Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 452: The Benefits of a Conservative Supreme Court

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Episode 452: The Benefits of a Conservative Supreme Court · Words & Numbers

• 0:00
  Coming up next on Words and numbers Sexy chat bots consumer.
• 0:03
  Sentiment is down, but should it be?
• 0:05
  Los Angeles should be burning, but apparently.
• 0:08
  Isn't and the benefits of a conservative Supreme Court?
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  Coming up next on Words and Numbers.
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  Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony and.
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  This is Words and Numbers. Words and Numbers is a civil
• 0:22
  original podcast. Go to civil.com to learn more.
• 0:25
  That's civl.com. What's new and exciting in your
• 0:29
  world this weekend? We should start off by telling
• 0:32
  the listeners that we have New Times that will be appearing.
• 0:36
  We have appeared words and numbers at 10:30 AM on
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  Wednesdays every week without fail for the past eight years
• 0:48
  and. Starting this includes
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  hospitalizations and surgeries. You name, I recorded an episode
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  like 20 minutes after I had surgery once.
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  In the hospital, and I was in the hospital with COVID at the
• 1:01
  beginning of COVID, Yeah, but we managed to get about.
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  But nonetheless, starting this week, we'll be coming out
• 1:08
  Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:00 AM so you can listen to us on
• 1:12
  your morning commute. In the morning?
• 1:14
  Who the hell does anything at 7:00 in the morning?
• 1:18
  Do you know I'm in the I'm at my desk at 6:30 every morning.
• 1:23
  See, and you have just proved what I've been saying for a
• 1:27
  decade, 15, even 2 decades. You're an idiot.
• 1:34
  I've got. We've received a couple of
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  listener questions and I'm not prepared to answer them in full,
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  but they're interesting enough I wanted to mention them.
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  What? A great way to start.
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  We've got some questions. I'm not going to answer them,
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  but listen to me anyway. These are both from listeners
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  comments on YouTube. Devil Man Sanchez says please
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  dedicate a small commentary on Venezuela and Argentina.
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  As a Venezuelan listener I would love to hear your opinions and
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  Devil Man Sanchez. We are always happy to respond
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  to listener questions, much more so to someone coming from
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  Venezuela. And frankly, you could probably
• 2:13
  tell us more about what's going on with the Venezuelan economy
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  than we can. But we will take a stab at it.
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  Actually, I'll just give you an interesting thing I looked up in
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  response to this. Venezuela's per capita income
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  from 1975 to the president. So that's 50 years, half a
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  century. Venezuela's per capita real GDP
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  growth has averaged 3/10 of 1% per year.
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  It's not fantastic. No.
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  For context, United States is per capita real GDP has grown on
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  average of 1.8%, so roughly almost 7 times that of
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  Venezuela. If if Venez going back to 1975,
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  if Venezuela's economy had grown at the same rate that the US
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  economy has had grown over that same half century, Venez, the
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  average Venezuelan today would be more than twice as wealthy as
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  he is now. And it should have grown at a
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  much, much faster rate because Venezuela sits atop the world's
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  largest oil reserve. Yes, and therein lies an
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  interesting question that we can get into when we do the whole
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  episode. But that's that's a fascinating
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  twist that Venezuela, hands down, is the single country that
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  sits on the largest set of oil reserves.
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  It occurs to me that we've never done an episode on the resource
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  curse. Yes, yes, that's why I put it
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  off because I have to do some research on to it.
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  I also have to do some research on it, but I think that would be
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  a fascinating thing to talk about real soon.
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  Yeah, watch Dealer 11, who comments often on our YouTube
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  channel, says please do an episode on Canada.
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  And you know, I just threw together a couple of statistics
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  thinking, you know, we could say something about Canada.
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  And the more I put together, the more I thought this is going to
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  make an A fascinating episode because here in the United
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  States, one of the things that that people keep repeating is,
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  well, why can't we have a healthcare system like Canada?
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  If you were in Canada, you wouldn't have to worry about,
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  you know, being, you know, sent to the poor house because of of
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  healthcare costs. So I just did some quick
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  Googling on average tax rates Canada versus the US and it
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  seems to be the case. And don't quote me because I
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  want to dig deeper, but it seems to be the case that for the
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  median household in Canada versus the median household in
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  the US, the median Canadian household is paying $11,000 more
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  per year in taxes. And how much do each of those
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  households make prior to tax? Oh, and that's very interesting.
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  I don't know what? Yeah.
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  Well, no, I do know the priority tax.
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  The median household income in Canada converted to U.S. dollars
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  is about $50,000 versus 80,000 in the US.
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  So they're making much, much less and they're losing much,
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  much more. Right, yeah.
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  And now you could say something like, well, yeah, but we've got
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  all this free health care. To which I respond, Yeah, but
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  1111 thousand a years, I think that's ballpark what you would
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  pay the employers part of of an employer sponsored plan.
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  Yeah, actually I can, I can answer this with 100% clarity
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  right now to the extent that my family is normal and I live in a
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  normal state, right? So you there's always these
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  variables, but wife carries our medical we pay 12,000 a year,
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  the employer pays 12,000 a year. Right, right.
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  So there you go. But I'm way more interested in
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  that $30,000 variance in in the median income.
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  Yeah. See.
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  And that's, that's an interesting thing as well
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  because I think the part that people tend to overlook when,
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  you know, it's so easy to say, well, let's you know, let's just
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  have the government handle this and raise our taxes and I'm
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  happy to pay the extra taxes, whatever it is.
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  The taxes slowed the economy and that comes back to you dressed
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  up as just like we saw a $50,000 median income in Canada versus
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  80,000 in the US. Get words and numbers on
• 6:30
  civil.com and on Civils TV and mobile apps.
• 6:34
  Regular episodes are free. Sign up for an annual membership
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  to support our show and for access to member exclusive
• 6:41
  content. One thing I wanted to throw out
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  for thought, and I've been talking a lot about this of late
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  as I travel the country saying things.
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  Economic consumer sentiment is down and I believe the last
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  number was this is on a scale of zero to, I don't know how high
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  the scale goes, but anything over 100 on this University of
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  Michigan's consumer sentiment scale, anything over 100 is
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  considered very good. The the people are happy.
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  When you get below 100, they start it's it's reflecting more
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  and more dissatisfaction with the economy.
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  Can I? Can I?
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  Yeah, please. 42. Oh, how about that?
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  Well, you're in the neighborhood.
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  It's 58. It's not that bad, but but
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  nonetheless 58 isn't good, not great isn't at all.
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  Yeah, it's not great. If you go back to 2015 through
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  2019, consumer sentiment averaged about 95 S Think of the
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  pre COVID era, roughly 95. Since COVID it's been around
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  averaging about 65. This marked change, and what is
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  puzzling to me is if you go back through our history and look at
• 7:57
  periods of U.S. history, and I'm talking about, you know, since
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  like 19501960, look through periods of U.S. history when our
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  unemployment rate was roughly what it is now, when our
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  economic growth was roughly what it is now, when inflation was
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  roughly what it is now. In those periods, Americans
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  reported consumer sentiment numbers close to or even
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  exceeding 100. In other words, we've we've seen
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  this economy that we see right now.
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  We've seen it before, and every other time we've liked it.
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  Now, all of a sudden, we don't. Why do you Why do you figure
• 8:31
  that might be? I, I have, I have a hypothesis,
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  but somebody threw out to me the question, is it Trump
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  Derangement Syndrome? And, and I, I, it's the first
• 8:44
  time I, someone had suggested that and I thought, well, it is
• 8:46
  a psychological thing. Maybe it is and it was only
• 8:50
  later I thought back and to realize, wait a minute, this
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  drop in consumer sentiment has, has existed throughout the Biden
• 8:59
  administration also. So it's, it has nothing to do
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  with the, with the president. I I think frankly, it's the
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  media. Yeah, it it might have to do
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  with the idiotic polarization that we see where everybody's
• 9:15
  lobbing bombs and everybody else all the time claiming that
• 9:18
  everything is worse than it's ever been.
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  Right. You know, and I've come into
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  vicarious contact with young people who claim that the United
• 9:28
  States is the worst place in the world to live.
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  These are, you know, 1819 year old people.
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  Who who have lived precisely nowhere else.
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  Yeah, and, and, but, but look, I mean, if you have a television,
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  you should know better. If you have a computer or a
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  telephone, there's no excuse for being that ignorant.
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  And yet we see it all the time. Yeah, so because what?
• 9:54
  The media only shows us the bad stuff.
• 9:57
  Yeah, but it's not only that, right?
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  It's the you know, I don't want to lay this at the feet of the
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  media when there's an entire industry of people who who are
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  out there whose only duty it is to spin the truth in such a way
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  that benefits their preferred political party.
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  Right. Sure.
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  Right. And and this, this, this exactly
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  is why we get letters every week, emails telling us how we
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  have Trump Derangement Syndrome. But.
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  Nobody ever bothers to remember that we had Biden Derangement
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  Syndrome and Obama Derangement Syndrome, etcetera, etcetera,
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  etcetera. You and I are more interested in
• 10:51
  criticizing power than party. Right.
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  Right. Whoever's in power deserves a
• 10:58
  heavy dose of criticism. That's what keeps them honest
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  and. Power doesn't magically become
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  good when your guy is wielding it.
• 11:07
  No, it most certainly does not. And then as soon as he's not
• 11:10
  wielding it anymore, his opponent is and they go just a
• 11:14
  little bit further. I mean, think, think Donald
• 11:18
  Trump says flag burning is now illegal, 2 Supreme Court cases
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  notwithstanding. If we let him get away with it,
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  what's going to be illegal next? I guarantee you it will be
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  criticism of President Trump and then the next president will
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  just cheerfully continue down that merry Rd.
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  Anyway, I'm I'm going to lighten things up a little bit here
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  because boy, we went down a, an abyss there, didn't we?
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  I'm going to ask you what three people who now, now that I think
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  about it, you probably have never heard of have in common.
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  What do Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift see now you have you have
• 11:56
  heard of that one and Scarlett Johansson have in common?
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  Well, Selena Gomez is tennis, Taylor Swift is music, and
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  Scarlett Johansson is an actress.
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  Well, you went 2 for three. Oh really, who'd I miss?
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  Selena Gomez, You're thinking of Serena Williams.
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  No, that's Serena Williams. Selena Gomez is a completely
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  different person, but nonetheless, what do they have
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  in common? Do you have any idea?
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  You. You don't, right?
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  Beats me. Yeah, there's a joke in there
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  somewhere. Anyway, they have this in
• 12:29
  common. Davies doesn't know what they
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  do. Yeah, sidestepping the joke
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  entirely, they each ended up as flirty chat.
• 12:42
  Bots on meta? No way indeed, I'm sure without
• 12:48
  their permission. Unbeknownst to them entirely,
• 12:52
  and it seems to be traceable back to one rogue Meta employee
• 12:58
  who decided to make these things.
• 13:01
  But now all of a sudden you could have, if you were there at
• 13:04
  the right moment, you could have had a flirty Scarlett Johansson
• 13:07
  chatbot and, and man, I got to tell you, I'm interested, man,
• 13:12
  Sign me up. Anyway, there's an entire movie
• 13:15
  about this called Her, which you should run right out and see.
• 13:18
  She's the voice of the chat bot in that movie.
• 13:22
  But here's the thing. The chat bots then took it on
• 13:29
  themselves to OfferUp sexy pictures of these people that it
• 13:36
  made itself. Wow.
• 13:39
  And you can see the kind of rabbit hole that we're
• 13:42
  doubtlessly going to be heading down from here on out.
• 13:47
  Wow. Because next the next month it's
• 13:51
  it's going to be movies. In the month after that, it's
• 13:53
  going to be hardcore porn. Well, but you know what I keep
• 13:56
  seeing on Facebook videos and I'm thinking this can't be right
• 14:01
  to start up several weeks ago and it turns out yet they're AI
• 14:04
  generated videos and they look. They're looking better and
• 14:08
  better you. Could tell there's something
• 14:09
  wrong, but they look good enough that at first glance you think
• 14:12
  this thing is real. They're going to fool a bunch of
• 14:15
  70 and 80 year old people real fast.
• 14:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:20
  Oh, then then they're going to be fooling younger people, Yeah.
• 14:24
  That's right, it's going to become indistinguishable from
• 14:26
  reality any minute now. OK, so, so let me pause here for
• 14:30
  a second, because just a moment ago we were saying about the
• 14:33
  problems with the media only showing the bad news, not the
• 14:36
  good news. What happens when people are
• 14:40
  just cooking up videos that support whatever political
• 14:44
  position they have and releasing them?
• 14:46
  And of course, people who agree with the political position are
• 14:49
  going to start start copying them, sending them, forwarding
• 14:52
  them. That's already happening and and
• 14:56
  we're going to get to a point when, when the video content is
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  indistinguishable from reality and we're almost there, it's
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  going to be almost impossible for anybody to know what the
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  truth is. And we got real problems coming
• 15:13
  up real soon as a result of that, because it's already
• 15:18
  nearly impossible for people to Fact Check things that are
• 15:23
  obviously untrue. Right, right.
• 15:27
  What are they going to do when it's not so obvious?
• 15:29
  But you know, there's a, there's a potential, I don't know if
• 15:33
  this is a cure, but it would certainly help a solution with
• 15:37
  blockchain, I forecast we're going to very quickly get to the
• 15:41
  point where a video is going to have A tag attached to it that
• 15:45
  you can via blockchain verify that Verily, this video came
• 15:50
  from an employee of Reuters who was on the scene recording as
• 15:55
  opposed to some 15 year old in his.
• 15:58
  Basement, except except an employee at Meta just created
• 16:02
  chat bots of sexy women that we all want to talk to.
• 16:06
  Right. No.
• 16:06
  But my point is that with blockchain person no, he
• 16:10
  wouldn't stop an. Employee of Reuters.
• 16:13
  Oh, I see, I see. Still create whatever the hell
• 16:15
  he wants, right? I see.
• 16:17
  Cost him his job, but he could still do it.
• 16:20
  I don't know. There's no easy answer here.
• 16:21
  Blockchain's an interesting answer, but there's no easy
• 16:24
  answer. So we'll be following this as we
• 16:27
  go. But this, of course, Aunt,
• 16:29
  brings us to the foolishness of the week when Homeland Security
• 16:34
  Barbie Christy Noem, who is known for saying one dumbass
• 16:38
  thing after another, she's talking about, You may remember
• 16:42
  Aunt, when Donald Trump, our fearless leader in big Toe, sent
• 16:47
  troops into an American city, Los Angeles.
• 16:51
  It seems cute 'cause now it's DC and we're talking about Chicago
• 16:56
  shouldn't be doing any of it. But that's another topic for
• 17:00
  another day. He sent them into Los Angeles
• 17:05
  and Christy Gnome said I I do know that LA wouldn't be
• 17:11
  standing today if President Trump hadn't taken action now.
• 17:17
  OK, there's always a little bit of political hyperbole when
• 17:21
  politicians start running their stupid mouths, but LA wouldn't
• 17:26
  be standing. If.
• 17:30
  If President Trump, I mean, I I've been to LA in the last
• 17:34
  year, it seemed under no grave threat of falling literally into
• 17:43
  the ocean. Well, I I have a.
• 17:45
  Question or burning to the ground, which is what Kristi
• 17:47
  Noem said would have happened, would have burnt to the ground.
• 17:51
  But if, if indeed that's the case, I want to know why the
• 17:55
  fires aren't starting now. Because last I saw, well, this
• 18:01
  would have been mid June, mid-july, that the President
• 18:06
  Trump withdrew half of these troops.
• 18:10
  And am I correct that they're all they've all been withdrawn
• 18:13
  now? I I'm not sure, they might well
• 18:15
  have been, but you know, if we needed X troops to keep it from
• 18:20
  burning to the ground, and now we have .5 X troops there, half
• 18:25
  of it should have burned to the ground, right?
• 18:27
  I know some. I know some math.
• 18:30
  Well, more than that, the numbers I believe he sent
• 18:33
  originally 4000 National Guard troops.
• 18:36
  So I did a little bit of digging.
• 18:38
  And it turns out there's a punch line here.
• 18:40
  Turns. Out right, the Los Angeles
• 18:43
  police force has 9000 officers. So it's not like it's not like
• 18:50
  the Los Angeles had 100 people enforcing the law and President
• 18:56
  Trump sent 4000. He said the sheriff was less
• 18:59
  than half the size of the force that was already there and then
• 19:03
  cut it in half within 30 days. And one would think and try and
• 19:08
  keep up with me here. One would think that if it were
• 19:11
  as bad as Christie, Gnome would have us believe that they would
• 19:16
  probably hire some more police officers.
• 19:19
  Right. Right.
• 19:20
  I mean, I just throwing it out there.
• 19:22
  Am I recalling correctly, James, that at the time, so I think we
• 19:26
  talked about it, weren't these National Guard troops deployed
• 19:30
  specifically to protect federal buildings, federal property?
• 19:34
  I, you know, I, it's so long ago, I can't remember.
• 19:37
  The only memory that I have at present of National Guard troops
• 19:43
  are the ones in DC who were there to stop that rampaging
• 19:48
  crime. And look, I've been to DC
• 19:51
  lately. It's not great right there.
• 19:54
  There are neighborhoods in DC. You're not going to go into it.
• 19:57
  It's a rough but. That's always been the case.
• 19:59
  Well, not, not always. It's, it's worse now than it's
• 20:02
  been in a while, right? And then, and then they say
• 20:05
  crimes coming down and, and OK, it's just a bunch of bullshit,
• 20:09
  right? DC is a place where there are
• 20:12
  problems. But if those problems are so
• 20:16
  profound that we need to send the National Guard, why are the
• 20:20
  National Guard raking leaves and picking up garbage?
• 20:24
  Because that's what they're doing.
• 20:28
  And you know, it doesn't, it doesn't jibe.
• 20:31
  There's a problem there. And let's, let's all be honest
• 20:35
  with each other. I read somewhere some, somebody
• 20:37
  worked out how much we're paying the National Guardsmen by the
• 20:41
  hour to do the rake in and pick up the garbage, and it's $66 an
• 20:44
  hour. Good Lord, right?
• 20:46
  Can can't we just hire some people in DC for, oh I don't
• 20:50
  know, 15? Right, and solve several
• 20:54
  problems right? And a third the cost.
• 20:57
  So there's all this nonsense swimming just below the surface
• 21:01
  to all this kind of stuff, but that we've got a cabinet level
• 21:06
  person saying that the city of Los Angeles would have burned to
• 21:10
  the ground had we not sent these troops in there.
• 21:15
  It's just so disingenuous. I don't even know what to say
• 21:19
  about it. Well, in in her defense, this is
• 21:23
  part of the fallout, I think that you get from doing things
• 21:26
  like firing the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
• 21:30
  because you didn't like what the statistics said.
• 21:33
  It wasn't even the director that was saying it was the
• 21:35
  statistics. So all of a sudden there's this
• 21:38
  pall over everybody who works for the administration.
• 21:42
  You don't say anything negative. And not for nothing, Aunt, you,
• 21:46
  you you don't fire the head of the CDC because she's in favor
• 21:50
  of vaccines either. And and yet here, here we are.
• 21:55
  So remember when we just said a minute ago that you wouldn't be
• 21:58
  able to tell fact from fiction? Yeah, but.
• 22:03
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• 23:15
  Let's just move on cuz maybe we can make sense of this next
• 23:18
  thing. What do we got this week?
• 23:20
  You had suggested this whole conversation start out when
• 23:24
  James said to me after we were done recording last time, I'd
• 23:28
  like to do an episode on things that that Trump has done well.
• 23:32
  Well, and then he. All right, all right.
• 23:34
  Stop. Good God stop man.
• 23:38
  I didn't say. That I I.
• 23:41
  Followed up immediately. Yeah, I know, but let's let's
• 23:44
  give the actual story. I I got asked to go on another
• 23:47
  podcast. It was Josh Martin's asked me to
• 23:50
  go on Good morning, Liberty, and I'm happy to give him a plug and
• 23:53
  you should all go right out and and listen.
• 23:56
  And I'll I'll be tweeting out the link for the one that I did
• 24:00
  with him real soon as soon as I can dig it out of that mess, I
• 24:03
  call an inbox. But Josh asked me, He said I
• 24:07
  want to talk about things Trump might have gotten right.
• 24:10
  And I, I had to sit there and and think about it and I didn't
• 24:13
  come up with anything. Well, you did, because you then
• 24:17
  followed up with. This it took a while.
• 24:19
  Supreme Court appointments. Yeah.
• 24:21
  And which we're probably, we're probably going to piss a lot of
• 24:24
  people off by even saying such a thing, right?
• 24:29
  Because he has, he has put some pretty reliably conservative
• 24:35
  people on the Supreme Court, yielding a pretty reliable six
• 24:40
  to three conservative majority on the court.
• 24:44
  Now, when you say conservative, I'm guessing you don't mean
• 24:48
  conservative in the sense of Republican, Democrat.
• 24:52
  Well. And, and, and that's probably
• 24:54
  the best place to start, right? When I say conservative, when I
• 24:59
  say, OK, what good has Donald Trump done?
• 25:03
  He's given us a court. And, and here I'm going to
• 25:07
  change the words a little bit to what I really mean and not what
• 25:13
  you should take away when you listen to a podcast on NPR.
• 25:18
  I think the Supreme Court is dispositionally conservative,
• 25:24
  and I'm going to go a step further and say that I think the
• 25:27
  Supreme Court should almost always be dispositionally
• 25:33
  conservative. This.
• 25:35
  Doesn't mean by dispositionally. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:38
  And that's, that's right. Where to start?
• 25:39
  Right, Because I don't mean Republican now, it's going to
• 25:44
  work out that way right now in this point in history that if
• 25:48
  you're dispositionally conservative, you're probably a
• 25:51
  Republican. But I would submit that you and
• 25:55
  I are both dispositionally conservative and neither one of
• 25:59
  us is Republican. Do do I have you?
• 26:02
  Peg yeah, that's probably fair. That's probably fair.
• 26:05
  I I know it's correct of myself. SO1 needn't be a Republican to
• 26:12
  be dispositionally conservative. As a matter of fact, I think
• 26:15
  right now it's actually harder to be Republic a Republican
• 26:20
  conservative than to be a non Republican conservative because
• 26:24
  what exactly are Republicans conserving?
• 26:28
  What's that big giant list of things that traditionally we as
• 26:33
  Americans have always held dear that the Republican Party is now
• 26:39
  lining up to do battle for? And it's not.
• 26:43
  The Republican Party is a Progressive Party on the right.
• 26:47
  The Democratic Party is a Progressive Party on the left.
• 26:51
  And when you look at what the framers did with the
• 26:54
  Constitution, how they divided power, and again, we are talking
• 26:59
  about power. We're not talking about people,
• 27:02
  how they divided power. It was quite ingenious, right,
• 27:05
  Because, and we've talked about this many times, but we have to
• 27:09
  do it again. They gave us the House of
• 27:11
  Representatives with A2 year election cycle.
• 27:14
  They gave us the Senate with a six year cycle elected by state
• 27:20
  governments. But OK, you take the point now.
• 27:23
  Elected directly by the people, but nonetheless, every six
• 27:27
  years. And even now, given how we've
• 27:31
  gone from election from state legislatures to direct election
• 27:36
  of senators, you can look at a senator and a representative
• 27:40
  standing side by side and you hear him talk for 5 minutes and
• 27:45
  you can reliably predict who is who.
• 27:49
  Right. The representatives necessarily
• 27:51
  have to be concerned with the order of the day, whatever it is
• 27:55
  that that are concerning people because they're there for two
• 27:58
  years. Right now, that's right, they're
• 28:00
  actualized by a different impulse than senators are
• 28:04
  actualized by, at least in the large.
• 28:07
  Because only 1/3 of the Senate is up for re election every two
• 28:13
  years. So when 100% of the houses is up
• 28:16
  for re election, 1/3 of the Senate is up for re election.
• 28:21
  The and and look this this has a salutary effect.
• 28:26
  Whatever is in the water right now is not necessarily going to
• 28:31
  RIP through government. And then you add a president
• 28:34
  there with a four year cycle. So right between the two and you
• 28:39
  you generally, I mean, you can override A veto, but you can you
• 28:42
  generally need his signature on legislation to get anywhere with
• 28:46
  anything. That's a difficult batch of
• 28:49
  things to negotiate, but it's not so difficult that it doesn't
• 28:54
  happen right it and all kinds of stupid ideas come along.
• 28:59
  But but look how much we're protected from stupid ideas.
• 29:04
  And I'm going to take the pro Trump side right now just to
• 29:07
  shut people up. Even with what's happening in
• 29:11
  Texas with redistricting, I'm not sure that Trump can maintain
• 29:17
  his grip on the House of Representatives.
• 29:20
  I'm just not sure. I think this Texas thing might
• 29:23
  well backfire. Even if you were much more loved
• 29:26
  than he is. It.
• 29:28
  He'd be hard pressed because it's typically, if my
• 29:31
  understanding is correct, it's in this first reelect, first,
• 29:34
  first House election after the presidential election.
• 29:38
  It typically goes the opposite way of of the White House.
• 29:42
  It very typically does, not always, but very typically.
• 29:45
  And Trump's popularity is sub 40% at this point, which is a
• 29:52
  very bad sign. And when they when they did the
• 29:55
  redistricting in Texas, which I actually think is their right, I
• 29:59
  think, you know, you're in government in the state,
• 30:01
  redistrict however you want, follow your own laws.
• 30:04
  That's what the Constitution requires.
• 30:06
  It seems to make sense to do it immediately after every census.
• 30:10
  And generally that's how it's been done.
• 30:12
  But it needn't be that way. So, OK, go nuts.
• 30:17
  But the Texans, the Texas Republicans, what they did, the
• 30:22
  presumption they made is that former Trump voters would
• 30:27
  continue to vote in Trump like ways.
• 30:31
  And the thing that they laid their hat on is Trump voting
• 30:35
  Latinos. And Trump voting Latinos, if you
• 30:39
  look at the the more granular data that we tend not to talk
• 30:43
  about have walked away from Trump almost completely at this
• 30:47
  point. So, you know, this whole thing
• 30:51
  was designed to give him five more seats in the House, but
• 30:54
  it's all predicated on him maintaining the Latino vote,
• 30:57
  which is probably not going to happen.
• 31:00
  So, hey, we'll see. We'll see what happens there.
• 31:03
  But if the Democrats retake the House, I I think it's a 100%
• 31:08
  certainty that they will impeach Donald Trump again.
• 31:13
  I don't think they can help themselves do.
• 31:15
  You now what? We've gotten to the point now
• 31:17
  where impeachment kind of doesn't matter.
• 31:20
  Back back when we were when we were younger, impeachment was a
• 31:24
  big deal. Bill Clinton getting impeached
• 31:26
  was huge. First time since Andrew Johnson.
• 31:30
  We weren't that young when Bill Clinton got impeached, right?
• 31:33
  But but. Here's the question.
• 31:35
  Are there the votes in the Senate to remove him?
• 31:37
  I don't think they're. Absolutely, absolutely not.
• 31:40
  And that's the design. The design is, is that the house
• 31:45
  kind of flits away from side to side given the passions of the
• 31:51
  day. And when you read The
• 31:52
  Federalist, passion is always a bad thing, right?
• 31:56
  When we say follow your passion, now the, the framers would think
• 32:00
  we sound like a bunch of idiots. You don't follow passion, you
• 32:04
  extinguish it, right? That's how the word was used in
• 32:07
  1787. And, and there it is, right?
• 32:11
  The House is designed to kind of move with the people.
• 32:16
  The Senate is designed as a bulwark against that.
• 32:20
  The president is a further insulation from that.
• 32:24
  But from time to time, idiotic things go from the House to the
• 32:30
  Senate to the president, and everybody's all in favor.
• 32:33
  And then the Supreme Court gets to weigh in.
• 32:36
  And I ask you this, do you want a Supreme Court that is actuated
• 32:41
  by the prejudices of the day, the passions of the moment?
• 32:47
  Or, as I contend, would you prefer to have a Supreme Court
• 32:51
  that's dispositionally conservative, whose first
• 32:55
  reaction to literally everything is, hey, wait a minute, slow
• 33:01
  down, let's think about this. Are you sure?
• 33:06
  Does this comport with the Constitution?
• 33:09
  The Does this run afoul of laws that you fools have already
• 33:12
  passed? Wouldn't you prefer to have that
• 33:16
  break on the process than to not have the break on the process?
• 33:22
  And I I would submit that the only people who don't want the
• 33:25
  break are the people who care more about getting their way
• 33:30
  than getting their way within the rules of the game.
• 33:34
  We all want to get our way. I want to get my way all the
• 33:36
  time. But there are rules.
• 33:40
  I mean, I want to be a millionaire.
• 33:42
  I don't go rob banks until I have $1,000,000.
• 33:45
  There are rules. Wouldn't you prefer that the
• 33:50
  elected branches of our government follow the rules and
• 33:55
  have an unelected body holding their feet to the fire?
• 34:01
  Right. And that's the the positive case
• 34:04
  in favor of a dispositionally conservative Supreme Court.
• 34:10
  And and we've got one right now. Now, I think also we have a
• 34:17
  Supreme Court that's a little too partisan for my tastes, but
• 34:21
  that's that's another discussion for another day.
• 34:23
  I think there are people on that court who will do anything
• 34:29
  Donald Trump wants. And that's not what I'm talking
• 34:32
  about, right? I'm talking about what I just
• 34:34
  laid out very clearly. So when you send me the hate
• 34:38
  mail, and you will send it given what I said, not what you think
• 34:43
  you heard me say, which is often why we get hate mail.
• 34:47
  So I want to, I want to go back in time a little bit to show you
• 34:53
  what happens when you don't have a dispositionally conservative
• 34:58
  Supreme Court. What do you think of
• 35:00
  contraception, Aunt? Contraception.
• 35:02
  What do I think of it? Yeah.
• 35:04
  Generally speaking, I think it should be left to the individual
• 35:07
  to mess with it or not. I agree.
• 35:11
  The people of Connecticut did not agree, and they made it
• 35:15
  illegal Once Upon a time, long time ago.
• 35:20
  And then you know that it was also illegal to discuss this
• 35:24
  with their patients. Why?
• 35:26
  Because it's illegal. It would be like a doctor
• 35:29
  discussing a heart removal surgery with a patient.
• 35:33
  Well, you don't do that because heart removal surgery is
• 35:35
  illegal. OK, should the people of.
• 35:40
  Connecticut, through their elected representatives, be able
• 35:47
  to outlaw contraception. Now you and I both think that's
• 35:51
  a fabulously stupid idea. Now when you say outlaw.
• 35:56
  Do you mean outlaw? Within the confines of
• 35:58
  Connecticut, yes. Connecticut doesn't get to
• 36:02
  legislate for any other state. Yeah, see.
• 36:05
  And, and that's the thing where I think Americans today tend to
• 36:08
  go off the rails, and Americans on both sides, the left and the
• 36:11
  right, they, they get it in their head that they're right
• 36:15
  about something. And I'm not arguing whether they
• 36:17
  would be or not, but they get in their head they're right about
• 36:20
  something. And they want to impose that
• 36:22
  view on everybody. Yeah, all the time.
• 36:26
  So there was a court case, Griswold versus Connecticut.
• 36:33
  Made it all the way to the Supreme.
• 36:34
  Court, you've read the Constitution, more importantly,
• 36:38
  you've read Article 1, Section 8.
• 36:41
  You can see all the things that Congress can legislate.
• 36:45
  And then that's by 1968, I want to say when this case was heard,
• 36:53
  the doctrine of incorporation is already alive and well.
• 36:56
  So, you know, we, we are applying certain things, the
• 37:00
  Bill of Rights to the states. So Congress isn't involved.
• 37:06
  So what the hell is the Supreme? Court looking at it.
• 37:08
  Well, the Supreme Court can weigh in on state cases in
• 37:12
  certain sets of circumstances, and you're going to have to find
• 37:17
  a violation in the Bill of Rights somewhere.
• 37:21
  Does the Bill of Rights contain the word contraception?
• 37:27
  No. So right off the bat, you've got
• 37:29
  a high hill to climb now. It doesn't, it doesn't include
• 37:33
  the word Internet either. And clearly we apply the 1st
• 37:38
  Amendment to the Internet. So maybe, just maybe there's
• 37:42
  something in the Bill of Rights that would apply.
• 37:44
  What might it be Ant well? I I need to?
• 37:48
  Clarify something before we move on.
• 37:50
  What is the the hypothetical question you're putting before
• 37:54
  the Supreme Court right now? Is it can a state?
• 37:57
  No, no, it's easy. Yeah, tooth.
• 38:00
  Well, can a doctor the the the the the first question is, can a
• 38:04
  doctor discuss? Contraception.
• 38:08
  Contraception. Right.
• 38:10
  Yeah. And well, that that has all
• 38:12
  kinds of First Amendment problems wrapped up in it.
• 38:16
  Yeah, OK. So.
• 38:17
  Maybe, maybe we got a speech thing going on here, but but the
• 38:21
  other thing. But then that larger question
• 38:24
  that. Larger question, right?
• 38:25
  Yeah. Can Connecticut?
• 38:27
  Outlaw contraception within the confines of Connecticut, to
• 38:31
  which I I looking at the Constitution, see a list of
• 38:36
  powers granted to the federal government and then the
• 38:40
  statement anything not listed here is reserved to the States
• 38:44
  and the people. I would have to throw my hands
• 38:47
  up and say if I were. On the Supreme Court.
• 38:50
  No, we've got nothing to say about this.
• 38:51
  This is a matter between Connecticut and his voters.
• 38:54
  Or. Maybe you could?
• 38:57
  Conclude that a doctor can discuss literally anything with
• 39:03
  a patient now. Yeah, now that's another.
• 39:06
  Matter the discussion thing now that seems to be well OK so now
• 39:11
  we have a problem because yeah now you got a problem cause can
• 39:14
  a. Can a doctor and a patient
• 39:16
  discuss a bank robbery? Yeah.
• 39:19
  Can they discuss I guess there? Is there is going to kill?
• 39:21
  Us can. They can they discuss how the
• 39:23
  patient's going to go home and kill his wife, right, Right.
• 39:27
  And be medically untraceable. But we're never going to say
• 39:29
  that there are limits right there.
• 39:32
  I just give you a limit that everybody would agree to.
• 39:34
  Everybody with a brain in his head anyway.
• 39:36
  Now the the comeback is. Yeah, but those things were
• 39:39
  illegal. To which you would reply, yes,
• 39:40
  but under Connecticut law, so is contraception that that's right.
• 39:44
  So. Justice William O Douglas, in
• 39:49
  order to find a way for the Supreme Court to get involved
• 39:54
  with this, said that there are penumbras and emanations that
• 40:02
  come from specific explicit guarantees in the Bill of Rights
• 40:07
  which apply to this case, and these penumbras and emanations
• 40:15
  yield a right to privacy, heretofore unspoken, that a
• 40:22
  doctor and a patient have. And this right to.
• 40:27
  Privacy changes the question how, for example, well now the
• 40:32
  doctor, what he. Just said.
• 40:34
  Could the doctor now? Is the doctor now free to
• 40:36
  discuss how the guy can kill his wife under that right to
• 40:40
  privacy, I guess we. Would have to ask Justice
• 40:44
  Douglas whether that was was right.
• 40:48
  My guess is he would say no, I didn't mean it like that.
• 40:53
  But look, this is what happens when you get what what we call
• 40:58
  an activist court, right? When a court knows the answer it
• 41:03
  wants to find and then goes and invents A judicial doctrine to
• 41:08
  find it right, all hell. All hell.
• 41:12
  Breaks loose. And and.
• 41:16
  Anybody. Who's been?
• 41:17
  Listening carefully should know that I'm going to talk about Roe
• 41:22
  versus Wade next, because Roe. Versus Wade comes.
• 41:26
  Out just a few years later and now abortion not in the Bill of
• 41:34
  Rights. Abortion is legal everywhere and
• 41:37
  always says the Supreme Court more or less right that that's
• 41:43
  that's an order that's an episode for another day.
• 41:46
  The finer points of Roe versus Wade.
• 41:48
  We're just dealing with it in the large today, abortion is
• 41:52
  legal in the United States everywhere and always because
• 41:55
  why? The right to privacy, which
• 41:58
  doesn't exist in the Bill of Rights.
• 42:02
  It was invented by Justice Douglas about contraception,
• 42:07
  right? So somehow, and I want you to
• 42:10
  really think about this, somehow the right of a doctor and a
• 42:15
  patient to discuss contraception equals the right to unfettered
• 42:21
  abortion. Yeah.
• 42:22
  And and notice what's. Going on here, he, the justice
• 42:25
  invents this right to privacy and unlike any of the other
• 42:30
  rights that actually are listed and described, there is no
• 42:35
  description of this. We don't know what its limits
• 42:37
  are because he just made it up. And, and this is what irks me
• 42:41
  about our history over the past 100 plus years in this country
• 42:46
  is that we encounter something and we want the easy way out,
• 42:50
  which is just get the Supreme Court to bless it rather than
• 42:53
  going through court. We.
• 42:55
  Have an amendment? Procedure.
• 42:57
  If this is a big deal, let's get an amendment.
• 43:00
  That's right. And if if you.
• 43:01
  Are speaking about abortion right now and.
• 43:06
  Notice neither of us. Have offered our opinion on
• 43:09
  abortion. We haven't on this podcast.
• 43:13
  Scrupulously, Scrupulously. And we're not going to today
• 43:17
  either. So nothing I say has anything to
• 43:21
  do with our opinion on abortion. We're talking about the
• 43:24
  constitutionality of, of abortion.
• 43:27
  And we have said many times, or at least I have, I think you
• 43:30
  have too, aunt, that there are perfectly good ideas out there
• 43:33
  that are completely unconstitutional and there are
• 43:36
  very lousy ideas out there that pass constitutional muster.
• 43:40
  No problem. Right, Right.
• 43:42
  So you draw your own conclusions, But the court was
• 43:47
  wrong in Roe versus Wade. It was just wrong.
• 43:51
  It's not a private issue. And I want to.
• 43:53
  Underline what James is saying here.
• 43:55
  He's about to tell you why he thinks it's wrong.
• 43:58
  That has nothing to do with his opinion of the outcome.
• 44:01
  It has to do with the law. Yeah.
• 44:05
  There's nothing in the Constitution about abortion,
• 44:08
  Nothing whatsoever. There's nothing that you could
• 44:12
  construe in the Constitution to get to legal abortion across the
• 44:18
  country. It's just not there.
• 44:21
  So whatever it is, you, you are pro anti, doesn't matter.
• 44:26
  It's a state issue. OK, so let let me.
• 44:29
  Take let me take the pro abortion side here.
• 44:33
  Someone who is who is in favor of abortion is going to say yes.
• 44:39
  But I have the right. To do with myself as I please
• 44:44
  and if you're going if you're going to well, OK, if you're
• 44:47
  going to say I don't then all kinds of other things fall under
• 44:50
  that category. But but it but we've all.
• 44:52
  We already live in a world in which all kinds of other things
• 44:55
  fall into that category. You can't go do heroin.
• 44:58
  My body, my choice. Well, no, not exactly.
• 45:02
  Not exactly. We even have laws about hurling
• 45:05
  yourself off tall buildings. You can't kill yourself.
• 45:08
  Your body, your choice. No, not exactly.
• 45:10
  The second one's moot. Yeah.
• 45:12
  But we. It is, but as a performative
• 45:18
  piece of legislation, it's not OK.
• 45:21
  We we, we do hereby respect life so much that we're going to make
• 45:26
  it illegal for you to take your own, even though we know we we
• 45:29
  can't enforce it. There's something to that that
• 45:32
  makes sense and right. Let me push.
• 45:34
  Let. Me push back on your heroin
• 45:36
  example because I would argue you're you're using a bad
• 45:39
  example to support another bad example.
• 45:42
  That is heroin should not be illegal.
• 45:44
  That that itself is unconstitutional.
• 45:47
  No, no, look it. I.
• 45:50
  I agree with. Everything you just said, I'm
• 45:53
  just giving you an example. When people say my body, my
• 45:57
  choice, they generally have no idea what they're talking about.
• 46:01
  They want it to mean one very specific thing, but it means
• 46:06
  hundreds of different things, hundreds of different things.
• 46:11
  There are places I can't go. There are things I can't take to
• 46:15
  places that I go. And we give laws about all kinds
• 46:19
  of things that that really fall down to my body.
• 46:24
  I can't. Walk outside naked.
• 46:25
  For example, well, it's literally we're talking about my
• 46:29
  body now, but you can't do it. And everybody in Tucson, AZ
• 46:34
  should be very, very grateful that that was on the books.
• 46:38
  But you know nonetheless. You see the larger point here,
• 46:41
  right? It's a state issue.
• 46:45
  Now you can make a couple of cases here depending on which
• 46:49
  side you're going to fall down on.
• 46:51
  If you're pro abortion, you're probably going to say, look, I
• 46:56
  might live in a state that makes this illegal.
• 46:59
  What am I supposed to do? Well, yeah, that's right.
• 47:04
  What are you supposed to do? Because you can't do that.
• 47:06
  Congratulations, that state you live in.
• 47:09
  And then somebody else is going to say on the other side, I
• 47:12
  think that this is murder. If it's legal anywhere, hell,
• 47:16
  anybody can take a bus. If it's legal anywhere, it's de
• 47:21
  facto legal everywhere. And then you add in abortion
• 47:25
  pills that are mailed to people surreptitiously and, and this
• 47:29
  sort of thing, and you've got another batch of problems to
• 47:33
  deal with. But that doesn't make it
• 47:36
  anything other than a state issue.
• 47:39
  That's by definition what it is. And as people get worked up
• 47:44
  about it, they lose sight of the constitutionality aspect of the
• 47:50
  problem. You've you have to face the
• 47:54
  Constitution first, regardless of what answer you want and
• 47:59
  when. Supreme Court justices like
• 48:02
  William O Douglas, he's just one of many.
• 48:06
  Dwight Eisenhower actually once referred to his appointment of
• 48:09
  Earl Warren, the man who decided Brown versus Board of Education,
• 48:13
  something that we're going to talk about with Clark because
• 48:17
  Clark and I are on opposite sides of that case, and I still
• 48:21
  don't know why we have a disagreement.
• 48:23
  He won't tell me. He wants to do it live and
• 48:26
  spring it on me at the last minute like a bastard.
• 48:29
  But OK, I'm up for it. Eisenhower referred to his
• 48:33
  nomination, Earl Warren, as, quote, the biggest damn full
• 48:36
  mistake I ever made. Because he was an activist
• 48:39
  judge. He was a conservative governor
• 48:42
  and he became an activist judge because once you get on the
• 48:46
  court, now you can do whatever the hell you want.
• 48:49
  And this is what Donald Trump found out about Amy Comedy
• 48:51
  Barrett, who he nominated, put on the court.
• 48:54
  And then she started ruling against him.
• 48:57
  And what do all of his acolytes say?
• 48:59
  She's compromised. No, she's Supreme Court Justice.
• 49:04
  That's how this works. Let me go back.
• 49:06
  To a difficult piece of what you just said.
• 49:12
  Now I'm going to take the role of someone who is anti abortion
• 49:16
  and you're going to tell me that this should be a state issue.
• 49:22
  And I am going to say, look, this is this is murder and it
• 49:27
  doesn't matter that it shouldn't be a state issue.
• 49:30
  Murder should be a national thing.
• 49:32
  The Supreme Court absolutely should step in.
• 49:35
  Murder is a state. Crime murders themselves are
• 49:38
  state. Crimes if you went in.
• 49:41
  And murdered somebody in a federal court.
• 49:45
  They would take you out, put you in a state prison, You'd be
• 49:49
  tried. In a state.
• 49:49
  Court and you'd be put in a state prison.
• 49:52
  OK, but the difference is. Every state has laws against
• 49:56
  murder. Murder is illegal in all 50
• 49:58
  states, so I don't have to worry.
• 50:00
  About that being a state. Issue now in terms of abortion,
• 50:03
  now I have to worry because it's not illegal everywhere.
• 50:07
  Yes, you do. You do have to worry and, and
• 50:10
  states have different laws about when we can pull the plug on
• 50:15
  grandma. And the the central question
• 50:18
  that people are wrestling with at the end of life is, is
• 50:22
  grandma still human? Is grandma still grandma?
• 50:26
  And that's exactly the same question that we wrestle with
• 50:29
  abortion, with abortion on the front end of life.
• 50:33
  When does it become human? Because we could all.
• 50:37
  Agree. I think that whenever it becomes
• 50:39
  human, whenever that might happen to be, from that second
• 50:43
  on you, you can't kill it. So our, our, our real question
• 50:48
  is when it becomes human. I mean, you would have to be, I
• 50:53
  think. So wanting in candor and
• 50:57
  conscience to deny that, that's the question.
• 51:01
  That you're probably. Not listening to this podcast
• 51:04
  anyway, and there's all kinds of.
• 51:06
  Things that people are going to point to extenuating
• 51:08
  circumstances that well, but it The thing is alive inside
• 51:13
  somebody else and the viability and all that stuff.
• 51:17
  I'm not talking. About any of that which, yeah,
• 51:19
  which. All of that becomes subtext to
• 51:23
  your original statement. Is this, Is this this human or
• 51:27
  not? Now, if you're going to say
• 51:29
  there are instances in which despite the fact you're dealing
• 51:32
  with a human being, it's OK to kill them, all right?
• 51:36
  And be be aware that that logic could be applied elsewhere.
• 51:40
  It gets very very. Difficult with that because
• 51:42
  every people will say idiotic things like well I'm completely
• 51:46
  anti abortion except in cases of rape or incest.
• 51:51
  Is it not human? Under those circumstances, you
• 51:54
  you can't be the I. I would submit that if you're
• 51:57
  anti abortion, you must be anti abortion under all circumstances
• 52:03
  unless the life of the mother is at risk or or you're basing.
• 52:09
  It on you're basing your argument on something other than
• 52:13
  the question of whether this is a human right.
• 52:15
  But I, I. Would submit that any other
• 52:17
  question is the incorrect question.
• 52:20
  Now notice. I'm not.
• 52:21
  Offering an answer to that question.
• 52:24
  I'm just saying that. That's the essential question.
• 52:28
  Let me go back. Still playing the role of a, of
• 52:31
  someone who is, who is anti abortion.
• 52:34
  And I'm hearing everything you're saying.
• 52:36
  I'm looking around and seeing all these various states in
• 52:39
  which because of abortion, in my mind, you know, humans are being
• 52:43
  killed and I need something's got to be done because this is
• 52:48
  no longer a legal thing in my mind.
• 52:50
  It's a moral issue. And so I'm very happy to have a
• 52:55
  president who packs the Supreme Court with people, justices who
• 52:59
  are going to rule the way I want them to rule.
• 53:02
  And I, I claim now speaking for myself, that what you have just
• 53:08
  done is something extremely dangerous, if indeed you
• 53:13
  achieve. And let's assume that that the
• 53:14
  court packing and all of that achieves your goal, which is
• 53:17
  wall to wall, abortion is outlawed.
• 53:20
  You have also destroyed the rule of law.
• 53:23
  You've destroyed the Constitution as a as a bulwark,
• 53:27
  a guardian of our freedoms against the government, because
• 53:31
  all it takes now is for the other guy to pack the court with
• 53:35
  his people and to decide whatever they want.
• 53:38
  Because the Constitution now no longer stands in the way.
• 53:40
  It no longer protects me. Well, it no longer protects.
• 53:44
  You because you were wrong. No, I mean it no longer
• 53:48
  protects. Anyone.
• 53:50
  No, no, it does it. Absolutely.
• 53:51
  Does it protects people who make the correct argument in the face
• 53:56
  of the constitutional text itself?
• 53:59
  And and look, Donald Trump did pack the court and the court did
• 54:06
  take on abortion. And and what did that court do
• 54:10
  in 2022 was Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization.
• 54:16
  They kicked it back to the states.
• 54:17
  It was exactly the right thing to do.
• 54:21
  That was well decided my my point here.
• 54:24
  Is if you even if you. Feel.
• 54:28
  That what you're the topic at hand is a moral issue.
• 54:32
  If you're willing to go around the Constitution on your moral
• 54:37
  issue, other people are going to go around the Constitution on
• 54:40
  other issues. And you don't have a
• 54:41
  constitution. That's right.
• 54:43
  That's and. That is, that is exactly why we
• 54:46
  need a dispositionally conservative Supreme Court, yes.
• 54:49
  Now a possible answer is, well, go get a constitutional
• 54:54
  amendment. Now you might say in response,
• 54:57
  but that's really difficult. Yes, it's.
• 55:00
  Supposed to be. Difficult, because we're a
• 55:03
  nation of many different people, of many different beliefs and
• 55:06
  many different attitudes and constraints.
• 55:08
  You've got to get us all. You have to get a super majority
• 55:12
  of us agreeing with this thing if your idea is so good.
• 55:18
  You don't have to shove it. Down everybody's throat, yes and
• 55:21
  if you. Do have to shove it down
• 55:23
  people's throats or if you're going to try and go around them
• 55:25
  then might not be that I'm not yeah it maybe it's not good or
• 55:30
  or really you're not interested in living in a in a democracy in
• 55:35
  a Republic. You're interested in living in a
• 55:37
  in a dictatorship. We have had constitutional.
• 55:40
  Amendments that are first class idiocy First class.
• 55:44
  I give you prohibition, right, Right.
• 55:46
  Yes. And then you know. 10 or so
• 55:49
  years later, people got together and said what the What the hell
• 55:51
  were we thinking? Let's get rid of this.
• 55:55
  And and I would submit. That for things not in the
• 55:58
  Constitution, not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
• 56:02
  That's the only constitutional thing you can do to change the
• 56:07
  meaning of the Constitution. But but look at what?
• 56:10
  Look at what we're talking about here, you know, civils, civils
• 56:13
  whole thing is upgrading civilization.
• 56:16
  And it used to be the case that when we had a disagreement, we
• 56:20
  talked about it and we came to some consensus for those of you
• 56:24
  who are confused. By what Anthony is doing, we
• 56:26
  have gotten into So what territory here.
• 56:29
  Yeah, so we have. In the past, sat down and
• 56:32
  discussed things civilly, and that's how we got prohibition.
• 56:36
  That's how we got rid of prohibition.
• 56:38
  We don't do that anymore. We just beat each other over the
• 56:41
  head. And now I argue This is why
• 56:45
  presidential elections have become so important.
• 56:48
  It doesn't have anything to do with the president or his
• 56:51
  policies. It has to do with the fact that
• 56:53
  this is the guy that gets to appoint Supreme Court justices,
• 56:55
  and the Supreme Court is how I beat other people over the head.
• 56:58
  Yeah, that that's right. We're going to exert.
• 57:00
  All kinds of authority, every way we can over those other
• 57:05
  bastards who you all hate. And then they're going to do it.
• 57:09
  And then we're going to do it. Then they're going to do it.
• 57:11
  Then we're going to do it. And this is, you know, as old
• 57:14
  people like to say, this is no way to live.
• 57:19
  This is not the way. To do it, the way to do it is
• 57:23
  to, dare I say it, familiarize yourself with the.
• 57:28
  Text. Of the rules, I can't tell you
• 57:31
  and I I taught constitutional law at the college level
• 57:35
  probably for 20 years. I got yelled at each of those 20
• 57:41
  years when I introduced the case Roe versus Wade.
• 57:47
  Every single time. Somebody wanted to take a swing
• 57:50
  at me and I said look. I'm your con law.
• 57:55
  Professor, and you're 18. What do you think the odds are
• 58:00
  that I might know something that you don't?
• 58:03
  And that usually took enough of the air out of it to move
• 58:07
  forward. And then I would say the
• 58:08
  following. What part of Roe versus Wade's
• 58:14
  decision do you think I'm probably going to get wrong?
• 58:21
  And they would say, yeah, women have the right to abortion.
• 58:23
  Say take it easy. Take, take a deep breath.
• 58:25
  That's not the question I asked. I asked what part of the text
• 58:30
  you think I'm going to end up misinterpreting, and it always,
• 58:35
  literally every time I was able to get these people to admit
• 58:38
  they'd never read the text of that decision right.
• 58:42
  They they don't care about the law.
• 58:43
  They. Care about the outcome.
• 58:45
  The outcome? That's right.
• 58:46
  And they, they commit the same terrible crime against
• 58:50
  constitutional republics that William O Douglas committed and
• 58:55
  that countless other Supreme Court justices have committed.
• 58:58
  And if you don't like talking about abortion and, and I get
• 59:01
  that you, you wouldn't, we, we actually don't either in a lot
• 59:05
  of ways. We could easily talk about the
• 59:07
  Commerce Clause, right? Which which has been abused and
• 59:11
  stretched in every direction to yield every outcome that
• 59:14
  everybody ever wanted. We could talk about.
• 59:18
  Tariffs, that that'd be OK, right?
• 59:23
  The Constitution clearly gives the authority to tariff to the
• 59:28
  Congress. Clearly, there's no doubt.
• 59:32
  And the law that Donald Trump decided to use to justify
• 59:37
  imposing tariffs doesn't include the word tariff, doesn't include
• 59:41
  the word tax, doesn't include any word that's even remotely
• 59:45
  related to tariffs. It's about national emergencies.
• 59:49
  What's the national emergency we have that causes us to have to
• 59:53
  put tariffs on Japanese products?
• 59:56
  Yeah, I don't know. And if it if it.
• 59:58
  Is a national emergency why are we delaying the tariffs yeah, if
• 1:00:03
  it's a national so many of. These talks he.
• 1:00:04
  Announces and then he puts off. And if it's a national?
• 1:00:07
  Emergency. Why can none of us agree on what
• 1:00:09
  the actual emergency is? And these are very.
• 1:00:14
  Very simple, basic political questions.
• 1:00:17
  You started off with the basics. Of talking about the the
• 1:00:20
  separation of powers, and this is an important one.
• 1:00:24
  Anything that has to do with taxing people, anything not.
• 1:00:28
  Not only is it decided. By Congress, but the bill must
• 1:00:32
  originate in the House. Specifically, the Founders
• 1:00:35
  designed it so that the the portion of government that is
• 1:00:39
  most immediately answerable to the people is the only portion
• 1:00:44
  of government that is able to begin the conversation about
• 1:00:47
  taxes and and there you go. Right so and and look, the
• 1:00:52
  separation of powers. It it seems almost tray right
• 1:00:56
  the the framers thought that ambition would counteract
• 1:00:59
  ambition. The word straight from James
• 1:01:01
  Madison's pen. They never thought that.
• 1:01:06
  People in the federal government.
• 1:01:08
  Would put party above country. As a matter of fact, the framers
• 1:01:13
  didn't think about party much at all, or worse to.
• 1:01:16
  Quit party with with country party.
• 1:01:19
  Doesn't appear in, in the the Constitution.
• 1:01:22
  It doesn't appear in the Federalist, not in the way we
• 1:01:25
  use it today, right? They, the word party appears,
• 1:01:28
  but it's not as a political party.
• 1:01:31
  And, and maybe they should have because they were political men.
• 1:01:34
  They knew about parties, right? It's not that they were ignorant
• 1:01:37
  of the very concept. They weren't.
• 1:01:40
  And you know, they also gave us, in addition to the separation of
• 1:01:46
  powers, federalism. And federalism was at least as
• 1:01:51
  important as the federal separation of powers, at least
• 1:01:55
  as because most people at the time thought of themselves as
• 1:01:59
  Virginians first and American second.
• 1:02:03
  Right the your. State was really where it was
• 1:02:06
  at. The federal government, that was
• 1:02:08
  just this thing in Washington or, you know, Rhode Island or
• 1:02:13
  New York, depending on what time we're talking about.
• 1:02:16
  But but Washington, DC, where it came ultimately to rest, and
• 1:02:20
  both of these things, federalism and separation of powers, were
• 1:02:23
  incredibly important. And they were supposed to work
• 1:02:25
  together. And now more often than not, the
• 1:02:30
  three branches of government line up against the people in a
• 1:02:35
  lot of very important ways. They certainly line up against
• 1:02:38
  the Constitution, and the states have become administrative
• 1:02:43
  subdivisions of the federal government.
• 1:02:45
  Yes, they're. Partners now.
• 1:02:47
  They're not. They're not warring actors.
• 1:02:52
  And that was the design, so. You know, to the extent we've
• 1:02:55
  strayed from the design, we're we have all lost.
• 1:02:59
  And what should you be demanding?
• 1:03:01
  What should you be demanding? You should not be demanding that
• 1:03:04
  you win the arguments that you think are important.
• 1:03:09
  You should be demanding that we all play according to the rules
• 1:03:13
  of the game and anybody who doesn't has to go.
• 1:03:18
  Yeah, and the founders? Had this right, They see one of
• 1:03:22
  the one of the great quotes is that we're to be a nation of
• 1:03:25
  laws, not a nation of men. And that's precisely what they
• 1:03:29
  meant, that the law is what matters.
• 1:03:31
  If it starts to matter who's been elected and who's on the
• 1:03:35
  Supreme Court, you've lost the battle immediately.
• 1:03:37
  You're not a nation of law, Tom paints and in.
• 1:03:40
  America, the law is king. There you go.
• 1:03:45
  That sounds about right. Doesn't work out that way of
• 1:03:48
  course, but sounds right anyway. But what what it also means is.
• 1:03:52
  You're, they're going to be laws that you disagree with.
• 1:03:55
  And part of that is living in a democracy, living, how should I
• 1:04:01
  say living peaceably Because the alternative is that, you know,
• 1:04:06
  we start open hostilities against each other.
• 1:04:10
  One of the stop gaps that we had in place that that we've lost is
• 1:04:14
  the differences in laws amongst the states.
• 1:04:17
  And to that extent, to that extent, agree with the with with
• 1:04:21
  abortion or not for the Supreme Court to throw it back to the
• 1:04:26
  states. Let's just take a step back in
• 1:04:29
  that direction of understanding. Look, we disagree with each
• 1:04:32
  other. You go do your thing in
• 1:04:34
  Connecticut, I'm going to go do my thing in Alabama and they're
• 1:04:37
  going to be different things. It was the best.
• 1:04:40
  Decision given the nature of the conflict and the.
• 1:04:47
  Words of the. Constitution it was.
• 1:04:49
  The best answer. You could get in a way it's an
• 1:04:52
  answer that makes literally no one happy, but it beats the
• 1:04:55
  alternative. Yes, by.
• 1:04:57
  A country mile because the constant if the Constitution
• 1:05:01
  doesn't matter, nothing does, and we're just going to be at
• 1:05:05
  each other's throats all the time for the rest of our
• 1:05:07
  history. And again, that's no way to
• 1:05:10
  live. It's just not.
• 1:05:13
  I say it all the time and. And HL Mencken said something
• 1:05:17
  very similar. We get the politics we deserve
• 1:05:21
  and. If you want.
• 1:05:23
  Better. You have to deserve better, and
• 1:05:26
  in order to deserve better, you have to be better.
• 1:05:29
  Now, I, I know the odds of that happening are slim to none.
• 1:05:34
  Indeed, the American founders did not found a Republic based
• 1:05:39
  on the idea of the inherent goodness of man.
• 1:05:43
  They founded it on the inherent worth of the individual.
• 1:05:46
  But that's different. So, you know, hoping that people
• 1:05:49
  will get better is just that. It's a hope.
• 1:05:52
  It's probably not going to happen.
• 1:05:55
  But if we don't? Try.
• 1:05:56
  I can guarantee you it will never happen.
• 1:05:59
  Yeah, and I'll throw. Out as as a more practical So
• 1:06:02
  what? What do you do about this?
• 1:06:04
  The way to start is respecting those around you.
• 1:06:08
  And I don't mean people who you agree with.
• 1:06:11
  Go find someone who you fundamentally disagree with and
• 1:06:15
  have a civil conversation with them.
• 1:06:17
  Have a cup of coffee. Respect the person as a person
• 1:06:20
  and that will rub off and that person will go and do the same.
• 1:06:24
  And before you know it, we're we'll have a much more civil
• 1:06:26
  society and, and you know. One of the greatest rounds of
• 1:06:30
  applause I ever got. I I, you know, you always
• 1:06:33
  remember when a big room bursts into applause because of
• 1:06:37
  something you said, right? Some person raised his hand and
• 1:06:42
  said, how can we make Congress better?
• 1:06:46
  And. I sat back and I said.
• 1:06:48
  Well, I'm not sure you can't. But I would start with a
• 1:06:54
  literacy test. And in order to pass the
• 1:06:57
  literacy test, I would have every member of Congress every
• 1:07:01
  year read the entirety of the Constitution out loud, because
• 1:07:05
  I'm convinced most of them have never touched it, let alone read
• 1:07:09
  it. And I don't think that's a bad
• 1:07:11
  idea. And I don't think that's
• 1:07:12
  necessarily all that onerous if you're of a mood to tell the
• 1:07:16
  rest of us how to live. Anyway, we've we've run kind of
• 1:07:20
  long. We've run.
• 1:07:21
  I like it too. We've run kind of long today.
• 1:07:23
  So probably let's just cut it there.
• 1:07:26
  Brace ourselves for the flood of hate mail to come.
• 1:07:30
  And this week, more than most, take a deep breath.
• 1:07:37
  Sit. In the dark for an hour.
• 1:07:38
  I suggest listening to Marillion when you do that.
• 1:07:40
  But yeah, you do you. And be nice to each other.
• 1:07:45
  Kindness goes so much further than you think.
• 1:07:48
  And you know what? Everybody kind of needs a little
• 1:07:51
  bit of it. So be nice to each other, Aunt.
• 1:07:54
  I'll catch you next week. See you next time, James.
• 1:07:57
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• 1:07:59
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• 1:08:03
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• 1:08:07
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