Great Britain well we had Justin in our community chat came forward and said hey would you mind doing something similar with respect to the Constitution we said that sounds like a great idea we don’t think we’re going to be able to do this Justice in just one podcast episode so
We decided to go over a couple of things that we’re going to talk about today one is talking about why do you even need a written constitution in the first place and this may seem obvious but it’s actually really unique all the way up until when the Constitution was ratified
This was not the norm within within history but the other thing that we really want to get to is we want to talk about the most I would argue deliberately misrepresented portions of the Constitution not to mention at least two we might talk we might talk about a
Couple more but at least two amendments that were absolutely horrible and still exist within the United States Constitution all of that and more coming up on this episode of making the argument on another note if you joined us for Tuesday’s episode where we reacted to the sound of freedom and are
Interested in viewing the whole interview with Victor Martin you can do so on the making the argument YouTube channel I’ll leave a link in the description of this show for that we’ve had some great conversations going on in our community chat and if you haven’t joined already hope you’ll go down to
The link in the description click that link join us there would love to get to know you and have a conversation with you about this topic after the show all right as always I’m your host Nick Freitas member of the Virginia House of delegates but other than that a
Reasonably good guy my beautiful bride Tina Queen of the bees is not here today but will be returning I I hope we all hope we do hope all right we do hope doesn’t care about the Constitution that’s what it is yeah everyone like Queen of the bees know that you are you
Are taking her absence she might be in the chat taking her absences demonstration of her lack of loyalty for the United States Constitution no she she’s got things to work on today uh but she is sorely missed of course our political prognosticator and Resident historian there should be a
Good episode for you Christian this is based on our um chats before we started going live I feel like there’ll be some disagreement on a couple things too oh I have a feeling Christian and I might I don’t I don’t think we’re gonna yell at
Each other no no no not like that but I’m just kidding I’m totally gonna yell more like the typical I’m gonna be like hardcore dooming and Nick is going to be explaining why we shouldn’t be dooming and I I I don’t know it’ll be an interesting and interesting episode and
Then of course we have our producer of producers Nicholas Hamilton the good Hamilton the one that doesn’t like Central Banking it is a pleasure to be here and I got to tell you today Hamilton if you weren’t entirely sure or if you thought the only reason why we
Call you the good Hamilton suggesting that perhaps Alexander Hamilton is not as good as some people think he is uh it is not just about Central Banking we’re going to give some other reasons today and and we’re not going to talk I’m not I’m not well I’m not gonna
Christian probably will I’m not gonna totally dump on Hamilton but I’m going to kind of dump on Hamilton not this Hamilton Alexander not the good Hamilton for anyone who’s interested my middle name is actually Alexander oh my gosh all right don’t hold it against me so
Let’s get let’s get right into it all right created in 1787 and ratified in 1789 the United States Constitution has stood the test of time but interestingly enough an overwhelming majority of Americans I would argue don’t really understand the structure of the Constitution why it
Was created the way it is in fact we’ve had many Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said in an interview that she had to advise someone on how to create a constitution for their country she would not use the United States Constitution she would use a constitution more like that in South
Africa and given South Africa’s current um well current difficulties we can just say that we’re glad Ruth didn’t win the argument on that one but here’s here’s what we’re going to go over we’re going to go over why does the Constitution exist in the first place
We’re gonna go a kind of a brief overview of the the various sections we’re going to really hone in on on the portions that are you know critical not to say that you know they’re not all important but we’re going to hone in on the portions the articles that are
Critical to the establishment of the federal government and what that actually means um and then we’re going to go through the Bill of Rights and then we’re going to talk a little bit about amendments 11 through 27 and our our main focus is going to be to really hone in on those
Parts of the Constitution that are the most contentious right the the we’re going to talk about things like the Three-Fifths Compromise that the constitution really say that that black Americans were only three-fifths of the person is that was that really the intent of the Three-Fifths Compromise right does the
General welfare Clause you know or the interstate commerce clause convey to the federal government all kinds of wide sweeping Authority we’re going to talk about all of those things and we’re going to equip you I hope with the arguments that you need to be able to
Again respond to what I I think are some of the most deliberate misrepresentations of the Constitution so let’s go ahead and start off with why do we have a constitution in the first place here’s the answer in one sentence because the founding fathers studied the history of Rome oh okay all right so
There’s well let’s look at first we we brought I brought up this interesting argument this comes from constitutionfacts.com and they argue that the the reason why this debate started on whether or not we were going to have a federal government was the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation here’s what they listen
Are each state only had one vote in Congress regardless of size Congress didn’t have the power to tax or to regulate foreign and Interstate Commerce that does sound like a weakness to me but there was no executive branch to enforce any acts passed by Congress there was no National court system
Amendments to the Articles of Confederation required a unanimous vote and laws required a 9 13 majority to pass in Congress so what they’re arguing is that the the United States right really was was not a thing because the Articles of Confederation essentially um provided such a a loose and um in
Their argument ineffective Confederation of these sovereign states right that’s the most important thing to remember right off the bat here is we’re talking about 13 independent states right they didn’t see themselves necessarily as being one country they certainly had a great deal in common they had fought the Revolutionary War
Together they had you know declared their independence together but they still largely saw themselves as independent states with some sort of like loose Alliance and the reason why is because they were very concerned about losing that individual sovereignty at the state level they didn’t want some sort of centralized Authority
That was going to Reign Over them and dictate the internal operations of their states right they felt like we just fought that we don’t want to create it now on our own continent however there were problems with respect to the states being able to not only coordinate with
One another uh but also to be able to provide for a decent defense from any sort of external threats but also solidifying the the unity between the individual states um in in order to be able to achieve what what many of them thought was going
To be kind of the future Destiny of the United States and that was something that went far beyond the individual 13 colonies the individual 13 states and what was going to be the process for being able to to govern uh Collective action between these entities so you had
Two different groups go ahead and scroll down here a little bit two main groups that we’re kind of talking about this the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists now I think most people that are even remotely interested in the United States Constitution have heard of The Federalist Papers which was
A series of I think was 85 articles written under Publius there was three authors there was Alexander Hamilton there was John Jay and there was James Madison and the two primary authors were Alexander Hamilton and James Madison and what these letters were was their attempt right they they had attended the Constitutional Convention
And I understand that the original constitutional convention was not organized to set up a new constitution it was just meant to address with what people generally saw as inherent problems within the Articles of Confederation and the convention actually went beyond what its stated objectives were now simply because that convention got
Together and said here’s a constitution we think you should go for it doesn’t mean that it went into effect right each individual state had to ratify it and so every state was going through this own internal debate within their respective legislatures to vote whether or not they were going to adopt this Federal
Constitution and so Madison Hamilton Jay were among people that were trying to convince the state legislatures to adopt the the Federal Constitution and then the Anti-Federalists which would you compose the people you look here it says during the push for ratification many of the articles in opposition were written
Under pseudonyms such as Brutus Sentinel Federal farmer but some famous revolutionary figures such as Patrick Henry came out publicly against the Constitution so remember Patrick Henry right he was the guy within the Virginia House of Burgesses came right out and said Give me liberty give me death he
Was a main proponent of Virginia citing the Declaration of Independence breaking away and fighting against England came right out and opposed it so the Federalists were essentially making an argument and if you look if you look at just about every Federalist paper what they are doing is they are assuring
People and specifically people with Anti-Federalist sentiment they are assuring them that this new Federal Constitution is limited in nature and is not going to be used as a tool to oppress the individual states they keep trying to to assure them that they put all of these Protections in place in
Order to make sure that the federal government stays within a very narrow field of responsibility right the Anti-Federalists are coming back essentially saying don’t care what you say the federal government once we give them Authority especially to do things like land collect taxes once we give them things like the
Necessary and proper clause the supremacy these things are going to be abused in order to infringe on individuals and states rights right that was the Anti-Federalist argument and so both sides were presented now the important thing to remember the important thing to remember the Federalists were not making an argument
That well no we we want this federal government to be powerful and we want them to have all kinds of control and we want them to be able to engage in this sort of overwhelming Collective action in order to accomplish nobody neither the Federalists or the Anti-Federalists
Were making an argument for what we needed was an incredibly powerful and centralized federal government which was going to be dictating policy to all of the states none of them were making that argument but there was one man in particular that his intention was to do
Exactly that I think that is a fair assessment and so do you want to get into a little bit with Alexander Hamilton you mean the the traitorous they they we should be building statues of Aaron Burr everywhere um oh my God for those of you who don’t
Know Aaron Burr is the man that killed Alexander Hamilton was in a duel and and by the way Aaron Burr was also not a great guy no Aaron Burr was not a great guy but he he he provided a great service to the people of the United
States oh my god um no I I’m serious about that Alexander Hamilton won Alexander Hamilton wanted the Holy Roman Empire imported to the United States he and that is not an exaggeration he I read Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention I actually had to read it in college
Um Hamilton is the one guy who gets up there repeatedly and it’s like you know what we really need we need an elected king that’s what we really need we just fought a war against the British crown but you know I mean we we need one of our own
And and part of me wants to be like and he was all too willing to to fill the void like I I just you look at Hamilton’s actions the guy gave us a central bank the guy advocated he wanted a king to be able to appoint State governors
He he wanted to transform the United States into its own monarchy yeah he was telling people he didn’t want to call him a king and here’s my biggest problem with Alexander Hamilton you would think it would be the the central bank um and that certainly is probably my
It’s in my top two most things I despise about Alexander Hamilton’s philosophy but honestly my biggest problem with them is the same arguments he made in the Federalist Paper trying to assure everyone that of course the federal government is never going to be able to
Do X Y and Z as soon as he had a federal government he was the one pushing to do X Y and Z that was the vibe that I got when when I was reading The Federalist Papers also in college that like over and over again I would I would read each
Of these individual papers and I would be like you know Madison is coming across as genuinely interested in this project because he thinks that it’s a good thing and he’s he’s not hiding his opinions or anything he’s sharing them openly Hamilton I always felt like that that everything that he was writing was
Like two-faced that he was that he was lying through his teeth and that he wasn’t being honest with what he actually was trying to push for and the reason I felt like that was because I I knew what he was pushing in Philadelphia and I mean that’s a whole nother discussion
For another day but but like the reason that I say all this all these mean things about Alexander Hamilton the reason that I hold him in such low regard is because I view people like him as basically being the type of people that Patrick Henry warned us about yeah
And I I feel like that in some ways Madison was kind of duped I’ll be completely honest if the founding fathers if the individual state legislatures of the 13 newly independent former colonies had like a crystal ball where they could see into the future almost 150 years later and see where the
United States is today in 2023 I don’t think there’s a single state in the Union that would have voted to ratify the Constitution I I think you’re I think you’re correct there may have been one or two exceptions um another thing Hamilton really pushed for very hard within the the centralized
Banking and it went out was basically the federalization of the war debts from the individual states because he thought it would be a way to unify the states and by unify the states it really meant if the federal government now comes in and goes hey we’re going to take all
Your debt and now this is federal debt it’s it’s more of a form of subservience it wasn’t just unification out of the other you know you know so no no I I get it like it he does not just have altruistic motivations but like I I look at
I said that I was going to be a a bit dooming this episode and that we might have some pushback so part of me feels like that Hamilton was right in his in his motivations he was on the right side in the sense that not not that what he was
Pushing for was Mo was like morally correct but he won out he absolutely went out it was not Patrick Henry that went out it was I I saw I saw a debate once um it was like an Oxford style debate and they were the proposition was is did Hamilton or Jefferson essentially
Politically in their day Jefferson won long term Hamilton absolutely won this well and Jefferson actually predicted it right Jefferson believed that that it is the it is in the nature of of governments to to grow at the expense of individual liberty um and and that was why there’s a lot of
People that will probably look at some of the arguments again in the anti-federals papers and think well this is this is kind of extreme of course this could never happen well we’re going to go over some of the things that it has happened and that that especially some of the Supreme Court decisions
Where they thought they’ve had perfect constitutional justification for it so again the point was was to come together amend the Articles of Confederation Madison who by the way I represent James Madison’s District in the Virginia House delegates I considered an incredible honor um there are some people that argue that
It’s inappropriate to call Madison the father of the Constitution because his original plan actually is not what was selected however he had done a great deal of of work on laying down kind of the base plan they accepted various compromises keep in mind that there was a lot of different debate Alexander
Hamilton essentially wanted elected Kings he he wanted a um I think I think originally he wanted like elected for life right he elected a king for life and and so this was the reason why Christian says this is a lot like the Holy Roman Empire is because if you look
At the way the Holy Roman Empire was established you did have it very into at various degrees you had a election of the Monarch and then you had all of these principalities within the Holy Roman Empire with varying degrees of of kind of power and influence but it really was like this
Hodgepodge it beared no resemblance to what we really have in the United States um but perhaps one of the the biggest the I would say the two biggest things that came out of the Constitution with respect to the establishment of the federal government was the separation of powers so that’s
Making sure that there was a legislative branch an executive branch and a judicial branch please understand something that has become a lot more common today it is it was revolutionary back then and and even today you can’t really I would I would suggest you can’t really argue the parliamentarian democracies have
True separation of powers because their chief executive is essentially the head legislature it’s a creature of of the legislative branch Scalia actually had an interview not an interview he had a hearing that he spoke to in Congress and I want to say either 2015 or 2016. yeah
It was great and um it’s made the rounds on the internet over the years and Scalia talks about this he says when I go to Europe and and I I speak to other jurists there or other politicians in Europe and we’re talking about separation of powers what I find out is
That we’re only talking about the separation between the legislative branch and the judicial branch there is no concept outside of just a handful of states in Europe there is no concept of a separation between the executive branch and the legislative branch the executive branch is always a creature of
The legislative branch there’s no disagreement there if the Prime Minister disagrees with with you know his or her majority in Parliament they’re not going to be in office for for much longer go look at what happened to Liz trust right yeah um like so the reason that he’s
Giving it’s a it’s a fantastic interview um I keep saying interview it’s almost like it’s it’s a cute Testament yes it’s a testimony to Congress it’s a fantastic testimony I highly encourage people to go to go watch it but but what Scalia is trying to get to is that there’s something unique about
The American political system that at the time of its forming there was no other similar system on the planet that was like it and even today it stands out among most other republics and democracies in the world in its in its formation and that we have three separate
Um co-equal branches of government in fact there’s um there’s a line from Federalist 51 that I want to read off um where Madison is explaining um you know why it’s so important for um for the separation of powers and he says um in a single Republic all the power
Surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government he’s referring to a unitary system right there or a parliamentary system and then he says and the user um and the user patients are guarded against by the division of the government into distinct and separate
Departments and the compound Republic of America the power surrendered by the people is first of divided between two distinct governments and that he’s referring to the state and federal and then the poor um the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments hence a double
Security arises to the rights of the people the different governments will control each other and at the same time will each be controlled by itself so what he’s referring there is that the way that we’re going to guard guard Liberty in the United States is that
We’re going to have not a unitary system like they had in France when they had their Revolution it turned into a bloody disaster where it was like everything’s run through Paris and it’s just Paris imposing it’s what France to this day is still a unitary system of government
They’ve been like that since the French Revolution which is funny because before the French Revolution it was actually power was very decentralized the King was not actually an absolute monarchy he had powerful Nobles beneath him but anyway point is is that in the United States we don’t have a unitary system
Right we have States and we have the federal government so that’s one way that Liberty can be protected and then within governments you have the division of power or between the judicial branch the legislative branch and the executive branch that’s a second way you can protect individual liberty now there’s a
Tragedy in that and that first off that first tool disappeared in 1865. completely gone now States states have been neutered by the federal government oh also disappeared when one of these amendments came along that we’re going to talk about later today so I think that um I think that that um Madison’s first
Guard of individual liberty has really Fallen by the wayside in the United States over the past 250-ish years the second one which is the division of powers between the states Nick I know that you think that this is like in some ways kind of like the last line I I think that that’s
Also kind of slipping by the wayside well I I think so look I I um so I agree with you that there’s there’s two levels here they was talking about let’s go to the next uh next article here um there’s there’s two things that were important about this one was again the
Separation of powers within the federal government itself the other was the separation of powers between the states and the federal government you can eat you can even go in to express how the Constitution also um you know guarantees to all states a republican form of government so they were essentially trying to replicate
That anybody that wanted to be a state within the United States had to replicate this this relatively similar system between a legislative branch and executive branch and a judicial branch now it wasn’t it wasn’t required the federal government obviously has bicameral legislature which means you
Have a senate and you have a house that was not required of the states Nebraska I think is the one state that has a unicameral house they don’t have a house on the Senate they have one they have just one legislative body now what’s important to understand about
This is just what uh Christian said James Madison essentially like locked himself in his library for over a year just pouring over different examples and historical documents looking at how how does the Republic survive Beyond a a very small city-state and it’s not through democracy yeah go read Madison’s notes
On the on the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and and see what the founding fathers had to say about democracy yeah they they were very they were very skeptical of this idea that you were just going to essentially Outsource violence to a democratically elected entity that was going to oh well
If we’ve got a if we’ve got 50 plus one we can impose what we want that that is not the sort of system that they wanted it’s not the sort of system they wanted to Foster because all of them were fairly dedicated with perhaps the exception of Hamilton and a couple
Others all of them were fairly dedicated to this idea of being very very skeptical of government power and so now if they were going to create an entity right the states were going to create an entity and that entity was the Federal Government I I think nowadays so many
People have this belief that the federal government is supreme and the states just kind of exists for whatever the states preceded the federal government the States created the federal government for the overall benefit and protection of the states the states the federal government not create the states because it would make it
Easier to manage a large country right that that’s an important distinction to make Madison looked at this from the standpoint of republics when they grow to a particular size when they’re still small and they’re they’re uh relatively um you know homogeneous which is to say that all the people living kind of have
A shared um culture or shared history a shared conviction with respect to the role of government these Republicans tend to do fairly well but then when they grow and they expand through success or whatever else it is and they get to a certain point where there’s people feel like they’re being ruled by
A distant body it tends to break down into fracture and Division and so one of Madison’s main questions was how do we expand as a country because even within the even within uh the individual states at that time there was a lot of cultural differences a lot of economic
Differences between New York and South Carolina right and so it was all about how do we take the things that do unify us that do that will allow us to flourish and expand and be able to defend ourselves because at this stage they were still very much worried about the UK coming
Back or some other foreign power from Europe coming in and and dominating certain sections so how do they do that and that was the whole idea of the Federalist system states have certain responsibilities the federal government has certain responsibilities and when Madison was adamant about was that the federal government’s
Responsibilities were limited and enumerated right so what does that mean it means they wrote down federal government this is your lane you go outside of this Lane and now you’re violating the boundaries you’re violating the compact between the federal government and the states you you’ve now usurped your Authority
Right so let’s look at what let’s let’s look at the Constitution so now we’ve got an idea of what that was about it was the Federalist component it was also the separation the division of powers what he believed from studying this was the more power was concentrated in a
Single entity the more likely it was to become tyrannical so you had to have an executive branch you had to have a legislative branch you had to have a Judiciary a judicial branch those had to be separate then in order to be able to expand the Republic out you had to have individual
States which had a similar system set up with similar rules and guidelines and then the federal government stayed within its Lane and the states stayed within their Lane and that’s and that’s how you’re going to to have this kind of symbiosis between states and the federal government in order to prevent tyranny
That was the objective the last Point Nick is that um the reason that it needs to be written down I said it near the beginning of this episode that that you know well well the reason we have a written Constitution was because the Founding Father studied
Rome the Roman Republic did not have a written Constitution it had an Unwritten Constitution similar to the UK today it’s an Unwritten Constitution and at the time there really was no written constitutions in the world there were Unwritten constitutions the UK had an Unwritten Constitution as well the
Founding fathers looked at the Roman Republic as a model for the United States in many ways that’s also why we get a lot of symbolism from Rome and also a lot of our early American architecture in Washington DC is influenced by classical Rome and the reason they did that instead of Greece
Was because they wanted a republican system of government not democracy right but they looked at Rome and they looked at the crisis of the Roman Republic near the beginning of the first century while first century BC um shortly before Christ and they saw like all the Civil Wars the political
Chaos the rise of Caesar the rise of Augustus the death of the Republic and the creation of of the Roman Empire and and they they said you know well we don’t want that we want to keep the Republican system of government so one of the the flaws of the Roman system is
Beautifully crafted as it had been over the centuries was nothing was written down and if nothing is written down over time things can be changed or ignored arbitrarily yes arbitrarily so so they needed to to codify it on paper in order for it to be written in plain English
For everybody to see here’s what the ultimate law is for for our country when Rocky Top Tom says y’all please discuss your opinions on the irony of the founders attempting to create a decent form of government but today our entire government is corrupted no matter the checks and balances Rocky we are going
To talk about about that we’re going to get into depth on why we think that is actually transpired and what the problem is and what’s the potential antidotes to it are so thank you very much for the question so if we now kind of understand that this was the General the the the
Reason why the people wanted the federal the reason the Federalists wanted the Constitution is because they thought that there needed to be greater unification and there needed to be a process whereby certain powers we’re handed over to a federal entity and these would largely handle things like
Um international trade and a lot of it was was was written in the whole concept of Defense because fighting the war and and George Washington saw this firsthand right I mean here he is the the the the colonies had declared independence become States individual sovereign states and it was
Almost impossible to be able to Levy taxes and coordinate military action it was incredibly difficult to do that under the Articles of Confederation uh so it made it very very difficult for any sort of central authority to be able to act so the idea was is that okay we
Still want to limit limit Central Authority but we do need to give it some more powers that was the Federalist argument the Anti-Federalist argument was we pretty much don’t care what you do the more you provide an entity that’s centralized it’s going to grow and it’s
Going to expand it’s going to expand at the expense of the individual states but they got through the ratification process the Federalists essentially won the debate the states ratified the Constitution somebody in the in the comments actually brought up some issues with respect to people missing from the delegations
Um understood but ultimately those various State legislatures through the ratification process did all eventually ratify the Constitution so here’s what we have so you have the Preamble and and the the way to think about the Preamble is this is kind of like a generalized uh statement of beliefs it’s establishing
The purpose it’s not the same necessarily as like legally binding components of the Constitution it’s more about again it’s not purely poetic but think of it as kind of like a philosophical groundwork for why the rest of what the Constitution is going to talk about exists so the Preamble we
The people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty or ourselves and our uh posterity it was a Prosperity yeah do ordain and established this Constitution
Of the United States of America so the way this is broken down I thought this was a pretty good breakdown the Preamble defines the following six goals to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and boy are we going to talk
About that and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity then there’s uh seven articles so article one outlines the legislative branch article two the executive branch article 3 the judicial branch Article 4 talks about defines the rules for and relationship between the states Article
5 States the rules and procedures for amending the Constitution okay now this is important because a lot of people have this idea when you hear this concept like oh the Constitution is a living document it is living in the sense that there is a process whereby you can amend it
Unfortunately a lot of people especially within the judicial system have adopted this idea that oh well the Constitution and the meaning of the words it adjusts over time based off of various social norms and and the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret and decide what those norms mean garbage
Absolute unmitigated garbage and let me give you a perfect example of this let me give you a perfect example if you really believe that a legal document and that is what the Constitution is if you really believe that the legal document can can merely change meaning over time based off of societal Norms
Okay great we have a mortgage okay I’m the bank you’re the you’re the person that I’m lending to we have a legal document that legal document is your mortgage and that outlines the conditions of the mortgage and what you’re I come in one day and I decide you know what your mortgage now
Just doubled what do you mean it just doubled it’s right there in black and white that it’s a certain amount no no it’s a living mortgage it’s a living mortgage it’s a living mortgage and it adapts over time and who gets to decide whether who gets to decide how this
Thing is alive I do right nobody nobody believed that when we were actually establishing that and nobody really believes that about living about legal documents in general nobody it is only living in the sense that there is a process for amending the Constitution so if you believe that
There is a necessary change within the Constitution you go through the amendment process because the last thing you want is five unelected judges getting to determine what new social norms mean why have a legislature then honestly why have a legislature why have a body of elected representatives
That are supposed to go to Washington DC in order to make certain decisions about what the people want why do any of that if five unelected judges could just say we’ve decided that the language means something different now it is absurd on its face and nobody really believes
That’s the appropriate way to interpret legal documents unless it happens to be interpreted in a way that they favor at that moment and they know they could never get what they wanted through the legislature this was I think in my opinion one of the the greatest shortcomings of our constitution was the
Founding fathers who drafted it and who subsequently drafted the Bill of Rights wrote down no such mechanism through which disputes over interpretation or language can be rectified and eventually the Supreme Court simply gave itself that power yes and that was a terrible mistake on to be completely honest what the Founding
Father should have done was had something where it was like States if there’s a disagreement over interpreting a part of the Constitution states get to decide what that is and you need a majority or a super majority or something like that in order for a state to determine no that’s not
Constitutional and this is where we’ll talk about the the whole idea of you know Marbury versus Madison and Maryland versus McCullough which kind of established this judicial Supremacy over these questions right that was not written into the Constitution the the martial Court just kind of gave themselves that power but then you had
Jefferson write the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions which actually provided a different mechanism for adjudicating these differences left in the Reddit said a mortgage isn’t the Constitution yes I’m I’m aware but they are both legal documents and the point is is to illustrate through example that if a legal document can be arbitrarily
Interpreted by five justices right which completely subverts every other process that we have within our system in order to determine what the people want if what the people want is no longer determined even by A legislature now it’s just determined by five justices that fits pretty neatly into the the
Term judicial tyranny right that I don’t think anybody wants that system I guarantee you I guarantee you the left right now would not want this Supreme Court arbitrarily deciding what how the language has changed I promise you you don’t want that all right so let’s go to the next one here um
Article uh uh what are we sex declares that the constitution is the supreme law of the land now this is going to be very very important to understand because when we get into things like the supremacy clause and the necessary and proper clause all right there are some people that interpreted
This is to say well if the Constitution says something that’s the whatever the federal government does is therefore the law of the land like whoa whoa whoa just back off that is not what this means that is not what this means what this means is that the constitution
Properly interpreted within its its you know powers right supersedes any sort of state law that would attempt to subvert it it doesn’t mean that the federal government can do whatever it’s want because after all it’s you know it’s the federal government right Supremacy no it has to stay within its proper
Constitutional boundaries and limitations if it supersedes that it doesn’t get to rely on the supremacy clause in order to justify whatever it does and then finally uh we have article 7 outlies the process for ratifying or approving the Constitution so again this is the process that the individual
States had to go through in order to say yes we we approve of this constitution we want to be a part of it Etc then next we go into the Bill of Rights and the additional amendments the Bill of Rights have obviously been the first 10 amendments the Constitution and the
Additional amendments amendments 11 through 27. so that’s the Constitution all right all right go to go to the next um next thing here real quick where we’re going to spend most of our time here go ahead and scroll up actually yeah you can stay you can stay right here so
Um section one lays out the Congress right and and it establishes that we’re going to have a House of Representatives that’s a portion based off of population and then we’re going to have a senate which is each state gets equal representation within the Senate so a
Lot of people now will come and say well the Senate is undemocratic yep it is undemocratic with respect to individuals it is not undemocratic with respect to state representation within that body because here is one of the things that you need to remember about the United States which makes it unique
In the world the only other country that I would argue comes close to our model is probably Switzerland Christian would argue Germany as well comes a little bit closer than most um the Polish Constitution of 1793 was V I think it was 1793. I’m going to look
This up real quick actually well I think that I think that was also in large part because of like kashishko and others but anyways yes oh sorry 1791 it was the war of the the um so the Polish Constitution of 1791 was heavily influenced by the United
States so much so that the absolute powers of the absolutist powers of Europe thought that it was a danger and Russia invaded Poland when they ratified that Constitution unfortunately the polls ended up losing that war and ended up completely losing their independence for 123 years but there there were early
Attempts to to model countries off the United States Poland was yes Poland’s constitution of in 1791 was the second oldest written constitution in the world at the time it just wasn’t long lived unfortunately but in today’s world you could say that Switzerland is is similar Switzerland Switzerland is very very
Decentralized though yeah I mean they they have four languages yeah in their country people forget romanche that’s that’s that’s the fourth one but I mean but I mean the general point I’m trying to make is that our system is is truly unique in what we do and like a lot of
People say oh we made the world safe for democracy and all these countries are free okay I’m not saying that they don’t have Democratic processes I’m not saying that they don’t have in some cases written constitutions Switzerland has Democratic problems but the mechanisms that we’ve put in place truly are unique
To the United States so the reason why it’s again the takeaway from this is we are a republic of Republics right please understand if you don’t properly understand that distinction then the Senate will make no sense to you all right we states have a have a degree of sovereignty as their own individual
Republics and their participation within the federal process is the reason why they have equal representation it’s to be able to protect that state sovereignty it’s to be able to hopefully keep the federal government within its boundaries by the states flexing its own Powers now we’re going to talk about an
Amendment that gutted a lot of that but that that’s the reason why it exists all right so that that sets up like we all kind of understand that’s that’s a legislative Authority go down to uh our article one section eight because this is important this lays out right the Congress shall
Have the power to land collect taxes duties Imports and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States but all duties impulses and exercises shall be uniformed throughout the United States what does this mean it means that for the first
130 years of of the Republic the federal government couldn’t couldn’t constitutionally impose a federal income tax it could impose taxes and duties on like Foreign imports it could Levy some sort of obligations with respect to the various States but the idea that it could text you as an individual wherever
You move within the United States that was not a thing that that actually required the passing of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution so these are these are the enumerated powers right of Congress to find briefly what you mean by enumeration means they wrote it down right enumerating means they
Said very specifically and Madison makes this argument and so does Hamilton they all make this argument when they’re trying to justify the the federal government the Anti-Federalists are coming in and saying the federal government is going to assume authorities that don’t belong to it right I think it was Madison that came
Back and said no the federal federal Authority is limited and enumerated State Authority is not like the federal government at this stage is not addressing state power it’s just addressing the power of the federal government it you don’t that doesn’t even happen until you get into like the 13th Amendment the 14th
Amendment or the incorporation Doctrine you don’t even get into any of that stuff it used to be for the majority not the majority now about half of American History okay the Bill of Rights were restrictions on federal power not state power it wasn’t until not just the 14th
Amendment but but more of the incorporation Doctrine where all of a sudden limitations on federal power were now translated as limitations on state power as well that’s why so many state constitutions actually specify limitations on their own State’s power all right so it’s important to understand that so they could borrow
Money on the credit of the united states regulate commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes this is this is sometimes referred to as the interstate commerce clause we’re going to get to this one believe me um establish uniform rule of naturalization and uniform laws on the
Subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States coin money regulate the value thereof in foreign coin demand and they did a bang-up job at that one oh yeah they’ve done a great job regulating the value they’re uh provide for punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current coin of the
United States okay why did the federal government have that power because they had the power to determine what the currency was established post offices and post roads to promote the progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to the respective writings and discoveries
Think of this as like patents copyrights uh to constitute uh tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court so the the point there was that we’re going to have a separate judicial branch but then the Congress was also able to come up with other federal courts that could be that could be utilized as necessary
To Define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high season offenses against the law of Nations to declare war Grant letters of Market reprisal and make rules concerning captures on land and water Congress isn’t interested in that one if you want to know if you want to know
What part of the Constitution that I think Congress has just completely completely given up their Authority it’s this one this one right here they have essentially handed off authority to the executive branch to go and conduct War whenever it feels like it and the only thing Congress does in response is
Choose whether or not they’re going to provide adequate funding in the budget you want to know the last time we declared war World War II sure glad we haven’t been involved in any War since then except of course for Korea Vietnam Grenada Panama Iraq Afghanistan Iraq again yeah Iraq again I mean
We all understand we all understand that the executive branch needs certain Authority in order to address imminent threats to the United States addressing an imminent threat to the United States is not the same thing as deploying tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops over the longest
Conflict in U.S history without a declaration of war so Congress as a combat vet screw you man seriously this was ridiculous the idea that Congress wants to sit there and say well we authorized no here’s what Congress wants Congress wants to be able to have the moral Authority that
When the war is going well they can say well we funded it and when the war is going poorly it’s like well that’s the president’s War it yeah time to put your big boy in big girl pants on and actually exercise this Authority granted exclusively to congress not the president not the Judiciary
So sick and tired of that I’m I don’t I don’t get fired up at all over that point anyway to raise and support armies but no appropriation of money uh to that use shall be for a longer term than two years again this has to do with part of
Our budgeting by the way this is why the Air Force is unconstitutional totally the Army Air corps yeah because I agree the Constitution says you know the next one is to provide and maintain a Navy notice how they didn’t mention an Air Force now there’s an obvious reason why but
Um yeah just just pointing out that the constitution only says zombies and navies so so here’s the here’s my proposal the Navy gets the space force and the Army gets the Air Force um or maybe the Navy can also get the Coast Guard hey look we already have the
Air Force it’s called the Army Air corps all right it’s ready to maintain a Navy to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and Naval forces to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union suppressants erections and repel invasions to provide for ongoing
Organizing arming and disciplining the militia to exercise exclusive legislation all cases whatsoever over the district not exceeding the 10 miles Square as made by this is DC and stuff and then to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution for the foregoing powers and
All other powers vested by this constitution the government of the United States or in any Department uh or office they’re up now here’s what I want to ask you that right there that right there is the authority that Congress has to operate on most of it
Most of it has to do with defense don’t you love the necessary and proper clause though there that’s the loophole Nick there we go for the people who don’t read the full sentence yeah so the people say well the necessary and proper clause as long as the federal as long as
Congress is determined that whatever they’re doing is in the general welfare well then of course under the necessary and proper clause they can establish whatever they need in order to actually carry that out and they have the spending Clause they can land collect taxis duties and imposts so of course
The federal ladies and gentlemen let me ask you a question if all that was required for the federal government to do whatever it wanted was to say well we have a general welfare clause and and Congress has decided that something’s in the general welfare and and and so obviously we can
Set up whatever we need to do what’s in the general welfare because we have the necessary and proper uh proper goes oh and by the way the Constitution is is supreme so do you think any state would have ratified the Constitution do you think any state would have ratified the Constitution if they
Honestly believe that it that a a faithful interpretation of the general welfare and the necessary and proper clause was as long as Congress decides it’s in the general welfare they can do whatever the hell they want that’s what I said earlier that I don’t think a single state would have there was
Actually a comment from Tracy Martin probably about 15 or 20 minutes ago I’ve been copying some comments yeah somewhere let’s do some comments Tracy Martin said 15 years ago I tried to read The Federalist Papers I only made it through the first 10. I was so angry at everything the Federalist Paper said
Would not happen with the federal government is now coming true yeah no it’s it’s one of those things where the anti-federal if you read the Anti-Federalist papers um you’re gonna figure out they got a lot they got a lot right I’m not saying they got all right but they got a lot
Right oh I I’ve got one that is Maybe somewhat related to what we’re talking about here with like the powers of congress and where that Authority derives and stuff like that yeah here’s a question from this is a hilarious name for an account I run hoes for money in
Parentheses equipment operator oh my God that guys uh that guys yeah he says we’re just gonna call him equipment operator around here he says question why do most politicians say we’re a democracy when in reality we’re a constitutional republic so I I would I would argue so you’re right we are a
Constitutional republic you could add to that we’re a constitutional republic that operates off of certain Democratic principles in fact we did a whole episode call is deposit is democracy the solution or the problem I’d encourage you to watch that episode because we kind of do a deep dive into this this
Question the differences between democracy and and a republic um I I think during the Progressive Era so like the the progressive area the early 20th century you see a lot more use of the term democracy you see this with Woodrow Wilson saying you know making the world safe for democracy and
And it’s not totally inaccurate in the sense that we do have Democratic processes right we do and that’s that’s a positive thing the thing that I think is very problematic with and the reason why I think a lot of modern politicians like to use it is because democracy carries with it this this
Um insinuation nowadays that it never that it didn’t before and the insinuation nowadays is democracy is synonymous with freedom or Justice if something is democratically selected therefore it is promoting freedom and it is just that’s not true it is just simply not true but you know
Who it gives a lot of power to elected representatives if elected representatives can actually convince a population that whatever they decide through Democratic processes is therefore freedom and justice well then what right do you have to oppose it I mean this is just the way that we solve things this is the way
That we adjudicate differences in a peaceful manner even if the way that we decided to adjudicate a particular difference is now going to authorize law enforcement Personnel to confiscate your property or restrict your rights or restrict your options or restrict your freedom not because you were doing anything inherently immoral but because
50 plus one of the elected representatives decided that whatever you were doing was bad or wrong or that they wanted to share they wanted a cut of what it is you were earning so that’s the problem the problem is not necessarily with with um Democratic processes per se I think
Democratic processes are are an essential component of an of an overall free Society but they’re not a sufficient component and unfortunately nowadays I think it’s being treated like a sufficient component as long as it’s Democratic it’s fine and it’s not but I think the reason why it’s become so
Prevalent is because if you believe the Democratic processes are the primary way that we solve problems or address challenges that gives a tremendous amount of power to politicians see I believe that the primary way that we address problems and challenges is not through Democratic processes within a government system but rather you
Exercising your freedoms Liberties talents Etc in order to choose to engage in voluntary cooperation with other people in order to address problems right the government’s not the reason why you have a job or a car or food on your table that’s most likely because you engaged in Commerce with other people and you
Exchange goods and services in a way that benefited both of you together now you could argue that the government might have had a role with respect to enforcing contract law or providing certain infrastructure or law enforcement in order to assist that that’s fine but that’s an assisting role
Not the predominant role right so that that’s the important distinction I think that’s why politicians like to use it Okay the reason why I went through article one section 8 is because this lays out the specific powers and authorities of Congress and what you see there is it’s incredibly Limited so I
Want you to I want you to imagine right now the 77 000 pages of federal regulations and I want you to ask yourself how many of those 77 000 pages of federal regulations do you think fall Within These categories and I’m going to argue it is a
Relatively very very small amount I feel like we’re making the argument without intentionally doing so that for all of its beauty I actually wrote wrote this um in our in our show notes and I’m just going to read it off um I said that it’s a beautifully written
Document but clearly the Constitution is falling apart why should we care about it when the left clearly doesn’t so I think that’s the better argument to make I think that we should be making later on it’s just something that I uh I promise we will Duke this out we’ll hold
It because the reason that I I brought it up was not to derail us but I just noticed like as we’re going through this that like we keep bringing up examples in the modern day of how like we got to the the you know value of the money
While they’re doing a bang-up job with that we talked about declaration larger question is does it have to be this way right because there there were certain there were certain things that happened and here’s the crazy part not all of them were illegal and that’s that’s the part that needs to be
Properly understood everybody has this idea that well Congress has just decided screw the Constitution do whatever they want actually they didn’t if you look at the Progressive Era they didn’t say screw the Constitution and do whatever they want they did on some things but no in many other cases what
They actually did was amend the Constitution in such ways that gave them legal authority to do things they should have never had the legal authority to do and then they used other dangerous loopholes in in waiting such as judicial review using Progressive courts in the 20th century to reinterpret the
Constitution so many times that it basically created a new consensus a new paradigm that is persisted all the way to the present day the Supreme Court 200 plus years ago would have never ever said something like Obamacare was constitutional oh no no it was absurd Roe v Wade was absurd regardless now I’m
Very pro-life but regardless how you feel on that there are honest pro-choice people that said yeah Roe v Wade was a ridiculously decided Crusader Ginsburg being one of them yeah it was like this was this was a horribly decided decision because it also set this precedent where
Now the Supreme Court could just make stuff up out of out of finish so I don’t mean not to mention the fact that if you’re someone the same people like we love democracy well then you hated Roe v Wade because that was not democratically so that was not democratically decided
By what we had before was Democrats yeah what we had before was Democratic but I I don’t mean I know that we’ll get to that later of like is any of this even still relevant because as we’re going through these points that I think we all
Know because I keep seeing a lot of comments too from uh the the chat of people that are like well they’re not following this and they’re not following that you know they’re just running rough shot over all of these things and so let’s let’s get let’s get through this
So drop down uh go back up and let’s drop down to uh section because we’re never going to get through all this if we don’t speed this up a little bit so let’s go to uh article two there you go all right so the executive power should be vested in a president of
The United States of America he shall hold his office during the term of four years and together with the vice president chosen for the same term be elected as follows now obviously go ahead and scroll down here a little bit it’ll talk about the authorities of of the presidency
Um the president shall be commander-in-chief of the Army Navy in the United States and of the militia of the several States when called into actual service of the United States this is interesting because there’s a lot of debate going on right now on whether or not the National Guard has been
Inappropriately called up and and sent overseas um without things like a declaration of war and and there’s this gray area in there that’s problematic um he shall from time to time give to the Congress information uh of the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall
Judge necessary and expedient um the president vice president all civil officers the United States will be removed from office on impeachment or conviction of treason bribery other high crimes and misdemeanors um okay here we go this part section three is important State of the Union Address right that’s
What the state of the union um he may on extraordinary occasions convene both houses or either of them in case of disagreement between them with respect to time of a German he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper he shall receive ambassadors and other
Public ministers who shall take care that the laws be Faithfully executed and shall commission all Office of the United States I I don’t know if you’ve noticed this nowhere in here does it say that the president is the in in the moral Visionary of the country and the president
If you look at the actual authorities of the presidency of the United States it is incredibly Limited and and it really wasn’t the first president to really go beyond a lot of these things and subvert power was it I mean well you could say poke poke
Did a whole lot where he he was he was pushing Wars of like Lincoln Lincoln was another one you can love the Emancipation Proclamation you can love that um you know a lot of things that Lincoln did but there’s no question that Lincoln subverted constitutional there was a
Question in the chat from Scott McKell who said related to exactly what you just said there question Nick what is your opinion on Abraham Lincoln do you think he was a good president or was he an American Tyrant like some people believe some Libertarians will straight away like Lincoln was absolutely a
Tyrant if you look at certain things that Lincoln did with respect to um Levine taxes with respect to suspending of habeas corpus he did a lot of things that if a president were to do it today we would look at that and be like what are you doing like a
Tyrannical you would you don’t get to lock people Woodrow Wilson did this too you don’t get to lock people up in time of War because you don’t like what they’re saying in the papers Lincoln did that um there’s other things that Lincoln did that Wilson did it as well like you
Pointed out yeah there’s other things that Lincoln did that were were totally beyond the the powers within the Constitution now I’m someone that believes that history is a little bit more complex than the the version of it we’re uh we’re often given um and I don’t just mean that in in the negative
I mean that in the positive as well a lot of times we we treat certain historical figures as if they were deities instead of men and women and so I think there’s a lot of things that Lincoln did that I I I think were very very bad from a constitutional
Perspective however am I grateful for the Emancipation Proclamation yes am I grateful for the work that he did that that eventually you know turned into the 13th and 14th amendments yes I I think we can I think we should look at things through the lens of what was going on at
The time and try to come to an accurate conclusion about what were they doing with the information that they had right nothing is easier than looking back on history and saying oh that I can’t believe they did this or that now some things are obvious right some things are just obviously horrible and
Evil and heinous other things there’s a little bit more of a gray area I think there were certain things that Lincoln did that were absolutely wrong I think there are other things that he did that I might not have agreed with but I can understand given the context why he
Might have chosen to do certain things um again doesn’t mean I agree with them but that’s the part where I think we we have to distinguish between treating people treating individuals as if they’re demons or deities and and recognize what they were trying to go through in the decisions they were
Trying to make at the time and then we need to have an honest discussion we shouldn’t just DFI them later and say oh all we need to know about Lincoln is the Emancipation Proclamation if that’s all you know about Lincoln then you also have an incomplete picture if all you
Know about Lincoln is that he subverted the Constitution with respect to the suspension of habeas corpus you also have an incomplete picture of Lincoln so I I think that’s important but I do think there’s been some very important work done to to basically talk about some of the things that Lincoln put into
Place and and kind of broke certain precedents with respect to Federal power that have plagued us to this day can I also and you could argue with the time well was it necessary to preserve the Union okay maybe but if those also sowed the seeds for the eventual destruction of
The Union is that is that not a conversation that we should have to that point Nick this is something that I’ve I’ve long believed in I don’t I’ve never seen anybody else articulate this to be honest that going back to federals 51 Madison’s explaining you know the the things that
Can be used to preserve Liberty and he mentions the division between state and federal powers being one of those things well I also said well that kind of went by the wayside in 1865. well likewise you can also argue that some of those powerful tools that states had at their
Disposal to reign in the power of the federal government things like nullification and including secession those things were perverted and destroyed by the fire eaters themselves yeah they they took the most powerful constitutional arsenals at the disposal of states to reign in the federal government and they chose to deploy
Those tools in the sake of preserving slavery and I I I want to write a book one day about how Southern fire eaters and and like pro-slavery advocates in the south in the 1850s and 60s in some ways are the reason that we now have to deal with
Some of the nonsense that we have to deal with today because they took the most powerful tools that we had to preserve individual liberty and the balance of power between state and federal governments and they threw them all at preserving slavery and in doing so not only did they lose the war and
Thus completely ruined the possibility of ever using states rights or nullification or secession ever again at least in the modern era but they also tainted those arguments with the evils of slavery and so now if you come out and you say why sport states rights the
Left will say oh so you support you’re a segregationist you’re you’re pro-slavery you’re pro-confederate yeah because they were they were utilized again during the Civil Rights Movement in ways that were wholly inappropriate and and what’s interesting Tom Woods actually uh talks about this in a way I think is very
Effective in his book nullification so so just so everyone understands what we’re talking about right now is we’re talking about the power of the presidency and we’re talking about in an example of the president exceeding his authority and and a state reaction to that there’s kind of three mechanisms that that
States have utilized in order to push back against the federal government when they believe they’ve they’ve performed an unconstitutional matter what is nullification nullification is essentially when a state says we don’t recognize that federal law and we’re not going to assist with the enforcement of it so soft nullification is this idea
That the law has the law is there but it’s not our job to enforce it because we don’t agree with it um then you have interposition so you have a nullification inner position interposition is when a state essentially says we are nullifying that law we do not believe it’s
Constitutional not only are we not going to allow not only are we not going to enforce it we’re not going to prevent Federal authorities from enforcing it one of the first cases uh one an early documented case of interposition was actually when Wisconsin refused to allow U.S Marshals to enforce
The Runaway Slave Act so basically slaves had escaped the South gotten into Wisconsin The Runaway Slave Act said that they had to be returned to captivity and Wisconsin law enforcement actually interceded arrested a U.S federal Marshal and said we will not allow you to enforce this law now I think most
People would look at that and say go Wisconsin well that was a case of nullification in her position all right the the third rem or the third you know thing for the States was secession now this is an important question to ask because people look at
It now where it’s like well oh secession was was horrible okay again one can look at the concept of it’s important to look at the concept of succession and separate it from the concept of slavery right if you are succeeding because you want to maintain the institution of
Slavery I would argue that’s highly problematic right I would argue that’s evil right however if you’re wanting to secede because you believe you’ve reached a point where participation within the union is no longer advantageous to the citizens of your state you could theoretically come up with perfectly morally justifiable
Reasons to want secession now I don’t want any state to secede I don’t want that but it is important to understand why those mechanisms exist and part of it was understanding the proper balance between the role of the federal government and the role of the states and as Christian pointed out that’s
Largely been wiped off the the face of of the planet now it’s just what the federal government says goes and the states are just supposed to get in line it’s worth pointing out that we seceded yeah from the United Kingdom the United Kingdom all right so let’s go actually
From Great Britain I don’t think it was the United Kingdom yeah so our article three goes with uh establishing the Judiciary and obviously this is establishment not only the Supreme Court but other federal courts and the purpose of that was to enforce federal law so federal law federal uh regulations and
This is important it wasn’t anything Congress came up with it was those federal laws and regulations which were afforded to it by the Constitution by those enumerated powers you will notice that the president has not is not given powers to make laws or regulations they’re purely there to Faithfully
Execute execute the laws of the United States Congress under Article 1 Section 8 is only supposed to make laws and regulations governing the things which follow within their enumerated powers all right and then the Judiciary is there supposedly to effectively interpret you know the the Constitutional limitations
So it’s it’s there to do essentially two things it’s there to um and intervene when there has been a violation of legitimate federal law and it is also there to intervene when the federal government has exceeded its own authority right now here’s the obvious problem with this and this was something that
Came up within Madison versus Marbury Maryland versus McCullough does the Supreme Court have like final say on that which is constitutional generally speaking today that is how we operate that is not actually enumerated in the Constitution and the reason for that is because if the federal government if an entity of
The federal government has the final say on what federal Authority is well then theoretically you’ve gave in one side of the of the the contract remember this was a contract between the federal government and the states you’ve now given final authority to one entity within the contract to decide what the
The actual legitimate and legal Authority is and that was very problematic in in one of the ways that people like Jefferson and Madison Madison kind of flip-flopping on this but Jefferson and Madison said that well no states have through nullification and through inner position the ability to essentially say
We don’t agree with that we think it we think it supersedes Federal Authority and so we’re not going to we’re not going to recognize it now that didn’t give that state the ability to impose that interpretation on other states but it could essentially not participate
In that aspect of it and if it got so bad it had the legal right to secede to leave the union right but now you know again because of concept of judicial review and because of the Civil War and and because of a number of other things that’s not how
It’s seen anymore but what what needs to be understand is that that does create a problem because now you’re giving the federal government the sole authority to determine the authority of the federal government again I’ll go I’ll go back to if you had a legal document if you had a contract
With somebody and written into that contract was to say that if you and I have a disagreement I get to decide what the what the contract means you wouldn’t sign that okay and so it’s important to understand you understand that the states understood that and that’s why it’s not in the Constitution
That gets into I I think one of the the the biggest flaws with the system I said earlier in my opinion the biggest flaw with the founders when they crafted the Constitution was is that they did not stipulate how disagreements over interpreting the document itself would be adjudicated yeah they put no
Mechanism in here for for any anybody to determine who has final say over what the wording means and and eventually the Supreme Court just gave itself that power well and so snake asks a good question he goes how does the Constitution still work when you have states trying to override it but still
Remain within the union that’s an excellent question because in in most cases if you and I signed a contract and we determined that there would be an adjudicating body if you and I had a disagreement about the contract we could go somewhere else to get that adjudicating body it would be a court
System right or or it might be uh some what’s the um I’m trying to think of what the arbitration um an arbitrator someone that would come in as a as a trusted third party in order to adjudicate the difference right so what happens when you have this agreement between the states in the
Federal government and now the federal government is exercising its proper Authority in the state isn’t you know participating what’s interesting there is that you’ve got a couple mechanisms for this now one is is that the the Federal Government Can essentially withhold um support for whatever it is that’s
Going on so for instance if the federal government has Monies to distribute based off of a particular thing and that state says we don’t want to participate the federal government come in and say okay fine if you don’t want to participate you’re not going to get the corresponding funding for it
Um the other thing that they could argue is that if there’s a clear violation of what what is what is obviously a federal power now here’s what I’ll tell you I don’t see too many situations I don’t see too many situations where a state has said I want to remain in the union
But I don’t want to accept that the federal government has Authority or power over this particular thing that generally doesn’t happen usually it happens when there is basically an egregious overreach or there’s very very unclear interpretation and a lot of the interpretation within the necessary and proper clause and especially the general
Welfare in the interstate commerce clause has led to some significant problems where I think states have a very good argument to make now again we’ve had various Supreme Courts some of them I think faithful you know capable of faithfully interpreting the Constitution others within this like living Constitution Doctrine go
Completely out the window and we’ll discuss one of those specifically with the interstate commerce clause in a decision called filburn so I think the the federal government’s pressure that it can apply to the state has to do with the power of the purse like appropriately applied and also the
Overall benefits that the federal government is supposed to convey as part of the union and if the state says I don’t want to participate with that well then they’re going to have to ask a question at one point where it’s like well if you want to remain and the
Federal government is actually executing something that’s clear clearly Federal Authority you’re either going to have to submit to the decision right of either the Supreme Court or maybe your own populace right if the population within your state doesn’t agree with the governor of the state legislature is doing with respect to the federal
Government well then they can elect a new one and now all of a sudden the problem’s been adjudicated what while still keeping the respect for the proper roles in place the other option is the state could say you know what we just don’t agree with this anymore and
Therefore we’re going to secede so the federal government’s real power should be coming withholding the things that are associated with its legal Authority not made up Authority but legal Authority and say fine you don’t get the benefit if you don’t want to actually participate that’s fair
By the same token if a state says okay fine I don’t want to participate and now I’m removing myself from the Union you would have to come to some conclusion that that is also Fair but I would say that in the vast majority of cases what we see is that
When the federal government is Faithfully executing its Authority you don’t see a lot of pushback from the states at least not for a long time you don’t see a great deal of pushback from the states uh it’s usually when there’s a real question of whether or not the federal government is is overstepping
Its boundaries and what is the appropriate application of the law Nick do you want to go through what are the four um yeah we’ve interpreted Clauses of the concept so let’s see some of them let’s jump to that so we’ve already talked about why we have a constitution the
Debates over the Constitution what the Constitution actually does we’re not talking about the Bill of Rights we’re not just the Constitution itself it establishes the federal government and it establishes the mechanisms for how people will be elected how they will serve and what their authorities and responsibilities will be with the
Intention that it was very very and limited and enumerated limited and enumerated and it’s important to understand this didn’t mean that the federal government didn’t think that there were other responsibilities that the the government might be responsible for but they did not think it was the responsibility of the federal government
And they were very intentional about that so what are the four most deliberately misrepresented Clauses of the Constitution number one the general welfare clause yeah that means that we get to set up a large you know Nordic style welfare state Nick this is so so stupid this is
Why the government should take over control of health care it’s in the Constitution this is this is so dumb if you honestly believe and this got this and just so you know that this is not a new debate the Anti-Federalists were saying this General Welfare Clause gives the federal government way too much
Authority and and Power and the Anti-Federalists or excuse me the Federalists came back and said that’s nonsense the responsibilities of the the reason why we have a written Constitution is because the responsibilities and powers of the federal government are limited and enumerated of course the general welfare
Clause doesn’t mean that Congress or the feds can do whatever they want as long as they’ve determined its quote in the general welfare no what general welfare is meant to the connotation there is supposed to be that the federal government is not supposed to exercise its authorities it’s enumerated powers
In such a way as to give benefit to a locality or or an individual entity it is supposed to be thinking with the general welfare of everybody involved right that is a very different interpretation than feds can do what they want as long as they’ve decided
Well gosh you know what um TVs everybody having access everybody having a smartphone we we’ve decided that’s a good thing and so now the Federal Government Can allocate funds in order to make sure that every American has a smart because you know General Welfare that’s absurd here’s what Madison says
Literally writes in Federalist number 40. he says some who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation have grounded a very Fierce attack against the constitution on the language in which it is defined it has been argued and echoed that the power to quote to
Lay the um to lay and collect taxes duties impulse and excises to pay the debts and to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States end quote amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every Power and which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or
General welfare and then he says no stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections then they’re stooping to such a misconstruation a Mis I’m gonna sound like an idiot here [Laughter] misconstruction oh my gosh for a second my mind was blinking there I was reading
It in my head but couldn’t say it out loud anyway I’m gonna read that last sentence because he’s dismissing people who are saying oh the general welfare of the United States that line leads to a quote unlimited commission to exercise every Power and then he concludes no
Stronger proof could be given to the distress under which these writers he’s referring to the Anti-Federalists labor for their objections and then they’re stooping to um to such a misconstruction so he’s basically saying these people are dead wrong and they’re having to like pull an
Argument out of thin air in order to say that this is going to lead to unlimited power Madison is literally saying in Federalist number 40 that will never happen yeah I mean I I think history has completely proven him wrong and the Anti-Federalists correct no I I think
That’s true so the the whole idea the first of the four terrible Clauses yeah so the important thing to understand about the general welfare Clause is it cannot possibly mean what the the liberal interpretation of of that Clause uh or with the liberal interpretation suggests which is to say
That provided that Congress believes it’s in the general welfare they have the authority to create rules restrictions or allocate funding as such the general welfare Clause has to be recognized in accordance with Article 1 Section 8 and it has to be recognized in accordance with the very specific and
Limited powers of congress right to to just again I’ll ask the question again if the general welfare Clause actually conveyed the sort of wide sweeping Authority that many people believe it does why would you need anything else within the Constitution why would you need enumerated powers why would you need to
Lose some why would you need to list out anything you would just say Congress has the authority to do whatever it wants provided they decide it’s within the general welfare done I mean it would have saved a lot of ink right the reason why that’s not the case
Is because it wasn’t the case and so it has only been later and and again I will admit you had people like Hamilton Alexander Hamilton that was trying at the very early stages but that’s because Alexander Hamilton wanted a more centralized Authority he wanted a more domineering federal government
Which was the very thing that most people did not want in the United States and the very thing that Alexander Hamilton himself argued against when he was trying to get ratification of the Constitution so it’s important to understand that the general welfare Clause cannot possibly convey the meaning that is sometimes attributed to
It the the more accurate interpretation the general welfare Clause is that when Congress is acting to allocate funds it should not be allocating funds or making rules um within its Authority in order to benefit like a small population it shouldn’t be using the general funds in order to Advantage one particular group
Over another particular group it should be thinking with the general welfare of the entire population the entire country that’s how it should be thinking that’s clearly not how it’s being interpreted today so what’s the second one second one oh my gosh so I got to
Tell a story I’ll tell I’ll say this the Supreme Court loves this second one oh yeah the interstate commerce clause so I think I think this is the question I I think it was so the first time I met Senator Mike Lee I was sitting in his office and I can’t remember
Um I think it was yeah it was this one so I sit down with Senator Mike Lee he’s he’s sitting there super nice guy right and he’s like well you know Nick tell me a little bit about yourself um I said well you know uh this is my
Background I served in the military I currently serve in the Virginia House of delegates I’m married to my wife Tina I have three kids you know he’s like oh that’s great you know hey thank you for your service thank you that’s that’s one what do you think of the interstate
Commerce clause that was the first question here oh it was like abrupt it was abrupt and I looked at him I said oh my gosh it’s been horribly misinterpreted in fact you really want to get to some other let’s also talk about the general welfare clause and
Necessary and proper you want to talk about supremacy clause I’d love to talk about how that’s messed up and then he’s like I like this guy and so and I proceeded to go into like the the filburn decision so what is the purpose of the interstate commerce clause well the the purpose of
The interstate commerce clause I’m going to ask you to define the filburn decision in a minute I will I will we’re gonna we’re gonna go through in fact Let me let me just bring it up so I can um kind of read this off uh I’m just gonna yeah here we go interested
All right I don’t know that’s the Interstate Commerce Act I don’t want that okay um overview of Commerce Clause all right Congress will have the power to regulate commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes and and this is what this constitution dot congress.gov says the
Commerce Clause gives Congress broad power no it does not to regulate interstate commerce and restrict States from impairing interstate commerce early Supreme Court cases primarily view the Commerce Clause’s limiting state power rather than as a source of federal power and and this is accurate this is an accurate interpretation of it so what
The what the Commerce Clause was meant to do was to establish that the the federal government really didn’t have a role in intrastate Commerce which is to say that if you’re buying a product producing a product selling a product whatever it is within your respective State the federal government really
Doesn’t have much say over that what they were trying to do is prevent States from essentially engaging in trade Wars within the United States so they don’t want Virginia setting up tariffs for Kentucky right it was this idea that the United States was going to be a free
Trade zone and then when it came to negotiating uh trade with foreign entities and keep in mind when this was all written the primary source of revenue for the federal government was not domestic taxation it was duties and impulse it was it was tariffs essentially that was one of the primary
Mechanisms the federal government raised money and so the argument was and you could debate this but the argument was the federal government has to operate uh collectively when it comes to determining what trade policy is because it’s one of the primary sources of its Revenue in order to raise armies and
Everything else and then of course with the Indian tribes as well because the Indian tribes even though there was problems there were still seen as you know Sovereign entities within the United States and so again part of the reason why they were moving from the Articles of Confederation to the idea of
The the federal government was the federal government was going to take on the role of negotiating on behalf of all of the states with foreign entities or with Indian tribes and then a part of that was also to make sure that within trade within the United States there
Would essentially be a free trade zone okay now if you if you understand that and again this is even admitted that this was kind of like the early interpretation he goes up the approximately 1400 Commerce Clauses the Supreme Court has heard before 1900 most stemmed from State legislation as a consequence the
Supreme Court’s early interpretations of the Commerce Clause focused on the meaning of Commerce while paying less attention to the meaning of regulate during the 1930s however the Supreme Court increasingly heard cases on congress’s power to regulate commerce with the result that its interstate commerce clause jurisprudence evolved markedly during the 20th century
1942 the filburn decision was essentially just blew the lid off of any sort of it used to be that that the Commerce had to do with essentially like trade and then all of a sudden Commerce became like any sort of productive activity whatsoever right so you have a massive you have a
Massive difference with respect to what Commerce actually includes from the early interpretation of the modern interpretation and then you also have a massive difference with respect to what federal Authority is so in 1942 with the Supreme Court and keep in mind the the FDR the first case of a real threat of
Court packing was FDR because FDR kept passing legislation with the National Recovery Administration with the new deal with all these other programs which were by the way heavily influenced by Italian fascism don’t take my word for it go look at Hugh Johnson who who ran the National Recovery Administration and
Used to pass out fastest fascist tracks to include the corporate estate right this is FDR he passed all the stuff which were clear violations of the Constitution clear violations of federal Authority and there was called there was four members of the Supreme Court called The Four Horsemen that constantly Were Striking these down
And then FDR threatened to pack the court well what ended up happening to some of those justices retired he replaced them with these living Constitution justices and in 1942 you had the manifestation of one of the most absurd Supreme Court decisions I would argue in history
Probably not the most immoral but one of the most absurd in 1942 they ruled against a farmer and here’s what the farmer was doing the farmer was growing I think it was wheat I think he was going wheat and they found out that this was in violation of different federal laws that
Had passed under the New Deal and the argument from the farmer was I was growing wheat for my own consumption the federal government has no authority to tell me what sort of wheat what I can grow for my own consumption and the Supreme Court ruled under filburn
That if that farmer had not grown the the wheat the farmer might have gone to the grocery store in order to buy a corresponding product and when they went to the grocery store the weed that he bought of the corresponding product that he bought might have come from a different state
And so therefore under the interstate commerce clause the federal government has the ability to regulate not just Commerce in the original sense of like trade but productive activity because it could affect interstate commerce ladies and gentlemen that is a bottomless interpretation of the interstate commerce clause what you’ve
Essentially done if you’re really going to interpret it that broadly if you’re really going to go so far as to say that if something affects interstate commerce clause therefore the federal or some excuse me if something affects interstate commerce therefore the federal government has the authority to regulate it
The government can regulate literally everything literally everything right you you own a you own a dog well did did you buy that dog in your state yeah well if you hadn’t bought that dog in your state you could have bought it from another state and that would have
Affected interstate commerce so we can regulate your dog where’d you get those SpaghettiOs like like this is in you can come up with a never-ending Loop of absurd you know manifestations of this of this reasoning that was a unanimous decision too that’s how stupid it was but this
Was also because the court had been scared to death off of FDR’s uh Court packing scheme so just just understand the original intention of the the Commerce Clause was very very specific to a particular definition of Commerce generally dealing with trade not all productive activity and it had to do with trade crossing
State boundaries or International boundaries and and it was not there to give the federal government infinite control over regulating the economy but that loose interpretation in Filbert and thank God we had we had we’ve had Supreme Court decisions and decisions post filburn which have essentially rained it back in
Thanks to people like Scalia but they’re still but it’s still somewhat limited though I mean it’s still really bad because the Obamacare decision in 2012 in many ways reinforced yes Phil Burns rather than thank you thank you justice Roberts that was so dumb so ridiculous
Or no he did he did it was Roberts he did under his Interstate Commerce club no no he didn’t understand he didn’t enter taxi not interstate commerce but but the thing was is that people were using the interstate commerce both sides actually were using that argument
So that’s the second one yeah um these next two I’m gonna do in tandem right the supremacy closet necessary in property we had a question before we move forward uh just a note for everyone I am taking notes on questions from the MTA Channel and Rumble and we’re going
To get to those after we get through these next too so if you have a question we haven’t gotten to it stick around yeah I apologize we’re like on a roll right now so I’m not reading the screen as well as I try to Supremacy class and necessary and proper clause the reason
Why we’re going to take these two together is because I think they’ve been misinterpreted kind of along the same lines of reasoning the supremacy clause doesn’t mean that whatever the federal government does they have Supremacy the supremacy clause doesn’t mean any federal interpretation of supreme of the Constitution automatically wins out
Because they’re the federal government the supremacy clause only means that insofar as a state law violates jurisdictions that have not been given to it insofar as state law interferes in those jurisdictions or authorities that have been granted to the federal government by the Constitution the Constitution is supreme
Right so the only way the supremacy clause works is if what whatever is being decided actually falls within the proper jurisdiction boundaries and authorities granted in the Constitution it is not a free-for-all that whatever the federal government decides to do that that wins out that’s that’s not
What it is necessary and proper clause is pretty similar um necessary and proper clause essentially says that again Congress and the federal government is allowed to do those things or to establish certain entities in in order to um in order to carry out its enumerated powers so for instance if the if the
United States government if the federal government is responsible for maintaining a navy and a um and an air or excuse an avian Army all right well then it stands to reason they’re going to need army bases it stands the reason they’re going to need Naval bases it
Stands to reason that they’re going to have to allocate funds in order to build ships or actually sign contracts in order to buy weapons now it doesn’t say within the Constitution you’re authorized to buy weapons for the Army it says no you maintain an army it’s obvious that part of maintaining an army
Requires training it requires uniforms it requires Provisions it requires ammunition it requires equipment and then obviously you can do the things that are necessary and proper in order to do those things now if the government came in and said well you know we we have to maintain an army
And so uh therefore we’re gonna like round you all up and throw you in the Army whenever we feel like it right okay that would be a little bit more problematic now we do have a draft we have a do have a draft system right but but the point is is just because
Something is um just because the federal government has an authority doesn’t mean that anything that they could you know kind of tangentially associate with that Autumn automatically becomes necessary and proper the Constitution says that we need to maintain an army so therefore we’re going to use taxpayer fund uh
Funds in order to subsidize service members getting abortions yeah yeah that is something the Pentagon is currently this came out just a few days ago where the Pentagon was like yeah we’re gonna you know what that is that we’re gonna pay for these yeah no nowhere does that
Fall with a necessary and proper nowhere it just doesn’t um so that that’s the that’s the issue necessary and proper has to be understood that we’re talking about necessary and proper with respect to the carrying out of those specific enumerated powers if you start to go beyond that and that becomes highly
Problematic all right last thing that we’ll get to here the LA the last thing is it’s worth mentioning the necessary and proper clause says gives Congress the power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing power yes not whatever Powers
Everybody forgets that last line the foregoing Powers it doesn’t say any power it doesn’t say all powers it says the ones that have been listed in this document up above yeah yeah everybody in DC seems to just completely ignore the second part of that sentence right there that
Stipulates what things are supposed to be necessary and proper for it’s supposed to be an execution of the other stuff up above yeah not whatever the federal government so the supremacy clause there was actually a um yeah there was a comment by um John here he goes yeah means the Constitution is
Supreme not the federal government absolutely correct within the bounds the Constitution places on the federal government the federal government is supreme that is true that is that is a you know good interpretation this is a problem that we’ve had for decades now is that DC has been interpreting it as
The supremacy clause means the federal government is supreme yeah and that anything the federal government says States and individuals just have to bow down and take it yeah absolutely absurd and it kind of gets into a Miss as you said you wanted to take them both in in
One take right the supremacy clause and the necessary and proper clause it’s a similar misinterpretation it’s not even a misinterpretation I feel like that some of this is deliberate to be completely honest I don’t think that it’s just people are are you know incapable of reading it properly I think that it’s
People who haven’t agenda to push are going to push for that agenda and come hell or high water it doesn’t matter what the law says it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says we’re going to reinterpret the Constitution or just ignore it flat out yeah insofar as we
Need to do so in order to achieve our desired end State yeah this is why like ultimately constitutions I I sent a message um when when Nick sent around the show notes when he was planning out this episode and the message that I sent was you know
I I feel like that that one of the big objections is going to be the left saying the The Constitution’s just a piece of paper and the right’s gonna be like the Constitution is just a piece of paper tone there well I think John Adams kind
Of hit on this where he said our constitution was written for a moral and religious people it’s totally unsuited to any other the idea that a Constitution’s have authority not simply because the ideas are good not simply because they’re written down constitutions have authority because people believe that the statements of
Principles and the limitations that are placed within them um are are true and good and just and the moment the vast majority of people don’t agree that anymore your paper your parchment is not gonna is not gonna hold up I got a couple things here I want to
Do um one is a walking contradiction said Mr Heinz you need to grow your beard out and braid it then strapping battle ax to your back you can pull off the Viking look I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna agree with this all right Daniel Clark question is the electoral college
Institutional if it is doesn’t that go against our freedom if only the government or people chosen by the government can choose the president Daniel Clark good question is it constitutional absolutely because it actually lays out as as the process for selecting the president now there’s a
Couple things to ask yourself on why do we have electors well again the reason for this was because the office of the presidency was essentially to just carry out the laws of the land properly put into place by the federal government and within the boundaries of the Constitution
Part of the reason why they had the Electoral College was because they also wanted they wanted to be like a a popular component to it that has to do with the number of electors by state but then they also wanted there to be a state component right there was it’s
Important to note that there’s always been this balance between uh popular representation and state representation and that goes back to we are a republic of republics so I think it’s important when we view it through that lens the Electoral College makes a lot more sense now the Electoral College itself has has
Developed over time initially what it was is like each state was voting for who their electors were going to be because the electors were people that were essentially trusted people right so they were popularly elected but then they would go and they would make a decision with respect to who their state
Wanted to be the president and and it provided this this process not only for election but also for debate among the electors now over time we we’ve adjusted that to where most state laws govern that whatever the popular vote is within the respective States all of the
Electors are to go to whoever the popular vote States there’s exceptions to that Nebraska being one main being one are there any others um Nebraska and Maine are currently the only ones but historically there have been in the past other states Michigan in the 1890s I believe specifically did
It yeah so so sometimes they’ll break it down um in in accordance with I think it’s congressional district congressional districts and they’ll allocate the electors that way so um it is constitutional there’s a debate on whether or not it’s it’s a it’s still an appropriate system I think it still
Maintains some Vestige of insuring uh not only popular uh choice of the president but also State concerns as well and and I think that makes sense with our overall Federalist system so do you want to get to the honorable mention in terms of most misinterpreted Clauses of the Constitution the controversial
Three-fifths oh boy this is I just have at it oh my gosh like it was either last it was either this session or last session I watched as a member of the Virginia House of delegates got up and said the the Constitution the Three-Fifths Compromise said that black
People were only three-fifths of a person and I’m looking going how how ignorant of the Constitution of this whole debate do you have to be to still believe that in the 21st century and and then I realized oh no it’s it’s the old Reagan adage it’s not that
They’re ignorant it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so the Three-Fifths Compromise was not about the Constitution declaring that black people were three-fifths of the person you want to know how I know because it didn’t apply to free states it applied to people in captivity
Why is that you might ask well I don’t know for all of you who thinks that the Three-Fifths Compromise was this this Vestige of of pro-slavery sentiment within the Constitution if we had counted if we had counted each person in captivity each slave as a person for population
You would have drastically increased the power of slave states the Three-Fifths Compromise was an attempt to curtail the authority of slave states with respect to representation because we all know the slaves weren’t getting to elect who represented them were they so you can look back at the institution of slavery
And as I do and think this was horrible this is the great sin right at the American founding you could also look at it within context and recognize that there was a lot of people there George Mason who was a Virginian got up and railed against the institution of slavery at the
Constitutional Convention but they came to the conclusion that they weren’t going to be able to unify if they tried to if they tried to address it right then the Three-Fifths Compromise hints at the fact that what it was is that anti-slavery Advocates at the Constitutional Convention were opposed to slave states demanding that
Their slaves be counted as people into artificially inflate their representation of the House of Representatives they wanted and Northern you know places like Massachusetts and stuff like that Northern delegates were like no you you can’t say on one hand they’re property not people and then on another hand say but we’re going to
Count them as people in order to artificially inflate our political power and then the southern slave states were like take it or leave it you know we’re going to walk basically unless you compromise with us and so the Three-Fifths Compromise was an attempt by anti-slavery Advocates to get
Something because they had so little power at the time to get something to curtail the power of slavery in the United States same thing with the with the band 20 years after the fact on the on on the Transcontinental slave trade yeah um or sorry um you know overseas slave trade yeah
And that was another thing that was Ranger the Constitution unfortunately the anti-slavery Advocates couldn’t get it enshrined in immediately yeah and so they they got the best deal that they could at the time which was 20 years after ratification it would give Congress the power to ban slavery and in
Literally exactly 20 years after the Constitution was ratified that was the first thing Congress did was ban overseas slave trading because they were finally allowed to do so so these were things that modern day I cannot stand the 1619 people and and leftists in general who just wanna
Just just absolutely tear apart the founding of this country and make it sound like that the United States was founded on on just pure evil because they hate everything they hate everything about this country and they they lie through their teeth it’s one thing for them to point to things that
Actually happen and say that’s evil and this is the reason why I hate the United States it’s another thing for them to lie through their teeth about something that’s written in plain English that you can go and read Madison’s notes you can go and read the Constitution itself and
You can see for yourself I’m not making this stuff up the the three-phase compromise was an anti-slavery measure in order to curtail the power of slave states and they want to twist this around into making it sound like that people were saying black people were only three-fifths of a
Person that wasn’t the case for black people living in free states it was only the case for slaves in order to curtail the power of slave owners well here’s the question I like to ask people are always being about like oh so you opposed the Three-Fifths Compromise yes
Absolutely okay so you think slave state should have had more representation in Congress wait what yeah exactly you don’t know what you’re talking about you you can be mad that the Three-Fifths Compromise was necessary right but don’t don’t misinterpret what it was actually about laughs is this we just got somebody
Donated said is this off-brand Nick Offerman being based on the Ron Swanson version not the Nick Offerman version all right reminder Nick Freitas you should mention State legislatures still have the final say over how the electors are chosen if Virginia GA chooses so it can select electors by drawing Lots Etc no that’s
That’s absolutely true there’s a great deal of authority provided to the states that that was somewhat limited with the uh the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and whatnot and and again because there was things like poll taxes things like um pull tests which were again horrible
Attempts to try to disenfranchise people uh in in violation of the 14th Amendment but um that has been called into question by Moore versus Harper that was decided um just uh what a month ago you’re talking about the Supreme Court decision on the independent state legislature Theory the Supreme Court
Ruled against it six to three now I don’t believe that that explicitly mentioned the appointing electors but it did say that that basically the Supreme Court said that state legislatures do not have absolute you know full authority over all the the mechanisms through which elections are conducted in
Their states so yeah there’s limitations on the yeah there’s limitations on it I mean that’s kind of obvious again with the button Rights Act and things like that that doesn’t mean a state can’t just do whatever the heck they want but they still do have a lot of authority
Within what might be considered legitimate processes um okay what are we on now we got some questions yeah let’s jump in here with some questions uh we’ve got two from intensive care bear on the MTA Channel a very Act member of our community chat first one is do you think there is a
Better governing document or a system than the Constitution no oh gosh that’s a I I don’t I don’t think well you mean you don’t think the constitution of South Africa or Venezuela is a better document um no I think one of the brilliant things about the cause I believe the
Constitution is 22 pages with amendments with amendments and if and if you look at um if you look at most constitutions like the Soviet Constitution it’s amazing they always they always go into all these one of the reasons why Ginsburg thought that the South African Constitution was better is because it
Guaranteed rights of Housing and health care and you can’t we discussed this before I’m going to say it very briefly right here there’s this thing called positive rights versus negative rights negative rights are basically prohibitions or restrictions on government or other people imposing their will on you the the powerful thing about negative
Rights is that it doesn’t require anybody else to give you something in order for you to have that right it prevents them from doing something to you positive rights or things like you have you have a right to Health Care you have a right to help Health Care housing all of these things
Don’t exist except in the sense of goods and services and property you can’t have a right to somebody else’s Services you can’t have a right to somebody else it’s not an inherent right you can trade for it you can exchange for it you can pay them and
Then have a right based off of the payment that you give them for them to be able to provide that service but you can have an inherent right to the labor to your property of somebody else and yet Democrats are constantly saying that you can we fought a war over this you
Can’t you don’t have an inherent right to the property Labor uh labor or ideas of somebody else you just don’t so whenever a constitution says you have a right to health care what they’re really saying is the government is now going to confiscate the property of other people
In order to provide this good or service well that just begs the question what kind of health care whatever Health Care the government decides you have a right to so this this has always been very very problematic now in the U.S Constitution again it puts all of its
Emphasis on what we would call Natural what I would call god-given rights which is to say that when you look at it it’s always prohibitions on the government doing something to you right that’s what it is me exercising my freedom of religion doesn’t require you to do anything
You know me exercising my freedom of speech doesn’t require you to do anything right then so that that’s the distinction that that’s the difference and it’s also one of the reasons why I think that I cannot think of another document um well I’ll actually I’ll take that back there’s one other system of
Government uh that would be superior in my opinion that I can think of and that is if if God were to come down and directly govern right if at all knowing all-powerful all perfect being decided that he was going to come down and be
Like this this is it do this and yes you already hear Nick so it’s absolutely theocracy right even worse theocracy yeah I I you know I’ll say this is even though it was Unwritten and it eventually fell apart the Roman political system worked very well for like almost 500 years we’re not
Even 250 years in and and I really feel like that our system is starting to fall apart at the seams here and it’s just being ignored and the Roman system wasn’t even written and it was obeyed and successfully executed for almost five centuries I think there’s things I
Think there’s things that we could and I think there’s things that we can improve on our constitution I’ll put it that way but the like the founding document of the Constitution I think is very very solid obviously it’s changed since then in ways in which I think were beneficial
I think the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was was absolutely necessary and very important um and then I think the Bill of Rights was was an important component and so let’s kind of get into that um if we can unless we got another question like waiting we’ve got a few more all right
Go ahead and ask them all right I’m gonna move on to Adam’s question um do you think it is possible that the USA is just too large to manage properly might it be beneficial if America is split into two smaller countries I don’t think it’s about too small or countries
I I think it’s so my personal opinion is that we’ve gotten to a point where we’re just no longer observing federalism do you know what we’re supposed to be what’s that 50 smaller countries that’s what we’re supposed to be that’s what the states are supposed to be if you
Look at what Madison was trying to achieve as he looked at like the Venetian Republic and as he looked at the various Republicans republics throughout Europe he noticed that once it got big and once it expanded and that Authority was centralized in a in a location that was Far Away people lost
Faith in it so the whole idea of federalism was the Federal government’s powers are limited they’re enumerated they’re just going to deal with these things but most of the things that actually affect you on a day-to-day basis that’s going to be handled at the state or local level and what that does
Is it allows you to be a part of a larger entity the United States of America while finding a place within the United States of America that caters more to your individual preferences not just with respect to things like geography or Economic Opportunity but also with respect to governance and so
If we could just get back to recognizing like let me let me put it this way I have no desire there are certain things I prefer that I have no desire to use the federal government to impose on you my problem is is that I can’t find many
People on the left that don’t think if it’s a good idea well then of course the federal government should be imposing it like I that’s become the problem it’s a lack of respect for the fact that we are never going to agree on everything and peaceful coexistence is not found in in
One side or a 50 plus one imposing their will on everybody else peaceful coexistence is generally found in leaving other people alone when you can’t agree except for when it is something that is so essential to existence that it requires some sort of Regulation by law
All right we have two questions one from Roya and Tyler both very similar so I’m going to read both of them with all the wrong things implemented interpreted in the constitution is it possible to take advantage of some amendments or add clear language to the Constitution to
Correct those wrongs and Tyler asks what what would it take to remove an amendment can scotus deem one is unconstitutional if it goes against the original document no because if you remain in the Constitution you’re amending the original document yeah it doesn’t work like that that’s what the
Amendment process is for yeah so we for instance we have changed the Constitution we’ve changed the Constitution 27 times you have the Bill of Rights right the first 10 amendments to the Constitution then you have you know 11 through 27. to be fair those first ten amendments were all ratified
At once yeah they were it was a little bit different it was only 17 times yeah it was a little bit different the other thing to keep in mind is that we’ve actually removed amendments from the Constitution so for instance when the third when the 13th Amendment came into
Play the three-fest compromise went away from the body of the Constitution because it was no longer necessary right when and um when prohibition was passed the 18th Amendment and then it was repealed by the 20 it was the um I should know it was the 21st amendment
I think it was the 21st um so anyways prohibition passed under the 18th Amendment right that that made um yeah it was the 21st amendment certain kinds of like transactions with respect to alcohol and consumption what not illegal in the United States and then we amended the Constitution shortly
After to get rid of that Amendment so that’s the process that it takes now people will say that it’s a it’s a long arduous process yes it’s supposed to be one of the reasons why we have separation of powers and one of the reasons why we have an amendment process
But it’s not easy is because of something that George will once said George Wilwood said that American political gridlock is not a problem it’s an American achievement and the reason why is because if you respect the fact that what government action essentially is is force it’s coercion it’s the
Threat of violence for non-compliance and if you’re going to impose that at the federal level then now you’re imposing on 330 million people I got news for you if 50 plus one of the population wants something that still leaves over a hundred and what 60 million people who don’t want it
You need to be really careful on what you’re trying to impose on that sort of level and so that is why it’s an arduous process and it’s a difficult process to amend the Constitution now are there things I would change the Constitution let’s let’s jump this is a great segue
Because I want to talk about the worst amendments to the Constitution yes I would repeal the 16th and the 17th amendments to the Constitution today because if you want to know if you want to know why when we were talking about Article 1 Section 8 and federal power is
Limited and why is the Government Federal Government doing a bunch of things that they were never intended to do or supposed to do it wasn’t because in every way they subverted the Constitution it was because with the 16th Amendment and for the first time legally gave the federal government the
Ability to tax you as an individual no matter where you go within the United States and now it gave the federal government this huge pile of money so when I look at the federal government I say wait a second federal government doesn’t have jurisdiction over education the federal government’s response is oh
No no we totally agree we don’t have jurisdiction over education but we just took a bunch of your money and if you want it back you’re going to do what we say yeah that’s we we call that extortion in some areas but that’s exactly what that that level
Of taxing Authority has granted to the federal government it essentially subverts the place that the state used to play in pushing back against Federal taxing Authority and now the Federal Government taxes you individually no matter where you go and by the way it now taxes you on you know
Income is a pretty broad thing it’s not just income tax it’s capital gains it’s it’s all these other taxes that it’s it’s the death tax right it’s all these other things that the federal government is now taxing and it gives them the ability to say oh no no we’re not
Requiring you to do this we’re simply saying that if you don’t you don’t get any of your money back so if I come in and I Rob your house and I take your life savings and I say no no no you don’t got to let
Me stay and you don’t gotta let me stay in this bedroom in your home but if you don’t I won’t give you any of this money back we would all understand that that’s somewhat of a coercive relationship okay well that’s that’s what’s currently happening with a lot of federal
Regulations the way the regulation is written is written in such a way to where it’s like we’re we’re not imposing this by law which is to say that we’re not saying that you have to do it we’re just saying you don’t get your money back if you don’t
Well as I think it was uh was a John Jay uh that said the ability to taxes necessarily the John Marshall John no I think it was Marshall that said I think it was Joseph’s story Joseph’s story said the ability to tax is necessarily the the ability to destroy I think it
Was story he’s looking me up right now to make sure I’m right um and that’s absolutely true if if I don’t have the authority to tell you how to live your life but I have the authority to take your money and if you don’t live your life the way
I say you don’t get your money back do I have the authority to tell you how to live your life all right so that that’s that’s why I would say the 16th Amendment gone the 17th amendment is the popular election it was John Marshall it was power to taxes the power to destroy
Here’s what people don’t understand the context in which he said it though he was writing in McCullough versus Maryland where the state of Maryland had been uh trying to tax the the central bank or a branch of the central bank because they did not want Central Banking in the state of
Maryland and so this came to the Supreme Court and um lo and behold John Marshall because he was a federalist and he was a big government type of guy he ruled against it right he said that Maryland does not have the ability to tax these branch banks and the reason he said so
Was because quote the ability to taxes the ability to destroy now everybody’s looked at that since then and they’ve they’ve said oh this is the problem with taxation he agreed but he was saying this is the problem with the state trying to push back against the federal government’s
Central Bank so it’s not really we don’t like the things the statement’s true we don’t like the context the reason that he said that was is because he wanted to preserve the bank yeah yeah but but it’s I could have swore Joseph’s story said something similar but anyways uh you’re right
Um so that again I would get rid of the federal income tax uh that doesn’t mean that the federal government wouldn’t have any sort of taxing Authority they clearly would now a lot of people look at that and be like oh my gosh but if you did that the
Federal government wouldn’t be able to do you know 78 billion dollars in in education spending and it wouldn’t be able to run Social Security okay let me just point this out think of all the quails that are that we wouldn’t be able to get high on cocaine right right
Here’s the thing I want to point out just because the federal government isn’t spending the money doesn’t mean the money isn’t being spent right it could be spent by the state or better yet it could be spent by the individuals that earned it on a whole variety of productive activity whether
It was engaging in Commerce charity or whatever else people have this idea that if the federal government doesn’t spend it the spending goes away no it doesn’t it just gets spent by people that are actually a lot closer to the people that it’s being spent on whether it’s the
Individual themselves spending on what’s best for them and their families or it’s a local or state government spending it which is a lot more interested in the in the in the concerns of what’s going on within its jurisdiction than the federal government ever will be
Like I I look at this and it just boggles my mind I want to look at people like federal government spending all this money is an absurdly inefficient way to actually do it even if you agree with government spending like this level I don’t but even if you agree with this
Level of government spending you never want it spent by the federal government you’d want to spend state or locally in most situations there would be a lot fewer spending projects yes so so Federal popular elections doing a 17th Amendment population of senators this is the one that um I think really gutted
State power within the legislature the Civil War yeah Delta crippling blow to states rights and the 17th Amendment killed it yeah completely the the it used to be that states that you’re Senators um were elected by your state legislature now people said wasn’t that undemocratic again understand what we’re
Talking about that’s the reason I understand what we’re talking about here democracy is not synonymous with good and Noble and wonderful and beautiful right Democratic processes may be a necessary component to Freedom they are not a sufficient one the whole purpose of the Senate was to ensure that state interests were also
Represented at the federal level not just popular interests and so the idea was that the state the Senate worked as a hedge against overwhelming Federal Authority at the expense of the states and so the state legislators electing the Senators again you still elected your state legislatures right you still elected
Your state reps but then they elected someone that they thought was going to do a good job of representing the interests of the state and that’s why it was so important and that’s why I think the those are two amen so to answer your question would I adjust the Constitution
I would definitely adjust it by getting rid of those two things the other thing I might do but I I I would I would certainly adjust the wording of certain things within the Constitution maybe on the Second Amendment to make it a little bit more
Clear but I I will say this well I would accept an opening of the 16th and 17th amendments for repeal I I would be very very hesitant to open up other portions of the Constitution for amendment process um because I would be scared to death on on how they would screw it up
Stage no I know that I’d rather we have what we have than so again we could go through a process there’s definitely amendments that would be I think beneficial to the Constitution um and I think the the best way to do it is usually through a bill submitted
Through Congress where it goes through Congress has to pass with two-thirds majority then it goes to the state legislatures two-thirds of the state States need to pass it then it can get ratified um there’s also an article 5 convention that we’ve never had we’ve had threats
Of an article five yeah but we’ve never actually had one and the reason why is because a lot of conservatives are heavily divided on conservatives are bitterly divided on on the value of an article 5K and the objections to it or I know many people that are very opposed
To it because they feel like that there’s no mechanism through unless you had another amendment that clarified how that process works again it gets into how certain things aren’t aren’t particularly worded we’ve seen examples of like like what we do not want is what they’ve done in a lot of South American
Countries where they call a constitutional convention to to to fix some problem and then the Socialists win all the elections and then they come in and they say oh now we’re going to have a a right to ever other people’s property and we’re going to confiscate Industries and and redistribute the
Wealth and impose a Marxist leninous system like you do not want that they’re in the process of of doing stuff like that in many South American countries if you want to look at the political chaos right now that is taking place in Peru and Chile these are two countries right
Now that are in the process of trying to amend their own constitutions and I mean it’s like Street violence at this point between the left and the right over this process there is a there is something to be said for making the Constitution again um not not overly
Not overly burdened with it with a bunch of stuff that isn’t necessary and keeping it limited enumerated and quite frankly small like you don’t you don’t want it to be governing every every little thing Nick I got a couple questions asked question if one were to introduce
An amendment for term limits for state representatives and the federal government would be more effective at the state or federal law state um the federal government is not supposed to be determining or dictating uh term limits for state legislatures that that would be considered I think a
Massive Federal overreach so if you do want term limits I would do it at the state level now there’s look I I’ve signed on for uh term limits at the at the federal level um here’s what I’ll tell you about term limits it is not the end-all be-all I I
Think there’s benefits from it there’s also problems with it the I think the benefits outweigh the problems Christian disagrees with me on this but I I would say that if I had my ideal I’ll put it this way I I don’t think I can get my ideal so I’ll settle for term
Limits on Congress but here’s here would be my ideal you win at term limit Congress you’d turn them back into a citizen legislature I would much prefer that most of your states are citizen legislatures with the exception of I think four or five that are full-time like Pennsylvania Michigan California uh
Maybe New York I can’t remember most of your states are citizen legislatures which says that they go to their state capitol they legislate for usually a small or limited amount of time and then they go back to their real jobs in the real districts and that’s where they live
Like in Virginia I’m in session which means down in Richmond for 60 days during even years because those are our biannual budget years and 45 days in odd years that’s it Monday through Friday we legislate we take the floor every day we have the veto session though we we do have a veto
Every now and then a special you come back for one day in April in order to uh consider Governor’s vetoes and amendments and then we can be called into special session right but normal practice is I don’t spend more than 70 days a year down in Richmond
Right so not even a full three months and guess what we have run system works fantastic we have roads and we have police departments and we and we used to have that at the federal level yeah it turns out you don’t need legislators sitting around um you know that long just constantly in
In session now obviously with the federal government they go back and forth between their districts and and but I think it’s horribly inefficient I think it’s ineffective um so I I would go not to mention the fact that if you move to a citizen legislature you would have more people
That self-selected to leave early they you’d have fewer people making it a career in my opinion and um to give you an idea in Virginia this election year in Virginia we are going to have roughly a 40 turnover in the house of delegates due to a combination of retirements and
Redistricting so I I’ve been in I’ve been in the house of delegates eight years next year will be my ninth if I’m re-elected I will have gone when I first went into the general assembly in 2016 I was 92 in seniority out of 100 delegates when I go
In next year I’ll be I’ll probably be in the 20s that is a high degree of turnover that you are having within a state legislature right so the the arguments against that term limits um are usually the idea that if you have term limits the bureaucracy will run the show not
The elected officials I I my response to that is I think one of the reasons why the bureaucracy has grown so much is because we have career politicians and and if politicians understood that their job was just to go down there do some things and then go
Home they would be less likely to give the government as much Authority as they currently have but that it’s a debatable point I don’t really want to get into the debate over term limits but Nick is right that he and I very much disagree and and the the reason why is like I
Look at California as term limits and that has not made things any better at all instead it’s created a revolving door for a political class to grow in size as people get into the legislature sell their votes while they’ve got it and then they get out and then they
Become lobbyists or they end up working for the government and it just increases the size of the political class it doesn’t restrict their power yeah but that’s a whole discussion for another day Nick um I I know that we’re at the two hour mark and so I I know we got a
Couple more things to go over and I want to get to as many questions as people have so I’ve got a question for you that I’ve been waiting um that I wanted us to and maybe some other questions can be related to this um to just wrap up the discussion here
Before we just do do nothing but questions I I remember when I said earlier that like it sounds like as we’re reading through the Constitution that like we’re just reading off a list of things the federal government has been violating like like over and over and over again we talked about you know
How the federal government has the authority to coin money and maintain the value of money they don’t do that we talked about how Congress has the power to declare war they don’t do that we talk about all of these different things like how the necessary and proper clause relates
To the foregoing Powers not any power they don’t respect that like there’s there’s so many examples within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for that matter that quite frankly the federal government just has no respect for pretend doesn’t even recognize that it that it exists and so
It gets back into what I was saying earlier that the left will say the Constitution is just a piece of paper and increasingly I feel like people on the right are coming to the conclusion that the constitution is just a piece of paper and the tone is different there but but
It’s for different reasons yeah it’s for different the left is saying it’s just a piece of paper because they feel it stands in the way of their objectives the right says it’s just a piece of paper because they feel it’s not protecting their liberties um here’s what I would say I still think
The Constitution has a great deal of of not just legal Authority but moral Authority but I think over time that the problem has become where power has been increasingly centralized at the federal level the federal government uh is now spending I think over 78 or over 80 billion a year on on education
Right and most people like well isn’t that a good thing it depends what they’re encouraging your children to be educated in when a lot of people will look at government provided education is isn’t this a great way to increase literacy and all those things and you could you can certainly argue that the
Time before that versus the time now with respect to literacy rates and things like that but there’s been Improvement um here’s what I would argue though do you honestly believe that the government controlling education to the degree that it currently does is going to educate a populist ready to hold
Their government accountable and keep it within its limited boundaries or do you think that they’re going to get an education which encourages them to see the government as this overwhelmingly benevolent institution which provides them with education and food right because we have free and reduced lunches and health care
And all these other things and government is all these good things and I get to participate in I get to be a part of it and isn’t that wonderful and isn’t that great and isn’t it Noble and isn’t it just and isn’t this Freedom it’s our democracy
This is the part where again I look at the problems that we’ve come into is in part is I think because we’ve allowed the we’ve allowed the the authorities which can use force and coercion to achieve their objectives to essentially run education in this country and lo and
Behold the government gives itself a big old pat on the back when it’s the one telling your children how to view their government now people can look at that and say it’s conspiratorial I don’t care because it’s not the first time in history we’ve seen the problems associated with government
Having this level of control over education um the other thing I would say is that again the the Progressive Era within the early 20th century I think said a lot of these things in motion and we’ve created growing dependency on government in general but specifically the federal government if you’re if your livelihood
Especially in retirement because elderly people tend to vote in larger and more consistent blocks than any other demographic if your livelihood is now dependent on the federal government not because it had to be but because the government had the authority to confiscate your earnings put it into
This account and say depend on us for your retirement right if your health care is now dependent on the federal government not because it had to be right there’s this myth that everyone was just dying in poverty and of sickness before the federal government intervened not true not true
But now if your livelihood and your health care and your education is all dependent upon Federal subsidies well you’re going to be encouraged to not look too skeptically at the federal government insofar as you’re dependent upon it now that’s never what the United States was supposed to be almost every
Government throughout history people were either you know in breaking poverty and even then they were still dependent upon their government because either the government was the the mechanism for which the poverty took place and then they they gave them some sort of subsidy to keep them happy whether it was the
Roman bread Dole right or or it was the Soviet state where oh yeah we’ll guarantee you health care and education and a place to live in a job you just don’t get a lot of say over any of those things we’ll tell you what it looks like
And if you don’t like it well then you’re An Enemy of the State right there’s plenty of examples all throughout his feudal feudal culture within Europe I don’t know it will give you a place to live and we’ll make sure that you’re protected but if you leave
This land we’ll butcher you and your family and if you don’t actually if you don’t effectively manage the crops we’ll kick you off and you’ll starve to death so I’m sorry history is replete with examples of people being heavily dependent upon the government for their sustenance in one way shape or
Form what was always unique about the American experiment was not just our system of government it was the degree to which the government did not interfere in your life the people that were desperately trying to get here were not desperately trying to get here because they’d be able to
Vote for someone they were desperately trying to get here because this was a place where if you actually used your talents and your abilities and you worked hard and you saved and you made wise decisions a government entity wouldn’t immediately come in and confiscated from you because you weren’t
Born to the right family that’s what was unique now that’s not to say that the mechanisms for which we set up the federal government or or the the ideas that that informed the establishment of our state governments that’s not to say that all that too wasn’t unique in its own right and also
Important but the most important takeaway from the way the Constitution was constructed was not oh good now we have a federal government to take care of us it was supposed to be oh good now we have an incredibly small and limited federal government that’s going to deal
With a very set piece group of things that is makes sense for it to deal with and overall provides us protection from things like foreign invasion so that we can engage in Commerce so that we can engage and educate providing education and health care and all those various
Things within the marketplace of both Commerce and ideas but if you’re going to transplant all of that to well the federal government’s here to take care of me and the way they’re going to do it is by taking money for those greedy people over there and giving it to me because
I’m more worthy why am I more worthy because I voted for the politician that told me I’m more Worthy and that person stole stuff from me I’m not exactly sure how but the person I voted for and this is democracy and democracy is good right my democratically elected leaders
Said they did and now they’re going to give it to me and I’m going to get my cut and that’s fair and that’s just and by me voting for them I’m doing I’m not only doing something good for me I’m Noble I’m far more noble than the person we’re taking stuff from
Right when Society has been reduced to that sort of mentality well then I got news for you democracy is not going to produce great results and it all goes back to what Adam said our constitution is made for a a uh what is it a moral a moral
And religious people and it is totally unsuited to any other when people lack the capacity for self-regulation whether that be on a moral basis whether it be on an economic or commercial basis whether it be on a basic social interaction basis when they lack that capacity or any sort
Of genuine foundation for why those things are necessary and and that all gets replaced to whatever our democratically elected leaders tell us well then don’t expect positive results and that’s the part that concerns me most is that when people look at the Constitution or when they look at the
Federal government they’re no longer looking at an entity which can be used for good or for ill they’re looking at an entity that they’re going to use because it has the coercive power to take from others in order to give to them and after all you’re the good people and they’re the
Bad people that’s when the Constitution that’s when the Constitution it’s when a majority of people have bought into that lie that the constitution isn’t going to protect anybody because it’s just a piece of paper and it’s a beautifully written piece of paper but it cannot protect itself
Right a piece of paper can’t defend itself yeah and that piece of paper is supposed to defend us like Montesquieu came up with this whole concept of you know the division of powers and and many of the founding fathers like James Madison really emphasized the division
Of powers we went through this in this episode right Federalist 51. um you know that that you’re gonna have two divisions of powers one between states and federal government and one within the federal government these men thought that that this is going to be the way that you restrain
The Leviathan but the problem is what happens when first off all the people that work within those branches all go to the same schools all work within the same Industries all have the same worldview all work together like what happens when the branches work together to increase
Their power because the idea was is that each branch would jealously guard its power what happens when each branch collaboratively Works to increase their own powers in conjunction with each other as we saw during the 1930s for example when Congress passed a bunch of New Deal Laws
FDR executed them and the Supreme Court was too cowardly to defend against them yeah and and when two branches gang up on the third branch or or coerce it into compliance let alone when all three branches work together they can shred the Constitution they can shred individual liberty there was actually a
Question from um the the equipment operator guy um that I think really gets to the heart of what you were just saying there when you were answering my earlier question Nick and and he said um question have you ever read Hans Hermann Hopps book democracy The God
That Failed I I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t I haven’t read it yet I have not read it yet but I have heard I I’ve seen Clips like I’ve seen clips and quotes from it it’s on my it’s on my to-do reading list in fact I might end up just
Ordering it and start reading it because I’ve heard so much about it from so many places and I’ve seen like I’ve I’ve read little quotes from it well it’s it’s funny the Wikipedia says democracy The God That Failed is a 2001 book by Hans Hermann hop uh containing 13 essays on
Democracy and this is what Wikipedia highlights passages in the book oppose universal suffrage in favor natural Elites again I I haven’t read the book so I can’t say whether or not I I agree with the conclusions in it but it would be interesting I haven’t read it but but
The synopsis that I’ve gotten is not the oh natural Elites in the sense that oh some people are better than others but more that that again the right has has much more respect for hierarchy than the left although the left is deluding themselves because you see that when
They take power they still create hierarchies right like it wasn’t like when the Bolsheviks took over Russia that they created an egalitarian system no Stalin was in charge yeah there was there it was very clear where power was emanating from that was a hierarchy right yeah and and so the argument that
I I think he’s making and that people on the right historically make is that hierarchies are a natural component of nature there’s nothing evil about hierarchies what’s evil is when you create an artificial hierarchy where you’re elevating People based on things that aren’t meritocratic in nature yeah
Right when you elevate somebody and you say believe all women right or you say white people are bad or men are evil like you see shocker there’s an entire political movement in the United States that is built around attacking people based on their race or their skin color
Or their ethnicity or their gender and and saying those people are the bad guys give us power and and we will Elevate you and punish them yeah you’re creating a perverse artificial hierarchy at that point yeah a natural hierarchy is not one where it’s just oh straight white men control everything and natural
Hierarchy is one where meritocracy rewards successful good hard work and people who produce things will rise to the top just like you see within an economic free market system well the the like I said nature kind of aborts of vacuum what we mean by that is when when
There’s an absence of of clear rules which everyone understands and can operate by something replaces it and the rules could be good or bad but something replaces and we usually refer to this as like strong men or things like that the the hierarchy is going to exist on some
Level now it could be a hierarchy of ideas well if the hierarchy of the idea is we want a society that rewards people that do productive work okay well then you can’t punish the people for doing the productive work and you can’t subsidize the people that are doing the
Opposite of productive work you can’t do those two things because you’re not going to get the sort of decided that you want but these are the conversations we’re not allowed to have because people automatically draw images in their mind of what those people look like when in
Reality that person should be able to look like anything anybody all right we got a couple questions here reminder said uh Nick do you favor ideas of creating a constitutional formula for the size of the house it’s been set at 435 for going on a Century now
Personally I like the Wyoming or the cubed root great question remind I’m going to read this right now just so everyone understands the Wyoming rule asserts that our total number of Representatives should be determined by dividing the nation’s total apportionment population by the total population of our least populous state
Applying this to the 2020 apportionment population our total number of Representatives would be 573. the cube root rule asserts that the ideal size of the House of Representatives is the cube root of the total population applying this to the 2020 apportionment uh would have the rep Representatives at 692. uh Bandit asked
The question any thoughts to restoring um constitutional proportional from the 700 000 voters per representative back to the original 33 000. we would have thousands yeah we would be like the galactic Senate Star Wars to give you an idea I’m so um yeah a a congressman is representing
Almost as close to a million people at this point to give you an idea in the house of delegates in Virginia I represent 80 000 and that’s considered a very high number uh so here’s here’s what I would tell you I I think there’s benefits to having the discussion like I
Haven’t made up my mind yet on what I would necessarily prefer and this is to answer reminders question um I think it’s interesting like I think the raming rule is as samarit I think the cube root laws is interesting here’s what I would say um you do get to a point where your
Legislature is so numerous that it can be kind of unruly itself um however how do you balance that with the idea that you don’t want Representatives so removed from their their constituents that they they can’t effectively hear from them or represent them I I really go back to the idea that
I I think there’s Merit in some of these ideas and I’d certainly be open to a larger discussion on what that could potentially look like my problem is I like a lot of these things I don’t know that it actually gets to the root cause of the problem
That we have especially at the federal level um I think that has more to do with how people that are going to the federal government actually see the duties and responsibilities once they’re there um and and I don’t know that adding more people necessarily improves that it
Could it could right I just I don’t know so that that’s why I haven’t spent a great deal of time thinking about it but I do think it’s interesting and I do see the Merit I do see the Merit on representation closer uh to to the
People that are actually going to be um that you’re representing uh but again I I think I think that’s better served by keeping the federal government within its proper limitations and making sure that your representation at your state and local level that that’s one of the I
Have these like four rules that I go through when I look at a bill the first rule I always ask is is it constitutional and for me that means not only the U.S Constitution but also the Virginia Constitution like is it constitutional because if it’s not constitutional no matter how good the
Idea might be might be you haven’t authorized me to actually address it so that’s the first question second question I ask is um is this a legitimate function of government so some people look at a legitimate function of government exclusively based off of like what their state constitution says I don’t I look
At legitimate functions of government as I’m very very skeptical of government power and so when government is dealing with what I call involuntary human interactions fraud theft murder rape like these are things where I see a very legitimate uh role for the government to come in and adjudicate contract
Violation right I see the legitimate rule other things I’m more skeptical of government involvement so I have a higher threshold for legitimate functions of government the third question I ask is what is the appropriate level of government to deal with the issue and again that’s one where I look very very stringently at
Article one section 8 of the federal government I look at State Authority within Virginia I look at local Authority and then I also ask myself where would this where would this problem more effectively be dealt with because one of the big problems that the federal government trying to deal with
Issues for which it’s not suited to deal with is that you’re imposing things on 330 million people when I vote in Virginia we’re imposing things on 8.2 million Virginians right it and and if you look at Virginia just Virginia you could easily break down six very distinct areas within Virginia that have
Different cultures different ideas different you know economic uh interests and things like that so I always look at it as like look if this is a problem that you’re bringing to the state level the first question I’m going to ask is because this could this be settled at
Your Board of Supervisors like is this is this a state problem or is this a you problem and if it’s a u problem how about you go deal with it like let’s not let’s not create a state issue so I hope that I hope that probably gives you more
Than you really wanted from that but um hope it was helpful all right another question here uh when is Nick going to run for president or vice president let’s hope never thank you Rhys let’s hope never um let me see we had a question from Caleb
Breed okay on the MTA Channel yeah a great member of our community chat yeah it was awesome he says would you consider being a Theocratic fascist dictator like Sweet Sweet Daddy wall aspires to be maybe this is a discussion for a future time there’s this joke about the libertarian to fascist pipeline
Oh my gosh we’re good we’re gonna do it we’re gonna have to do another episode on on fascism versus communism I I did it I did a little clip the other day on this and people were I said you know when somebody says when somebody calls capitalism Fascism and then goes out and
Immediately burns down buildings attempts to intimidate their political opposition and you know advocates for government speech codes and ask for more political control of the economy because apparently they don’t know what fascism is I don’t know that antifa had very fascist Tendencies yeah right so it’s
Just yeah but no to answer your question no I I am not uh you know no no desire going on the record for that no desire to play the role of God I’m gonna go hard no right now no no not God fascist dictate it yeah no I’m good I’m good all right
Last question from me yeah this is coming from Sir of potatoes another great member of our community chat he said should we call Hamilton something else such as anti-central banking man it’s funny is that when we because of because you guys watching and sharing and because of our clips and
Stuff like that all of us now when we when we go out every once in a while we’ll run into someone at the store or whatnot we’ll be like oh you’re the good Hamilton or they’ll look at Team like oh you’re oh it’s Queen of the bees I love Queen of the bees
Um we got to come up with a we got to come up with a Slicker nickname for uh Christian though oh yeah all right so that that’s gonna be that’s going to be an assignment for everybody watching we got to come we got the good
Hamilton we got the queen of the bees we need a better we call them our political prognosticator and Resident historian but that just doesn’t roll off the tongue it does not we we need something like yeah Captain Doom maybe I mean I like the Viking title but I do like the
Viking title we have to put some work in we could call it uh like Ragnar Doom Brock or something like that yeah what’s a what’s what’s the name of a very very pessimistic Norse god that man some of the some of the Vikings from from like the what like 7th to 10th
Century they had some weird nicknames like Ivar the Boneless yeah yeah yeah all right wrath has a question for Nick what would his opinion be on a state using a monarchy as their state government well if it’s in the United States it’s unconstitutional they’re not
Allowed to do it like uh one of the things that the Federal Constitution affords to all the people of the United States is that all states are required to operate as a republican form of government so that doesn’t mean it has to exactly mirror what the federal government has
But it’s generally been interpreted to mean that you have to have a legislature a Judiciary and an executive branch which are all separate um and but again the 1K most of them have bicameral houses the only state that doesn’t is Nebraska which has a unicameral house but it would be it
Would be unconstitutional for a state to to try to operate as as a monarchy although I think Gavin Newsom is trying his his dick I’ll be honest I’m going to take the controversial position and say I am not as opposed to monarchy today as I historically have oh my usually I’m
Not and the reason why not not monarchy in the absolute sense but more I personally I I’m I’m increasingly feeling like the ideal form of government is something like a shareholder CEO type relationship where you replicate the way that a corporate board structure works and you apply a
Political system to that and so in that sense you could say that this CEO is effectively a monarch right the board appoints the CEO and then the CEO has many of the you want a constitutional monarchy I want a constitutional Authority with teeth not not a not a a
You know Charles III well everyone say goodbye to Christian because yeah this particular dictatorial setting and making the argument I know here’s the thing people say that oh that’s not very libertarian no it’s not very Democratic it can very much be very libertarian okay all right that’s we we do have a
Few years we got a few we have we have back to some more light-hearted yeah uh we have the dark scholar that’s interesting uh Doctor Doom that’s from Harrison Morgan on the MTA Channel well wrench heads like dark scholar or Darth scholar that’s these are nicknames for example I think I like walking
Contradiction uh Mr Hines is is gorthak the blooded we have we have Ace of uh Ace of Spades saying multiple tabs man Caleb says owner owner of 300 tabs Christian the Doom owner of three eyes yeah that really sounds like the doom doom of Gloom is sticking yeah you know what’s
Funny though is I I’m I’m still I’m very optimistic long term I’m just very pessimistic short and medium term yeah no I get it I get it um all right let’s go we got some more questions coming I want to get to those um I am going to gonna there were some
Other things we wanted to get to we didn’t get a chance so I’m going to go over them briefly while we wait for a couple more questions to come in because I I know we had some people so Hamilton’s monitoring those start monitoring questions I’ll I’ll
Take a look at them too all right so here’s here’s just kind of a wrap-up of everything we talked about so again whole purpose of the Constitution was the perceived weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation you had this battle between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists what they all agreed on
At the time at least when they were arguing for it was that the constitution was supposed to establish a very very limited government within specific enumerated powers that it was supposed to consist of co-equal branches between Federal uh legislative and Judiciary which is to this day unique in the world
All these other countries the people oh like you know Western democracies they’re very very different from the United States again Switzerland You could argue Germany on some level have more of a Federated Republic but most of them parliamentary democracies which means little to no distinction between the executive and the legislative right and
That’s one of the things we were trying to avoid in the United States and the reason for that is because we put a greater emphasis not on government efficiency but on the preservation of individual liberty and that’s very very important you want a really efficient government North Korea is super
Efficient he says do something and something happens and if you don’t you get eaten by dogs that’s efficient I don’t know that it actually produces positive results so keep that in mind our government was established at the federal level to try to prevent tyranny while accomplishing certain limited
Tasks it wasn’t presented to be the most efficient thing on the planet secondly we added the Bill of Rights why were those Bill of Rights added well a lot of it was a compromise with Anti-Federalists because they said look we understand a proper reading of the Constitution might keep the federal
Government within its proper boundaries but without these Bill of Rights we’re not ratifying the Constitution and that’s why you do get things like freedom of the press freedom of religion um the right to keep and bear arms and by the way anybody that believes the Second Amendment only applies to a
Well-regulated militia has not read the second part of the Second Amendment it is absolutely conveys an individual right and for good purpose and that purpose was twofold one was to protect a free state and two it was actually to protect against tyranny in general to include tyranny which I could actually
Come from within not just from without and then we can we can go through the rest of the Amendments but there was obviously things that were put in there that today like the quartering of troops these aren’t things that we’ve contended with in a long time but a lot of it was
Based off of what you would call like the Intolerable Acts that came from England they wanted to make sure that the federal government would not be engaging the sort of things that King George was engaging in uh the ninth and Tenth Amendment of the Constitution certainly don’t get enough attention the Ninth Amendment
Specifically focuses on making sure that it is understood that has understood that because a right is not specifically conveyed within the Constitution does not mean that right does not exist this what I like to think of the ninth amendment is reiterating that it is the enumerated powers of the federal
Government right it’s the Restriction is on the federal government the Constitution is not there to restrict your freedoms and Liberties it is to restrict government power and the Ninth Amendment kind of reiterates this the 10th Amendment also reiterates the proper disposition between the people the state and the federal government as
Well all that’s important obviously you have other things too with uh right of trial um fourth and fifth amendments that are kind of conveyed to some degree your right to be safe and secure within your own uh property and your papers there’s some people every once in a while will
Try to say try to suggest that your right to an attorney right and in certain uh cases with respect to uh transgression of federal law that your right to attorney is is actually a positive right because after all you have a right to an attorney let me explain why it is not
The only reason why you have a right to an attorney is because the federal government is attempting to prosecute you and deprive you of life liberty and property and so therefore it adds this additional provision which says if the federal government is going to attempt to deprive you of life liberty or
Property under certain conditions it is obligated for you to be able to to provide for your defense but if if um if a right to an attorney was a positive right what that means is that you could walk down the street right now and be like hey lawyer are you home yeah
I have a right to your services right because you know the you no that’s not what it is it’s a conditional right based off of the federal government trying to deprive you of something okay um we already talked about the worst amendments with the 16th and 17th and
Why again I think it gave a great deal of both inappropriate power to the federal government at the same time that it kind of did a lot to gut um to gut federalism and then overall again the kind of the argument that the Christian I went through here a little
Bit was this idea is is the Constitution still relevant well obviously it is still relevant as a legal document and I think it’s still relevant also as as a kind of a um on a moral level as well I do believe that we still live in a country with the
Vast majority of people still pay some degree of homage like even the people that even a lot of the people that believe that the the Constitution is far far more restrictive than it should be look at what they do they try to expand the general welfare
Clause they try to expand the meaning of the interstate commerce clause they try to expand the meaning of the necessary and proper dispremacy clause they’re still trying to operate within that document because they recognize that it has a great deal of popular support at least is kind of like a even if it’s
Just as a cultural icon now if we want to preserve it as having legal Authority moral Authority as well as cultural Authority then we’re going to have to do a much better job of explaining to people not only what exists and why it’s there but why it was originally put into place
What was the purpose again the purpose was not to create an all-powerful federal government that was going to take care of you it was to create a federal government with limited powers and then to create enough friction within that system in order to prevent it becoming tyrannical
And if we don’t teach that part of why the Constitution exists then your course you’re going to get people going well wait a second isn’t that undemocratic wait a second if we got rid of this wouldn’t the government be able to do this so much easier if we’re not teaching the dangers of
What government power represents along with the very very limited benefits the government power can convey well then we’re going to run into a real problem and as Christian pointed out at that point the Constitution will just be a piece of paper because ultimately pieces of parchment don’t defend
Themselves it relies on people that actually believe in the concepts and the ideas and the laws which are set forth in them and are willing to operate within its proper boundaries in order to make changes when necessary But ultimately to be able to agree to live in peace with one another Guided by
These documents and by these legal agreements and if we’re not willing to do that well then the only answer that comes from after that is violence and I don’t want that I don’t want that but the only way we’re going to get what we want is if we do teach a proper
Understanding of the Constitution why it was put into place why it’s still relevant today and do have an honest conversation at times on when it needs to be amended but when it does need to be amended let’s follow the proper process let’s not hand it over to a
Bunch of unelected judges to decide for us what terms mean when we’re perfectly capable of deciding that for ourselves let’s not do that let’s go through the proper processes and and ultimately I think one of the mechanisms I do think that we are we are so far down the road
That I do think it’s going to come to a point where there are going to have to be states that finally push back against Federal overreach and say we’re not doing this we are not doing this we believe this is a violation of federal Authority and we’re not going to permit
You to do it and is that going to cause a certain degree of of Crisis yes but I think the crisis that can arrive from a peaceful pushback under those conditions would be far more advantageous to the long-term prosperity and security not only of the country but of the individual liberty of our
Citizens which is what all of this is supposed to be about then I actually welcome that to come and I hope it gets here as quickly as possible I hopefully it’s as peaceful as possible and I hope it ends with a favorable resolution as quickly as possible because I will tell you right
Now I have some very definitive beliefs based off of my faith based off of my experience on what constitutes good and proper living and I would never dream of attempting to impose that on you at the federal level at the state level at the local level
But if we want to get back to a place where we understand that the proper way for us to engage in discourse and cooperation is within the marketplace of ideas in the marketplace of Commerce and then our primary mechanism for adjudicating problems should not be to immediately give politicians more power
And control in the hope that they will somehow do a good job wielding that which we didn’t trust to ourselves all right thank you very much I think we got to cover do we have a couple more questions um I think there’s all the questions we
Have for right now uh just real quick if you haven’t already uh be sure to go watch the full-length interview with Victor marks on the making the argument YouTube channel we published it yesterday as well with well worth your time and we would appreciate it yeah I I
Can’t emphasize that enough we did we did a little bit of a sneak preview on on this on the Nick Freitas Channel but we wanted to put the full interview because we’re going to start doing this over on the MTA Channel we’ve got more people that we’re going to do interviews
With we’re planning these out right now and that’s one thing that we wanted to make available over on MTA because eventually is this as this channel grows and as we start to do other projects and there’s some other things in the wings that you know eventually we’ll be
Letting people in on and we’ll probably be initially letting in our community chat over on Circle and on those ideas and getting their feedback but as we grow we’re actually going to have to split off various things into their own unique channels and they’ll always be kind of a central repository of certain
Things on the Nick Freitas Channel but uh ultimately what this is what this is is really about is the different ideas that we’re fighting for and we’re trying to Advocate and it’s it’s not it’s not about an individual person it’s supposed to be about the ideas uh and how we all
Utilize those in in order to you know again uh build in our in our faith building our community building our families and as individuals so once again I want to thank you all for the dialogue this was a lot of fun to go over if you want to have some say on uh
Future episodes because this I gotta say right now this all I think we give them uh Credit in the beginning but I want to give them a credit again this actually came from um where’s I think this was Justin Justin yeah Justin over on our community
Chat on Circle he’s the one that asked us to do this dive I hope we did a credible job we tried to do a lot in two hours and 38 minutes uh the Constitution’s a topic that there’s entire Advanced courses on in college so hopefully we we did adjust this and
Hopefully we we answered the mail for Justin and what a lot of our other viewers were interested in but if you would like to be able to have influence on what our next episode or our future episodes look like join our community chat over in circle great place to do
That and we always look forward to the dialogue in there and the Insight once again thank you very much appreciate your time and we’ll see you next episode foreign
