, the abolitionists, William Garrison considered the compromise so damning to make the Constitution a covenant with death, an agreement with hell.
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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.
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As the historian James Oak put it, Douglass shared Abraham Lincoln's view, recognizing the Constitution as the promise of universal freedom.
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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.
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And his plan was to more or less send the freed slaves to Africa when they were done.
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They're pro-Lincoln in this paragraph, at least.
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Yes, but also instructions on how to thwart it.
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These glaring discrepancies between the soaring words in the Constitution's preamble,
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We the People, that is a seemingly ringing endorsement of popular governance.
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So, the fact that they said We the People, but they didn't immediately in slavery, I guess, invalidates the Constitution.
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As Cherminsky puts it, the distrust of democracy embedded in the rest of the document,
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reflecting the framers' inability to conceive of a future where women and black people could have a right to vote.
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So, this is a very interesting sleight of hand here.
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Democracy is what we're aiming for in the leftist theory, I suppose, here.
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And so, any restriction on democracy is specifically a restriction on women and black people.
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Now, obviously, these groups could not vote at the time, but even if they had been able to,
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the same restrictions on democracy would still exist, just with them as actual voting blocks.
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Both of those groups can vote, and those restrictions do exist in the Constitution.
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The main thing is, everybody is racist, and that's why the Constitution has to go.
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You might think that such disputes would have been laid to rest by a bloody civil war
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and Reconstruction amendments, which were outlawed slavery and granted all men the right to vote,
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Why, yes, you would think that that would put this to rest.
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That's why you passed the amendments, was for this to be put behind you.
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But, of course, it is against the interest of the Democratic Party, of the left,
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to put any of this behind them, because the entire point is to bury us forever in this racial
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Not to mention that the Constitution continued to change in the century after.
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Senators would be directly elected, and women were granted the right to vote.
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Yes, so you've been stripping away all of these limitations on the franchise,
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and all of these limitations on democracy repeatedly.
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The last major amendment was in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18.
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So, the last major amendment here is language, I guess, that just means amendments that only
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adjust or directly address the civil rights movement, right?
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So, if an amendment does not increase democracy and reduce protections against mob rule, then
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And, therefore, the Constitution has been frozen in amber, even though we did actually
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In reaction to a landmark decision prohibiting segregation and bans on interracial marriage,
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conservative legal scholars began to champion judicial interpretations that rested on the
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All right, guys, we'll continue this article in just a minute.
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We'll also talk about the amendments, which is what I, for some reason, was trying to say.
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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,
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They did note that the Supreme Court had, you know, knocked down a lot of the made a lot
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of rulings on things like segregation or laws against interracial marriage, these kind of
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Uh, but I remember 10 seconds ago when the Supreme Court was a problem that, uh, the existence
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of the Supreme Court and its ability to restrain democracy or to make decisions against the
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democratic will of the people was a huge issue.
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Now it's looks like we're once again, pro the, uh, you know, inside the very same article,
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uh, just a few paragraphs later, we're pro the, uh, Supreme Court, uh, overriding all
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of those, the will of the people and being able to change all these things without any
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additional actual alterations to the constitution, which has been busy being, uh, frozen in amber.
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Uh, so all this, these complaints about the Supreme Court and its ability to, uh, defy the
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democratic will of the people suddenly disappear when the Supreme Court was doing exactly what
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the left wanted originalists as these scholars called themselves said that they were simply
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Again, liberal critics counter that the interpretation of law, according to what the founders supposedly
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wanted amounts to an end run around the protecting and promoting of multiracial democracy.
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You just said that the Supreme Court is the end run around democracy and that's a bad thing.
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But now when the Supreme Court is denying the will of the people and making these changes,
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uh, you're in favor of these things that people are saying are overreaches and activism
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You don't care about the end run around democracy when it's doing your bidding.
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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.
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They're just saying, well, you can't think about what the founders wanted because the most
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When did we decide the most important thing was multiracial democracy?
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Was there a vote saying that multiracial democracy was the best thing?
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Did we put together a, uh, a, a large, um, you know, more, uh, moral case for this somewhere
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No, uh, did, did some authority from on high come down and issued?
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Do we get another, uh, you know, another set of commandments, uh, that tell us that multiracial
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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
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democracy was, is, was limited, you know, specifically should have been more explicit
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about that should have been something that was held to, you know, but whatever, all that
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aside, uh, at no point did we like, you know, uncover some tome that says, oh, actually
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multiracial democracy is the be all end all of the end moral goal of all action in the
00:26:11.640
And therefore, uh, we can just go ahead and ignore anything and everything that the founders
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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
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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
00:33:01.520
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
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
00:37:08.640
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,
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
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
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.
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
00:41:33.400
wars, uh, in the middle East to make sure that, uh, you know, trans lesbian children, uh, can exist
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
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.
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
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
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.
00:59:26.540
Uh, multi-racial democracy is the only thing that matters.
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?
01:00:58.620
Wokeness is most definitely a Christian heresy.
01:01:00.440
Uh, it is, it is trying to take Christian principles and completely divorce them, uh,
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.
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.
01:02:02.300
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.
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
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
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01:07:56.260
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