The Auron MacIntyre Show - Zombie Constitution ｜ 8⧸31⧸23

00:00:00.000 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.

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00:00:28.720 CRCanada.com.

00:00:30.620 If you want a good laugh, you can enter the phrase

00:00:32.580 Sovereign Citizen into your favorite video search engine

00:00:35.300 and find endless hours of delusional people being arrested by the police.

00:00:40.000 Sovereign Citizens are a loose collection of individuals 1.00

00:00:42.700 who believe that they can evade the authority of the police

00:00:45.620 by claiming exemption from the legal code.

00:00:48.680 There's no central text explaining the Sovereign Citizen ideology,

00:00:52.460 but one branch holds that America's first governing document,

00:00:55.560 the Articles of Confederation, was never legally dissolved,

00:00:58.960 meaning that those who claim sovereign citizenship

00:01:01.640 are not subject to the law as currently enforced under the Constitution.

00:01:06.220 Though it's never stopped a single arrest,

00:01:08.720 devotees of this doctrine will confidently state their case as they resist detainment,

00:01:12.760 treating the legal assertion as a magic spell meant to halt a police officer in his tracks.

00:01:17.080 While delusional people attempting to argue their way out of an arrest can create a hilarious spectacle,

00:01:22.880 the phenomenon can also teach an important lesson about placing one's faith

00:01:27.100 in a document that no longer has the authority to restrict power.

00:01:30.440 A surprising number of people, even those who consider themselves well-informed and patriotic,

00:01:36.320 don't know that the Articles of Confederation served as America's first governing document.

00:01:41.000 The Articles governed the young American nation from 1777 until 1789,

00:01:46.060 when they were replaced by the Constitution,

00:01:48.240 which most identify as our founding document.

00:01:50.940 This original legal framework created a very weak central government

00:01:54.440 that treated the individual states more like independent nations

00:01:57.780 that happened to work together on certain key issues.

00:02:01.220 The central government found it difficult to raise taxes,

00:02:04.160 settle disputes, negotiate trade, and handle monetary policy under the Articles.

00:02:09.420 After the nation's leaders had trouble putting down a tax rebellion

00:02:12.300 led by Daniel Shea in 1787,

00:02:15.020 they decided to form a new government that could wield power more effectively.

00:02:19.200 The Articles were designed to be very difficult to change,

00:02:21.820 requiring unanimous consent from all 13 states.

00:02:25.760 The Constitutional Convention began work to replace the Articles in 1787,

00:02:30.480 but no vote to alter or dissolve the original document was taken.

00:02:34.720 Instead, the new Constitution created its own rules for how it would be ratified,

00:02:39.180 requiring only nine of the 13 states to agree to the document.

00:02:43.500 Technically, the sovereign citizens are correct

00:02:46.080 that the Articles were never legally dissolved,

00:02:48.540 but this has never stopped any of them from going to jail.

00:02:52.800 The point is not that the sovereign citizen crowd is right.

00:02:55.840 They are very, very wrong,

00:02:57.980 but they're wrong in a very interesting way.

00:03:00.480 In a formal sense,

00:03:01.640 the Constitutional Convention's replacement of the Articles was illegal,

00:03:05.520 but it hardly matters.

00:03:07.300 The Constitution is the key governing document throughout American history.

00:03:11.780 It's the foundation on which the majority of law has been placed,

00:03:16.280 and the values enshrined in its words have become the critical, binding narrative of the nation.

00:03:22.420 Most people have no idea about the Articles,

00:03:25.360 but everyone knows about the Constitution.

00:03:28.560 Debating the legitimacy of its ratification hundreds of years later is irrelevant.

00:03:34.220 The Constitution became the functional law of the land

00:03:37.520 and shaped every aspect of America as we know it today.

00:03:42.000 Trying to argue that fact to get out of an arrest will get you nowhere,

00:03:45.860 and people will simply laugh as you're thrown into the back of a police cruiser.

00:03:50.040 The formal letter of the law is less important than how it's enforced and followed.

00:03:55.520 Making arguments based on the technicalities of a document that fell into irrelevance long ago

00:04:02.540 is the act of the desperate or the delusional.

00:04:06.120 In his book, The Age of Entitlement,

00:04:08.600 Christopher Caldwell traces the development of civil rights law in the United States.

00:04:14.020 Caldwell asserts that America has developed a secondary informal Constitution

00:04:18.240 that runs parallel to the document that formally rules the nation.

00:04:22.080 He believes that the civil rights movement began as a well-intentioned effort by most Americans

00:04:27.440 to deliver on the promise of racial equality in law,

00:04:30.920 answering the legitimate grievances of those who had been treated unjustly.

00:04:35.120 The situation was understood as urgent,

00:04:37.700 and when legislation proved difficult to pass through the normal channels,

00:04:41.780 politicians and activists were willing to use courts,

00:04:44.780 executive orders, and other tools to circumvent the traditional democratic process.

00:04:49.320 A patchwork of legal decisions slowly merged with dictates from the federal bureaucracy

00:04:54.560 and sweeping legislation to create a Byzantine network of rights and regulations

00:04:58.840 generated by new interpretations of previous constitutional amendments.

00:05:03.380 The rapid success of the civil rights movement was unprecedented,

00:05:07.640 and other activist groups sought to use the same strategy to their advantage.

00:05:11.760 The rights of other racial minorities, women, the disabled,

00:05:16.360 and gay and eventually even trans individuals all became civil rights,

00:05:20.620 granting them access to the second constitution.

00:05:23.720 The slow and exhausting work of changing public opinion

00:05:27.120 and passing constitutional amendments could be circumvented

00:05:29.960 by placing the concerns of your group in the fast lane.

00:05:33.120 When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

00:05:37.120 When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

00:05:41.960 When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.

00:05:44.620 When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.

00:05:48.340 Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

00:05:50.920 So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.

00:05:54.220 Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

00:05:58.260 Service fees exclusions and terms apply.

00:06:00.480 Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver.

00:06:03.920 This development didn't go unnoticed by political parties,

00:06:07.740 and a coalition started to form.

00:06:10.200 The only common factor that seemed to bind its wildly diverse constituents together

00:06:14.960 was access to the second constitution.

00:06:18.100 An emergency program that was initially conceived

00:06:20.880 to right the historical wrongs visited on a small and specific percentage of the population

00:06:26.040 was being applied to over half the country.

00:06:29.300 The majority of the population now had access to the second constitution.

00:06:33.120 Creating a new minority of second-class citizens who were relegated to only the rights 0.99

00:06:38.680 found in the original governing document.

00:06:41.480 Even these legacy constitutional rights quickly became subordinate to the new civil rights.

00:06:47.780 Christians have quickly discovered that freedom of religion has proven a very flimsy shield 1.00

00:06:52.780 as the FBI targets them for protesting the sexual indoctrination of their children.

00:06:57.220 Every previous norm can and must be discarded in pursuit of the utopia offered by the second constitution.

00:07:05.140 The regime will now enthusiastically arrest Donald Trump, their primary political opponent,

00:07:11.260 and call it a defense of democracy.

00:07:14.080 Democracy is no longer a process by which leaders are chosen,

00:07:17.800 but a sacred affirmation of the new paradigm assembled under the second constitution.

00:07:22.840 The current American conservative has an uncomfortable amount in common with the sovereign citizen crowd.

00:07:30.400 The conservative remembers and cherishes the freedoms that were enshrined in the original constitution

00:07:35.800 and believes that their presence in that founding text should defend those rights in perpetuity.

00:07:41.840 Unfortunately, those rights were not vigorously defended by previous generations,

00:07:46.080 and the document that was supposed to protect them has been subordinated to a new order with its own priorities.

00:07:53.040 Conservatives will impotently recite sections of the Bill of Rights to government officials

00:07:57.260 who care about nothing but the power to advance their own agenda.

00:08:01.480 For these progressives, the constitution is a dead letter,

00:08:04.560 a forgotten relic with no power to constrain their actions or limit their utopian ambitions.

00:08:10.360 The good news is that while the constitution is regularly abused and ignored,

00:08:15.060 its fate need not be the same as the Articles of Confederation.

00:08:19.760 The constitution has been central to formal law for most of the nation's history,

00:08:24.700 and its values still echo in the hearts of many.

00:08:28.320 Ultimately, it's not the words on a piece of paper that make a nation,

00:08:32.400 but the people who cherish and pass on those traditions.

00:08:36.640 Constitutions are not dusty and dry legal pronouncements,

00:08:40.240 but the formal inculcation of the traditions and folkways that exist

00:08:44.380 in the day-to-day lives of a nation's people.

00:08:47.620 If the people stop carrying forward the spirit, tradition, and values of the country,

00:08:52.240 no document can safeguard their way of life.

00:08:56.000 Those that oppose the current progressive tide must step away from a form of zombie constitutionalism

00:09:01.320 that expects the document to shamble forward and protect itself.

00:09:05.520 Ronald Reagan famously said,

00:09:07.160 Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,

00:09:11.180 but too many generations have been convinced that those freedoms must become subservient

00:09:15.740 to the progressive utopian vision.

00:09:18.460 Quoting constitutional amendments to woke revolutionaries

00:09:21.680 will never shame them into honoring values they do not share.

00:09:25.460 If those on the right want to see their freedoms returned,

00:09:29.320 they'll need to fight for every inch. 0.92

00:09:32.000 Not just in the sphere of law and politics,

00:09:34.460 but in every aspect of culture, religion, and education.

00:09:38.700 The Founding Fathers told us that the Constitution is only fit to govern a moral and religious people

00:09:44.640 who are willing to actively protect their way of life.

00:09:47.460 It's the revivification of that tradition,

00:09:50.940 and not the quoting of constitutional protections,

00:09:53.840 that can ultimately rescue the American spirit.

00:10:17.460 If you'd like to follow me on Twitter, or Substack, or Gab,

00:10:22.440 if you'd like to watch these videos on Rumble or Odyssey,

00:10:25.100 the links to do all that are down below in the description.

00:10:28.240 And of course, you can read all of my columns

00:10:29.940 and watch all of my shows over on The Blaze.

00:10:32.840 Thanks for watching, guys.

00:10:33.900 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - August 31, 2023

Zombie Constitution ｜ 8⧸31⧸23

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