The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 58 ｜ Return to God and Return Power to the States ｜ Josh Hammer ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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00:01:30.420 Most people don't know this, but we have four branches of government.

00:01:55.380 It's the executive, the legislative, the judicial, and I think the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:02:02.900 Apparently, we added a fourth branch.

00:02:05.160 You know, I don't remember a constitutional amendment about it, but that's where we are.

00:02:08.740 Judicial overreach is raging.

00:02:10.800 And my guest today has a lot to say about it.

00:02:14.780 He's a constitutionalist that doesn't mince words as a writer or an editor or a speaker or a lawyer.

00:02:20.660 He graduated from Duke University, degree in economics,

00:02:23.740 followed by a law degree from the University of Chicago,

00:02:26.520 clerked for a federal judge on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,

00:02:30.440 later clerked for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

00:02:33.280 He was on Mike Lee's staff for a while.

00:02:35.280 He's currently a lawyer at First Liberty Institute specializing in cases involving religious liberty and the First Amendment.

00:02:42.660 He has written for Red State, The Resurgent, and is currently the editor-at-large of a good friend of mine's place called The Daily Wire.

00:02:51.420 Yes, Ben Shapiro is this man's boss.

00:02:54.120 How did our judicial system go off the rails?

00:02:56.680 How is our Constitution being violated?

00:02:59.300 How do we save it?

00:03:00.700 Our conversation with Josh Hammer.

00:03:05.280 What is going to happen with the Democrats in the next election? 0.98

00:03:20.720 Besides just total chaos and crap show? 0.98

00:03:23.200 Yeah, yeah. 0.96

00:03:23.880 I mean, my best guess right now is Liz Warren,

00:03:28.300 but I feel so weak in saying that because she's so unlikable.

00:03:31.820 I mean, who the heck gets up in the morning and says,

00:03:33.580 I want Liz Warren to be president? 1.00

00:03:34.600 But who else would it be?

00:03:35.740 Who could you find in the country that was less likable than Hillary Clinton? 1.00

00:03:41.360 They found someone, apparently.

00:03:42.360 Right. 0.87

00:03:42.640 She is Hillary Clinton, yet a little more unlikable. 1.00

00:03:46.900 It's crazy. 0.87

00:03:48.280 Yeah.

00:03:48.760 It's crazy.

00:03:49.620 It's absolutely crazy.

00:03:50.560 I mean, I actually think the odds of a brokered convention doing the math for all these early states is actually decently high.

00:03:57.620 And if we get to a second, third ballot of a brokered convention,

00:03:59.980 I could easily see someone like Hillary or Michelle Obama trying to come in at the very end. 0.89

00:04:04.080 I think there's a real possibility of that, honestly.

00:04:06.000 You don't think Buttigieg might slip up?

00:04:11.000 See, Buttigieg, I mean, he speaks French.

00:04:13.620 He's Ivy League educated.

00:04:14.880 He appeals to that Upper West Side New York Times reading liberal elitist crowd, the blue checkmark crowd on Twitter.

00:04:20.460 Does he have any black or Hispanic supporters?

00:04:23.040 No, none.

00:04:24.300 Zero.

00:04:25.000 Yeah.

00:04:25.260 So, I mean, he's going to lose South Carolina.

00:04:26.960 I mean, he's not going to compete well in a lot of these states that are driven by a large African-American population.

00:04:30.760 I don't see the path forward for him, but he's a smart guy.

00:04:34.560 I mean, he's a pretty intelligent guy.

00:04:36.420 Can't fault on that.

00:04:36.760 They've got to find somebody that can not look as extreme, even though, strangely, communism, communism has gone up in the polling eight points in the last 12 months with millennials.

00:04:54.960 Gone up.

00:04:56.360 Communism, not socialism, communism.

00:04:58.580 Yeah, my generation just needs to go straight to Gitmo.

00:05:02.740 I mean, that's literally, that is literally the only solution here. 0.95

00:05:07.240 Take your freaking avocado toast and your pumpkin spice and just get out of the country. 0.97

00:05:10.820 I mean, literally, socialism is one thing, okay? 0.97

00:05:14.140 Everyone kind of flirts with their little socialist phase in college, you know, like they smoke their dope and like utopianism, kumbaya, whatever.

00:05:20.940 Communism is literally what resulted in 100 million deaths over the last century.

00:05:25.240 That is not just an economic system.

00:05:26.840 That is a totalitarian political ideology.

00:05:29.880 It is evil.

00:05:31.020 The only thing that killed more people in the last 100 years is all disease.

00:05:35.760 All disease.

00:05:36.600 The totality of all diseases is literally combined.

00:05:40.000 No, I deeply, deeply worry about where we're going as a country.

00:05:43.660 And, you know, we need to find God, as you and I were saying offset earlier.

00:05:46.600 We need people to start attending religious services.

00:05:48.480 We need a great awakening.

00:05:49.780 That's really all I see.

00:05:52.680 We are a, let me say it this way.

00:05:58.020 In the 1850s, there was a great awakening.

00:06:04.060 And the argument at the time was, where was the real birth of America?

00:06:10.920 Was it in Plymouth or was it in Jamestown?

00:06:14.060 And luckily, we decided that it was Plymouth, but there was a strong argument that, no, it's Jamestown.

00:06:24.880 If you look at that, that argument is the argument that we're having right now.

00:06:30.280 Are we a covenant people who believe in God, who believe in being good and decent to one another, living side by side with people who are vastly different, but coming to an understanding where we can work together and be a covenant people that says, we are going to try our very best to do the right thing and serve God.

00:06:57.080 Or are we going to make our God gold, like in Jamestown, and we'll try every trick, we'll try socialism, which in their case ended up in cannibalism, all of this stuff.

00:07:09.840 It's what happened to Columbus.

00:07:14.580 It's what's happening to us now.

00:07:17.400 We are a people focused on our God, which is gold or whatever.

00:07:24.060 It's not actually God.

00:07:25.780 If we don't pick Plymouth again, we don't survive.

00:07:32.540 I'm convinced of it, that we are now at a place only God can save us.

00:07:40.060 Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

00:07:42.700 I mean, if you go back to founding era political theory, James Madison in Federalist 45 kind of encapsulates the theory of federalism pretty well.

00:07:50.760 He says, the powers delegated to the federal government are few and far between.

00:07:55.660 Those reserved for the states are numerous and indefinite.

00:07:58.760 But that premise, the federalist premise, the system of dual sovereignty by which the states would have largely plenary power to govern as they like, and then you could vote with your feet in a live and let live type mentality.

00:08:11.180 All of this was premised, as John Adams famously tells us, that the Constitution was intended for a religious people.

00:08:17.660 It is wholly inadequate for anyone else.

00:08:19.600 And the reason that it's inadequate for anyone else is exactly what you're saying.

00:08:22.540 It's this concept of covenant, of agreeing that we are one people.

00:08:25.880 We the people, as the Constitution's preamble quite eloquently speaks.

00:08:29.480 We the people.

00:08:30.240 Not we the individuals, not we the global citizenry.

00:08:33.740 We a concrete people.

00:08:34.940 We need a sense of kinship with one another.

00:08:37.800 We need a sense of solidarity.

00:08:40.040 We are the most diverse group of people ever to be collected or assembled, ever in the history of the world.

00:08:51.300 No country is even close to the diversity of the United States.

00:08:55.200 But we came here for a reason.

00:09:00.160 No matter where you came from, you came here for a reason.

00:09:04.940 And that reason was our unum, E pluribus unum.

00:09:10.180 And that unum was all men are created equal, endowed by their creator, and they can go their own way, and they can do their own thing, and they can become successful.

00:09:21.940 They can keep their money.

00:09:23.480 They can give their money away.

00:09:25.900 They are the sovereign of their own life.

00:09:30.800 We don't have that anymore.

00:09:33.540 So, you know, you talk about we have to be more civil to each other.

00:09:38.220 How can we possibly come back together when we have some people saying, you should pay a penalty, you should maybe even have jail time or a fine if you're wearing an offensive Halloween costume?

00:09:56.260 We have people who, I can't find any common ground with someone who believes that the state, large S, should control everything.

00:10:08.540 Right.

00:10:09.480 Right.

00:10:09.880 Yeah, I mean, maybe it's a chicken or the egg question.

00:10:13.100 I mean, the way I formulated it just now was I said that the entire concept of federalism was premised on religiosity and on God.

00:10:19.800 But maybe we should try to just rediscover federalism as a way to rediscovering God again.

00:10:25.260 Maybe we need federalism. 0.94

00:10:26.640 Maybe we need local control.

00:10:28.240 We need to be able to vote with our feet and live as self-governing peoples as we choose according to the dictates of our own consciences, as our own local elected officials are going to dictate policy for us.

00:10:39.280 Maybe that will help get us to God.

00:10:40.660 And you know what the states that don't want God in the system, like Vermont or whatever.

00:10:45.120 I mean, go for it.

00:10:46.560 I mean, like this is the thing I just don't understand how so many in your generation can be so far ahead on the cutting edge and grow up in a world that I never even imagined there could be.

00:11:03.100 I had to go through the system to go.

00:11:06.360 I had to go through the FCC to get a license to be able to be on the radio and I had to have a corporation hire me and all of this stuff.

00:11:16.060 Now, start a podcast.

00:11:18.220 And your life is like that everywhere.

00:11:21.240 And we know fundamentally that works.

00:11:25.880 Just let people be.

00:11:27.580 How that generation can be the one that is saying, oh, yeah, but we want a huge 1950s communist kind of state that oversees all of that.

00:11:42.680 How do you make sense of of people putting those two worlds together?

00:11:50.360 It's extraordinarily difficult.

00:11:51.600 I mean, I don't have a whole lot in common with someone who supports communism.

00:11:54.520 That's for sure.

00:11:55.220 I know you don't either, but I think what's going on that is making all this so much worse is not just that we're disagreeing with one another.

00:12:02.440 It's the sheer level of vitriol, of ad hominem attacks.

00:12:06.460 I mean, I spend more time on Twitter than I would care for.

00:12:09.100 I'm trying to cut down.

00:12:10.300 It's just not healthy for any of us.

00:12:12.120 It's fundamentally this political volume, this back and forth.

00:12:16.500 And, yeah, there's been sniping going back to the beginning of the Republic.

00:12:19.320 The election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

00:12:22.520 Awful.

00:12:22.700 Oh, the things that the parts of newspapers said about the opposing candidates there, the son of a half-breed mongrel. 1.00

00:12:29.520 I mean, like, disgusting stuff.

00:12:32.460 The difference is that we didn't have – one of the differences, at least, is that we didn't have all these technologies.

00:12:37.920 We would go out into the town square.

00:12:39.940 We would see our neighbors who we disagree with politically at church on Sundays.

00:12:43.700 We would have a way to communicate and to empathize with one another.

00:12:46.320 But nowadays, you know, Ben Sasse, I think, wrote a book on, like, the loneliness epidemic recently.

00:12:51.260 This loneliness epidemic is dramatically exacerbated, I think, by social media, big tech, and just the nature of living and working behind our machines all day.

00:13:01.300 Well, I think social media has brought out the things that we always thought we were alone on.

00:13:10.680 And now we're in a club, but it's still a pretty small club, but it doesn't feel like one anymore.

00:13:20.000 Because you can gather all your friends and social media, and you can – you know, there's always a crazy guy that lives on everybody's street.

00:13:28.360 And we used to ignore him.

00:13:29.420 Well, now he's connected to all of the crazy people that lives on all of our streets.

00:13:34.560 You know what I mean?

00:13:35.360 And so they have a voice, and they – and this happens with all of us.

00:13:43.060 They have this sense of real power, and I'm going to tell you how you should live your life.

00:13:50.240 And if you're not listening to them, you can't just drive by and go, there's crazy Ed.

00:13:55.240 You know what I mean?

00:13:55.700 Yeah, I think social media has been good for helping us find like-minded people for sure.

00:14:01.780 It has been extremely bad for incentivizing us to hate the so-called the proverbial other side much more.

00:14:10.640 And this tribalization mentality, it's not good.

00:14:14.220 It's just – it is unhealthy.

00:14:16.220 And, you know, just to get back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, we just need to rediscover – hold God aside for a second.

00:14:21.100 And I increasingly think that federalism – and Eric Erickson has been writing this for years now – federalism is one means, rediscovering local sovereignty.

00:14:29.580 We should be able to vote with our feet in this country.

00:14:32.380 You know?

00:14:32.820 You know, when I went out right after Donald Trump was elected, and I went out to California,

00:14:39.720 and I met with probably 25 very big CEOs, leaders of industry, a lot of leaders of tech.

00:14:51.620 And you couldn't come to the meeting unless you could take off your team jersey.

00:14:57.740 If you couldn't say something bad about your side, you couldn't come to the dinner.

00:15:01.940 And it was the first time in California I heard people talk about the Constitution.

00:15:09.480 And they were so afraid of Donald Trump and what he would do.

00:15:14.140 And they said – many of them said, and the whole table agreed – I used to think the Tenth Amendment was racist.

00:15:21.640 I thought it was a ploy.

00:15:23.480 But I understand it now.

00:15:25.220 We shouldn't have to live under the rule of whatever Donald Trump says.

00:15:30.220 And I thought, there's a chance we could get back to this.

00:15:35.620 Because no president – either side – no president should ever have the power to make anyone afraid

00:15:43.700 that they were going to be snuffed out, their business is going to be snuffed out,

00:15:48.760 their point of view is going to be snuffed out.

00:15:50.800 They should not have that power. 0.99

00:15:52.960 And I don't have a problem with California, in my opinion, being bat crap crazy. 0.98

00:16:00.220 That's what they want to do. 0.97

00:16:02.800 But how do we get people to understand – leave everybody else alone?

00:16:09.620 Yeah.

00:16:10.400 Yeah, what a novel concept, leave everyone else alone, right?

00:16:13.540 I mean – but look, I agree with you.

00:16:15.200 I mean, but for the fact that my boss lives there, my company is based there,

00:16:18.000 I have no problem with California just drifting off into the proverbial Pacific Ocean, right?

00:16:21.280 I mean, let them self-govern their way into leftist, socialist, communist oblivion for all I care.

00:16:26.240 I live here in Texas where I can, you know, tow my guns and pay no state income tax

00:16:30.060 and enjoy a relatively free and peaceful life.

00:16:32.640 The problem is that what California decides to do affects us.

00:16:40.380 You know, Vermont had – what is it, Vermont Care?

00:16:43.020 Yeah, that's right.

00:16:43.660 Okay, socialized medicine.

00:16:45.160 They did the whole thing after Obamacare.

00:16:48.600 Right.

00:16:48.940 And it failed miserably.

00:16:52.160 Why didn't we study that?

00:16:54.320 We didn't study that because it doesn't work unless you have the power to print money.

00:16:59.760 Right.

00:16:59.880 So you have to have the federal government do it.

00:17:02.740 Right.

00:17:02.960 And everything is pushed up to the federal level.

00:17:07.000 And even the mistakes of California, we will pay for.

00:17:12.300 Yeah, no, I mean, this is true.

00:17:15.960 It's also somewhat of a dangerous argument, though, because the gun control folks in Chicago

00:17:19.360 always talk about how it's actually the guns in Wisconsin and Indiana that are always flowing through.

00:17:23.480 So I think we need to be a little careful about this concept of externalities, but it is a real concept.

00:17:28.480 I mean, externalities are real.

00:17:30.500 No, I don't mean – no, no, hang on just a second.

00:17:33.660 For instance, California being an illegal haven, that affects the borders and affects Arizona and Utah and everybody else.

00:17:43.240 I'm not talking about that.

00:17:44.260 I'm talking about money.

00:17:45.680 Oh, I see.

00:17:45.960 Okay.

00:17:46.180 I'm talking about when they collapse, we're going to bail them out.

00:17:51.460 And we'll be forced to – it is taxation without representation.

00:17:55.420 Right.

00:17:56.020 Right.

00:17:56.380 I'm going to be forced to pay for stuff that I knew was crazy.

00:17:59.740 Right.

00:18:00.360 Well, it's happening in Europe, right?

00:18:01.420 I mean, when Greece and Italy almost went under, you know, seven, eight years ago, it's the Germans and the Belgians and the Dutch who are bailing out the peripheral, you know, Spanish, Italians, Greeks who are grossly profligate. 0.65

00:18:13.120 I mean, this is what happens, as you were getting earlier, when you don't have both a fiscal and a monetary union.

00:18:18.040 If you can just pass whatever crazy spending policies you want, but you're not controlling the currency.

00:18:23.000 And, you know, this kind of gets to monetary policy, which is a very dorky slight interest of mine going back all the way to college.

00:18:28.240 I mean, I'm personally – and the Fed guy, in my heart of hearts – I want competing private currencies.

00:18:33.220 That theoretically could solve a lot of our problems if we want to rediscover this federalist dual sovereignty structure.

00:18:39.040 But as it stands currently with the Federal Reserve, the government having a monopoly on the currency, yeah, it's incongruence.

00:18:45.680 It's just not going to work the way that they want it to work in terms of passing these crazy spending policies but not controlling the coin.

00:18:51.600 I don't understand – I don't understand – I really don't understand how people don't see that competition makes things better and stronger.

00:19:04.180 If the government knew that their currency could be taken out by a better, stronger currency, they'd be more responsible.

00:19:15.380 Yeah.

00:19:15.940 You know, and I don't – and especially when – if you are the product, the company, and the police, who do you go to?

00:19:27.180 Right.

00:19:27.860 Who do you go to when that company is screwing you if they're also the police?

00:19:31.760 Right.

00:19:32.300 Right.

00:19:33.380 Yeah.

00:19:33.820 No, look, it's a great question.

00:19:36.040 I mean, competition, the marketplace just solves so many of our problems.

00:19:39.840 I mean, the marketplace of ideas that the left is increasingly intolerant to, in theory, to once again beat this hammer hard of federalism, the competition of states.

00:19:49.260 I mean, you know, look, I mean, I am not particularly a big fan of drugs, but look at what's happening in Colorado.

00:19:54.860 And, yeah, I think there have been some bad effects of marijuana legalization there.

00:19:57.800 The homeless problem in Denver has actually gotten a lot worse, honestly.

00:20:01.440 But if they want to try that, go for it.

00:20:04.340 Go for it.

00:20:05.160 Yeah.

00:20:05.900 And we – you can't tell me that Texas, if they found a way to make this socialized medicine actually work, which, you know, it can't.

00:20:17.260 But let's just say, miracle, it happens.

00:20:20.300 And Colorado is the one that says, we got it.

00:20:23.320 And look, it's cheaper for everybody all the way around.

00:20:25.800 It's better health care.

00:20:27.300 You think Texas is not going to take that?

00:20:29.140 Right.

00:20:29.320 Just be stubborn?

00:20:30.000 Of course, as Americans, we will always adopt the best strategy in the free market.

00:20:38.100 But we're not really – we're not going down that path at all.

00:20:43.920 No, we're not.

00:20:45.180 And, you know, I think back to 2012, actually.

00:20:49.020 So many people criticized Mitt Romney for signing Romney Care in Massachusetts and then, like, the model for Obamacare.

00:20:55.060 All Mitt Romney had to say was, I was governor.

00:20:58.980 It was my plenary authority.

00:21:00.140 I thought this was the best program for my state.

00:21:02.140 I don't want to nationalize it.

00:21:03.300 I can't believe, in retrospect, he never said that.

00:21:06.280 Because I don't think he – I think he did want to nationalize it.

00:21:10.040 I mean, that's usually what they think.

00:21:12.780 Well, this will work.

00:21:14.060 And it just didn't work.

00:21:14.880 I mean, that's why communism happens over and over and over again and all the bodies pile up because everybody's like, well, they screwed it up, but I got it right.

00:21:22.800 And it doesn't work.

00:21:25.220 No.

00:21:25.740 Communism has worked precisely zero times in the history of times that has ever been implemented.

00:21:30.500 It will never work.

00:21:31.740 And it is foreordained that it will never work because the people – it is inherent in the human soul, in the human fiber, a rudimentary willingness to control our own destiny that communist ideology precludes.

00:21:47.040 Okay, so how do you fix a country that its history has been stolen from it, doesn't understand its history, doesn't understand its place in the world, doesn't appreciate what it even has, you know, just wants more and more and more.

00:22:05.980 The culture is rotten to the core.

00:22:09.960 There is no virtue.

00:22:12.080 I mean, look at the leaders of our country.

00:22:14.160 The leaders, we're a representative government.

00:22:16.180 They represent us.

00:22:18.380 We don't care. 0.99

00:22:19.640 We just put that thief in charge. 0.99

00:22:23.840 A constitution that means nothing anymore.

00:22:28.780 I mean, I can't think of any of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that's not violated on a daily basis.

00:22:37.960 How do you pull that back together?

00:22:41.460 Yeah.

00:22:42.060 Wow.

00:22:42.920 Million-dollar question, right?

00:22:44.260 I mean, my mom's an elementary school teacher, so I think about education policy a lot.

00:22:49.200 That has to be a logical place to start, right?

00:22:51.800 I mean, I've been being the school choice drum for a very long time now.

00:22:55.160 I mean, talk about ending monopolies. 0.78

00:22:57.000 I mean, ending the public sector's de facto monopoly on education, incentivizing competing private schools, many of which will be religious, many of which will be secular, but perhaps a strongly secular, perhaps a Hillsdale College-esque emphasis on the great books.

00:23:12.760 I'm going back to Aristotle and all the Greeks and the Romans. 0.99

00:23:15.360 I mean, this is what it has to look like.

00:23:17.300 We need to learn civics again.

00:23:18.960 We need a better education system that is not going to be synonymous with leftist indoctrination.

00:23:23.760 But you can't have a free nation and a government-run education system, right?

00:23:32.020 Because you can't teach, question the government.

00:23:39.580 Watch them like a hawk, as Washington said.

00:23:43.200 They're a fire.

00:23:44.040 When you control them, it's fine.

00:23:47.840 If they get out of control and control you, it'll burn everything down.

00:23:52.440 You know, how do you expect a government-run institution to really instill the rights that come from God?

00:24:04.560 It goes against any kind of common sense, doesn't it?

00:24:08.620 Not only does it go against common sense, but it's been erroneously interpreted by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional.

00:24:15.940 You're not even, like, allowed to talk about God in public schools, according to these ridiculous First Amendment rulings.

00:24:21.220 So not only is it illogical, but it is literally unconstitutional, as the court has told us.

00:24:25.820 So are we getting better?

00:24:27.420 Because I've just talked to some people, you know, you're home of First Liberty.

00:24:34.740 I'm being told that we're in a better place that we have been in since maybe Lincoln's time on religious liberty.

00:24:48.460 Some of the rulings that have come down.

00:24:51.680 I mean, yes and no.

00:24:52.800 I mean, the Blainsburg Cross case last term was a good victory for our firm, First Liberty.

00:24:58.800 It was a narrow victory.

00:25:00.040 It wasn't a complete overturning of the so-called lemon test, which is the controlling legal test.

00:25:04.840 So it was a narrow victory, but, you know, from the law firm's perspective, from our perspective, it would be a victory nonetheless.

00:25:10.580 But, you know, I like what happened yesterday at Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Lawrence Van Dyke,

00:25:15.320 this Ninth Circuit nominee who, former Solicitor General of both Nevada and Montana, Harvard Law Review, brilliant, brilliant attorney.

00:25:21.960 Who broke down in tears during his confirmation hearing because the American Bar Association had erroneously and maliciously fabricated this outright lie that he was hostile to the LGBT community.

00:25:36.340 And why did they say that?

00:25:37.620 Because of his pro bono hours working with First Liberty and religious liberty groups.

00:25:41.440 So we have very powerful institutional actors, the American Bar Association, the ABA being one of them,

00:25:48.020 that are trying to delegitimize religious liberty and paint it all as just the idiosyncratic province of bigotry and hostility.

00:25:55.860 And that is very, very pernicious.

00:25:58.240 That is dangerous territory right there.

00:26:00.260 You don't have anything.

00:26:01.540 If you don't have the First Amendment, you have nothing.

00:26:03.560 You lose the right to worship and live your life as God dictates to each of us.

00:26:14.520 Do you have anything?

00:26:15.980 Do you have any right?

00:26:17.100 Do you have any power after that one?

00:26:19.640 No, you have nothing.

00:26:20.200 I mean, the reason why our firm First Liberty is called First Liberty is because it is,

00:26:24.360 the religion clauses are literally the first liberties enshrined in the First Amendment.

00:26:28.980 It is literally, you open the Constitution to the First Amendment, it's the first one there.

00:26:32.800 And that logically makes sense, right?

00:26:34.640 Our country was founded on religious liberty.

00:26:36.980 I mean, say what you will about the pilgrims.

00:26:39.220 They may not have been, you know, our cup of tea from a 2019 perspective,

00:26:42.480 but fundamentally they were sailing on the Mayflower to escape persecution.

00:26:47.140 This country was literally founded on the notion of religious liberty.

00:26:51.380 And you have these candidates, I mean, you know, Beto O'Rourke talking about stealing tax-exempt status from churches,

00:26:56.880 the so-called Equality Act that the entire House Democratic Caucus supports,

00:27:00.780 which would, all this-

00:27:03.440 Explain that for people who don't know.

00:27:05.220 The Equality Act would essentially statutorily add sexual orientation and gender identity

00:27:09.960 to Title VII protected classes under the Civil Rights Act.

00:27:13.600 Here's the problem.

00:27:14.780 That is probably bad policy on its own merit.

00:27:17.100 I would actually prefer that we strip down anti-discrimination law,

00:27:20.400 because I don't think in the year 2019 there's really systemic discrimination in any manner,

00:27:25.300 so I would rather the marketplace just root this out.

00:27:28.180 But even granting the premise of adding additional layers of anti-discrimination law,

00:27:32.900 the Equality Act actually expressly precludes a religious exemption.

00:27:37.800 They had the malicious, they had the malice and the foresight to put it into this bill

00:27:43.540 to expressly say that religious institutions do not have a claim under RFRA,

00:27:49.160 the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to claim that they can't do this due to their faith.

00:27:53.860 That is malice.

00:27:55.120 That is intolerance.

00:27:56.520 That is secularist intolerance against the religious.

00:28:00.920 You know, Bill Barr gave a brilliant speech, I thought, earlier this month at University of Notre Dame

00:28:04.560 talking about how in the year 2019 it is the religious people in America who are on the defensive.

00:28:10.760 They feel like they are being overrun, being outed from the town square by militant secularists.

00:28:17.340 And what happened in the Equality Act, by putting in this provision to authoritatively say

00:28:23.300 if you are religious you will have no exemption, is I think a perfect example of what Bill Barr was talking about. 1.00

00:28:28.700 So I belong to a church that in the 1990s everybody thought was crazy.

00:28:33.720 I mean the members of the church thought it was crazy because the leadership came out with what's called

00:28:38.580 the Proclamation of the Family.

00:28:40.600 And it says, gender is ordained by God.

00:28:45.260 Men and women are here to have children and to raise families. 0.97

00:28:52.440 I mean it explains everything that we're going through right now 25 years ago.

00:28:58.100 And I know that's our doctrine.

00:29:02.960 It didn't come because of a shift of something.

00:29:07.480 If we have to marry same couples, if we have to have in our temples people who are in same-sex relationships,

00:29:21.120 our entire foundation crumbles.

00:29:25.240 There is nothing left because we believe in the sanctity of gender and the sanctity of marriage

00:29:34.200 being between a man and a woman to have children.

00:29:37.780 It's an eternal perspective.

00:29:41.860 Where's my protection?

00:29:43.980 Right.

00:29:44.980 Right.

00:29:45.620 No, that's exactly right.

00:29:46.340 I think back to Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court case that overturned Texas' statutory

00:29:54.720 banning of homosexual sodomy, effectively constitutionalizing sodomy across the country.

00:30:01.600 There were three dissenters, Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas.

00:30:06.940 Justice Scalia had a vociferous 15-20 page true culture war dissent.

00:30:12.200 Thomas had, I think, a one-paragraph dissent where he referred to the policy as uncommonly 0.79

00:30:17.840 silly. 0.86

00:30:18.900 Uncommonly silly, but nonetheless constitutional under our federalist structure. 0.98

00:30:22.680 So, what I'm getting at here is that folks like you and I, Glenn, we would not tell people,

00:30:28.180 I think, how to live their personal lives.

00:30:30.040 That is between you, God, the dictates of your conscience, whatever.

00:30:34.060 Whatever.

00:30:34.660 Whatever.

00:30:35.280 Smoke your dope in Denver, Colorado. 0.99

00:30:37.140 Engage in whatever sexual relations you want in Montana. 1.00

00:30:39.760 I don't care.

00:30:40.280 What I care about is that I and others like me, you and all of us, have the right to pursue

00:30:46.940 truth and understand truth and pursue justice and understand justice through the dictates

00:30:51.960 of our own faith, according to the dictates of our own conscience, unfettered by big government

00:30:57.100 bureaucrats who are imposing their secularist morality and shoving it down our throats.

00:31:00.640 Are you concerned at all about, I mean, because the real problem in our country right now is

00:31:09.000 the pendulum is swinging between extremes.

00:31:12.500 I mean, I don't want to hang out with the people who are really, honestly, on the right that

00:31:20.020 are saying, we got to shut them down and we've got to control the press and we've got.

00:31:26.040 No, we don't.

00:31:27.440 No, we don't.

00:31:27.880 I don't want anything to do with that.

00:31:29.660 And I don't want to be over here on the left where they're saying, you know, basically burn

00:31:33.820 books, shut people, shut people up. 0.85

00:31:35.920 I don't want anything to do with that.

00:31:38.560 How do we get that swing of that pendulum?

00:31:41.500 Because the person who replaces Donald Trump, if they can't beat him this time and look at

00:31:48.700 what they're doing to try to beat him, they'll just find somebody bigger and badder. 0.95

00:31:55.600 Somebody else who's more of a bully or an authoritarian.

00:31:59.160 We are going to, it just depends on who, which side is in power when an emergency happens

00:32:05.980 that's going to grab the pendulum. 0.97

00:32:08.200 How do we get that pendulum in each of us to swing where we're like, dude, I have no problem

00:32:15.960 with you.

00:32:17.080 Just live your life.

00:32:18.440 I don't care.

00:32:19.380 Yeah.

00:32:20.600 Yeah.

00:32:21.080 I mean, the reason why limited government was so politically palatable at the beginning

00:32:26.680 of the Republic and really continuing until the Woodrow Wilson Administrative State Revolution

00:32:31.100 in the early 20th century.

00:32:32.440 I hate that guy. 0.96

00:32:33.520 Probably the worst president of all time, from my perspective. 1.00

00:32:35.660 Probably?

00:32:36.280 Yeah.

00:32:37.220 I mean, James Buchanan, perhaps, but I mean, in terms of most actively destructive in the

00:32:41.540 long run, definitely Woodrow Wilson.

00:32:43.540 But the reason why limited government was politically palatable to generation upon generation of Americans

00:32:49.080 for the first 120, 130 years was because we had a robust, thriving civil society.

00:32:55.240 It was because we had churches, we had synagogues, we had private institutions that we could

00:32:59.560 look to, to inform and imbue us with morals and virtue and confidence.

00:33:04.320 How do you respond to people who say, yeah, and you guys took it and you shunned us, you,

00:33:13.140 you know, you, you, homosexuals couldn't, you know, be out in the open because religious 1.00

00:33:20.000 people had no tolerance of it.

00:33:22.940 What do you say to those people?

00:33:24.280 So, look, I think that's probably not true, but even granting the premise that that once

00:33:30.940 perhaps was true, maybe, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, let's say it was, that's just not

00:33:36.300 the world we're living in right now.

00:33:38.520 Wait, wait, wait, you're not saying that you don't think that people lived in the closet

00:33:41.760 and...

00:33:42.280 No, no, no, of course, but no, no, no, of course they were living in fear, but I'm talking 0.99

00:33:45.940 about like religious armies hunting down homosexuals with shotguns.

00:33:49.620 I mean, to my, to my knowledge, that has never happened in American history.

00:33:53.500 But yeah, certainly people were living in closet and fear, no doubt about that.

00:33:56.520 But that's just not what's going on in the year 2019.

00:33:58.960 In the year 2019, the LGBT groups have the backing of the academy, of the media, of the

00:34:05.820 Fortune 500.

00:34:06.840 I mean, I worked at a big law firm, Kirkland Ellis, down in Houston for 14 or 15, 15 or

00:34:11.500 16 months, probably.

00:34:13.040 LGBT was all about what the law firm stood for. 0.97

00:34:17.060 If you were a religious person who belonged to a church or synagogue that did not preach

00:34:20.620 the dictates of that particular agenda, you had to actively hide it on like firm-wide LGBT

00:34:25.380 celebration moments.

00:34:26.720 It was very monolithically imposed.

00:34:29.640 So I think the pendulum has swung so much in just on this particular issue, just the past

00:34:34.140 10 to 15 years, where they have all the institutional capital, all of it.

00:34:38.700 And it is fundamentally the religious people who are feeling on the defensive.

00:34:44.660 And I go back to that Equality Act inclusion of saying that if you are religious, you cannot

00:34:49.220 claim an exemption under RFRA.

00:34:51.600 That encapsulates the whole thing here.

00:34:53.540 They are maliciously trying to preclude us from living our own life.

00:34:57.240 So is it, were you that, you know, you know history well enough to know, this is happening

00:35:06.100 all over the world.

00:35:08.140 When people feel that they are oppressed and they are not being listened to by whomever is

00:35:18.420 in power, they tend to revolt.

00:35:21.880 They tend to get ugly.

00:35:23.140 We are in a situation where people are intentionally poking, trying to get riots happening in the

00:35:31.480 streets.

00:35:32.740 Here's a group of law-abiding citizens who love the Constitution, love their country.

00:35:38.200 They've been violated every step of the way, called all kinds of horrible names by the media,

00:35:44.660 by politicians and everything else, who are not like that.

00:35:48.100 But they feel under attack.

00:35:51.060 And just like the people in Sweden or Italy or Great Britain, they don't hate the rest of

00:35:58.320 Europe.

00:35:59.360 They just, they like what they have.

00:36:01.600 They're like, I'm an Italian.

00:36:03.100 I like Italy.

00:36:04.280 I didn't mean I hate France. 0.99

00:36:06.440 You're a racist. 0.97

00:36:08.060 At some point, those people say, I've had enough. 0.99

00:36:11.860 I've just had enough.

00:36:14.360 Yeah, no.

00:36:15.700 Does that concern you?

00:36:17.140 That we're on that road, it seems?

00:36:21.120 It concerns me a great deal.

00:36:22.880 I really do try to be an optimist by nature.

00:36:25.800 I really do.

00:36:27.200 I mean, people read my columns, my tweets, and they're like, that can't possibly be true.

00:36:30.240 But I'm born Abraham Lincoln's birthday, okay?

00:36:32.620 Lincoln is my foremost hero in American history.

00:36:35.320 Lincoln is the eternal optimist in the history of America.

00:36:38.680 You can't go back and read his addresses at Springfield, the Intemperate Society.

00:36:44.100 I mean, his post-Dred Scott address, his second inaugural, for God's sake.

00:36:48.100 That's the best.

00:36:48.940 The second inaugural.

00:36:49.940 Oh, my goodness.

00:36:50.800 I mean, he is the eternal optimist of all optimists.

00:36:52.980 So, I really do try to channel this.

00:36:55.200 It's hard.

00:36:56.180 It is really, really, really hard.

00:36:57.920 Because both sides are just increasingly embracing this authoritarianism, kind of stamp out the other side mindset.

00:37:04.440 The left has been there for a very, very, very long time.

00:37:07.600 I think one of the arguments against those of us who I think were in the Ted Cruz camp in 2016 was that the putatively conservative party would go down a very similar mirror image of what's been happening on the left if we elected the guy that we ended up electing.

00:37:22.220 And, you know, I've been pleasantly surprised by a lot of the policies that have been enacted.

00:37:25.720 I think he has largely governed in pretty traditionally conservative fashion, actually.

00:37:30.600 But there is...

00:37:31.740 Not in his words or his public actions.

00:37:35.800 Right.

00:37:36.280 But in his actual policies.

00:37:38.700 If you separate him from the policies, he hasn't been bad.

00:37:44.320 No, not bad at all.

00:37:45.660 Yeah.

00:37:45.920 Yeah.

00:37:46.180 I mean, he's been very traditional conservative.

00:37:49.120 Right.

00:37:49.560 Right.

00:37:49.820 Look, I personally clerked for a U.S.

00:37:53.360 Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit judge here in Dallas that was nominated by President Trump.

00:37:57.260 So I have personally benefited from the President Trump's outstanding judicial nominations.

00:38:01.840 Obviously, we've gotten some tax cuts.

00:38:03.700 The DOJ seems very attuned to our core religious liberty issues.

00:38:08.860 They're very closely attuned to that.

00:38:11.040 Immigration, he really should have... 1.00

00:38:13.720 I think he could have done a lot more.

00:38:15.360 But he's overall been pretty good.

00:38:16.820 But the problem is just rhetorically, just in the broader realm of public discourse, the ideas that are kind of percolating in the interstices of society, just are embracing this kind of authoritarian ideal.

00:38:30.180 And I really do worry about that.

00:38:31.580 The momentum on both sides, on both sides, seems to be in the same ultimate direction of funneling towards greater state power, oftentimes of anti-federalism, of pro-national government, anti-state power.

00:38:44.100 No one on the right talks about federalism anymore.

00:38:46.820 I mean, Mike Lee still does.

00:38:48.800 Bless Mike Lee's heart.

00:38:50.080 I don't know how that guy's still standing.

00:38:51.820 Oh, my God.

00:38:52.440 Yeah.

00:38:52.940 I mean, I worked for him my first year of law school summer as a Senate Judiciary Committee law clerk.

00:38:56.640 I mean...

00:38:56.980 He's great.

00:38:58.260 Wonderful man.

00:38:58.980 A humble public servant.

00:38:59.940 I think the world of Mike.

00:39:01.000 But we need more people who talk about federalism.

00:39:04.180 No one on the right even talks about this anymore.

00:39:07.140 It's crazy.

00:39:07.740 It's crazy.

00:39:07.780 It's crazy.

00:39:07.820 It's crazy.

00:39:14.100 So, let's talk about the Supreme Court a bit.

00:39:32.860 I think we got one good guy, maybe.

00:39:37.980 I don't know where the second Supreme Court nominee even came from.

00:39:44.960 And I worry about, you know, we had a list.

00:39:52.720 And the Oval Office seems to go, where did I put that list?

00:39:57.000 Oh, well.

00:39:57.440 And I'm concerned that because the world is going towards more fascistic or autocratic sort of rule, that if we as conservatives are not very clear in this next election, where is that list?

00:40:19.520 We want you to pull from that list.

00:40:22.800 Things could get dicey.

00:40:24.840 Yeah.

00:40:24.960 So, the list does need to be updated, to be clear.

00:40:27.540 They have not updated that list in a couple of years.

00:40:29.460 And there have been some truly, truly terrific people who have gone on to the federal courts, including my former boss, since then, I would say.

00:40:35.980 I think on the state and federal level of his appointments outside of the Supreme Court, I think it's been great.

00:40:45.980 But that was Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.

00:40:48.780 Right.

00:40:49.320 No, that's right.

00:40:49.840 So, yeah, I mean, look, Justice Gorsuch is, he's generally very solid.

00:40:54.960 I actually do have some finer points to pick with him.

00:40:57.440 I think he kind of misunderstands some doctrines.

00:41:00.240 He had this weird concurrence in a case called Sessions v. De Maia a year and a half ago.

00:41:05.120 It was kind of an immigration criminal case where, for the first time in the history of the United States government, the court read an immigration statute as unconstitutionally void for vagueness.

00:41:14.520 And Gorsuch writes like a 15 to 20 page, very flowery concurrence, talking about Blackstone and the Federalist Papers, really kind of anchoring it or at least masquerading as originalist thought.

00:41:25.000 But I think kind of fundamentally misunderstanding whether a statute can be constitutionally void for vagueness in the first place.

00:41:31.760 That's just one example.

00:41:32.620 So I have some small bones to pick with Gorsuch.

00:41:34.420 He's generally very good on the core structural issues.

00:41:37.440 Separation of powers, federalism, religious liberty is a great example.

00:41:41.640 He is rock solid on most of these issues.

00:41:43.380 Because Justice Kavanaugh, look, he was not my first, second, third, fourth or fifth choice for that seat.

00:41:49.320 He's off to a rocky start.

00:41:51.260 I think of him as a Beltway, capital R Republican, you know, like.

00:41:55.260 You called him, I love this, Karl Rove in robes.

00:41:59.040 Yeah, that's right.

00:41:59.880 Yeah, yeah.

00:42:00.760 No, I think that's exactly right.

00:42:01.760 I mean, he was he was staff secretary for President George W. Bush.

00:42:05.600 OK, he is he's from he's literally from the Beltway.

00:42:08.720 He is a Beltway Republican.

00:42:10.620 That doesn't usually bode well.

00:42:13.380 For decisions down the road.

00:42:15.320 Those guys always go left.

00:42:18.020 Oh, yeah.

00:42:18.300 Always go left.

00:42:19.880 Yeah.

00:42:20.100 You know, I won't reveal names here, but I have it on good authority.

00:42:24.440 Suffice to say, from people who are friends of mine in D.C. who have literally had breakfast or lunch personally with Brett Kavanaugh since he joined the court.

00:42:32.980 He actively follows what people say about him.

00:42:36.100 Like he actually seems to follow what various commentators, pundits, politicians, etc. write and talk about him.

00:42:43.040 And that scares me a lot.

00:42:46.080 A lot.

00:42:46.720 That that that produces John Roberts.

00:42:49.400 Produces John Roberts.

00:42:50.420 It produces Anthony Kennedy before John Roberts.

00:42:52.820 But John Roberts is, of course, the perfect example of this.

00:42:55.420 No one cares about the perceived intellectual and institutional integrity of the court more than John Roberts does.

00:43:01.200 And that's the road that I fear the Kavanaugh is very much on right now.

00:43:03.600 I really do.

00:43:04.180 I worry about him a lot.

00:43:05.060 Well, that doesn't make me happy.

00:43:09.060 Well, I told you I tried being an optimist.

00:43:10.800 I know.

00:43:11.320 It's hard.

00:43:12.020 I know.

00:43:12.700 It's hard.

00:43:13.860 So the next term.

00:43:16.220 How many appointments do you think the next president gets?

00:43:24.020 Great question.

00:43:25.900 I mean, God, Justice Ginsburg is, what, 85 years old now?

00:43:29.440 She's she's just she's God bless her.

00:43:31.980 She is.

00:43:32.500 She's fought every battle. 0.71

00:43:33.720 Oh, my God.

00:43:34.040 Yeah.

00:43:34.160 She's had three bouts of cancer, if I'm not mistaken.

00:43:35.860 Now, I love the fact that she and Scalia got that we're friends.

00:43:43.040 Beautiful.

00:43:43.480 I love that.

00:43:44.780 Beautiful friendship.

00:43:45.420 Oh, yeah.

00:43:46.680 They would attend operas together.

00:43:48.540 You know, it reminds me at Princeton University these days, you know, Robbie George has been there for decades.

00:43:53.620 Perhaps the preeminent Catholic intellectual in the country.

00:43:57.300 A brilliant, brilliant, brilliant statesman.

00:44:00.720 He loves touting the fact that he and Cornel West have this kind of speaking tour where they go from campus to campus just to talk.

00:44:07.780 And they're great.

00:44:08.280 They're wonderful at it.

00:44:09.140 They're amazing.

00:44:10.080 I love watching those.

00:44:11.840 Scalia and Ginsburg.

00:44:12.640 Ginsburg, they disagreed on everything, everything.

00:44:16.660 So how do we get there?

00:44:18.000 How did they do that?

00:44:19.180 Because.

00:44:20.780 Their job was the Constitution.

00:44:23.060 And I just said.

00:44:25.540 How do we agree when we don't agree on fundamental rights?

00:44:29.160 How did they get there?

00:44:31.300 Just don't talk about that.

00:44:32.420 I mean, I think that's basically it.

00:44:35.640 I mean, Scalia was a devout, I think, a lot of mass attending Catholic.

00:44:39.700 Ginsburg was a fairly secular Jew, if I'm not mistaken.

00:44:43.360 They didn't talk about religion, presumably, even though Scalia was actually very philo-Semitic, if I'm not mistaken.

00:44:48.060 They didn't really talk about religion much.

00:44:49.660 They didn't talk about originalism versus living constitution, presumably, because that would just spike both their blood pressures.

00:44:56.140 They talked about their families.

00:44:57.480 They talked about the opera.

00:44:59.000 They talked about the arts and cuisine and culture and anything else that can possibly unify us.

00:45:05.340 Because politics is not everything, Glenn.

00:45:07.340 Politics, the Constitution, this is important stuff, okay?

00:45:10.840 I care about politics so much that I quit my big law firm job and I now do this for a living, okay?

00:45:16.680 That's how much I care about this.

00:45:18.040 But it is not everything.

00:45:19.820 There are so many more just as and usually more important things in life than politics.

00:45:25.620 And I think Scalia and Ginsburg were able to find a lot to agree on in that.

00:45:29.780 And that is a wonderful example for us to follow.

00:45:31.620 So, let me ask you this, though.

00:45:32.780 It used to be easy for people to say, let's not talk politics.

00:45:46.220 But now, sports, footwear, everything.

00:45:52.420 It's all political.

00:45:53.060 It's all political.

00:45:53.860 And by design, by design.

00:45:56.840 So, there is nothing.

00:45:58.600 That's one of the real problems is you can't get past politics.

00:46:03.740 I don't care what you're talking about.

00:46:06.280 Hey, you know, oh, that's a great car.

00:46:10.060 Well, is that adding to global warming?

00:46:13.060 You know, hey, let's go have a great, you know, great dinner.

00:46:16.760 Are you eating animals?

00:46:18.960 I mean, it's everything is political.

00:46:22.020 Yeah, this arguably is actually even more dangerous in the long run than political tribalism itself.

00:46:31.320 Because we already are losing a physical common ground, a physical town square because of the internet and technology.

00:46:38.520 And we work behind our computer screens all day.

00:46:40.040 That's why federalism no longer works.

00:46:42.060 Right.

00:46:42.420 Because everything is a government issue.

00:46:47.200 All of it.

00:46:47.960 Right.

00:46:48.480 It's all regulation.

00:46:49.680 Right.

00:46:50.520 Exactly right.

00:46:51.160 So, we're already missing the physical town square, the physical kind of public gathering grounds.

00:46:57.240 But if we lose that in addition to kind of the more ethereal public square, these things we're talking about, sports, cuisine, culture,

00:47:07.240 if all of that is just then kind of siphoned off and cabined into the space of political tribalism too, that is what I really fear.

00:47:14.720 And I had a great conversation with my ex-college roommate about this actually this past spring.

00:47:18.600 And he's center left for sure.

00:47:20.500 So, we don't agree on a whole lot politically.

00:47:22.960 But we were saying how we are risking going down the road of not just consuming our own media, but literally, as you're saying, shopping and living in our own universes, living in our own political universes.

00:47:34.600 And-

00:47:35.360 We already are.

00:47:36.380 Yeah.

00:47:36.620 We really, we really already are.

00:47:38.980 They can tell just by what you buy at the grocery store with like 95, 98% accuracy by the products you buy.

00:47:47.920 Wow.

00:47:48.380 Because we buy different ketchup.

00:47:49.920 We buy, you know, different bread.

00:47:51.780 We, and I don't even know how that happens, but we do.

00:47:56.180 We just have already been sorted.

00:47:59.980 And now with high tech, that sorting is encouraged.

00:48:05.140 Right.

00:48:05.940 Right.

00:48:07.380 It is a dangerous path that we are going down.

00:48:10.160 But I mean, you know, let's not pretend that this is happening equally on both sides.

00:48:14.960 I mean, it is the left that is politicizing a lot of this a much more, much more than, than, than the right is.

00:48:19.860 I mean, Nike being a great example, obviously with Kaepernick and the freaking Betsy Ross sneaker.

00:48:24.320 You know, I mean, to the extent the right has reacted, I look at like Black Rifle Coffee Company, a veteran founded company.

00:48:30.040 I'm not even sure that if that counts as being on the right, honestly.

00:48:32.460 But I mean, it's the closest thing I can imagine.

00:48:34.180 This is increasingly happening on the left.

00:48:36.360 And people like Taylor Swift, who once conscientiously avoided politics, Taylor Swift used to like never, ever, ever get involved with this.

00:48:43.380 It's only over the past three years that she has become a pretty overt partisan Democrat.

00:48:48.360 And I suspect it's because she's just gotten so much pressure to conform or to essentially be, you know, proverbially excommunicated from the space of what it means to be a good musician.

00:49:00.920 Which gives you so much respect for people like Dave Chappelle and Kanye West.

00:49:06.700 I mean, I was never a fan of Kanye West.

00:49:09.340 I'm a fan of Kanye West, you know, I think that guy is, I don't know if he's a, I don't know him, I don't follow him, I don't listen to his music, so I don't know.

00:49:20.940 Yeah.

00:49:21.140 But I am a fan of anyone who has courage to put it all on the line and just take a beating to the head over and over again.

00:49:31.900 He had no reason.

00:49:33.100 He was a genius.

00:49:34.800 No matter what he did, he was a genius.

00:49:37.800 Now, he's Kanye West to half of the country.

00:49:42.900 Not a good business move by any stretch of the imagination.

00:49:47.800 Brave.

00:49:48.680 Extremely.

00:49:50.200 Same with Dave Chappelle.

00:49:52.980 Yeah, raise your hand if you saw five years ago that Kanye West would become a MAGA hat wearing Christian living on a ranch. 0.97

00:50:00.880 Insane!

00:50:01.720 I think he's literally living on a ranch these days.

00:50:04.140 I'm not positive about that.

00:50:05.880 Well, he lives in Calabasas still.

00:50:07.860 Oh, he does?

00:50:08.460 Yeah, and he's got a big, Calabasas has horses and things like that.

00:50:12.820 Got it, okay.

00:50:13.400 So, not quite right, but close.

00:50:15.780 Yeah.

00:50:16.300 But, yeah, no, these, but it's crazy that we need to, we as a society feel compelled to say, like, good job, brave, bravery for free thought, for thinking according to yourself.

00:50:28.380 It's just profoundly sad.

00:50:30.160 It's amazing to me that his message isn't more universal.

00:50:37.480 I mean, it is the American message.

00:50:41.220 Yep.

00:50:41.760 I don't have to vote like you.

00:50:43.340 I don't have to live like you.

00:50:45.120 I don't have to think like you.

00:50:46.880 And you don't have to think like me.

00:50:48.620 Let's leave each other alone.

00:50:50.820 That's controversial?

00:50:52.980 Yeah, you know, it's crazy.

00:50:53.900 I mean, I'm only 30 years old, but I feel like I've heard dozens, maybe hundreds of times the question, how can the Republican Party reach out better to the black community?

00:51:03.120 And I always kind of wince when I hear that question because there is no black community.

00:51:07.360 There are black Americans.

00:51:08.740 There are black individuals.

00:51:09.660 The same way that there are Asian individuals, Jewish individuals, et cetera.

00:51:13.720 We are, there are no monolithic groups.

00:51:16.100 I hate the idea that these, these parties reach out to groups and, and the reason why I think Republicans are so bad at some things is because they believe in the individual, you know, and I'm not talking about the progressive Republicans, but, but the constitutionalist, they believe in the power of the individual.

00:51:40.560 Join me.

00:51:41.440 Don't join me.

00:51:42.580 I don't care.

00:51:43.320 Right.

00:51:43.580 You know what I mean?

00:51:44.260 And so it's not, it's not a collective mentality, which is hard when it comes to organizing for the collective.

00:51:55.060 It just goes against what we believe.

00:51:57.860 I think.

00:51:59.320 No, no, I, I completely agree with that.

00:52:02.000 I think collectivization or collectivism is fundamentally at odds with the American way of life.

00:52:09.320 Our constitutional structure is not secured.

00:52:13.840 It is not in place to tell the citizenry what to do for a living, how to treat their neighbors, how to treat their family, or how to basically engage in the fundamental day-to-day acts that a person goes through.

00:52:27.040 We are supposed to arrive at these conclusions on our own.

00:52:29.520 And that's why, to go back to the communist statistic, like 8% more communist my generation over the past decade or the time frame was, not only is that scary in terms of physical safety because 100 million people, again, have died from communism, but just to tie this all together, nothing could be more fundamentally at odds with what America is itself. 0.58

00:52:50.100 Nothing is more indicative of the fact that we have lost any semblance of what this country stands for, of civics, of the Declaration of Independence, of any of this, than totalitarianism being bipartisanly on the rise.

00:53:05.000 I literally lose sleep over this.

00:53:08.200 I literally lose sleep over this.

00:53:09.440 And I think education is where it has to start.

00:53:12.280 I can't think of where else it possibly could start.

00:53:14.440 It's not going to come from the top down.

00:53:15.820 It's got to come.

00:53:16.180 No, it's got to come from the home.

00:53:17.540 It's got to come from the home.

00:53:20.100 Yeah, I find myself doing this a lot these days, too.

00:53:24.040 Yeah, I know.

00:53:24.980 I want to, I want to, I specifically wanted to talk to you about one thing, but I think I want to, well, let's just, let's just start with tech and then we'll go back.

00:53:41.460 I think the only time that I agree with people who say the founders never saw this, they didn't see machine guns, they didn't see airplanes, they didn't see going to the moon.

00:53:58.440 But they have, they had enough vision to boil it down to the principles that cover all of those things, right?

00:54:08.400 What is it in the principles that covers corporations becoming bigger, more powerful, and more frightening than the federal government?

00:54:23.740 Our constitution is made for the government.

00:54:26.660 Conservatives, we all say, I don't want to regulate that company.

00:54:30.400 I don't want to do these things.

00:54:31.720 But I think they are, they are quickly becoming much more powerful than the government.

00:54:39.700 And they don't have any, they don't have to worry about rights.

00:54:46.620 They don't have to, they can, they can cut you.

00:54:48.840 The public square is online.

00:54:50.920 You're cut out.

00:54:52.140 You don't have a voice.

00:54:54.860 What is it that our founders did or had as a tool or saw that could help us on this?

00:55:02.120 Is there anything?

00:55:04.440 I'm not sure there's anything in the constitutional fabric itself that directly addresses this.

00:55:09.520 And this is no doubt a huge, huge, huge challenge.

00:55:12.800 I was at Yoram Hazoni's National Concertism Conference in D.C. this summer when Tucker Carlson went on stage and said that these private corporations are now a bigger threat to your liberty than the government.

00:55:24.240 That may or may not be true, okay?

00:55:25.740 I think people can probably disagree on that.

00:55:27.920 I'm not sure I would go quite that far, to be honest with you.

00:55:29.800 But the point stands.

00:55:31.320 And I'm not sure that we have constitutional tools at our disposal to address this.

00:55:36.060 We do have legal tools.

00:55:37.180 There are an assortment of legal tools.

00:55:38.620 I am not a big proponent of antitrust in particular.

00:55:42.040 I do not look fondly upon the days of Teddy Roosevelt trust-busting.

00:55:45.580 I think some Republicans do, but that's not me.

00:55:49.960 What I am more sympathetic to is some kind of more statutory kind of nibbling around the edges.

00:55:55.020 So, for example, controversial figure, but Senator Josh Hawley, the freshman senator from Missouri, had this bill earlier this year to take away the legal immunity from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from these big tech companies and essentially allow the common law of defamation to become the legal operating standard again.

00:56:15.460 That, to me, makes a lot of sense, okay?

00:56:17.900 I think there are ways to nibble around the edges here to try and tow these companies in line.

00:56:22.580 But I'm pretty averse to Teddy Roosevelt trust-busting.

00:56:26.180 Yeah, so am I.

00:56:27.040 But what are the tools?

00:56:28.720 For instance, why has nobody proposed or have they and they just went nowhere?

00:56:34.340 Why can't we say my information belongs to me and if I want to sell it to Facebook, okay, but you can't collect it on me unless I say, okay, and you're going to pay me for that.

00:56:53.100 You know, when products are free, you're the product.

00:56:57.240 And we've exchanged this, but now when we start to see, oh, wait a minute, hang on, that information is extraordinarily valuable and I'm not comfortable with them having it.

00:57:12.680 How can we claw back our personal rights and information because that stops a lot of the things that are concerning?

00:57:21.600 Yeah, so I was a little too young to experience this, but I think in the early days of kind of the cell phone era, there was a mass consumer protection group, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, that essentially reached an agreement with cell phone providers such that you could transport your cell phone number if you switch providers.

00:57:38.660 That is the blueprint here.

00:57:40.000 I think that is the exact blueprint for what we should be doing with these tech companies.

00:57:43.460 We should have some sort of mechanism to personalize our own data, and much like a health savings account, you can take that from one health insurance provider or et cetera, it stays with you.

00:57:55.800 That should be the paradigm, the example for going on in the technology space.

00:57:59.960 Our data, we can contract it, we can farm it out to Facebook if we want to interact with our friends on Facebook or whatever social medium you choose to engage in.

00:58:07.360 But there has to be a way, and I think the cell phone blueprint is the best legal example that I've seen, to be able to take this in somewhat concrete fashion and then just take it to platform to platform no matter what sprouts up.

00:58:21.520 Holly might have had a bill on this, it might have been where I saw it, or maybe I just read it somewhere, but the cell phone number example is the best thing that I've seen to possibly analogize to I think what you're getting at.

00:58:37.360 Last question.

00:58:48.520 What is the thing that if you could stand on a mountaintop and shout, wake up, X is happening or coming, what would it be?

00:59:01.580 Oh boy.

00:59:03.700 You only get one.

00:59:04.880 Only get one, yeah.

00:59:05.580 So just to tie it all together, Glenn, our constitution is the most enduring political charter in the history of Western civilization.

00:59:16.680 Now, federalism was a very, very, very unique American addition to Western politics, okay?

00:59:25.560 Separation of powers was basically directly borrowed from Montesquieu, the French thing, but federalism was very unique.

00:59:30.460 But the totality of all this, the notion of enduring a physical constitution in contradistinction to England, which was just and remains a non-written oral constitution, to physically codify this and write this down.

00:59:43.080 And then to have the foresight, to have we the people, of which the constitution's preamble speaks, be the ultimate sovereigns, to have we the people be the sovereigns, and then to allow us to form our own destinies within our own federalist dual sovereignty structures, according to dictates of our own whims, our own conscience, our own local accountable elected officials.

01:00:04.640 This is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful political system.

01:00:08.200 There's been no greater political system that's ever been devised.

01:00:11.820 And we are ungrateful is what we currently are.

01:00:15.560 We have lost any sense of appreciation or gratitude and kind of an Edmund Burke, Burkeian sense for what has come before us.

01:00:22.340 And I think the best path forward, and conservatives have been being this drum for decades because it's true, the best path forward is to just be grateful again, to appreciate this wonderful, vibrant, rich, political, legal tradition that's been bequeathed us by our forebears. 0.97

01:00:39.960 And I would just encourage people, if I'm sitting on a mountaintop, yelling across the country, take out your pocket constitution, go online, access it, whoever you were, just read the damn thing. 0.94

01:00:51.820 It takes literally 30 minutes to read. 0.84

01:00:53.880 It is a short document, but there is so much wisdom embodied in that short document.

01:00:59.380 And we are just sticking our proverbial middle fingers to the founding generation, but they knew so much more that we just fundamentally do not know.

01:01:05.820 Constitution better than the Declaration of Independence?

01:01:08.100 No. No. Abraham Lincoln famously, I think the way he formulated it, right, was that the Constitution was the frame of silver around the apple of gold.

01:01:16.100 That is the Declaration.

01:01:17.540 Yeah.

01:01:17.880 Yeah. So the Declaration over the Constitution, for sure.

01:01:20.780 But they're both important.

01:01:22.300 Right. Well, progressive, you know, Woodrow Wilson, back to him, he hated the Declaration, said it was, there was nothing to it that had anything to do with our day.

01:01:32.700 It was a document stuck in the past, and I look at it as our mission statement, and there's no greater.

01:01:41.620 When we hit that, all right, then go, let's go look for another mission statement, grander.

01:01:48.060 But there is no grander mission statement than that.

01:01:50.860 I can't think of anything that if I got together with a group of people and said, we're going to start a movement, and we're going to change the world.

01:01:59.400 And we want the world to be a happy, healthy, loving place that guarantees everybody can do whatever they want, but we still have parameters and guardrails, but you're free.

01:02:16.640 I would present the Declaration of Independence.

01:02:20.540 That is our mission statement.

01:02:22.600 Yeah, you know, I did a recent online course through the Tikva Fund, a Jewish kind of intellectual right of center group, and it was taught by Mayor Soloveitchik, who's a pretty prominent Orthodox rabbi in New York City, a politically conservative guy, brilliant PhD, etc.

01:02:39.660 The way he formulates it is that the Constitution is a contract, but then to tie it back to what you were saying at the beginning of our conversation, the Declaration is a covenant.

01:02:48.920 The Declaration is what embodies the covenantal relationship of the entire American people.

01:02:54.280 And Lincoln, who was a pious figure, completely understood this.

01:02:58.520 He completely understood that the way that the country was currently being run, including the abhorrent Dred Scott case, of course, of 1857, Roger Taney's worst ever decision as chief justice.

01:03:09.300 It was fundamentally at odds with the incipient covenantal nature of America.

01:03:15.480 And he fought a very bloody war, a very, very bloody and tragic war.

01:03:19.880 But in so doing, he redeemed the promises of the Declaration of Independence.

01:03:24.560 He ensured the longevity, and I would hope, perhaps permanent, if we can keep it, of our covenant.

01:03:32.340 And what's interesting, though, is that it actually, even after the war, or during and after the war, I should say, it took constitutional amendments, the 13, 14, and 15 amendments, to actually do it.

01:03:42.180 So, you know, I was talking to a law school earlier this week, and this leftist law professor was commenting after my talk saying, 0.97

01:03:48.200 oh, the framers were like these old white slaveholders, like garbage arguments. 1.00

01:03:51.980 My basic response to these people is, it literally took the Article 5 amendment process that the framers had the intellectual humility and the foresight to include in our governing charter to ultimately eradicate all the things that you're complaining about. 0.97

01:04:06.960 They literally used the amendment process to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.

01:04:10.880 But I digress.

01:04:12.140 The Declaration is our covenant.

01:04:13.740 It is beautiful.

01:04:14.840 No one understood it like Lincoln.

01:04:16.500 No one hated it, as you say, more like Woodrow Wilson.

01:04:18.840 But if I'm trying from the mountaintops, I am preaching constitutional structure. 0.99

01:04:24.000 I'm preaching separation of powers and federalism, because we need to get back to that, or else I think we're in really bad shit. 0.98

01:04:29.940 Thank you. 0.98

01:04:30.400 You got it.

01:04:36.400 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:04:48.840 You got it.

01:04:49.800 You got it.

01:04:51.060 You got it.

01:04:52.120 You got it.

01:04:52.460 You got it.

01:04:52.780 You got it.

01:04:53.520 You got it.

01:04:54.660 You got it.

01:04:55.580 You got it.

01:04:55.960 You got it.

01:04:56.660 It was two hours.

01:04:57.660 You got it.

01:04:58.440 You got it.

01:04:59.940 You got it.

01:05:04.400 You got it.

01:05:05.340 You got it.

01:05:08.180 You got it.

01:05:09.120 You got it.

01:05:09.560 You got it.

01:05:10.200 You got it.

01:05:11.720 You got it.

01:05:12.300 You got it.

01:05:14.160 You got it.

01:05:16.780 You got it.

01:05:17.800 You get it.

The Glenn Beck Program - November 09, 2019

Ep 58 ｜ Return to God and Return Power to the States ｜ Josh Hammer ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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