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The Elites vs. Everyone Else: The Hidden Power System Explained | James Keena · The TalkBlock Show's Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a segment of society that gets very wealthy, literally doing nothing.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the banking segment of our society.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're basically being encroached upon by the same forces that made up the British Empire, the same financial political forces that we revolted against them, and who bribed these politicians, sometimes with insider knowledge about trades, sometimes with just simple graft and corruption.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Our politicians are beholden to that very wealthy group.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: Hi everyone, welcome back to the show.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Vadim, and today's guest is James Keener.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: He is author of Dystopian Fiction, Political Satire, and Nonfiction Books.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: He's also educator and former corporate executive.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: James, welcome to the show.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Glad to be here, Vadim.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we can start the first question for you, James.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: You spent many years in corporate boardrooms as an executive.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: What made you decide to write this stuff in fiction?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've always wanted to be a writer.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a young child, I lived in a somewhat poor family, and our our entertainment was uh getting books from the library.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I read passionately and uh loved reading and uh decided at some point I wanted to be a writer.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I also, as I was uh a young young man and growing into adulthood, uh I started a family.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up with eight children, and so I had to feed them somehow, and writing wasn't going to feed them, so I ended up going into business and uh had a very successful career there, but I was also very anxious at some point to pull away from that and uh pursue my writing career, which I've been able to do now.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: And uh where did you grow up?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Was it a big town or I was a very small town called Marn Marne, Michigan.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it had a population of about 450 if you count the cows.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So very small.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: So um today about um socialism, it's number like almost number one uh uh I would say topic for today, especially before the election.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: And um what I noticed for myself, like many young people nowadays are down to socialist ideas.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so James, like you uh why do you think it happens and what do people get wrong about socialism?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think a lot of young people today look at the world and they see something that uh probably frightens them.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you think of we've got a$40 trillion national debt, uh the surveillance state seems to be growing uh bigger and bigger.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um young people, when they try to buy a house, they can't do it until they're like 35 or 40 now.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it used to be they could buy a house when they were 20 or 26 or 27.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when they come out of college, they've got a heavy debt, uh, and they a lot of times can't find a job in the discipline that they studied in college.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um they look at our institutions now and they say, I I can't trust them anymore.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a lot of fraud and abuse.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and with and they look at the uh political system and say, you know, there's just a lot of uh friction and anger and hatred.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then they look at the the wealth gap in America, and it seems like the wealth gap is growing bigger and bigger over time.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's not unusual for someone to look at all that and say, I I think we should try something different.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I have to confess, when I was younger, uh, you know, in my teens, I was very attracted to Marxism uh for much the same reasons.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I thought there was something wrong with the world, and uh at on the surface, Marxism seems to offer solutions.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So socialism offers something as an alternative to what they see as a world gone wrong.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I think a lot of young people haven't experienced life enough or the complexities of of living and the complexities of the world to understand whether socialism can really work or not work.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: They just see it as an alternative and maybe an attractive alternative, at least from the words that are spoken.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: So is uh that's what you think most people misunderstand about it?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like because they never experienced it in the first place?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's a lot of like historical evidences that it's I don't know, it leads to something terrible, like communism and dictatorship.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Yeah, it's a funny sort of thing that uh a lot of the a lot of people who are most passionate about uh capitalism and the American concept of governance uh come from other countries uh because they look at it and say, I think they understand it better than a lot of our own citizens do, probably because they've experienced far worse circumstances where they came from.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people in America, particularly the younger generations now, have grown up in affluence and have grown up in a world where uh life seems simple to them.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think they get envious about, well, how come all these other people have so much?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they have a house?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they have a big house?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't they have student loan debt?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they why do they have a big car?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't I have that?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they get envious and they start to think about, well, there's a system that can bring all that to me simply by taking it from someone else, and it's called socialism.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um we can get deeper and deeper into why that's a very terrible system, but I think on the surface, people from that sense of envy and from that sense of feeling like the world has gone wrong want to look to that kind of system to bail them out.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: It probably looks and works good in the beginning, but then when it starts not working, government should be more more strict and uh eventually turns to tragedy, right?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of the major flaws of socialism is that um it it it's not voluntary.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like if if if socialism was r really voluntary and people really wanted to do it, it would just happen naturally.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like in America, people could just create socialistic communities and live that way.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they never choose to do that.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the only way you can actually uh enforce com or socialism or communism in a country is through force.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: That you simply have to tell people, I'm going to take your wealth, I'm gonna take the company that you own, and I'm gonna give it to the state, we're gonna make the state your parent, we're gonna um institute secret police to keep track of you if you don't follow our laws and be and uh obey our commands.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It they don't understand that socialism, since it's not a voluntary system, automatically invites force, coercion, and uh spying into your society.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's unavoidable.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every society that's ever tried it has gone down that path because there is no other way to implement it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: So it doesn't give that uh like uh incentive for doing something, let's say, better than others, especially those people who move who move this world in uh uh uh by doing some inventions and like all these big cor little corporates, um corporations.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if you really want to break into socialism, they would be pretty much as poor as the rest of the people.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there's a a very deep-rooted psychological reason for that.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the nature of the human being, um people prefer better rather than worse.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So in everything they do, they're gonna look for a better relationship, a better life, a better uh job, a better uh way of uh doing things.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem with socialism, if you look at Marx's fundamental tenet, which is from each according to his ability to each according to his need, that disables if you're a person and you say, well, what's the best thing for me?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: The best thing for me is to get what I need, but not have to do anything.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually what socialism offers, is you don't have to actually offer a value to society because society has told you they're going to provide what you need no matter what.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: In a capitalist system or a free market system, the incentives are just the opposite.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: You own the what you get out of the market, the value you get out of the market is equal to the value you bring to the market.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: You must do something productive, useful, something meaningful for society in order to get something back from that market.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: That creates a tremendous incentive for everybody involved, whereas socialism is essentially an enormous disincentive.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: The easiest path forward is to simply do nothing.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: Got it, yeah.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: So in in a little bit about uh cap uh capitalism, uh uh how does true capitalism uh create real human freedom?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Why do so many people confuse capitalism with uh like corporate greed?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well it's an interesting question, and I've learned to defy capitalism into two different things.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: One is market capitalism, uh, which is the capitalism where you experience freedom the most, where you have the freedom to choose how you live, where you live, what you want to buy, where you want to work.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have you know all those freedoms of association because you've got a free market and you're free to do as you please in that market.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's market capitalism to me.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's another kind of capitalism, and I hate to even call it capitalism because in a way it's not, because it's um an amalgamation of financial power and political power.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: But there is an element of capitalism that's controlled by how we create our money in our society, who controls that money, uh, and when it's accumulated, how that money is used as leverage in our political system to control uh the basic institutions of society.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: That has nothing to do with markets.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: That really is an exercise in who has taken control of the process of creating money and controlling it, and how has that become allied with the political forces in our society?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think people confuse those two things and they call that capitalism, but it's not really.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's a a um an abuse of our political system by very rich people who have um probably, you know, if you at some point I like to talk about our banking system and the way it's structured, but there's a huge element of our society that acquires wealth simply by doing nothing and leveraging the institutions of banking in our society.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they use that wealth that they accumulate by doing nothing to influence politicians, the media, and the other institutions of our society to uh basically protect their privileged position in society.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically the elites versus everyone else.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think a lot of young people look at that elitist group, that could all of uh industrialists, financiers, politicians, um, you know, media uh figures, and they say, well, that's capitalism.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: It actually has very little to do with capitalism.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's how uh elitists and totalitarians always gain control in a society.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: Media plays a big role nowadays in propaganda and and uh yeah, all this in information.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: And how can regular people seek truth um like when when media is so polarized?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a wonderful question.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: Now before this uh midterm election in in the United States, it's uh it's like a war going on.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of the things I've learned uh the hard way over my life is that uh I've come to the point where I believe almost nothing that comes out of Washington.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not a partisan observation.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe what the Democrats say, I don't believe what the Republicans say, because I believe they're protecting their own interest and they're trying to uh keep us from seeing basically the charade that's being played, that uh they're the decisions they make in Washington are entirely for the the interests of this select elitist group in Washington.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're not interested in us, those decisions don't help us.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you get is a lot of confusion and misinformation uh from both sides of the aisle to keep us from realizing that that's the problem.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the step one in trying to understand how to know what's true or not true is to not believe what anybody in Washington says unless you can triangulate it with other data points, other resources, other pieces of information where you're or even just observing the world directly, where you can say, okay, yeah, I think I believe that now.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time when I go through that exercise, I end up thinking, uh, I'm glad I didn't believe what someone in Washington said because it's simply not true.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh tell me please about uh uh Electoral College.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: What is that and why is it so important today?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was a very interesting structure created by the founding fathers.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: What they were trying to do is uh establish a lot of checks and balances in our society so that it couldn't uh stray from the basic uh premise or the basic vision of the founders.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those uh checks and balances you see in Congress itself, where you have two houses, you have the House of Representatives and the Senate, and they both have to agree on something in order to pass a law.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: The the president can veto legislation, so that's another check and balance.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Supreme Court can say even if the politicians agreed on something, it may actually violate the Constitution, and that's another check and balance.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the Electoral College was similarly supposed to be another check and balance because um in order to get the states interested in the concept of becoming a federation, uh there had to be some protection for the states to say you're not going to be overwhelmed by the most populous state in the in the Union or the most populous city that every state has their own special interest, their own special geography, their own special culture.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a strong interest at the beginning, and and I think there should be a strong interest today, to protect the integrity of state uh interests.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the concept of giving, you know, the uh having the Electoral College be allocated uh by senators, the count of senators and representatives in the state, actually gives the states more influence over who becomes president of the country.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's not just a popular thing, because if you look at the way the population in America is right now, if 50% of the population lives in very in in urban areas, and they're actually very small blue dots on the whole map.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the rest of the rest of the 50% lives in the rest of the country, and it's a gr a great big swath of red.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And but so if you didn't have the Electoral College, you'd basically have New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia running the rest of the country, at least from a presidential perspective, because that that's who would uh determine who the president's gonna be in every election.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd lose the concept of statehood.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't matter.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: It would all just be a a question of the most populous cities are gonna decide where we had as a country.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: So and that's uh what's uh what most people get wrong about it when discussing it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they uh I think they look at it and uh here here's where I think a lot of people struggle with the concept of democracy in general, uh because it it it in their minds it comes down to well, it's a popular vote kind of thing.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: If the people will it, then it must be so.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um but actually the con the con the construction of our republic uh doesn't accept that premise.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the whole concept of a constitution where we have inalienable rights as individuals, as sovereign individuals, regardless of how people vote, they can't vote to make us slaves, they can't vote to take all our wealth if they want to.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Constitution is supposed to protect our sovereign individuality.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so the notion that all we have to do is uh you know count the votes and say whoever got the most votes is automatically the winner, without understanding the other guardrails uh that were put into the Constitution to protect individual interests, state interests.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about adding up all the votes and saying who won.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: So in uh James, in your book uh The Elites versus Everyone Else, you you explore hidden power structures.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Are these uh are these dystopian uh themes already already happening in real life or or not yet?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they are.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I did when I wrote my Pathless Land series, which includes the book The Elites versus Everyone Else, is I took a look at uh the current trends in our society, the things that are happening now, and also some of the historical things that got us to this point.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked myself, well, what would that look like 50 years from now if those trends continued and uh we didn't solve some of the issues we have now?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I end up ended up with my dystopian series of novels, that those trends, which which are occurring today, if you extrapolate them into the future and magnify the impact of them, you get a very dystopian society at some point.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the biggest things, well, there there's there's many things that uh we ought to be concerned about.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: One is we've lost control of our government and uh some of our major institutions.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we like to think that you know every four years we vote and our vote means something, but the truth is the power structure in Washington is a very um incestuous structure.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So all of the uh very wealthy people who contribute to the campaigns of these politicians and who uh hire these politicians after they leave office, there's sort of a revolving door, uh, and who who bribe these politicians, sometimes with insider knowledge about trades, sometimes with just simple graft and corruption.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our politicians are beholden to that very wealthy group.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's such a powerful thing that I've had um a couple of friends who went to Washington and they were very idealistic, very passionate about uh you know limited government, freedom, uh individual sovereignty, and they were going to go to Washington and try to help clean up the swamp.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what they reported back though is it's an impossible task because if you don't play ball, if you don't follow what that uh cabal in Washington is doing, you'll simply be kicked out of the club.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: You won't get a committee assignment, which means you have no influence over legislation, you won't get any funds for your re-election campaign, uh, the media will turn against you.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a very closed-loop club in Washington that includes a lot of very wealthy people.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so the biggest myth right now is that we actually control that club and we don't.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you extrapolate that into the future, it's a a control over society that's only going to become more and more totalitarian.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that even today with things like flock cameras and uh the data collection mechanisms of our uh social media.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, artificial intelligence is gonna feed a lot of information to the government.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Department of Homeland Security has basically turned inward, uh, calling a lot of its citizens enemies instead of uh foreigners.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're only gonna see more and more of that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna become more of a uh surveillance police state as that cabal in Washington wants to uh enforce more and more control over society.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the major trends that's gonna drive us to a dystopian future.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I I I think it's uh it will be that it doesn't matter who will be in power, Democrats or Republicans, it's like inevitable.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of the other things that's gonna drive us towards that dystopian future, and a lot of people don't understand this either, is how our money is created and who really controls it.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we tend to look at people like Elon Musk and say, wow, he's got a lot of money.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he does, but he earned it.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he created rockets and Starlink satellites up in the sky and electric cars and neural implants for the brain.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's he's made enormous contributions to society, and that's a wonderful thing.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't begrudge him his money.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a segment of society that gets very wealthy, literally doing nothing.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the banking segment of our society.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I I say they make their money by doing nothing because they actually create our money out of nothing.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think a lot of people understand that that's how our banking system works.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so from that capability to literally do nothing and create money out of nothing and become very wealthy, that wealth is used as leverage against the institutions of our society.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if we don't figure out how to uh resolve that issue, that's another thing that's going to push us into a totalitarian world.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we see is despite all of our efforts with tax policy, with transfer payments to uh you know un other people, you know, un under underprivileged people of our society, we're doing lots of things to try to help them and to s to spread the wealth around.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it's even that's not even working because the wealth gap just keeps bigger and getting bigger, bigger and bigger.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it always will if the people who control the money in our society also control the political system, because that whole structure is going to be designed to protect them and serve them.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so as that propagates through the years to come, again, that's what's going to lead us towards a dystopian society.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, true.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think it's will be spread across the whole Western world or like the whole planet?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because China, China is is already like that almost or yeah.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's an interesting question because the reason I I titled my book, the last one, The Elites versus Everyone Else, is because that's actually a summation of my theory of history.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: That when you look at the history of you know the last seven Or thousand years, it's been a steady stream of certain groups of elites assuming power over the rest, whether it's masters versus slaves, uh barons versus serfs, uh kings versus subjects, theocrats versus their uh worshippers, uh the bureaucrats versus uh citizens.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's always in every society been some group of elites that for whatever reason, whether it's mythology or uh force that they've used, it takes control of the reins of that society.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's happened forever, everywhere.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: So to your question, yes, it's going to happen all over the world.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is happening all over the world, and uh history shows that.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Even in the last hundred years, you had Nazi Germany, you had Stalinist Russia, you had Maoist China.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Europe, in my opinion, is sliding in that direction right now.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Africa, you've had all kinds of strong men who've uh taken control of those societies.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Middle East has become a theocratic despotism in many cases.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, that that uh elitist control of the world has gone on forever and is going on around the world and will consume the United States if we don't do something different.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: Can free society survive without uh shared moral foundation nowadays?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a wonderful question.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people who believe that, well, we must be a Christian civilization in order to have a moral civilization.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would take some exception to that, not that Christians aren't moral people.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think they are.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think um that's certainly a foundation of their belief.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it it's not like they have a monopoly on morality.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um people who aren't Christians can develop a moral view of the world and behave in a moral way.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the important thing is that we do find and that we create a system where moral behavior is rewarded and not punished.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, in in um in my view, the very basic foundation of morality is to do no harm to others, um, and and and and don't don't take anything from others, don't lie to others, don't hurt others.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think everybody can embrace that concept of morality, uh, you know, not just a Christian or a particular religious sect.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very common sense among people, is that, geez, we shouldn't hurt each other and we shouldn't take each other's stuff.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can uh create a culture that believes that, uh, I think you'll have a more effective, peaceful, productive society because people will interact with each other in a in a way that's very respectful, peaceful, and allows you know free freedom of choice.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: And how how do you think, how do we define morality without forcing uh dogma on others?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, part of morality is if you accept the premise that every sovereign person is sacred in the sense that they own their own life and they own the things that their hands and mind produce, um, and then you you give them freedom, and freedom implies two things, that they have uh the latitude and the freedom to do uh with their life as they choose, but they also have to take the responsibility for whatever actions they take along the way, they have to own the consequences of those.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my belief is if you build that into the culture that you're free to choose, but you also own the consequences of your actions, that you you automatically force some moral decisions into everybody in society because every person has to think, well, if I'm gonna make decisions, if I'm gonna choose, I have to choose wisely now because I'm gonna own those consequences.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I have to understand how my choices are gonna affect not only me as I as present self creates future self for me, uh, but I also have to understand the consequences of how my behavior is gonna affect everybody around me, because I I'm gonna get some some feedback, sometimes brutal, if I behave badly amongst my friends.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, true, I agree.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: So how should we um how should we view the separation of church and state?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: I would like to talk about it.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like um yeah, to protect uh religious liberty for everyone.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's another fabulous question.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um certainly as a libertarian and a believer in the sovereignty of each individual, I believe everybody should have the right to pursue uh whatever religious perspective that they believe in and want to pursue.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that's a fundamental right of humanity.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I also think that government should not interfere with that.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I would even broaden the whole concept, uh not just separation of church and state, but separation of mind and state, that the government should not be uh telling us how to think dogmatically even outside of religion.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't be forcing its own opinions on us in all regards, not just religious perspectives, but all of them.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't think it's the role of government to tell us who to believe, you know, what God to believe in, what to think, what dogma to hold.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the role of government.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: The role of government is to protect our rights, to freely choose those things ourselves and to live peacefully amongst each other as we do that.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so separation of church and state doesn't mean, well, we're gonna abandon religions or abolish Christianity, but it means that the government's not gonna pick a particular religion, it's not gonna pick a particular dogma and force the rest of us to believe that.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: But if government uh will not be involved, uh one religion can take over like another one, or like vice versa, uh do you think it's not dangerous in any way?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or no, uh I mean danger comes through force.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so you know, governments fundamentally should be protecting people from force, you know, whether it's from criminals or from gangs or even from governments themselves.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: The role of government is to protect our our life, liberty, and property.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it shouldn't the the government should protect one religion from attacking another religion and and uh making its uh you know the adherents of that other religion slaves or whatever.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a role of government is to stop that because that's a form of violence against people that simply can't be tolerated.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Powell Yeah, to stop any like radical movements, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, also within society, though, um there's society as a forum for sharing ideas, testing ideas, challenging each other.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, you know, one religion may become more successful at that, not because of force, but because they are they have a clearer message, a better message, and a more compelling message, and they might um convince people to convert from one religion to another.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a problem.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people are free to choose.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: If if I was born a Hindu and I want to become a Christian, oh, by golly, become a Christian.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: The government should have nothing to say about that, stopping it or encouraging it.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: It should have nothing to say about it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: So a little bit about um limited government.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh James, what does limited government mean in daily life for you?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell That's another wonderful question.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at what the founders were thinking when they envisioned a concept for America, is they started from the premise of a sovereign individual, that uh you know, if you read the Declaration of Independence, it's very clear that we each have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that implies that each of us have that right as individuals.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And their view of how to protect that politically was a concept called subsidiarity.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And by that what they meant was you should give each individual as much power as you possibly can because that's the um the sacred unit in society.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's also the lowest level of society and the least harmful level of society.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody should have as much power as they can have.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And by power I mean the right to choose, like where do I live, where do I go, where what church do I go to, what job do I want to do, who are my friends?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that kind of power.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those are most of the decisions people make in their lives, and people should be free and have the power to make those decisions.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then the founders said, well, you need a little bit of uh political structure above that because you've got to be able to protect those rights.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you need uh some laws that give us some guidance, you need a police function if there's some criminality or gangs.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are some civic functions that have to be managed, like construction of roads and things like that.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you give a little bit of power to local communities to take care of those things.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Above that, you give even less power to a state or the federal system because the the more you remove the individual from the locus of power, like in Washington, you know, we as people have no control over what happens in Washington.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see we can't see what's going on there.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know us, we don't know them, they don't care about us.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so to give that group in Washington a lot of power in their view was terrible because all that's going to do is diminish the um the importance of the sovereign individual.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the the government in Washington should have as little power as possible, and yet there are some functions it has to do, like protecting our borders, having a a defense department, having a um a legal system uh with a court structure to arbitrate disputes.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are legitimate functions, but those aren't the things that tell us what to do in our daily lives.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: They just create the structure for us to freely do what we want to do.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: And James, w why do you think um uh the modern society drifted drifted so far from our founding principles?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: Was the was the main reason in your in your opinion?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in in my opinion, and you know, I mentioned earlier that my theory of history had said it's always been the elites versus everyone else.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And prior to the founding of America, you know, America was part of the uh British Empire, you know, the empire upon which the sun never set.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the British Empire controlled most of the world at that point.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so something really revolutionary happened in America from our revolution, not just a normal revolution where there's a riot and you you replace one king with another king or something.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: We decided to upend all of history, and we said we're not gonna allow some power structure that's based on some mythology or some force.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna, we the people of this country are gonna choose our own leaders, we're gonna establish our own constitution, and this is gonna be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's never been purely that, but that whole notion upset the whole elitist structure of all of history, where kings and monarchs and barons and warlords just simply assumed power.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, that's not gonna happen in America.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: We the people are gonna make our decisions for ourselves.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think the rest of the world, uh particularly in the financial end of the world, uh decided that was not acceptable.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the people who, in my opinion, who control the money of the world, the banks, the financial institutions, said, I don't like the fact that everybody in the world can make their own choices.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I prefer the elitist architecture of we're gonna control the politics, we're gonna control the institutions, and we're gonna make sure that it continues to enrich us and not the common people of the world.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the last 150 years have been a steady example of those people, those elitist forces in the world who want to retake control of American society, and they're they're having some great success, in my opinion.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to talk about um accountability.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and and and future hope, so to speak.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh your books focus uh heavily on um personal accountability accountability and individual sovereignty.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh what uh gives you hope for future of freedom.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the fact that a country such as the United States could come into being uh gives me hope.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think back to, you know, 1750 or so, uh again, with the British Empire controlling the colonies here, uh it would have been almost unimaginable that uh that small group of people in the American colonies could thumb their nose at the British Empire and uh successfully separate from them and successfully establish their own society.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that we did was an astonishing thing.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it set an example for a lot of countries around the world, but I think it also ought to be a reminder to us is that if we start to understand what's really happening here, that it we're basically being encroached upon by the same forces that made up the British Empire, the same financial political forces that we revolted against then, uh, I think if we start to come to understand that, hey, we've lost control of our government again, that those forces are out of control, we have no influence over them.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think if we start to understand that rather than saying I'm gonna vote for this Democrat or this Republican or this leader or that leader, we think we need to think a little bit more deeply right now.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna take some time.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it it took time in the American colonies because, like I said, in 1750, people were starting to get very suspicious of the British Empire and its intentions and its encroachments.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it took about 20 or 25 years of town hall meetings, uh, in fact, a lot of churches, there was a lot of political discussion in the churches then, discussing about what their grievances were and what was possible as a future uh kind of society.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it took about 25 years for the mass of people to say, you know what, um, they're right.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: There is something terribly wrong with the current structure, and the vision that we're evolving here in America is a really fabulous vision.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think we've got that work to do ahead of us yet, that we've got to understand what we're up against here, and we've got to start to discuss honestly what's wrong here, and we've got to start to discuss honestly what's the right vision for moving forward.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: After you get enough um momentum behind that, things happen.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it happened for America in 1776, and I have hoped that it can happen again in the world.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: Got it.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you very much, James, for uh your time.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us, please, uh, how our audience can uh find you, contact you, or uh buy your books.
• 37:04
  unknown: Okay.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have a wonderful website.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's called jameskina.com.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And on that website you can see uh everything I've ever written, books, articles, um, some of the speeches I've written.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um you can um see some of the uh videos and presentations I've made on there.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a great resource if you want to study more of what uh I've been talking about here.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but also on Amazon.com you can find all of my books.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh recently, over the past several years, I've been working on my Pathless Land series, uh, which includes the books 2084, American Apocalypse, uh, the book Outcast Island, and the book The Elites versus Everyone Else.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think a lot of what I talked about today you can see in those books.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah, with pleasure.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Jim, for uh sharing your precious time and wisdom with us today.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it was a real honor talking with you.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: So, and to our viewers, guys, uh everything.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh what Jim uh said about his uh website and books will be attached down below in description.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: You can find his book on Amazon, the links will be down there as well.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Jim, and thank you everybody for for watching.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: Bye bye.