The Auron MacIntyre Show - Rufo vs. Yarvin： Can We Return to the Founding？｜ 4⧸19⧸24

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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:31.900 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.380 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:35.940 So if you're a fan of this show,

00:00:38.340 then you're probably familiar with both Christopher Rufo and Curtis Yarvin.

00:00:43.960 They're two guys who I really respect.

00:00:46.580 Both of them are excellent at what they do.

00:00:49.060 They've both been guests on this show.

00:00:50.920 They're people that I have both had differences and agreements with.

00:00:54.280 And I think that they're two of the most important voices out there on the right.

00:00:58.780 But as of now, I think that they represent two poles of the political process.

00:01:05.560 And both of them are outside, I think, of what most people think of as the conservative mainstream.

00:01:13.280 Rufo is obviously far more connected to the establishment conservative operation, but is bringing in tactics and viewpoints that a lot of people in, you know, kind of the National Review type crowd find to be offensive because they're too aggressive and too effective.

00:01:30.500 And so these are both guys that in their own way are breaking the mold, though I'd say Yarvin probably a little more outside of that.

00:01:38.260 But of course, Rufo is also somebody who is able to operate in the real world in a way that Yarvin never has been.

00:01:44.740 So I think they all, they kind of both bring their own merits to this table.

00:01:49.500 And in the pages of, or I guess the digits, the online digital page of IEM 1776, there was a debate between these two guys.

00:02:00.660 Now, Rufo and Yarvin have traded barbs for a while now.

00:02:04.880 They've been back and forth with Yarvin saying that Rufo's approaches will ultimately fail.

00:02:11.660 They'll be ineffectual and they might even prolong some of the problems that the right is facing because they lull conservatives into a certain amount of kind of complacency, thinking that Rufo's style could still pull them back from the edge without having to make any radical changes.

00:02:27.720 And Rufo has always countered with, I think, what is a pretty effective criticism of Yarvin is that he has no practical application for his ideas.

00:02:36.180 His ideas are very disembodied. Many times they seem to be resting on the idea that there'll be some kind of collapse or some kind of sudden revelation or some kind of great cultural sea change where the elites will come and beg people like Curtis Yarvin to teach them how to actually lead the United States.

00:02:55.120 And there's no actual practical way that much of this can get implemented as where Rufo is out there taking action.

00:03:03.520 He's taking scalps. He's doing things in the real world.

00:03:07.260 And so he puts his real world record up against Yarvin's theoretical problems with the way that he is doing things.

00:03:15.020 Again, like I said, there have been barbs traded back and forth multiple times.

00:03:18.900 Chris Rufo has responded. I even had Yarvin on my show and he critiqued the way that Rufo was doing certain things.

00:03:26.200 So this is a longstanding debate between these two men and I think one that is very valuable to look at.

00:03:32.080 However, in IM 1776, they kind of had a knockdown drag out.

00:03:36.660 This is a far more brisk conversation than they've had before.

00:03:41.340 These have always been largely kind of cordial if they would not, you know, they toy with each other a little bit, maybe, you know, a little bit of back and forth between them that is mildly insulting.

00:03:55.900 But this one went a little more off the rails.

00:03:58.860 Yarvin, I think, particularly was a lot, was very condescending to Rufo in this one.

00:04:05.140 And Rufo kind of responded in kind, very dismissive of Yarvin in many ways.

00:04:10.200 And so we got a more heated debate between these two.

00:04:14.340 But I think it's something that is worth looking at because they're addressing issues about the conservative movement that aren't going away anytime soon.

00:04:23.820 The debate between them is one that I think is substantive, even though they didn't go into probably the depth that most people would have preferred in this particular debate.

00:04:33.320 I think it does reveal different attitudes and possibly some flaws with both men's approach to certain things.

00:04:41.680 I'm not going to give you some lame middle ground thing here.

00:04:45.400 I'll tell you who I think ultimately is correct.

00:04:48.520 I'm not just going to hedge my bets.

00:04:50.160 But I think it is worth pointing out that both guys have important things that they're saying.

00:04:56.300 They do correctly point out issues with each other's approaches.

00:05:00.300 And it's worth giving both of them credit about what they're good at before we talk about the things that I think probably are failures or short-sightedness in the way that they made their arguments.

00:05:11.300 So I'm going to dive into this debate here in a second, guys.

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00:06:21.660 All right.

00:06:22.460 So let's start this with the stuff that's probably a little boring.

00:06:25.720 It's not as exciting as talking about why everybody's wrong.

00:06:29.200 But I think it's worth saying just because it's true and we want to acknowledge these things.

00:06:33.480 So first, like I said, I think both of these guys are important to the right.

00:06:37.200 I think they both have incredibly essential roles to play.

00:06:40.660 One of the things that I think is actually at play here is specializations.

00:06:45.880 In our world where everyone spends their entire life getting really good at one thing and investing themselves in one thing, often we feel it necessary to make the one thing we're good at the most important thing and to use that to drive out any other approach.

00:07:00.580 I think there really is a little bit of this here where Rufo being a consummate activist, somebody who is the most probably successful activist on the right in my lifetime, he sees everything through that lens.

00:07:15.220 And he thinks that the most important thing and these tangible results, you know, I have this guy fired.

00:07:21.760 I got this person to step down.

00:07:23.820 I got this person to, you know, those are the most critical things at every moment.

00:07:28.480 And of course, those tangible results are important.

00:07:30.800 I'm not saying they aren't, but because that's what Rufo does and what he does effectively, he says that that's the long and the short of it.

00:07:36.800 If you don't have these things, if Yarvin can't show the scalps that he's collected, he's not doing anything of value.

00:07:42.620 And the same thing with Yarvin.

00:07:43.680 Yarvin is a systems analyst.

00:07:45.540 He's a he's a theorist.

00:07:47.180 He thinks everything is solved, I think, at the system level.

00:07:51.140 It's always about making sure that we correctly set up the system.

00:07:54.200 And that's what actually solves the problem of government.

00:07:56.940 And so he looks at Rufo and he says, oh, you know, you're just working inside the system.

00:08:01.000 You're very good at the system.

00:08:02.380 You're maybe the best, the very best conservatives have inside the system, but you're still stuck inside the broken system.

00:08:08.480 And because you're not out here theorizing with me and dreaming up kind of these abstract ideas, then you're just not doing anything of value.

00:08:17.260 Ultimately, maybe you win a couple battles, a couple skirmishes, but everything is tactical.

00:08:22.200 It's not strategic.

00:08:23.140 And ultimately, you're going to lose this because you're not focused on the right things.

00:08:27.000 And I can see those things because I'm an abstract theorist.

00:08:30.160 And so it's unsurprising that both of these men think that the things that they do are the most important things and that they're the primary things that need to get done.

00:08:39.260 Again, I promise you, I'm not going to just go ahead and try to cut this baby in half.

00:08:42.840 I do think someone won this debate, but I just want to acknowledge that there is a place for both of these guys.

00:08:48.760 And I think there's a bias built in because of what they do that leads them to draw some conclusions that are hasty about what's going on here.

00:08:57.340 Like I said, I've also had both these guys on my show and I've disagreed with both of these guys.

00:09:02.840 I respect both of them.

00:09:04.320 So there's no animus here.

00:09:05.920 I think they're both critical.

00:09:07.700 I respect both of their work, even if I think that there may be some flaws here and there with the way that things are being approached.

00:09:14.760 So the next thing I want to say real quick before we get into the substance of the debate is, like I said, Yarvin was unnecessarily hostile.

00:09:21.140 And I think this led to a less productive debate in, you know, kind of the main.

00:09:27.040 I still think there are important things to look at in what was said here.

00:09:30.760 I think there are things that reveal some of the issues that we're addressing.

00:09:33.760 But Yarvin's need to constantly degrade what Rufo is doing was unhelpful.

00:09:41.300 He did give Rufo credit saying, OK, he is out there showing people that you can fight and that you can slay dragons.

00:09:48.060 I think he probably should have said more of that.

00:09:50.040 I think that is actually super important.

00:09:51.800 That's not something that you just throw in as an aside.

00:09:54.620 The fact that Rufo is on the ground making things work is important.

00:09:58.900 And I think it's worth giving him far more credit than Yarvin did before moving on to a lot of insults.

00:10:05.400 And he was very dismissive, often described Rufo as practicing Paw Patrol politics or American history.

00:10:15.400 And I think that was unnecessary.

00:10:17.340 Also, Yarvin routinely just threw a bibliography at Rufo.

00:10:22.280 He vomited a bibliography at Rufo, which I think is a pretty leftist academic tactic a lot of times.

00:10:29.540 You know, oh, well, if you haven't read these seven books on the American Revolution, then what do you know?

00:10:34.880 You know, if you just haven't done it.

00:10:36.460 And don't get me wrong.

00:10:37.400 I think ultimately, Yarvin is kind of correct about Rufo's understanding of the country and some of its history.

00:10:45.560 But the way it was done just so dismissively and just, oh, well, if you haven't rattled off these 12 books, then you're just not worth my time.

00:10:53.820 That's very dismissive.

00:10:55.160 It's not very productive.

00:10:56.500 It's kind of, like I said, it's very leftist academic tactic.

00:10:59.760 And I didn't really enjoy that.

00:11:01.400 I think that that was the wrong way to approach this.

00:11:04.460 And so I think that was a shortcoming as well.

00:11:07.740 And I want to say one more thing about what I think that Yarvin got wrong, because I'm going to mainly talk about what he got right, because what probably is not going to be surprising to a lot of people is I think ultimately Yarvin did point out some critical problems with the approach that Rufo and the wider conservative movement has, because that's what Yarvin's good at.

00:11:29.540 I don't think he provided any answers, to be very clear, and this is something that Rufo hits him on repeatedly, and rightly so.

00:11:36.040 I don't think Yarvin provides a lot of better answers in here.

00:11:40.820 There's not a lot of ways forward other than, you know, someone will eventually just make an effective CEO king, and that will solve the problem.

00:11:49.440 He's right to hit, Rufo's right to hit Yarvin on that.

00:11:52.100 But I do think that Yarvin ultimately won this, but there was, I think, a couple of things he did get very wrong.

00:12:00.100 So the first thing I think that Yarvin got very wrong was he had a very materialistic and nihilistic view of the United States and the wider kind of assessment of cultures and peoples and histories.

00:12:14.220 He just said there's nothing special or spectacular about the United States.

00:12:19.440 There's nothing divine.

00:12:21.160 There's nothing written on the hearts of people.

00:12:23.440 There's no specific direction of the United States.

00:12:26.380 I think that's a big failure on Yarvin's part, and this is always the critical, I think, failure of Yarvin is his materialistic nihilism.

00:12:34.740 He is ultimately a secular guy.

00:12:37.560 He does not believe in God.

00:12:38.520 He's an atheist.

00:12:39.540 He recognizes many of the flaws that come with atheism.

00:12:42.360 He understands many of the shortcomings.

00:12:44.280 He admits them.

00:12:45.360 But ultimately, that is still a problem that he incorporates routinely into his analysis.

00:12:50.700 And this is a failure, particularly because I know Yarvin is familiar with the works of Joseph de Maistre.

00:12:57.040 He takes a lot of inspiration from Joseph de Maistre.

00:13:00.320 And Joseph de Maistre specifically tells us that actually constitutions are always written by God.

00:13:07.860 They're not written by people.

00:13:09.640 Yes, the American Constitution may have just been one of many.

00:13:15.360 It might not be magical in the sense that it's got the one single solution.

00:13:21.020 I think that's a mistake that Rufo makes, and I'll get back to that in a second.

00:13:25.400 But I think Yarvin overstates his case by saying that there's nothing divine.

00:13:29.700 There's no God above involved in the creation of the United States.

00:13:33.660 I think that's exactly wrong.

00:13:34.920 And I think that Joseph de Maistre is exactly right about this.

00:13:39.000 Not only, you know, the United States might not be unique in this fact because it's not the only, it's not the one divine constitution.

00:13:46.660 But in fact, all constitutions are divinely inspired in so much as they are written unto the hearts of the people by God.

00:13:55.020 People don't come up with their own folk ways or traditions or ways of being.

00:13:58.980 God creates them that way.

00:14:00.600 I think what Curtis Yarvin was trying to say, what would have been better if he would have said, is that the United States Constitution was particular to its people.

00:14:09.820 And it's not unique that the people had a constitution particular to them.

00:14:14.320 There are constitutions that are particular to the many different peoples of the world.

00:14:19.440 And, you know, their ways are encoded in their, the structures of their government, governments very often.

00:14:26.180 And that is, that is an effect of, you know, the divine inspiration being, you know, basically carried out through people being gifted with different traditions and ways of being.

00:14:38.480 And that's reflected in the United States Constitution, just like it's reflected in other constitutions.

00:14:43.900 And so I think it would have been far better for Yarvin to have said, you know, that the United States Constitution is particular to its people.

00:14:50.780 And in that way, it is divinely inspired that there is a direction for the people.

00:14:56.120 There's a way of being that is correct for the people rather than just saying, oh, well, you know, no, there is none of this is the case.

00:15:03.260 And, you know, you could have just swapped it out for anything.

00:15:06.420 You know, it's all, there is no direction for the American people.

00:15:09.720 There is no specific way of being for the American people.

00:15:12.200 I think that's a failure of Yarvin's.

00:15:13.680 I think he's wrong about that.

00:15:14.820 And I think that leads him to bad conclusions often because he treats people as interchangeable widgets in many ways.

00:15:22.520 He's not a blank slatist as much as your average liberal.

00:15:25.920 He doesn't go that far.

00:15:27.520 You know, he said, you know, the American Constitution probably wouldn't work very well in Haiti.

00:15:30.580 And he's very right about that.

00:15:32.440 And so in that way, he's not.

00:15:35.040 But in some ways, he's still, because he's too materialistic, is maybe only caught up in genetics or IQ or something and doesn't recognize the role that I think the divine, the metaphysical, does actually play in the directions of peoples and histories and constitutions.

00:15:52.320 And so I think that is a failure on his part.

00:15:54.100 And I think it's something that Rufo rightly hits him on several times.

00:15:57.780 So I want to make it clear that while I'm going to probably spend the rest of this siding with a lot of what Yarvin said or some of the problems he pointed out more accurately, I did agree with Rufo on several things.

00:16:11.580 And this is something he rightly hits Yarvin on on a regular basis.

00:16:14.680 So, you know, credit to him.

00:16:16.840 And this is something that I think Yarvin falls flat on.

00:16:19.980 All right.

00:16:20.320 So what do I think he was right about?

00:16:24.580 Where did Curtis Yarvin make good points?

00:16:27.680 Or more importantly, where did he point out, I think, flaws with some of the things that Rufo was trying to do?

00:16:34.920 So one of the things that Curtis Yarvin said was that the Founding Fathers did not figure out some unique principle of human governance.

00:16:46.560 And I think that's true.

00:16:48.180 And that's going to be angry.

00:16:49.760 That's going to anger some people.

00:16:51.160 Some conservatives are not going to like that.

00:16:53.020 But I don't think that the Founding Fathers created some new and really important piece of political technology.

00:17:04.940 And the reason I think it's important to recognize that is that a main problem that Rufo has in this debate, and I think a main problem that really hits the wider conservative movement, is the idea that the Founding Fathers solved politics.

00:17:20.320 That they figured out something that no one else had figured out.

00:17:24.460 And once they figured out this issue, it really solved all politics going forward.

00:17:29.940 Now, in the debate, Rufo specifically says that the Founding Fathers revolutionized politics by solving the kind of classical, the core problem that kind of the philosophers of antiquity could not solve when it came to political theory, political science.

00:17:48.640 I don't think that's true.

00:18:18.620 Now, I read this several times, and I did not see that.

00:18:24.100 Maybe I'm just blind.

00:18:25.060 Maybe I'm missing it.

00:18:26.420 Maybe he did mention it somewhere.

00:18:28.240 I didn't actually control off the document.

00:18:30.020 Maybe I should have.

00:18:31.380 But from what I can see there, he didn't say that.

00:18:35.400 Maybe that's what he meant, or maybe he thought that was somehow obvious and implied.

00:18:38.800 Maybe I'm just, maybe, you know, I'm ignorant, and I didn't know that that was the obvious conclusion from what he said.

00:18:44.220 I'll give him credit where it's due, if that's the case.

00:18:47.820 But from what I can tell, that's really not what he said.

00:18:50.600 But let's assume that's what he meant, because he did correct that.

00:18:53.160 And so maybe he meant that they just solved the problem of scarcity.

00:18:58.400 And he was very clear that he meant material scarcity later on in other comments he made in Twitter.

00:19:04.000 So that's confusing to me.

00:19:06.980 I don't think anything in the Constitution solves the problem of scarcity.

00:19:13.820 So what Rufo went on to explain was that he meant that the magic of mixed government is the thing that the founders solved.

00:19:25.060 Now, mixed government's not new.

00:19:27.000 He rightly points that it goes all the way back to Aristotle, at least.

00:19:31.400 And so the idea that a mixed constitution would, you know, be the most stable form of government is not new.

00:19:39.280 And so you can't say that that's new to the founders, because it's been around for a very long time.

00:19:44.560 They were themselves drawing that from Baron de Montesquieu.

00:19:48.780 So obviously it's not new to them, even if you want to exclude the long history of it in antiquity.

00:19:55.400 But he said basically the prosperity allowed for a large middle class.

00:20:00.600 And so the large middle class is what made mixed government more effective than it had ever been.

00:20:06.840 Okay.

00:20:07.820 We will.

00:20:08.960 I think there are, again, some problems with that assertion.

00:20:11.800 But even if we follow that logic, that doesn't quite make sense.

00:20:15.620 Because the idea that the founders created prosperity, they solved the problem of scarcity, just isn't true.

00:20:26.440 The United States had a lot of things going for it.

00:20:29.460 It was relatively isolated due to many of the historical realities around the founding of the United States.

00:20:37.100 Many European powers were unable to probably defend their colonies the way that they wanted to.

00:20:44.320 Obviously, this helps the United States in its own revolution.

00:20:47.580 Assistance from the French and the fact that the British were busy elsewhere meant that the United States probably got away with fighting a much easier war than it otherwise would have.

00:20:55.600 And then because many other European powers were otherwise involved in the United States was useful to them in many ways.

00:21:04.060 They sold off different colonies to the United States.

00:21:07.380 We got the Louisiana Purchase.

00:21:08.900 And many other things that were owned by foreign powers came under the control of the United States.

00:21:15.640 And the fact that we had a large untamed wilderness and a large amount of land for people to settle on created an amazing amount of economic opportunity for a lot of people.

00:21:27.100 Well, I guess you could grant some of that to the Constitution, you could say maybe the brilliance of federalism allowed these places to rule themselves more efficiently and that allowed expansion at a rate that otherwise wouldn't be the case.

00:21:42.500 I guess I'm not sure that that's true, that that's unique to the American Constitution, but if we're going for the sake of argument, okay, I can give you some of this.

00:21:53.380 But to be clear, like the true middle class boom, like the one that most people think about today, really comes from the Industrial Revolution and more importantly, the Americas more or less conquest of the world after World War II.

00:22:08.800 The fact that we kind of became the world hegemon with only really the Soviet Union as any kind of challenge was really, you know, and the fact that we kind of rebuilt Europe and everything was where a lot of the things that people think of as the middle class came from.

00:22:24.440 Maybe Rufo was talking about beforehand, you know, and again, I want to give him as much credit as possible here.

00:22:31.260 But I really do think that it's a difficult case to say that the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, their political system solved the issue there of the middle class.

00:22:43.800 But I think the problems with that go even deeper because even if we're, we'll look and see that, you know, they created abundance and this solved the problem of scarcity and this created the middle class and that middle class pressure is what created, you know, kind of the...

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00:23:17.860 The mixed constitution there.

00:23:22.360 We'll say that that's accurate for a second.

00:23:25.660 The problem, again, with this is that the beauty of the mixed constitution comes in that different social forces push against each other. 0.95

00:23:35.560 This is a common misconception when people look at the, you know, Baron de Montesquieu and the separation of powers.

00:23:44.900 The idea that we'd have checks and balances and separation of powers.

00:23:48.760 They think that, well, because we have three branches of governments and they check and balance each other, that's what actually creates the beauty of mixed government.

00:23:56.260 That's what the Federalist papers were talking about in Federalist 51 when Mattis is talking about how power will check power.

00:24:05.520 That comes from the, you know, the kind of political tripod of the American constitution.

00:24:12.080 But that's not right.

00:24:13.960 That's not accurate.

00:24:14.900 But what Montesquieu was trying to say is that different social spheres, different social interests are what create this mixed government.

00:24:25.640 What actually limits government, and I think this is correct.

00:24:29.660 Bertrand de Juvenal talks a lot about this when he talks about the metaphysics of power in his book on power.

00:24:35.280 Is that the different social spheres, the regional spheres, the spheres of the nobility, the church, the merchant, the commoner, you know, the different tribes, the different regions, they all push against each other.

00:24:49.680 And this is the actual limitation of government.

00:24:52.180 Nothing about words on paper in a constitution actually limit a government.

00:24:56.360 What limits government power is that there are different forces in society that demand your loyalty, your money, your time.

00:25:05.880 And so there's only so much that the actual central official government can demand from you.

00:25:10.940 And as long as there are robust opposing social spheres, the government can't consolidate itself.

00:25:17.840 It can't become the total state because you've got all these different competing interests in your society that push against each other.

00:25:25.260 I think there's a, and this is a, I think, again, a very American failure is the idea that it's all just about money, right?

00:25:33.000 That, well, if you just have a burgeoning middle class, if you have a large middle class, then, you know, because of their economic interests, they'll push against each other.

00:25:42.500 That's true to some degree, but it's not just about economic interests.

00:25:46.300 That's really critical, and I think, again, I think it's a really big failure of the United States to think of class only as a economic factor.

00:25:55.420 So, well, oh, you have a middle class, and because of their income is in a particular, you know, bracket, then they'll push against, you know, the other interests.

00:26:05.040 Well, that's kind of true, but it's not a stable solution.

00:26:09.420 It doesn't actually create a long-term solution.

00:26:12.380 And the problem with this, and this is well outlined by Gitano Mosca in his works, is that what happens is, especially with the rise of the mass man, mass production, mass consumption, and most importantly, mass media, the ability to indoctrinate people, you get a phenomenon where, especially in a society with a democratic mechanism,

00:26:36.380 the incentive structure is always to go ahead and increase the ability of people to vote, to expand the franchise.

00:26:46.660 And as you expand the franchise, the reason for, you know, for people to participate becomes their ability to basically vote themselves stuff.

00:26:55.780 And, you know, this is hardly a new insight.

00:26:57.860 You can trace this back to democracy in America, to Tocqueville.

00:27:04.320 But the ability to give the vote to people who are then going to support you because you give them stuff is a key weakness to democracy.

00:27:13.060 And so even if the mixed government was something that was properly built in by the founders, and it is a unique political technology, which I really don't think it is, but even if it was, the problem is inside their own structure, they put like the seeds of its own destruction. 0.99

00:27:34.740 There was basically a ticking time bomb at the heart of the American governmental system in that you had an incentive structure that would ultimately destroy the mixed government itself because as the ability of money to influence election rises, the power of oligarchs dominates. 0.92

00:27:55.600 Oligarchs are the ones that can control the media. 1.00

00:27:57.940 They're the ones that can provide benefits.

00:27:59.420 They're the ones that can control large systems and managerial structures to manipulate voting outcomes.

00:28:05.500 And so what we see in America over time is the expansion of the franchise, but also the amount of the government that's moved into the democratic sphere.

00:28:15.780 Originally, you only had one half, one third of the government being elected by the people, and the number of people who had the franchise was very small.

00:28:23.580 But slowly, we had the direct election of senators, and more and more of the executive branch was moved into the deep state or the unelected bureaucracy, which is largely funded by Congress.

00:28:36.380 So the democratic mechanism expands there.

00:28:39.320 We see the erosion of kind of senatorial independence.

00:28:43.660 We see the erosion of judiciary, the independence of judiciary.

00:28:48.100 There's a reason that today Congress is constantly, you know, Democrats are constantly threatening to, you know, pack the court, and they're sending protesters.

00:28:56.940 The White House is sending protesters to, you know, stand illegally on the lawns of justices.

00:29:03.460 They're trying to use the democratic process to intimidate the branches that are supposed to push back against.

00:29:09.760 And so because I don't think America had a robust understanding of kind of different classes and interests and regional interests and these kind of things, or more importantly, that that understanding eroded over time, I think the ability of the mixed government to actually limit the power of the state has dissolved itself. 0.94

00:29:29.560 And when I brought this up to Rufo, he said, well, yeah, other people have made that argument.

00:29:34.060 Deneen has made that argument.

00:29:35.580 You know, Gottfried has made that argument.

00:29:36.900 There's probably some merit to it, but I don't think it's insurmountable.

00:29:40.160 And my question would be, why?

00:29:42.640 Actually, it looks very insurmountable.

00:29:44.620 In fact, the trend line looks like we're going this way, you know, throughout history.

00:29:50.620 Every bit of American history has been moving this direction.

00:29:54.420 So why would this be insurmountable?

00:29:57.280 In fact, if there's one core problem, it might be this, right?

00:30:01.420 I agree that mixed government does actually limit the expansion of the state, but it doesn't do that if you have a mechanism built into it, which inevitably, you know, dissolves the very spheres that make mixed government possible.

00:30:16.800 And so I think this is a critical flaw in what Rufo was saying.

00:30:20.860 And I think Yarvin is correct to point out that, you know, the founders did not solve this problem.

00:30:26.720 That is not the case.

00:30:28.040 And pretending that they did is what I think turns the conservative movement into basically this captured, controlled opposition, because they just assume that these problems are fixed in perpetuity and we just need.

00:30:41.320 So, you know, it's basically this is the conservative version of the end of history.

00:30:45.480 The problem of politics has been solved.

00:30:47.320 We already know the best system.

00:30:48.780 We already know that there's no problems here.

00:30:50.520 And so really, we just we just need to be more vigilant.

00:30:54.140 So, you know, you know, adjust some things here and there.

00:30:56.140 And that problem, you know, will be resolved ultimately.

00:30:58.900 And this leads conservatives to never look outside of kind of this this explanation for solutions or problems, because all their political thought is contained inside this assumption that the founders have already decided on the best system of government.

00:31:14.140 And there's some other flaws here, too.

00:31:17.180 For instance, you know, the idea that the government was solved.

00:31:21.960 And we all we have to do is kind of look at the history of the United States and pretend like pretending like there's some kind of system that that has fixed, you know, how we resolve conflict in the political arena inside the United States.

00:31:36.120 It's just it's just wrong on its face.

00:31:38.760 If you look what happened, you know, the United States had a revolution, broke away from England, instituted the Articles of Confederation.

00:31:46.560 It only took a couple of years before the Articles of Confederation didn't seem to really work.

00:31:51.720 And most importantly, the elites of the country decided to go ahead and dissolve the Articles without doing what the Articles said you needed to do to dissolve them is basically a coup against the Articles of Confederation and without going through the process of getting rid of the Articles.

00:32:07.320 And they just went ahead and created a new government and came up with new rules as to how that was going to work.

00:32:12.460 And when it came to resolving conflicts inside the United States, you had a number of crises, including things like the, you know, the the well now I'm going to escape me, but where, you know, states didn't have to approve different parts of the Constitution or they didn't have to pay attention to different parts of the Constitution.

00:32:37.760 There were many different questions as to whether the states had to follow different, the annulment crisis, I believe.

00:32:44.820 But there were many different questions as to whether the United States, the different states were actually going to have to follow the Constitution that way.

00:32:53.240 There are multiple rebellions.

00:32:54.800 There's Shays' Rebellion, which is what led to the Constitution in the first place. 1.00

00:32:58.060 You have the Whiskey Rebellion.

00:32:59.580 There are multiple times where the United States, you know, the question was, do the states, do the citizens get to make decisions?

00:33:05.860 And the answer was, no, actually, the central government is going to decide for you.

00:33:10.940 And, you know, even if we say that those, you know, like 75 years went went relatively fine when it came to conflict resolution, there was still one big conflict that we couldn't resolve.

00:33:22.320 And we had a civil war about it.

00:33:24.380 And the way we had a civil war about it is Abraham Lincoln imported a large amount of foreigners, especially from Ireland, to go shoot at his countrymen, shutting down newspapers, throwing journalists in jail, shutting down state legislatures, you know.

00:33:40.600 A lot of things that would violate the very conflict resolution mechanism outlined inside the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

00:33:48.960 And that's how we resolved that.

00:33:50.660 And then there was a, you know, military occupation of the South for a long time.

00:33:55.320 And I guess what I'm saying is we just got really good at explaining why we basically have a large shift, a revolutionary shift in government every 50 to 75 years in the United States, FDR, the Civil Rights Act.

00:34:10.380 And these are, you know, devastating changes to the basic system that the founders put in place.

00:34:19.520 And we just pretend that they aren't and pretend like there's this continuity of government that, you know, was solved by, like, the system of the founders.

00:34:28.380 When just kind of a very brief and honest look at the American history shows that's not the case.

00:34:34.180 Now, again, this is not a problem with the United States.

00:34:37.260 This is what happens to every country.

00:34:39.380 We're not unique in this.

00:34:41.320 But Yarvin is right to point out that the United States does not solve the problem of conflict resolution inside, you know, political systems.

00:34:49.520 We did not get rid of the political.

00:34:51.720 And I think ultimately Chris Rufo is embracing, you know, a narrative of liberalism that is untrue.

00:35:02.620 There's a couple other problems.

00:35:04.140 Yarvin correctly points out, you know, some of the tactics that Rufo is suggesting.

00:35:11.140 Yarvin says, you know, well, what do you want to do to make it, you know, your plan is to make it illegal to be racist to white people, to, you know, treat them badly.

00:35:19.580 Well, great.

00:35:19.900 We already have that law.

00:35:21.020 It's called the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

00:35:23.220 And he's right to point that out.

00:35:25.980 The law is on the books.

00:35:27.260 It simply isn't treated that way.

00:35:29.280 So the idea that just passing the law fixes the problem is not the case.

00:35:33.640 And to be clear, Rufo isn't even on board with repealing that.

00:35:37.880 He's made that very clear.

00:35:38.860 That's a disagreement that we've had.

00:35:40.280 He wants to keep, you know, the civil rights infrastructure in place.

00:35:44.700 So he's not even willing to go as far as the thing Yarvin points out doesn't actually solve the problem.

00:35:51.380 And so I think that's a pretty relevant point.

00:35:55.560 There's also a problem, a couple other problems.

00:35:58.960 There's a problem of scale.

00:36:00.100 So one of the things that doesn't get addressed and really needs to is the problem of scaling things up.

00:36:07.880 When the United States was founded, it was obviously 13 colonies.

00:36:11.560 It's much smaller than it is now.

00:36:13.480 And it expanded out to a continent-wide empire.

00:36:18.200 Sorry, if you conquer an entire continent, taking multiple things from multiple countries, you're an empire.

00:36:23.440 And then it went beyond the continent and expanded into a global empire.

00:36:30.700 And we certainly continue to operate a global empire today.

00:36:34.900 And the problem is assuming that the same system that works for 13 colonies of people who are largely from similar places and speak a similar language and have a similar culture and traditions,

00:36:49.700 though there was still a lot of diversity in the United States starting out to some degree.

00:36:55.240 Not what people mean by diversity today, but there was.

00:36:59.000 People were not all from the same part of Europe and they had different, mainly Protestant, but often even differences in Protestant beliefs and folkways in that way.

00:37:10.760 But there's a big difference between trying to make those 13 colonies work and trying to make a continental or then global empire work.

00:37:19.700 And the same system of governments that works for those 13 colonies, by definition, cannot work for a global empire.

00:37:27.160 It can't.

00:37:28.220 It can't work on many levels.

00:37:29.900 And I'm not just saying that because I'm some weird reactionary right-wing guy.

00:37:33.560 That's what the founders said.

00:37:35.700 The founders were very specific about who the Constitution was for.

00:37:39.360 They had to have a specific belief system.

00:37:42.000 They had to have a specific set of traditions.

00:37:44.100 And they had to have a shared goal, a shared moral understanding of where things are going to go.

00:37:51.560 That's not universal.

00:37:53.040 That's particular.

00:37:54.200 And you can't just scale that infinitely.

00:37:57.060 And this is, I think, a huge danger in the idea that the founders solved politics or even that they solved a single core problem of politics because it leads us to this idea that, well, the system is solved, so we can just go on forever.

00:38:13.000 It can just go every single country can be brought under liberal democracy and they can all be part of the American empire.

00:38:20.260 No, they can't.

00:38:21.360 And you can't keep the same system from a set of 13 colonies on the east coast of the United States all the way to a globe-spanning empire.

00:38:31.660 It doesn't work.

00:38:33.080 And, again, we have evidence of this.

00:38:35.280 You can look at Rome and other republics have become empires.

00:38:41.040 They change the way they're governed.

00:38:42.800 This is not new.

00:38:44.100 This is not – and I'm sorry, but the founders did not solve this problem.

00:38:48.000 They didn't solve the problem of scale.

00:38:50.760 And so when you don't factor in the problem of scale and you say, oh, well, we can just return to the founding.

00:38:56.440 Well, no, you can't because you don't have the country that the founders had.

00:39:00.500 You just don't.

00:39:01.980 You don't have the logistics.

00:39:03.760 You don't have the culture.

00:39:04.780 You don't have the people.

00:39:06.000 You don't have any of it.

00:39:07.300 And so pretending that you do and pretending the dynamics stay the same is, I think, a critical failure.

00:39:13.520 There probably is a version of the American constitutional republic that works for the people it's intended to work for and for the scale at which it was intended to work.

00:39:24.620 But it cannot work infinitely, and it cannot work for all people, and it cannot work for a global empire.

00:39:30.900 It simply is – that's not the case.

00:39:32.440 And so if your only plan is to go back to the founding, but you don't plan to scale down the empire, you don't plan to go back – I mean, and let's be honest.

00:39:44.580 We're not going back to the founding anyway.

00:39:46.760 Like, most Americans, most conservatives would not go back to the founding fathers America.

00:39:52.700 They wouldn't.

00:39:53.540 They would think that it's abhorrent.

00:39:55.020 They would find many restrictions and many things about the founders America very difficult for them to square with their current understanding of America.

00:40:06.140 And so that's just not happening.

00:40:08.160 And so I think Yarvin is right to point out that, unfortunately, Rufo is ultimately investing in a very modern conservative narrative about a history that simply does not exist and about a political system that simply does not exist and cannot be applied to America as it stands.

00:40:30.720 I think there is a problem of scale in the United States.

00:40:33.500 I don't know that the global American empire is going to continue.

00:40:36.840 I don't think that it's sustainable, and I don't think that we're going to make it sustainable by just going back to the founding.

00:40:44.900 I don't think that the founders created the system to govern the kind of country we have now, and I think that they were very explicit about that.

00:40:55.960 I mean, look, if you want to read the Federalist Papers, it's all there.

00:40:59.580 Again, you don't need some kind of edgy, crazy, right-wing political theory to see the problems here.

00:41:05.060 The founders were talking about the dangers of a standing army.

00:41:08.480 You can read in the Federalist Papers where Madison, in multiple Federalist Papers, is trying to calm people's fears because there were multiple states, multiple colonies that had in their individual constitutions warnings against standing armies.

00:41:23.380 And he said, look, I understand your concern about standing armies, and so that's why you need to grant the power of the militia to the federal government so that they don't need a standing army.

00:41:33.400 See, we can avoid having standing armies by creating a reliable federal access to militia, and then you don't have to worry about that.

00:41:42.620 Imagine applying any of that today.

00:41:44.380 You can't run a global empire on a federal militia, right?

00:41:50.440 The things the founders were talking about in the Federalist Papers don't scale.

00:41:55.140 They don't work with the country we have now.

00:41:58.020 Sorry, that's just the case.

00:41:59.920 And again, if you look at many of Rufo's responses to the fact that the Constitution was admittedly written for a specific people or morally religious people, founded on a Christian idea, sharing a culture and tradition, he admits this, but he never addresses that fact when he then talks about going back to the founding.

00:42:21.560 Oh, we'll just use the same tools that the founders did.

00:42:24.080 Well, why would you think that would work?

00:42:25.620 Because they explicitly told you it won't work.

00:42:27.820 And then this is my problem.

00:42:30.100 Now, that doesn't mean that Yarvin's solutions are universally great or even, unfortunately, that Yarvin's solutions are even present in many cases.

00:42:38.480 There is very clearly a lack of we can't currently get to where Yarvin would want to be from here at the moment anyway.

00:42:46.220 There's no practical resolution there, even if Yarvin's solutions are the best, which I think they aren't.

00:42:51.900 I think that, again, there are critical failures in Yarvin's analysis as well.

00:42:56.540 The fact that he's hyper-materialistic, the fact that he is too invested in the eternal dominance of the managerial state, the fact that he himself doesn't seem to factor in scale as a problem.

00:43:09.800 So these problems are not unique to Rufo's argument.

00:43:13.500 However, I do think the core problem that Yarvin brought up against Rufo is legitimate.

00:43:21.620 And that problem is that his history and understanding about the United States is one that is a relatively modern creation.

00:43:32.300 And I think that the founders did create something that is unique and important, but it is particularly unique and important by the universal realization about political power.

00:43:46.600 I think Demetra is right that the Constitution is written down to the hearts of the people.

00:43:52.020 And they wrote something that worked for the people of the time and the size and the scope and the traditions and the folkways of the people of the time of the United States.

00:44:01.900 It's a beautiful system in that way.

00:44:03.720 But I think that we have disembodied it from the people and the tradition it was founded in.

00:44:10.000 And that is the core failing that I think we have when we try to just apply that system to the situation we're in now.

00:44:19.980 If you want to go back to American founding, you probably have to go back to those conditions of the American founding.

00:44:27.020 And that's a lot harder.

00:44:28.700 And so I don't think you're probably going to see anyone trying to actually make that work.

00:44:35.420 So those are my thoughts, guys.

00:44:37.540 Again, I have tremendous appreciation for both these guys.

00:44:41.340 I think ultimately both of them are good actors.

00:44:44.000 I think both of them are smart.

00:44:45.520 I think both of them are doing good work.

00:44:47.040 I think they both have valuable roles to play.

00:44:49.660 And whatever criticisms I might have, and I'm sure they'll have criticisms of me, I think that ultimately it's important for us to continue to have these discussions and work together, push in the same direction as much as possible.

00:45:05.500 Because there is ultimately, I think, a necessity for the United States to realize the position that it's in.

00:45:16.160 And Rufo is taking a very active role in that.

00:45:19.140 Yarvin is taking a very kind of theoretical, abstract role in that.

00:45:25.720 But both of them are probably going to be essential to get people to understand kind of what time it is and how important it is to resolve many of these issues.

00:45:33.820 Because if you don't, things are only going to continue to become more difficult for people in the United States.

00:45:40.280 All right.

00:45:40.580 There are a lot of questions of the people.

00:45:43.020 So I should probably go ahead and get started here.

00:45:46.160 All right.

00:45:53.060 Creeper Weirder says,

00:45:54.860 Oren, your haircut is bad and the things that you say are cringe.

00:45:58.080 Nobody trusts you and the fact that you changed the music posters behind your wall is really annoying.

00:46:02.360 Do you agree with my politics?

00:46:04.060 No, yes.

00:46:04.880 Yeah, I think you may be mimicking Yarvin's attempt.

00:46:09.060 Don't insult the rock posters, though.

00:46:10.500 Don't insult the metal posters, but they're vinyl album covers, by the way, not posters.

00:46:15.800 But yeah, I think that is Yarvin's approach.

00:46:20.700 And fortunately, it's not a particularly great one when it comes to being persuasive.

00:46:25.200 So let's see.

00:46:29.520 Nerve AMV maker says, it's worth noting that the founders wouldn't believe you could return to the founding Madison and Jefferson.

00:46:37.720 Believe the Republic would end once cities took over.

00:46:41.700 Read The Elusive Republic by McCoy.

00:46:43.820 I've not read that book, but yeah, I think, you know, that this dovetails with a lot of what I was saying.

00:46:49.220 We often, you know, and it's understandable, but we often pretend like the founders understood that they were just creating this.

00:46:59.820 They were enshrining this eternal city, right?

00:47:02.880 That the 2,000 years of the United States dominance would come.

00:47:09.260 They did not.

00:47:10.760 They understood that the Republic was a fragile thing.

00:47:13.500 They understood that it had very particular limits and could easily fall apart.

00:47:18.440 They did not think that they had created some, you know, solution to the political problem of the ages that would endure through everything and would never need to be altered or changed.

00:47:31.900 Again, to refer to Joseph de Maestra, he says, look, the Constitution will change as the people change.

00:47:39.460 And there is no eternal Constitution for the same reason that there is no fixed state of people.

00:47:45.120 Now, to be fair, Rufo, you know, in some of the exchanges on Twitter acknowledge that, yeah, of course, you know, things are not completely solved and there will always be, you know, certain things that we have to be vigilant about and we have to, you know, we have to adapt to.

00:48:00.520 But there does seem to be a core belief that, you know, you simply cannot look at the structure of the government of the United States and understand that there may be issues there with our current situation.

00:48:13.300 And I think that is a failure, ultimately.

00:48:16.320 I think the founding fathers knew this in a way that for some reason, modern conservatives don't. 0.98

00:48:22.100 Tiny Stupid Demon says, I don't care what anyone says. 0.97

00:48:25.060 Your wall albums and covers and good morning tweets are the main place for my aging boomer metal head self discovers new metal bands.

00:48:31.780 Well, thank you very much, man.

00:48:32.860 I enjoy that.

00:48:34.280 I very much enjoy listening to metal.

00:48:36.380 I enjoy sharing that stuff.

00:48:38.140 And I am glad that you appreciate it.

00:48:40.980 Uh, Curver Weirdo says, uh, I think I get why Yarvin annoyed me with this debate.

00:48:46.700 Rufo is being a lion.

00:48:48.300 Yarvin is being a fox.

00:48:49.720 Also, Paw Patrol, politics, a thing, uh, do it.

00:48:53.500 Yeah.

00:48:53.960 So, uh, I wouldn't say that Rufo is being a lion.

00:48:57.400 A lion is, uh, to be very clear, a specific, uh, one of, and, and actually we're still, but we're borrowing language from Machiavelli to explain Pareto because Pareto uses, uh, residues, uh,

00:49:10.800 and derivations, which are not as catchy a term.

00:49:13.520 So we stuck with foxes and lions.

00:49:15.800 However, um, the, the lion is a, is a, is a martial character.

00:49:20.720 It is someone who is physical.

00:49:22.120 Now I would say that, uh, in this case, Rufo is being far closer to a lion and Yarvin is being far closer to Fox.

00:49:29.980 But I want to be clear that Rufo is still very much playing the Fox game.

00:49:34.020 Uh, he is involved in language manipulation.

00:49:35.840 He's involved in propaganda.

00:49:37.400 These are Fox strategies. 0.88

00:49:39.580 Uh, if Rufo was putting tanks in Harvard yard, uh, then we could talk about how Rufo was deploying lion strategies, but, uh, I don't think that's the case.

00:49:48.140 However, I also found Yarvin's tactics distasteful in this debate and it's easy to sympathize with Rufo simply on that.

00:49:56.640 Uh, so, uh, Cooper Weird also says not to be cross, but if Rufo were to go to Yarvin in that way, Yarvin went to Rufo, it would have been, you're a part of the tribe.

00:50:07.000 Yeah, no, there, there could have been, uh, a lot of insults to be sure.

00:50:11.700 Um, and wouldn't that have been cringe?

00:50:14.320 I'll be honest.

00:50:15.300 I mean, if, if Yarvin had talked to me like that in public, I would have had a difficult time.

00:50:20.300 Uh, you know, those, those could have been fighting words.

00:50:23.620 That's a very condescending way.

00:50:25.140 Like I said, his, his behavior was, was unnecessary.

00:50:27.840 Uh, but, uh, you know, that's not really material to the points made in the debate ultimately, even though it's very off-putting and, and certainly doesn't speak well.

00:50:38.940 I think of, of Curtis's approach there.

00:50:41.720 Paladin YYZ says the founding is a progressive folk band based in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

00:50:47.460 I thought Rufo and Yarvin used to play this, uh, for Saxon.

00:50:51.380 Maybe it was a metal church.

00:50:53.240 Did they start a new band anyway?

00:50:55.100 Great show.

00:50:55.640 And yes, I appreciate your many, uh, metal references.

00:50:58.980 Uh, perhaps, you know, we can get Rufo and Yarvin to heal, uh, by forming a folk or power metal band.

00:51:05.000 I think that would ultimately be, uh, perhaps the way to bring them together.

00:51:08.960 The power of metal to heal, uh, all I think might, might be the solution here.

00:51:14.060 Uh, uh, Danny DeWitt said, or Donnie DeWitt said,

00:51:17.460 Rufo lost when he tried to claim that the leftists were the only, were only invented after the

00:51:22.400 French revolution, thus pointing to clearly leftist traits and behaviors from before the

00:51:27.100 revolution is invalid.

00:51:28.440 Yeah.

00:51:28.680 So, uh, this is something I didn't get into, but it's a, it's a good point.

00:51:32.860 Uh, so Rufo, uh, so Yarvin says that basically the left, all of American history is left-wing

00:51:39.780 history because it starts in revolution is pushing it back against the monarchy.

00:51:44.220 Therefore, everything that the Americans were doing were leftist.

00:51:47.740 And to be fair, he makes some very good points about the fact that like, um, you know, you,

00:51:51.780 you think that MLK was a right-winger, but then you discover that actually he was very

00:51:56.280 much a left-winger.

00:51:57.100 He would have hated modern conservatives, but for some reason, conservatives still, you

00:52:01.060 know, keep, keep that myth alive about how conservative MLK was, but that's only because 1.00

00:52:05.420 in comparison, uh, to, you know, I don't know, some gender theorists today, maybe, uh, he's

00:52:11.080 too right-wing for them.

00:52:12.440 Uh, but, uh, you know, Yarvin makes the point that basically America was always left-wing.

00:52:17.660 And so the idea that you're going to have a right-wing like counter-revolution, no, you're,

00:52:22.320 you're, you're just like your counter-revolution at best would lead you back to the leftist

00:52:25.600 revolution of the United States.

00:52:26.900 I think that's a little far.

00:52:28.580 Uh, but I, I think there are points there.

00:52:30.880 Uh, Rufo, uh, kind of countered by saying, oh, well, you're imposition of the ideas of

00:52:36.600 the left and the right, the ideological left and right there is all is a problem because

00:52:41.560 those terms are created with, you know, kind of the tennis court oath and the French revolution.

00:52:46.060 And that's where that comes from.

00:52:47.540 And so you're projecting that backwards onto these events where they're not really relevant.

00:52:51.800 Uh, that, I think that's in some sense true.

00:52:55.040 Um, but it also avoids, uh, kind of the problems that you're pointing out, uh, Mr. DeWitt.

00:53:01.320 Ultimately, I think the problem is, uh, I think there is a problem of, uh, ideology here.

00:53:06.740 Uh, again, if you believe that constitutions and governments should be created for the benefits

00:53:11.560 of their people, then it doesn't matter if an idea is left or right.

00:53:14.780 It matters if it's good for the people or not.

00:53:16.380 Um, and if your idea is that, uh, you have these solutions in the abstract, then you start

00:53:23.500 running into problems.

00:53:24.700 Like I think both Rufo and Yarvin fall into where Yarvin's ideas will all right-wing system

00:53:30.720 analysis is correct.

00:53:31.980 And so all you need to do is impose a more right-wing system onto any group of people and

00:53:36.200 it solves the problem.

00:53:37.660 And Rufo's analysis of like, well, um, you know, the disembodied, uh, you know, uh, kind

00:53:43.740 of spirit of America's ideology solves, you know, the, the political situation.

00:53:49.720 And so you can just apply the founding fathers principles to any time and place at all moments

00:53:54.940 and that's in all peoples.

00:53:56.700 And that solves the problem.

00:53:57.700 And that's not true either.

00:53:58.840 I think the problem for both men is, is, uh, disassociating, uh, their ideologies from

00:54:05.440 particular needs and particular peoples of particular times.

00:54:09.160 And when you do that, you end up in the situation where I think both of them made good points

00:54:13.860 against each other and neither of them actually got to the real problem there.

00:54:17.720 Uh, let's see, uh, laws of like Hergis says, thanks for all your hard work, Oren.

00:54:22.120 You're a true patron.

00:54:23.160 Well, thank you very much, man.

00:54:24.120 I appreciate your guys support.

00:54:26.060 Uh, it, it really is amazing that I get to do this on a regular basis. 0.99

00:54:30.840 Uh, the tiny stupid demon says the first lesson of economic scarcity is there's never enough 0.99

00:54:35.560 of anything to satisfy everyone. 1.00

00:54:37.160 The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

00:54:44.800 That's exactly right.

00:54:46.100 Especially when it comes to democracy.

00:54:49.440 Sorry.

00:54:50.120 In a democracy, the incentive is always to buy votes with stuff.

00:54:54.280 Sorry.

00:54:54.900 The history of democracy is the history of buying votes with stuff.

00:54:57.760 That's all there is to it.

00:54:59.080 And, uh, the more fractured and diverse your, uh, your democratic polity becomes, uh, the more

00:55:05.860 this becomes a game of identity politics, uh, and, uh, definitely not what's good for a

00:55:11.400 united vision of the people.

00:55:13.420 And so I think that, um, the idea, yeah, I think the idea that, uh, you know, the, the

00:55:19.420 founders solve the problem of scarcity kind of goes against basic, even like Thomas soul

00:55:24.400 level analysis of, uh, of politics.

00:55:27.400 And, uh, I think that's a problem.

00:55:29.920 Let's see.

00:55:30.560 Uh, Jarvin, uh, sorry.

00:55:32.700 Paladin YYZ says as a former victim of being constantly observed at bars by radical leftist

00:55:38.760 bartenders, bad taste left by Jarvin comes from his love of drink.

00:55:43.580 Nice play on the, uh, how he vomited, uh, bibliography.

00:55:47.880 Yeah.

00:55:48.140 Like I said, I just don't like the way that he, you know, the way that he just threw up

00:55:53.880 a bunch of references and said, well, if you haven't read these books, then it just doesn't

00:55:56.600 matter.

00:55:56.980 I think that's, that's pretty lazy.

00:55:58.480 If you don't want to involve yourself in the, in the debate or discussion, just don't

00:56:02.140 involve yourself.

00:56:02.740 There's no reason to go to kind of those very lame rhetorical tactics laws of, like

00:56:07.620 Kirkus says, Daniel Shays, uh, was more authentic than most founding fathers.

00:56:12.860 You know, Shays rebellion is a very interesting, uh, historical thing.

00:56:16.600 You know, we, we just talk about the articles of confederation, but the things that led to,

00:56:20.720 um, the Shays rebellion are really critical.

00:56:24.180 Uh, you know, the, the States could not pay off their debts.

00:56:27.540 Uh, many people will point to the inability to love the axes by the federal government.

00:56:32.720 Uh, but either way, the States were left to pay off the tech, the, the debts.

00:56:36.000 And this is what led Massachusetts to put a heavy tax on farmers.

00:56:41.040 Farmers didn't like this.

00:56:42.060 They felt like it weighed heavily on them, especially compared to the merchant class.

00:56:45.920 So you can see that merchant farmer divide, uh, right at the very beginning of the United

00:56:50.200 States, that is a real class conflict.

00:56:52.760 And that existed, uh, that many people would say that, uh, is a significant factor in the

00:56:57.900 civil war, uh, merchants versus farmers, city versus rural has always been a very critical

00:57:04.500 division in the United States.

00:57:06.120 Uh, and so the, you know, the, uh, the, the government of Massachusetts attempted to basically

00:57:11.980 extract all this money from the farmers to pay off their war debts.

00:57:14.440 Uh, and when, uh, the farmers started realizing that they could just start, uh, like strangling

00:57:20.400 the judges or the, the, the bankers who were trying to seize their property or shut down,

00:57:24.600 uh, the courts that were attempting, uh, to, uh, go ahead and seize their, you know, uh, their,

00:57:30.860 their property, uh, through these judgments, uh, the, basically the, the state had to go, uh,

00:57:36.240 hire a mercenary army to go attack, uh, the, the farmers, uh, it really kind of gives the

00:57:42.800 lie to the idea that the United States just solved this problem right away.

00:57:47.460 They really didn't.

00:57:48.680 In fact, we basically immediately taxed people way worse than the British were taxing people 0.75

00:57:53.720 in order to pay off war debts, which is why the British were taxing the United States

00:57:56.900 in the first place to pay off their war debts and the, from the French and Indian war.

00:58:00.420 So we immediately fell into the exact problem and the exact temptation that we had fought a

00:58:05.320 war to, uh, avoid.

00:58:06.580 And the reason Daniel Shea decided to go to war or start a rebellion is he said, Hey,

00:58:11.540 I just led a rebellion and I just fought in a rebellion against, uh, you know, the British

00:58:15.580 government for doing exactly what the United States government is doing now.

00:58:19.020 Why don't I just do that again?

00:58:20.760 Uh, but we don't talk about that because that kind of blows up our narrative.

00:58:24.280 So, uh, yeah, and, and I, you have been right to point that out.

00:58:28.060 Uh, like Hergis says, uh, here's a classic, uh, there's a classic American.

00:58:32.720 They have a, or sorry, there's a classic American. 0.83

00:58:35.320 They have a vision of building on an America newly arrived.

00:58:39.820 Immigrants have a vision of, uh, of a completed nation that hands out money. 1.00

00:58:43.320 Ah, okay.

00:58:43.700 I see what you're saying.

00:58:44.500 Yeah.

00:58:44.640 This is a real problem with the settlers versus immigrants, uh, distinction.

00:58:49.920 A lot of people will talk about how the United States is a nation of immigrants because

00:58:53.100 everybody came over here from somewhere else.

00:58:54.960 That's not the case.

00:58:56.320 Uh, they were as a nation of settlers first because they came here and they had to, let's

00:59:00.360 be really frank, conquer the land.

00:59:02.380 They had to take it, uh, in many cases, it wasn't occupied or well used, but, uh, in

00:59:07.160 many cases it was, and they had to conquer it from people who were here.

00:59:10.020 Uh, and after that conquest, they had to settle it.

00:59:12.400 They had to create, um, a, what would be a more European civilization in the area that

00:59:18.440 they had conquered.

00:59:19.040 Uh, that's very different from just coming over to an already built nation and saying,

00:59:22.960 Hey, I want some of what you've already got.

00:59:25.100 And, uh, you're right to draw that distinction.

00:59:26.900 It's, it's one that's not drawn enough and it really gives the lie to the, uh, the idea

00:59:31.560 of a nation of immigrants.

00:59:32.860 Uh, Cooper weirdo says just because it's your, it's your ideology doesn't mean that when you

00:59:38.140 throw it out, uh, there, you don't get, you won't sound like an idea lot.

00:59:42.120 Have a better frame, my dude.

00:59:44.940 Uh, let's see here.

00:59:46.920 George Heyduke says, uh, they're both right about each other.

00:59:50.220 Yes.

00:59:50.620 I would think that's ultimately correct.

00:59:52.120 Yarvin is content to have his side keep losing and Rufo can only tease, uh, rope from, uh,

00:59:59.840 tease a rope from the Gordian knot.

01:00:01.580 They snap at each other, uh, while also taking, uh, talking past each other.

01:00:05.940 Yeah.

01:00:06.180 I think that's a really excellent evaluation.

01:00:08.760 Uh, I like the teasing out a piece of rope from the Gordian knot, uh, Rufo is winning

01:00:14.340 real battles, but he's only attacking very, uh, you know, small parts of the problem in

01:00:19.220 an increment.

01:00:19.680 The way that Yarvin correctly points out probably is not sufficient.

01:00:22.840 Uh, but ultimately Yarvin, uh, is kind of, uh, content to not take significant action

01:00:28.300 or substantive action.

01:00:29.700 And so, uh, is ultimately probably less effective than Rufo, even if his points about Rufo are

01:00:36.040 ultimately, uh, correct.

01:00:37.540 Uh, CB says there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

01:00:40.880 If you believe we can have an actual solve politics, would you say that the founders got

01:00:44.680 close in their own time?

01:00:46.440 Uh, yeah, no, you're right that there are no solutions.

01:00:48.520 There are only trade-offs.

01:00:49.340 That's, that's a really important thing like that.

01:00:51.740 Sorry, but you did not, especially because the problem of politics is the human condition

01:00:57.260 and the human condition is unsolvable.

01:00:59.380 If you have a tragic view of human nature, which I do, especially as a Christian, then 1.00

01:01:04.500 you know that the problem of politics is unsolvable because people will always be the problem of

01:01:10.640 politics.

01:01:11.160 And because people are the problem of politics, you cannot solve politics.

01:01:15.720 Uh, do I think that they got as close as they could in their own time?

01:01:18.420 Yeah, probably.

01:01:19.540 Uh, I think that again, they, they were creating a very particular system for particular people

01:01:25.380 in a particular time.

01:01:26.500 And for that time, it had, I think some, some very good insights.

01:01:31.060 However, again, uh, the fact that it immediately fell into disarray, uh, we had to get a new

01:01:35.920 constitution, uh, and that constitution still led us to a civil war within 75 years. 0.94

01:01:41.560 You know, uh, probably, probably means that there was still some, some serious issues.

01:01:45.740 Sorry, but I'm my, my love of America comes from the people and the culture and traditions

01:01:51.200 and moral, uh, vision of America.

01:01:53.620 It doesn't come from the construction of a piece of paper.

01:01:56.580 I don't need to believe that the American constitution solved all of America or even,

01:02:02.220 you know, uh, humanity's problems, uh, to love and be proud of the United States.

01:02:07.040 And I, I hope that's true of everybody.

01:02:09.120 Uh, I hope none of us believe that the United States is a piece of paper.

01:02:12.940 Sorry, it isn't.

01:02:14.520 Um, let's see.

01:02:16.560 Uh, George Hayduke says, how, why is the American revolution, a counter revolution?

01:02:21.940 It's more like a sequel reboot of the English civil war with the U S as the round heads.

01:02:27.480 Yeah.

01:02:27.620 I, I don't understand that.

01:02:29.360 That was a very weird.

01:02:30.160 He's like, Oh, well the, the U S wrote, he said this, I didn't go into this, but he said

01:02:34.220 this in the debate, Rufo said, but the U S was more of a, the U S revolution was more

01:02:38.560 a counter revolution.

01:02:39.420 I think that's cope.

01:02:40.500 Sorry.

01:02:40.880 It was a revolution.

01:02:41.740 Uh, I think the Arvin's position that it's like all just super bad because it was a revolution

01:02:46.720 against the King.

01:02:47.360 I think that's also a bit of cope, sorry, but I believe that ultimately losers can and

01:02:51.300 do lose the mandate of heaven.

01:02:52.800 And when they do ultimately, you know, there, there is a true right of people, uh, to become

01:02:58.640 their own nation.

01:02:59.340 Um, in the same way that, uh, perhaps the United States empire has reached its kind of

01:03:04.920 end point.

01:03:05.380 The British empire was reaching a point to where it could not properly govern its people.

01:03:09.780 Uh, and so the, you know, it lost the mandate of heaven and, uh, you know, the American founders

01:03:14.780 picked it up.

01:03:15.480 Uh, and that's, that's just how these things work.

01:03:18.340 Again, when you lock yourself into ideology, Oh, I'm the good guy.

01:03:21.740 Cause I'm the revolutionary.

01:03:22.660 No, I'm the good, good guy because I'm the, I'm the, you know, uh, the monarchist or the

01:03:28.520 reactionary.

01:03:29.220 No, you're, you're the good guy because you're securing what's good for your people.

01:03:34.100 Uh, and, and that's always the solution to the ideological problem.

01:03:38.140 Uh, laws of Lycurgus says, uh, Rufo believes that when England attempted to govern the colonies,

01:03:43.780 that would be a shift in, uh, in colonial politics, which takes, uh, which he takes as

01:03:49.920 a revolution.

01:03:50.540 Yeah, fair enough.

01:03:51.720 I mean, maybe you could say, I guess that way.

01:03:54.560 I, again, I feel like at that point we're arguing over terminology that has become unuseful,

01:03:59.200 uh, because we're trying to fit things into an ideological frame.

01:04:02.840 I would ultimately agree with Rufo over Yarvin in this area.

01:04:06.820 Uh, it, like I said, I think that ultimately the British did lose the mandate of heaven

01:04:10.460 due to, uh, poor governance and a, in a shift in American identity.

01:04:15.640 Um, there was, uh, to some extent an ethnogenesis occurring, uh, that the British did not understand,

01:04:20.700 uh, and their, and their insistence on isolating, uh, Americans, uh, in some ways, uh, and trying

01:04:27.900 to tighten their grasp on them in some ways ultimately led to them losing control over

01:04:32.060 them, uh, star Wars reference in there somewhere.

01:04:34.200 I'm sure, uh, life of Brian says in, uh, 1786 ruling over, uh, 350 million people was ruling

01:04:41.220 all over the world.

01:04:41.960 And the U S is already, uh, uh, is already a world government.

01:04:46.400 Excellent points to be sure.

01:04:48.220 Uh, creeper weirdo says, uh, I can't get past the Yarvin's behavior because it feels like

01:04:53.400 he would have learned something or gone somewhere.

01:04:56.580 But Yarvin, uh, had to pwn Rufo in the cons.

01:04:59.900 So we learned nothing and got divided more.

01:05:02.500 Yeah.

01:05:02.760 I think that's a fair assessment.

01:05:04.200 Again, I still think there was plenty to learn in this debate, but it was far less productive

01:05:08.440 than it could again, could have been.

01:05:09.900 And that probably is largely due to Yarvin's approach.

01:05:13.800 Uh, let's see.

01:05:16.480 Uh, perspicacious heretic says, is it even worth having this debate in this manner? 0.65

01:05:20.640 No enemies to the right.

01:05:22.780 Uh, so I don't think.

01:05:26.580 That Rufo or Yarvin, even after a unfriendly exchange would explain each other as enemies.

01:05:34.280 I don't think that's the case.

01:05:36.080 I think they both recognize that they're on the same side.

01:05:38.420 Uh, they might disagree vehemently on certain things.

01:05:41.680 They might become unnecessarily hostile, even, uh, in a way that's unproductive, but I don't

01:05:47.400 think they would see each other as enemies.

01:05:49.380 Either way, you're right that it was, uh, probably unproductive ultimately, uh, to, uh, air

01:05:56.380 these grievances in this way.

01:05:58.400 However, um, I do think that some things were learned.

01:06:02.980 I tried to point them out as much as possible.

01:06:04.600 Hopefully we made as much positive, uh, as we could out of the, the kind of, uh, even

01:06:11.360 though this debate was very hostile, I think hopefully there at least drew as much, uh, kind

01:06:16.160 of positive understanding as we could out of, uh, an otherwise contentious debate.

01:06:20.080 All right, guys, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up.

01:06:22.820 Thank you so much for coming by.

01:06:24.960 Lots of great questions from the audience today.

01:06:27.580 Very insightful.

01:06:28.660 Always appreciate when you guys take the time to come by and talk to me about this.

01:06:33.500 It's one of the nice things about doing a solo stream.

01:06:35.440 Sometimes we can, I love doing the interviews, but it allows us to get more into these topics.

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01:07:00.600 When you do leave a rating or review really helps with the algorithm magic.

01:07:04.560 Uh, if you want to go ahead and, uh, pre-order my book, the total state, I just got my hard

01:07:10.720 copies, uh, looks great guys.

01:07:12.480 Make sure that you go ahead and do that.

01:07:14.640 You can do that on Amazon.

01:07:15.620 Many people have already pre-ordered.

01:07:17.560 It's awesome to see the response.

01:07:19.520 It's overwhelming.

01:07:20.340 I can't believe that I have a book.

01:07:21.800 I can't believe that so many of you are buying it.

01:07:24.120 Uh, I'm really excited.

01:07:25.640 It'll be out May 7th.

01:07:26.700 So make sure to go ahead and stack your copy.

01:07:28.280 Now I know they've already shipped out, shipped out the first wave.

01:07:31.220 Uh, they're probably doing another printing now.

01:07:33.440 So you want to make sure that you can get your copy as soon as, uh, it comes out.

01:07:37.840 You need to go ahead and pre-order.

01:07:39.260 Thank you once again, everyone for stopping by.

01:07:42.620 And as always, I will talk to you next.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - April 19, 2024

Rufo vs. Yarvin： Can We Return to the Founding？｜ 4⧸19⧸24

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

The Auron MacIntyre Show - April 19, 2024

Rufo vs. Yarvin： Can We Return to the Founding？ ｜ 4⧸19⧸24

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Rufo vs. Yarvin： Can We Return to the Founding？｜ 4⧸19⧸24