Latest / The Junto Podcast / E12: Libertarian Roots: Bastiat and Tocqueville

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E12: Libertarian Roots: Bastiat and Tocqueville · The Junto Podcast

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Music.
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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto Podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining us.
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Music.
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Welcome to episode 12, good people. Thanks for coming back. Thanks for listening.
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Thanks for the continued support.
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So today we're going to be talking a little bit about some political figures
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from the 1800s, political philosophers.
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They indeed were not American political figures at all.
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Both happened to be French. I know that sounds odd, but I'm going to lay it on you.
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And the reason I felt compelled to do this episode is that a lot of people,
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I talk about libertarianism a lot, the part, the libertarian party,
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but libertarian ideals and libertarian politics.
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Many people don't know the foundations of libertarianism, and you could probably
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compare libertarianism of today to what would have been called classical liberalism in the 1800s.
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So there's a couple of figures that I want to highlight.
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I want to do a little compare and contrast, and then kind of juxtapose their
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philosophies with modern politics and how their philosophies could either,
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how they hold up and possibly how they could help us or if not.
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So hopefully many of you have heard, not only heard of Frederick Bastiat, but have read the law.
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He wrote a paper, and I want to say he wrote the paper, and it was published in 1850.
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I want to say he wrote it during the French Revolution, 1848 or 1849.
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But Frédéric Bastiat, yeah, he was a French economist.
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He was a political philosopher, and he was a strong proponent of limited government
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and individual liberty.
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Now, for those of you who are savvy to libertarian politics,
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you know that those two things right there are dead on.
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So he believed that, well, there's a few core principles.
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So let me get to the core principles of the law. And that's what the paper was called, the law.
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Bastiat believed that the law existed only to protect individual rights.
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That's life, liberty, and property.
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That anything that it did beyond that was unnecessary and lent itself to potential corruption.
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And he also thought that the law should be a negative, not a positive,
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as to say the law should be passive and that if somebody has a grievance,
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then they go and take it up with a judge or whatnot, but that the law should
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not be out actively attempting to write law, change law.
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It should not be a proactive thing going after people, going after the individual.
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So that's an interesting way to look at that. Now, we're so far beyond that
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these days, it's insane. But, man, what could have been?
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One of the core principles of the law is Basiat's critique of legal plunder.
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So let's define it. What is plunder?
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When the law is used to take from one group to benefit another.
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Ergo, wealth redistribution, subsidies, subsidizing various businesses, etc.
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And some more examples of that. In today's world, this might seem very familiar.
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Tariffs are an example of legal plunder.
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Welfare programs, the government contracting system, these are all USAID.
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Now, there's a big controversy right now over Doge and Elon and Trump having a little breakup.
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But the fact of the matter is USAID was used for plunder, legal plunder,
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for padding the pockets of, you know, you name it, whoever.
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And then another core principle of the law was limited government.
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He very strongly advocated that the government should have very,
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very limited roles, and those roles simply to protect rights.
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Absolutely not to engineer society, not for social engineering,
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not for social experimentation, et cetera, et cetera.
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And then a part of those core principles is the moral foundation of the law.
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The law should align with natural rights.
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Now, you can call those natural rights from simply by existence,
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by existing, you have natural rights.
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And then those of us who believe in Jesus and believe in God,
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we believe those are endowed by our maker, right? Either way, natural rights.
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The law should align with natural rights and obviously justice, right?
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There's no arbitrary power or there's no majority rule when it comes to the law.
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And I know some of the lefties are going to jump all over that because they
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love to talk about democracy, a true democracy, but a true democracy.
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We'll get to that later when we talk about the next guy. And comparing Bastiat
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to modern politics is a little difficult as far as the good things go.
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We are not in a limited government.
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There are people out there who advocate for limited government,
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but that's not what we have.
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We do, as a nation, I suppose we do still sort of respect property rights within
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the legal system. But you see that that gets kind of crapped on.
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You see that there's riots in Los Angeles right now because of these ICE raids.
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And no one there cares one thing about property rights. But more importantly,
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I think he was talking about then was the individual property rights being safe
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from the government, right?
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From the centralized government and doing eminent domain or things like that.
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Or these days you see a lot of asset forfeiture from somebody who's charged with a crime.
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And then the government takes everything they have based on that.
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And then there are still small groups out there who vocally resist,
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you know, overregulation in business or even personal freedoms.
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You see an assault on free speech these days. People.
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Extreme groups, right, activists are out there trying to define what is and
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isn't free speech based on what they like and what they think.
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You know, you're not allowed to say anything ugly. Well, free speech means that
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you can say ugly things if you want.
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Again, you're not free from the repercussions of those things,
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but you should have every right to say those things, whatever they are.
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Free speech. All right. So as far as comparison to modern politics goes,
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there's not a lot that we're doing that aligns with Bastiat's principles.
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However, there's a lot where we diverge from his principles, right?
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The expansion of government roles has been going on since government has existed.
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The government has tried its best to grow into the behemoth that it is today.
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And now welfare, people, now I don't say universal health care positively.
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That's a negative thing when I'm saying it, folks.
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Because I understand the welfare state and the universal health care and income
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redistribution via Social Security even, but via taxes.
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All that stuff is bad. And you all are thinking, oh, Edgar, you hate poor people.
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Well, the same applies to the expansion of government via corporate bailouts
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and via subsidizing one business over another.
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That is modern legal plunder, 100%.
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Devaluing our dollar through inflation, that is legal plunder.
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Foreign aid is legal plunder.
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You know what? I love sports. Oh, no, I don't love sports. I love minor league
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baseball. There's a difference there.
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And I disagree that taxpayers should foot the bill, even part of the bill,
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for a new baseball stadium.
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I don't think that is the taxpayer's job.
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It's not the government's job to step up on behalf of the taxpayer to get a
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stadium in town, right? These teams have plenty of money.
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Plenty of money, plenty of benefactors. So I disagree with that.
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And I disagree with that on every level, minor league, major league,
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whatever, football, whatever it is.
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So that's just another form of legal plunder.
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Where else do we diverge?
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Erosion of individual liberties. That's been happening ever since there's been
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government, starting with, I want to say one of the very first prime examples
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of that was the Whiskey Rebellion.
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But now we have surveillance. We're living in a surveillance state now,
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especially after 9-11, especially after the Patriot Act and the, I think they,
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whatever this big, big bill, whatever the bill is, everybody's fighting over right now.
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I'm pretty sure there's even more surveillance packed in on top of that.
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Regulatory overreach with all these agencies. All of these unconstitutional agencies that exist,
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as opposed to putting something up for a vote to get some kind of law passed
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for whatever it is they work with, they simply write policy and then hold you to their policy,
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whether it's constitutional or not.
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And I'm thinking EPA right now, but there's ATF.
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There's many of them. There's many of them.
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Erosion of individual liberty. I'll give you another example where the government
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has taken an inherent right and then created some kind of license out of it
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so that you know how to pay a fee to exercise your right.
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And that's happened with many of these states that you have to get a concealed carry permit.
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Oh, well, you can freely go buy a gun, but you can't carry it unless you have a permit.
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So they're basically charging you to use your rights. But I'm going to go even
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further and say that professional licensing.
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And I want to give an example, and I don't know if this is true or not,
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but I'm throwing it out there and somebody can double check me on it.
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I believe that a hairstylist has to go through more hours of training than a
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new police officer. I believe that's the case.
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Why? Why exactly? I can understand a cop having to go through a whole bunch of training.
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I can't understand a hairstylist. Well, Edgar, if the government doesn't regulate,
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then everybody's going to have an ugly haircut.
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Well, holy shit, man. Like you go to the place, you get a bad haircut,
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you don't go back to the place.
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The hairstylist either improves or they lose business and go out of business.
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That's, is that oversimplified?
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Yeah. Professional licensing.
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Yeah. I guess commercial driver's license. I don't know, man.
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There's so many different things.
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Yeah. An 18-wheeler is what, a big 20,000-pound death machine if somebody's
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driving who don't know what they're doing.
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But I don't know about the hairstylist. I don't even know about having to get
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a business license for any reason.
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At any rate, sorry, sidetrack.
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Erosion of individual liberties.
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What's another? Tax code. That's legal plunder.
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Taxation is theft. It is legal plunder, like point blank.
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And the tax code is so convoluted that your average Joe can't sit and read it and make sense of it.
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And that's why we all go to H&R Block. We got our tax guy.
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We got tax lawyers that have to do our taxes for us. It's madness.
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It's absolute madness. But that's yet another version of that.
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So we have definitely not taken Frederick Bastiat's philosophy to heart. At one time, yes.
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And then what else? Where else? On a global scale, you have crony capitalism,
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where politicians and big business are literally in bed together doing discussions.
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Investing things, costing you money.
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And then the lobby, you know, the whole lobby system where special interests
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can get their meat hooks via money.
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None of that is within the vision of Bastiat's, the law, as a neutral protector.
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The law should protect your rights and only your rights, individual rights.
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Should not it should not then
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tip the scales toward the
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the corporations and whatnot all right i'm gonna i've talked about frederick
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bastiat a little bit here now i'm gonna slip on over and talk about this next
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guy and then we'll come back to bastiat for those of you who read a little bit of history,
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you may have read Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
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And he wrote that just based on observations of America in the early 1800s.
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And I think Tocqueville, I think he loved America.
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He was French as well, but I think he loved America, really. And so we'll compare.
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His theory a little bit against Bastiat's, and then we'll look at how some of
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those things resonate in American politics.
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So, recap and embassion, right? Life, liberty, and property are inherent natural
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rights that the law's only job is to protect those.
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Limited government, and literally the only scope, is to protect individual rights,
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contract disputes, that sort of thing.
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And then legal plunder, right?
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Getting rid of legal plunder, being aware of it and ensuring that it doesn't go unchecked.
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And then the law had to have some moral foundation that aligned with individual
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justice, individual freedom.
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And everything that, it was definitely not in line with any socialism or collectivist ideals at all.
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And emphasis from Bastiat is on individual responsibility. It's also on a free market. All right.
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So now let's talk about Alexis de Tocqueville. He believed in equality as a
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key component of democracy.
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And for some of you, that will resonate today, right? But...
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He believed that democracy should foster social and political equity,
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and our institutions and culture should reflect that.
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But at the same time, he warned against tyranny of the majority.
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But he was acutely aware that the majority can easily suppress minorities' rights.
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And I mean, you can say majority or minority to mean black and white or male
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and female or business owners and laborers, any of those things,
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right? Any of those things.
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So a pure democracy is not good, folks.
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I know you think it sounds awesome, but anytime 51 can get together and dictate
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what 49 can do, there's a problem there.
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Tocqueville emphasized voluntary associations, and that we have codified in
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the First Amendment, right?
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But he believed in the power of the local community civic organizations to counterbalance
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the big centralized power.
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So he was weary of the centralized power, and he did lean on these community-based organizations.
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And this is evident by he warned of the risks of centralization,
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and I warn of it all the time.
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Where the soft despotism, he calls it, where the bureaucracy,
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just like it is today, the bureaucracy essentially just erodes any local autonomy.
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Now, I stand that the original 13 colonies were meant to be 13 independent little countries.
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I believe that, but we saw what happens. We became the United States and that
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was great and beautiful.
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We fought a civil war to maintain that, that union.
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And now each state lacks any autonomy whatsoever to make their own decisions
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because getting that federal money means you're beholden to the federal interests
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and all the folks sitting in Washington don't give,
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don't give a rat's ass about, Georgia.
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Or about Oklahoma, or Oregon, or Idaho, or anywhere else.
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They don't care. They only care about D.C.
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And then, so, some of those things we just talked about, and again,
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Tocqueville also emphasized the role of religion or integrity,
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but he also emphasized civic participation in order to sustain democracy.
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And and but again also
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to warn against the tyranny of the majority and that's
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what happens when when you get a big centralized government and that's then
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that's where we're at now that's where we're at now so let's talk about Tocqueville
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and and Bastiat and liberty versus equality so,
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So Bastiat prioritized individual liberty and property rights,
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and he viewed equality under the law as a byproduct of freedom, right?
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Everyone should be treated the same under the law.
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Now, the problem we have today is that that wasn't always the case.
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So there are people who are very mad about that. But at some point,
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it needs to start being the case. We need to...
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I would like to say, generally speaking, we do, but we all know that there's
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at least a two-tiered legal system, at least.
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And that's based on the ruling class and then everyone else,
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the people who want to be in charge versus the people who just want to be left alone.
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And Tocqueville saw equality as democracy's sort of linchpin.
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He believed in the equality, but warns that the equality can undermine liberty
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if it goes unchecked. And how can, how, how can equality undermine liberty?
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Well, when you start trying to force unequal things to be equal,
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just based on some edict or just based on whatever, whatever you base it on.
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And I can't remember who said it. Some famous philosopher said the greatest
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injustice is to try to make unequal things equal.
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Some things just are equal opportunity is what we need. You can't force two
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humans from two different backgrounds and two different belief systems and value systems.
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You can't force equality on the masses.
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You can't do it for even a state, you know, of 8 million people,
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let alone country of 360 million or whatever it is.
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So equality versus liberty And then the roles of the government Again,
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Bastiat was a minimalist Whereas Tocqueville accepted a broader role of government But again,
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caution against centralization Threats to freedom So Bastiat's main threat was
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legal plunder And folks,
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you can say what you want about terrorism You can say what you want about crime.
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Legal plunder Is what's doing us
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in Legal plunder is what is Killing
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America right now Because that's where the money
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flows And in Tocqueville His biggest warning was about the tyranny Of majority
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Soft despotism through bureaucracy Where the big machine Just gets over and
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then the bureaucracy And the army we call it a Self-licking ice cream Where you exist to exist,
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You have to continue existing to keep yourself alive, but there's no other functions coming from that.
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You're not busy protecting rights. You're not busy doing anything except existing.
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Civic responsibility. So Basiat emphasized individuality, individual agency, self-reliance.
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Tocqueville was very adamant about the power of community and civic participation,
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which, folks, on a voluntary scale, there's nothing wrong with that at all.
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When I rail against communism and socialism and all these things,
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that doesn't mean you can't voluntarily go out form a collective,
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a group, and volunteer to do things.
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You can volunteer to pay more money to the federal government if you want,
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as long as it's voluntary.
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But freedom of association, all right, that collective civic engagement,
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that was Tocqueville versus Bastiat's sort of individual roles there.
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So both of these guys we've talked about that their philosophies have an application
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to today's politics we may be far beyond it but the relevance especially with
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Basiat concerns about the legal plunder that is the thing,
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that's what Doge was all about trying to cut the waste now yes I was in the
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military but I can tell you that there's 100%,
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waste, fraud, and abuse going on, and they could cut the military budget significantly.
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Now, I don't advocate for a weak military, folks.
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I do advocate for a strong military. I just believe it could be more refined
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and better managed monetarily.
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So application to today's politics, yes, legal plunder, man,
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overtaxation, And all these regulatory agencies, the overreach that they have,
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his philosophy applies to that.
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Completely. And Bastiat did sort of critique collectivism in contrast to Tocqueville.
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The collectivism, again, on small community scale, voluntarily,
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it's not bad. It's good. It's okay.
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But at the federal level, making broad sweeping decisions for hundreds of millions
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of people is not bueno, not bueno at all.
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And then Tocqueville's relevance to today's politics is that the tyranny of
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the majority reflects the vast polarization in today's society and today's cancel culture,
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where the loudest voices will get on the platforms and they seem like the majority,
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and then they either shame people into capitulation or they straight up cancel these people.
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You know, based on whatever infraction, you know, whatever, whatever thing.
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And then the centralization that Tocqueville warned of, oh man, it's long since.
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Yeah, it's long since been here. Long since been here.
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So I think ultimately Basiat and Tocqueville, their views were complementary of each other.
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You know, some nuance there. I think both of their philosophies are relevant
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to today's politics, and it's not because it's ultra-simple or simplistic.
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It's not, and I'll get to some of that in a minute here.
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But I think both of those philosophies are very good philosophies,
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especially Tocqueville.
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I think his warnings, where social media essentially amplifies the,
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like I just said, the tyranny of the majority, that seems amplified on social media.
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And then the pressure you get, the cancel culture.
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Now, I think we're starting to slide out of that a little bit, and I got to hope so.
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I hope we're starting to slide out of that cancel culture a little bit.
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All right. So that's a little bit about Bastiat and Tocqueville.
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And now what I want to do is kind of compare and contrast those two philosophies
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with not just modern politics, but now modern libertarian principles.
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Because there is plenty of core principle overlap there, for sure.
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Libertarianism clearly, obviously, champions individual liberty,
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property rights, minimal government.
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And that's right on board with old Fred Bastiat there.
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Opposition to legal plunder. Libertarians critique anything that spends taxpayer money.
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I don't care if it's a welfare program or if it's corporate subsidies or if
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you're trying to get the electric vehicle tax credit that they had, all that stuff, man.
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Anything that costs taxpayer money, the libertarians are against it.
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And that's it. And especially taxation.
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All taxation. What else? Non-aggression principle. That's a big platform principle
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there for the libertarians.
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Which aligns directly with Bastiat's view that the law should only prevent harm,
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not try to enforce positive obligations.
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So when the IRS gets a bunch of armed troopers to come knock on your door,
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that is not, I say again, is not what our government should be doing.
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Then, of course, advocating free markets, right? Libertarians are all about
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the free market, the true free market, laissez-faire economics.
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Libertarians oppose tariffs, over-regulation, all those things,
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which is very much in line with Bastiat.
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In what ways does the libertarian principles differ or diverge from Bastiat?
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Well, any of you who know anything about libertarians know there's about a million
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subsects of libertarianism.
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So whereas anarcho-capitalists, for instance, might advocate for no government,
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you have minarchist libertarians who kind of advocate for just small government, right?
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So that's slightly different from where Bastiat.
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But Bastiat definitely didn't advocate for no government, but more in line with
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Minarchist as far as small, very small.
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In practical application, the libertarians sometimes, there's a joke out there
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and I can't remember exactly how it goes, but nobody hates libertarians more than libertarians.
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Because there's a lot of guys who They want to push this real Ideological purity
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right I don't want to say extremism But just the purity of the Ideal stuff but.
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Very difficult. Bastiat was a little more practical about that,
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a little more pragmatic about that when it came to focusing on economics.
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You can't really be a purist and get too far in government.
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There has to be some kind of compromise, some kind of compromise.
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So, yeah. And then some modern libertarian challenges, like what?
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There are so many things today that didn't exist in Bastiat's time.
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So his idea of the law, if you read it, it might seem somewhat outdated,
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but really it's not. It all applies.
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And also, Bastiat was, libertarianism didn't exist back then.
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Bastiat was what you would call a classical liberal.
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And his philosophy had actual support. He, yeah, they're classical liberals
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of that time agreed wholeheartedly.
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But some of the more complex things that have come along since his time,
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like immigration, for instance, dealing with intellectual property,
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just the Internet, free speech on the Internet, things like that. He.
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Didn't touch on those things because they obviously didn't exist.
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But I think the general idea can, I think you can get a good idea of where he
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would have went on certain things like that.
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Libertarianism, excuse me, libertarianism, like Bastiat, definitely condemns
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government overreach. I'll give you a good example.
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A modern example is the war on drugs.
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It's been a miserable, colossal epic
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failure that's it
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so the the government agenda the
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war on drugs all the while pumping drugs
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into various places but to to have cash man to i don't want to go too deep and
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then the also libertarians condemn much like i think bastiat probably didn't directly talk Well,
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he did, in the law, if you read it, he directly did.
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His military intervention, unnecessary military interventions,
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especially going to war without Congress voting on it.
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What else? Libertarian, in line with Bastiat, oppose or criticize fiat currency
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in the central banking system, ergo the Federal Reserve.
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Obviously, in Bastiat's view, the Federal Reserve just enables legal plunder
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What is the Federal Reserve but an counterfeit machine that was voted on in 1913?
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All right, all right What are some contrasts and tensions between modern politics
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versus the sort of Bastiat libertarianism?
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It always comes down to individualism versus collectivism, doesn't it?
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Individualism versus collectivism. Modern policies, it's all about sort of these big group outcomes.
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Social justice, man. That's what's going on.
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Social justice. All these climate things.
34:08
This climate. Is climate change a hoax? No, man.
34:12
Is the government response to climate change a hoax? Well, a shambles? Yeah, absolutely it is.
34:18
They put those things ahead of individual rights. and
34:22
that's in direct contrast to libertarianism
34:26
and and boshan and then
34:29
you got pragmatism versus principle so what's practical versus what what our
34:35
principles are politicians prioritize what yeah getting getting voted getting
34:42
voted in on the next cycle that's literally all they care about and padding their own pockets.
34:48
You're not going to convince me otherwise. There's very few that are,
34:52
I think, have the integrity to actually be leaders of America.
34:59
So yeah, politicians are going to do what will get them elected.
35:03
They don't stick with their philosophical, even party platforms sometimes. Yeah.
35:10
Complexity of the modern economy here, globalization
35:13
technology these things
35:18
all lead us down the road to a
35:21
a one world you know
35:23
government a big global government and i love technology man but the government
35:30
is gonna that's where they're going and if we don't get a handle on protecting
35:36
our data it's not going to be long before that's exactly what we are is one world,
35:44
government with a bunch of.
35:47
All them? Subjects. We're just going to be subjects. How can libertarians,
35:54
libertarian party, I mean, libertarianism,
35:58
how can it evolve beyond Bastiat and still hold on to those principles?
36:07
Some of the modern issues in the libertarian, you know, sort of sphere is like
36:13
cryptocurrency, for instance.
36:15
That's a big deal. Net neutrality.
36:19
But a lot of technology has crept its way into politics.
36:24
And those obviously extend beyond Bastiat's day.
36:30
But we can apply the same principles still. Just because the technology's there
36:36
doesn't mean the principles weren't sound and it doesn't mean that our rights change in any way.
36:44
And then some cultural shifts that libertarians focus on, like legalization of drugs.
36:51
I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have been an issue for old Bossy out there.
36:57
But the Libertarian Party focuses on social liberty, right?
37:02
Legalization of drugs. And some even advocate for marriage equality among the sexes, right?
37:11
Man-on-man marriage, woman-on-woman marriage.
37:16
Don't advocate that. And I'll tell you why. The only reason I don't is because
37:20
I don't think the government should be in the marriage business.
37:23
As far as two men getting married or two women getting married, I care less.
37:30
I care less. If you're in love and between you and your holy institution,
37:37
whatever that may be, right on. Go be married.
37:41
I don't think the government has a hand in that. They don't have skin in that
37:44
game. And I've ranted about this before, but I'm never going to get on board
37:48
with that because I don't think it's a non-issue.
37:52
And if anything, I'm on board with deregulating marriage completely.
37:57
And then as far as public perception goes, these days, you know,
38:01
I think the Libertarian Party was born in 1972.
38:04
I think these days people look at, you know, they see on TV and they see like
38:10
Vermin Supreme with a rubber boot on his head. and they equate that to the Libertarian Party.
38:16
Or they see a candidate running for office who's a gay advocate and he seems
38:22
more like a gay advocate than a politician.
38:25
And that keeps the party on the fringes, I think.
38:32
I think it kind of keeps the party on the fringes a little bit. Yeah, I do.
38:37
So the public perception of the Libertarian Party these days,
38:40
If you ask anybody on the street about a platform issue, you will probably get
38:48
a very libertarian answer.
38:50
But then if you ask them what their politics are, they'll they'll give you red
38:54
or blue because they don't because they don't really know any better.
39:00
Asiat's day, his ideas were mainstream in classical liberalism.
39:05
And I wish we had that same kind of credibility amongst the masses here with libertarianism.
39:14
And then modern politics, public perception. I think you see it with this freaking
39:19
Israel and Gaza and then Ukraine and Russia.
39:25
This interventionism.
39:30
Libertarians and basiat as well
39:32
as libertarian party we're all
39:35
about anti-interventionism we are not the world police we shouldn't go around
39:42
saving the day because we don't save the day by the way but we're not the world
39:47
police i don't think we should be messing around with ukraine Not boots on the ground,
39:54
not giving them weapons or money.
39:57
I think, you know, being a third-party host for peace talks, sure, great.
40:04
Offering neutral ground, yeah, for sure. But almost, you could almost classify
40:11
me as an isolationist, only almost.
40:15
All right. As far as relevance and challenges of today, the politics of Bastiat
40:22
and the current libertarian politics,
40:26
as far as Bastiat goes, the core principles endure.
40:34
The warning against legal plunder. That is as relevant now as it's ever been.
40:40
Tax policy, subsidies, corporate welfare, public welfare.
40:46
These are all hot issues and have been at least since 1849, right? At least.
40:55
And then defense of individual liberty.
40:58
That is Basiat's, another one of his sort of core principles that is timeless. Individual liberty.
41:09
Now, as an American people, I don't know how many people really truly understand what that means.
41:18
But once you start getting censored and you start getting surveilled on a daily
41:22
basis, then you'll get it.
41:26
So with libertarians and Bastiat specifically, it's not me.
41:31
I'm not the guy, but I wish we had a figure who was bought into Bastiat as much
41:39
as I am and could articulate and translate his ideals to today's politics and
41:46
to mainstream politics.
41:48
I think that would work wonders for the government.
41:52
And then I don't hear Bastiat discuss that much, but assuming because everybody
42:02
in the Libertarian Party already knows who that is and all that.
42:06
But I think political education is
42:09
very important, and I think he's a very important one to be educated on.
42:13
And then finally, what are some barriers to implementing these ideas?
42:20
What in his time were good and accepted and in our times would be looked at as fringe.
42:27
Because we know that the government, the big government, is entrenched,
42:32
right? It's the bureaucracies are entrenched.
42:36
The corporate Lockheed Martin is entrenched with the military.
42:42
Northrop Grumman is entrenched with the government.
42:46
So these people are going to resist anything that, Anytime you say small government,
42:51
of course, the government is going to resist.
42:53
And what's another barrier, right? So we got the big entrenched interests. That's a barrier.
42:59
And then tragically, we got the public being brainwashed and thinking that the
43:06
government is their solution to everything.
43:09
Health care, education, climate change, etc.
43:12
And that is in direct contrast, opposition of the libertarian and Frederick
43:22
Basiat's core principles.
43:24
And so what we need definitely is some modern adaptation of those ideas,
43:33
translate them to the modern economy,
43:37
the modern digital economy.
43:40
Modern global trade, and translate those, well, Bastiat's ideas specifically,
43:48
but the libertarian ideas as well.
43:49
So, yes, Bastiat, Tocqueville,
43:54
their philosophies align pretty closely with libertarian principles,
43:59
very specifically on individual liberty and the opposition to legal plunder,
44:04
taxation, those types of things.
44:07
Modern politics, never mind libertarians, modern politics diverges significantly
44:13
due to the vast expansion of the government. So, in closing here folks In closing.
44:23
Read the law, and I strongly encourage you to read it. Frederick Bastiat, the law.
44:28
He offers amazing clarity in defending liberty, right?
44:34
It's very plainly written, and everything in there, man, it's just timeless.
44:44
It spans the different political eras, and it's a framework that could be built
44:51
upon without much change whatsoever. Yes, you have to modernize a little bit, but not much.
44:59
But yeah, applying what seems like a very old school philosophy with the modern
45:08
complexities and public expectation as well.
45:12
Like, you know, people are impatient these days.
45:16
The voting public is impatient. I believe that's why DJT trying to push this
45:23
big, big bill, even though there's some significant flaws in that bill.
45:29
There's some good stuff in that bill, but there's significant flaws.
45:32
And once again, folks, just in case you forget, the Mills Clean Bill Act of
45:40
2025, you better believe that if I was in charge, the big, beautiful bill wouldn't be a thing.
45:47
It would be a whole bunch of little bills that everybody had to vote on.
45:51
So at any rate, Bastiat, Frederick Bastiat,
45:56
Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville, both French philosophers who experienced
46:06
America in the early 1800s,
46:09
mid 1800s, and both had solid philosophies.
46:15
Tocqueville on democracy in general with emphasis on civic duty at the community level.
46:25
And then Bastiat with emphasis on individual liberty and small,
46:31
minimal government intervention.
46:34
So think about those. Please go read those, guys.
46:37
Democracy in America by Alexis D. Tocqueville and The Law by Frederick Bastiat.
46:44
But if you're even remotely political, please read those and give it a good critique.
46:53
Like read it, not just to breeze through it, but read it to really critique.
46:59
Then, like I've done here, kind
47:01
of juxtapose it to modern politics and see what can we take out of that.
47:07
And then if you agree with those philosophies, if you agree with those philosophies,
47:12
then go and see which of those philosophies apply to which of the current political parties.
47:21
Yeah, see who's doing the things that you like, that you read,
47:25
that you think, yeah, that makes sense. That's good. And who's doing these things?
47:31
I think you're going to find that your team is not, unless you're a libertarian.
47:37
And so, all right, this has been my political rant.
47:41
This episode has been essentially a political rant on why we can't do things better.
47:50
It don't take any new groundbreaking political philosophy
47:54
folks to govern well there's plenty that have been has been written that is
48:00
perfectly good guideline perfectly good set of rules to govern off of but again
48:06
we've got greedy politicians out there that do what greedy politicians do,
48:12
so look here folks thank you for listening if if you have a disagree with anything
48:18
i've talked about or if you find mistakes and some of the things i've said please
48:23
hit me up you can find us on the jinto podcast.com and that's where you can contact me.
48:34
Find us on all the podcast platforms.
48:40
If you like to shoot guns, you can go to OspreyshootingSolutions.com and look
48:44
around. We got plenty of things going on for June and July.
48:49
If you are interested in adventure-based leadership and teamwork development,
48:55
you can find good stuff at 2teamguys.com.
48:59
That's the number 2teamguys.com.
49:03
Everything from situational awareness to
49:07
land navigation to surviving
49:11
captivity we got we got all kind of stuff over there
49:14
and the common threads there like I said are leadership and teamwork we put
49:20
you in stressful you know situations pretty tough austere environments and there's
49:28
problem solving that has to be done on the fly.
49:32
And you have to manage personalities and convince people to do the things you need them to do.
49:40
So it's very good teamwork and leadership development.
49:45
So that's the number two, teamguys.com. And again, folks, if you want to write a paper,
49:52
something you feel strongly about, and I'll publish it on the website on the
49:57
jintopodcast.com because we do written blogs on there as well.
50:01
So please go and check out my latest couple of written blogs.
50:06
And other than that, folks, I appreciate you listening.
50:10
I'm getting, we're almost to 5,000 now. Hopefully we'll be climbing on up even faster, sooner.
50:17
And again, reach out if you need something. If you reach out,
50:22
if you have any suggestions or ideas, I appreciate you guys. I love you guys.
50:27
Music.