The Auron MacIntyre Show - Small Government Is NOT the Goal ｜ 6⧸28⧸24

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00:00:30.540 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.360 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:34.100 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:36.580 If something crazy happened at the debate,

00:00:38.800 if there was something wild that was said,

00:00:40.940 and I'm not talking about it right now,

00:00:42.760 that's because this is a pre-recorded episode.

00:00:45.520 I am currently flying back from the Blaze studio

00:00:48.620 where I did live commentary about the debate.

00:00:51.820 So if you want to get my thoughts on what happened there,

00:00:54.500 you can go ahead and check that out on the Blaze.

00:00:58.140 But today we're going to be talking about small government.

00:01:01.300 We have this obsession, this ideological obsession with small government.

00:01:05.340 We have the cult of small government when it comes to conservatives and libertarians.

00:01:09.140 We need to limit government.

00:01:10.460 We need to cut back, cut more out of the government.

00:01:12.960 That's what everything is about.

00:01:15.140 And we never really get an explanation as to why.

00:01:17.800 There's usually some vague reference to freedom,

00:01:20.300 but we never get a larger explanation of what this small government does for the community,

00:01:25.940 why it matters, what kind of lives enables people to live.

00:01:30.480 And that's what I want to go into today,

00:01:32.540 because I think the ideological addiction to small government often blinds us to its actual value

00:01:38.780 and why sometimes it's actually important to pass laws that make government smaller.

00:01:43.960 Yes, by going ahead and enforcing certain laws through the government,

00:01:47.080 we can actually reduce the power of government.

00:01:49.700 But before we get to all that, guys,

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00:02:59.840 All right.

00:03:00.580 So again, small government is the obsession, right?

00:03:03.300 We have to go ahead and reduce the size and power of government at every opportunity

00:03:08.340 because that's what conservatism is, or that's what it means to be right-wing.

00:03:12.940 We hear this all the time.

00:03:14.780 This is the most important function of a conservative or a right-winger

00:03:18.060 to go ahead and push for this constant reduction in small government.

00:03:22.800 Now, I'm going to go ahead and explain early on that this is not a screed against small government.

00:03:28.940 I'm not here to lobby you for a vast government.

00:03:32.700 That's not what I'm doing here.

00:03:33.960 I think there are many virtues to a smaller government,

00:03:37.920 but the key that I want to focus on is the virtues there,

00:03:41.440 the things that this does for a community,

00:03:43.500 the things that it allows people to do and be because the size of government is smaller.

00:03:50.120 What I wanted to get us past is this ideological addiction

00:03:53.520 that we just cut government at every opportunity.

00:03:56.640 Because when we think about it this way,

00:03:59.000 when we reduce everything to that very simple maxim of cut government no matter what,

00:04:04.380 we end up missing what the actual purpose of a small government is.

00:04:08.280 And sometimes it can lead us to making decisions that are actually detrimental

00:04:12.660 to a smaller government.

00:04:14.740 By cutting certain aspects of restrictions that the government might apply,

00:04:19.840 we go ahead and increase the overall power of government without realizing it.

00:04:25.020 So that's what I want to get into today.

00:04:27.300 So first, what are some of the virtues of a small government?

00:04:31.160 What does that actually do for people?

00:04:34.520 I want us to remember that we are orienting ourselves with first the good of a people.

00:04:40.080 We want to go ahead and make sure that that is what is driving us.

00:04:43.240 We don't want a uniform ideology.

00:04:45.720 We're not interested in going ahead and producing some thought experiment

00:04:48.960 about the way governments or economies or anything else should be run.

00:04:53.020 We're not here to prove which scientific theory is the most viable.

00:04:57.940 That is not what is happening here.

00:05:00.180 We are beginning with the good of a people, in this case, the American people.

00:05:04.400 Hopefully, you have a more local people as well that you understand.

00:05:08.380 You're working for their good, your community, your family, your region, your country.

00:05:14.500 It is their good that you want first.

00:05:17.140 And so by putting America or your state or your family or your community first, 0.63

00:05:24.500 you can then start thinking about what principles or what application of government

00:05:30.200 or any of these other things would be best for the people there.

00:05:34.740 You are oriented for their good first, not for an ideology, not for a foreign policy,

00:05:40.040 not for capitalism or socialism or any of these isms.

00:05:44.040 I am thinking about the good of these people first.

00:05:47.880 What do I want in my community?

00:05:50.200 Why is small government advantageous to my community?

00:05:55.020 Well, the reason that small government is advantageous to a community that is virtuous

00:06:00.620 is that it allows them to pursue ordered liberty.

00:06:04.300 It allows them to go ahead and exercise their virtue in accordance with the moral vision

00:06:10.660 that the community understands.

00:06:12.960 If you have a government that is constantly dictating every aspect of life,

00:06:17.460 if you've had to go ahead and formalize every aspect of what people should be doing

00:06:23.540 inside your society, they don't have a lot of liberty to pursue virtue.

00:06:29.100 Now, maybe you've ordered every aspect of your society in a virtuous way.

00:06:34.880 Maybe that's in treating them or teaching them virtue.

00:06:39.020 Now, a lot of people would think that's authoritarian.

00:06:41.700 Maybe it is.

00:06:43.080 But ultimately, the problem with it is that it doesn't allow virtuous people to go ahead

00:06:47.540 and, again, exercise that ordered liberty.

00:06:50.760 Now, the ordered liberty requires you, of course, to have certain things about your community.

00:06:55.780 The people in the community must be oriented towards a specific moral vision.

00:07:02.780 They must have a shared understanding of what type of life they should be pursuing.

00:07:08.140 Now, they have liberty inside their own decisions about how to best pursue it.

00:07:13.100 But if you don't have a community that shares those values, you won't have a community for long.

00:07:18.080 That's what makes a people a people, is that they have a shared history, a shared set of traditions and folkways,

00:07:24.980 a shared religion, a shared understanding of who they should be.

00:07:28.960 And if you have that and you have the robust organic institutions that come along with that,

00:07:35.200 then the government doesn't really need to do a whole lot because the people already have this shared moral vision.

00:07:42.400 When you have a people who have organically created a culture,

00:07:46.980 when they've grown together through many centuries of shared experience and shared moral goals and religion, language, these things,

00:07:56.380 then you don't need to do a lot of top-down manipulation to properly order your society.

00:08:03.320 Alexis de Tocqueville recognized this in Democracy in America.

00:08:07.120 He said the things that made America run was the voluntary institutions it created, the voluntary associations.

00:08:15.000 So many Americans were rigorous in their involvement in civic life.

00:08:20.160 They were constantly creating fraternities, fraternal organizations, churches, community organizations, merchant guilds,

00:08:28.080 you know, all these different things that allowed for this creation of social fabric,

00:08:33.900 this, you know, shared help if you ended up in trouble through all these different organizations.

00:08:39.400 There was a social safety net, but the government didn't have to create it because society had already created it.

00:08:45.120 And there were lots of ways that you had to behave and should behave, but they were enforced at a communal level.

00:08:51.800 There didn't have to be somebody running around, you know, arresting everybody who made a mistake

00:08:57.620 because ultimately the constant pressure of the community, the moral force of the community,

00:09:02.980 the folkways and the traditions of the community, all bound people in a specific way.

00:09:08.280 And so all these different organizations and all these different beliefs and all this history

00:09:13.060 all went ahead and bound people into a particular way of life.

00:09:17.720 And so if you have a small government in this way, then you're allowing people to exercise their ordered liberty inside of this social fabric.

00:09:29.360 And the thing is to understand that these things are necessary for each other.

00:09:33.960 You cannot have this ordered liberty, or rather you cannot have the small government if you do not have this ordered liberty.

00:09:42.060 Small government is something that is facilitated by a virtuous people, a people who share an understanding of who they are,

00:09:50.320 how they're going, how they should conduct themselves, how to bring about the social good.

00:09:54.960 These people who already have these ideas deeply ingrained, it's already very organic,

00:10:00.500 they don't need a lot of formal institutions to go ahead and impose that on society because they impose it on themselves.

00:10:08.740 They are self-governed. Not in the sense that each person does whatever they want.

00:10:14.020 That's not what that means. And this is a problem that a lot of conservatives and libertarians have.

00:10:18.740 They just think that means freedom. I just do whatever I want, whenever I want.

00:10:22.540 That's what freedom is about. I just do anything and everything I please without worrying about anyone else

00:10:28.260 and the government doesn't stop me. That is not what we're talking about here.

00:10:32.360 We're not talking about just this wild, unattached freedom, no duties, no responsibilities, no restrictions,

00:10:39.380 no care for the community, no care for your impact on yourselves or the other.

00:10:43.460 That is not what we're talking about here.

00:10:45.880 An ordered liberty is one in which you are exercising your ability, your choice inside this framework,

00:10:54.540 but it is the framework that is created. It is the virtue that allows for that.

00:10:59.900 The small government can only exist because you are already limiting what you do.

00:11:04.420 If you create a free society where everyone just gets hooked on heroin because they're free to do whatever they want,

00:11:12.000 we're going to have a really crappy society.

00:11:14.140 That's not a society that's going to be free for very long.

00:11:17.760 You see, freedom in and of itself is not actually the good.

00:11:23.180 It is the pursuit of the good that enables a liberty that you can practice inside that community.

00:11:31.280 It's not the other way around.

00:11:33.420 And so it's really important when we talk about this to recognize that the reason for small government

00:11:38.600 is that you already have a virtuous people.

00:11:41.920 You already have a people who are capable of self-government, people who are capable of acting inside these bounds.

00:11:49.240 But self-government is almost a misnomer because, again, it's not just I do whatever I want for myself.

00:11:54.100 It's not being selfish.

00:11:55.640 You can self-govern really because you are community-governed,

00:11:59.960 because there is already this organic structure built into your society

00:12:05.180 that does the vast majority of things that we think of that the state would do today.

00:12:09.660 You already educate your own children.

00:12:12.080 You already take care of your extended family.

00:12:15.280 You already go ahead and participate in your church

00:12:17.760 and make sure that the poor and others are taken care of through that organization.

00:12:22.020 You already work through a fraternal organization to make sure that there's mutual aid

00:12:26.740 if one of your friends or someone else you know is injured or falls sick

00:12:31.440 or has some kind of fire or some other disaster befalls them.

00:12:35.060 Like all of these communal organizations,

00:12:36.880 all of this active virtue that you've built up,

00:12:40.440 this social credit inside the community,

00:12:42.440 that high trust that you have created allows for small government.

00:12:47.360 All these other things create small government.

00:12:50.700 Small government does not create those things.

00:12:53.540 And this is always the problem, again, that libertarians and conservatives have so often.

00:12:57.920 They confuse the causality.

00:13:00.580 They think that small government creates virtuous people,

00:13:04.420 that small government creates social fabric,

00:13:07.100 that small government creates all of these organic institutions.

00:13:11.060 But that's not the case.

00:13:12.500 If you already have all those things,

00:13:14.340 if you already have a high trust society with a lot of social fabric,

00:13:18.260 with a lot of organizations that are organic to the community,

00:13:22.480 you don't need the artificial power of a large overbearing state to step in and force people to behave in certain ways.

00:13:31.000 You don't have to create a social safety net.

00:13:33.360 You don't have to create a demand for certain behaviors because they already exist in that communal form.

00:13:41.820 There's no need for the state to get involved and step in.

00:13:45.240 So now I want to talk a little bit about how the government can get involved,

00:13:50.980 how certain government interventions actually can create a smaller government.

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00:15:24.360 So like I said, we're not here to talk about the virtues of just small government.

00:15:28.740 We're not in it for the idea of limited government or small government for its own sake.

00:15:33.340 The reason we care about small government is it allows the exercise of ordered liberty.

00:15:38.980 If a society is already virtuous, that is, the goal is to create this virtuous society

00:15:44.180 that takes care of itself, that has organic institutions, then we get a limited government.

00:15:50.360 So it is important to understand what actually limits government.

00:15:53.640 Again, a lot of conservatives and libertarians think it's just words on paper.

00:15:57.220 We wrote it down.

00:15:58.160 We made a law.

00:15:59.180 We separated the powers.

00:16:00.500 We made some amendments to the Constitution, and boom, government is limited.

00:16:05.400 But anyone living in America in the year of our Lord, 2024, knows the government is not actually limited.

00:16:11.300 The government can go ahead and shut down your church.

00:16:13.540 The government can shut down your business.

00:16:15.160 The government can lock you in your house.

00:16:16.920 The government can go ahead and allow people to riot in the streets, and you're not going to do anything about it.

00:16:21.720 They know this, right?

00:16:22.940 This is what government does.

00:16:25.240 So what actually limits government?

00:16:27.900 Because we know that government isn't always totalitarian.

00:16:31.420 It doesn't always have complete power all the time.

00:16:33.980 We don't always have a total state.

00:16:35.680 So what actually limits government?

00:16:38.140 Why are we here?

00:16:40.140 Why don't we have that limited government?

00:16:42.560 How can we get it back?

00:16:44.080 The key is opposing social spheres.

00:16:47.080 It is not formal government restrictions.

00:16:50.000 It's not, oh, I wrote it down on a piece of paper somewhere.

00:16:52.540 There's a contract, and it says so.

00:16:54.520 The words on paper do not limit government.

00:16:57.220 What limits government are opposing social forces.

00:17:01.580 The government can only ask so much of people if people have to devote themselves to other forces in society.

00:17:08.600 When you had to take care of your extended family, when you had a lot of kids because you didn't really have a choice because birth control wasn't really a thing, when you had to take care of your ailing parents because there wasn't really another option for that.

00:17:21.140 It's not like you could just hand them off to some state nursing home.

00:17:24.000 When you had to go ahead and take care of your deadbeat niece because there wasn't some welfare program that stepped in and take care of her and her kid. 1.00

00:17:32.840 When you had all of these things, you had to be involved in a church because it was a key aspect of social life.

00:17:39.060 It's how you found a husband or a wife.

00:17:41.440 It's how you shared and taking care of the poor and other people in the community.

00:17:45.880 When you had to be involved in all of these different organizations, that was very much a drain on all of your other resources.

00:17:54.320 Now, all that sounds pretty exhausting to the average person, but this was just part of life through most of history.

00:18:00.660 And because of this, government could not really make certain demands because government couldn't fill in all those responsibilities.

00:18:07.880 You can only ask so much of somebody who has to support like seven children and take care of his ailing mother and educate his children and go to church to make sure and fund that church and volunteer in that church to make sure that the poor and everybody else were taken care of.

00:18:24.260 And he has to go to the Merchant Guild to make sure that their prices are going to be set properly or that whatever.

00:18:31.400 His time is taken up.

00:18:32.900 His money is taken up.

00:18:34.000 He's paying tithes to the church.

00:18:35.160 He's paying for his kids.

00:18:36.060 He's all of his time is involved in these things.

00:18:39.720 He cannot give everything to the state.

00:18:42.280 The state can't make these vast demands on him because the state can't fill in all of those duties.

00:18:47.560 But what has happened is we've handed over so much power to the state and we have given up so many of those duties that once exhausted us.

00:18:57.140 You know, we feel free, not because the state is any smaller.

00:19:00.640 The state is actually much bigger and can make much bigger demands.

00:19:03.140 But we feel free because we have lost all of those social obligations.

00:19:07.880 But when we lost all those social obligations, we also destroyed all those opposing social spheres, spheres of community, spheres of family, spheres of the tribe, spheres of the church, spheres of the guilds, spheres of the fraternity.

00:19:22.400 They're all gone.

00:19:23.800 All of that is gone.

00:19:25.400 And instead, there's just the state.

00:19:28.180 And the state can make these vast demands on us.

00:19:30.840 Now, that makes for a huge government, right?

00:19:33.340 That creates large government.

00:19:35.720 So that's not good.

00:19:37.780 But it's not just not good because the government is large.

00:19:40.820 It's not good because it leaves people without any of those critical connections.

00:19:45.280 By handing all those duties over to the state, we might feel free in the moment.

00:19:49.180 But we've lost our organic connection to meaning or organic connection to purpose.

00:19:53.920 We no longer have that deeply woven social fabric that holds us in place, that creates those identities, that gives us meaning and purpose, that gives us a reason, that points us in a direction, connects us to our ancestors, connects us to those that will come after us.

00:20:09.960 We've lost all of that.

00:20:11.660 We are no longer in that great chain of being.

00:20:13.940 We can no longer practice the ordered liberty that we talked about because we have stripped the virtue out of our communities by handing everything over to the state.

00:20:25.620 The state has grown.

00:20:26.920 It can no longer.

00:20:27.680 We can no longer have limited government because we no longer have the virtuous communities that enabled it.

00:20:34.040 So it's not that the, again, it's not that the small government was the goal.

00:20:38.400 It's not that the small government is the thing that we are pursuing.

00:20:42.660 It's that small government was something that came after we created these virtuous communities.

00:20:48.600 It's something that is enabled because we had to create communities that could take care of themselves.

00:20:52.620 There simply wasn't a vast, massive, bureaucratic government that existed during colonial America.

00:20:59.480 They had to go ahead and create these communities that could more or less take care of themselves.

00:21:03.880 And that enabled small government because once the government did get formalized, there was already this organic set of community institutions, already this idea of who we are and where we're going and what kind of life we should achieve that meant that we could keep government small.

00:21:20.500 But that's not the case today.

00:21:22.540 And so instead, government has exploded.

00:21:24.960 So what can we do?

00:21:27.560 What's another way to look at this to understand how social spheres can be kept intact?

00:21:32.940 I want to talk to you today about blue laws.

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00:21:38.000 I want to talk to you about the utility of blue laws, why they existed, what they do for a community, and how the exercise of government power in the case of blue laws can actually protect alternative social spheres that push back against the power of the government.

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00:23:54.760 All right, so small government, right?

00:23:59.420 Again, the point is we don't want to just worship small government.

00:24:03.800 We want to understand why it's valuable, what goods it enables, right?

00:24:09.420 We're looking for the good of our community.

00:24:11.620 And if small government brings about the good of our community, then that's great.

00:24:14.680 But if it doesn't, then we need to think about why.

00:24:17.660 And we need to understand what we're actually looking for in our community.

00:24:21.100 We're orienting ourselves towards a good life for the people who live in our community, not just for some abstract ideological value of small government.

00:24:30.780 Now, again, I am generally pro a small government.

00:24:34.880 I think that ultimately having a massive, totalitarian, overbearing, bureaucratic state is not good for people.

00:24:42.640 However, I think it's bad for people because it keeps them from developing this ordered liberty in these virtuous communities.

00:24:50.740 Not because I have some kind of ideological purity test when it comes to small government.

00:24:56.120 So when people say, Oren, are you for small government?

00:24:58.880 The answer is kind of, sometimes, right?

00:25:01.760 It depends.

00:25:02.820 So, for instance, why don't I just declare myself a champion of small government?

00:25:06.880 What's one way in which I actually think that small government is a problem, not a solution?

00:25:12.320 So one thing that I think is very valuable are blue laws.

00:25:15.900 Now, for those who are not familiar, there's still a few places where this is hanging around, but most of the remnants have kind of been destroyed over time.

00:25:23.820 Blue laws were laws on the books that restricted what could happen on Sunday, usually, because Sunday is, of course, the most common day of worship for Christians.

00:25:35.340 There are some that do it on Saturday, but Sunday is generally thought of as the primary day of worship for Christians.

00:25:42.800 It is the Sabbath.

00:25:43.840 These are Sabbath laws.

00:25:46.260 Now, there are different levels of blue laws.

00:25:48.940 There have been blue laws that completely shut down everything on Sunday.

00:25:52.800 Nothing is open.

00:25:54.540 Nothing is allowed.

00:25:55.880 Everybody just has to go to church, go home.

00:25:58.260 That's it.

00:25:59.040 There are some blue laws that allow for specific critical things to be open, things like gas stations or grocery stores, things where if you didn't do the shopping the day before, then you might be stuck without something vital.

00:26:13.960 Now, to be clear, a lot of blue laws didn't allow this at all.

00:26:16.260 They're like, well, tough.

00:26:17.240 You should have gone to the store the day before.

00:26:19.060 Get your grocery store shopping done on Saturday.

00:26:21.880 Fill up the gas tank on Saturday.

00:26:25.740 Don't bank on it being open on Sunday.

00:26:28.160 Blue law says that they're closed.

00:26:29.780 However, there are some that have allowed those.

00:26:32.040 There are other blue laws that only restrict things like, say, alcohol or other vice type stuff.

00:26:37.520 They reduce the amount of things.

00:26:39.200 Or, for instance, they would close movie theaters specifically on Sundays to keep people from going out, going to distractions, instead making sure that they're going to church, spending time with their families, these kind of things.

00:26:52.540 So, a blue law, if you're a strict small government guy, a blue law is terrible, right?

00:26:59.280 This is the worst thing imaginable.

00:27:00.720 It's the government telling people how to live their lives, how to run their business, how to go ahead and spend their Sunday.

00:27:07.520 You are taking a religious dictate and you are building it into your legal code.

00:27:14.300 In fact, many so-called Christians today would be against this because this is establishment of church and state.

00:27:20.460 This is the woke right here, right?

00:27:24.160 They're telling you that the government should enforce some kind of a religious idea onto the people.

00:27:31.660 Yes, that is actually exactly what we're doing here, to be very clear.

00:27:34.880 That is the purpose of this.

00:27:36.260 So, what is the value of a blue law?

00:27:39.080 Since I'm not a small government guy and I think that there is a value in the government setting a norm, what is the value of the blue law?

00:27:47.020 So, the blue law protects a sphere of society.

00:27:51.060 It says, we understand that the vast majority of people here are Christian.

00:27:56.700 And because the vast majority of people here are Christian, Sunday is their holy day, their Sabbath.

00:28:02.560 And that means that most people who are Christian are going to want to not be working.

00:28:07.600 So, they need the day off because they're not supposed to be working on Sunday.

00:28:11.900 Also, they're going to want to be going to church.

00:28:15.360 And if they have to work, then they can't go to church.

00:28:17.720 So, not just the violation of the working on Sunday, but the inability to go to church because they have to work.

00:28:24.400 And if we leave all these things open, this will create a distraction.

00:28:28.180 That means more people will want to go to the movie or there's an extra day to get errands done.

00:28:33.120 Or, you know, there's something else to do besides church and spending time with your family.

00:28:37.560 And so, all of this will destroy the general understanding that we should be spending Sabbath with our families, you know, going to church and not working.

00:28:48.960 Like, the fact that all these things are open and available will distract people, will keep them from doing what they're supposed to be doing.

00:28:55.260 So, we're just going to pass a law that says all this stuff should be closed.

00:28:59.620 We're just not going to do any of it.

00:29:01.020 We're not going to allow any of it.

00:29:02.440 And that way, there isn't an opportunity for people to exploit this, to work around it.

00:29:09.640 We're just going to shut it all down.

00:29:11.060 Now, again, to a small government person, so a person who's just ideologically for small government, this sounds terrible.

00:29:17.720 I can't believe the government is telling people what to do with their business.

00:29:20.400 I can't believe the government is promoting religion.

00:29:22.640 I can't believe the government is telling people what to do with their free time.

00:29:25.700 All of this is horrible.

00:29:26.940 However, if you understand this properly, you will recognize that blue laws actually reduce the power of government.

00:29:34.740 In fact, government has grown as blue laws have shrunk in the United States.

00:29:40.240 So, let's think about this for a minute.

00:29:43.040 What does a blue law do?

00:29:44.380 Well, first, a blue law is formalizing, hopefully, what is already a normal thing inside your community.

00:29:53.460 So, to be clear, as so often is the case, if there is not an organic support for a way of being, the law in and of itself can have a difficult time enforcing it.

00:30:04.880 Now, this is not to say that laws cannot change minds.

00:30:07.960 I'm a strong believer that the law can be a teacher and that so many of the cultural changes that we have had in the United States are a result of law happening first and then the culture following the law.

00:30:21.600 Things like gay marriage, things like abortion, all these things are coming from the fact that the law changed first and then everything followed it, not the other way around.

00:30:32.180 These things were not popular and then we got a law in enshrining them.

00:30:35.880 They were law and then people followed them.

00:30:38.420 With the blue law, however, you would hope that if you are a Christian society and this is how people are living, then all the blue law is doing is formalizing what people already know. 0.98

00:30:47.620 Now, in an ideal society, again, with the proper amount of small government, because you already have a virtuous community, blue laws are unnecessary.

00:30:56.200 Somebody who opened their store on Sunday would be reviled.

00:31:00.780 Somebody who's operating some kind of merchant business at this time would be considered terrible for violating the Sabbath.

00:31:13.000 People would expect you to be at church and if you didn't come to church, people would notice because your community would be one that's closely knit and people would say, hey, why isn't this person attending?

00:31:24.940 All of these things would be self-enforcing.

00:31:27.640 Now, again, that might sound terrifying to modern people.

00:31:30.440 They might say to themselves, well, this sounds horrible.

00:31:32.900 I wouldn't want to live in that.

00:31:34.080 Well, fine.

00:31:35.180 But I want you to understand this is what keeps you from having a larger government.

00:31:39.560 When you have this level of social accountability, when you have these organic structures and expectations inside your society, this is what keeps people from needing a large state, a total state to take over and dictate these things to them.

00:31:56.520 All right.

00:31:56.900 So how does a blue law restrict the growth of the state?

00:32:01.300 There is always the slippery slope.

00:32:04.500 The slippery slope is not some kind of fallacy.

00:32:07.360 It's not some kind of logical error.

00:32:12.000 Slippery slope is an observable fact.

00:32:14.340 Once you start letting people take one step towards removing a norm, they will take the next step and the next step and the next step.

00:32:22.100 Once you go ahead and start pulling away some of those restrictions, once you go ahead and chip away at this shared idea, over time, people will move more and more towards the complete abolition of that restriction of that idea.

00:32:37.920 And they'll forget why they even practiced it in the first place.

00:32:41.000 So the Sabbath is important for a lot of reasons.

00:32:44.480 The Sabbath is religious.

00:32:46.860 That part is really important.

00:32:48.580 But it also provides a day off for people that is shared.

00:32:52.520 That means everybody does it.

00:32:54.300 Everybody knows you're going to be home.

00:32:55.960 Everybody can involve themselves in these communal activities because there's always a day where everybody won't be at work, which is critical.

00:33:05.180 It also creates a limitation on the marketplace.

00:33:10.700 When you have a day that is set aside where no one can trade, no one can buy and sell, you're making a statement about the priorities of your community.

00:33:20.580 Priorities of my community are not commodification.

00:33:23.640 The priorities of my community are not making money.

00:33:26.920 Priorities of my community are not avarice at all costs.

00:33:30.960 There is a day we set aside to make sure that people can be with their families, they can take care of themselves, they can worship God.

00:33:39.160 We are setting aside a part of our week, a weekly rhythm, a rhythm, a cycle of life that goes ahead and protects people from this constant grind of the market.

00:33:52.760 And that's really critical because if you don't have that, then there's always an opportunity to make a little more.

00:33:59.740 And we can see what has happened here, right?

00:34:02.080 You open up the blue law.

00:34:03.280 First, the blue law says there's nothing open, right?

00:34:05.760 Just nothing open.

00:34:06.940 Get your gas, get your groceries on Saturday because Sunday everything's closed, right?

00:34:13.640 That's how things start.

00:34:15.420 And then someone says, well, what if I, you know, wouldn't it be good if we just at least had the gas and the grocery stores open?

00:34:21.420 What if there's an emergency?

00:34:22.580 What if I, you know, someone's driving through town and they run out of gas, they can't get any.

00:34:26.280 What if they, you know, someone runs out of food or, you know, something happens, there's an emergency, they don't have it.

00:34:32.680 Now, the correct answer, right?

00:34:34.500 If you have a real community is, well, if someone's like refrigerator died and they didn't have any food, we would take them food.

00:34:40.600 You would need to open a grocery store on Sunday.

00:34:43.300 If there's an emergency where someone needs gas, we'll siphon it out of someone's tank if we need to.

00:34:48.440 Or, you know, I've got an extra can in the garage for my lawnmower.

00:34:52.160 You can use it, right?

00:34:53.360 If you have a community that's looking out for each other, then these emergencies aren't solved by the marketplace.

00:34:59.880 They're solved by your neighbor.

00:35:01.260 They're solved by your church.

00:35:02.380 They're solved by your family members.

00:35:04.540 That's how they get solved.

00:35:05.800 You're not reliant on the marketplace to go ahead and mediate every problem.

00:35:09.880 You have other resources.

00:35:11.820 You have social resources that allow you to do that.

00:35:14.860 But once you open up yourself to the idea that every individual should be able to solve this problem inside a market transaction, that they should need friends, they should need families, they should need community, they should need a church.

00:35:29.880 Well, you create the scenario where the market is there to solve everything, but also where the reliance on all those other social spheres goes down.

00:35:38.180 So when there's a reliance on the church or a reliance on the family, a reliance on your neighbor, then the government is not the be-all, end-all.

00:35:47.280 The market is not the be-all, end-all.

00:35:49.320 But when you no longer have to rely on those things, when there's always a market option or there's always a government option, then those spheres start to lose their power.

00:35:59.620 And that means they also lose the ability to restrict the government.

00:36:02.260 Because if you are not reliant on those spheres, you will be reliant somewhere else.

00:36:08.080 That's the key.

00:36:09.300 You are always reliant on someone or something.

00:36:12.480 None of us are completely individualistic.

00:36:15.760 None of us are completely unconnected.

00:36:17.960 We all rely on something.

00:36:20.680 And if it's not your community, if it's not people, it will be the state.

00:36:24.880 And the market is, in often, in many cases, the driver that enables the state to take over those spheres.

00:36:32.740 Because once you get rid of some of those restrictions, the next one comes, right?

00:36:37.360 So, okay, the grocery stores are open.

00:36:39.080 The gas stations are open.

00:36:40.700 Well, if we're already open for the grocery store and the gas station, then why can't these other businesses operate?

00:36:46.340 The grocery store is selling things I sell, and it gets an advantage just because it's a grocery store.

00:36:51.400 The gas station is selling things I sell, but it gets an advantage just because it's a gas station.

00:36:56.100 And so my store needs to be open, too.

00:36:58.440 Otherwise, they're getting the opportunity.

00:37:01.040 Oh, well, then, you know, if every retail business is open, why not entertainment options?

00:37:06.660 Why not my movie theater?

00:37:08.080 Why not my restaurant?

00:37:09.360 Why do all these things have to be closed, too?

00:37:12.740 And all of a sudden, we have this slippery slope where one thing opens and the next thing opens and the next thing opens.

00:37:18.400 And now, to stay competitive, everybody needs to open.

00:37:20.860 And so now, everybody has to be open on Sundays.

00:37:23.740 Now, all of these people who used to be able to go to church have to go to work because they have to fill these spots.

00:37:30.720 You have to generate business because, remember, it's not enough to just be open, especially in the mass production, mass consumption economy.

00:37:40.780 You have to constantly schedule the amount of consumption that's going to happen.

00:37:46.680 So it's not just enough to be open.

00:37:48.400 You have to advertise.

00:37:49.300 You have to drive people to the store so you can justify being open on Sunday all the time.

00:37:53.840 You have to demand people's presence there.

00:37:55.760 All of a sudden, this sphere of sovereignty, this social sphere that was the church, that was faith, that was family, that was all set aside inside that Sunday is gone.

00:38:08.580 And so, yeah, we got rid of a government restriction.

00:38:12.660 We created smaller government by going ahead and getting rid of blue laws.

00:38:17.340 The government's not restricting my purchases.

00:38:19.380 They're not telling me when my business can be open.

00:38:22.100 The government is no longer putting their thumb on the scale.

00:38:25.880 They're no longer reaching to my life in that aspect.

00:38:28.160 But because there is no formal ban on this action, all of the social mores suddenly wear away.

00:38:36.520 And all of a sudden, you have this scenario where these social spheres that used to wield a large amount of power because there were certain areas of life where people were dependent on them, where they mediated the problems of society.

00:38:51.400 Instead, all of that current gets turned over to the market.

00:38:54.280 And any time the market fails, and this is a really important thing to grasp, okay, any time the market fails, the government steps in.

00:39:03.460 This is, again, really important for conservatives, people who call themselves conservative or right-wing, to understand.

00:39:09.960 Any time the market fails, the government steps in.

00:39:12.780 And if you don't think that's the case, just look at, I don't know, the banks getting bailed out, right?

00:39:17.680 Like, any time there's a loser in the market, you can't just leave people losing in the market forever.

00:39:24.440 So what we end up doing is covering over all of those gaps in the market with the government.

00:39:30.020 The government backstops all of these interactions.

00:39:32.620 So instead of the church, instead of the family, instead of the community, the fraternal organization, the guild, all of these things covering that mutual aid that is necessary there,

00:39:45.300 instead it all gets moved over to the government.

00:39:46.980 And so by destroying that sphere of sovereignty, by going ahead and shutting down that one day of rest where the market was not in charge and you had to rely on people and you had to go to church and you had to spend time with your family because there's nothing else to do.

00:40:04.020 You can't go to the movies.

00:40:05.440 You can't go golfing.

00:40:07.660 You can't go do whatever.

00:40:08.740 However, the only thing there is to do is spend time with God and spend time with your family and that's everyone's going to be available and you don't have to worry about scheduling.

00:40:17.280 You don't have to figure out, you know, who's working what shifts or anything because everyone is off simultaneously because you no longer have that government does not get smaller.

00:40:28.380 However, it gets bigger.

00:40:29.860 You got rid of a blue law.

00:40:32.620 Yeah, you got rid of a restriction on the books.

00:40:34.280 You got small government in one sense, but your small government enabled the explosion of government on the other end.

00:40:42.660 And that's what I want us to think about.

00:40:45.040 Blue laws are just one example, but I think it's a good example to show us moments when actually building in some protection of the other social spheres.

00:40:55.780 Going ahead and formalizing protection of our way of life helps to prevent the eventual growth of government by recognizing what actually restricts government, which is not laws on paper, but is the the opposing social sphere.

00:41:13.680 We can recognize that maybe some laws on paper might actually help us to preserve the social spheres that keep government small, because once we lost the sacredness of Sunday, once we lost the Sabbath.

00:41:25.780 Once we lost the day that made people dependent on the church and the family and the community.

00:41:30.920 Once we lost the day that made that or made that holy and made that something that we all respected and shared.

00:41:37.400 Whether you were Christian or not, you still understood that this is how your society was going to function.

00:41:42.460 And this is how you were going to live the rhythm of your life.

00:41:45.460 Once we lost that government explodes because government covers all of these things that used to be colored covered by the social spheres.

00:41:53.240 And also we lose our shared identity as people because we no longer have those rituals.

00:41:59.200 Again, whether you were a personal believer or not, you know, there are all these stories of people who didn't believe in God, but moved to this area where there's a small church.

00:42:09.680 And that's the only place where they can have community.

00:42:12.500 And so they start going to small church and lo and behold, they become Christians because once they have been in it, once they have acted inside of it, they recognize the truth of it.

00:42:22.120 Once they have involved themselves in this day-to-day life of believers, they observe it in a way that they never would have intellectually.

00:42:29.520 But that can only happen when you have certain things that are dependent on that.

00:42:33.220 Those people don't just go to church because they feel like it.

00:42:35.500 They were atheists that go to church because that was the only place where they could find the community.

00:42:40.960 And if you don't create that space, if you don't carve out that sacred space for families and churches and other communal organizations, if you don't set that outside of the market, then the government does not shrink.

00:42:55.000 You didn't create small government by knocking down the regulation.

00:42:58.260 You exploded the size of government.

00:42:59.980 So that's what I want us thinking more about, again, is just this idea of how we can protect these social spheres, how we can understand ourselves as being oriented towards the good of our community and understanding the good of our community may involve small government.

00:43:14.340 But small government is not the goal of our community.

00:43:16.960 If small government facilitates a better community, then we should do that.

00:43:20.660 And if there are things that we can do, laws we can pass, ways that we can restrict things that will empower those social spheres that keep government small, then we should do that.

00:43:30.360 Even if it feels like an oxymoron at the moment, even if it's like, oh, granting the government the power to regulate this business, how can that be small government?

00:43:38.560 Well, it can be.

00:43:41.180 It can be in the long run if that is otherwise protecting these social spheres that push back against the ultimate power of government.

00:43:49.960 All right, guys, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this one up.

00:43:52.820 Thank you so much for watching.

00:43:54.380 I will, of course, be back live on Monday, but I hope you enjoyed this prerecorded one.

00:43:59.760 I hope the debate was very exciting.

00:44:02.880 I'm sure there are a lot of hilarious moments because, of course, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are on stage.

00:44:08.280 If this is your first time on the channel, please go ahead and subscribe and turn on the notifications and the bell so you can go ahead and watch the streams when I'm live and not prerecorded.

00:44:19.040 If you'd like to go ahead and get this broadcast as a podcast, make sure you go ahead and subscribe to The Ora McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platform.

00:44:27.440 And, of course, if you'd like to pick up my book, The Total State, you can do that on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, or order it at your favorite local bookstore.

00:44:35.600 Thank you so much for watching, guys.

00:44:36.860 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - June 28, 2024

Small Government Is NOT the Goal ｜ 6⧸28⧸24

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