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00:01:50.000I thought it'd be fun to kind of get a series of experts from Hillsdale College so you could get an idea of why am I always bragging on Hillsdale College?
00:01:59.000Well, just a couple of awesome people.
00:02:19.000Yes, it has been long, and we have to do it more often.
00:02:22.000So I understand you're teaching a course on Montesquieu, Locke, and many other things.
00:02:27.000So my Montesquieu is, let's just say, not as sharp as it should be.
00:02:33.000At least I did remember he wrote a book called Spirit of the Laws when Kyle mentioned it.
00:02:37.000Why is it important for us to know Montesquieu or understand Montesquieu to properly understand the American founding and tell us who Montesquieu is?
00:02:47.000So Montesquieu was an aristocrat from France and he had published The Spirit of the Laws in around 1750.
00:02:54.000And many of our early founders had actually read it in French and it was quickly translated into English.
00:03:00.000And he's one of the second or third most quoted authority among the early American founders when it came to debating what exactly is the purpose and role of government.
00:03:10.000Now, to be sure, Locke is central to that debate where the founders take Locke's understanding of natural rights very seriously and Locke's idea that consent of the governed is the only legitimate form of government.
00:03:25.000But where Montesquieu comes in is Locke has a very early version of the separation of powers.
00:03:32.000So he separates the executive and the legislative branch.
00:03:37.000And it's a bit of a mystery where he puts the judicial branch.
00:03:40.000It's somewhat shared by the executive and the legislative.
00:03:44.000For Locke, with respect to domestic issues, the legislative branch does have some control over the judiciary.
00:03:51.000Whereas when it comes to international relations, the executive.
00:03:54.000Now, when Montesquieu writes The Spirit of the Laws, he's very reluctant to go down that path.
00:04:01.000What he wants is a far stricter, if that's a word, separation.
00:04:05.000And so he identifies three powers that any government has, whether it's a tyranny or whether it's a republic, there's three powers.
00:04:14.000The question is: how are they organized and assembled?
00:04:18.000The executive, the legislative, and the judicial.
00:04:20.000Well, in a tyranny, as you can imagine, the authority is centralized, and the despot would simply wield all three.
00:04:27.000And for Locke, it's okay to have the separation just between the legislative branch and the executive, because the executive branch is checked by the legislative branch.
00:04:38.000And of course, the legislative branch is checked by the consent of the governed.
00:04:42.000And they're all working from within a very strict standard of natural right that Locke puts forward.
00:04:49.000But with Montesquieu, Montesquieu does not believe you can have political liberty in any government unless all three powers are separated.
00:04:59.000But even if they are separated, anytime a power begins to abuse its authority, you no longer have what he calls liberty.
00:05:08.000So if you look at our Constitution, the framers basically separate all three and then go over each aspect of it.
00:05:18.000And so you've got the executive branch, you've got writings on what the powers of the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary are.
00:05:27.000So he's enormously important for that reason alone.
00:05:31.000Now, you could consider him a bit of an honorary founder in a way that we would consider Locke.
00:05:37.000But the course is not exclusively devoted to Montesquieu.
00:05:42.000It's our flagship U.S. Constitution course.
00:05:46.000And we have some liberty to add some material that's not usually included in our text.
00:05:51.000And so what we've been doing is taking very seriously Jefferson's letter to Henry Lee, where he's informing him what went into the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
00:06:02.000And Jefferson says, well, I'm drawing from principles as old as Aristotle and Locke and Sydney.
00:06:09.000And so that gives us a bit of a framework or an outline of how to proceed to understand how the framers understood themselves.
00:06:17.000So we just finished a whole section on Aristotle's politics and the ethics.
00:06:22.000And then we turned to Locke, where we covered virtually the entire second treatise.
00:06:28.000And now we're just about to wrap up book 11 in Spirit of the Laws, where Montesquieu discusses liberty.
00:06:35.000And then after that, we will turn to the Federalist Papers.
00:06:39.000And in the Federalist Papers, there's only one philosopher actually mentioned by name.
00:06:47.000And it's Montesquieu in relation to how one deals with expanding the orbit of the governmental powers so that you can control factions and bring about some kind of equilibrium within the branches of government so that it can foster tranquility and liberty without having to squash, say, factions militarily, because then you'd be a despotism.
00:07:10.000So a bit of a combination of David Hume and Montesquieu go into the early Federalist papers.
00:07:15.000And so I'm just trying to sort of make good on Jefferson's letter and show students how our founding is really a result of absolute genius and but a real deep understanding of history political thought.
00:07:29.000Yeah, I think it's Federalist 47 where they mentioned Montesquieu a couple of times.
00:07:34.000And so Dr. Habib, I think it's really important as we try to educate the audience, and I get educated when I just listen to you, about how we view power.
00:07:45.000This is something I've been really fascinated with and kind of how different structures of government understand power and who actually has the power.
00:07:53.000Where did the idea of the people being sovereign come from?
00:08:07.000To some extent, you see it already indicated in works like Aristotle, but it's not as pronounced.
00:08:14.000He's more interested in the moral quality of the rulers.
00:08:17.000But you can see that whether it's classical or early modern political thought, there's always a sense that consent is required of governing.
00:08:25.000Otherwise, it's coercion and you don't have anything even resembling liberty.
00:08:28.000But it's Locke who begins to use terms such as the sovereignty of the people.
00:08:34.000And because he builds it on the consent of the individual who does have a duty to respect and honor the rights of others, so it's not strictly individualistic in an extreme sense.
00:08:44.000It's rather that a commonwealth that takes seriously liberty and property rights, among other things, has to acknowledge the central authority of the individual.
00:08:54.000We need each other's consent because in the state of nature, we're all free and equal from any authority of any other person.
00:09:01.000There is no coercion that is legitimate within the state of nature for Locke.
00:09:06.000And so that really forms the foundation for the consent of the governed and the sovereignty of the people in Locke.
00:09:15.000This is very important because, you know, we look at the American founding sometimes and we look at it in a silo or we fence it off.
00:09:22.000But it's important to understand the people that they studied, the ideas that they pondered, right?
00:09:28.000That Jefferson and Madison, well, Jefferson, obviously the author of the Declaration, Madison, Jay and Hamilton, much more of the driving force behind the Constitution.
00:09:38.000And that's really what Hillsdale College does better than any other institution on the planet.
00:09:43.000So, Dr. Habib, I want to ask about social contract theory and why Locke was different.
00:09:50.000I'm going to try to tie this to current events very quickly.
00:09:52.000People talk all the time: I have a right to this, I have a right to that.
00:09:54.000I have a right to housing, I have a right to healthcare, I have a right to be happy, I have a right to an iPhone, I have a right to TikTok, I have a right to all this.
00:10:02.000Locke's view was that rights were given by a creator or from God, this idea of natural rights.
00:10:07.000Why is it important that we understand natural rights before we even begin to hear the complaints of somebody saying, I have a right to all these different material things?
00:10:33.000For him, liberty is working within what he calls the law of nature.
00:10:38.000And that law of nature is known through reason and it's given to us by God and by nature.
00:10:43.000And so it's really a right to self-govern.
00:10:47.000And that when one, on the one hand, means a form of government, you want a government in which the citizens get to self-govern or at least represent it fairly, but it also means to self-govern your appetites.
00:11:00.000So if you define a right as just the indulging of one's license, Locke would not consider that a form of liberty.
00:11:08.000For liberty for him means self-rule, and moral virtue is the command of reason over the appetites.
00:11:14.000If you can't self-govern your with respect to your appetites, then it's highly unlikely that you can be self-governing in a form of government.
00:11:23.000So before he moves us in the direction of forming a civil state that will protect the rights that we have, he has to first explain what a free human being is.
00:11:34.000And a free human being is not one that just indulges in any license that they have.
00:11:59.000Property belongs to the person who earned it.
00:12:01.000And in fact, in the passage on private property, he says the property, private property, belongs to the rational and the industrious.
00:12:08.000And the Federalists actually argued early on in the Federalist Papers that the purpose of our government was to protect even the inequalities that will emerge from the disparate amount of wealth people can collect for themselves on the basis of certain priorities that they've made in life and choices and different talents.
00:12:27.000So for Locke, property rights means protecting the fruit of your labor.
00:12:32.000What we often hear today, cloaked in the language of rights, is a sense of entitlement.
00:12:37.000And for Locke, that would be a violation of private property and natural right.
00:12:45.000And it's easy to act as if you have a moral right to tempting to somebody else's property or somebody else's consciousness, but it violates public opinion.
00:14:35.000So I'm meaning to take your course, and the reviews are just phenomenal about it.
00:14:40.000I want to ask you specifically about Roman history.
00:14:47.000There's a parallel that is made every so often about the decline of Rome, you know, porous borders, a destroyed currency, greedy politicians, some would say sexual perversion, and kind of comparing that to America.
00:15:00.000Do you think those parallels are helpful or appropriate as we kind of try to look to see if a superpower has ever been on the course of what America is on right now?
00:15:09.000Yeah, I think there are some definite parallels, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are a free society, and particularly in the Roman Republic.
00:15:22.000I mean, that was a free society as well.
00:15:24.000And whenever you have a free society, you have the freedom of citizens to be what they will.
00:15:32.000And as a Christian, of course, I understand that at least part of that is to act out on their fallenness.
00:15:38.000But there's also positive that can be found in that.
00:15:43.000Now, the Roman Empire, I think, suffered from a number of things.
00:15:47.000First of all, its paganism was very much running against it.
00:15:54.000The second was the fact that it was magnificently successful.
00:15:59.000And so they had a huge amount of wealth and a huge amount of luxury.
00:16:03.000And you put all those things together and you do have a recipe for disaster.
00:16:08.000You find in so many of the ancient cultures that they begin to fall.
00:16:14.000Their demise begins as soon as they reach their height.
00:16:18.000Now, can we make some parallels with the United States on that?
00:16:23.000You know, we had a great century where we defeated the Nazis, who were socialists, I think we need to remember, and defeated all those fascist forces and then came home and created the most remarkable economy the world has ever seen and spread freedom, spread great medicine, spread technology all over the world, which has created the world we have today.
00:16:51.000So much of CRT and what's going on in the left, they want to pretend like all that has happened in the last 100, 200 years has been negative, but I don't think so, of course.
00:17:03.000I think there's been a great deal of positive to it.
00:17:14.000I don't think the parallel works for one main reason.
00:17:19.000We have this great document that states that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:17:30.000The Romans would never have written that kind of document.
00:17:34.000The idea of equality there would never have happened.
00:17:37.000Also, the Romans fought three wars to keep their slaves in place.
00:17:46.000And so I'm a person who sees a lot of the parallels, yes, because we're human beings and because we live in a free society and because we're a huge society and very, very wealthy, there are a lot of parallels.
00:17:59.000But I'm one who would say that we're nowhere near over.
00:18:03.000And I think a lot of the blowback to the Biden administration, a lot of what's going on today, the blowback to the left that is on the part of sane Americans, I think that's showing us that there's still a lot of life left.
00:18:20.000That is the best answer I've ever heard, where you say, look, there might be parallels superficially or kind of looking at the top, but the Romans never would have composed the document that would say, one of the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have tied them to another.
00:18:39.000And so let me ask you, you know, kind of just looking at the arc of Roman history, and this is obviously a very, you know, let's just say open question.
00:18:51.000When you look at the good emperors, the bad emperors, you know, whether good being Aurelius and, you know, that whole category and negative Caligula, Nero, and many others, you know, what are the, let's talk to positives.
00:19:04.000What are some of the virtues that we can learn of a statesman in a time of today?
00:19:09.000Because you have multiple examples over a long period of time.
00:19:13.000And in historical terms, from what I understand, rather well-documented history of how they acted and what they did.
00:19:22.000What are some of the lessons you think we can learn from and apply them to today's time?
00:19:26.000Well, when we look at the Roman Empire before it became Christian under Constantine, we can see a number of good emperors that really exemplify the positive nature of what Rome was.
00:19:46.000Caesar Augustus was a very rational man and was a man who did an excellent job of organizing an empire that was far abroad across many cultures, across many languages.
00:20:01.000And he did a great job of unifying a very diverse empire.
00:20:08.000If we look at Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius, and I would encourage any listener to read Marcus Aurelius on the meditations, his meditations.
00:20:19.000Here's a guy who understood discipline and duty.
00:20:26.000And against his own personal interests, he wanted to be a philosopher.
00:20:33.000He wanted to do anything other than be emperor.
00:20:36.000And his example of faithfully, dutifully doing his best for the empire is really a tremendous example.
00:20:47.000And I would say that his stoicism and his meditations had a definite influence on our founders, particularly a man like George Washington, who returned power back to the government, back to the civil authorities over and over again.
00:21:03.000He was a man who understood that this was not about him.
00:22:18.000The Order of Cincinnatus was actually named after him.
00:22:22.000He was the American Cincinnatus, and the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, really is named after George Washington and for his willingness to give up power.
00:22:46.000If you want to know what the left's real plan is for your kids, just look at how they react to the wonderful company of Patriot Mobile.
00:22:53.000I use Patriot Mobile, and you should too.
00:22:55.000Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative cell phone provider.
00:23:00.000This is because they take a portion of your bill and fund conservative causes and candidates who believe in sanctity of life, freedom of speech, the Second Amendment, and they're winning.
00:24:27.000So the great Kyle Mernan, who is the driving force behind all things online courses here at Hillsdale College, said that you have a very interesting take on liberalism post-1960s.
00:24:38.000And so I'll let you take it from there.
00:24:41.000Well, I'm doing a course for Hillsdale College on post-60s liberalism.
00:24:46.000And one of the things, the things that I think is important is that people, when they use the words liberal or radical or progressive, neoliberal, that they root that in some historical context.
00:24:57.000And so one of the things that I do in the course is while I treat some of the later movements, identity politics, transgenderism, the anti-racist movement, and so on, is I go back in history and I show how the radicals that embrace all those ideas are really breaking from the mid-century liberals.
00:25:16.000In fact, many of the things that we talk about today, even words like woke or trigger, all those things are around in the late 60s and in the early 70s and are even being sponsored by the federal government.
00:25:27.000So in this course, we look at what the regime is today.
00:25:31.000But importantly, we understand that by seeing how we got where we are.
00:25:36.000So I think that's really important for people to kind of draw the roots back to 1960s and how all these forces came together.
00:25:42.000Can you talk about how some of the, you could call them liberal forces, you know, let's just say classical liberal forces that would say that want international trade, that want, let's just say, open and porous borders and maybe more socially liberal on certain social issues, about how they kind of created a consensus of neoliberalism for many decades.
00:26:10.000And recently that's really been pushed back against.
00:26:12.000But what we're talking about post-1960s is all these different types of variations of what could be considered, you know, liberalism or radicalism.
00:26:22.000How do we reconcile, you know, what would be considered neoliberalism with some of the more radical elements that we now see driving the American discourse that would call themselves more kind of like leftists?
00:26:34.000Well, I think if you look at the mid-century liberals, here we're talking about the New Deal era, 1933 to 1945, that liberalism for them meant big government.
00:26:43.000It was the creation of the welfare state.
00:26:45.000But ultimately, in the 1960s, you see an implosion, right, the end of the 60s, the American economy, and the stagflation that rolls in in the 1970s.
00:26:53.000The break with those mid-century liberals who prioritized the labor coalition, right, where the government was supporting labor unions, something like 35% of the workforce was unionized around 1950.
00:27:06.000After the 1960s, what you find is a class break.
00:27:09.000And so the tensions that occur in the neoliberal period, I think you can understand in terms of class.
00:27:14.000You have on the left, the radicals who create systems of identity politics, and they ensconce themselves in the universities as well as in the regulatory commissions and agencies.
00:27:26.000The same radicals that were there in the 70s were still there in the 1990s.
00:27:31.000And they understood the American middle class as being the enemy, right?
00:27:34.000It was culpable of racism, for example.
00:27:37.000But then you also find another elite group, and I think that's the group that is part of what's called the knowledge economy in the 1970s and after, sometimes called libertarians.
00:27:49.000But that group saw the middle class also as being an enemy.
00:27:53.000And while those on the left were going to fight for the underprivileged or the disadvantaged, by which they meant government policies for minorities and single women, the whole affirmative action regime, that you find on the right, they're making neoliberal arguments to benefit the disadvantaged, by which they mean the consumer.
00:28:12.000And so what you lose is any element of citizenship.
00:28:15.000And so Americans become replaceable consumers.
00:28:19.000Both of those groups on the right and the left in this neoliberal period see the middle class as the enemy.
00:28:25.000I should also point out one more thing: that neoliberal is a word that's being used in the 1980s to describe the new Democrats, right?
00:28:34.000Think about Tim Wirth, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsangas.
00:28:38.000These are all Democrats who are saying what we need is more free market policies, deregulation.
00:28:43.000And this would be a solution to the big fiscal policies of the liberals of the mid-century.
00:28:49.000So, Dr. Slack, I find that fascinating.
00:28:51.000And, you know, in the time we have remaining here, I do want to ask you about one of the courses you teach.
00:28:59.000Politics 804 on Herbert Marcuse, which, of course, reminds me of one-dimensional man.
00:29:06.000Who is Marcuse, and why is it important that we learn about him and what kind of damage has he done to our republic?
00:29:14.000Well, Marcuse is one of the founders of critical theory.
00:29:17.000And critical theory is a power philosophy that's responding to the positivist philosophies in the mid-century.
00:29:25.000When you hear the language of other, for example, that comes from the Frankfurt School, where it's important to understand certain identities and how they're inseparable from their other and how that very relationship leads to political oppression.
00:29:41.000And so Marcuse was arguing for a new politics of liberation.
00:29:45.000So I get into this in great detail in the online course.
00:29:48.000I'm not sure how much we can get into it now.
00:29:52.000But essentially, Marcuse has the argument that the philosophers or you could say the poets, and here you could stand in place of that, the white young progressive radicals should ally with, in solidarity, should ally with the underprivileged of society against the American middle class.
00:30:11.000And so you have this rejection of what was seen as the middle class, the working class, in the 60s by the radicals themselves.
00:30:18.000How this unfolds in the neoliberal period is that those who are espousing critical theory, who see America as a land of oppression as the enemy, they form their own authoritative priesthood.
00:30:30.000And when we round out the neoliberal era around 2008, what we find is, particularly on the conservative side, that all the conservative gods are dead.
00:30:39.000The old neoconservative school, the libertarian school, the performance traditionalism, they no longer are able to justify the oligarchy that's been created.
00:30:48.000For example, the change in antitrust law that's privileged large corporations and the formation of monopolies in every sector of the American economy.
00:30:55.000And facing this crisis of legitimacy, both the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in the 2008 housing market crisis, I think the oligarchs needed legitimacy.
00:31:04.000And so they sided with that woke priesthood, whose roots go back to critical theory.
00:31:09.000That was the foundation for other schools we're familiar with.
00:31:12.000Critical legal studies, critical race theory, transgenderism, and identity politics.
00:31:17.000And so you have an oligarchy that rejects the populist movement on the right, and it turns to the group that had been most critical of it.
00:31:24.000And that's going to be the radicals on the left to justify, to give that regime legitimacy.
00:31:29.000And so there are two real religions that have emerged.
00:31:31.000One we saw during the COVID crisis, and that's the religion of health.
00:31:34.000So we have authorities on health who, by poisoning the population, will do them good through government mandates.