Speaker 1: Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the money, my.
Speaker 2: Way, Oh whiskey, Why think alone when you can drink
Speaker 2: it all in with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Join
Speaker 2: your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John, You and the international woman
Speaker 2: of mystery, Lucretia.
Speaker 1: Where the laps it up?
Speaker 3: And David, ain't you easy on the should taps?
Speaker 1: Gotta give me and let that whiskey blow?
Speaker 3: Well. Welcome everybody to this very special episode of the
Speaker 3: Three Whiskey Happy Hour. It is a no host episode
Speaker 3: because there will only be John and me, and we
Speaker 3: don't have to fight like we do with Steve for
Speaker 3: the opportunity to say something. When he decides to give
Speaker 3: us permission. We will just go back and forth drink
Speaker 3: our whiskeys in peace, without a single historical analogy. Because
Speaker 3: Steve is off somewhere in the deep Arctic and just
Speaker 3: can't be bothered to opine upon the important issues of
Speaker 3: the day. John has his own theory about why Steve
Speaker 3: is not here.
Speaker 4: Welcome John, I thanks Lucretia, and I just want to
Speaker 4: say to all the listeners, turn on the recording button now,
Speaker 4: because you have the chance to make your own final cut.
Speaker 4: Of what might be the last Lucretia unplugged album where
Speaker 4: if you remember, if you're people of our generation, there
Speaker 4: would be the studio album and then the artist would
Speaker 4: play acoustic guitar in front of a coffeehouse audience and
Speaker 4: this would be marketed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this would be marketed.
Speaker 4: As the unplugged album where things like Steve, like synthesizers
Speaker 4: are gone, electric guitars are gone, all interference with the
Speaker 4: true voice are removed.
Speaker 1: So now we have no Steve. So now we're finally unplugged.
Speaker 4: But Lucretia before we start, Yeah, I know where Steve is.
Speaker 4: Steve's up in Norway or Iceland or some place. Why
Speaker 4: do people of Western European extraction like to go on
Speaker 4: vacation to such desolate places that are used as the
Speaker 4: backdrop for science fiction movies for Mars and planets where
Speaker 4: aliens are birthed to come destroy humanity.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let me just remind you, my friend, that
Speaker 3: not being from a Western European extraction and being from
Speaker 3: Korean extraction, how many times have you visited your ancient
Speaker 3: ethnic homeland?
Speaker 1: So maybe that also it's so cold there, so cold
Speaker 1: that Steve.
Speaker 3: Doesn't have a Viking bone in his body. I, on
Speaker 3: the other hand, in half Viking.
Speaker 1: And wow you are that explains a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the good half, I might say. The other half
Speaker 3: is some weird mixture of those those Brits and the
Speaker 3: Scots and Cherokee Indian anyway, so I'm proud of my
Speaker 3: my Viking back owned. But Steve goes there because it's
Speaker 3: cold and he doesn't like hot weather, because it's miserable
Speaker 3: here in Arizona. It's going to be one hundred and
Speaker 3: fourteen tomorrow in too sonwhere I'm gonna be. So that's
Speaker 3: why Steve goes. I don't know. And he drags his
Speaker 3: lovely wife along, and I think she can't possibly like
Speaker 3: it that cold. I've seen her in the cold before.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I Steve says he's never actually been cold.
Speaker 1: Well didn't I've seen.
Speaker 4: I think photos of Steve doing the polar bear thing
Speaker 4: on New Year's jumping into the water is kind of
Speaker 4: California in the Pacific.
Speaker 3: Ocean fifty degrees Yeah.
Speaker 1: Insane, it's sane.
Speaker 4: That's that's why he makes such a wonderful podcast co host,
Speaker 4: because he suffered such brain freeze that he says, ridiculous
Speaker 4: outrageous things because he's not thinking straight.
Speaker 1: Is that it?
Speaker 3: Okay? That explains a lot. Either that or he can't
Speaker 3: actually he can't process what's going on today without some
Speaker 3: sort of lame extension of some analogy that's never app
Speaker 3: in the past. Some listeners, by the way, really really
Speaker 3: like it. I was yesterday really quickly. I forgot to
Speaker 3: tell you this, John, I'm at a talk by the commander,
Speaker 3: the guy who the general who was the commander for
Speaker 3: four years up until twenty twenty four of Korea in Korea,
Speaker 3: and also that thereby the commander of the UN forces
Speaker 3: in Korea, and he had a I guess this is
Speaker 3: a you know, famous statement from Sun Sun Zou. How
Speaker 3: do you say, Sun Sue know your enemy and know yourself,
Speaker 3: and Steve knows neither.
Speaker 1: Well, if you knew Steve liked you and I do,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to know there.
Speaker 3: He might actually know himself better. But he's way too
Speaker 3: kind to his enemies or doesn't.
Speaker 1: Know who's true. That's true. He is very nice to
Speaker 1: his enemies, that's true.
Speaker 3: Not me, not me. I'd make a good intel, sure
Speaker 3: I would. All right, let's talk up a little bit
Speaker 3: about Los Angeles. I am Angelino. I went to high
Speaker 3: school in Los Angeles and lived there for some time.
Speaker 3: Some of my family still lives there. So what do
Speaker 3: you think about the National Guard being sent into Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Are a good friend Stephen Bryer, Justice, He's still alive, right,
Speaker 3: Justice Stephen Bryer.
Speaker 1: Justice Bryan.
Speaker 3: His brother, the eighty three year old Charles Bryar, issued
Speaker 3: a decision saying, oh, you don't have kings. We don't
Speaker 3: have kings in this country anyway. Tell us first about
Speaker 3: why all the reasons Trump can send troops into Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: assuming the conditions are met, what the actual rules are.
Speaker 3: Because you are our favorite lawyer, John.
Speaker 4: Well, first, I think we should start with the facts
Speaker 4: that I think we can all see with our own
Speaker 4: eyes from the television feeds. You have people trying to
Speaker 4: attack officers of the federal government who are trying to
Speaker 4: carry out immigration law. Right They're trying to detain for
Speaker 4: removal people who are in the country illegally, and they're
Speaker 4: authorized to do that under federal law. Immigration is not
Speaker 4: just a core federal function, it's exclusive federal function. States
Speaker 4: are not allowed to carry out immigration law.
Speaker 3: Courts. I have to stop for a moment and say
Speaker 3: that one of John's strong suits is consistency. It's absolute consistency.
Speaker 3: Because when I would argue that the states had every
Speaker 3: right to practice their own deportetion of illegals and all
Speaker 3: of those and you know, try to in different ways
Speaker 3: enforce immigration law, John insisted they could not do so.
Speaker 3: So go ahead, John, I'm sorry, credit, well.
Speaker 1: Just my life.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's the right the best way
Speaker 4: to do things, but that's what the Supreme Court has said,
Speaker 4: and so but that just makes really clear that what
Speaker 4: these officers are doing is.
Speaker 1: Carrying out federal law. That's all important.
Speaker 4: So you know, we've seen efforts to break into federal buildings,
Speaker 4: We've seen efforts protests to stop people from getting in
Speaker 4: and out of buildings, and we've seen right cars set
Speaker 4: on fire, freeways blocked and so on.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just don't think there's any dispute of that.
Speaker 4: I mean, people who say this is peaceful or that's
Speaker 4: restricted to just a few blocks, Well, then why did
Speaker 4: the mayor of Los Angeles impose a curfew? I mean,
Speaker 4: and why have hundreds of people been arrested? And why
Speaker 4: is the LAPD chief not just officers on the ground.
Speaker 4: The LAPD chriefs chiefs say that the LAPD had been overwhelmed.
Speaker 4: I organized organized rioters who are trying.
Speaker 3: You're not going to get invited to any cocktail parties
Speaker 3: anymore after that.
Speaker 4: Although there may not be any cocktail parties unless this
Speaker 4: guy's around in LA much longer. So, given that kind
Speaker 4: of disorder, and we might see all that happen again
Speaker 4: this Saturday. I don't you know at the at this
Speaker 4: no King's protests, They're going to be occurring all around
Speaker 4: the country in hundreds. I looked at the last figures,
Speaker 4: hundreds of cities and towns around the country already. Some
Speaker 4: of them are turned violent, like in Austin, Texas, where
Speaker 4: I spent a lot of time this last year. Given
Speaker 4: that kind of disorder, I think the president, any president,
Speaker 4: has three grounds.
Speaker 1: On which they could call out the troops.
Speaker 4: One is just his constitutional authority as president to protect
Speaker 4: the federal government, the same power that Abraham Lincoln claimed
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the Civil War. Remember he said
Speaker 4: that he was protecting at the outside of Civil War,
Speaker 4: federal arsenals, federal forts. That's why Fort Sumter is the
Speaker 4: last place under federal government protection because Lincoln said he
Speaker 4: had the right to protect federal installations and federal personnel.
Speaker 4: That is a claim the Supreme Court has recognized in
Speaker 4: the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: There are two cases in Ray Nagel in Ray Debs,
Speaker 1: the Debs.
Speaker 4: There's Eugene Debs who's arrested by the federal government for
Speaker 4: trying to blockade railroads because he was interfering with interstate commerce,
Speaker 4: trying to lead a strike against all the roads in
Speaker 4: the country basically, and there the Supreme Court reaffirmed this power.
Speaker 4: It says in those cases that the president can use force,
Speaker 4: even military force, to protect the government and protect its
Speaker 4: personnel and going a little farther and to protect them
Speaker 4: and carrying out their functions. So that's the core, and
Speaker 4: I think that justifies what Trump's done in LA because
Speaker 4: the other thing is getting lost in the noise is that,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, is that Trump's order is rather modest. He's
Speaker 4: called out the National Guard just to protect federal personnel
Speaker 4: and facilities's and he authorizes them to do no more.
Speaker 1: He did.
Speaker 3: He is on record as saying that he actually blames
Speaker 3: himself for not doing so. Earlier during the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: riots because they you know, they destroyed an entire federal building.
Speaker 3: I forget all the details, but it was a courthouse.
Speaker 1: Right, a courthouse.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they protesters, right, They set up their own little
Speaker 4: sovereignty focused around the Portland Courthouse and wouldn't allow any
Speaker 4: police nearby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean supposedly he was. He said, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to let that happen again, which you know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this nonsense about kings. I mean, I'm really disappointed that
Speaker 3: a judge who's been a judge obviously for many many years,
Speaker 3: if he's eighty three years old, could ever say something
Speaker 3: that manifestly stupid.
Speaker 1: Well was it? He said again?
Speaker 3: He just said that we don't that this is a
Speaker 3: constitutional republic and we don't have kings, and Trump is
Speaker 3: behaving like a king.
Speaker 4: I usually whenever I hear people say that, I usually, Yeah,
Speaker 4: when you hear people throw around this rhetoric, it's usually
Speaker 4: a cover for I don't want to think carefully about
Speaker 4: executive power, which it's just.
Speaker 3: Like, which I get, no, But but you and I
Speaker 3: have even talked about the fact that there's some subtleties
Speaker 3: about executive power that you don't necessarily want to push
Speaker 3: too hard. You know, the whole idea, the Lockean idea
Speaker 3: of prerogative, that maybe the president has to even act
Speaker 3: against the law if that's what's necessary in an emergency
Speaker 3: to save the country, right, I mean, that's but we
Speaker 3: don't spend a lot of time talking about that, nor
Speaker 3: should we. But when a president engages in activities that
Speaker 3: are clearly within his legal and constitutional authority, and just
Speaker 3: because you don't like it, a judge should know better
Speaker 3: than to call that, you know, reminiscent of a monarch. Sorry,
Speaker 3: monarchical behavior and not what we would expect in a democracy. Trademark.
Speaker 4: Well, it's also there's a lot of lazy thinking there,
Speaker 4: because yes, we did rebel against a monarch, but we
Speaker 4: didn't rebel against executive power. And you know, people who
Speaker 4: follow the revolution and the constitution see that the revolution
Speaker 4: was thought to have gone too far in some ways,
Speaker 4: and the revolutionary state constitutions were quite weak, the Articles
Speaker 4: of Confederation were quite weak, and our founders actually purposefully
Speaker 4: established a vigorous executive to correct the mistakes of going
Speaker 4: too far.
Speaker 3: Many of those mistakes being that the legislature in the
Speaker 3: case overall, that the legislatures were too powerful in the
Speaker 3: case of the Articles of Confederation, the whole federal government
Speaker 3: had no power whatsoever and couldn't do what it needed
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 4: And what insight the founders had I think in this
Speaker 4: really explored in Hamilton's contributions to the Federals Papers, is
Speaker 4: that there's some things legislatures can't do that large multi
Speaker 4: member bodies like Congress can't do.
Speaker 1: And we're living through.
Speaker 4: One of the prime examples is you can't five hundred
Speaker 4: and thirty five people can't respond quickly to emergencies. They
Speaker 4: can't respond quickly to threats against.
Speaker 1: Public safety, public health. That that's why you have a
Speaker 1: singular person in charge of.
Speaker 3: The energy branch, secrecy dispatch. And there's one more I forget,
Speaker 3: but yeah, the point is is that that's, as Hamilton
Speaker 3: puts it, it's the very definition energy in the executive
Speaker 3: is the very definition of good government. Right.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing. As long as people can look at
Speaker 3: Trump and say it's Trump's fault, they can hold him accountable.
Speaker 3: They can know who it is it did what, and well,
Speaker 3: assuming he won't be running again, but perhaps hold his
Speaker 3: current vice president, maybe the nominee accountable. That's how the
Speaker 3: systems supposed to work. You can't do that if you
Speaker 3: have power dispersed, so you don't know who's responsible. And
Speaker 3: that's that's Hamilton's whole argument, and we have means to
Speaker 3: correct him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I mean, the thing is that you're quite right.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not.
Speaker 4: What these officers are doing is carrying out a more
Speaker 4: vigorous immigration agenda, and that is probably the top thing
Speaker 4: on the twenty twenty four election agenda. I mean, Trump
Speaker 4: was very care about what he was going to do,
Speaker 4: but he made promises about he was do and I
Speaker 4: was carrying them out.
Speaker 1: And the proper means of opposition is not to try
Speaker 1: to prevent federal officers from doing their legal duty. No
Speaker 1: one is claiming here that these.
Speaker 4: Federal officers are actually, you know, detaining people who are
Speaker 4: here legally.
Speaker 1: They're not detaining citizens.
Speaker 4: The normal way is you go to your member of Congress, right,
Speaker 4: you go to your state governors, you use the national
Speaker 4: political process, or as you said, Lucretia, you could impeach
Speaker 4: Trump if you actually thought he was doing something illegal, or.
Speaker 1: You go and win the next election.
Speaker 4: That's I mean, that's the founder's answers for policy disagree
Speaker 4: with not defy the authority of the federal government.
Speaker 1: I mean, but that's what we're seeing in our cities now.
Speaker 3: Well, and remember Lincoln's Lincoln's justification for was it? It
Speaker 3: might have been for the suspension of habeas corpus. I
Speaker 3: forget which which law he was accused of breaking, which
Speaker 3: constitutional revision? He says, Look, you know, four short years,
Speaker 3: not that much bad can happen. Now, we've seen things
Speaker 3: move a little faster these days, right, But that was
Speaker 3: non hold me accountable and get rid of me, if
Speaker 3: that's what you want to do. He didn't mention impeachment,
Speaker 3: but you know that's underlying. It's just it makes the
Speaker 3: whole No Kings is as much a gas lighting operation
Speaker 3: to me as the as the Biden is. Biden's as
Speaker 3: fit as he ever was, you know that.
Speaker 4: Or let's cancel four hundred billion dollars in student loans,
Speaker 4: all right, let's make it ever get nationwide vaccine mandate.
Speaker 4: I mean, these are you didn't hear these same people,
Speaker 4: these same judges blocking him or saying there's no Kings.
Speaker 4: So I'm just gonna you know this, No King's rhetoric
Speaker 4: just doesn't give the judiciary to say, I'm just say
Speaker 4: no to anything a president wants to do. You have
Speaker 4: to look carefully at the as you said, lucretia.
Speaker 1: The authority.
Speaker 4: See what he what authority president has or not. Oh,
Speaker 4: just to return to two other things, the two other
Speaker 4: forms of authority. One is what's called the military people
Speaker 4: called Title ten authority. Title ten is just where the
Speaker 4: statutes that regulate the military are located in the US codes.
Speaker 1: If you go into yeah, I tell yeah. Title fifty
Speaker 1: is sort of the military national security powers of that
Speaker 1: Army and Navy and Marines and air Force.
Speaker 4: So Title ten says the president is allowed to call
Speaker 4: up the national Guard in three circumstances, and the media
Speaker 4: seems to think there's only two because the first two
Speaker 4: are circumstance of invasion.
Speaker 1: Second is rebellion. Now we can have argument about whether
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 4: Evasion or rebellion, but circumstance three is obviously involved.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 4: Number three is the president finds that he is unable
Speaker 4: to carry out federal law. And you see it on
Speaker 4: the streets of LA You're seeing it in the streets
Speaker 4: of other cities. You have people trying to stop officers
Speaker 4: of the federal government from carrying out legal, legitimate immigration
Speaker 4: law that itself, I think is sufficient grounds for President
Speaker 4: Trump to call out the National Guard. Just a side note,
Speaker 4: and we'll talk about Judge Brier's opinion. He claims that
Speaker 4: those orders essentially have to be confirmed by the governor
Speaker 4: of the state. I think that's a complete misreading of
Speaker 4: the statute. The statute says the orders go through the governor,
Speaker 4: but the governor has no veto. In fact, the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court decided this, and we'll talk about this later too,
Speaker 4: but there's actually a Supreme Court case which which Briar
Speaker 4: did not mention, that talks exactly about this issue about
Speaker 4: whether a governor can veto what's done with the National Guard.
Speaker 1: I'm astounded that he missed this case. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was at the Supreme Court and it was unanimous.
Speaker 3: Well, because think about it, logically, if it gets to
Speaker 3: the point where the president has to nationalize the National
Speaker 3: Guard for some reason, because for instance, other Republican governors
Speaker 3: are prepared to or have already called up their National
Speaker 3: Guard in their states to help about with these protests.
Speaker 3: If you have a situation, say with these protests, or
Speaker 3: say you're talking about back during the de segregation orders,
Speaker 3: it was not. It did not go through the governor
Speaker 3: because the governor would have stopped the National Guard.
Speaker 1: The governor was an opposition.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and I don't see that showing up in
Speaker 3: Briar's case either.
Speaker 4: No, he doesn't really mention the most prominent example of
Speaker 4: the uses of these powers, which was right the most
Speaker 4: recent obvies was there desegregation and to protect civil rights protesters.
Speaker 3: But I think the way you put it, the media
Speaker 3: is ignoring this because it doesn't fit. Oh, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say it's a narrative. They want to make
Speaker 3: this narrative not about they're doing anything they can to
Speaker 3: make it not about removing criminal aliens. Now it's a
Speaker 3: difficult thing. Let me stop there for a second. A
Speaker 3: criminal alien, an illegal alien is by definition of criminal
Speaker 3: but law. Yes, to Trump's credit and you know, Homan's
Speaker 3: credit and so on, they really are going in most
Speaker 3: cases that I understand, first after the worst of the criminals,
Speaker 3: and you know that, so as long as that keeps happening,
Speaker 3: Trump wins on that issue. And then when you have
Speaker 3: rioters out there engage in violence and waving Mexican flags,
Speaker 3: the best other argument they have besides Trump is a
Speaker 3: dictator or a king? Is that this is stolen land?
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, California, that Los Angeles where I live
Speaker 3: in California. It was the Mexicans were tricked into allowing
Speaker 3: the United States to buy their territory. And so there
Speaker 3: wasn't a trick.
Speaker 1: There was a war and we took it.
Speaker 3: There was a war, but then there wasn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there was a treaty, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's like it just the United States
Speaker 4: took it farre and square.
Speaker 3: But no, they didn't because because nobody can do that
Speaker 3: because it's the ancestral land of these people, just like
Speaker 3: you can't Berkeley can give all the land acknowledgments at once,
Speaker 3: but that land still belongs to somebody. I don't know
Speaker 3: who it is. Do you guys have are you on
Speaker 3: Indian land?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I actually refuse to give these land acknowledgements with something
Speaker 4: called the Aloney tribe, I believe.
Speaker 3: Okay, ours is the ta Honah Autumn. But I mean,
Speaker 3: so those are the lame kind of arguments that democrats have.
Speaker 3: And then you know they were trying to make a
Speaker 3: whole big deal about your stupid, dumb senator Alex Padilla.
Speaker 1: Who oh yeah, what do you think about that, Lucretia.
Speaker 4: As a former senate aide, I did feel some you know,
Speaker 4: I felt some unhappiness at seeing a senator manhandled.
Speaker 1: Now there's some.
Speaker 4: Senator as well. I would have liked to have seen
Speaker 4: treated that way. But as a body as a whole,
Speaker 4: do you think that they went too far in restraining
Speaker 4: Senator Padilla and uh arrest doesn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. And it's not just because they didn't
Speaker 3: really know who he was until you know, he didn't
Speaker 3: have security badge on, you know, all those other things. Okay,
Speaker 3: then he told them and they still handcapped, handcuffed him.
Speaker 3: But being a senator, I'm too much of a small
Speaker 3: d democrat on these things. I don't give a damn.
Speaker 3: If you're a senator, I don't give a damn. If
Speaker 3: you're any supposed vaunted thing, you get treated just like
Speaker 3: anybody else would. It comes into a press conference and
Speaker 3: acts like a jerk. I mean, I don't think a senator,
Speaker 3: being a senator entitles you to act like a jerk.
Speaker 3: And actually, you know, uh threatened.
Speaker 1: This was a stunt. I mean, it was an obvious stunt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe they didn't know that he wasn't.
Speaker 4: No, not just that makes it worse, That makes it
Speaker 4: worse for him that he wasn't there really seriously to
Speaker 4: conduct oversight or investigate the facts.
Speaker 3: He was just well, yeah, and this isn't the first
Speaker 3: such stunt that Democrats have done. And you know, but
Speaker 3: what that does, of course, it is it draws attention
Speaker 3: away from the fact that people are very happy with
Speaker 3: Trump getting rid of of murderers and child molesters and
Speaker 3: drug traffickers and all those other things who have no
Speaker 3: right to be here. That's you know, everything that Trump
Speaker 3: has done in the immigration space has been ninety percent
Speaker 3: of what he promised to do, which is amazing for
Speaker 3: a politician, right, I mean, no politician ever does everything
Speaker 3: they say they're going to do. But Trump shut down
Speaker 3: the border. Trump's removed people that shouldn't be here. And
Speaker 3: they can't stand that because it's so popular. So I
Speaker 3: think they're doing anything they can to change a story
Speaker 3: to something else. The Badia thing that no kings, you know,
Speaker 3: so why would they talk about the actual authorities of
Speaker 3: the president. Those are those are my thoughts. I think
Speaker 3: it's the biggest gas lighting operation in history because they
Speaker 3: stand to lose forever.
Speaker 4: I mean, let me add one more thing, because I
Speaker 4: think it also addresses your first question, which which was
Speaker 4: what's Trump's authority? Because I think if the courts actually
Speaker 4: do intervene and block Trump from using troops in this
Speaker 4: modest role right where he does transmit orders through the
Speaker 4: governor and President Trump hasn't invoked his constitutional authority, which
Speaker 4: I think he has, then he's only going to have
Speaker 4: to escalate to the third basis of power, which is
Speaker 4: the Insurrection Act and the Insurrection Act. And the reason
Speaker 4: I'm say is a broader power is the Insurrection Act
Speaker 4: allows the troops to go out onto streets and make
Speaker 4: arrests to execute the law, not just protect the government,
Speaker 4: not just protect federal officers and support them who are
Speaker 4: doing their jobs, but actually to do the job themselves.
Speaker 4: You know where marines will actually arrest people for federal trial.
Speaker 4: This is an enormous power, and we generally don't want
Speaker 4: our military to have to do it in our country,
Speaker 4: unlike places like Urep, for example, where.
Speaker 1: You see heavily armed troops on city streets quite often
Speaker 1: or in train stations.
Speaker 4: And the Insurrection Act has also, just like the Title ten, authority,
Speaker 4: three different independent reasons you could call out the troops.
Speaker 4: They don't involve anyone else's, you know, getting permission from
Speaker 4: someone else.
Speaker 1: Now one of them does.
Speaker 4: One of them is you have if the governor asks
Speaker 4: for assistance, then you can. Then the president can call
Speaker 4: out the troops. And that was what happened to ninety
Speaker 4: two the last time we had this in La, the
Speaker 4: Rodney King Riots. After the Rodney King Riots, Governor Wilson
Speaker 4: called out, called to the call President Bush, and President
Speaker 4: Bush sent troops, and I think wisely so to restore
Speaker 4: order after the Rodney King verdict. The second round, which
Speaker 4: I don't think is evident here but maybe it is,
Speaker 4: is if there's an insurrection basically that prevents the enforcement
Speaker 4: of the law. I'm not sure this is an insurrection.
Speaker 4: I didn't think January sixth was an insurrection either, But
Speaker 4: if January six is an insurrection, then this is definitely
Speaker 4: an insurrection because I think here you have much broader
Speaker 4: violence over a longer period of time, much more I
Speaker 4: think you've seen. I think you have much more risk
Speaker 4: of loss of light, and you have I think you're
Speaker 4: really directly taking on the authority of the federal government here.
Speaker 4: But whether that's evident or not, it doesn't really matter,
Speaker 4: because the third option under the Insurrection Act is I
Speaker 4: think already met, and I think Trump is actually showing
Speaker 4: i'll use your favorite word, prudence. He's showing prudence and
Speaker 4: not invoking it yet. But if he continues to get
Speaker 4: judicial interference, he can very well invoke the third ground
Speaker 4: under the Insurrection Act, which is, and this is lovely
Speaker 4: early nineteenth century language, when illegal combinations, right, illegal combinations
Speaker 4: impede federal law. And that's clearly what's going on here
Speaker 4: on the ground in Los Angeles. You do have people
Speaker 4: trying to stop in cases successfully stopping federal law enforcement.
Speaker 4: They are successfully right. Unfortunately, they're successfully i think, preventing
Speaker 4: the federal government operating in places it's legal to operate.
Speaker 4: And this is not again, this is not some think
Speaker 4: Trump concocted President George Washington invoked the Insurrection Act and
Speaker 4: put down the Whisky Rebellion of seventeen ninety four. Although
Speaker 4: I have great sympathy for the Whiskey rebels who are
Speaker 4: from my home state of Pennsylvania, and I think should
Speaker 4: have every right to make booze free of federal taxation. Nevertheless,
Speaker 4: President I remember George Washington. He personally led the militia,
Speaker 4: you know, the eighteenth century version of the National Guard,
Speaker 4: personally led them. He rode in a horse at the
Speaker 4: front of the troops to put down the rebellion you know,
Speaker 4: or insurrection.
Speaker 3: And didn't take much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it didn't take every Actually, when people heard Washington
Speaker 4: was coming, they dispersed and gave up. Actually, interestingly, and
Speaker 4: this actually goes to this Eric Adams parton issue. Washington,
Speaker 4: for the good of public stability and to make peace,
Speaker 4: pardoned all the ringleaders and dropped the prosecutions, not because
Speaker 4: they weren't guilty.
Speaker 1: But because he thought it was best to put this
Speaker 1: behind us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, anyway, so I think I think the natural response,
Speaker 4: I think is that President Trump could go higher and
Speaker 4: escalate the use of his powers and response to this
Speaker 4: kind of resistance he's getting from state officers like Newsome.
Speaker 3: But I agree with you, I don't think he will
Speaker 3: unless things get really really out of hand. The other
Speaker 3: thing that the media is, I don't want to say
Speaker 3: covering up, but making sure doesn't make it into the
Speaker 3: stories they're putting out there. The situation in Los Angeles, actually,
Speaker 3: if you believe, sorry doctor Phil, If you believe doctor Phil,
Speaker 3: I do know that the situation in Peoria, which is
Speaker 3: a suburb of Phoenix, that a protest that escalated out
Speaker 3: of control, was actually a situation where HSI was going
Speaker 3: in on some very serious drug trafficking activity and they
Speaker 3: were executing warrants on drug traffickers. But somebody put out
Speaker 3: to somewhere I guess on social media that it was
Speaker 3: an ice raid, and so that thing all got completely
Speaker 3: out of hand. But the story in La is, if
Speaker 3: you believe it, who knows what to believe these days,
Speaker 3: that is actually originally the original ICE raid was conducted
Speaker 3: on a warehouse that was being drug running for the cartels.
Speaker 3: And the cartels are the ones who got their friends
Speaker 3: on social media. They're friends on the left to gin
Speaker 3: up this big protest that is now of course spread everywhere.
Speaker 3: So just another crazy thing about how much the left
Speaker 3: doesn't care about what happens to this country and would
Speaker 3: rather take the side of cartels than they would love
Speaker 3: abiding American citizens. There's my editorial comment, John, But.
Speaker 1: You know, for the purposes, this is one crazy thing.
Speaker 4: Judge Bryer said in his opinion is that he said
Speaker 4: President Trump is doesn't satisfy the requirement for being unable
Speaker 4: to execute federal law, unable to get to send agents,
Speaker 4: for example, to make those arrests and break up the
Speaker 4: cartel's use of this warehouse.
Speaker 1: Not because someone has blocked federal agents.
Speaker 4: He said, because they've may been able to make some arrests,
Speaker 4: they've been able to make some detentions, and what you
Speaker 4: have to see is zero cases of success.
Speaker 1: So it's quite incredible. He basically says, well, it looks
Speaker 1: like the.
Speaker 4: Federal government has been able to detain to to say,
Speaker 4: two hundred illegal aliens. Therefore he is able to execute
Speaker 4: the law. That makes absolutely what if you know, what
Speaker 4: if the DHS was actually trying in these operations to
Speaker 4: detain twenty thousand illegal and they were only able to
Speaker 4: get two hundred. Coring to Judge Pryor, that means you
Speaker 4: can't trigger any of these authorities because federal law is
Speaker 4: still being executed at some minimal level.
Speaker 3: And in a much deeper point to that, John, that
Speaker 3: you've made many many times over and excellent articles, is
Speaker 3: that it's not the judge's place to decide what is
Speaker 3: necessary to execute federal law. It is the president's sole
Speaker 3: discretion about is what is and is not a legitimate
Speaker 3: exercise in any given case of federal law. Now again,
Speaker 3: I suppose that you could argue that this has gone
Speaker 3: too far and then you impeach the president. But you
Speaker 3: or you could on behalf of some actual innocent person
Speaker 3: who was arrested, prosecuted, and jailed as a result of
Speaker 3: all of this. You could go backwards and you know,
Speaker 3: find out was this not a was that person's conviction
Speaker 3: not consistent with the proper application of executive power? You
Speaker 3: could do it that way. A judge can't make those decisions,
Speaker 3: Am I wrong?
Speaker 4: Yeah? No, So if Judge Brier's opinion is upheld, I
Speaker 4: think it will be the first and only time a
Speaker 4: federal court has essentially overruled a president's decision that the
Speaker 4: protective function was justified, or that Title ten could be triggered,
Speaker 4: or that the Insurrection Act could be triggered. And there's
Speaker 4: a case I wrote about from you and Steve love
Speaker 4: these old cases because they're close to the time of
Speaker 4: the founding, and you guys think the founders have this
Speaker 4: insight into politics that many of US have lost. There's
Speaker 4: a case called Martin versus Mott, which is from the
Speaker 4: War of eighteen twelve, and there was a guy called
Speaker 4: up to defend the country in the militia, and he
Speaker 4: basically said, there was no invasion going on when I
Speaker 4: got called up. The British had shown up yet, and
Speaker 4: so there was no legitimate evasion, so I didn't have
Speaker 4: to The call of the militia was illegal. And justice story,
Speaker 4: you know, one of the greatest justices in American history,
Speaker 4: just history. He said, it's not for the courts to
Speaker 4: second guess. You know, it's up to the president under
Speaker 4: the laws to decide. And how can how could courts
Speaker 4: figure out whether the evasion or rebellion or obstruction of
Speaker 4: federal law is enough? You know, the federal courts aren't
Speaker 4: there to, you know, examine all the cases in the
Speaker 4: country simultaneously at a point in time.
Speaker 1: We're under great stress of time and resources. Just I
Speaker 1: don't know how Judge Bryor thinks Martin Versus Mott doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to this case.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to find quickly. The great statement you made
Speaker 3: in the piece you wrote with Robert Delahunty recently about
Speaker 3: it's not the place of the JA. It's not the
Speaker 3: place of any branch of government to decide the powers
Speaker 3: of other branches.
Speaker 1: Well that's yeah.
Speaker 4: That also that each branch, the branches expected to fight
Speaker 4: over their own powers and right And what was your
Speaker 4: what I'm.
Speaker 3: I was looking for because they can't remember what your
Speaker 3: Oh here it is, I've got it that I'm quoting
Speaker 3: the great John yu on Robert Delte in interpreting the Constitution.
Speaker 3: The branches cannot force each other to adopt their favored,
Speaker 3: favored reading of the law. They must respect each branch's
Speaker 3: freedom to carry out its unique functions. Just as the
Speaker 3: president cannot order the courts how to decide cases the
Speaker 3: Supreme con the Supreme Court cannot force a president to
Speaker 3: veto or sign a bill. Two examples not the only examples, obviously,
Speaker 3: And I think the problem is that whole argument gets
Speaker 3: lost in the the larger emotion of all of these
Speaker 3: cases because it's Trump. Because it's Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
Speaker 4: You know, we may uh you know we're going to
Speaker 4: you know, this will be posted by Saturday, but because
Speaker 4: of this uh nationwide whatever.
Speaker 1: It's no King's Day, but this day of rage.
Speaker 4: You know, President Trump may have to make some of
Speaker 4: these difficult decisions because you could see things really deteriorating
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles and maybe other cities where law enforcement
Speaker 4: does get overwhelmed as we've seen in law as the
Speaker 4: LA Police l a p D Chief said, And President
Speaker 4: Trump's gonna have to make the decision whether to deploy
Speaker 4: troops in some of the cities tours just to restore
Speaker 4: basic public safety, you know, basic law and order.
Speaker 1: And I think that maybe remember I think.
Speaker 4: Democrats by you know, exaggerating and saying oh he went,
Speaker 4: I mean there. You know, Governor Newsom has actually said
Speaker 4: that he thinks President Trump was doing this on purpose
Speaker 4: in order to take over blue cities and become an autocrat.
Speaker 3: And it wouldn't have happened without Trump doing it. That's
Speaker 3: caused it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Trump has caused the chaos when you know,
Speaker 4: you look at the timeline of events and you know,
Speaker 4: this thing started to go south in LA before the
Speaker 4: deployment of the troops.
Speaker 1: But to make arguments like that, you know, makes it.
Speaker 4: Harder for our troops to restore order and encourages people
Speaker 4: to continue to try to disrupt the functions of the government.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let me channel Steve here for a minute.
Speaker 3: Oh but we don't want listeners to think we've completely forgotten.
Speaker 3: Steve would say that if that happens, what's going what
Speaker 3: is likely to occur is that Republican governors and republican states,
Speaker 3: Republican governors. We've seen examples of them. I think it's
Speaker 3: Florida where the sheriff has said, you want to protest here, Fine,
Speaker 3: you'd break any laws, you harm you, you threaten to
Speaker 3: harmony officer, we will kill you dead in a graveyard's dead,
Speaker 3: you know, on and on. So what will happen is
Speaker 3: that it will kind of be twenty twenty on steriles
Speaker 3: rights where where those protests will again harm leftist cities,
Speaker 3: leftist states, you know, blue states. I guess we should
Speaker 3: call it, and it will only make it more and
Speaker 3: more clear to people that the left is not responsible
Speaker 3: enough to govern.
Speaker 4: Is that it's just like a federalism argument, and then
Speaker 4: people will leave those cities and move to right states
Speaker 4: that do a better job of public safety.
Speaker 1: More people in California for Arizona and Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well Arizona's not necessarily but we won't go there. Yeah, No,
Speaker 3: Hobbs has said she's not going to allow them to
Speaker 3: come in and do these raids anymore. And in my really, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's awful. But you know what, when it comes
Speaker 3: down to it, every person in the United States who's
Speaker 3: here legally, resident or citizen has the right to live
Speaker 3: in safety. And Trump says that over and over. They
Speaker 3: don't want that to be the message that's going out.
Speaker 3: This is oh, poor Maryland fathers who you know, got
Speaker 3: z into El Salvador. And you know, it's all an
Speaker 3: emotional argument, which is funny because we still know that
Speaker 3: a vast majority of people think all illegal immigrants should
Speaker 3: be deported. I do know that this whole activity is
Speaker 3: causing for massive self deportation.
Speaker 4: Lucretia, do you think that Trump is winning that. I
Speaker 4: did see that poll that just came out saying that
Speaker 4: a very large majority of Americans think all illegal aliens
Speaker 4: should be all of them should be deported. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: was really surprised. And then I think I saw a
Speaker 4: poll that said that numbers even higher amongst immigrants, you know,
Speaker 4: legal immigrants in the United States are naturalized citizens agree
Speaker 4: with that statement even a higher rate than right in
Speaker 4: the native foreign Americans.
Speaker 1: That was truly stopped.
Speaker 3: Those are the people, you know. I live next to
Speaker 3: the border, so many many of those people are my friends,
Speaker 3: naturalized citizens, and the absolutely because the way I saw
Speaker 3: somebody explain it. You know, if you stand in line
Speaker 3: for something really important, not that you and I would
Speaker 3: ever stand in line but anymore, but if you stand
Speaker 3: in line for something really important, and the person in
Speaker 3: front of you, you've been there for a while, invites
Speaker 3: fifty of their closest friends and put them in front
Speaker 3: of you in line, You're gonna be a little upset
Speaker 3: about it. I know that that's cheesy and a little
Speaker 3: bit trite, but it kind of gets to the point
Speaker 3: that if I was an immigrant who came here and
Speaker 3: did things the right way, I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: so happy about knowing that. You know that these people
Speaker 3: can just come here and and they can get jobs,
Speaker 3: and they can get welfare, and they can get Medicare
Speaker 3: and all those other things. And so it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: If we're a small percentage of immigrants who came here illegally,
Speaker 3: I don't think it would be an issue at all.
Speaker 3: But when you're talking, some estimates think there could be
Speaker 3: forty million illegal immigrants in the United States now because
Speaker 3: we just have no way of counting them anymore. That's
Speaker 3: my thought.
Speaker 4: Well, see, but then this is the thing that I
Speaker 4: don't understand from a political perspective. I can totally see
Speaker 4: why Trump is doing what he's doing, right. He made
Speaker 4: promise during the election. He's keeping his promise. He I think,
Speaker 4: wants to have federal law enforced throughout the country. He's
Speaker 4: not going to say, well, I just won't enforce federal
Speaker 4: law in Los Angeles. Why are democrats you just made
Speaker 4: fun of them, right? Why are Democrats out there defending
Speaker 4: people like Garcia? Why are they out there saying these
Speaker 4: these protests are mostly peaceful?
Speaker 1: Why are they out there? Right?
Speaker 4: Some I've seen, incredibly, I've seen California, some elected California
Speaker 4: officials saying there should.
Speaker 1: Be more protests.
Speaker 4: Well, what is Why do the Democrats think that rather
Speaker 4: than saying we will cooperate, we welcome you know, federal
Speaker 4: assistants or devote their own police forces to put down
Speaker 4: these riots.
Speaker 3: I think you have to look at it at a
Speaker 3: really big from a really big picture point of view,
Speaker 3: and that is that this is now of a piece
Speaker 3: with the whole leftist project, the globalist project, the no
Speaker 3: borders project, and if you actually allow for Trump to
Speaker 3: deport all of these people that you know, the left
Speaker 3: wanted to pretend that you that they couldn't The Biden
Speaker 3: administration wanted to pretend that they couldn't close the borders
Speaker 3: because of course they didn't want to close the borders.
Speaker 3: And you have a larger and larger low income, poverty,
Speaker 3: almost income population that depends upon the government for their subsistence.
Speaker 3: That's power base. And I think that they've just gone
Speaker 3: so far down that road they can't turn around.
Speaker 4: So if Trump, the election results of twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: haven't shown them that this is at you've seen.
Speaker 3: Any evidence that Democrats are willing to change their their
Speaker 3: They're doubling down on everything. They're doubling down. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a few there's a few people RUI to Shara
Speaker 3: and others who are Democrats, smart Democrats who are trying
Speaker 3: to argue that this is crazy, but they're not. You
Speaker 3: know who are we listening to Jasmine Crockett who tells
Speaker 3: us that we can't get rid of illegal aliens because
Speaker 3: who's going to pick our cotton?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: So anyway, so tell me a little bit what your
Speaker 3: thoughts are because you have the most foreign policies.
Speaker 1: No, I mean anybody I happen to be.
Speaker 4: No, I mean you're the political Oh I didn't want
Speaker 4: to accuse you of being a political scientist.
Speaker 1: Sorry, now they're a philosopher. But you know, just being
Speaker 1: in California, I've I.
Speaker 4: Think the state is terribly run and it's being terribly
Speaker 4: led right now, and I think people like Gavin Newsom
Speaker 4: are sacrificing the safety of people in Los Angeles to
Speaker 4: his presidential ambitions.
Speaker 3: Well, but and he's making a big gamble. Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: making a big gamble because if Trump ends up failing
Speaker 3: in all of this because the protests gets so out
Speaker 3: of hand and he oversteps a thousand different ways it
Speaker 3: could go, then Gavin Newsom maybe has a chance. But
Speaker 3: and you know, these people live in a bubble. He
Speaker 3: has no idea that the average person out there is
Speaker 3: not in favor of even of the you know, the
Speaker 3: big things you see on social media all the time. Oh,
Speaker 3: this this man has been here, he's started a business,
Speaker 3: and he's got seven children and they've all gone through
Speaker 3: the schools, and you know he's an illegal immigrant by
Speaker 3: pays his tax Well, you know, what did he do
Speaker 3: for all those years? Why didn't he get his citizenship?
Speaker 3: Why didn't you apply for a green card? People are
Speaker 3: losing their patients with it, but they don't see that.
Speaker 3: I think their ideology just doesn't allow them to.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: So the crusia, I think we've already gone beyond the
Speaker 4: time we specified. So let's can we turn to political
Speaker 4: theory and political philosophy and leave for the next episode
Speaker 4: discussing Israel's attacks on Iran's still going on. Yeah, we
Speaker 4: still don't even have all the facts and what's going
Speaker 4: to happen.
Speaker 1: So I'd vote all in.
Speaker 4: Favor of turning to Jaffa and Strauss and then taking
Speaker 4: up Tel Aviv and Tehran in the next episode. Who
Speaker 4: knows Steve might come back from those places too, although
Speaker 4: I hear they're very warm there, maybe even radioactive in
Speaker 4: some places, and so Steve won't go visit there for
Speaker 4: his vacation.
Speaker 3: Not until winter.
Speaker 1: I'll go there in the winter.
Speaker 4: Well, let me set it up, John, explain to me, explain,
Speaker 4: I just what is the Why Why do you and
Speaker 4: Steve get upset when I say you're political theorists rather
Speaker 4: than political philosophers.
Speaker 1: What's the difference.
Speaker 3: Let me start by saying how some of this started,
Speaker 3: which was me getting upset whenever you or Steve would
Speaker 3: throw something at me like game theory or realism or
Speaker 3: something like that in the international relations field, which is
Speaker 3: not my field, by the way, And I claim no
Speaker 3: expertise because I found all of that to be unbelievably
Speaker 3: boring and irrelevant. So I just went off in a
Speaker 3: different direction. But I'll come back to that. Here's the
Speaker 3: problem with being a political theorist, which as opposed to say,
Speaker 3: a studier of political thought or a studier of political philosophy.
Speaker 3: I would never in a million years claim to be
Speaker 3: a political philosopher, or I have no such vaunted abilities.
Speaker 3: But I do study political philosophy, and I study politics.
Speaker 3: And what I find, in the most mundane sense problematic
Speaker 3: about political theories is that they attempt to put into
Speaker 3: politics a all encompassing, very handy, very neatly tied up
Speaker 3: in a package way of looking at things that I
Speaker 3: think I mentioned to you last time, I considered both
Speaker 3: too inclusive and too exclusive, because you begin to look
Speaker 3: at everything through the lens of that theory. Use Marxism,
Speaker 3: for an example, you yourself have said many many times
Speaker 3: on this podcast, you just have to look at that
Speaker 3: as a Marxist way of things, you know, or that's
Speaker 3: the Marxist perspective, because everything gets seen through those lenses,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't allow you to look at what the
Speaker 3: actual human condition is, the actual human experience in this place,
Speaker 3: in this time, and so you make a lot of mistakes,
Speaker 3: especially I think in international relations. But whenever we've seen
Speaker 3: Marxism or socialism or all these other isms that are
Speaker 3: political theories about how governments and societies should be organized progressivism,
Speaker 3: we've seen that they mistake their understanding of human nature.
Speaker 3: They end up becoming very dictatorial or authoritarian. They have
Speaker 3: to force people to do what people would not want
Speaker 3: to do. When you change the focus from how you
Speaker 3: perfect the human character to how you create institutions that
Speaker 3: will get people to do what they want to do,
Speaker 3: that's the problem. A political philosopher studies human things, human
Speaker 3: nature and looks for what is good and in this
Speaker 3: particular situation what we call natural right, what is good
Speaker 3: in the here and now. But you take your bearings
Speaker 3: from what is good simply speaking.
Speaker 1: So can I say just.
Speaker 4: So thank you for clearly explaining this. You know, it
Speaker 4: took Steve to be absent to get a clear explanation.
Speaker 4: Like I said, Lucretia unplugged. So because Steve would be
Speaker 4: like a Moog synthesizer, if anybody remembers what.
Speaker 1: Those were, he would start anyway.
Speaker 4: So is this a difference between you know what we
Speaker 4: in law and other social scientists call. Oh, well, you
Speaker 4: guys don't like it when we call you social scientists either,
Speaker 4: or at least Steve doesn't like it.
Speaker 1: Between descriptive and normative in that.
Speaker 4: When you say you study politics and you study political theory,
Speaker 4: but that's because you want to understand you know, man
Speaker 4: and political you know, political decisions and conduct, that sounds
Speaker 4: to me like you're trying to be descriptive. You're trying
Speaker 4: to understand why did a cause b, why did person?
Speaker 1: Why did Lincoln do this?
Speaker 4: And that's descriptive and our philosopher is just normative in
Speaker 4: the sense that they don't really care that much about
Speaker 4: what's descriptively true.
Speaker 1: They just think I have a moral view, it's just
Speaker 1: my values.
Speaker 4: I just want to I think like Marx, I think
Speaker 4: proletariats should overthrow everybody and just run the world. Not
Speaker 4: because that's descriptive. In fact, he's been descriptively utterly wrong.
Speaker 4: That's not happened in any country.
Speaker 1: But that's just what he wants. That's a value he has.
Speaker 1: And you're interested in facts, as it were, you're interested
Speaker 1: in the way the world really is fair.
Speaker 3: There's there's the rub. Actually I don't I'm not going
Speaker 3: to call it unfair.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm not trying to be unfair. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to understand you.
Speaker 3: No, no, you'll understand what I mean by that. The
Speaker 3: biggest problem with social science, of which political science, of
Speaker 3: course is a a sub subscience, subdiscipline, is this idea
Speaker 3: that you can actually distinguish between facts and values, or
Speaker 3: that you should And what you end up with with
Speaker 3: social science, if you'll forgive me for just making it oversimplified,
Speaker 3: is you end up with social scientists who can study
Speaker 3: human phenomena, political phenomena, economic phenomena, international phenomena, and so forth,
Speaker 3: but they have no guide, no bearings to discover, to
Speaker 3: determine if a it's even worth studying those things, or
Speaker 3: what context they should be placed. So, for instance, when
Speaker 3: you and I have had our discussions about prudence. You
Speaker 3: want to say that it's just simply a cost benefit analysis.
Speaker 3: It is a cost benefit analysis, But the question is
Speaker 3: what's your final tilos? What is informing you about what's
Speaker 3: a cost and what's a benefit. It can't just simply
Speaker 3: in politics at least be economic. So is democracy a
Speaker 3: good thing? The modern political scientists will provide you with
Speaker 3: all of these different means for advancing democracy, but they
Speaker 3: can't tell you why democracy is a good thing. And
Speaker 3: so that's the first problem. The modern political theorists accept
Speaker 3: the webers the fact value distinction, and then there their
Speaker 3: activities become kind of mundane and irrelevant and trivial because,
Speaker 3: you know, like the old fashioned, silly metaphor of how
Speaker 3: many angels can dance on the head of a pen?
Speaker 3: How do we make a determination about what's even worth
Speaker 3: being studied? Why is Lincoln? You know, Lincoln and Winston
Speaker 3: Churchill both have you know, I guess the most books
Speaker 3: written about them of any human beings. Why who cares
Speaker 3: about Lincoln? Who cares about Winston Churchill? Lincoln was a
Speaker 3: goofy guy who's only president for you know, eight years.
Speaker 3: He was one one session of Congress and he was
Speaker 3: voted out. You know, from a purely empirical point of
Speaker 3: view that there's nothing very interesting about Lincoln. He was assassinated.
Speaker 3: You know, why is Lincoln? Why does he capture the imagination?
Speaker 3: Those kinds of questions social scientists just kind of pretend
Speaker 3: don't exist, and so go ahead, no, I'm done, Go ahead.
Speaker 4: No. So so are you saying that what you and
Speaker 4: Steve and other Straussians do, which is different from what
Speaker 4: other self styled you know, self styled social scientists do,
Speaker 4: is that you start out before you start investigating things,
Speaker 4: making arguments with a certain you called it, or if
Speaker 4: you don't call it value vapor called values or just
Speaker 4: or the normative. There's certain things you think are right
Speaker 4: and wrong before you start, before you start. That's valuating politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, different, So you can follow up. I would say
Speaker 3: it like this, that the most important thing that you
Speaker 3: can study is what those telos are. That's the most
Speaker 3: important thing. And then but you can't you never know
Speaker 3: the final thing. The tendency of modern science is to
Speaker 3: say that when it comes to you know, human things,
Speaker 3: we we can we can't have absolute certainty, so we
Speaker 3: can't know anything. And a political philosophy, at least ancient
Speaker 3: up until recently would say, well, we can't know everything,
Speaker 3: but the quest for knowing the good is the most
Speaker 3: important thing and it should inform everything we do.
Speaker 1: You So, yeah, so this is so? I yes, I
Speaker 1: understand that. So then why is how do you know that?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 4: Marx might not disagree with you in a way I
Speaker 4: think you would, but no, I mean I disagree with
Speaker 4: how you set up the problem. But then the question is,
Speaker 4: how do you decide that it's natural rights? That is
Speaker 4: the tilos you're gonna you know, there's going to be
Speaker 4: the prism through which you view your lens?
Speaker 1: Would you view everything you know?
Speaker 4: Marx could say no, I think it's you know, mode
Speaker 4: of production that should be the starting tilos.
Speaker 1: And then I understand everything that way. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Why is how do you decide one versus
Speaker 1: the other? Then? Is there right?
Speaker 3: So if I'm talking to my students, this will upset you.
Speaker 3: But if I'm talking to my students about the argument
Speaker 3: of Madison in Federalist Number ten, I do so by
Speaker 3: contrasting it with Marx's argument. And I know, Marx, you
Speaker 3: know the Madison predated Marx. But you know, according to Marx,
Speaker 3: this whole concept of private property is a construct that
Speaker 3: is not part of human nature. Acquisitiveness is not part
Speaker 3: of human nature, and it is, you know, it is
Speaker 3: somehow unhuman for what's dehumanizing? That's what I'm looking for,
Speaker 3: for us to have a society built based upon that.
Speaker 3: I won't go into all the you know ways Madison
Speaker 3: says different things, but I will often ask my students,
Speaker 3: have you ever seen a couple of three year olds
Speaker 3: with a brand new toy? Have they been? So?
Speaker 4: We've seen it, We've seen We've seen Steve show off
Speaker 4: as computer equipment all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or or fight me for a piece of cake.
Speaker 4: Judging by your relative sizes, it seems you let Steve
Speaker 4: win every time.
Speaker 3: Oh but is that is that truly? Is that natural
Speaker 3: equivalitive inquisitiveness? Let me take it a little bit less trivial.
Speaker 3: The fact that you know you, You and I are
Speaker 3: married and we care. I don't care what you say
Speaker 3: about it. We care more about our wives, our husbands,
Speaker 3: our children, our families, our own moms and dads. We
Speaker 3: care more about those things. Why is that just conditioned
Speaker 3: by society? Remember a major, major tenant of at least
Speaker 3: Soviet Marxism was to destroy the family. Because totally agree
Speaker 3: with you, right so so so the reason I use
Speaker 3: those examples, though john is one or the other is
Speaker 3: the accurate, uh fact finding description of of of genuine
Speaker 3: human nature.
Speaker 4: So this is the thing I didn't understand before. So
Speaker 4: your views of uh, you know, the normative. To me,
Speaker 4: the normative question is not just because you're you're like Marxian.
Speaker 4: I just think this is better for everybody. It has
Speaker 4: to be rooted in something you've observed about the way
Speaker 4: human beings are.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 4: So you're saying the reason why property has to be
Speaker 4: part of a natural right is because human beings are
Speaker 4: wired a certain way to acquire and if you don't
Speaker 4: recognize it, then you have terrible things that happen to people.
Speaker 1: So nobody means like it's like it's interesting to.
Speaker 4: Me because it's it's kind of like a you're making
Speaker 4: normative claims or claims about virtue or what's good, but
Speaker 4: it's within the context of things that you have observed
Speaker 4: about human beings that have to be true or unchanging. Yes,
Speaker 4: And whereas you might say therefore, so I see, so
Speaker 4: now you're saying that the reason we're able to pick
Speaker 4: natural rights as our framework rather than Marx is it
Speaker 4: because it's not. It's not that Marx isn't allowed to
Speaker 4: make his claims. It's just that they're wrong. Like he's
Speaker 4: just mistaken about human beings and the way they the
Speaker 4: way they operate, and so therefore his But if he
Speaker 4: had been right, you know, if he had actually if
Speaker 4: there had been all these proletarian revolutions right after the
Speaker 4: publication of his book and all the industrialized countries, we
Speaker 4: might have to change what we think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is totally wrong. Yeah, it was something we
Speaker 1: have to observe about the way people are.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, kind of a mixture of you know, normative
Speaker 4: and descriptive in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One might argue too, that the success of the
Speaker 3: United States, especially up until the progressives took over and
Speaker 3: offered an entirely different view of human nature, the perfectibility
Speaker 3: of human nature, and all those other things we've talked
Speaker 3: about before, that the success of the United States, the prosperity,
Speaker 3: the freedom, all of those things that were unrivaled in
Speaker 3: the history of the world happened for a reason. It
Speaker 3: wasn't just luck. It was because of the belief in
Speaker 3: the understanding about human nature and it's inquisitiveness and what
Speaker 3: you know, Lucke and Madison Bill talk about protecting the
Speaker 3: faculties for acquiring property and giving people of freedom to
Speaker 3: criticize their government at the same time that you have
Speaker 3: certain principles of that government that that that that have
Speaker 3: been sort of embedded in. There's all sorts of reasons
Speaker 3: why I think the United States was successful, but its
Speaker 3: understanding of human nature was in many ways the best
Speaker 3: that that could happen in the modern world. And that's why,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think it was accident.
Speaker 4: No, no, so so, but now I kind of understand
Speaker 4: why the Jaffa school, of which I include you and
Speaker 4: Steve and a lot of our friends, find such importance
Speaker 4: in the Founders and Lincoln and the Civil War, whereas
Speaker 4: I think what I know of is East Coastraucians think.
Speaker 1: This is not important. So you think this is important.
Speaker 4: Because it shows that they got something right about human nature,
Speaker 4: Like they properly identified something that's true about human nature,
Speaker 4: and then they designed uh a philosophical system or a
Speaker 4: governing system that took of you know, properly responded to it.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say take advantage, but that's not the
Speaker 1: right word. It's properly allowed, you know, responded to it.
Speaker 4: I remember, as we've talked about the I think we
Speaker 4: talked about when Steve was last not here, the Federals
Speaker 4: papers and the Founders had.
Speaker 1: A pretty dim view of human nature.
Speaker 4: Right, humans left to their own devices, were you know,
Speaker 4: like Hobbsian's they were pretty you know, they were they
Speaker 4: were you know, they right?
Speaker 1: You know, Madison says.
Speaker 4: That we wouldn't need government if men were angels, right,
Speaker 4: men are not angels. They are, which is the progressive view,
Speaker 4: the Brissoian views there angels and have to be freed
Speaker 4: from society and government. But it's more that, in your view,
Speaker 4: the better society, better government is one that properly restrains
Speaker 4: and channels human nature then allows it to flourish when
Speaker 4: it's when it does well without government.
Speaker 1: But when it does badly without government, then you need government.
Speaker 4: And but that's why you think the American experience is
Speaker 4: really important, whereas East Coast Straussians don't think it is.
Speaker 1: Or if you know, I always study.
Speaker 3: Well, I hate to put words in their mouths, but
Speaker 3: there you kind of hinted at it as well. And
Speaker 3: that's that they think that the foundations of the American
Speaker 3: constitutional system, the founding are so low and so base.
Speaker 1: Yeah, about virtue.
Speaker 4: It's not about virtue stopping people from hurting each other, right,
Speaker 4: And you know.
Speaker 3: They have their their like you say, almost a hobbsy
Speaker 3: and that that they follow Lack who followed Hobbes. We
Speaker 3: won't go and we could have a lovely five hour
Speaker 3: conversation about that. We won't borrow listeners today, maybe someday.
Speaker 3: But their their argument is with the fact that, yes,
Speaker 3: this is not the best regime. They do not agree
Speaker 3: with Lincoln that this is the last best hope of mankind.
Speaker 3: And they definitely don't agree that someone like Trump could
Speaker 3: ever be any kind of prudential statesman, as low and
Speaker 3: as crass and all those other things that we know
Speaker 3: he can be. And so that's why you have the
Speaker 3: East Coast Straussians not interested in any way, shape or
Speaker 3: form in promoting the Trump rustation.
Speaker 4: Question free, who do the East what regime to the
Speaker 4: East Coast Straussians think is the best one? Then it's
Speaker 4: not the American our political system Athens.
Speaker 1: The one that's not around anymore.
Speaker 4: You mean the one that disappeared effectively in the I
Speaker 4: think that that what ends up the tree BC after
Speaker 4: Alexander the Great put them under his heel, and that Athens,
Speaker 4: the one that lost the Peloponnesian War.
Speaker 1: Athens. Really, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You have two options. One is the option of the
Speaker 3: philosopher who becomes uninterested in politics altogether. And that's.
Speaker 4: Yes of our friends say the best thing to do
Speaker 4: is to just live in a regime that supports philosophers
Speaker 4: so they can live have the life of leisure to
Speaker 4: think about virtue.
Speaker 3: Right, which is a little bit of what I mean
Speaker 3: when I say Athens. But the other one is, you know,
Speaker 3: think about someone like a William Crystal, who was so
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, he's he's a much smarter guy
Speaker 3: than you would ever know from his stupid postings.
Speaker 1: A very smart guy. He's a very smart guy.
Speaker 3: But he's very emotional about this and he he I
Speaker 3: don't know if his feelings were hurt by Trump or
Speaker 3: what it is. But I don't know what his alternative is.
Speaker 3: But he has supported the worst of left wing politics
Speaker 3: in the United States because he hates Trump so much.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the answer is, but I know
Speaker 3: that the reason the Claremont folks, I won't say roundly
Speaker 3: of race Trump, but they began to understand that some
Speaker 3: of the defail the of the United States that have
Speaker 3: become so profound could only be fixed by somebody willing
Speaker 3: to be entirely different than the than even say a
Speaker 3: Ted Cruz or a or a Ron DeSantis. It needed
Speaker 3: somebody who would challenge everything that had been built up
Speaker 3: since at least since the New Deal, because.
Speaker 1: Those are things so like the East Coastraussians. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, the two groups.
Speaker 4: The first group shouldn't care about Trump one way or
Speaker 4: the other, right, because they want to have a life
Speaker 4: of leash, of intel, of leisure that would support the
Speaker 4: ability to have a class of people. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 4: kind of like Plato right this story, except they're not kings,
Speaker 4: they're just philosophers.
Speaker 1: But they live on a live in a society that generates.
Speaker 4: A surplus that allows you to have a class of
Speaker 4: people just to sit around and think all the time
Speaker 4: about a good life. But but they shouldn't care whether
Speaker 4: Trump's in charge of not as long as he just
Speaker 4: right does a good job of providing the material resources
Speaker 4: and stability.
Speaker 1: To allow philosophers to do what they want.
Speaker 4: But there's a lot of Straussians who are quite hard,
Speaker 4: quite offended by Trump, right They don't They see me
Speaker 4: as a kind of a coarsening of politics, you know,
Speaker 4: that kind of you know. But I don't understand why
Speaker 4: I'm putting to your question, like I don't understand why
Speaker 4: they would care about the regime as long as it
Speaker 4: supports there's a.
Speaker 3: Little hypocrisy at work there. John and I say it
Speaker 3: as with this, we probably should take it up again
Speaker 3: in another time, or Steve will kill us. He won't
Speaker 3: publish this. In order to have the kind of society
Speaker 3: that offers philosophers the leisure to sit around and think
Speaker 3: about politics, or think about political philosophy or whatever it
Speaker 3: might be, you have to have a material abundance, and
Speaker 3: you do have to have a society that sort of
Speaker 3: leaves you alone. How many people do you suppose in
Speaker 3: Iran right now or have the leisure to sit around
Speaker 3: and think about political philosophy? And I mean, so it
Speaker 3: takes a good regime even to have enough leisure and
Speaker 3: enough freedom to be a philosopher. You can't just be
Speaker 3: a lousy regime and that's.
Speaker 4: It certainly doesn't have to be a democracy, because isn't
Speaker 4: that also true? The East Coast Strauscians are quite ambivalent
Speaker 4: about democracy.
Speaker 1: Where the Jaffa School, you know, you you know, you guys.
Speaker 4: Like the Founding, So you like the Founding, you're a
Speaker 4: democracy the Founding, you know, the balanced regime that they created.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was not a democracy, right, it's not a democracy. No,
Speaker 3: I don't care how many times the left tells us
Speaker 3: that we do not have a democracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we agree. We don't live in a democracy. Then
Speaker 1: we don't want to live in a pure democracy.
Speaker 3: What happens or even something close to a pure democracy.
Speaker 3: I mean we could from a purely logistical point of
Speaker 3: view with tchnology today, every single human being in the
Speaker 3: United States could vote on every single issue, right, I
Speaker 3: mean we could have a pure democracy that we could
Speaker 3: do it, sure, but who would be the ones put
Speaker 3: You know, you can just imagine what a nightmare that
Speaker 3: would be.
Speaker 1: We don't have to imagine.
Speaker 4: You just look at Europe in the last hundred years
Speaker 4: they've tried to become warm up pure democracy. It leads to,
Speaker 4: you know, rapid changes to fetish politics that produce socialist governments.
Speaker 3: That that and even that is countries within the framework
Speaker 3: of a parliamentary system, which in itself is not a
Speaker 3: pure democracy. But anyway, do I'm gonna quickly.
Speaker 1: I think we have to end and go to the
Speaker 1: Babylon B headlines.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, so one thing, two real quick things I want
Speaker 3: to throw out there for comment, because then the Babylon
Speaker 3: will work in the Babylon B. This week is June nineteenth,
Speaker 3: or how the Ebonics version of it, June teenth. I
Speaker 3: propose that since this is the one hundred I didn't
Speaker 3: do this right, one hundred and fortieth anniversary, and my
Speaker 3: mouth is probably bad. Coming up in December sixth was
Speaker 3: the ratification of the thirteenth Amendment. Why we celebrate a
Speaker 3: stupid holiday like June nineteenth, which all it did was
Speaker 3: pass along to what was at Galveston, Texas. Wherever it
Speaker 3: was in Texas. They finally figured out that Lincoln had
Speaker 3: made the Emancipation Proclamation, so some more slaves in the
Speaker 3: South were free. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't free all the slaves.
Speaker 3: The Thirteenth Amendment did. We need to change, We need
Speaker 3: to have a movement to get rid of Juneteenth and
Speaker 3: replace it with Emancipation Day on December sixth. That's my
Speaker 3: first thing, and my second thing is Happy Birthday to
Speaker 3: the Army. Are you going to watch the military parade?
Speaker 4: I was going to watch a lot on TV, but
Speaker 4: we might be seeing the army out in force of
Speaker 4: many cities having their own parade around the country.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, where's my.
Speaker 3: Where's my tinfoil hat? I read today that they might
Speaker 3: cancel the parade because of thunderstorms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently it's supposed to rain on the parade as
Speaker 1: it were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, since when does the military care of it anyway?
Speaker 1: Yeah, not supposed to stop the military.
Speaker 3: Trump disappointed army parade won't have a giant snoopy balloon.
Speaker 3: You'll like this one. Unclear of crowd of fifty thousand
Speaker 3: illegals is an ice protest or Dodgers game.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh that's terrible.
Speaker 3: Illegal immigrants forced to do the rioting Americans. American citizens
Speaker 3: refused to do. All right, we've gone way long. You
Speaker 3: want to take us out, John?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Let me finish the podcast by doing Steve's job,
Speaker 4: which is I put in three whiskey Happy Hour into
Speaker 4: the AI machine and accident to write a poem, and
Speaker 4: I think this is this case with AI. They just
Speaker 4: repeat themselves, because I think Steve repeated these very lines.
Speaker 4: It said, first, let's toast to the host a trio
Speaker 4: so grand. With each tram they pour, they explore and expand,
Speaker 4: from politics to law. They delve ever deep with the
Speaker 4: rich flavor of knowledge. Their spirits do keep. That's pretty good.
Speaker 3: I mean they know how better AI than Steve.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, mine is free. I don't pay for it
Speaker 1: like Steve does. I have no subscription.
Speaker 4: This is actually quite impressive that it knows where podcasts
Speaker 4: about politics.
Speaker 3: I have to tell it quickly. Mister Lucretia was trying
Speaker 3: to uh to demonstrate to friends of ours how great
Speaker 3: Groc was, and he asked questions from Groc about three
Speaker 3: whiskey happy hour without giving them any information, and they don't.
Speaker 3: AI Rock doesn't like me.
Speaker 1: You are the.
Speaker 3: Measured I wish we didn't record it, which was disappointing,
Speaker 3: but it was definitely the AI was pro John you
Speaker 3: and thought I was brassy and sassy.
Speaker 4: It said that, well, that's that sounds better than being
Speaker 4: a moderate reasonable one. I'd rather be brassy and say well,
Speaker 4: but I wouldn't mind being brassy?
Speaker 3: Okay, are you are you sure?
Speaker 1: Are you sure that it didn't call you brassy and
Speaker 1: Steve sassy? That would actually make a loup.
Speaker 3: No, they didn't talk about Steve very much at all.
Speaker 3: It was almost like it was like today, you and me.
Speaker 3: But I'll ask it again.
Speaker 4: I was great to see you, Lucretia, and I'm sorry
Speaker 4: Steve's going to start coming back so soon. I hope
Speaker 4: he enjoys his herring and stays a little longer.
Speaker 3: Have a good week, everybody, you too.
Speaker 1: Later Ricochet join the conversation.
Speaker 3: H