Latest / For The Defense With Brad Koffel / A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARGUING WITH YOUR GOVERNMENT

Transcript

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARGUING WITH YOUR GOVERNMENT · For The Defense With Brad Koffel

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: General, another show, fresh, hot off the press. Good to
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: see you, my friend.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Good to see you as well, sir.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: We're zeroing in on the 2026 midterm elections at the
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: federal level. At these midterm elections, we have state elections.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: We always have, every two years, you always have state
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: reps are running. By the way, I do want to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: mention to everybody, at least the listeners in Columbus, greater
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Central Ohio area, era area, there is a Koffel on
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the ballot.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Indeed, there is.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Cameron Koffel, my son, 24, is attending law school at night.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: He is working part time for me. Well, it's kind
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of suspended that because he decided last year he wanted
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: to run for the statehouse. He wants to get into politics.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Much to my dismay. I mean, you and I, we
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: sit outside the political arena and throw rocks and.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say dismay. Chagrin.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know the difference between dismay and chagrin. I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: didn't say chagrin because that's what everyone's expecting me to say,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: so I went with dismay. I'm proud of him not
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: because he's throwing in. I'm proud of him because he
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: is showing initiative first by rebuking both parties. He is
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: not– he chose not to affiliate with either the Democrat
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: or Republican parties. Of course, if he affiliated with the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Democrat party, we might have a little tougher conversation at home.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: But even affiliating with the Republican party, I– of which
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I've been in and out of for 40 years, currently out.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: He said, Dad, look– You keep saying, and I've heard
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: you say this my whole life, who's in charge? Who's
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: making these decisions? Dad, you're an entrepreneur. You're an attorney.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: You own your own business. You have kind of pushed
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: this work ethic of individualism on us. But there's also
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: a need for– I'm not going to say socialism. We're
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: going to call it collectivism. It's a membership in society
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: that when you become a member of a society, you
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: have to surrender some individualism, some of your individual rights
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: to participate in the greater good.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: This is what we're.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Going to talk about today. The Democrats have gone far
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: left into the communism freezer.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: But that is where they were always headed.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I disagree, and this is what this show is about.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: The Republican Party has just– I don't know. Trump has
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: taken over. It's Trump's party. We might as well just
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: call it MAGA right now. And the rest of the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: GOP is just kind of waiting for him to dither
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and his second term to expire.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: What's so interesting to me about him is that he
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: was a democrat in the 80s and his politics really
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: haven't changed.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: No, he's not a party. He's like– if you actually
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: drill down, if you bypass– If you bypass the pre-programmed media,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: if you bypass the idiocy of social media, quote, influencers,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: if you actually step back and look at everything the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: guy talks about, it's everything every rational American would want.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: He's an 80s Democrat that does not want to go
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: any further.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: How he does it, look, there are some really good
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: lawyers– Trial lawyers, you know, we're in the courtroom, they're
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: in the courtroom, but they have totally different bedside manners.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: How you are, bedside manners versus, which is how you
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: get there. But we all are aiming for the same thing,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the best result for our client. Trump's got different bedside
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: manners than Josh Hawley. Trump's got different bedside manners than.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Schumer, right?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Bernie, you name it. But you don't let bedside manners
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: get in the way of the target. the results. And
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: right now, like for instance, right now, he's in UN week,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: it's his Super Bowl, and he gets to be bombastic
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: on our behalf. But you got to get past the
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: bedside manners. Now, there are a lot of listeners right
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: now that say, look, I still don't like what he's
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: talking about. Let me say this. And here's a fact
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: that this is just fact. We now know that Homo sapiens,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: has been walking around on this planet, yes, it's round,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: for roughly 300,000 years. Civilization, meaning cities, writing, canals, water redistribution, farming,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the whole production, that only got going about 5,000, 5,500
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: years ago. Percentage-wise, 98% of human history Nobody built a city.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Nobody wrote a grocery list. Nobody was late to a meeting.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: There was just a field and whatever was trying to
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: eat you in that field. So we're in the 2%
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: of history right now. If you go back, now we're back,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: let's go back 5,500 years ago. We're BC, BC. We're
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: in that 2%. Now, if you just go back to Jesus,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: we're in the 1% of time. Recorded time.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Recorded time, right?
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Our best guesstimate. Our ancestors spent 300,000 years accomplishing, from
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: modern day standpoint, almost exactly what you will accomplish on
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: a regular Saturday afternoon. You will live, you'll wake up,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: you'll tend to yourself, you'll tend to your loved ones,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: you'll eat, you'll drink water, you will rest, and you
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: will sleep. maybe throw in some social, a little bit
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: of having some social interaction.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Well, even the prehistoric people had college football. That's true.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I forgot about that. What cable channel was that?
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Do you remember? I think it was BC1.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: So here's the other thing. This didn't just happen in
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: one spot. We all talk about the nerds. We talk
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: about Mesopotamia. We talk about the the breadbasket there on
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the eastern side of the Mediterranean.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: The Sumerians.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: This, you know, a guy in a toga in Athens
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: didn't invent civilization and everyone else around the world waiting
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: for the memo. This happened spontaneously around the world. Egypt, China,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: a bunch of folks in what we call Mexico, folks
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: down in what we call Peru, interesting thing about those
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: people down in South America, somehow they got there early
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: enough to skip the line entirely. We're not quite sure
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: how they got all the way down there about the
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: same time, but either way, none of them called each
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: other first. They all just independently at some point looked
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: at a pile of grain and thought, you know what
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: this situation needs? It needs a guy whose entire job
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: is writing down exactly how much grain there is and
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: how much, how many people we have and how to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: make this work so we can live, so we can
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: live together. When you live together, You have protection from
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the things in the field that want to eat you.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: We want to live together. And so that, folks, was
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: the world's first middle manager. And civilization never really moved
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: past the middle manager. That's kind of how things start, right? Now,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: once we stopped wandering and started farming, now we have
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: two brand new problems. Brand new problems. First, we have
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: stuff worth stealing. So the concept of private property, it's mine.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And number two, people close enough to steal it. We
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: don't want you here. So you have these two competing.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: That's mine, not yours. And who are you?
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Go away.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Get out of my camp. That's how we if you're
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: going to boil this all the way down to its.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Particle level. That's my– that's where I go. That's where
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I go. And then like, you know, we're having a
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: hard time with these other people coming in here and
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: trying to take our stuff. So maybe it's time to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: build a wall. So now you start building walls. You
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: start having circles. You're in a circle.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Remember in 2015 when they said it could never be done? Yeah.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Well, talk to the– Now they're angry that it has.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: They built– oh, geez. In the Bronze Age– They build
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: a wall six miles around a city. I mean, there
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: are many places, many places. The equivalent of a ring doorbell.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: But instead of trying to catch someone stealing your Amazon package,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: it's some guy trying to steal your entire food and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: usurp your civilization.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Wife and kids.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Right. Then at some point in time, we need one
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: guy to kind of be the– the leader. You know,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: there's always going to be an alpha. This picks up
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: on our last show.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Alpha.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: There's going to be an alpha. It's going to be
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: a male. It's going to be a male. I'm sure
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: there were female alphas, but historically, alphas. And they called
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: them kings. So let's take a break. Let's come back
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: and pick up on this. We will get to modern
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: day America in November.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: I promise.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome back. This is For the Defense of the American People.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Attorney Brad Koffel. That is the general. We are
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Kind of picking up on our last show. The last
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: show was, you know, America, we can't lose our alpha males.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: You need every culture, every society, every band, every platoon,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: every pack of monkeys. What do they call a pack
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of monkeys? A troop. A troop. Every troop, every pride
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: needs an alpha. Historically, it tends to be an alpha male.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I guess it'd be alpha female, likely lesbian, but whatever.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Who cares? Sexual preference. There's an alpha. How do you
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: deal with alphas? Well, let's go back on our first segment.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: We're talking about as civilization has evolved, we've had to
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: deal with the economics inside the domestic unit, and we've
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: had to deal with protection from the outsiders. So Once
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: we stopped wandering, we started farming. We had a little abundance.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: People figured out, hey, we don't need to work all
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: summer and starve all winter. We can move over. We
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: can migrate over here. They can get us through the winter.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And then you need an official, kind of like a sheriff,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: to police to make sure that your stuff's not getting
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: stolen and other people aren't coming in and changing your
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: value system, changing your culture. This goes backwards. 5,000 years,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: if not longer.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Indeed, to the Middle East, it comes from the word Sharif.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Kings, as best we can tell, started out as a
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: temporary emergency hire, kind of like a college quarterback these days.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: The ancient version of calling in a consultant, except the
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: consultant never left, and eventually his son got the job too.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: But the king was kind of that alpha male, and
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: the king could draft you to go dig a canal
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: for free. which is the collective option, and it lets
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the regular people, the skilled people, to actually deploy their skill.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So you're not good with the clay tablets.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And the.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Arithmetic on our inventory.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: You suck.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: You're not reading these clay tablets well at all. In fact,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: you can't even read Go dig that ditch. Make the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: canal bigger. That's collectivism recognizing individualism.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I would look at it from a slightly different point
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: of view, that there are things that we give up,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: certain rights we give up to get greater rights and
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: abilities in a different area. So it's a rational trade.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: You give up your right to drive 100 miles an
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: hour through downtown Columbus and ignore all traffic signals because
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: You give that up in order to reach your destination safely,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: which is more important to you, but it's a voluntary thing.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: You can jump over to homeowners association, especially as the
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: older generation, those of us in 55 and up, we
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: start looking at where do I want to live the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: last hopefully quarter of my life outside Columbus, Ohio, where
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: it seems to rain all the time. And so right now,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: like for me, the coffles, I will not be in
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: an HOA. It's just against– cuts against my grain. I
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: need my individual sovereignty. That's just– it's in my blood.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I can't have a second home in an HOA. I
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: don't want some Karen across the street telling my wife
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: not to plant those types of flowers.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: But you also don't want to stop and go as
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: your next-door neighbor.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Correct. So you got to be smart about it. And
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: there you get– that's– OK. OK. We can move into
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: the different type. Right there, we could move into cultural
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: institutions and listening to your elders about where to go. Anywho,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: so you have the kings. They kind of morph, and
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: they now are shifting the chess pieces and that little
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: civilization around. And then you get the Hammurabi code, the law.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: The first time that it's written down, And it authorized
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the king to make you dig the canal, but it
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: also said the king can't just walk into your house
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: and take your property or take your stuff. So that's
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: kind of– we kind of get it reduced to writing.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Here's the deal.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it was nicely and conveniently also carved in stone,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: so it couldn't be readily changed.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Literally carved in stone.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. Right.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: So you start to see the development of property rights
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and individual rights. And then you get the birth of institution.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: So specialization kind of starts with specialization. Take a potter,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a guy who's really good with his hands or a
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: man or woman gets really good with their hands. They're
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: good at making pots. That's great for him or her
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: personally right up until he realizes it. You can't eat
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a pot. I can't eat this pot. I've been busy
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: so long making these pots, but my kids can't eat
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: pots for dinner. And so now you start trade. And
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: with this trade, we have the ability to communicate. We
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: need writings, be able to write things down. The first
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: writings were not poems or prayers. They were not. They
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: were an inventory, someone counting sheep, someone else counting other
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: items that could be traded. You kind of need to
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: know what inventory is for trade. So that you– again,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: your family didn't starve. So accounting came first, then art
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: and lawyers somewhere in between the two. That's how– you agree?
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Good, good, good. OK.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: To the order.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Now, let's fast forward thousands of years. Let's go to
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Germany post-World War II.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: If we have to.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Take Germany. Germany ran the experiment that the– The American
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Democrat Party, the socialists, communists want to run. They want
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to run this playbook. Germany ran the playbook.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Well, they were also running it before World War II
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's– we can really see it after– Under
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the National Socialists. We can really– yeah. But we really
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: fine-tune it here. Let's look at middle 20th century. Germany
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: runs this playbook that Mamdani wants to run. AOC wants
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to run. Whoever is going to run for president for
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the Democrat Party is going to promise to run this playbook.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: And for– it's– you can see that after the wall
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: came down, the people on the west side of the
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: wall had roughly tripled the income per person than the
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: people on the east side of the wall.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: People on the west side of the wall– had much
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: better cars than the people on the east side of
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the wall.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I wonder what makes that different. What is it?
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: The east side of the wall had a two-stroke engine
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and a waiting list measured in years. Literally. Let's look
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: at Korea. Korea did the same thing. One peninsula, one people,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: split a line on a map. Today, one side has,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: on the south, has Samsungs. Among others, the other side,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: as far as anyone can tell.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: 20 year waiting list for horses.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: From satellite photos taken at night, a light bulb shortage.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, OK, let's go far east, China. After Mao's revolution.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And we we we don't need to go into the
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: crimes against humanity and what Mao did. And that revolution did.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Where's Uncle Ho?
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Or the Soviets and what they did.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Where's Uncle Zolenev?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In 1978, China let farmers own their land again.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And roughly 800 million people climbed out of property. I'm sorry, poverty.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Into property.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Into property, right?
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So. That was just coincidental, according to the communists.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: So plenty of smart people will tell you America's post-war
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: boom was– and this is true. It was heavy on
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: public investment, meaning public dollars, highways, research money, the whole apparatus.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Sitting underneath all that was private enterprise. But when you
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: line up every one of these natural experiments side by side,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the answer keeps landing in the same place over and
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: over and over again. Like my golf ball that keeps
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: hitting the same bunker at the course I play on
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the first hole.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: You need to switch courses.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: OK, so there's we've talked about the wisdom inside old fences.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: G.K.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Chesterton saying don't tear down a fence until you first
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: learned why it was put up. These are the lessons
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: that the American people need to be able to understand and.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and articulate to their younger generation, to their youth. Make
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: sure they're educated. Sounds sexy when Mamdani's talking about rent
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: controls when the 25-year-olds from college grabs who want to
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: live in New York City but can't afford to rent.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Sounds sexy. We've got to talk wisdom. Before we get
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: back into the show, General, a little pump the tires
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: for Chesron Automotive.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Well, speaking of capitalism and the wonderful products that capitalism
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: creates for us and evolves for us over the years,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: you have a dealership up in the Delaware area that
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: if you were to drive north on 23– Or south.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Or south, depending on where you're coming from, because the
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: reach of this radio station is massive. Unlimited. Yes. You
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: would eventually come to this nirvana of car purchasing where
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: you come in there, you're not pressured, you're not set upon,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: you'll be treated fairly.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: They've been around a bit.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: They have. And you don't stay in business that long
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: with such good recommendations on the internet that unless you
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: treat people with respect.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: You know what I like? They haven't tried to open
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: up multiple dealerships. They haven't tried to go buy a
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: bunch of dealerships and try to just make that compound
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: their profits. They're just sitting pretty right where they are,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: taking care of people, doing what they're supposed to do.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Love it. They're doing what they do well.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Today, the general and I were talking about how do
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: we communicate to the younger generation that collectivism, a.k.a. communism,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: socialism— American, this new form of American socialism, the Democrat Party.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: How do we how do we talk them out of
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: what they're being sold? You've got some. You've got some
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: gregarious young political candidate upstarts like Dhani in New York City,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Abdul El Zayed in Michigan. You've got and there's more.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And I'm not even getting into the religion piece of this,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: which is a much bigger, bigger issue than this particular show.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: And we've danced around that. And we will stay on that.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I think that's– we must stay on that. We must
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: stay on that. This is a Judeo-Christian land. And before
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: we let another religion move in without infringing on their
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: First Amendment rights– where they move into the political system
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and want to start rewriting the laws to match their religion.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: There needs to be a lot of checks and balances
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: in place.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Well, if you look at their handbook, it's not just
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: a religion. It's also a theocracy. They're trying to take
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: over governments.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: We must be on the stand on the walls of
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: freedom for them to practice their religion while standing on
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the towers, the watchtowers. as JFK would say.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: A free exercise for ourselves.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of our sovereignty. So here's the thing. Here's the thing.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: If you're going to live in America, you're going to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: reap all the benefits of living in America. But you've quietly, silently,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: unbeknownst to you, surrendered a lot of your individual rights.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: You can't go anywhere right now. This is changing, but
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: you can't go anywhere right now without being surveilled, videos surveilled.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It's coming under greater scrutiny with the flock camera system,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: but it's not going to go anywhere. You can't communicate
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: on your iMessages or Snap or text without signing off
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: terms and conditions, and you sign away a lot of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: your right to privacy. The government can send a subpoena
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: to Apple or Meta and get your Facebook account, get
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: your e-mails.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Your Instagram account.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Get your text messages. Get your photos. Yes, they can.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Your Snapchats.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Without your knowledge. So you surrender a lot. There's a tradeoff.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: You also don't need to go out, mount a horse,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and go out into the plains and try to track
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: down a buffalo. We've improved upon that. You don't need
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: to grow your own food, although not a bad idea.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Not a bad idea.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: There's a tradeoff, right? There's always a tradeoff. It's never
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: just one way. It's not just the Republican way. It's
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: not just the Democrat way. Again, I'm going to pump
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: my– I'm going to toot my son's horn here. He's
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: running for the statehouse to represent Upper Arlington, Grandview, parts
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: of Clintonville. And if you want a yard sign, a
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: call for a yard sign, text me. I tell you what,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: email me rather, Brad at KoffelLaw.com, Brad at KoffelLaw.com. If
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: you would like a Koffel Yard sign, and you're in
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the district, or even if you're not in the district,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: you just want a Koffel Yard sign, that'd be great too.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: But my son's on to something. He's like, look, Dad,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: this isn't just Republican and Democrat. This just isn't capitalism
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: versus socialism. There needs to be a tradeoff. We just
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: need to make sure that the tradeoffs match common sense.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: They go through the common sense doctrine, one of my
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: favorite doctrines. Is that one of your favorite doctrines?
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: It is my only doctrine.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: You clearly don't have a doctrine for clothing and attire.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: What is your doctrine for your attire?
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: As I explained to these young skulls full of oatmeal,
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: your appearance does not matter much.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Anyhow, I digress. You're a very handsome gentleman.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't agree.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: The the here's the trap. Here's the trap. I spent
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I've got a daughter down at Ole Miss. Conservative, very
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: conservative part of the country. Let's define conservative. We're willing
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: to progress. But not as fast as you want to.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: We're willing to engage in progress. But not as fast
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: as you want to. We have our traditions, our rituals.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: We aren't going to surrender them ever. We're just not.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: We're not going to surrender our traditions and our rituals.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: And there are these invisible fences down in the south
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that are tradition and ritual. One is all the young
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: men and women down there say yes, sir, no, sir,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: primarily the boys. Yes, sir, no, sir.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am and no, ma'am.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Yep. Love it.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Tradition, ritual, respect, love it.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir. No, sir.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Good boys. Good young ladies.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: There are some fences. There are some traditions in the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: South that need to go away. The old fence of
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the Jim Crow laws, the old fence of slavery needed
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: to go down.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Brought to you by Democrats.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: So when G.K. Chesterton tells the story, about a reformer
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: who wants to tear down a fence. Because the reformer
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: can't see the point of why that fence is there.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: The wise move is to tell him, fine, go find
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: out why it is there first, and then we'll talk
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: about tearing it down. This is also, incidentally, excellent advice
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: for anyone about to remodel a kitchen, renovate a courthouse,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: or rewrite a 900-page statute at 11 o'clock at night.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Just slow down. We will take down old, bad old fences.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Jim Crow is the proof that our society, America, will
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: do it. We will do it. But we're not tearing
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: down every fence you don't like. We will talk about
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: why these invisible fences are there, these tradition, rituals, customs.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And there are going to be some fences that we're
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: just not going to let you take down. So the
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Great American Experiment is that. in a nutshell. We're going
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: to have the consent of the people. We're going to
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: have representative form of government. And we are going to
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: have a written constitution to protect your rights etched in stone.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: And if you want to amend the constitution, it's really
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: hard to, but you can.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Unless it's the Ohio constitution, which seems to be done
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: by simple majority.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Seems to be the case. So, Here's the problem that
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of my peers are having right now. Our
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: government is supposed to run on our consent, your consent.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: It's a lovely idea, right up until you remember that
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: regulating a nuclear reactor or approving a new drug requires
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: knowledge that approximately nobody standing in line to vote actually has.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: So James Madison fixed this idea that You elect somebody
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: with a little more time to study the problem than
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: you have. So you kind of delegate that out there
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: that that that the guy who makes the pots, the blacksmith,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: you know, let them do it. And then we'll feed
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: you from what the hunters and we'll trade. So that's
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: kind of this whole this tradeoff, this representation. We're going
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: to we're going to take someone from our tribe, meaning
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: our district. We're going to put them in the state
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: house or in.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Congress whose judgment we trust whose.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Judgment we trust to study the problem take the time
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: that you don't have to study the problem and the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: knowledge that you don't possess that great until the country
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: got complicated enough that even the representative needs help which
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: is how we wind up with agencies like the fda
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the epa All staffed by people nobody voted for, making
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: rules that absolutely affect your life. All right, well, what
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: about just direct democracy? Just put everything on the ballot.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Just let people vote for it. It's called direct democracy. Well,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: there's a state in our union that has tried that.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: It's called California. California seems to have referendums all the time.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: California's ballot initiative system stands as a pretty damn firm
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: demonstration that asking Californians to design a utility rate structure
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: on a Tuesday in November does not actually work. So
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: what do you do? It's all tradeoffs. It is not.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: It can't be. This wisdom cannot be imparted in a
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: tick tock 30 seconds or 90 seconds. That's another problem
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: is communication. Who's got time to listen to our show?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think even our loyal listeners have time to
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: listen to every show. All right, General. We've talked about
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: we're in the 2% of history. 98% of history of
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Homo sapien is behind us. Going back to civilization is
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: living together. Civilization was 5,500 years ago. So 2% of
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Homo sapien living together. has been in a civilized way,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: how we're going to live together. And there have been
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: many different models over those 5,000 years. We covered a
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: lot of them very briefly in the first three segments
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: of the show. What I'm fascinated about now are five
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: little countries we usually group together. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: and maybe Iceland, which is now the Sixth borough of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: New York City.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Iceland.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Iceland. No, it's Greenland.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Greenland. Now. Which Mr. Trump did a very good job
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: on this week. I saw that. Getting what he wanted.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: High taxation. Denmark and Sweden both run on a top
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: income tax rate north of, say, 55 percent. And broad VATs,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: value added taxes, around 25 percent. So high tax economy.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: They have extensive welfare programs, not just the SNAP program,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: but health care, education, parental leave, unemployment support. They also
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: have strong labor unions that have collective bargaining. And the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: part that gets left out of the most American debates
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: is they have genuinely strong private property rights, low levels
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of business regulation. and an open competitive private market underneath
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: all of it. So Denmark, for instance, employers can hire
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: and fire relatively easily. Kind of like American at-will employment,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: but there's a generous unemployment benefit and a heavy public
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: investment in retraining, to taking that person, getting them retrained, retooled.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: So it's a hybrid public-private that we're not doing in
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: America anymore. designed to keep the labor market flexible while
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: getting protection, kind of putting the individual worker in some
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: bubble wrap. It's not a top-down economy like China. It's
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: not a bottom-up Jeffersonian agrarian economy. These five countries, I
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: just checked this this morning, they rank in the world's
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: top 15 to 20 It depends on what you're looking at.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: In income levels, purchasing power, life expectancy, infant mortality, happiness,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: life satisfaction, business friendliness, entrepreneurship. The World Bank, I did
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: stumble upon this. Take it for what it's worth. I've
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: not verified this, but take it for what it's worth.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Denmark and Norway routinely... outrank the United States in a
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: category of ease of doing business. Sweden has a remarkably
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: large number of billion-dollar companies for a country of 10
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: million people. Spotify, which is what I listen to exclusively,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: income inequality is among the lowest in the world, in
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the developed world. So I think we ought not focused
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: just on what the Democrats are saying or what the
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Republicans are saying, we really need to take a hard
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: look at the Nordic model. We haven't spent a lot
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: of time on the Nordic model. I'd like to do that.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: I think that what that analysis misses is that, first
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: of all, back during the 60s and 70s, there was
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: an extremely high tax rate, a confiscatory tax rate. And
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: you had people like the tennis player Bjorn Borg moving
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: to Monaco because he just couldn't take it that he
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: would win $ 100, 000 for winning Wimbledon and then walk away
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: with $ 5, 000. It hardly covered his hotel room and his
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: plane fare. And then you look at the fact that
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: these Nordic countries are in a situation where if what
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: they're doing doesn't work out, they're dead. The winter kills them.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: This would be like setting up in Manitoba, northern Manitoba
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: in Canada, and saying, let's have a commune. Now, that
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: works in sunny Southern California. It works in the Mediterranean
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: where the coldest winter temperatures get down to a balmy 63.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: But when people are going to freeze to death and
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: you've literally got six months of almost no sunshine, you know,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: you've got to have some certain economic models there.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: What happens when all of a sudden there's a food shortage,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: you know– In the United States, for some reason, the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: grocery stores, there's something that interrupts the supply chain, whatever.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: I think– The only thing that could do that would
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: be the government.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I think the Nordic countries, what makes them unique that
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: we probably can't replicate.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Really, really good-looking blonde-haired girls.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Two things. There are small countries, 6 million people in Denmark, 5.5
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: million people in Norway, 5.5 million people in Finland. So
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: they're small.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Ten million Sweden.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Number two, they have cultural homogeneity. It's easier– what's called
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: a high social trust. There's a cultural homogeneity. And that
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: is a sin for the progressives in America, in the West.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Cultural homogeneity is a sin. I say it's not. Cultural
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: homogeneity is important because the people will take care of themselves.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: They will also have– they will trust the system because
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: they don't see the– what's– they don't see the graft
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: going out the door to people that haven't earned it
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: or participated in it. That's my take. It's a small country.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: It has high social trust with their institutions. Because there's
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: cultural homogeneity.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Almost zero cost of military defense.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: There's that as well, right? So, you know, there is
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: no silver bullet theory to any of this. Hard stop.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Well, and also, when was the last time Sweden produced
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: a magical breakthrough drug that cured Alzheimer's or cured polio?
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: That all comes from America. Yeah. And capitalism.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they've gotten the, certainly.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: They get to ride on the coattails of our discoveries.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: But there are parts of the Nordic system that I
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: think we need to look at. Anyway, that's it for
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: today's show. Thanks for listening. If you like it, share it.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Appreciate it. Have a great rest of your week and weekend.