The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 161. Government as Force ｜ Senator Mike Lee

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

00:00:05.560 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

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00:00:48.080 the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Welcome to the JBP podcast, season four,

00:00:57.040 episode 13 with Senator Mike Lee. This episode was recorded on February 18th, 2021. Jordan and Mike

00:01:04.680 Lee spoke at length about the structure and original formation of the U.S. government. They also covered

00:01:10.380 Mike's hypothesis of what's happening politically today, why it's a problem, as well as possible

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00:02:28.620 Brief Peterson update, if you haven't heard the latest controversy, Red Skull, the supervillain from

00:02:33.900 Captain America was espousing 10 rules for life and talking about chaos and order. Dad was written

00:02:40.180 into a Marvel comic book. If you want to know more, I would suggest looking at the reaction video I did

00:02:45.280 rather than going to the mainstream media. Their coverage is iffy at best. We also made merch and

00:02:50.860 are donating profits to charity. Google Red Skull Jordan Peterson on YouTube. Can you Google on YouTube?

00:02:58.300 You can probably Google on YouTube, considering they own YouTube. Search Red Skull Jordan Peterson

00:03:03.160 on YouTube to check it out. It's definitely a bit of a glitch in the Matrix story. I'm in Dubai at the

00:03:08.540 moment. Don't hate me. I can work remote. My dad is finally healthy again and Toronto sucks right now

00:03:13.800 and I was going crazy with the stay-at-home mandate, seriously, and because I can. Anyway, I miss my

00:03:19.520 mattress. I'm not kidding. Nothing beats it. I have the Helix Midnight and it's perfect. I hate the

00:03:24.960 mattress I'm using now. Helix has a money-back guarantee and you can sleep on it for 100 nights

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00:03:34.400 helixsleep.com slash Jordan. Take their two-minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a customized

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00:08:24.240 I'm privileged, I would say, today to have a discussion with Senator Mike Lee. He's been the

00:08:32.240 U.S. Senator from Utah since 2010, chair of the Joint Economic Committee since January of 2019. I'm going

00:08:39.960 to get you to tell us what that is and why it's important. Senator Lee graduated from Brigham Young University

00:08:45.900 with a degree in political science and gained his law degree from BYU's law school in 1997. He started

00:08:52.740 his career as a clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah and then clerked for Justice

00:08:58.220 Samuel Alito on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He served Utah as Governor John Huntsman's general

00:09:04.620 counsel and reunited with Justice Alito, who is now on the U.S. Supreme Court for an additional one-year

00:09:11.060 clerkship. He's written four books. I don't know how you find the time, quite frankly. The Freedom

00:09:17.640 Agenda, arguing for a balanced budget amendment, Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare, which was

00:09:24.500 an e-book critiquing the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling, Our Lost Constitution in 2015, and Written Out of

00:09:32.720 History in 2017. He's been ranked by the New York Times using a nominate system developed by political

00:09:40.060 scientists to assess political position on political spectrum, mostly left to right, as indexed by roll

00:09:47.720 call voting behavior, as the most conservative member of the Senate. And I thought we could talk to

00:09:53.680 Senator Lee today about, well, first of all, about civics. What was called civics at one point,

00:10:01.100 I suppose, that you might have been taught in high school, if you were fortunate, about the structure

00:10:05.000 and function of the U.S. government, and about the day-to-day life of a senator, and what that entails,

00:10:12.500 about the American Constitution in general, and then about the issues that he sees as most pressing,

00:10:19.240 currently confronting, well, the U.S. in particular, but also the world. So,

00:10:26.500 thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me today.

00:10:29.380 Thank you, Jordan. It's really an honor to be with you.

00:10:32.640 Yeah, well, we met, just so everyone knows, we met in Washington, that must be three years ago,

00:10:39.680 I think it was in 2018. I was very fortunate to come down to Washington and meet a number of

00:10:45.500 Republican senators and congressmen, Democrat senators and congressmen as well, trying to

00:10:52.220 get people to talk across the aisle. And we'll talk about that a little bit too, about that possibility.

00:10:57.620 So, you're an expert on the U.S. Constitution, from the legal perspective, and you have lots of

00:11:04.920 practical political experience. And so, maybe you could just start by talking to us about how you

00:11:10.700 see the, how you understand the structure of the U.S. federal government.

00:11:16.880 Thanks for asking that question, Jordan. This is something I feel strongly about. It's something that I

00:11:21.660 think can help lead us to a place where, as a country, we can heal, where we can avoid some of

00:11:27.040 the pitfalls that have proven problematic for us at times. The U.S. government is based on a document

00:11:37.280 written in 1787 by a group of individuals who I believe were wise men raised up by God to that very

00:11:45.940 purpose. Whether you believe in God or not, and regardless of what form of belief you might have,

00:11:54.820 when you look at the U.S. Constitution, you can't help but see that it has been an essential part of a

00:12:01.760 puzzle. It's sort of fostered the development of the greatest civilization that human history has ever

00:12:06.940 known. It's done this, and not because the document itself has any magical powers, or the words

00:12:13.360 themselves do, but because the document itself recognizes that the sovereigns in our system are

00:12:20.400 the people. The people have a right to be free, and that's something that's embodied in our Declaration

00:12:29.440 of Independence, written 11 years before the Constitution, which we acknowledged partly as a

00:12:36.860 product of the Scottish Enlightenment, and how that spread on both sides of the Atlantic,

00:12:43.780 that the power of government really derives from the people, and that ultimately our sovereign is God.

00:12:51.400 On earth, sovereigns are citizens. Government is an earthly institution that operates by necessity

00:13:00.120 in order to prevent us from harming each other and being harmed by others, in order to protect life,

00:13:06.920 liberty, and property. Ultimately, we realize that government is something of a necessary evil.

00:13:13.020 Government is best understood, I believe, as the official collective use of force under the

00:13:21.540 authority of a rule of general applicability that we call law.

00:13:26.360 Force, properly understood, is something that, like anything else that we deal with in the world

00:13:33.280 that we find necessary, like oxygen, like water, like fire, for example, absolutely an essential part

00:13:41.080 of life, certainly an essential part of any thriving civilization. But it's dangerous, just like each of

00:13:48.100 those things. And unless kept carefully in check, it will become dangerous, because it's run by fallible,

00:13:55.020 mortal human beings. That's essential to our understanding of the Constitution, is the fact

00:14:00.200 that human beings have infinite and eternal value. They are flawed, but they're redeemable. And we've got to

00:14:10.760 make sure that power checks power, because government is forced. So within our system of government,

00:14:15.500 sets up two really important structural protections to guarantee liberty. You see, liberty and government

00:14:22.540 power exist somewhat in opposition to each other, and yet at the same time, they kind of hold each

00:14:27.980 other in check. Government power, authority, force, if you will, cannot expand except at the expense of

00:14:36.820 individual liberty. To a degree, we need this to make sure that we don't kill each other and hurt each

00:14:43.080 other or take each other's things. But it's also got to be kept in check. At earlier times of human

00:14:50.120 development, and in some parts of the world to this very date, government has best been understood as

00:14:53.780 being embodied. The government authority is embodied in a single sovereign, a monarch, a Caesar, a king, a

00:14:59.740 queen. In our system of government, we recognize that immense danger exists in the concentration of power 0.87

00:15:08.300 in the hands of the few. And so we split up the sovereign authority to make sure that it really

00:15:13.180 belonged ultimately to the people. We split up government authority along two axes. First on the

00:15:18.940 vertical axis with something we call federalism. It was embodied in the text of the original Constitution

00:15:23.820 and later emphasized in the 10th Amendment, adopted a few years later. But it says basically that most power

00:15:31.500 in the United States of America will be exercised at the state and local level by the people.

00:15:37.200 Now, there's a principle, if I remember correctly, and I really like this principle. I believe it was

00:15:42.340 developed in England, in Great Britain, and maybe it's part of the Scottish Enlightenment, that an issue

00:15:48.760 should be dealt with by the most local authority capable of dealing with it. And so that's one way of

00:15:54.580 deciding, of noting that authority has to be distributed across multiple levels, but also of determining

00:16:01.280 who should be in charge.

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00:16:59.100 And so that's one way of deciding, of noting that authority has to be distributed across

00:17:04.580 multiple levels, but also of determining who should be in charge.

00:17:09.480 Yes, yes, that's exactly right, Jordan. And in fact,

00:17:11.840 we learned this as Americans, as part of our experience with colonial Britain. We were British

00:17:23.680 subjects prior to our revolution. And over a couple hundred years, we learned something that I think

00:17:30.840 the English crown discovered somewhat by accident, which is that once you've established a community,

00:17:38.440 in the case of what became the United States, these 13 colonies, to allow them to govern themselves

00:17:45.520 locally on local matters, it actually works pretty well. And over the couple hundred years leading up

00:17:50.760 to our revolution, we would go for these cycles where the crown would exercise either more or less

00:17:56.120 influence. It tended to exercise more in the wake of wars that it had to pay for. It said more tax

00:18:00.760 collectors, those tax collectors would impose more regulations. And then after a while, they would

00:18:06.080 withdraw, but we prospered as they sort of let go. So that's part of why we were instinctively drawn

00:18:12.160 to what we today call federalism, or in other words, where we say, let's govern ourselves at the most

00:18:18.520 local level possible. Just a few powers will exist at the national level. The federal government is supposed

00:18:25.340 to be in charge of national defense, declaring war, regulating interstate and foreign trade, bankruptcy

00:18:34.380 laws, immigration laws, postal roads. And there are a few other powers, but you get the idea. That's the

00:18:40.620 basic gist of it. They're distinctively national in character, unavoidably national in their impact. All other

00:18:48.860 things, aside from that default proposition of where things are made federal are to be kept local.

00:18:56.620 Local people have the advantage of being on the ground and being able to see exactly what's going

00:19:00.940 on. And higher orders, officials, let's say, have the advantage of being able to aggregate large

00:19:08.140 numbers of people to do the same thing at the same time. But there's a tension between those two things.

00:19:14.060 And so you could think that there's a level of responsibility for the individual and for the

00:19:20.540 family and then for the local community and the state and the federal government and then

00:19:24.300 hypothetically international organizations as well. But you want the least amount of power possible

00:19:29.980 moving up. Precisely. It's a very good principle, I think.

00:19:34.700 You made a case for force. Two things that I think will strike some listeners or watchers,

00:19:44.460 make them curious. You made a case for force and you also made a case for the embeddedness of the

00:19:51.180 constitutional system inside a religious structure and associated that with sovereignty. And I mean,

00:19:58.780 sovereignty, historically, especially if you go back into the deep past, has been associated,

00:20:04.460 let's say, with the divine right of kings or emperors. There's always been an association between

00:20:09.420 political sovereignty and something like divinity. And that connection, although church and state are

00:20:16.620 separate, isn't severed entirely in the United States. That's the case you're making, and I think

00:20:23.260 it's a general case that that connection still exists and necessarily exists. So let's look at

00:20:28.220 those two things. You talked about the government in relationship to force. And why start there?

00:20:38.140 That's what government is. Government is force. The only reason we have government is force.

00:20:44.460 Bad things happen. Ironically, violence can ensue when people start to think of it as more than force.

00:20:50.860 If they look at government as the arbiter of all that is right and all that is wrong,

00:20:55.900 of all that is fair or unfair, expectations change. And all of a sudden, force can be brought to bear

00:21:04.460 where it ought not tread under the banner of government. Force is there to make sure that we

00:21:10.380 don't hurt each other or take each other's things, to make sure that we are protected from those on the

00:21:16.380 outside of our country who seek to harm us, and those who are within it, who would destroy us and our 0.61

00:21:23.420 rights. So I think these problems become more pronounced when we lose sight of what government

00:21:31.580 is. We develop an almost reverence, and it's almost like it's become the new idolatry. We worship

00:21:37.740 government as it is.

00:21:38.540 That's why I wanted to concentrate on your discussion of force. So what I understand from

00:21:44.220 that is that I have a domain of rights, and you have a domain of rights, and we're going to bump

00:21:49.900 into each other. There's going to be conflict at the place we touch where our rights might conflict.

00:21:58.460 And what that'll mean is that there's the possibility of conflict breaking out there,

00:22:03.980 that might mean that I'm going to use force on you, or you use force on me. Now,

00:22:07.900 we could cede the right to that force to a different, to a third party, to another authority,

00:22:12.940 and that takes away the necessity for us to use force. So for example, I remember years ago,

00:22:22.380 I can't remember, he was the governor of Massachusetts. He ran for president.

00:22:26.460 He was asked at one point about an escapee from a prison who…

00:22:33.980 Michael Dukakis.

00:22:35.580 That's right, that's right, who was then raped someone. And Dukakis was asked about his personal

00:22:44.300 response to that, how he would have responded if that had been someone he cared for, who was attacked,

00:22:49.580 for example. And he… his response wasn't… he didn't allow himself to… what would you say,

00:23:02.780 to have the kind of anger that you would have if that sort of thing happened,

00:23:06.940 and then say, look, of course I should… would be put in a murderous rage as a consequence of that

00:23:12.860 occurrence, but I've ceded that power to the government, because it's too dangerous for individuals

00:23:18.460 to have to seek retribution and retaliation on their own. If… if that was always the case,

00:23:24.540 we'd have nothing but constant… a constant state of warfare between individuals. And so we cede that

00:23:30.860 power, and that has something to do with the government's monopoly on force, at least under

00:23:36.540 some circumstances. And so… Yes.

00:23:40.220 That's… that's a much… well, it's a much different viewpoint than thinking about the government

00:23:43.740 as something that's… that's the benevolent provider of goods, for example.

00:23:49.100 Right. Right. Exactly. And… and… and Dr. Peterson, that is… that is not to say

00:23:54.140 the government is incapable of good things, and that government doesn't do good things that don't

00:23:58.460 directly involve force. It is, however, important to remember that that's ultimately what government is,

00:24:05.660 is force. The way government does things, the way it does anything everywhere, at least in our country,

00:24:11.580 is that it collects taxes from the people. We… we have a number of different kinds of taxes in

00:24:18.140 this country, as they do in many countries. But ultimately, that's how government operates.

00:24:22.940 And while we call that a voluntary system, and in many ways it is, or is supposed to be, ultimately,

00:24:28.940 we pay those… citizens pay those, because they know that if they don't pay them,

00:24:34.620 force will be brought to bear. People will come, and there will be penalties attached to it if they

00:24:39.500 don't pay them. That's… that's why it's so important to remember that government is force.

00:24:44.220 It uses force to do things that we need it to do. And… and as you say, it would be chaos. It would

00:24:50.220 also be terribly inefficient, and it would result in all kinds of problems. If every one of us had to be

00:24:55.660 our own sheriff, our own, uh, Department of Defense, our own army, and our own navy, uh… that would be

00:25:02.780 problematic. Just the same, having delegated those things to a government, we have to remember what

00:25:08.460 government is, why we have it, and utilize government for that which only government can do,

00:25:14.060 and not attribute to it, uh, benevolence, and omniscience, and… and an omnipotence that most

00:25:20.300 people reserve for deity, if they believe in God. I… I want to get something back to… to another

00:25:26.620 point you made a moment ago about the role of religion. I… I'd re-characterize one of your

00:25:33.180 observations, uh… about my comments there. I… I… I don't believe that the… that the Constitution

00:25:39.180 requires, uh… in order for… to work for anyone to cling to any particular religious belief, or for

00:25:45.180 that matter, to any religious belief at all. In fact, by its own terms, it carves those things out,

00:25:51.180 and makes clear that government can't mess with those, uh… but government also may not establish those

00:25:57.020 things. It's important to have that boundary. Now that… but the… there… there… uh… I… I think

00:26:02.860 what you're referring to there is my comment about the fact that it helps to understand these things,

00:26:08.620 if… as was the case in America at the time of America's founding, and as I believe is still the case

00:26:14.220 with most Americans. When we understand that we are subject to an all-knowing, uh… benevolent,

00:26:23.500 and all-powerful creator to whom we will stand accountable at the end of this life.

00:26:28.380 And when we understand that our rights and our existence come from Him, and are… uh… a result of

00:26:34.460 a… a bestowal of… of His blessings, rather than that of any government, I think that helps inform,

00:26:41.020 uh… the proper role of government and the proper relationship between a people and its government.

00:26:45.260 There seems to be a supposition in the Declaration of Independence that rights… that there's a relationship

00:26:51.100 between rights and divinity. And… and that is… I think you can think about that conceptually,

00:26:58.140 rather than purely religiously, although you can think about it both ways, is that… there's a

00:27:04.060 hypothesis that there's something transcendent about each individual that… that isn't subject to

00:27:12.460 earthly definition, let's say, that always escapes definition. That's what makes it transcendent.

00:27:17.660 There's a transcendent value in each individual, and the best way that we can describe that is in

00:27:22.780 religious terms. In fact, when we start describing it, the description becomes religious.

00:27:29.260 And so, we use language like the soul, and we think of our rights… our rights as something that are

00:27:36.460 intrinsic to us and of the highest possible value. And… that… that is an assumption that has to be made

00:27:46.860 before the declaration… before the… the statements that are in the Declaration of Independence

00:27:51.420 can even get off the ground. That's why the… people who crafted that document said that they held those

00:27:59.500 truths to be self-evident. It's an a priori presupposition that there's something transcendent

00:28:05.260 about each individual, and that's where sovereignty is placed. When I've done my attempts at historical

00:28:11.900 analysis in… in… in monarchical systems, there's a relationship posited between the monarch and

00:28:19.420 divinity, and the monarch is sovereign because of that relationship with divinity. And it's a complete

00:28:24.540 transformation of the view of humanity that occurred over thousands and thousands of years, and certainly

00:28:30.220 manifested itself in the American system, that that sovereignty is actually something that is inherent in

00:28:36.700 each individual, not just the aristocracy, or the monarchy, or not just… not just any single group of

00:28:44.060 individuals, aristocrats, or… or any specific group, but in each individual. And so…

00:28:49.500 That's… that's exactly right. And… and were we not the offspring of God created in His image,

00:28:54.460 which… it would probably be harder to recognize that and to accept that as the… a priori supposition.

00:29:05.180 Because the… the inherent worth and the infinite value of each and every human soul is part and

00:29:11.900 parcel of this concept of liberty. Now, I… I want to be very clear. I know a lot of people who… who don't

00:29:18.060 share my religious beliefs, who share another. And a lot of other people who don't have any religious

00:29:23.100 belief at all and don't believe in God. They too… all of them are… are capable and… and are rendered no

00:29:30.460 less capable of living in freedom than I am. Just the same. One cannot mistake the significant influence

00:29:41.820 of a religious belief system, like that that most Americans share, about the existence of a God,

00:29:48.300 and the existence of a redeemer. The other thing that I think is important

00:29:52.060 about that conceptually, again… and the reason I insist upon the conceptual level is because

00:29:58.860 of the dangers of associating this with any particular religious viewpoint, or even with

00:30:03.500 a religious viewpoint at all, for that matter. Because as you said, the Constitution works just

00:30:08.060 as well for atheists, or it's just as applicable. There is some real utility, I think, in

00:30:14.780 in positing that ultimate knowledge lies beyond you. You know, and if you look at… if you're

00:30:23.740 a totalitarian, let's say you're an atheistic totalitarian, which… and those things don't

00:30:29.420 always go hand in hand, but generally they do. There isn't anything, even hypothetically,

00:30:36.460 beyond your system of knowledge. But if you're… if you're a believer, if you're someone with faith,

00:30:44.300 then you're forced into a position where you always have to admit your fundamental ignorance, because

00:30:51.180 you don't have the answers at hand. That's… that's reserved for something that's beyond you,

00:30:56.220 or something that's beyond. And so, I've often thought that there's a real useful humility

00:31:01.420 that's part and parcel of… of belief in something that's transcendent. Because you leave what's

00:31:09.580 omniscient well outside of you, and you understand that that's something that you always approach,

00:31:15.580 but never can possibly attain, and that all your systems are partial and incomplete at best. And

00:31:23.340 that seems to me to be a necessary antidote to, like, a potentially dangerous totalitarianism or

00:31:32.220 narcissism. So… and I… so… I think it's so wise that the system is set up that way. I mean,

00:31:39.660 it puts a tension in it, because there is this nesting of the political system inside a set of

00:31:45.660 religious suppositions, but then there's also this insistence and… of the separation between church

00:31:51.740 and state. So that's a strange tension, and it's… it's a tough one to… to sort through. But…

00:31:58.060 No… No, that's right. And… and it can seem… it can seem contradictory. It can seem like it's in

00:32:04.860 conflict. I think once you unpack what government is and… and how it's used, and you understand human

00:32:12.860 beings and their relationship to each other and to their government, it becomes easier to see how this

00:32:20.300 can work and how it… it must work. In other words, for me at least, um… my belief in my relationship

00:32:30.620 with God is, uh… the most important thing, um… in this world to me. It's… it's right there with my

00:32:41.100 relationship with my wife and my children. It's something without which I cannot imagine my existence.

00:32:47.660 Um… and it is for that reason, and not in spite of it, that I don't want government touching it.

00:32:55.420 In other words, uh… there… there is an increasing inclination in society today,

00:33:00.540 including among many Americans, that if something is really important, then it must be something that

00:33:07.660 the government does, promotes, funds, uh… or… or… or is otherwise, uh… officially in… uh… involved in.

00:33:17.900 Um… and I think it… this is a helpful example to all of us, uh… of the reasons why it ought

00:33:24.140 to stay out. It is… it is because it's important that it must not touch it. It's not an appropriate

00:33:30.220 place for the use of force. There's a good reason why, uh… people have, for many, many centuries,

00:33:37.340 uh… sought sanctuary in places of worship. People instinctively recognize that force…

00:33:45.900 use of physical… uh… physically coercive force is not something we want to… to take place

00:33:53.020 inside of a church… or… uh… or a synagogue… or another place of worship. And, uh… uh… so too

00:33:59.820 with many aspects of our lives that are important. Because they are important, you don't necessarily

00:34:03.580 want government in charge of it. Mm-hmm. So it brings up a really complicated question,

00:34:07.340 you know, which is… how do you determine… so… how do you… the government can become dangerous

00:34:14.220 because of its monopoly on force and its potentially expansive reach. Um… but there's many complex

00:34:20.140 problems that need to be solved and… and hopefully… hopefully people of good will can work together

00:34:24.540 to solve them. You're… you're faced then with the necessity of a constant discussion about what

00:34:29.420 government could and couldn't do. And it seems to me that that discussion should be informed by

00:34:35.100 realization that government does some things that are necessary, but that, like any other powerful entity,

00:34:43.660 it… it's… it needs to face constraints. Part of the political debate is constantly about what

00:34:51.260 that domain of action should be and what those constraints should be. And I suppose the conservatives

00:34:55.580 are constantly on the side of pushing for constraint, at least in some domains, on government expansion.

00:35:03.500 There's exceptions to that. And whereas the people on the left end of the spectrum are… are more

00:35:10.220 convinced that, you know, the… the power for government to do good is so great that its power should be

00:35:17.580 expanded outward.

00:35:22.060 That… that's right. And… and it's an important discussion to have. And you've got… you've got

00:35:26.460 conservatives and you've got liberals, you've got libertarians who… um… you know, I'd consider myself

00:35:33.420 a… a conservative with libertarian leanings. Um… in any event, regardless of where you categorize

00:35:42.700 yourself, it's important to recognize what government is, what it's not, what its power is, and… and which

00:35:48.140 level of government ought to be operating, uh, for a particular issue, and, uh, which person or office

00:35:55.660 within which level of government is appropriate. So, a minute ago, we talked about the… the federalism,

00:36:00.620 the vertical separation of powers, leaving a… a… a fairly stable pyramid-like structure. A few

00:36:06.620 powers at the top, most powers at the base, close to the people. Most people know their state

00:36:11.500 legislator, their city council members. They interact with them at the grocery store. They

00:36:15.500 might recognize them at their child's baseball game. Uh… fewer people know their federal legislators.

00:36:20.380 It's part of the reason why we have fewer powers and trust at the top. There's also a horizontal

00:36:25.340 protection in the constitution. One that says, uh, once you're inside the federal government,

00:36:30.780 dealing with something that's a federal issue, you know, war powers, regulating trade or international,

00:36:35.900 uh, uh, trade or commerce, and so forth. We're going to have three distinct branches. We've

00:36:41.180 further subdivided the king or the Caesar, the king or the queen, the monarch there, uh, into three

00:36:46.220 distinct parts. We've got one branch of government, the legislative branch, Congress, where I work,

00:36:50.300 that makes the laws. This was designed as the most dangerous branch. That's why it's made the most

00:36:54.620 accountable to the people at the… at the most regular intervals, because we have the power to

00:36:59.500 prescribe the rules by which the rest of government operates. That's the legislative branch. The

00:37:04.380 executive branch, headed by the president in our system, uh, has the power to execute, implement,

00:37:10.300 and… and enforce the laws passed by Congress. Then you've got the judicial branch, headed by the

00:37:15.020 Supreme Court, that has the power to interpret, uh, the laws and disputes about the laws, where they

00:37:20.620 come into conflict between two or more parties properly before the jurisdiction of the courts.

00:37:25.900 When each of those branches stays in its lane, the legislative power remains the most dangerous

00:37:31.740 branch, but it is made less dangerous by the fact that it's the most accountable to the people at the

00:37:37.340 most regular intervals. So, insofar as we follow those guidelines, uh, the vertical protection of

00:37:43.420 federalism, the horizontal protection of separation of powers. This document really has helped us,

00:37:48.140 and it's helped us prosper. It's… it's led more people out of poverty than any government program

00:37:53.340 ever could or… or ever will, because it unlocks unlimited human potential by restraining government.

00:37:58.940 Over the last 80 years or so, we've seen a system by which, unfortunately, under the leadership of

00:38:04.860 White Houses, Senates, and Houses of Representatives of every conceivable partisan combination,

00:38:10.540 we've seen a shift in power. We've distorted the vertical protection of federalism by pushing power

00:38:17.420 that belongs to the states up to the federal government. Then once it's inside the federal

00:38:22.380 government, you've seen Congress responding to that in a panic, trying to shield, uh, individual

00:38:27.980 members from political accountability that comes from all this power. They shifted out to the other

00:38:32.620 branches, primarily the executive branch, by delegating out power.

00:38:36.460 Okay, so that's a really interesting argument. So, I haven't heard that before. So, you're… my

00:38:42.300 understanding of what you're stating is, so as… as increasing power has been… what would you…

00:38:49.100 abdicated, let's say, to… to the federal level, or taken by the federal level ill-advisedly,

00:38:56.460 the weight on the individual legislatures… legislators, the moral weight has become too intense,

00:39:01.740 and they're abdicating their legislative responsibility. And that means that it's

00:39:05.660 handed over to the executive. Is so… so… I mean, it's confusing for a Canadian. Well,

00:39:11.020 our system is confusing for a Canadian, but your system is even more confusing for a Canadian.

00:39:17.740 The legislative branch in the US drafts the laws, but the… the president appears,

00:39:23.420 and this is over many administrations, to be using more executive orders.

00:39:28.060 And so, this is a reflection of what you just described. Is that the case, as far as you're

00:39:33.740 concerned? It is that… yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. That is the culmination

00:39:38.940 of what we do when we ignore federalism by pushing too much power to the federal government.

00:39:43.420 Okay, so let me… let me ask you how you came to this conclusion, because it's a very…

00:39:47.260 it's a subtle argument. So, I want to walk through it again.

00:39:52.860 We are… you're basically hypothesizing that at some point,

00:39:56.060 the weight of responsibility becomes too much for any single individual in a position of power to bear.

00:40:02.300 And so, they'll look for avenues of escape. And they can't bear it maybe because it's too complex,

00:40:06.700 they can't keep up, they can't bear it because people are after them for making decisions.

00:40:10.380 There's all sorts of reasons. They might be intimidated by the magnitude of their decisions,

00:40:14.620 all of that. So, if you dump too much on them, then they shy away from it. And then it defaults

00:40:19.180 over to the executives. Can you… are there… do you have, like, examples at hand of that happening?

00:40:23.740 What sort of powers are… have been taken away at the state level or abdicated… where the states

00:40:30.780 have abdicated their responsibility and moved towards the federal? And any idea why that's happening?

00:40:35.180 Yeah. Great question. The best single example that I can think of lies with what we call the

00:40:44.140 Commerce Clause. Clause 3 of Article 1, Section 8. Article 1, Section 8 is the part of the Constitution

00:40:49.500 that outlines the powers of Congress. And with it, basically, the powers of the federal government.

00:40:54.220 The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate trade or commerce between the states with

00:40:58.380 four nations and with the Indian tribes. Over the first 150 years or so of our republic, this was 0.65

00:41:04.300 understood and exercised as a power to regulate interstate commercial transactions, for example.

00:41:11.260 Making sure that Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania weren't engaging in trade

00:41:20.300 wars against each other. To make clear that the federal sovereign would be in charge of interstate

00:41:26.620 commercial transactions, interstate waterways, roadways, things like that. And then we had a shift.

00:41:35.900 And that would be because no single state obviously could do that because it involves more than one

00:41:40.060 state. So the federal level is the logical level for that power to reside.

00:41:45.420 Correct. Correct. And in that respect, we were trying to set up a, you know, a single

00:41:50.780 common market to make sure that we weren't operating as 13 independent republics who would engage in

00:41:56.780 trade wars against each other. All of this started to change during the Great Depression,

00:42:02.220 during Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal era. Initially, there was some resistance by the Supreme

00:42:08.620 Court. But all of this changed. Our reading, our official interpretation of the Commerce Clause,

00:42:13.100 Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, changed on one day in America that's very seldom recognized in a Supreme

00:42:19.500 Court decision that very few Americans even know anything about. It's called NLRB versus Jones and

00:42:25.900 Laughlin Steel Company. It was decided on April 12, 1937. In that case, the Supreme Court concluded that

00:42:33.180 Congress's power to regulate trade or commerce between the states with foreign nations and with Indian

00:42:38.140 tribes not only meant interstate commercial transactions and the regulation of interstate

00:42:43.820 corridors of trade and things like that, but it also extended to the power to regulate any activity

00:42:51.020 that is commercially natural and that when replicated across every state, while local and intrastate by

00:42:57.900 nature, has in the aggregate a substantial economic impact, such that something as local, as trade and

00:43:07.740 labor laws or agricultural production, things like agriculture, labor, mining, and things like

00:43:16.300 this that are economic but occur in one state, had always been the bread and butter of something that,

00:43:22.940 if regulated by government, would be regulated by state authority and not federal. In that case,

00:43:27.660 on that one day, April 12, 1937, the Supreme Court said, no, it's anything that's economic and has a

00:43:32.540 substantial effect. Ever since then, Congress has enacted law after law federalizing all these issues,

00:43:41.100 labor, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and so forth. The Supreme Court has left basically a

00:43:49.660 perpetually green light since that date. Since April 12, 1937, we've really had only three instances in which

00:43:56.940 the Supreme Court has identified any act of Congress as outside Congress's legislative authority to

00:44:03.020 regulate interstate and foreign trade. Basically, all three of them, two of those three were sort of

00:44:08.700 drafting errors. The Supreme Court explained to Congress how it could remedy, and on the third one,

00:44:12.700 Congress went ahead and papered over the problem by validating the act of Congress in question

00:44:20.620 as legitimate under a separate provision of the Constitution. As a result of this, Congress has

00:44:28.060 now got all this power. Congress then delegates that to the executive branch, passing laws that sound

00:44:33.820 less and less like laws over time, and more and more like platitudes.

00:44:37.100 Can you give us any concrete examples of that?

00:44:40.300 Yeah. Okay. Let's take a good example.

00:44:44.940 Let's say trade laws pass something regulating minimum wage, prescribing a nationwide minimum wage.

00:44:59.340 Okay. That seems like it's a main issue at the moment.

00:45:01.820 That is economic in nature. It has a substantial effect on interstate commerce when aggregated across

00:45:08.940 every state. Insofar as we just set the minimum wage, that is not violating the horizontal protection

00:45:15.820 of separation of powers if we set it. If, however, we were to delegate to the Secretary of Labor or the

00:45:22.380 President of the United States or somewhat other executive branch official the power to prescribe

00:45:27.580 rules making sure that the minimum wage was set fairly, that would be an unacceptable delegation of that 0.94

00:45:34.860 legislative power over to the executive branch. Now, we haven't done that with the minimum wage. It's

00:45:40.380 still an improper exercise of federal power, in my view, but at least we haven't exercised that there.

00:45:45.660 In other areas, let's take, for example, clean air. Clean air is something over which we have

00:45:53.180 basis for authority because if you've got a factory or a mobile source of pollution in one state,

00:45:59.020 it can emit things that can move into another state and cause problems downwind.

00:46:02.300 But we've delegated a lot of what power we do have in the federal government to executive branch

00:46:09.420 agencies. We've got something, for example, called the Clean Air Act. Now, a lot of good has been done

00:46:13.420 through the Clean Air Act. We've significantly abated things like acid rain problems, other air

00:46:19.420 pollutants that have caused a lot of problems for people. The Clean Air Act, this is a slight

00:46:23.420 oversimplification, but as I explained in our last constitution, it's a little bit like we said,

00:46:29.340 we shall have clean air. We hereby declare that we shall have clean air, and we hereby delegate to

00:46:35.420 the EPA, the executive branch agency in charge of administering that law, the power to define what

00:46:43.100 air pollution means, what are acceptable limits on particular air pollutants, then to prescribe

00:46:50.060 penalties for those who exceed those limits, and the power to enforce those same penalties,

00:46:56.460 all vested in one executive branch agency. That might be good for politicians, because it allows

00:47:04.380 them to say, I like clean air. But if the EPA then charged with that, does things that in some

00:47:11.660 circumstances make no sense, like for example, when they set the minimum ozone levels at a level below

00:47:17.020 where Mother Nature herself has set them, as has happened in some parts of the country, people become

00:47:22.140 outraged, they complain to Congress, members of Congress, beat their chests and say, those barbarians

00:47:26.860 at EPA, I'm going to write them a strongly worded letter, as if that were our job as lawmakers to write

00:47:32.220 a strongly worded letter. But in reality, all we've done is pass the buck to the EPA. We've done the same

00:47:37.020 thing with EPA, as we have with occupational safety and health requirements, with OSHA,

00:47:44.140 MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, alphabet soup agency, after alphabet soup agency,

00:47:54.780 throughout the federal government has lawmaking power, that's inappropriate.

00:47:57.820 Sorry, sorry, I should remind everybody that there's a bit of a lag in this conversation because of the

00:48:03.340 technology. So we might interrupt each other and appear rude. But the lag has something to do with

00:48:08.060 that. And maybe me being rude also has something to do with it. But there's all this talk about the

00:48:13.820 deep state. And, and I'm just thinking that some of that could well be generated as a consequence of

00:48:20.620 what you're describing, you know, as more and more decisions are, are delegated or relegated more accurately

00:48:28.620 to, to entities that aren't accountable in the same way, then it would seem logical that an extra

00:48:36.300 governmental government, so to speak, emerges. I mean, the same thing happens in a country like Canada,

00:48:43.420 where the, the, the, the civil service becomes more and more powerful across time, because

00:48:50.220 responsibility is relegated to it by legislators that aren't, or can't, aren't willing or can't

00:48:57.100 maintain their responsibility. Or it's passed on to the court to make decisions to make law de facto,

00:49:03.500 because the legislators won't take the initiative to do so they can put it off. So,

00:49:10.860 so what kind of, what kind of reception does this kind of argument get among your peers and among your,

00:49:16.700 among your political opponents?

00:49:20.460 It's interesting, Dr. Peterson.

00:49:21.820 Um, most of my colleagues in the Senate and our counterparts in the House, um,

00:49:30.300 what I suppose, if they were part of this conversation today, um,

00:49:35.340 say that they, they don't necessarily disagree with the fact that we've moved power from states

00:49:40.780 and localities to Washington. And then within Washington, we've given power away from the,

00:49:45.180 uh, people's elected lawmakers who have voluntarily delegated that power over to unelected,

00:49:49.660 unaccountable bureaucrats. And in many cases, the president of the United States, many of them,

00:49:54.380 perhaps most of them, uh, would agree that, uh, to a degree that has happened.

00:50:01.100 What they would say next would depend in part on their political persuasion.

00:50:05.260 Um, some of them would say, yeah, that's true, but it doesn't matter because this is a good thing.

00:50:11.740 And we really benefit from the specialized expertise of those who occupy these executive

00:50:17.580 branch agencies. And I want, I want to make very clear, I got nothing but respect for those

00:50:22.700 individuals. They're, uh, by and large, well-educated, hardworking, well-intentioned people

00:50:28.460 with a high degree of specialization. Uh, my point is not that we can't learn from them. My point is that

00:50:34.220 they're not lawmakers. They don't stand accountable to the people, uh, in regular elections or elections,

00:50:39.580 elections ever. Yeah. Well, you said, for example, you would, you said that the EPA that, that had,

00:50:45.980 had many positive effects. You're all, you're all, you, you seem also still worried about it.

00:50:53.020 And so I might object, well, if it's had those positive effects, then what's the problem? Why

00:50:59.980 worry about it? And so I would like to, to know that what, why, why is that a problem?

00:51:06.460 Because our government needs to be ours. And that means that the laws, a law consists of a set of

00:51:15.740 words that prescribe a rule, a rule of general applicability, imposing affirmative obligations

00:51:21.500 on members of the public. When a law thus understood is prescribed in our system of government

00:51:27.660 by the federal government at the federal level, you have to follow a formula for it to be legitimate.

00:51:32.780 Uh, and that's true for not just the philosophical constitutional reason, but also for the practical

00:51:38.940 reason that you don't want the lawmaking power, which is the most dangerous of the powers of

00:51:44.940 government to be ever in the hands of people you can't fire. They, they, they work for you. And you've,

00:51:51.900 if you can't fire the people who make these laws as well-educated, well-intentioned as they might be,

00:51:56.620 you got a problem. So, so you see something like a drift over time so that the legislative power

00:52:02.400 drifts out of the bodies that are supposed to be exercising it into other specialized areas. And,

00:52:07.900 and that escapes, that escapes, that has the risk of escaping public accountability.

00:52:13.020 So I guess what you might argue then is that the EPA and legislation like it produces some short,

00:52:19.080 medium-term positive outcomes, but it has this long-term potential payment lurking in the background.

00:52:25.640 And we always have to keep an eye on that. So, but I mean, what do you do about that in this

00:52:31.080 situation though? Because the, the power has been ceded to the federal government and it looks like

00:52:35.220 the legislators can't keep up. So what's the solution or what are the steps towards the solution?

00:52:43.360 The easiest, uh, way that I can answer that question, because it, look, it took us, um, 80,

00:52:49.080 uh, plus years to get here, 82, 83 years from the date I identified, um, uh, to get here. Um,

00:52:58.220 the, the solution to that is going to take some time. It's not simple, but the concept is pretty

00:53:04.420 easy. I think the important first step is to enact reforms, including those that are embodied in a

00:53:11.320 proposal called the RAINS Act dealing with regulatory policy. Another similar one that I've introduced

00:53:15.440 called the Global Trade Accountability Act, where you identify policies that have been handed over

00:53:20.340 to the executive branch. And you say, insofar as we're dealing with the prescription, the prescribing

00:53:26.220 of, of laws, the making of laws from within the executive branch, we're going to treat those as

00:53:32.080 legislative proposals that will then themselves be become subject to the formula ordained by the

00:53:38.260 constitution, specifically article one, section seven of the constitution, which says that to make

00:53:42.360 a federal law, you have to have passage of, uh, the, the same set of words, the same bill,

00:53:50.240 legislative proposal within the house of representatives and in the Senate, same bill's

00:53:54.720 got to pass. Then you have to present it to the president for signature or veto.

00:53:59.200 So you're identified if you're, you want to identify laws that have already been passed that haven't

00:54:04.480 had this, haven't undergone this process and bring them back into the house, so to speak.

00:54:10.180 And that document you're holding up that particular book, what is that?

00:54:14.820 Oh, I'm sorry. This is, uh, uh, the U S constitution. I carry this around with me.

00:54:19.800 You know, it's, it's pretty simple. It's only 4,553 words wrong long, but it's still very easy to

00:54:25.880 understand. And even though I've spent a lifetime studying it and defending it, and I focus on it,

00:54:33.300 uh, constantly in the Senate, I keep the document with me because notwithstanding the fact that I'm

00:54:38.480 very familiar with it and happened for a long time. I find that by having it with me, uh, make sure

00:54:44.180 that I can check what the wording says. You'd be surprised at how often it comes in handy.

00:54:49.760 I have a question for you about that too. Like, how do you, how do you check yourself

00:54:54.640 against the standard human propensity to have an opinion and then to justify it by recourse to,

00:55:03.540 hypothetical recourse to first principles? You know what I mean is you're a constitutional expert.

00:55:08.160 And so you've got this whole body of argumentation at hand and that would make whatever elements of

00:55:14.140 you that might tend towards corruption quite dangerous because you can justify that with the

00:55:19.240 knowledge. I mean, and everyone tends towards to corruption to some degree. So, you know, when you

00:55:23.820 have that kind of specialized knowledge, then you have to, you have to ensure that the parts of you

00:55:30.320 that might not be so, um, aligned with the light, let's say, don't use their knowledge in a negative

00:55:37.900 way. I mean, scientists do that by trying to falsify their hypothesis and then having other

00:55:42.500 scientists critique their work. And, but as a constitutional expert, I mean, I know you're

00:55:47.600 accountable to the people, so that's a huge part of this, but do you have any other techniques that

00:55:53.280 you use to, to ensure that your conscience is clean in relationship to, to your relationship with the

00:56:00.060 constitution? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do. And that connects to something you mentioned a minute ago,

00:56:06.440 refer to me as an expert on the constitution. I don't call myself an expert on the constitution.

00:56:10.680 I don't consider myself that. I consider myself a guy who has, uh, uh, a copy of the constitution

00:56:18.060 with him at all times and who reads it regularly. That's, uh, that's what we need. We, we need fewer

00:56:24.280 experts and more people who just read it and develop an opinion on what it says and how best to implement.

00:56:31.080 Why did you fall in love with it in that way? I mean, it's really quite something actually that

00:56:35.240 you carry it around. I mean, and to me, that seems like a good thing. I mean, you're, if you don't mind

00:56:40.420 me saying so, um, you know, it, you're, you're carrying around something that you want to be

00:56:45.800 accountable to. And that's a, that's a big decision. How did you come, how did you come to,

00:56:51.960 how did you come to do that? I don't imagine that when you were 18, you were carrying around a copy of

00:56:57.140 the constitution. Oh, well, um, maybe you were always, not always. I, uh, it started, uh, for me at a,

00:57:06.960 at a young age, the constitution was something that was, um, important to my parents. Um, my mother

00:57:13.120 was a school teacher, uh, uh, who went on to have seven children. And, um, my father was, uh, a lawyer

00:57:20.620 and, uh, a professor of law, later served as, as dean of, uh, Brigham Young University's law school

00:57:26.920 and as president of Brigham Young University. For a few years when I was a child, he was Ronald Reagan's

00:57:32.880 solicitor general, a solicitor general in our system as the, the government's chief advocate

00:57:37.740 before the Supreme court for the administration in question. So he devoted his life and his career.

00:57:44.040 He died 25 years ago. Uh, but, um, uh, during his, uh, 61 years on this planet, he devoted much of his

00:57:54.880 career to the constitution. It's something that we talked about around the dinner table and something

00:57:59.320 that he always taught me was my responsibility to defend. I have also come to believe, uh, since

00:58:05.400 his passing, he died while I was in law school, that the constitution has never been more important

00:58:10.880 than it is right now, because it's the one thing that I think can lower the emotional temperature

00:58:16.720 in this country. It's, it's risen, risen to an almost fever pitch level in part because we've

00:58:22.620 misused government. We've mischaracterized what government's even capable of, and we've created

00:58:27.340 unreasonable expectations. The constitution's whole point is to limit and restrain government

00:58:32.000 power because we understand that it's dangerous. And one of the things that's great about this is

00:58:37.020 that it's politically agnostic. It's politically neutral. It doesn't require everyone to be a liberal

00:58:42.040 or a conservative. It simply says, uh, look, here's how we're going to make decisions. Here's where

00:58:47.480 decisions are going to be made. I, for example, I sometimes, uh, cite the example that, um,

00:58:53.440 people in Vermont, the majority of people in Vermont, I'm told would much prefer to have a

00:58:58.180 single payer government run government funded healthcare system, perhaps sort of like what

00:59:02.080 you've got in Canada. People in Utah would not want that. One of many reasons why I'm not likely

00:59:07.560 ever to live in Vermont, but let's let Vermont be Vermont. Let's let Utah be Utah. Vermont could

00:59:14.280 actually go in that direction much more easily, more quickly, more cost efficiently, more completely,

00:59:19.660 uh, if we allowed them to do it on their own than if we were trying to federalize everything,

00:59:25.220 which we have. Well, you'd also get the advantage of running the experiment. I mean,

00:59:28.740 that's certainly one advantage of a multi-state system with some autonomy at the state level is

00:59:33.680 you can run multiple experiments and see which one works. That's much better than, than, than

00:59:39.200 legislation by fiat from the top, because you're likely to be wrong no matter what your political

00:59:43.680 persuasion, when you're trying to solve a complex problem. Oh, that's, that's exactly right. And,

00:59:49.160 and in fact, uh, our founding fathers thought of the states as laboratories of Republican democracy,

00:59:54.680 places where people could experiment with what worked and what didn't work. States could learn

00:59:59.720 from one another, follow each other, not by coercion, not by coercive force, but by choice.

01:00:06.520 As people voted with their feet or with their ballot, they could see what was appealing to people

01:00:12.040 and what wasn't. So, yeah, I support the document.

01:00:15.400 So that's a really good argument for desensualization, even from a leftist perspective,

01:00:18.360 because you could say, well, look, if you want government to do good, then you want to put as

01:00:22.600 much power as possible, as low as possible, so that you could run as many experiments as possible,

01:00:27.180 so that government could, in fact, do the best possible job. Whereas if you aggregate power at the

01:00:32.520 top, you can make sweeping declarations, but the magnitude of your error is going to be,

01:00:36.520 is going to increase as a consequence. And that's a terrible thing, because you can be really wrong.

01:00:43.880 Yes. Yes. You could be really wrong. But if you split out the authority,

01:00:49.880 the authority becomes less concentrated and less lethal. Speaking of, of, of lethality,

01:00:55.880 this can manifest itself even within the areas. The, the, the problems I've identified,

01:01:01.400 manifest themselves sometimes even within those areas where the federal government is clearly in

01:01:08.120 charge. And the, the, the problem that we've had is once we've seen this seepage that happens with

01:01:15.320 the legislative branch delegating out its power in other areas where it's exercising power that

01:01:20.600 probably should be federal in the first place, by habit, like a dog to its vomit, it continues the

01:01:25.480 ritual. And it does so even in areas like the war power. Federalist number 69, Alexander

01:01:31.320 Hamilton explains that one of the key features of our system that differentiated it from the,

01:01:38.760 the British system that we had left was the power to declare a war. You see that the English monarch

01:01:43.800 had the power to take the country to war. It was parliament's job to then figure out how to pay for

01:01:47.560 it and support it. Hamilton explained, we deliberately didn't do that here. We wanted the power to declare

01:01:53.640 war only in Congress. Over time, we've gradually ceded even that power to the executive. Speaking of

01:02:00.760 Vermont, that's where my, my friend, Bernie, his Bernie Sanders and I, but probably absolute opposite

01:02:07.000 ends of the political spectrum within the Senate. There are a number of areas where we agree. This

01:02:11.960 is one of them. Uh, we are, uh, really upset about the fact that the war power has been bastardized.

01:02:21.080 It's been commandeered by the executive branch with the, the acquiescence. And in many cases,

01:02:26.280 this is the blessing of the legislative branch. And he and I have been fighting for years to get us out

01:02:31.160 of an undeclared, unconstitutional, ridiculous civil war in Yemen, in which the American people

01:02:36.200 have no business. Fortunately, uh, President Biden is going to get us out of it.

01:02:40.040 It's become slippery to define war. You know, it seemed to be more obvious when it was one set of

01:02:48.120 uniformed men against another and two sovereign states. And so, uh, I mean, part of, part of that

01:02:54.360 slippage seems to be a definitional matter, but I suspect as well, given your arguments or at least

01:03:01.960 along the same line, that it's somewhat of a relief for the legislators not to have to bear that

01:03:06.280 responsibility. Yes. And I think you're right. I think some of that has, has changed a little

01:03:12.760 bit as times have changed. It's one thing to just declare war against France, Spain, Germany,

01:03:19.080 the United Kingdom, whatever country might have been named in centuries past than it is, uh, uh,

01:03:26.040 to make a broader declaration of our region or against the philosophy today. But then again,

01:03:31.480 then as now one could propose that Congress declare war on bad people. Now it would be a terrible idea.

01:03:41.000 I wouldn't vote for that, but at least you'd be subjecting it to the political process. There

01:03:44.760 would be some political penalty for any one crazy enough to vote for a war against all bad people.

01:03:51.960 Why? Well, because that concentrates discretionary power, immense discretionary power. Ultimately in one

01:03:57.640 person, the president of the United States, that's a bad thing. And, and we ought to get away from that.

01:04:02.360 But all these features that Jordan have creep crept up to the point that we have glamorized and we 0.81

01:04:07.720 have imperialized the American presidency. Oh, it's one of the reasons why you saw this chaos.

01:04:12.120 Oh, I have a question about that too. I have a question about that. This is particularly something

01:04:16.200 interesting from a Canadian perspective, because I've often thought that there are probably four

01:04:21.640 branches of government, legislative, judicial, executive, and symbolic. And the advantage to

01:04:29.160 the British monarchy is that they extracted out the symbolic and they placed it on a monarch. And so,

01:04:35.960 you know, there's a pronounced tendency in people to admire leaders and to project something like

01:04:46.200 divinity onto them. And in, from the outside of the US, I mean, I see the constant transformation

01:04:54.280 of the American president and the American quote, first family into a monarchy. Like it was quite

01:04:59.880 stunning to me, for example, when I moved to the United States in 1993, to see the sort of power that

01:05:05.720 Hillary Clinton wielded as the wife of the president. That would never occur in Canada, under our system, 1.00

01:05:12.120 that would be essentially impossible. But I thought that that was part of the consequence of the

01:05:18.280 executive having to bear the burden of this symbolic, that should probably be parsed out into

01:05:26.040 the symbolic. You know, because then the queen and the king can be the object of admiration,

01:05:31.960 and the royal family can play that role for people who want that. But then the executive is free from

01:05:37.160 that, at least to some degree. So, I mean, I'm not proposing that you establish a monarchy, but it

01:05:42.760 does seem to be something that's like twist. And you see that also in the establishment of these

01:05:47.800 familial political dynasties, that that's that tilt back towards a monarchical form of government

01:05:55.560 that seems quite unfortunate, I would say, dangerous. That is, that is an interesting observation.

01:06:02.520 I'd never thought of it quite like that. It is true that under our system of government,

01:06:08.440 the president is the head of state, in addition to being the commander in chief of the armed forces,

01:06:13.480 and the chief executive officer of the, you know, of the executive branch. He's also the head of state.

01:06:19.720 It's a gamble, but a risk or a decision that we made consciously as Americans. And I think it's a

01:06:27.320 very manageable risk, especially if you follow the rest of the rule book, keeping in mind that no

01:06:33.560 president may serve more than eight years as president. So that's the maximum time they're

01:06:38.200 going to have. In some cases, it's only going to be four. And if we properly managed our government,

01:06:44.760 meaning if we kept the proper decisions at the proper level and in the proper branch,

01:06:49.240 the president of the United States would still be significant. But the presidency would be far less

01:06:54.760 less emotionally charged than it has become. It's become bubbling over. It's become the seething

01:07:02.360 hotbed of incipient tribalism. It's really a scary thing. We've seen this in both parties.

01:07:12.280 So you see that as a symptom of the movement towards excessive executive power. And so you could think

01:07:19.640 about that as a principle is that if the office of the presidency, as it becomes increasingly too hot

01:07:26.760 to handle, that's an indication that too much power has been placed on the president, placed at the

01:07:33.000 president's feet. Well, that's an interesting hypothesis, I think. It's both an indication of

01:07:38.440 that. And it's also the, in my view, the foreseeable and absolutely inevitable result of doing that.

01:07:45.720 This is just what happens when you do that. We have created this by allowing for the secretion of

01:07:51.880 power. Remember, earlier in the conversation, we talked about the unique relationship between

01:07:58.600 force, the use of government or force and liberty. You can't really expand or contract

01:08:04.120 either one without affecting the other one. But as we push this power upward within the federal system,

01:08:11.240 to the federal government, and then over to the chief executive, to the president,

01:08:16.840 power comes from somewhere. It goes somewhere. Ultimately, that power comes from the people

01:08:22.520 and accrues within the executive branch of the federal government. That's what makes it so darn 0.77

01:08:29.400 contentious. Because he's not only the head of state and the commander in chief, he's now in many ways,

01:08:35.800 he's not just the law enforcer, but also the lawgiver, the lawmaker. And that's dangerous.

01:08:42.600 Okay, that's okay. So let me pull two things together here. So you've alluded during this

01:08:49.480 conversation, and I have too, to the increasing political tension in the United States. And so

01:08:55.640 could you, how would you characterize that tension? Like, what do you think,

01:08:59.480 what do you think is happening? What evidence do you have for that? And that would be a good start.

01:09:05.720 I mean, because I can't get my, I know it seems like things are hot. I don't know if they're

01:09:10.120 hotter than they were under Nixon. I don't know if they're hotter than they were during the Vietnam

01:09:14.840 War. I can't tell, but they're hot enough. But what's going on in your, in your, in your view?

01:09:20.920 Yeah. It's hard for me to compare apples to apples, then versus now. I was a young child when

01:09:32.680 President Nixon left office. And when he was working to get us out of Vietnam, I wasn't

01:09:39.640 serving in the Senate or, you know, as a four year old, I wasn't terribly aware of all public

01:09:45.000 affairs by then. But I have sensed just from my reading of the history and from

01:09:51.160 my own anecdotal accounts of what I've experienced in the last 10 years in the United States Senate,

01:09:57.080 I've sensed the emotional tension continuing to go up. There are some objective measures

01:10:03.080 that I think could help quantify this. I'm not an expert in those, but if you look, for example,

01:10:09.640 over this 80, 85 year period that I've been referencing since the New Deal era, prior to the

01:10:16.680 New Deal era, in peacetime, the combined expenditures of all of the states in America

01:10:25.320 were always greater during peacetime than the expenditures of the federal government.

01:10:31.160 Since the New Deal era, the opposite has always been true. It's always been the federal government

01:10:36.840 spending more than all 50 states combined. It was never intended to be that way.

01:10:42.440 Is that growing? Has it grown across that period?

01:10:46.440 I haven't checked it in the last few years, but generally, yes. And in particular, Dr. Peterson, the

01:10:54.440 share of our economy that consists of government spending has itself expanded rather dramatically.

01:11:00.760 Most of the increase has been federal, but state expenditures and federal expenditures

01:11:11.480 combined have as a share of GDP in America grown significantly since then. And with it,

01:11:18.840 the emotional temperature has gone up. With it also, you've seen the federal government and the federal

01:11:23.800 bureaucracy in particular playing a more heavy-handed and more ominous, looming role. So for example,

01:11:31.560 25 years ago when I was in law school, first time I ever sort of started thinking about this executive

01:11:37.640 branch agency lawmaking problem, we had a guest speaker come to the law school. And he explained that

01:11:46.520 compliance with federal regulations, those prescribed by the alphabet soup agencies

01:11:54.200 in the federal government we were talking about earlier, were really kind of a backdoor invisible

01:11:58.440 tax on America's poor and middle class because Americans pay through the nose for those things

01:12:04.600 to the tune of, he said, about $300 billion a year. And he said, but they don't see the price tag for that.

01:12:11.320 That's what makes them devious and hidden and manipulative is that they pay for them, but with

01:12:18.040 higher prices on goods, higher prices on services, diminished wages, unemployment, and underemployment.

01:12:23.720 That's how they pay for those things because everything becomes more expensive. And that ends up

01:12:28.120 being kind of a backdoor invisible, highly regressive tax on America's poor and middle class. Since then.

01:12:33.240 It becomes more expensive because of cost of adhering to the increasingly complex regulatory

01:12:38.680 environment. Yes. Yes. Yes. This Byzantine labyrinth of federal regulations.

01:12:45.720 Like the month you spend doing your income tax. Yes. Yes. One of many examples. It's now estimated

01:12:52.280 that, you know, well, it was estimated around $300 billion by our guest speaker 25 years ago. They say

01:12:57.560 that that same cost is now somewhere in the range of $2 trillion a year. This is immense. It's a massive

01:13:05.240 expense, uh, uh, uh, to the American people and that disproportionately affects America.

01:13:10.200 And just for comparison purposes, the total budget is what's the magnitude of the total budget now.

01:13:17.080 Okay. So COVID is something of an exception, but we're trending toward, uh, annual federal outlays in

01:13:23.960 the range of about $4 trillion. Well, we've exploded that with COVID, uh, uh, spending several trillion

01:13:30.040 dollars more than that over the last year. We hope that's temporary. We know that it tends not to be

01:13:35.160 completely temporary when the minute you ratchet up spending, it's something of a, of a one-way ratchet.

01:13:40.680 I also measure some of this, um, in unconventional ways. Do you think that's a reasonable estimate that

01:13:46.200 the cost of the excess cost of regulatory adherence is half the budget is equivalent to half the budget?

01:13:52.600 Yes. Yes. I mean, there, um, there are lots of estimates out there. Some say that $2 trillion,

01:13:59.240 it doesn't really measure the whole of it. Uh, there are others who say that it's somewhere in

01:14:04.600 that range. Others who might try to argue it's a little bit lower, but there, there are some who

01:14:08.840 say that the true cost is even higher than that. But yeah, I think that's an accurate measure.

01:14:13.880 Another somewhat imprecise, but interesting metric that I use

01:14:16.840 is my office in Washington. Uh, I'm trying to remember whether I showed you this

01:14:23.560 while you were visiting. If not, I'll show you next time you're there. I keep two stacks of documents

01:14:27.320 behind my desk. One document is a few inches tall. It's usually either a few hundred, sometimes a few

01:14:34.760 thousand pages long, and it consists of the laws passed by Congress in the previous year.

01:14:39.160 The other stack, uh, is in some years, um, uh, 13, 14 feet tall. I keep it in three separate, um,

01:14:49.560 cases, bookcases in, in my office. It's sometimes as much as a hundred thousand pages long.

01:14:57.320 And it's last year's federal register. The federal register is the annual cumulative index of federal

01:15:03.240 regulations as they're released initially for notice and comment. And then later as they become effective.

01:15:07.800 Well, so that's a very interesting metric too. So that's ratio of, of paper necessary to document

01:15:14.840 regulatory change. Yes. It is prescribing of the relative power of the, of the two institutions,

01:15:23.320 so to speak. Yes. In a sense. Now it's not a, it's not a precise measure because some of that

01:15:29.480 is not an apples to apples comparison, but a lot of it really consists of lawmaking. These are new

01:15:35.640 affirmative legal obligations imposed as a generally applicable rule on the American people enforceable

01:15:41.480 by the overpowering, uh, force that is the federal government. The difference between those two

01:15:47.960 stacks is that this small stack, the one that's only a few hundred to a few thousand pages long,

01:15:53.800 made by elected lawmakers, the one that's 13, 14 feet tall, a hundred thousand pages long in some years,

01:15:59.320 made entirely by unelected unaccountable bureaucrats. That's scary.

01:16:06.200 Yeah. Well, it should be, it should be, it should be, uh, something that sets again,

01:16:11.640 people across the political spectrum back on their heels, because if government wastes its time doing

01:16:17.080 things that aren't necessary, it's not going to be able to spend its time doing things that are

01:16:20.840 necessary. Prioritization is a massive problem, right? There's only so many things you can attend to at

01:16:26.040 the same time. So, you know, in any country where

01:16:36.040 there is a societal tendency to trust the people and be skeptical of government, we call that liberty.

01:16:46.120 In a society where people are encouraged to trust the government and be skeptical of the people,

01:16:54.040 we call that tyranny. But it's interesting. It's interesting though, you know, because you,

01:17:00.200 you do trust the government in a really deep sense. You carry the constitution around.

01:17:04.840 And so I, the reason I'm pointing this out is because I just read something a while back about

01:17:10.360 the degree to which young people distrust institutions. And I've found my trust in institutions

01:17:16.520 decreasing as well over the last years, especially media institutions. And I'm not pleased by that in the

01:17:21.880 least. But you, like you, you do definitely have faith in the constitution. And so what are you,

01:17:30.440 so when you say to be skeptical of government, you mean specifically something like the tendency of

01:17:37.720 government to expand and overreach its proper domain. Is that right? I don't want to put words in your

01:17:43.960 mouth, but you are obviously a patriot and you have great respect for your fundamental institutions.

01:17:50.200 And so it's necessary to separate those things out because otherwise, especially young people,

01:17:55.640 they don't know what they can trust and they need to trust something. You know, it's really important.

01:18:02.040 Yes. Yes. And another way of, I'd put it, I'd take exception to one thing you said where you

01:18:08.760 suggested that I, I trust government as evidence by the fact that I carry on the constitution and I

01:18:14.440 seek to follow it. I'd turn that precisely on its head. In other words, um,

01:18:22.440 the constitution reminds us that we don't trust government as an institution. We trust people,

01:18:27.720 but not the government. The constitution is our key to making sure that we unlock unlimited

01:18:34.280 human potential by recognizing the inherent dignity and infinite worth of every human being.

01:18:40.520 And that we show that respect by saying that when we use force on you, as we do whenever government

01:18:46.120 acts, we will do so respectfully and in a way that's measured, restrained, exercised at the appropriate

01:18:54.600 level and is geared specifically toward protecting life, liberty, and property. If it's not those things,

01:19:01.160 we won't do it. We, we need to have trust and confidence in human beings because they're God's

01:19:07.160 creations and because we are all created equal. When we put trust in government itself, we're putting

01:19:16.360 trust in force. Now, human beings, while redeemable and basically inherently good, are themselves flawed,

01:19:26.840 and flawed specifically in the sense that they are covetous and powerful. And we've learned through

01:19:36.520 sad experience throughout human history that when someone acquires power, especially power in his or her

01:19:44.440 own estimation, that person will eventually begin to abuse that power insofar as that person is allowed

01:19:51.240 to abuse that power. And so we, we, we have to compel the government to work for us and remind the government

01:19:59.400 that it is not the sovereign we are, otherwise people get hurt.

01:20:03.080 That's exactly the kind of definition that I was, that I was hoping for. So let me, because of course we have finite time,

01:20:10.360 I will, I would like to turn our attention to a couple of other things. Um, we talked, we talked a little

01:20:17.400 bit about this rising tension and you, you described some of your theories about why it's occurring. Um,

01:20:23.720 are there, what else do you see as, as characteristic of this rising tension? Like what worries you when

01:20:30.520 you look at the United States right now, or maybe the Western world as a whole, but let's stick with the US.

01:20:35.160 What, what, what concerns you, what keeps you up at night? And, and, and then maybe what do you think should be done about it?

01:20:46.440 I tend to believe that the erosion of civil society

01:20:51.880 is, uh, is concerning, meaning the voluntarily, uh,

01:20:58.120 associating, the, the, the, the voluntary associations that free people form when they're allowed to be free.

01:21:04.920 And that they form in the absence of any government telling them that they must, uh,

01:21:09.480 or that they may, or that they may not, they just do it. And by that, I mean, churches, mosques, synagogues,

01:21:15.480 fraternal orders, charitable foundations, universities, uh, neighborhood watch associations,

01:21:21.560 all of those things that operate as, uh, an organized entity outside the force of government.

01:21:27.480 Those are things that have really helped us. And I've often said that the twin pillars

01:21:32.920 of human, the thriving of the human condition, whether in American society or anyone else, anywhere

01:21:38.120 else, it tend to be built on robust institutions of civil society and free markets. If you have those

01:21:44.680 two things, human beings can thrive. They won't always choose to do so. Sometimes they will make choices that

01:21:50.520 will put them on a path of self-destruction, but if you've got those things in place and people make

01:21:55.400 the right choices, human beings will thrive. You'll lift people out of poverty. I worry that as we've

01:22:02.200 put more trust in government, we've done so we've allowed the muscle of civil society and the muscle

01:22:09.240 memory of free markets to atrophy. And so it's not just what we've created through a, a, a, a, a bloated

01:22:19.960 government that is the problem. It's also what we lose, what we give up in the process. People become

01:22:26.120 less connected, uh, the, the more brooding the government's presence is in their lives. And that

01:22:32.520 worries me as does, you know, some of the things that go along with that include, um, you know,

01:22:37.720 religious associations and religious beliefs. And I worry that in many cases we have traded faith,

01:22:44.280 um, either in an all-knowing, loving, all-powerful God with judges at the end of this life,

01:22:51.320 or even if, if, if not that, uh, uh, faith in a set of principles by which we guide our lives,

01:22:58.920 has in many places been replaced and supplanted by an almost religious, uh, faith geared toward

01:23:07.240 government. This is in a sense, the new idolatry, the idolatry of our time. I, I've, uh, whenever I

01:23:13.240 study the Old Testament, I'm struck by how much they focus almost obsessively on idolatry. And I thought,

01:23:19.080 well, that's weird. We don't really see a whole lot of that here. In a sense, we do.

01:23:23.240 We worship mortal institutions, mortal institutions with immense military power, aircraft carriers,

01:23:30.200 government offices, uh, $4 trillion in annual outlays. That's an almost religious amount of faith

01:23:39.000 toward something that is not God. And it doesn't bring us closer together.

01:23:42.360 That you've also said in your own personal experience that you can feel the temperatures

01:23:49.000 rising in the Senate, say. And one of the things I was struck, I was struck by a number of things when

01:23:55.240 I went to Washington on the several occasions that I did. I was struck by how absurdly busy senators and

01:24:03.960 congressmen were with their multitude of duties. And I, it was completely, um, mysterious to me how any

01:24:12.600 business ever got done given that. I was also struck by the lack of, uh, personal communication between

01:24:23.640 people within political parties in the Senate and in Congress, but more particularly across.

01:24:31.080 And so, well, you said that you've seen, you've felt this rising tension. And so what to have,

01:24:38.520 how have you experienced that? And what, what's the consequence of that as far as you can tell?

01:24:44.040 Well, you know, it's, it's not good, you know, across the board, the more issues there are where the

01:24:49.400 parties are inextricably, um, uh, unavoidably at odds with each other, that gets more difficult. And I, I'm not one

01:24:57.320 who believes that we have to manufacture, uh, or contrived unity where it doesn't exist. There are

01:25:03.160 some issues on which the parties really are in genuine disagreement. This doesn't reflect mere

01:25:08.040 petulance on the part of politicians. Sometimes it, it can do that, but more than anything else,

01:25:13.080 it reflects a genuine disagreement among those we represent, uh, who feel passionately one way or the

01:25:19.560 other. So, but sadly, as we push more power up to the federal government, seems like the, the more

01:25:29.160 areas there are for these potential conflicts that are almost irreconcilable between two competing

01:25:34.360 political worldviews.

01:25:36.280 So that makes perfect sense. If, if what you're saying is correct, because those conflicts should

01:25:42.360 be resolved at a local level and maybe in a multitude of ways, if they're not resolved and

01:25:47.560 popped up, they're going to affect more people and the conflicts themselves are going to aggregate.

01:25:53.160 Right. Right. Right. Exactly. And just as the saying goes, if everyone's family, then no one is.

01:25:59.960 If, if everything is, is an emergency, then nothing is an emergency. And so too here,

01:26:07.400 if everything is federal, then the federal government's not even going to be able to

01:26:12.040 do the few things that only it can do things like immigration laws and trade policy and, and, uh,

01:26:18.840 war powers and so forth. And so, you know, the way I've tried to deal with this in my own life and

01:26:25.320 my own service in the Senate, um, is to find, scan the horizon continuously to look for areas where

01:26:31.880 the parties are not unavoidably at odds with each other and to identify allies. And done this in a

01:26:39.400 whole host of areas from war powers to criminal justice reform, fourth amendment, government

01:26:44.600 surveillance, uh, due process protections and things like that. Some of my very favorite people in the

01:26:49.480 Senate, uh, many, many of them, uh, happen to be people who are at the opposite end of the political

01:26:55.880 continuum from me. I've found, I don't know whether everyone's experience is, is similar to mine, but

01:27:03.000 in the Senate, at least we have more of an ability to get to know each other than members of the House

01:27:07.080 of Representatives. There are 435 of them. There are only a hundred of us. I don't get to know all of

01:27:12.520 my colleagues equally well, but I have the chance to get to know, uh, uh, uh, uh, most of them. And it

01:27:18.760 really is a great experience. And I've also found that my personal, why is it a great experience? I

01:27:25.240 mean, politicians don't generally have a good name, so to speak. You know, I was very impressed on a

01:27:31.240 personal level with the people I met when I went down to Washington. I mean, they all seem Democrat and

01:27:35.560 Republican like their, their stories of motivation for involvement in politics were so similar. They

01:27:41.240 wanted to serve their country. I had no reason to believe that that sentiment was false. Um,

01:27:47.160 they, they, without exception seemed like admirable people to me. Um, you, you're talking about your

01:27:53.560 admiration extending beyond the limits of your political party. I mean, why is that? What, what are

01:27:59.000 these people like apart from the media depiction of them? Let's say they're great people. They're

01:28:05.560 fascinating people. They're people who love their country. They're people who in, in many, many

01:28:12.280 respects want the same outcome that I want, which is, um, uh, opportunities for a thriving of a human

01:28:21.160 condition, uh, globally, certainly, and especially here in the United States. Those ultimate outcomes

01:28:27.160 are shared, uh, uh, by, I think all 100 of us. We do have different theories and different approaches

01:28:34.440 about how to get there. The minute I'm able to see on any particular issue, uh, how that particular

01:28:42.360 Senator, no matter, no matter how much I might disagree with her or him, uh, on a particular

01:28:47.400 issue, if I can see why it is that they believe that their policy competing with mine or at odds with

01:28:53.960 mine really gets to the same Nirvana like outcome, the same positive outcome. It's easier for me

01:29:01.720 to try to try to figure out whether there is a way to reconcile the two approaches. There isn't always

01:29:07.320 in many cases, there is not, but in a whole lot of cases, there are ways to get there. And that's

01:29:13.080 an especially rewarding part of the process. There's something especially rewarding about

01:29:19.640 unexpected success, uh, about something working when you don't expect it to from the outside.

01:29:26.200 Yeah. Well, that makes you smile. I mean, so, so there's something about that, that,

01:29:30.840 that must keep you going. And so what are you, are you thinking about something in particular,

01:29:35.160 like something, a concrete example of that kind of success?

01:29:39.160 Yeah. So, uh, referred a few minutes ago to invoking the War Powers Act adopted in 1973. Bernie

01:29:46.360 Sanders and I got together to try to get us out of civil war in Yemen. The first time in the history of

01:29:51.880 the War Powers Act, we got something passed in Congress before last. Unfortunately, it didn't

01:29:57.160 make it through the House of Representatives before that Congress ended. And we got it passed again

01:30:00.360 in the next Congress. Then we got the House to pass the same thing. It got to President Trump's desk

01:30:05.160 and unfortunately he vetoed it. Uh, we tried to override the veto. We didn't succeed. Um, but

01:30:11.160 Have you got a chance now? Yes. Not only have we got a chance, but President Biden has the last few

01:30:17.160 days announced that he's going to get us out of Yemen. And assuming he follows through with what

01:30:22.440 I expect out of that, uh, the entire issue will mercifully, uh, have come to with the right

01:30:29.240 conclusion. Um, when I first started in the Senate. That must be really satisfying.

01:30:33.640 Oh, it was fantastic. It's a, it's a really fulfilling moment. It's a minor victory in, in,

01:30:39.800 in a sense that it's small compared to other disputes and compared to the number of people who are aware of

01:30:47.000 it, but it's a huge issue. It's, it's a big issue. Criminal justice reform. Something I identified

01:30:53.000 as a brand new Senator about 10 years ago, but I wanted to achieve. I saw too many people within

01:30:57.960 our federal criminal system in the United States being sent away to prison. Sometimes for decades

01:31:03.080 at a time for a relatively minor nonviolent defense. We had a case in Utah that I became aware

01:31:09.000 of nearly 20 years ago. It's an individual, a young man who has become a dear friend since then,

01:31:13.560 named Weldon Angelos. Weldon Angelos was caught selling three dime bag quantities of marijuana

01:31:19.400 over a 72 hour period to a person who, as it turned out, was a confidential informant of a law

01:31:26.680 enforcement agency. Because of the fact that he was carrying a gun at the time, a gun that was

01:31:31.800 neither brandished nor discharged in connection with the offense. Mr. Angelos was sentenced to 55 years

01:31:37.560 in prison for selling three small sandwich bag quantities of pot. It's ridiculous. The federal 0.98

01:31:44.680 judge who sentenced them said that there are hijackers, murderers, rapists, terrorists who

01:31:49.320 don't get this much time, but I have got no discretion on this case. And only Congress can fix this problem.

01:31:55.560 Those words were still echoing through my mind when I got to the Senate. I started reaching out

01:32:02.600 initially to some fairly liberal Democrats. Dick Durbin and I teamed up. Cory Booker came to the

01:32:08.120 Senate a short time later. He joined up with us. We ended up passing the most sweeping criminal justice

01:32:15.000 reform law in an entire generation in December of 2018 with the First Step Act. And we brought judges

01:32:22.920 more discretion. Dick Durbin and I are still working on another bill to finish what we started there.

01:32:28.840 There are example after example of things like this that we've gotten done that are gratifying,

01:32:33.880 that are rewarding. It makes it all worthwhile. It makes it so much more fun.

01:32:37.560 Yeah, I can tell. I mean, you light right up when you talk about those things. And it looks like 10

01:32:41.320 years falls away from you instantly. It's really something to see. So I can see that enthusiasm,

01:32:48.440 untrammeled enthusiasm, and still belief that the system works, which is so lovely to see in an age of

01:32:54.600 cynicism. What's your day like? Walk us through what a day in the life of a senator,

01:33:03.960 the day of the life of a senator. I'd like to know.

01:33:07.640 When the Senate's in session when we're in Washington, each day is filled with a combination

01:33:13.160 of committee hearings, of votes on the Senate floor inside the Senate chamber,

01:33:21.000 sometimes giving a speech or two here or there, maybe on the Senate floor, maybe to some group

01:33:26.360 that's assembled at the Capitol, meetings with constituents who happen to be in town and in

01:33:31.800 Washington. And then the balance of that time might be reserved for conducting interviews with

01:33:41.400 reporters from the media. And in many cases, meeting individually or sometimes talking on the phone

01:33:47.160 with colleagues, debating and negotiating the terms of legislation that you're pushing and you're

01:33:53.480 preparing for either a committee hearing or a markup, which is a vote inside of a committee,

01:33:58.600 or for a Senate floor vote. Those things take up an enormous amount of time. And you noticed

01:34:06.280 earlier that we were struck by how busy members are. It's true. We stay very busy. Motion shouldn't

01:34:13.880 always be confused with actual progress on this or that issue, but we certainly stay in motion.

01:34:19.240 But it does speak to the burden of the job.

01:34:23.000 Yeah. No, that's right. That's right. One of my favorite things that I do,

01:34:27.720 at least once a week, sometimes more, I'll meet with colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike,

01:34:33.160 and over a meal, dinner, or on other occasions, breakfast. We'll meet together. We'll pray together.

01:34:39.960 We'll share our personal experiences, our own walk through life. And we develop a great appreciation

01:34:48.440 for each other. The fact that there's real humanity behind the political figures that are known to media

01:35:00.040 pundits. But the person needs to be understood in order for the legislative body to function properly.

01:35:08.920 Well, that is a nice ending. I was going to ask you what you might say to viewers and listeners who

01:35:23.000 find themselves becoming cynical about the political process. But I think that the last 10 minutes of this discussion actually answered that question.

01:35:31.480 And so I think I'll leave it at that and not ask for an explicit answer, because the implicit answer is much better.

01:35:40.520 I was overwhelmed with admiration, I would say, of the institutions that I had the privilege of visiting when I was in Washington.

01:35:52.440 I think it's the current level of political tension disturbs me because so much of what's established already is so great.

01:36:02.600 And it works. And it would be lovely if that was more widely known. And the cheap cynicism that passes for wisdom these days was casually was discarded.

01:36:14.040 So thank you very much for talking with me today.

01:36:19.720 Thank you so much.

01:36:20.760 If you can convince a Democrat to sit down with me, I would like that.

01:36:26.760 I'll get right on it. I'm sure there will be many who would love that opportunity.

01:36:29.800 Yeah, maybe. I don't know. They might think being seen with me in public is anathema.

01:36:34.200 It might not be because I can listen. So and I think these like I think the the net is an absolutely underutilized resource for political figures who actually want to communicate with the public because it's long form.

01:36:52.200 There's no soundbites. You can say what you want to say. You can bring your thoughts directly to your to the people that you serve with no no intermediation.

01:37:04.600 And I know it's not a trusted venue yet for for people in the political arena, but I think it's it's an opportunity that's waiting to be exploited, waiting to be used, not exploited.

01:37:19.560 You can't really exploit long form media.

01:37:24.520 It's not susceptible to manipulation in the same way that that the old media forms were.

01:37:31.720 So people who are interested in straightforward communication can really benefit from the advantages of these podcasts and and YouTube videos.

01:37:42.200 And I'll tell you, I've learned the general public is a hell of a lot smarter than people think and hungry for

01:37:49.480 information in a way that no one would have ever expected. I think we were blinded to that by the constraints of broadcast TV,

01:37:56.040 you know, which had to assume that no one knew anything and that everything had to be compressed into something approximating, you know, 30 seconds to half an hour.

01:38:06.360 People people don't need to be spoon fed that way.

01:38:09.240 So, no, that's brilliantly put, Jordan, and I want to thank you for seeing that in this particular medium.

01:38:18.920 You've harnessed this in a way that's required an entire generation of Americans to utilize this resource as a tool for healing and reconciliation and understand it.

01:38:29.020 So, thank you for doing that.

01:38:30.460 Wouldn't that be nice.

01:38:31.740 Well, I hope that I can see you again in Washington at some point. That would be wonderful.

01:38:36.460 And thanks again. Maybe, you know, in a couple of months, if you're interested, we could talk again and we'll find some other topics to go at.

01:38:45.380 You can tell us a little bit more about what's happening in the current government and about what you think might happen,

01:38:52.380 what should happen in the future, if we're lucky. I'd like to hear about all of that.

01:38:56.320 Absolutely. Anytime. You name the moment and I'll join you. I'd love nothing more.

01:39:04.640 Great. Thanks. Thanks again.

01:39:07.140 Thanks so much. Take care.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 12, 2021

161. Government as Force ｜ Senator Mike Lee

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