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Speaker 2: Back to day on the panel.
Speaker 4: Man Man, you don't don't matter many, all right, bug
Man Hagel, Welcome to the Jay Burdon Show. How you doing?
Speaker 3: Hi, glad to be here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we got connected. We have some some mutuals
on Twitter, and so, you know, I'm familiar with who
you are and what you do, but some of my
audience might not be. So what do you do on
the internet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I started my account of the long and
short of it is. I was active on Reddit. I
wasn't really active anywhere else. I got permanently banned from Reddit,
and so I just started posting on Twitter. I was
in law school. I was really frustrated with the environment
in law school. It was it was obviously very asymmetric
in terms of the opinions of the professor the students
in general, and so I kind of used Twitter as
my outlet to kind of lamit the cultural environment as
well as the political environment. On Twitter, I have a
mix of topics. I cover. I used to cover a
lot more of kind of esoteric history. I covered a
lot more about Hegel, kind of the hermetic influences on
the Protestant Reformation, some stuff about Kabbola, how Kabla had
influenced certain Protestant schism movements, the Moravians and the Atabaptists.
But nowadays I'm really busy, So I just I just
kind of do some like a surface level of political commentary.
And that's kind of the long and short of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting because if you talk to older people,
right boomers will just use that that slur. There's you know,
this idea that, oh, you know, once these these college kids,
you know, as broadly defined as that term is, hit
the real world, then they'll realize right there, their parents
were right all along. And I didn't get anything after
my undergrad degree. I burnt out on education for you know,
any number of reasons. But it's sort of interesting that
that you know, idea of you know, getting in the
real world, you know, quote unquote uh really never seems
to pan out, to be perfectly honest, and that track
of education, you know, from undergrad to your graduate degree
post grad all that it's like this this treadmill to
make you more and more of an obnoxious progressive hall monitor.
You know, it's kind of like chasing gold stars. And
so you mentioned, of course, right that you know law
school was non representative, right, it was very much one opinion.
So what was it like being a sort of a
dissident in that in that space, if you will.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I I went to a Bury. My my
undergrad degree is in biochemistry, and I also I did
a dual jd and masters as a little background, my
undergrad my undergrad, I was a bit more insulated despite
going to a more liberal undergraduate program because of the
fact that I was in STEM and so I was
less I was less around the more kind of let's say,
radical cohorts in my undergrad but I was still exposed
to it here and there. I won't go into the details.
So there's a couple of big scandals with uh, like
people got suspended from the sports teams for let's say,
throwing tortillas at a date auction and things like that.
I thought they were outrageous, but I kind of kept
more to myself. It like, it wasn't really in my
face because of the program I was in so I
was like, you know, I'm just want to get this
over with. And then law school, it was it was
more unavoidable because this stuff was integral to the coursework itself.
Like in criminal law, you're talking about different types, different
theories for justice, like you have retributive justice, you have
rehabilitative justice, and then you have punitive justice. And there
was obviously a clear preference among U with that particular professor,
like for rehabilitative justice. And for those who don't know,
that's basically where the point of incarceration is rehabilitation of
criminals as opposed to protecting the public from them. And
a lot of our problems in criminal justice dim from
the back of the fact that the rehabilitative justice school
is kind of the overarching trend we have been consistently
heading to really since the night late night, And really
I was being successively radicalized in the right wing direction,
and it was really something that happened to me after
I graduated law school and moved to Houston for a
job that really kind of like just blew the whole
thing up my face, because, like I was, I had
been in Houston for less than a week starting my
new job, and I got burglarized about four days after
I moved there at two am, and it was just
like I just started kind of looking into like the
political environment of the city of Houston, and it was
just kind of one of the first times where like
my politics kind of or like the opposition to my
politics viscerally interacted with me. And I was just like,
this is not working. Like I'm a young new grad
and I'm being I'm just having all these things like
throw it in my face by no fault to my own.
And I talked to like Boom or family members, and
they just kind of treat it as like the cost
of doing business, like the cost of existing. And I
was like, why why are we accepting this? Like why
why is this something that we are going to put
up with as a society that like like kind of
people who go out of their way to be lawbiding,
productive citizens are just effectively at the whims of any
petty criminal that should choose to victimize them. It was
just an incoherent frame of mind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm glad that you brought up the fact that,
in the example of a word, I have a hard
time saying justice. One of the things that I find
incredibly frustrating in an academic setting with many of these
people is that they don't know their own history. They
assume that they are at the cutting edge of a
new idea, right Whereas if you understand it, and you know,
we're antribute to justice, thank you, I finally got it out.
There is one of kind of this cluster of different
ideas that have effectively been in academia since the late
fifties to early sixties. And there's not a new experiment, right,
this is this that we have tried this before with
predictable results, and you know, look like, of course it
produces bad results. You get broken into and you know,
your apartment in Houston. But similarly, it just kind of
bothers me that by alling to power, they get to
sort of play pretend as radicals. Right. Play pretend is
if they've come up with this great new idea that
was old by the time my grandparents were going through school.
It's you know, not the primary objection to it, but
very much something that kind of rubs me the wrong way,
if you see what I'm getting at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think part of it is liberalism has
a degree of staying power and I believe it's because
it is a comforting idea, especially like just Anglo Saxons
in general, but especially Anglo Saxon's post twentieth century kind
of have built their I don't want to say have
created new like American ethogenesis, especially postththr they kind of
have where American culture espeal, specifically American Anglo Saxon culture
is one of like overcoming basically the constraints of the material,
and they do that through this like having this like
platonic ideal that man is infinitely malleable and you can
infinitely mold man by altering the conditions. It's it's almost
Faustian to the degree because like it allows you to
like this iterative infinitely overcoming the bounds of my bounds
to my conditions. And I believe kind of this like
blink slate egalitarianism is residual of that where like not
even biology is a constraint for us, and you kind
of see this developing in like I know, like transhumanism
is kind of a buzzword, but transhumanism just in terms
of let's say, widening human cognitive capacity through things like
neuralink and like exploring the final Frontier, which is Elon
Musk's entire project. And so I think this kind of
blink slate egalitarianism is just another facet of this, of
this kind of Faucian concept that you can terrorform literally everything,
including like humankind individually and as groups.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's that same idea in the perfect malleability
of man. I think you see it nowhere else more
than in education. The idea is that, you know, the
these certain fields are and kind of stasis made up
of demographics that we don't approve. We want it to
be more representative, more made up of our of our clients.
And so the idea is by simply passing people through
you know, the hallowed halls. It's like, oh, well, Harvard
makes Supreme Court justices. So if we just jam a
bunch of our people, you know, people we decide that
we want through that door, well will just produce you know,
similarly august figures, and by sort of passing through the
magic door, they will become the same thing. You see
this as well, honestly, probably more clearly in public school system, right,
the idea is simply like the piece of paper is
the signifier. And so if you can simply increase the
number of people or the sort of people getting something.
They can be molded into that sort of idealized form.
It's very much related to the sort of magic dirt
fallacy you see with immigration, where if we simply take
the entire world and stick them into a place that
was nice ten years ago, well they will enjoy the
benefits of that place being nice, and it become the
same sort of people. Weirdly enough, this kind of reminds
me of the and there's no polite term for this,
but the we'll go Friedman's schools after the American Civil War,
where effectively you had basic you know, Massachusetts wasps coming
down to the reconstructive South in designed to basically eradicate
what was black culture at the time and turn them
into progressive white people. Right. And it's funny because, weirdly enough,
a lot of the kind of like Nation of Islam
black separatist types make this exact same point, one of
very few points of agreement I have with those guys.
But effectively it's the same project, right. It's this idea
that we can, through education and training, turn this culture
into something like us. It's sort of this bizarre kind
of progressive imperialism, if that term makes sense to.
Speaker 1: You, Bookman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I believe kind of the one of the
primary historical modes of operation that have or let's say
substraits that have allowed for this to be facilitated. I really,
I might make the stance mad, but I think Protestantism
was really integral as the delivery method for a lot
of these ideas. I'm an orthodox Christian and so but
so take that with what you will. My biases are
out there. But the kind of issue or what I
see with Protestantism, especially especially kind of the more apocalyptic types,
they like to compress the transcendent and the inminet and
basically flatten that difference. And so therefore the idea is
like this, we have to pure, imminently purify the world
in order for skistological project to proceeed. And you see
this kind of with the Social Gospel movement and Raush
and Bush back in the eighteen fifties. And like the
Social Gospel and Raush and Bush were really deprogenitors of
a lot of the the Northeast social justice initial initiatives.
They were the kind of inspiration behind the whole house.
They're the inspiration behind a lot of a lot of
the civil civil rights movements. You have a lot of
progressive progressive Protestants participating and encouraging civil rights movements. And
part of this is I think, I think it is
specifically a type of I guess a apocalyptic strain that
is especially unique to evangelicalism, where the mot the mode
of thinking is that purification of the world is necessary.
And so obviously you have to look at the frame
of which one is purifying the world, Like if if
you think the world will be pure given certain precepts,
you are going to follow those precepts to their logical conclusion.
And so if that kind of delivery method is combined
with these pre extant, uh aggressive precepts, that that kind
of religion is going to pull these precepts to their
logical conclusion, which ends up being blank slade galitarianism. Part
of purifying the world is this absolute state of equality.
And that's why the Social Gospel where they were an
integral movement with the Christian socialists, and you kind of
see the Protestant influence on the Fabian society, and there's
all these kind of overlapping strands that kind of point
to this weird imanitizing, almost quasi apocalyptic mode of thinking
about politics and human society. I mean, I don't know
if you're familiar with Eric Boglin, but it's Eric Boglin's
famous line of iminitizing the esketon. And that's kind of
what at least the evangelical strain of Prosantism has has
ushered in.
Speaker 4: Well, I think fundamentally. And it's funny. I'm not necessarily
like a Southern lost cause type, but you know, they
talk about this quite a bit that effectively what you
have in America is two distinct cultures, right, Northern and
Southern culture, with profoundly different views on human nature and
effectively the perfectibility of man. So in a cultural sense,
you see the output of this kind of tragic understanding
of human nature and things like Southern Gothic literature, right,
the idea that man is at his core deeply flawed,
but there is nobility to be found in how you
manage that flaw. Right. Whereas you know the concept of
you know, the city on a Hill, which I believe
was initially coined by oh, shoot, what was his name?
He was one of the initial pilgrims. I can't quite remember, right,
but this idea of setting up a new novel and
perfected society is something you can sort of bring the
city of God into being in the world. The idea that,
in much the same way talking about education, that you
can fundamentally change what a man is. And actually, if
we're gonna I realized mold Bug has become sort of
unfashionable recently, but he has a series of essays on Quakers,
and he particularly talks about the idea of prison, you know,
not simply as like a dungeon, we throw you before,
we either let you go or peel your skin off
and set you on fire. You know, this was more
common before they came around, and the idea in that
was basically that, you know, prison was a sort of
like state and judicial form of purgatory or you could
sort of you know, work off your sins. And so
in the early days of these reformatory prism prisons are
what they call them is they have these sort of
like comedically like sissify and jobs, you know, like they
just have a box with a paddle full of sand
and they just make you turn this wheel for hours
on end, and that was your prison sentence. And okay,
maybe that's better than just you know, eating you know,
mac and cheese and you know, getting in you know,
shive fights with Mexicans or whatever we do in our
prisons now. But you still you have that idea that,
you know, the point of criminal justice is not to
avenge the wrong, punished the guilty, but it is to
produce a measurable like a moral improvement and change in
the criminal himself. It sort of becomes this social engineering project,
and that same idea is scaled up, of course, the
idea that you can do that to an entire society,
which becomes there is a moral duty to do that too,
cultures who are not as enlightened as you are, that
you can you know, wage a massive war or you know,
with your own society, or the idea that democracy needs
to be exported to the world. It's this sort of
belief in both the perfectibility of man and also in
your personal moral duty to expand that system as far
as possible. Again, it's that same sort of kind of
progressive imperialism mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think two we also kind of forget what
civilization is in these conversations, specifically progressive or I don't know.
It's like if they forget per se, but they had
this idea of civilization as this kind of abstract thing
that exists independent of people. Like institutions have their kind
of like own ontologically independent existence, and it's it's on
the institutions are comprised of people who whom the society
is comprised of institutions or kind of these like standalone
things that exist independent of the society. And to that extent,
like if you've sent that content of the institution to
the civilization is like civilization is just a thing that
exists and people happen to inhabit civilization. Whereas I think
my perspective and probably probably it is probably close to
your perspective, Like civilization is not independent of the people
that comprisee it. Civilization is an extension of the Ethnos.
It's not something that you can interchange. It is mutually
dependent upon the Ethnos. And when we had this kind of.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, oh well, and this is is Demeister's whole
point right writing about constitutions, where it's like the constitution
does not create a people, it describes a people at
a certain time. It has no power in and of
itself and this idea and exactly what you just mentioned
is why when I very rarely decide to post to
social media on Twitter at least, I very afflic get
into the dumbest arguments in the world with both constitutional conservatives,
you know, for the idea that you know, a constitution
does not have the ability to enforce or create a culture,
which in my mind is demonstrably true. Right does America
look like it did in seventeen seventy seven? I rest
my point, but also right with the an caps who believe,
you know, that no state should be allowed to regulate
you know, who lives in a certain area and simply
culture is not a factor. But at the same time,
right these these even something is as kind of liberal
as the conception of human rights, you know, the rights
enumerated to you, you know, by God or the state,
depending on your view of it. Those are highly cultural.
Those are effectively Anglo conceptions, right. The other cultures do
not conceptualize things in such a way. And sorry, I'll
kick it back to you, but I think that's what
makes Demeaster's work so interesting is because he is addressing
that very very early, right, you know, briefly after the revolution,
you know, the idea that you can create a sort
of formalized description or a set of rules that will
guide culture. And clearly that doesn't work. But excuse me,
I interrupted you.
Speaker 3: And this kind of like goes back to the classical
liberal idea, well, let's say the small government conservative Like
the kind of point they're failing to understand is that
small government is only possible when you have authoritarian government
on the borders, on the edges of society. Like I
like to think about as like let's say, hard and
stern strictures facing the outside and a more kind of
soft a soft belly. And we we kind of have
this concept in the Orthodox Church with it where it's
called like economia, where the priest has leave to kind
of grant you, let's say a little bit of latitude
on certain things, given the circumstances of your situation. And
I think that that that concept is applicable to civilization.
But it's only and that like basically libertarianism on the
in on the inside of society, whereas a hard shell
facing the outside of society, that type of like kind
of free market, free association where you kind of let
let society run on its own substrates is only possible
if you maintain the integrity of the society from the
inside facing the outside.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: And it's sort of based in uh a similar a
similar myth, the idea of the neutral institution. You know
that an institution, whether it's the judiciary or you know, education,
whichever can deal with can deal with everyone fairly, that
it has no I guess a negative way to say it,
but it has no sort of bias or prejudice built
into it. Clearly that is is not the case. And
you know, as regards this kind of mix of you know,
authoritarian and libertarianism, it's like, well, to be honest, it's
it's freedom to do what because you know, even when
you look at the constitutional conservative types they hold up
you know, the era of the American founding, the kind
of first American republic or if they don't know a
whole lot about history, kind of the first and second
you know, pre Lincoln as this example of you know,
maximal freedom. And it's like, well, well, sure like from
a certain perspective, you have quite a lot of freedom.
You don't really have to pay a lot in taxes.
You know, no one can say, you know, no one
can tell you not to you know, drop gamer words
or you know where you can live. But at the
same time, like your other forms of kind of modern
freedoms are radically restricted. You have George Washington, for example,
you know, executing soldiers for sodomy. There were blasphemy laws.
You know, if you slept with another man's wife, you
might well end up in a duel and get shot
or lynched. So again, right, it is freedom to do
what and that is highly cultural, culturally contextual, and also
that depends on a certain certain common cultural understanding of
what is and is not acceptable. And in a multicultural society,
like there's a reason that you know when you can
look at Aristotle, right, this leads to tyranny because there
is no common cultural understanding for that small l libertarian
amount of social freedom. And again I'll reference them twice,
which will said chatting to just an absolute fit of
rage is mold Budd makes this exact point where he
talks about speaking to libertarians, where he says, you know,
the libertarian's mistake is he thinks that he can bring
about and capistan by acting as if it were already
the case, by acting as sort of an agorist, and
his point is, no, if you were a libertarian in
the current moment, you should be a fascist. You know,
you should advocate for, you know, the harshest police state
in the world, because you know, once you have that,
once you have that, you know, that perfect security, that
perfect you know, assurance of punishment of wrongdoers, then that
spontaneous order quote unquote can occur, but does not come
out of Somalia. You know, it does not come out
of you know, a lawless, decentralized society. It's plainly not
the case. And so hey, we we've been been talking
a lot about these of critiques of liberalism, these critiques
of progressive liberalism, and one of the things that I
can't stop talking about is many of these defenders of
liberalism look at that, look at that attack on the
idea of neutral institutions, look at that, attacks on ideas
of secularism, and they say, well, that's exactly what that,
in scare quotes woke left does. Therefore, because you criticize liberalism,
you are woke. Therefore the woke right is born a
subject I cannot stop writing long articles on. So I
assume everyone listening to this is sick to hear me
talk about it, but I'm curious to get your thoughts
on that term.
Speaker 3: It's just beyond idiotic and I have negative patience for
this type of attempt to shoehorn, say right wingers outside
of that classic libertarian conventional oh sorry, classical liberal conventional
libertarian motive politics, because it's kind of like you said,
in terms of like the and caps they treat they
try to precipitate and capistan by treating it, treating society
as if it were already in Capistan. Classical liberals and
libertarians they want to implement their policies as society exists,
and that requires this having this kind of platonic ideal
of what society currently is and then pretending as if
that's the actual way it is. And so the classical
liberals they deny this, but they still operate on the
basis of this kind of blank slatism, this type of
almost like dialectical evolution of society where we're all poor,
we're all pulled towards this ultimate constitution idea, and if anything,
whenever we stray from that idea, that's because that's not
because of the actual society or constitution itself. That's just
because that's just how it works. That's just a temporary setback,
and we cannot lose faith in the ultimate project. And
and it's about to be this kind of this kind
of like self referential, self referential idea where like great
real classical liberalism hasn't been tried, like it's the ideal
project hasn't been achieved. But they and they and they
point to this era of society. I don't even really
know what area era of society they American society they
point to to kind of justify this point. It's always
kind of some ambiguous pleading to the founders or the
Federal's papers. But then you have you have other founders
who directly refute their kind of concept that of American
society is this kind of uh, let's say, put potentially
multicultural like utopia. I can't remember. I think it was
I think it was James Monroe who who it was
it was to Toke Folle and then James Monroe who
were speaking of the constitution specifically for white Anglo Saxon Protestants.
And then so it's this like degree of cherry picking,
trade picking. The founders they want to idolize, and then
even then what words of the founders they want to idolize.
And it's absolutely a deification of the founding. Right in
order in order to have this type of fealty to
this classical liberal idea, you have to you have to
you have to kind of elevate the Constitution to a
sacred document one and two, you have to deify the founders.
The Constitution and its processional nature is therefore infallible. The
Constitutional conventions are comparable to the Nicean Councils. They're given
this staff of infallibility. It is the American founding myth.
And if you call that into question, that all of
a sudden that you are a heretic. And that's how
they treat you, like the woke word, attaching woke to
these kind of like political categories, all that is a
synonym for you've committed a heresy. And obviously some heretics
are worse than others, are more destructive, but they're effectively
tranching anyone with the woke label as an equally destructive
heretic and making no distinction between quote unquote heresies.
Speaker 4: Well, and the thing that bothers me about this is
that they're not even and this was proven by Joel
Berry's I think it was Joel Berry. I didn't watch it.
I can't listen to him debate with Dave Green, the
distributist or. Dave Green asked him a very simple question, right,
is Thomas Jeffers and racist? Because you know, if you're
an adult about it, regardless of your opinion on Thomas Jefferson,
you can say, well, yes, probably by the standards of
our time. But you know, I don't view that as
you know, affecting other things we could or couldn't take
from it. You know, it's not a sainted figure. You're
simply a man, a cringe atheist, but you know, impressive
in other ways. But the reason that the constitutional conservative
position is especially ridiculous is that they truly are the
progressives of yesteryear, and so they have to hold that,
you know, simultaneously, are all of these founders sainted figures?
But also they were so ahead of their time they
could see into the future, and what they actually meant
was something in between, you know, kind of like Ronald
Reagan and you know Bill Clinton's Democratic Party platform. That's
what they really meant. It's this idea that because they
are infallible, and this is what I think they must
you know, have all along, you've been in accordance with
exactly what I think. And the progressive types run rings
about them on this issue because it's it's plainly clear
by again the standards of the modern left that all
these men were horrifically racist, again in scare quotes, by
the standards of the day. But it's because of simultaneously
that kind of like deification where they must be perfect,
and also the problem of deep down effectively just being progressive.
And so in a way i'd almost I wouldn't agree
with it, but I almost respect the position more if
it were. Yes, they were, and it's awesome. You know,
I want to literally, to quote Alex Jones, you know,
seventeen seventy six will commence again, warts and all. But
it's not that, you know, it's this sort of ten
tactical invocation where you know, it is sort of bringing
these figures kind of like we're casting yourself as a
you know, strict constitutionalist doing exactly what you know, the
sounding document said, while also kind of twisting them to
meet modern standards. I am, you know, a Protestant, albeit
you know, not a particularly uh when you read enough
to meister right, it kind of throws you for a loop.
But to me it reminds me very much of the
Catholic critiques of Soul's scriptura, the idea that you know,
scripture is you know, entirely preminent. You know, it's this
for this literalist interpretation, because you see a sort of
echo in that in the you know, constitutional liter literalists.
Excuse me, it's light here, and in both cases, I
maybe I shouldn't say that, but I in both of
those I see a certain degree of cope because again,
as we see both, you know, in the example of
scripture and in law, what matters is not what's written
on the page. What matters is who interprets it right,
And that becomes the Schmidtian question, right, who decides? And
so to me, that's what one of the many things
I find frustrating is about these you know, constitutional conservative
types that we could consider, you know, their their ancestors
to be right, or their predecessors to be successors, excuse me,
to be the sort of you know, good classical liberals,
the IDW types who still kind of run around. But
ultimately there is that law right, that that fundamental misunderstanding
that you know, the law as written actually matters, and
I think that there is a theological route to that,
but I'll kick it back to you.
Speaker 3: I will add one of one of the hilarious things
about constitutional conservatives in our quotes is often very they
like to call themselves a originalist originalists. There's a couple
of different schools the constitutional interpretation. There's originalism, purposivism, and textualism. Right,
Anton Scalia was a different different Conservative judges of the
Court like, they typically plead to the thing called originalism,
where it's like interpreting the Constitution from the lens of
the founder, or the lens in the perspective or the
historical president of the time that was originally written in
And so these makes the kind of jewel berrys joel
Berry's retort to the distributists even more interesting and kind
of incoherent, because if you actually look at the perspectives
of the founders at the time that the Constitution was written,
and we interpret the Constitution from that lens, what do
we think the new kind of prevailing sets of precedent
would be if we were actually originalist, Well, there would
be no civil rights framework, there would be there would
be none of this kind of this kind of progressive
what have you read into the Constitution. And so it's
like by the very fact that you can have and
this is kind of Socrates. By Socrates preferred the spoken
word the written word. When things get put into writing,
there is a effectively a barrier between the person writing
and the person reading it. And you can interpret interpret
the same sentence and obviously how many different ways. And
that's effectively how how the judiciary works. You can read
almost anything you want that's politically expedient into the Constitution.
You can try to put bounds on it by these
different interpretive schools, but effectively you're still just doing the
same thing because any like and this is kind of
like the problem with doing quote unquote history even from
an originalist interpretation, you're still a modern person trying to
understand the historical context of the founders, and so therefore
you are still there's still multiple points of mediation, like
or points of distance, points of error between you and
the founders. And so this type of this entire type
of frame that the Constitution works as long as we
as long as we defer back to the Founders is
ridiculous on its face, and it's it's incoherent because it's like, sure,
we can extrapolate the mentalities of the Founders, but there's
many Founders and they came from many different schools of thought.
So it's what motivation behind the Constitution, even from an
originalist perspective, are we pursuing? And so this is the
entire problem with this deification of the Constitution. The Constitution
it has to run on a substrate, and that substrate
is the people itself. And so when you had this
idea that like, and I've seen Joe Barry tweet that
I don't remember off off the top of my head,
but it was like, it'd be preferential to have like
browns compared to the woke, right. I cannot remember the quote,
but that was the general sentiment I remember, And it's like, okay,
so then you don't actually respect like the milieu of
the founders because that would have been incomprehensible to the founders.
But even being I believe it was Monroe or Madison,
I don't remember, but I remember like reading this quote
from one of the founders that was effectively like it
is entirely possible that we will have a Mohammedan as
president of the United States, and he expresses of woe
the day that occurs. But within this framework, that is
entirely possible. So it was not a foregone conclusion when
the Framers wrote the Institution that this our current situation
was a possibility. In fact, it was thrown out there
as a possibility. And so like from that perspective, your
view of the Constitution as a success or a failure
just depends on your ability to reckon with the acceptability
of being replaced or being subjucated, subjugated by by foreign cultures,
foreign peoples in your own nation, do you have such
little legions to your nation or culture that that is
an acceptable proposition? And for people and for constitual conservatives,
people like Joe Berry, if they are truly originalist or
they are truly differing back to the Founders, it must
be an acceptable proposition because that is what the founders
viewed as a potential, inevitable and evitability of the document
that they created.
Speaker 4: Well, and one of the things that I think is interesting,
and this kind of dovetails with your recent kind of
Twitter posting about student debt, but also with a lot
of the data I'm seeing from Mark Mitchell at Resmusen
about specifically Generation Z is that the sort of pre
existing political theology is completely and totally dead. It was
sort of, you know, gradually losing steam. The state religion
was no longer able to produce political miracles anymore. And
so you know, there's several subsequent generations who believed in
it less, you know, they didn't hold to the same
kind of sacred strictures of you know, impartiality or into
the belief in you know, the rule of law, democratic norms.
Right as someone might say, because to be perfectly honest,
I don't actually care about the Constitution one way or
the other. Right, there's stuff and I like their stuff,
and I don't. And when it helps me, right, when
there's court case going and you know, a strict literalist
interpretation of the Constitution gets me what I want, then great.
If not, who cares? And what Mitchell has done it
Resmussen is basically go through and ask people in our
rough age demographic number of questions and basically he's found
that it's like almost sixty percent that basically want a
dictator and look like I'm not a populist. You know,
I don't believe that there's some magic significance in a
lot of people wanting something, but I think it is
an interesting sort of trailing indicator of the decline of
liberalism per se, right, the decline of the belief in
these institutions, the belief in you know, these sort of
kind of lies that we've laid out earlier. And you know,
among that sixty percent, and who knows, I might be
wrong on that number. I saw it on Twitter several
days ago, so forgive me on that. But I'm not
naive enough to assume that you know, every one of
those people is you know, reading through their you know,
the kind of required reading list of you know, right
wing reactionaries. Not at all. But I do think, you know,
you see a sort of a political belief already dead,
kind of dead on its feet, because you know, ultimately
all these things we're talking about, like that that phrasing
of the woke right is basically everyone who isn't a
liberal is woke. But that basically just means everyone, and
so effectively, the only people who still believe in that
system like fully and truly are effectively like loser conservatives
if you see what I'm getting at there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I think in terms of people, I
believe the number was fifty seven percent. I saw that.
I saw that as well.
Speaker 4: Okay, three percent off as far as my ability to
remember stats, not too bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was. I was very surprised. Like I'm partial,
Like so I'm partial to monarchy as a system. I haven't.
I've thought through a lot of different ideal systems, and
I kind of from my position, let's say, in history,
I have a hard time envisioning the United States transitioning
to anything other than liberalism, just because liberalism in the
United States has worked so long and it has made
us a global superpower. And so just from a pragmatic,
like power based perspective, liberalism has put us on top.
But at what costs, And that cost is kind of
this this cultural and historical sense of identity, sense of place,
sense of belonging. And but we've gotten to the point
where I believe, quote unquote history is accelerate, is accelerating
there there there are more and more asymmetries popping up,
and you kind of on the student loan point, like
one of these main a symmetries is oftentimes I see
and just as a caveat, I don't have any student
loans like this is not from a motivated perspective. In fact,
i'd be just from what I've seen, I should be
disincentivized from advocating for student loans dischargeable and bankruptcy. But
from like a pragmatic perspective, it does not. There is
a fundamental asymmetry introduced when you prevent when you prevent
student loans from being dischargeable bankruptcy, and that is obviously
it allows for an unfettered ballooning of university budgets because
if something cannot be discharged, you're even from let's say
the libertarian visa's perspective, when you when you institute or
regulation like that, you're introducing an inherent market. And official
should see and we have seen that. You've seen if
you've seen the called the cost of college graphs, like
after two thousand and two, after there was a blanket
ban on dischargeability of student loans. Since two thousand and two, uh,
the cost of college has let's say, rapidly increased compared
to all other all other categories of analysis on the CPI,
and so the asymmetry here created is an asymmetry in
preference to institutions and corporations effectively at the direct expense
of the average citizen of the country. And and not
to like, uh, not to crap all over the boomers
too much, but the people you hear kind of this
list meme where it's like luxury boomer communism, it's luxury
boomer communism the at the spins of the rest of society.
And so there's an acceleration of these asymmetries, and it
almost seems to be I don't know if that's kind of,
let's say, an emergent phenomenon, or if the asymmetries are
the point, because we know in certain and certain strains
of Marxism the entire kind of mo is acceleration of
the contradictions, and so a widening, widening asymmetries are effectively
an acceleration of the contradiction. So it creates societal unrest.
But what's confusing, too is despite all of these increasingly
large asymmetries, you if you look around, you like, our
economy is not that bad. Like people aren't I mean,
outside of let's say New York. Instantly, people aren't necessarily
starving in the streets, like on mass scale, like poverty,
like poverty now is much lower compared to the nineteen
twenties or the nineteen fifties, And so it's like you
have this degree of let's say, like cognitive dissonance where
you look around and things are not that bad, but
you feel this kind of sense of civilizational foreboding. And
I think that that that's a degree that that dissonance
is created because of these increasingly large asymmetries where society
just does not seem to break or move regardless of
how large these asymmetries become. And so I think, I
think that's like creating a sense of unease because there
there is clearly like a mechanistic a mechanistic contradiction happening here.
And I think what going going in the future is
going Who has power in the future is just going
to depend on who capitalizes on this dissonance.
Speaker 4: Well, and I find myself in somewhat of a similar
situation with housing prices, right Like I own a house
relatively recently. It would be kind of convenient for me
if that asset just kept inflating forever. But something needs
to happen there, and going back to you know, Mitchell's data,
this has been one of the really interesting things. Like,
I'm not a huge voter, not a huge democracy guy
per se, but you do have this sort of critical
mass of primarily young white men who swung hard for
Trump and have very quickly abandoned him in a relatively
short amount of time. And at least according to Mitchell
right that that was effectively a protest vote. Right, of
this is not working for us. You can look at
educational data, you can look at any sort of other
method of you know, kind of tracking achievement, and the
young people wouldever constitute that to be are not doing
very well.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: If you dig into the you know, the economic stats,
you see a very similar thing. And particularly for the GOP,
they're in kind of a tough spot because you know,
their largest voting block is Gen X, and after that
the Boomers, who are proportionately quite wealthy. But the day
of the pillow is nigh, right, Boomers are about to
hit fifty percent mortality, and of course we understand that
that moves much much much more quickly once you get
past the fifty percent mark. And so at the same
time we were both seeing a sort of ideological shift,
you know, where the boomers who have the kind of
current or not the current, but the kind of dying
version of the American Republic, you know, like the FDR
regime and then the kind of you know Patch put
in in sixty four. They believe that more than almost
anyone else, their children slightly less, their grandchildren even less.
You see this on both the left and the right.
You know, more and more people on the left are
describing themselves as socialists. You know, they're rejecting albeit not
at a fundamental level, right, but they are rejecting the
kind of stricters of liberalism. So you have this both
this kind of incredible economic and achievement on the ease
that you were talking about, mixed with a sort of
political shift. I think it's a very interesting and sort
of exciting time to be in the discourse as it's described.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Well, one of the other things I think that's interesting,
and this is masic. This is my personal thoughts on
the kind of student loans, which is like a very
basic patronage point, which is the education system universities. The
people who make their money from that are not my friends.
They don't believe anything in common with me, and I
did not particularly enjoy my time there for you know,
political reasons as well as just you know, social ones.
But why would you go to the mat right, alienate
potential allies for the sake of a group of people
that hate you? University professors, we understand their politics broadly speaking,
and to me, setting aside any kind of principle of argument,
just on a pure patronage level analysis, there's a very
clear answer, which is take resources from your enemies to
buy yourself new friends.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Our opponents understand this quite well. And you know, I
think that that sort of kind of you know, what
Francis would have called, like the beautiful loser mentality, you know,
the idea that you know, I will stick to the
you know, the rules as written, the kind of you know,
originalist constitution or you know, the kind of you know,
upstanding correct way of doing politics. I mean, I'm not
the biggest fan of Trump, but I do think that
the the people who cried about him, you know, shattering
democratic norms again in scare quotes, they weren't entirely wrong,
and it was less that he shattered them and more
realized that had become they had sort of ossified and
become guardrails, right, and within that box you would never win.
Albeit you know, he is far from you know, the
sort of genuine reformer, you know, restructuring needed. But I
think that that's another kind of interesting, interesting symptom I
guess of that. So sorry, I threw a bunch at you. Heygil,
I'll give you a chance to respond.
Speaker 3: And I think just in terms of the protecting institutions,
I think that's just a simple consequence of like, well,
there's there's this weird kind of contradiction amongst the boomers. Uh,
they have this they have this almost institutional fetishism, fetishism
while simultaneously being kind of the fledgling generation that attempted
to usurp the institutions. The entire kind of woods Stock
generation was, let's just say was was anti institution in
the sense that they thought that there is an old
way of doing things that they they should personally take
the mantle and overturn. They weren't necessarily anti institution, and
that they wanted to abolish the institutions, but they wanted
they wanted to take them, they wanted to seize them.
And I think if we contrast this two let's just say,
the conservative way of approaching that tends to be parallelism
instead of instead of let's say, sieging the institutions, like
doing what is necessary at whatever costs to get those
institutions back, the conservatives would rather see them even if
there is still a degree of deference for them, and
create parallel ones. And these parallel ones, I mean you
so to kind of site redeemed Zuomer. I don't know
if you're familiar with him. He's like, he's a Presbyterian,
the PCUSA church, and he specifically chose to to join
the more let's say, the original, the original branch the
Presterian Church, despite the fact that they allow female priests
or whatever pastors, and despite the fact that they endorse
in certain in certain churches LGBTQ stuff. His idea was
that consistently within the history of prostism, it has been
Protestants leaving the established institutions and creating their own institutions
when the other institutions become more liberal. So the reason
why I joined the pc USA church because I'm trying
to retake the institution from the inside. He's like a
to for lack of a better term or phrase, like
a one man kind of in reconquiste conserve entist if
you will. Yeah, And I like the idea behind that,
But the problem is it's just, for some reason, the
position of the conservative American is just not geared towards
that idea of retaking institutions. It's always parallelism. Let's create
our parallel institutions. The problem is that you're giving You're
just freely giving the reins uninhibited to the progressive cause
of all these historical institutions. You're just giving them these
culture making apparatuses and just hoping and hoping and praying
that your parallel institution ends up being successful and ends
up having similar cultural weight, which it almost never does.
So and I tried to interrogate this where it's like,
why is this kind of the base impulse of the
American right? Why is parallelism the base impulse? I don't
understand why we were have been perpetually in this frame
of parallelism as opposed to the kind of left wing
frame where it's like, if you have a problem with
the institutions, let's capture them. And I'm hopeful that with
gen Z, like the seven percent ras musem poll. I'm
hopeful that that's changing and we're getting a bit more
of an energetic propulsion on the right that that is
enough to recapture some of the institutions that's opposed to
just default to this parallelism. But I don't really see
a lot of historical precedent for the right recapturing an
integral institution once it has been culturally infiltrated. There's there's
flight oscillations like we'll get it back for a little bit,
or will exert some influence, but like it just ultimately
reverts that base state of kind of progressivism. And so
I don't know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on
how we can kind of create that propulsion for recapture
as compared to parallelism.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's several things there. This is a point from
land I think it's the chapter Cracker Factory in Dark Enlightenment,
which is it's to be honest, it's hilarious as well
as insightful. But his point is effectively that the Anglo
mode of conflict resolution is effectively you fight it out
and then the loser leaves to start their own thing.
You could look at the English Civil War, right the
Formation of America all the way down to modern day
white flight. The idea is, you know, okay, well I
can't have my culture here, so I'll go make my own.
And I think a large part of that is you
could look at it's kind of like ebagenetic almost. But
also I think that the problem for conservatives with that
sort of entry is that the force which effectively the
progressives are aligned with entropy, and so you know, there's
sort of a certain gravity to what they do. You know,
it is much more difficult to you know, deprogressive ize
something than it is to you know, to make it
more kind of leftist. And so to me, I guess
I see, you know, parallelism as a entirely rational short
to medium term strategy because of the sort of power
imbalance there that you know, if this is sort of
a fifty to fifty struggle, then fair enough. But I
don't necessarily see how with one guy and I made
this point to redeemed Sumer and I am now blocked
on the interne locked on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Did he really?
Speaker 4: It was years It was years ago. I got upset
about it. But uh, you know, point is, so I
think that you were entirely correct, and that attitude of
eternal retreat, of you know, splintering forever, you know, finding
the three guys who agree with you and starting your
own thing is incorrect. But to me, you know, when
I look at you know, the boards my friends from
South Africa, you know, I think of an article written
by I think it's Ernst Roots or Ernst ven Zeel,
one of the Ernsts you know, wrote this article where
he compared it to you know, digging a trench. And
this was an article that was very impactful on me
shortly before I entered, you know, the kind of internet world,
you know, living after school, and you know, one of
many kind of you know, godless progressive American urban centers.
And his point was there is a time for retreat tactically,
but you do not do that, to retreat forever. You retreat,
to dig a trench, to make something defensible, to make
something you can fight for. And to me, you know,
the answer is neither, you know, progressivism or entryism as
one universal strategy. This gets back to our point about
like the Constitution or any particular law. It's like, well,
there is a time for each And in my mind
I completely understand, you know, the rationale that says, look like,
you know, I am barred from you know, certain jobs,
I'm barred from a certain place. I must you know,
support my family. So there's an element of retreat to that, right,
find something. But once you were there, right, that institution,
that thing that you were building, that thing that you
were making, must be defended. And you know, I see
this in my own religious community. I see it in
you know, in others, and so to me, I guess
I may disagree with you on parallelism because I think
that it is entirely rational in the short to mid term.
It's not an eternal strategy, but I mean, hell, you
can even look at uh, you know, arn't. Younger makes
a very similar point in the Forest Passage and umswell
both right that you know, when faced with kind of
a you know, a toutalitarian system or a totalizing system,
is one might more accurately say that a direct you know,
head on, full frontal assault, you'll be squished like a buck.
But I'll give it back to you. I guess that's
kind of my thoughts on it, at least initially.
Speaker 3: But then on the other point, if you look at
like let's say, like Ernst Youngers, let's say contrarianism to
the Nazi regime. He he was still involved in the
institution and he and he was contrariant to it, or
he was let's say, opposed to it as it was
comporting itself, and that ended up getting his son killed.
And so kind of like there's still like I don't
think we can compartmental life. It's like there's no such
thing I think as discrete kind of parallelism, and that's attempted,
but you're still under the shadow of these institutions, like
and that was a very real consequence in Art's Younger's life,
like his his kind of antagonism to the Nazi regime
got his son killed in Italy, and so and that's
kind of I don't necessarily disagree with you that it
may be a good tactical decision in the short term,
but ultimately it has to be a tactical decision positioning
yourself to ultimately confront the main institutions itself. And it
seems like that just that seems to not be the case,
Like like the just from deferring back to redeemed Zumer situation,
the I believe it's p USA as opposed to pc USA.
I can't remember the other Presbyterian branch, but they are
not necessarily directly antagonistic or trying to poach members of
pc USA. They're kind of they're kind of in this
mode of I just want to be left alone, just
do not subvert this new institution I've created, And that's
kind of been the conservative, like like the conservative conservative
kind of mentality, I just want to be left alone,
and the progressive mentalities I want to consume all things,
like I want everything to be under my thumb. And
so it's kind of when you have that, when you
have those two kind of like fundamentally opposite dispositions, one
is going to prevail. And like I said, I think
parallelism is a completely rational, pragmatic decision. The problem is,
I do not think it is sustainable when you when
your enemy is held bent on subsubing every single institution
created in parallel or not. And Eric Hoffer has this
really good quote where he said, the kind of benefit
of the leftist, so the progressive, is that people who
lack things, or who think they lack things, are willing
to fight and die for that which they do not have,
but people who have are not willing to fight and
die for that which they already possess. And so the
entire progressive mode of operation, because it's just like devouring,
it's this desire to devour, a desire to pull society,
and this idolized direction that has not yet been obtained.
They can frame and they can exist in this mentality
where no matter how much they achieve or how many
institutions they capture, it's still not enough. They do not
have that kind of critical threshold that they desire to
completely terrorform society. And so whereas conservatives there are let's say,
more willing to be content, more willing to be contented
with what they have or what they can't create, and
so there isn't this kind of drive that is extant
among the progressives to capture that which they think they
do not have, because they think what they have is sufficient.
And so that's kind of my my view. And like
the critical flaw of like discrete parallelism as a as
a governing strategy is it's doomed to fail just just
by virtue of who the enemy is in position to
who we are, or like what motivates us but obviously,
like you said, like the progressive position is inclined toward entropy,
order takes it like order takes a lot more energy
injected into the system to actually like for thisstem to
actually order itself. If the progressive kind of the progressive
directionality is always in tropic, there's not. It's kind of effortless.
It's an effortless, effortless march, whereas going against that requires
an asymmetric amount of energy to be expended, which makes
the parallels I'm totally understandable on an individual act or perspective,
but as like, if we kind of scale out and
look at the course of history, it's going to be
a doomed a doomed strategy. I fear.
Speaker 4: It's a bug man Hagel. We're a little bit over time.
It's been a fascinating discussion. Where can people find you?
They want more of your work?
Speaker 3: I'm just on Twitter now. I started a podcast like
two years ago, but I started getting nervous with being
let's say, getting exposed and docs. I kind of like
to keep my online presence and my offline presence discreete
but so mainly Twitter, my handle is fed posting my
use name is bug Man Hegel. You can just find
me there.
Speaker 4: Well, sure thing. And also there's a few other interviews
out there pretty good with you on them. Maybe link
one or two of those in the description. As far
as my stuff, Jay Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, this
is what I do full time. If you want to
support me, you can throw me a few bucks a
month on Patreon, Substack or gum Road. You hit the
episodes early in ad free. I know they're annoying, the ads,
but I got a mortgage, guys, what can I say? Also,
you can check out our sponsor, Axious Remote Fitness Coaching.
JD's a good business man, he's a good friend. You
should support him. And look, I've gone to enough of
these events I met you guys. Some of you could
use some personal training, so check out JD's work for that. Again,
buck Man Hegel, it was great speaking to you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Never keep your het up.
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