Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 421: Did We Break the Constitution?

Transcript

Episode 421: Did We Break the Constitution? · Words & Numbers

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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony and this.
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Is words and numbers brought to you by the fine people at KHAKI,
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the Center for American Culture and Ideas, and what's new and
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exciting in your world this week.
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Well, a couple things. This past week I was at Samford
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University giving a couple of talks there.
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Our friends Art Carden and Joy Buchanan are there, and the
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university is, I don't know the exact number they told me and
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I've forgotten, but I got the sense it's like a larger end of
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the small schools, maybe couple thousand students, something
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like that. I was having the conversation
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that I do with so many academics of how badly are you observing
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the decline in student quality and the response of the
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administration, the whole thing. You and I have talked about this
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a number of times, but what's surprising was their answer.
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They said, no, they aren't having a major problem.
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In fact, Sanford, across the board are pretty rigorous about
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their standards to which they hold the students.
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And then I expected the next sentence to be, yeah, and our
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enrollment is down, you know, X percent.
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And they said no, their enrollment's actually rising.
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Samford is a religious school now.
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I came from Duquesne University, which was a religious school,
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but Duquesne was more in name only.
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Samford is a serious Christian School.
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And it, it got me wondering, is it the case that schools that
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are doing better in terms of attracting students, maintaining
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rigor, is it the case that they have this thing in common, that
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there's some reason that the students are going there, some
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compelling reason apart from the academics?
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Well, that, that's interesting that you would put it that way,
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right. I've never really thought of it
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in exactly those terms. But I think I can shed a little
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more light on this because I have also gone to Stanford and I
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was very impressed by it. Yeah, very impressed.
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But there are two other liberal arts colleges that you and I
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have been to that were equally impressive in other ways, and
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those would be Hampton, Sydney and.
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Wabash yes, I was going to mention Hampton.
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Sydney, you're absolutely right. Yeah, and.
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Both Hampton, Sydney and Wabash are all male schools, so there
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is something different about them too.
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It's not. They're not religious, but there
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is something about them that is very, very different.
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Yo, you and I have had a College in common that has or had the
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opportunity to distinguish itself in a way like this and
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chose not to. Actually chose to try and be the
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same as all the other four year schools.
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Yep, and it will be one of the first to shut.
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Down yo. But that's for another day.
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I was thinking this past week, it would be interesting to have
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you and me and several of our academic friends, some retired,
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some still in, to have a no holds bar talk about the state
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of higher education. I want a wide enough variety
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that listeners are comfortable that they're hearing all sides
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of the issue. Yeah, it could be a good time.
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I'd be interested. So let's put a pin in that and
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figure out how to make that happen.
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Before I let go of the mic, let me mention one thing that I ran
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across today came in the e-mail. This is from Amazon.
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You may have heard of this. It was news to me.
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Amazon One Medical Have you heard of this?
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Oh sure, and I've heard of everything medical.
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I have never heard Amazon is getting into medical.
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What do I say? Healthcare.
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It's the General practitioner stuff.
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So you got a sore throat or something like that.
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You go to them, but it seems to be like what?
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There's a membership, 100 bucks a year or you can pay on a menu
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basis. It's all the General
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practitioner stuff. You should go see if you can
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find one of those doctors to come on and talk about it.
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It fascinates me. My guess is that they won't be
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allowed to, but you never know. Yeah, but who would have thunk
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that Amazon? Well, it makes perfect sense and
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I think about it, but who would have thought Amazon would come
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to the rescue when it comes to medical care?
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Well, when they started having prescription drug options, I
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kind of saw this coming. Yeah, yeah.
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So we'll see how it all plays out.
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But, and I want to talk about well, and I should mention that
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this is not the foolishness of the week.
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This is a this is an ongoing thing.
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You've got multiple foolishnesses.
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Well, you know, people on Twitter have been asking and
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notice how I still call it Twitter.
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I can't seem to call it X no matter what I do.
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People on Twitter are asking how it is that I even choose a
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foolishness of the week. I saw someone say something
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about that, yeah. It's just such a target rich
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environment that how do you narrow it down?
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And I said, well, it's gotten both much, much easier and much,
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much harder. And that's about where we are.
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But every week I seem to have two things that could easily be
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the foolishness of the week. And I start with one, which is a
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call back to something I've talked about a number of times.
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You're probably sick of hearing about it, but do you remember
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that clown who got himself a rifle and went to that pizzeria
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in Washington, DC to free the kidnap children who were in the
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basement? And it turns out there were no
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children and there was no basement.
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There was a pizzeria. And I keep saying that when you
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say this kind of nonsense, that a certain kind of person is
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going to grab hold of it sooner or later and do some real
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damage. And this is the guy, his name
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was Edgar Madison Welch. This is the guy who did that
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damage. Now, luckily, he didn't shoot a
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person when he was there, although it seems to have been
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his plan. But if you Fast forward to last
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month, Edgar Madison Welch was a passenger stop in a traffic stop
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in a town called Kannapolis, wherever the hell Kannapolis is.
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And he pulled a weapon on the police officers who pulled him
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over, and they promptly shot him dead in the front seat of the
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car. Yeah.
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And I just think, you know this, for those of you out there who
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said, well, maybe there was something to the pizza thing,
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this is the guy you were saying maybe was right and we should
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remember this sort of thing. And thank God he didn't shoot
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someone at the pizzeria. These are crazy people and crazy
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people do crazy things and that's just kind of how it goes
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on to another flavor of crazy. And boy are we going to get some
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hate mail for this. Aunt, you best braced yourself
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because the lunatics in my Facebook and Twitter feeds who
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are anti vaxxers would. They are outsized in their
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number. There are so many of them and
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they say all the same dopey nonsense all the time.
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Aunt, did you know there's formaldehyde in vaccines?
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Did you know there's mercury in vaccine?
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Everybody knew this for decades, right?
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There are reasons for that. Is it?
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They make it sound like some evil scientists somewhere said
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what can we stick in the vaccines that are really harm
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lots of people? It's just ridiculous.
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What? But that's the thing you if you
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drill down on, OK, what's the motivation behind the behavior
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you're claiming? You don't get anything other
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than they're just evil. Well, it's in their interest to
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keep us sick so they can sell us more healthcare.
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But they never bother answering the question how it is that
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lifespan keeps increasing. Right.
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If we were kept sick on purpose, lifespan would flatline or
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decrease. It wouldn't increase.
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We're in a strange place because a lot of the things that were
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labeled conspiracy theories during Trump's first
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administration, it's indicating that there's something to it.
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Now this one, I don't think there's anything to but the anti
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vaxxers. You got to be careful of
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tainting all the other conspiracy theories that turned
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out to be correct by appearing to be crazy people about this
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one. As is often the case, I'm just
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talking about this. Yeah, right.
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So if you're out there and you hear that I'm talking about
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something that's not this, if you're mistaken, I'm talking
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about this for a reason, because now we have a measles outbreak
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in the great state of Texas. Of course we do.
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Yep. And we've got about 100 children
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with measles in a relatively confined area geographically in
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the state of Texas. Now, that's a lot.
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It doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a lot, especially for a
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disease that we had eradicated through vaccination.
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Yep. Well, now it's on eradicated and
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I did a little bit of digging and the death rate for those
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with measles is one to three for every 1000.
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OK, there it is. Now, individually, the chances
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of your child dying of measles or being harmed by a vaccine are
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vanishingly small. But one of the two is growing
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because people have opted out of the vaccines.
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And soon, and I mean soon, children will start to die from
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measles in Texas. It's just a numbers game now.
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Oh, and that's just the start of it.
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How much longer before polio makes a resurgence?
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I've been asking that question for a while.
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Polio is still active in the world.
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There are places you could go visit, contract polio and bring
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it back here. And that will happen,
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guaranteed. So all I'll say is And now we
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wait, which is not the good thing to say at a time like
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this. I made a comment on a
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conversation I ran across on Facebook along these lines, and
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they were talking about the rising incidence of what is the
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thing that males get now? Autism, autism.
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Thank you. The rising incidence of autism
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and how this came about in the wake of vaccines.
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I posted what I thought was a reasonable question of, well, is
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it simply the case that we've diagnosed autism now we're
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measuring it because they were going back to date in the 1950s.
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There was no diagnosis of autism in the 1950s.
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So of course you're going to get a greater prevalence of it now
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because we've named the thing, we identify it, we look for it.
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And I thought that was a reasonable question to ask.
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Boy, did I get Liam based. You're going to.
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Get jumped on for that. And look, it is a reasonable
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question. And if you go back far enough,
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you'll find that there were no diagnosis.
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But you know, back in the late 80s, early 90s, as most of our
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listeners know, I worked in mental institutions.
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And in those mental institutions, autism was pretty
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well represented. And I can tell you this having
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had that experience and having lived long enough, I can tell
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you with 100% certainty that there is more autism now than
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there was then, right? Just a priori, I can tell you
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that that's true. Now, what's caused that, I don't
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know, right? I know it's not vaccines because
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the paper that claimed it was vaccines has been so widely
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discredited and debunked that that's just not the answer.
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Now, the vaccine answer is compelling, right?
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Because the correlation is all over the place.
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But it's roughly the same time period that Wi-Fi became
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ubiquitous. Maybe Wi-Fi didn't.
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That sounds a little ridiculous. Doesn't.
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It well, but it reminds me of the thing back in the early
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2000s when people were talking about the cell phones up against
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your head and giving you brain cancer from the whatever the
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waves are coming off the thing. Yeah, I don't know.
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Here we are. It's just fascinating.
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And it's fascinating that in a time like this, where
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technological advance is everywhere, what we see is an
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emergence of some kind of neo Luddites who just pay no
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attention to it and find fault with everything, regardless of
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where the evidence lies. And it's just a little baffling
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to those of us who live our lives guided a touch more by
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reason. And I would point the finger
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here to anybody who says yes, but I experienced it.
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I know this person X or my kid X got the vaccine in the next day,
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showed signs of autism. Yet that's one, one observation.
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I don't know what else was going on there.
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But that's not how we do science.
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We look at a whole bunch of them and ask is there a trend here?
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1 / n is meaningless. That's an anecdote.
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And you know, here we are and people are going to die, and the
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people who are going to die are going to be children.
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OK, you wanted it, you got it. What are you going to say now?
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So there it is, foolishness concluded.
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13:57
this week. I had asked a couple weeks ago
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and I appreciate you taking the time to dig into it.
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I had asked if we could have a conversation about, and you're
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going to get mad because I can't remember which one it is. 14th
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Amendment The direct election of Senators.
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That's the 17th, the only there were a document that you could
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refer to. The 17th Amendment.
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Now here's the thing. Intelligent people, many that I
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speak to, are unaware that at one time the public at large did
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not elect their senators. Actually, I wasn't aware of it.
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You made me aware of it, but this was some decades ago.
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But the more I think about it, the more I wonder, did we break
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the Constitution in allowing the direct election of senators?
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Well, let's take a broader view for just a moment.
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With that, did we break the Constitution question on the
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table? And instead of looking at simply
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the 17th Amendment, let's look at all of what we call the
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Progressive Era amendments. There were four of them, and I
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would argue that three of these are such bonehead ideas that I
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don't know how anybody came up with them.
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I'll leave it to you to figure out which of the four is the one
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that I would be just fine with. 16th Amendment gives Congress
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the power to levy and income tax. 17th Amendment allows for
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the direct election of senators. 18th Amendment gives us
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prohibition, and the 19th Amendment guarantees women the
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right to vote. Oh, now I'm interested in why
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you mentioned the 19th. Because these are the
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progressive amendments. Oh yeah, but you prefaced it by
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saying these broke the Constitution.
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Yeah, I'm saying this period of our history.
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This period of Constitution. And of these 4 amendments, three
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are completely idiotic ideas. Now one of them, prohibition,
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was undone by future amendment. So, OK, it wasn't that one that
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was stupid, but it didn't break the Constitution.
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No, in fact, I would argue the opposite, that it reinforced it.
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We should be pointing to the 18th Amendment when we want
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Congress to do things that aren't listed in the
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Constitution. Oh yeah, that's right.
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But it's still an idiotic idea. Oh, agreed.
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Agreed. Yeah.
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Right. The 19th Amendment guaranteeing
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women the right to vote. I'm obviously not going to have
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anything to say about that. That seems fine to me.
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I think women should be allowed to vote in exactly the same
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proportion men should be allowed to vote.
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And you can unpack those words however you choose.
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But 16 and 17, man, good God in income tax and direct election
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of senators and people would say, well, clearly the income
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tax is worse. I'm not so sure in the long run.
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We'll see. Always my answer, always we'll
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see. But the original design was for
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the state legislatures to choose who would serve in the Senate on
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behalf of each individual state. So for example, you're in
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Arizona. Arizona's legislature would
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elect Arizona's 2 senators. Yeah, elect might not be the
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right word. It might be an OK word.
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They would decide. Oh, really?
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So by any means they like. I don't think there was any
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qualification given. How interesting.
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So given that, I would imagine, for example, a state legislature
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could say we hereby grant the power to appoint the senators to
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the governor. I don't think so.
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Hang on a second, I'll just read the relevant text.
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So James is doing what I didn't do.
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He's actually going to the Constitution to see what it
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says. I made the mistake of trying to
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Google that and I'm just idiotic.
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I'll go straight to the document myself and be done with this.
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All right, you ready? Yep, the times, places and
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manner of holding elections for senators and representatives
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shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature
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thereof. But the Congress may at any
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time, by law, make or alter such regulations except to the places
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of choosing senators. So there you go, it's left at
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the state. OK, so given that a state could
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on its own say we're going to allow a popular election.
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Yeah, could. And that did happen.
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I see. In the years leading up to the
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17th Amendment. So that's an option.
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It did happen with greater and greater frequency, as you could
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well imagine, right? Because only after that started
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did other people start saying things like, well, they get to
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do this in their state, Why don't we get to do it in our
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state? But, and here's the thing, we
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have to remember what the Constitution was designed to
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accomplish. And one of the things the
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Constitution was designed to accomplish was to limit the
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power of the federal government. And the bulwark against federal
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power was going to be the states, right?
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So a number of things were woven into the Constitution, giving
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states all kinds of authority to do all kinds of different things
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in order to to keep the federal government from becoming
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unwieldy and overbearing. And this is not what I recall
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being taught in high school. I don't recall any mention of
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the states, but rather the federal government's power was
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limited by spreading it across 3 Co equal branches.
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It was limited that way too. There were two very distinctly
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different forms of limitation. 1 was the bulwark the states would
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provide. And remember, at the time of the
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founding, people understood themselves to be citizens of
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their states 1st and citizens of the United States well after
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that, right? People were Virginians, not
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Americans. And there's an interesting thing
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I've talked about it before in our etymology, the verb used for
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the United States, the form of the verb to be used with the
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United States was always the plural. the United States are
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whatever. Only after the Civil War do you
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start seeing, and this progresses until the Progressive
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Era do you start seeing that shift in language the United
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States is. And you might think, well,
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that's not a big deal, but that's a profoundly big deal.
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That illustrates what regular people, how they perceive of the
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government and of the structure under which they live.
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By the time you get through the progressive movement, it's the
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United States is almost 100% of the time.
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And that is illustrative of a real shift in thinking.
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And there's another shift in thinking that happened right
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along with it. At exactly the same time, as the
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federal government became more powerful, people became less
21:24
frightened of it, which would baffle the founding generation.
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They said frequently that you should be very, very, very
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nervous about federal authority. And why?
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Well, because you should be very nervous about any kind of
21:38
authority, simply. But the more power you give it,
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the more frightening it becomes. In power to the federal
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government is a lot different than power to the state
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governments, which under the Constitution, pretty much the
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state governments are giving carte blanche.
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They can do whatever they want. The Constitution limits the
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federal government. That's right.
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It was even more so than most people think, because if you go
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to the First Amendment, what does it actually say?
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No state shall dot dot dot establish a law respecting the
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establishment of religion. That cuts both ways.
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The state could have a state religion, just as it might not,
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but the federal government can have nothing to say about it
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either. Way.
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Oh, I see. OK, so it says that the federal
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government may not Congress. Congress may not do it and say
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anything one way or the other. That's interesting.
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Yeah, because that's read to be that the government is not to be
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involved with the church. But that's only at the federal
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level. So how did we get from there to
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here? The short answer is we got from
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there to here with the doctrine of incorporation, something
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people can go look up if they want, whereby the Supreme Court
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reads the Bill of Rights through the 14th Amendment.
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OK, But that brings up a rather interesting thing when you start
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thinking about the Supreme Court cases that led to what I would
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call a rather pernicious doctrine, the doctrine of
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incorporation. Because what happened prior to
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the direct election of senators? Well, the Supreme Court, I mean,
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how do you get on the Supreme Court?
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You're nominated by a president, approved by the Senate, a bunch
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of senators chosen precisely because they were going to
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represent their states in a very strong manner.
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They're going to choose a certain kind of person to be on
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the Supreme Court. One who protects state rights.
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Over time they did that less and less.
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States rights went out the window, and then you get the
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doctrine of incorporation, among a million other things that
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never would have been possible under the original design right.
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The Senate was a bulwark against federal encroachment of all
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kinds. Why?
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Because everybody in the Senate was chosen by their states
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precisely because they would be that.
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So I just want to hit briefly doctrine of incorporation.
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Am I correct? The doctrine says that the 1st
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10 amendments apply to the states as well as the federal
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government. Careful, aunt, careful.
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Only the amendments the court likes.
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Right, OK. So not that pesky Second
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Amendment. No, not that one, right?
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Certainly not the 9th or 10th Amendments.
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So in mentioning the Second Amendment, you've hit upon
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something that I find strange, that people who are big about
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the Second Amendment, you know, they're saying, look, I have
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this right to bear arms and protect myself and all of that.
24:45
And the federal government should not be imposing any
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restrictions. But I never hear them saying the
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next sentence, which is But by a strict reading of the
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Constitution, I should be OK if my state imposes those
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restrictions. By a strict reading, yes, but
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not by a reading in the world in which we now live.
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Right. So in other words, you're in
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this strange place where someone who is a Second Amendment
25:07
advocate would have to also be an advocate for the doctrine of
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a corporation. This leads to all kinds of
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intellectual discomfort for everything.
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Right. Yeah, yeah.
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And when you deviate from a founding document with new and
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novel legal theories, well, this is what's going to happen.
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Look, we're left right now with a group of people on the
25:31
American political right who would say the Second Amendment
25:34
gives them an absolute right to keep and bear arms.
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And for the record, I'm very sympathetic to that perspective.
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The plain language of that amendment is such that the
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government does not have the right to disarm me in any way,
25:49
shape or form. Those same people can read the
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14th Amendment where there is plain and obvious language about
25:57
birthright citizenship and say, yeah, but that doesn't mean it
26:00
what? It looks so unique.
26:02
Right. Do the words on the page matter
26:04
or don't they? Do they only matter when you
26:06
like it? And you know, we've been here a
26:08
lot of times. And the answer most people will
26:11
give us? No, of course not.
26:13
But then they live according to that answer anyway.
26:17
This brings us pretty far afield from the 17th Amendment, doesn't
26:20
it? Yeah, but.
26:20
Before we leave this doctrine of the corporation, I want to
26:23
underline it just in case anybody missed it.
26:26
Under the original intent of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights
26:31
did not apply to the states. They only applied to the federal
26:35
government. So if Virginia wanted to control
26:38
the press or outlaw guns or do whatever, that's perfectly fine
26:42
under the original Constitution. Yeah, that's right.
26:48
There could be and were state religions.
26:51
It says Congress shall make no law.
26:54
All right, long as Congress doesn't make a law.
26:56
That's fine till you get to the late 1950s or so where all of a
27:03
sudden we can read portions and, and just think about how
27:06
ridiculous this sounds. We could read portions of the
27:10
Bill of Rights through the due process clause of the 14th
27:13
Amendment to arrive at very different answers.
27:18
Why don't you? What's the difference?
27:19
Why don't you just read the words on the page?
27:22
What does the Bill of Rights have to do with the due process
27:25
clause of the 14th Amendment? And here we are, because from
27:30
the 1950s on, it became much more important for justices to
27:36
get the answer they wanted instead of the correct
27:39
constitutional answer. And there's always been a fair
27:41
amount of that, even before this period.
27:44
But from this point forward, it becomes utterly decisive.
27:48
This is why people worry so much now about who gets on the
27:52
Supreme Court. There's no lie big enough that
27:56
an opponent won't tell to keep somebody off the court.
28:01
There's no lie big enough. I mean, people engage in the
28:04
politics of destruction when they look at Supreme Court
28:08
nominees. I've referred to it recently as
28:13
a benevolent dictatorship. Yeah, yeah.
28:17
It was referred to in the founding era as the least
28:19
dangerous branch. And it's turned out to be the
28:21
most. I'll just say no, that's
28:24
incorrect. It is not the least dangerous
28:26
branch, not by a long shot. The argument was solid, right?
28:29
Because it has neither force nor will, right?
28:32
It can't do things, it can only decide things.
28:34
And turns out the power to decide is plenty good enough.
28:38
Yeah. So whatever the justices say the
28:41
Constitution says, that's what the Constitution effectively
28:44
says. It is, by definition,
28:46
constitutional. And here's where you find the
28:50
real rub when it comes to the 17th Amendment.
28:53
Because Once Upon a time, the state actors decided who got to
28:59
sit on that court. And this was part of their
29:02
calculation. Is the man going to undermine
29:06
state power? Is it going to be a problem to
29:09
us long term? Interesting.
29:15
Now, what else can the Senate do essentially on its own?
29:20
Well, in this case, the complete Senate with the President.
29:23
The Senate can come up with treaties and alliances.
29:28
Treaties. And if a treaty is passed, it's
29:32
the Senate and the President. The House has nothing to do with
29:34
it. If a treaty is passed, it also
29:38
brings with it the force of the constitution.
29:43
Huh. Seems that the stakes are
29:45
actually rather high when it comes to treaties.
29:48
What if we had a treaty tomorrow saying that we were only going
29:51
to use electricity 6 hours a day?
29:55
That would actually be the constitutional answer.
29:59
Really, because when you think about treaty and you think about
30:03
interrelations between countries, not a restriction on
30:06
our own, but. We would have an agreement with
30:09
all countries that no one would use more than six hours of
30:11
electricity. OK, I see.
30:14
Nice and easy. So wouldn't it be wise for the
30:17
senators to really care about their states, because the states
30:27
are going to be the bulwark against this kind of
30:29
foolishness? And yet we've decided no.
30:35
And we decided no in the name of enhanced democracy.
30:40
I said a couple of weeks ago that what Churchill often said,
30:44
the answer to the problems of democracy is more democracy.
30:47
And I think this might be the only thing that Churchill was
30:50
ever wrong about, such as my love for him.
30:53
And boy, I'm God, I'm going to get hate mail this week.
30:57
I think the answers to the problems of democracy, I'm more
31:00
in line with Madison, who would have told you the answer is less
31:04
democracy. So, you know, you should expect
31:09
some awful results over time with this sort of thing.
31:16
Sure, of course you should. And it's precisely what's
31:20
happened. Now, someone who's been paying
31:24
attention to this conversation might come back and say
31:26
something like, well, you guys are hitting hard on the dangers
31:29
of federal power, and you're arguing that we should return to
31:33
the era of more state power. But what does it matter?
31:37
You just move the power from one place to another.
31:39
To which I respond, there's a big difference between federal
31:43
power and state power, And the difference is when the power is
31:47
in the hands of the state government.
31:49
I don't like what's going on. I have a last resort and my last
31:54
resort is to pick up and move to a different state.
31:57
You know, that's the perfect economist answer to this
32:00
problem. It's the right of exit, and you
32:03
don't really have the right of exit at the federal level.
32:07
People say if you don't like it, you should just leave.
32:09
Where am I going to go? Right.
32:11
Yes. There's no place I could just
32:13
pick up and go. You've got to get permission
32:16
from the country you're going to, and even then, you probably
32:18
won't be allowed to work until you fulfill whatever
32:22
requirements I want. Yeah, but it's not nearly.
32:25
It's not even in the same universe as the hassle of moving
32:28
from one state to another. Yeah.
32:31
And anybody who's moved from one state to another knows it's a
32:34
bit of a hassle, but it's not really that much of one.
32:38
But I've done it tons of times. You've done it too.
32:40
In the time that I've known you, you've done it.
32:42
And I would rather not do it, but there's all kinds of great
32:46
reasons to go ahead and do it. And is it a hassle?
32:49
Yeah. Is it a deal breaker?
32:50
No, not by any stretch. And if the Neo Nazi party of
32:55
Arizona came into power tomorrow in Arizona, I'd leave.
32:59
I'm putting up with that. I'd be out of here.
33:04
So there you go. It matters.
33:06
So what was the bulwark against federal foolishness in the past?
33:10
The structure of the government itself.
33:13
What's the bulwark against federal encroachment now?
33:17
There really isn't one because federalism ceased to exist as a
33:25
competitive enterprise. Federalism.
33:27
It used to be called dual federalism, and the States and
33:30
the federal government contested for things.
33:34
They actually fought it out. Now it's called cooperative
33:37
federalism, where the federal government decides to do
33:40
something and the states line up behind to decide how to help,
33:43
because federal funding comes back to the states for those
33:46
reasons. What do we need federal funding
33:48
for? The enhanced vision of
33:51
legislation that we now have, legislation that touches every
33:55
part of American life, legislation and regulation.
33:58
When did we get that? In the same Progressive Era that
34:00
we got these amendment. So let's go back to getting
34:04
these amendments because the counter argument here is that
34:09
this was all necessary because of slavery, that we were in a
34:14
situation where, yes, the states had this power, they could do
34:17
whatever they want. The Bill of Rights did not apply
34:20
to the states. And because of that, you get
34:21
slavery. I don't see what that has to do
34:24
with the 17th Amendment. Well, slavery plays when you
34:28
think about things like the Civil War Amendments, 1314 and
34:31
15. By the time you get to the
34:33
Progressive amendments, I mean, race gets talked about all the
34:39
time. But I'm asking about direct
34:40
election of senators. It's not a racial thing.
34:43
And I'm speaking more broadly about applying the Constitution
34:47
to the states, to rolling back state power.
34:52
Well, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments accomplished that.
34:58
What more can you say? The states cease to matter the
35:01
same way they once did in the wake of the Civil War, precisely
35:04
because of these 3 amendments. Is that a good thing?
35:09
Well, it was a necessary thing. I don't see any way around that,
35:14
which is why today when people say, well, we should do X, my
35:17
first question is, where would that leave for the possibility
35:20
of things like, oh, I don't know, slavery?
35:23
And if there's an answer that isn't the right one, you have to
35:27
move on because we've got that in our history.
35:31
But, you know, we're looking at the 17th Amendment here.
35:34
And what if we got the states have ceased the matter and the
35:37
federal government, the three branches, jealously contesting
35:41
power? Well, turns out if you get a
35:46
case where the legislature finally realizes that it can
35:49
create a bureaucracy and then put that bureaucracy under the
35:53
purview of the executive branch, who's going to complain?
35:58
Right. Because the Congress is getting
36:00
its way, and the federal branch gets more authority every time
36:04
the bureaucracy is increased. And the Supreme Court has just
36:08
said consistently, yeah, OK, go ahead.
36:10
Yeah. So now there's literally nothing
36:15
holding back the federal government.
36:18
There is one thing holding it back and that's the laws of
36:22
mathematics, that eventually you get big enough, and we're
36:25
starting to feel it, you get big enough that you just simply
36:28
can't borrow more. You can't continue to expand
36:31
without creating inflation or driving up interest rates or
36:34
what have you. Yeah, that's right.
36:36
And in many respects, we're now falling apart at the seams
36:41
because we just couldn't ever say no.
36:46
That sometimes no is the correct answer When people want
36:49
something and we typically don't say it.
36:52
We've been spending well beyond our means for decades, even
36:57
almost a century. Really.
36:58
Well, it's interesting you bring this up because I've been
37:01
watching this business with Doge and these proposed cuts and all
37:05
of this, and people were asking me about it, the economic
37:08
implications. And frankly, I don't think the
37:11
economic implications are that great.
37:13
You know, if DOGE gets its way on everything, it's going to be
37:17
a drop in the bucket where the federal budget is concerned.
37:20
It will not be $2 trillion. But I think there's something
37:25
big brewing. It's not economic, it's
37:27
psychological. The last time the federal budget
37:30
shrank from one year to the next was 1953 to 1954.
37:36
There was a little bit of shrinkage, like a fraction of a
37:38
percent, 2010, 11-12, but that was rolling back the stimulus
37:44
from the housing crisis. But the only real actual cutback
37:48
was 1953 and 1954. And that brings me back to the
37:52
psychological effect that these proposed cuts at the moment are
37:56
showing Americans that it is possible to restrain the federal
38:00
government. Indeed necessary.
38:06
I offered a wager, as I often do for anybody who thinks the
38:10
budget will be balanced next year.
38:14
I'll take that bet literally every time with however much I
38:17
have to borrow to cover it. So certain am I that it will not
38:21
be balanced. I got one guy that wants to take
38:23
me up for a $200 bet. I was hoping somebody would sell
38:26
put my house up against yours. I was hoping for that level of
38:30
acceptance because it's not going to happen.
38:33
The budget will not be balanced. You can't cut $2 trillion in a
38:37
year. Not possible, especially in this
38:41
nickel, dime way that DOGE is going about doing its business.
38:44
And I'm all for rooting out whatever waste you can find.
38:48
I, I really am. I'm just saying that there's not
38:51
enough waste, right? Hard decisions will have to be
38:53
made. Things will have to be cut that
38:56
we are unwilling to cut. Social Security and Medicare,
38:59
They will have to be cut significantly in order to
39:03
balance the budget. And until you hear people
39:06
saying, all right, we've got a majority that's willing to
39:08
figure out how to cut these programs, you will not have a
39:11
balanced budget. It's just that simple.
39:15
It's interesting how Doge is going about this.
39:18
And apparently this is the same strategy that Elon used at Tesla
39:23
of firing basically everybody and then immediately rehiring
39:28
the ones you want, which seems strange at first, but then I was
39:32
thinking about it. And it occurs to me if you have
39:35
a tremendous amount of waste and redundancy, it may be easier to
39:40
wipe the slate clean and then say, what do we need and bring
39:44
those people back. It's the only way to get around
39:48
the problem of institutional inertia.
39:52
You're going to have this problem.
39:53
And look, the federal government has become huge relative to what
39:57
the founders thought it would be.
39:59
I mean, it's a gigantic. How do you deal with a thing
40:03
that is gigantic? Literally millions of people
40:06
work for the federal government. What do you do about that?
40:09
And you'll find that there's not really an easy cut and dry
40:12
answer. And anybody who's pushing easy
40:14
answers is lying to you. And you know, it really is.
40:19
I say it all the time. It is that simple things are
40:21
always pretty simple. That doesn't mean they're easy.
40:25
It it just means they're not complicated, right?
40:27
You can understand just about anything if you take an honest
40:30
look at it, but most people don't bother doing.
40:34
That kind of brings us back to where we started, right?
40:36
We've got a number of people who perceive the world only through
40:39
a partisan lens, where their team is always right and the
40:42
other team is always wrong. Well, if that's right, then
40:45
problems would get solved. And we see that problems never
40:50
get solved, which should lead everybody to the belief that
40:54
both sides are wrong. That's the only logical
40:58
conclusion 1 can come to when looking at the totality of the
41:02
problem over time. And they'll instead say, well,
41:06
it's only bad because that Biden was in charge for four years.
41:10
He made such a mess in four years that we can't clean it up
41:13
in four years. Please.
41:16
And then what's going to happen? The next Democrat will come in
41:18
and say exactly the same thing and people will believe it.
41:23
You shouldn't, but they will. And and there we are.
41:26
Now, what role does the 17th Amendment play in all of this?
41:30
I think a sneaky 1, because the Supreme Court would have decided
41:35
any number of cases very, very differently.
41:38
If the Senate was different, legislation would have looked
41:42
very, very different, right? The treaties would look very,
41:46
very different. And when you change a
41:50
fundamental feature of a system, it takes a long time to see the
41:56
unintended consequences. And we live with the unintended
41:59
consequences of the 17th Amendment every day because
42:03
generally speaking, broadly speaking, we live with the
42:05
consequences of the Progressive Era every day.
42:11
And that's all the time we've got this week on words and
42:13
numbers. Until next time, send us.
42:15
E-mail wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com.
42:19
Try to be nice to one person who doesn't deserve it till next
42:22
week. Can't take it easy.
42:23
See you next week, James.