The Complicated Truth of U.S.-Israel Relations

> - The Trump administration may be realizing the risks of aligning too closely with foreign leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu.
> - Historical perspectives reveal that ethnic cleansing is a common solution in conflicts between incompatible peoples.
> - Diplomacy seems ineffective in resolving long-standing disputes, leaving displacement as a likely outcome.
> - American foreign policy has often deviated from the founding fathers' principles, leading to fragility in alliances.
> - As individuals recognize the limitations of current governance, there is a shift towards community and tradition.

So, I feel like the Trump administration is finally figuring out that aligning yourself with Benjamin Netanyahu, while there's definitely some overlap in interests, and I don't think any of this is personal. But when you form an unbreakable alliance with any foreign country, you're likely to get hurt, and American interests are likely to get hurt. And I think it's dawning on them that, you know, if another country, I don't know, decides to move 2 million people by force in the biggest internment mass migration since the Second World War, you don't want to have to take credit for that.

Are you surprised? >> Not really. Obviously, this is a terrible situation in the Middle East, and you can sit around and say, "Oh, you know, Israel should have been formed one way. Palestine should look at way." >> Right. Exactly. But the truth is at the end of the day, these two peoples are completely incompatible, and one of them is going to try to remove the other. It's a really ugly thing. Nobody should ultimately think that's positive. But if you look throughout history, the solution most nations have to this issue is ethnic cleansing. That's just what happens throughout history. Again, you don't have to judge it one way or another. You just have to look at history and know that's how these things tend to get resolved. And it's ugly business for anyone. And why should we involve ourselves on either side of that, right? I just don't understand how that would ever serve America.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] >> Well, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Of course this is going to happen. And it's dawning me slowly. It's like, wait, but what about the 2 million or however many are still alive people in Palestinians in Gaza? Like, what? Well, we'll just move them somewhere else. What? No one's tried that in 80 years. It didn't work then. Now everyone has an iPhone. It's going to be on video. It's totally immoral and disgusting. But it's also, as you just pointed out, inevitable. Again, it's messy, but it's a historical reality. And if we deny that, then we're going to end up getting caught in this never-ending cycle. The only reason this really hasn't happened, again, one direction or the other, it's not that I think the Palestinians probably wouldn't have a similar solution if they were in the Israelis' shoes, but the only reason this hasn't happened is there has kind of been this international consensus to involve ourselves in what otherwise would be a natural process throughout history. And so that's why we find ourselves stuck here over and over again. This is never going to get solved through diplomacy. You're never going to work out the ways in which you find a No. It's going to end with one group displacing the other. That's just going to happen. And it's just not our problem. There's no reason we should have our money, our treasure, our people, or more importantly, our moral worth tied up to any of this.

>> But that's kind of the American way, isn't it? I mean, historically, and you've taught history, that the United States forms unbreakable alliances with countries that share its values. That's what we're told. Is that true? >> No. And that's the most hilarious thing is like over and over again we hear this, "Oh, don't you care about America? Don't you care about American values?" Actually, if we look at what the founders said about foreign policy, it's radically different. George Washington in his farewell address was very clear about the way we should approach foreign alliances. He said basically you shouldn't have them. You can have commercial relationships; you should trade with other nations. Be friendly as possible. But he says very explicitly never ever have a favored nation or a nation that you hate because either way it makes you a slave to that nation and a free nation should be free of foreign influence. He very clearly says that foreign influence is the death of any given republic. So he says be very careful about making some nation your favorite nation because the natural dynamic that will happen...

I'm not like; you tailoring this in some way to the current environment. >> So this to be clear, this is Washington's farewell address >> right which is quote there's one line from it: don't make foreign alliances or something that has, you know, everyone's kind of familiar with. But does he goes on about it >> oh for several pages and he explains exactly the dynamic that's going to happen. He says, "You're going to associate this favored nation with your own nation. You're going to conflate its interests with your own interests." And not only will that happen, the different leaders of political factions inside your nation will start vying for favorability with the favored nation, showing themselves to be the true ally while you're the one who is deceiving everyone and you are actually betraying our true ally. And he says it's even going to get worse because the real patriots that point out that you are favoring that nation instead of the interests of the real country you live in, those people will be now denounced as traitors and they'll say very clearly. And so he's warned us about everything that we...

Washington wrote that. >> Yeah. 100%. Washington said the people who stand up and say wait a second nothing against that other country but our country's interest should be the main focus of the US government that guy will be denounced as like a tool of Qatar >> right and this is a document this is a document that every cool school child used to have to learn this is what every in every history class you would go this is one of our core documents along with the Constitution and the Gettysburg address but we never go over this anymore and I don't think that's any kind of strange coincidence. It very clearly contradicts everything about our current foreign policy. And that's what the founders actually believed. >> That's so preant. It's almost spooky. >> It's absolutely amazing. When you go back and read the words, you would think he's speaking exactly to the situation we're in now. And of course, you can see this with many places. You can see this as Israel, but you can also see it with Ukraine. And it's so strange that the right learned this lesson with Ukraine, right? We all learned that actually this deep state will send us to war. And they don't care about the boys in Appalachia or Texas. And it's not about defending America. We all recognize that when the Biden administration was calling us, you know, Putin puppets because we didn't want to send blood and treasure to Ukraine. But all of a sudden, we have a similar situation with Israel where we might need to involve ourselves. And we forget all of the lessons we learn. We forget all of the foreign policy that we were actually supposed to be following if we're following the American tradition. 

>> That's amazing. When did that fall out of the curriculum, do you think? It's a great question. I have never had it as something when I was a history teacher that was required reading. I went through it because I thought it was something important for students to understand, but as a necessary part or mandatory part of the curriculum, it was never there. Maybe a short excerpt. I mean, it's only a 30-page thing, but we're not allowed to have students actually look at any kind of primary sources anymore. Because one of the nasty things that happens when you look at old books that were written before, say 1945, is you determine that the world is actually very different and that there's something very radical and modern that's happened. That's why we don't read primary sources because then we might actually know some history.

>> Anything written pre-Second World War has a completely different tone that you can feel even if they're not saying even if the document itself doesn't say anything that is particularly radical to the modern sensibility. The way that it's written, the sort of freedom of expression, you realize how much censorship and self-censorship exists post-war when you read it. I mean, it's like sh read a Loth Stoddard book, for example. Um, it's amazing that people wrote stuff like that. It's also the amount of historical context everyone knew the language of the old world. They understood that they were connected to a chain of tradition and everything that they spoke about was deeply seated in that context. If you go back and read Hobbes's Leviathan, even though he's making an argument for secular government, 9/10 of it is couched in biblical language. It's nothing but biblical references. And he makes casual references to very complex theological issues that he assumes everyone is familiar with. And this is the exact same thing you see with the founders, whether it be in the Federalist Papers or Washington's farewell address. These are men who are deeply built into a very specific tradition and understand everything about the world inside of that. And we just don't see that anymore. Now when we look at history, it's all these little blocks of carefully managed narrative. It has no connection to the actual lives lived by our ancestors.

>> Well, I don't think we have ancestors as a nation, right? I mean, what percentage of the population has an ancestor fought in the Civil War? >> Yeah, increasingly very few. And that's actually a huge problem as we face these issues coming with deportations. A lot of people are asking, okay, we understand mass deportations for illegals. We get that, but what about legal immigrants? How does that work? Who is an American ultimately, right? And that's really going to be the question of our age. We're transitioning from a moment where identity globally was very ideological, right? You're either communist or you're capitalist. You're one for with one empire another your first world or second world that was shattered right that paradigm was shattered after the end of the cold war and instead we all had to turn back inward and stop having this global ideological struggle and ask, okay now that that's gone who are we as peoples again and that struggle to understand national identity I think is seeping through everything including our ability to understand our own traditions and understand how our constitution work and what our values actually are not just what's being handed to by the news media or an educational system.

>> So we're understanding ourselves in a very different way. And where does that shake out? Like what is identity post-ideology? Well, the most traditional understanding of identity is a collection of many different factors including language, religion, people, place, heritage, tradition, folkways, history. These things were all the different aspects that made up human society until we needed to create these supernational organizations run by managerial elites that didn't have any connection to these individual places. And that's why we see over and over again our different world governments desperately trying to erode the particular nature of peoples. If you look at the UK right now, they're completely destroying any free speech tradition. They're completely destroying any Anglo understanding of rights. And they're all doing it in the name of creating this multicultural society that England never had in the first place. And so you see these elites who are destroying the nature and quality of their people. They're actively replacing the people in their nation because if they do that then those barriers to the power that previously existed that were tied to the tradition will be gone. 

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I can so many questions. Um I can I can imagine a multi-racial society. I I certainly want to I don't understand what a multicultural society is. How can you have a multicultural society? Cuz society is the culture. So like how can many exist in one society? >> Well, and this is I think a real problem with our really modern uh and vulgar use of race. Race is a macro category. Ethnos is a more organic micro category, right? And so when we think about different ethnicities in Europe, there are many, right? There the the difference between an Italian and a Swede is rather large. However, there's this vast, right? It's too vast, right? But there's this macro, you know, uh category of white or European and that means something but it really only means things in a highly racialized society. So it used to be that in America we had black Americans and they had a specific ethnic identity because they had basically been shorn of their previous ethnic identity. They didn't have a connection to their tribe, to their peoples, to their history. And so they had an ethnogenesis. They formed an ethnos in the United States. But the white population, the European descendants were ones that had different European ethnos backgrounds. They had Germanic backgrounds. They had English backgrounds, Irish, all these, right? And so, you know, those different identities were distinct and we even had different neighborhoods, entire states that were settled by very different peoples even though they're of European descent. But as we have racialized, as we have become only interested in those macro categories, all of those separate white ethnos that once existed have been pulled into for that matter, right? Yeah. The ones that existed previously. >> Yeah. Washington DC is the I think the largest population of Ethiopians and Aattrians who are black. Ask them what they think of local black people. >> Right. >> Right. They I don't know that they have anything in common. They don't seem to. Right. So, but why would you want to erase all of those very real differences? Like why why pretend that Swedes are the same as Sicilians? Because eventually each one of those particular cultures creates a high level of resistance to both standardization and scale of managerial power but most importantly to government power because peoples with particular traditions and identities aren't going to just go along with whatever the government says. They have real organic deeply seated understandings of who they are. 

We can just look at co who are all the people that actually resisted during co orthodox Jews the >> the religious high people with high degrees of individual transcendent identities right this is my group my practice of my religion the people I go to church with the people in my community they are more important than whatever the state believes and the only thing that can push back against that it's not abstract principle it's not words in a constitution the words in the constitution only restrict the government if they reflect particular understandings of peoples and the way that they live their lives. And that's why those communities were more resilient because even if there was no paper constitution to protect them, their real beliefs, their real identity actually resisted the state. 

So your thesis is we see the world becoming homogenized and there's something in us normal people I think that find that very distressing. Very distressing. And that's why we seek out places that are different because we understand that the actual diversity of peoples is somehow important. We can feel that and it's certainly interesting. But there are huge forces pushing against it, leveling forces. Everyone's the same. Same attitude, same sports, same food. Um, and your thesis is that's on purpose. That's not natural. And it's a power grab by governments. 

Well, I think the better way to understand this is by a managerial class. They're certainly part of the government, but a big change has happened, especially after the industrial revolution. We used to have statesmen, right? And these were people who had to make very real and decisive decisions. They had to use a lot of, uh, wisdom. You had to be very prudent. They had to use discernment. We were very reliant on their ability to lead. What has happened over time is that we've found that that is a very inconsistent way to produce results and so the best way is to remove human agency from decision-making and when we do that we can increase the level of scale at which we can produce results in government and business and weapons manufacturing and everything else and so ultimately if we can go ahead and abstract the human condition if we can create a set of parameters by which people always have to act then that allows us to create a situation in which we're producing bigger and better results without needing to understand any particular culture or people or rely on any type of human prudence or decision-making. 

This is what everyone gets very angry about when they call any kind of bureaucracy, right? They're stuck in a phone tree and there's no one who can make a decision. There's no one who can overrule the machine. Every even real person they're talking to is kind of talking like a robot. And that allows the uh the call center to handle more calls than they would if each individual person was actually making decisions and helping people. But in the end, it actually destroys the whole purpose of the call center. It only exists to serve itself. And that's what's happened with our managerial elite. They now only exist to serve their power. They now only exist to serve their global network. It involves of course governments, but involves NOS's and banks and educational institutions and media institutions. This is an entire class of people with the same interest set that are all working constantly to ensure that their power grows and the agency of individual people in their actual homelands is reduced.

One of the core beliefs about economics I think that most people have cause it's just intuitive is that in order to receive a reward you have to provide a service like doing something useful, moving the ball forward, feeding people, giving them shelter, educating their children, allowing them to go to heaven or whatever. But like there has you have to be adding something in order to take something. And what I'm struck by with the group you're describing is how little they add. And I wonder if that I wonder if there is like kind of any precedent for that in human history. 

Well, there is quite a bit. Right. So pretty much every government is at some level a thief, right? That that's how kind of all governments start at some level. They're they're they're taking some percentage of what people make, what they do, and they're gathering it to themselves and hoarding it for themselves. But as you say, there used to be some kind of service provided. They're protecting your livelihood. They're ensuring no one invades you. They protect you from criminals, right? Like there is some kind of transaction that is occurring here. 

But over time, the more you control the market, the more you don't have to offer the product, right? This is why we hate monopolies because they create scenarios in which you don't have to be reactive to the needs of the people. You don't have to keep providing because you're the only game in town. And more and more people understand that the only way they can interact not just in their country but globally is with these managerial apparatuses. You have to work inside that framework. And so they continue to run in this race thinking that it's going to get them somewhere, but it's really the only thing available to them at this point. 

And so we are seeing in many different places around the world people are pushing back against the managerial elite. You hear people like JD Vance or Vet Ramaswami talking about the administrative state and the need to dismantle the deep state. All of these things. We see people in the UK understanding that ultimately their government and not some foreign enemy is actually the most hostile thing to them. So there is push-back coming. We are seeing this to rise up. But the system is vast and powerful and extremely wealthy. And all of this is very difficult for people to do, especially because they've been trained for the most part to not even recognize that they are ruled, that there is a ruling class, right? 

It's all popular sovereignty. It's all democracy. The people have chosen this. You voted for it somewhere. And so, it's actually not the leader's fault. It's not the guy making billions of dollars fault. It's not the guy who's, you know, buying his fifth home's fault. No, it's your neighbor. It's the guy who runs the plumbing with a MAGA hat. It's his fault. He voted wrong and he's the reason you're poor. 

>> I mean, h that's such a perfect description of what's happening. An organization at a certain scale always exists for its own self-perpetuation. Is that true, do you think? >> That's right. Yeah. There's a, there's a historian, Robert Conquest, and he has three laws of organization. >> Yeah. Absolutely. And his third law is that at the end, an organization, a bureaucratic organization is just going to look like it's operated by a cabal of its enemies because it eventually turns into an organization that only serves the members of the organization and not the actual purpose it was stated for. 

And so every one of these managers, everyone who is disassociated from both the people you're serving and the original organization itself is just going to turn every piece of the organization into their own little power grab, their own little FFTM where they can secure more. And that's why we see the managers exploding at every form of business, whether it's consulting, if you look at public education, where my experience came from, you know, you have a thousand more administrators than you do teachers because the incentive is not to actually educate students or actually serve the public that you were created to serve. It's to perpetuate your existence inside that system. 

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So the system as one of its core imperatives has got to divide the population. It feels that way. It doesn't a lot of the, I mean, this I'm coming to this slowly but a lot of the ugliest things that the system does inspiring race hatred, for example. I never have understood why you'd want to do that. Why would you want to do that? But they're doing it and have been for 60 years. Like is that a long term? Is that can you continue doing that not forever? But it's a classic power strategy. So we need to understand that the one of the things that power always wants to do is centralize and expand its reach. I think that's pretty obvious to a lot of people. But this guy Bertrand de Juvenile came up with this metaphysics of power and his understanding was that the you're what we would think of as the middle class, right? The kulocks. They're entrenched in society because they own a piece of the tradition. They own a piece of the land. They have actual communities. They have resilience. They have the ability to push back against the government. And so if you have this middle class, they're in the way of your power as a leader. 

>> Yes. And so what do you do? Well, you take your high, your high, your ruling class, and you pair them with a low class from outside of society. And that high and low versus the middle is the way that you break apart society because you promise the new voters or the new participants that you will give them whatever the kulocks have. It's all their fault, the middle class, they're the ones who are keeping you back. They're the racists. They're, you know, they're the sexists. And if you just defeat them, we'll just give you all their stuff. And this is the wedge that is continuously used. The large amount of our government right now is just a wealth transfer between heritage Americans and the new political class that's being moved in to rule society. That's just the dynamic we're seeing. And this happened in Rome. This has happened many, many times over. You can see many historical examples. 

>> So the H-1B thing is just a so the enemy is what you call heritage Americans. What are those? >> Heritage Americans are those that are actually tied. You could find their last names in the Civil War registry. Like they have a tie to the history and to the land. And you know, Samuel Huntington, uh, is a guy who I really like. He wrote the the uh uh uh clash of civilizations and who and who are we? And uh, you know, I think won his debate with Francis Fukuyama pretty decisively. But you know, he said in who are we, his book about American identity, the core of American identity is the Anglo Protestant spirit. And he's a man of the center-left, you know, he's a Harvard professor. This is a guy who's not, you know, he not, oh, you can only be an Anglo or a Protestant to be part of America, but he says even the Catholics and Jews in America take on this Anglo Protestant affect in some way. And so, you have to have this majority culture for people to assimilate to. 

And so when we're talking about a heritage American, we're either talking about someone who is tied specifically that tradition or someone who has come here and has been here for generations but understands that they are conforming to that way of being that's the core of society. 

>> And what is that way? Can you describe the Anglo Protestant worldview? >> I mean obviously we could spend entire books on that and and and that has been done. >> Well, it's almost never mentioned. >>  It's true. Yeah. Yeah. And which I think is interesting because those are the people who founded the country and set up every system that we're benefiting from now from you know our economic and political systems or have been benefiting from maybe not anymore but those are the founders 100% Anglo Protestant like 100%. 

>> Right? >> So I don't why don't we ever mention that culture because we're very terrified of the idea that ideas are particular to cultures and peoples. That sounds very scary in old world. >> It's true. >> Of course it's true. It's obviously true and we know that because now we laugh whenever we try to export democracy to Afghanistan or something, right? 

>> Well, I know it from traveling a lot. I go to different countries and I don't hate their cultures or ideas at all. I don't have to live under them. I'm just visiting. I think they're really interesting, but they're very different because the people are different. Inherently different. >> Yes. And when you change the people, you change the culture, which is why our Western governments are so busy trying to replace those populations. >> Yeah. When you change the population, you change, >> yeah. you change the country and you change the principles that it's going to be founded on. 

You know, we look at the Declaration of Independence and it says we hold these truths to be self-evident. >> If you go to Afghanistan, are the truths of the Constitution self-evident to them? >> No, of course not. Because when they said self-evident, they meant to people in our tradition, to our to us, to the people who descended us, who share our values, who speak our language, who speak uh you know the the the type of uh heritage that we understand. That's where that comes from. Again, it doesn't mean that other people can't be grafted into that and absorb that. But the idea of a purely propositional nation that is in no way tied to a culture or a people, but is entirely a collection of abstract things agreed to in some social contract before society even began is just ridiculous. And it's not the way the constitution was even understood when it was written. Our founders said very famously that the constitution is for immoral and religious people. They had a particular understanding of how we would have to live our lives and what that would look like if we were going to be able to live under the republic that they erected. 

Um, all true. I interrupted you with my outburst of rage. Uh, when I asked you what what exactly are the presupposition? What you know, what's what's the nature of this Anglo Protestant culture that founded this country? I think this is where people get a lot of the ideas of a decent amount of individualism. This has always been a key part of it. Also, restrained government. The idea that government would be limited is something tied to the Magna Carta, right? Like yes, they had a, you know, became a constitutional monarchy, but you know, we can see a direct line from what the English were doing with their set of government, the way that we understand, you know, our society. 

The idea that free speech is something sacred, that the individual conscience and the practice of religion is something that needs to be maintained. These are all core values that when you actually look in other societies, they don't look the same. Free speech in Germany does not look the same. >> There's no Slavic society, and I love Slavic societies, just being honest. They're great, >> but they don't see free speech as a foundational god-given right. They just don't. >> Right. 

and the >> they're whiter than I am. So, it's not it is like it's much that is to your very smart point about lumping all these different very distinct cultures into the white group eliminates differences that we should be thinking about, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. Even inside European cultures, vastly different traditions, closer perhaps than say someone in Eastern Asia, but still very very different from place to place. And the fact that we've just kind of melted that all down into this, you know, binary or between a couple few races as if that's like the complete understanding of who peoples are and how they live their lives is just silly. And again, I think that serves the purpose of really just melting down culture in general, right? 

Like it looks like race is very divisive identity politics, right? Which to some degree it is. But the reason it feels so divisive, the reason it feels so unnatural is it's thoroughly unrooted from actual organic ways of being. It's completely removed from the things that make your life better when you have a holistic identity. It's just this rough collection of hatred for people who happen to have a different skin color, which doesn't get you anywhere good. 

Smart. So smart. Um, can you have a continent-sized country with hundreds of millions of people in it with completely distinct cultures with totally different assumptions about things like natural rights? To some extent if you want to operate as an empire and I think this is the crossroads that America is at. We if you talk to Americans, you know, the the Democrat side will say, "Well, we're a democracy." And then Republicans will say, "Well, no, of course not. We're a republic." That's very different. If you ask them what the difference is, they won't be able to really explain it to you. They never care. 

There's a representative. >> They get all huffy, but they have no idea what >> Yeah. And and the real difference is that republics have self-government because the body politic sees itself as being a necessary participant on a regular basis. That the individual sees themselves as needing to cultivate a certain amount of virtue and individuality that allows for a level of self-governance that otherwise doesn't exist. And so the fact that the republican type of government requires this type of virtue means it has to stay relatively small. And this isn't something I just made up. You can see this in Aristotle or Machiavelli or you know the the founding fathers. They understood that scale was a very dangerous component of government forms and that if you created this vast empire, even a continent size empire, much less a world empire, that was going to radically change the way that you had to govern. 

And we have continued to expand our imperial ambitions as the United States, but have never addressed the impact it's been having on our governance. And this is why so many people feel like the people they elect don't run the government. Of course they don't because you don't live in a republic anymore. You live in an empire and the empire has a large amount of machinery that hums right under the surface and it's constantly serving its own interest on a regular basis. 

Some people will call this the deep spit state. I wrote a book called the total state because I think that really encapsulates a far wider understanding of the managerial elite and the power they hold. They're not just in the unelected bureaucracy, but they're in the media. They're in financial institutions. Uh they're in education. All of these different things that manipulate our public opinion. And really, the ability to manipulate public opinion has become the one skill necessary to govern at this point because we switched from this idea that we have a people, a specific people ruled in a particular way through virtue in a republic and instead have understood that just the mass will is the only thing that matters. 

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So, the idea that media would be a bulwark against government overreach, that it would be a sort of watchdog acting on behalf of the population, they're too busy to know what their government's doing, the media is going to do it for them. That whole notion is like absurd. The media is a participant in the system. And what's funny is again if you look at the American tradition, if you just look at the people writing inside of the American tradition, they describe exactly this process and how it was going to take place. John C. Calhoun, you know, vice president of the United States, uh, you know, served in multiple cabinets. Uh this is a guy who laid out in one of his treaties that ultimately the American media would not serve as any kind of check, some kind of you know fourth estate, and instead would be used by political parties to manipulate the opinion of people creating a winner-take-all situation in any given election. You have a situation where all political parties are suddenly incentivized to basically burn down the country, take as much as they can for themselves and imprison or otherwise deny their opponents access to the ballot box because otherwise they'll lose this giant leviathan they built. And again, I think he wrote this in the 1850s, the 1840s. You know, it's released after his death. But again, we can just look at the people who were part of the American tradition and they recognized that this is the function media was going to play from the beginning.

It does seem like we're moving toward dictatorship and I'm not pointing at any one political leader or party even. Um I think the Democrats are much more eager for dictatorship than the Republicans generally. But I'm not even making that point. I'm just saying uh people's faith in democracy, whatever that is, has been badly shaken. And I just don't think you can govern in the way that our government currently governs forever. Do do you think that's inevitable? >> Yeah, I do. I think Caesarism is a natural life cycle of any civilization. You when you get to the oligarchic stage, >> Caesarism is a so smart. Yeah, this is you know Oswald Spangler talked about the life cycles of civilizations and after the age of money power after the age of oligarchy the only thing that can cut through the Gordian node of this vast sprawling bureaucracy built on money is a strong man that’s what he predicts in any given age obviously that’s not the Anglo understanding right the it’s definitely not the way that you want to see 

>> let me speak for all Anglo when I say we’re very opposed to that >> right but if you aren’t careful if you don’t understand how and why money powers come to dominate your society and create this rule of the oligarchs. People will cry out for that. They and >> well the only thing more powerful than money is violence, >> right? >> So that just kind of that simple. >> Yes. >> So if you reach a stage where money determines everything, which is where we definitely are now. We are in the in the age of oligarchs and the people want some say, there’s kind of like no other option, is there? >> No. And that that's why you see them fall behind, you know, leaders like this very very easily, right? And so you have a very precarious situation right now. We are at a very important crossroads in the United States. It's very rare that a nation decides to scale back its empire voluntarily. It doesn't happen very often. And we have to consider whether we think that's worth avoiding the current track we're on because there is a cost to scaling down empire. To be clear, you know, being the world hedgeimon has amazing benefits for you in theory. It has more benefits for your ruling class and eventually it's going to destroy your population. But in the short term, the benefits the empire always destroys the population. >> I believe that to be the case. It can be longer, it can be shorter, but over time we see this over and over again. Again, we can look at the classic example of Rome. It continues to expand its borders. A guy like Hrien tries to pin it back inside, but eventually they end up just giving citizenship to everyone. Caracal expands it to the entire empire in the hopes that this will eventually bring the identity of the empire back and get people to fight for it. And instead, what happens is they just keep importing Gauls until Gauls more or less just take over the empire. 

You know, they take over every important aspect of it. So again, a pattern that we see over and over again. It's very hard for the Gauls. Why were they so successful within the empire? >> Well, they were the only people who weren't tamed anymore. >> I was about to say, so it was a testosterone thing. >> Yeah, it really is. We need to import our own barbarians to fight off the barbarians because the people themselves are no longer willing to fight. And this is a key aspect of republics again. >> I know. Just like it's all it just it's uh this record is on repeat. It's crazy. 

If you go back to the Federalist papers, you can see Hamilton telling people, "Look, I know you're scared about standing armies because we all know that standing armies are a detriment to free republics. So, if you want us to not have a standing army, you need to turn over control of all of your different militias to us so that we can, you know, protect the US without it." It was understood that being part of republic meant being a soldier. Service actually did guarantee citizenship. It was the idea that your willingness to stand and defend what was yours was what made you a citizen worthy of contributing and voting and being part of the body politic. 

Again, Aristotle said the citizen is he who is armed. Machiavelli said you should never have mercenaries. You should never have paid standing armies. Instead, you should always have a militia. This is a core part and of your identity as a republic. And the minute the people are no longer willing to fight and have to contract their fighting out somewhere else, you know the republic is done. 

So the republic is done. The country is not done. The republic just becomes an empire is what you're saying. So then what's and and we're there. So what's the life cycle of empire? Typically a lot of people think it's very short. Some people will cite the 250 year mark. But the one thing that is for sure is that these complex systems always reach a point of marginal utility that is just collapsing. They can no longer squeeze enough power, enough wealth, enough influence out of increasing one more rank of the complexity of their societies, conquering one more area, adding one more complex system. And so you're just waiting for the Tower of Babel to fall. I I I think this is honestly a very deeply biblical pattern that repeats itself over and over again. 

We try to unite all of humanity under these imperial ambitions and in our hubris we're scattered back to our natural state as peoples but the process is always brutal. >> So there's no happy ending for empire. >> There’s those that you know can walk away to some extent but you look at what the British have done. Yes, they in some to extent pass their empire on to us but what does that cost them? Almost everything, right? >> Well everything. >> Yeah. 

Yeah. It looks like they lost a war. >> The most degraded people in the world, >> right? And so, you know, the the question is, is there a happy escape? And I'm not sure what the answer to that question is. I think to some degree, the answer is a return to a localism that can actually reinvigorate the communities that cultivate virtue and create republican governance in the first place. But, do we have the will to do that voluntarily? Do we have the will to walk away from the centralization of power? I I don't think that we do.

Okay. Um, so you said this is the moment which is without many precedents in history where we're we are voluntarily trying to scale back the empire. Clearly that that's what Trump's election was about, right? And there are costs to that. What are the costs? 

>> Well, a large amount of that is going to be global influence, right? We if we're not in charge of an area, someone else might be. And that also means that we're not imposing our standards and our understandings on the way that global commerce and all of these things should be affected. We're not controlling the diplomatic situation or the military deployment of foreign nations through our influence and that can have large economic impacts. 

I mean our entire dollar is based on being the global reserve currency. Withdrawing away from something like that is devastating. We are deeply dependent on this global system. We are as dependent on it as the system is on us at this point. And so untangling it is very messy business. A lot of the things that we'd have to sacrifice cheap labor, global know, the global hegemony, the the idea that we don't constantly have the ability to reach in and affect every international situation and dictate its outcome. Those are things our elites are unwilling to do. 

And we've already seen that in a place like Ukraine, right, where it was we just came off of CO. It is very clear that the ruling class had spent a large amount of their capital deceiving the world and yet they immediately went right back into another conflict because well Russia is not allowed to conduct any business without the United States being involved in it. Now, if I was Ukrainian I'd hate Russia. I have no particular love for what's happening there. But the idea that we would immediately jump in and try to dictate the terms of that conflict is a hubris that can only be tied to the idea that as the global empire we have the right to tell you somewhere in the middle of, you know, Eastern Europe how we should actually be conducting a war like this.

So what's the what's the model for a society? So clearly this isn't working. It's chilling um your description of this historical pattern which clearly we're reliving yet again. But if you could start from scratch like what is the ideal form of government? What is the ideal nation? Can you have a nation this big? Can it stay sovereign? Can it stay focused on its own people? I mean is that possible? 

Well the key I think is really understanding that this shouldn't be ideological. uh one of my favorite thinkers Joseph Deastra said that every people gets the government that they deserve that ultimately there is a correct form of governance but it is different for different peoples and so we can't look at one exact abstract idea of how government should run and say we'll just force that down on everybody again we've seen the failure of that with liberal democracy across the world and so the key is really the organic cultivation of the way that your people live again the you Anglo Protestant understanding of authority is very radically different than say the Chinese one you know one throughout history and so what would be the correct way for us to live is very different from the Chinese and that's okay they they don't have to right they we don't have to live in their system they don't have to live in ours we don't have to impose that artificially 

>> but we definitely don't have that view in this country so in Arkansas I was reading because I know one of the people involved the attorney general of Arkansas Tim Griffin is a perfectly nice guy, but um he's like considering bringing charges against some group building some like housing development and it's all white and that's like a threat somehow to everyone else. There's no allegation they've done anything against anyone. Um just yet another indicator that our like core beliefs as a country circa 2025 anyway are that you know everyone has to live in exactly the same way whether they want to or not. 

>> Well this is a huge part of the civil rights act right the civil rights act itself is the end of freedom of association which was a basic understanding of >> are you a racist? Oh, of course you can't have you can't hold any opinions of our founders without being racist. We all know that. 

Um, but but you know, one of the key understandings is that people had the right to associate as they please. Now, I would never frequent a place that's, you know, refusing to serve a black American. Like that's not in my principles, but I should have the choice whether or not I should do that. A business owner should have the right to decide whether I should do that. 

And let's be honest, this is 2025 America. We're not getting Jim Crow back. That's Yeah. Unless and this is the funniest thing about conservatives. They'll say, "Oh, of course America isn't racist." And you say, "Well, we can get rid of the Civil Rights Act then, right? Because we don't need a giant government bureaucracy that invo that intervenes in every aspect of society, giving it a blank check for large government power. You're conservative. You would want to get rid of that." 

And they say, "Oh, no, no, of course not. What if someone somewhere is racist?" Right? So we have to keep this giant Soviet level mind control bureau that you know that works across our entire society and warps every incentive from housing to employment to education. We have to maintain that. Why? Well, because if we're honest, most conservative politicians actually believe what liberals believe that somewhere in the heart of America is just this giant pile of KKK members waiting to conquer the United States. 

Um, and not just conservative or Republican lawmakers, but a lot of the opinion merchants out there on the so-called right turn out to have none of the core assumptions that I have of maybe I'm like super liberal. I never I always think of myself as most right-wing person in the world, but I don't seem to have anything in common with them at all. 

I didn't I didn't know that until the second Trump term. Do you know what I'm talking about? >> Oh, yeah. And it's it's been rather hilarious. Yeah. I'm pretty new to this. You've been doing this for a long time, but >> 35 years. Not too long. But no, you were like teaching school 5 years ago, right? >> Yeah. 

I I've only been doing this for like 3 years. And so, yeah, it's been very eye-opening to interact with different personalities. And don't get me wrong, there are very sincere people. I want to I want to warn people cuz everyone runs out there and just says, "Oh, this person's a grifter. He's a grifter. They're they're all selling their opinion." But you know there there are very principled people or very passionate people but there are also a large amount of people who are in no way conservative no way Republican no way rightwing and make their living operating inside of these organizations 

even some famous ones. It's interesting um... Who is I mean I think we can say the majority of people in general are afraid just they're afraid all the time you know secular people are all afraid all the time. Um so I'm not attacking anyone. And I feel sorry for everyone involved, but I think the majority of people on the internet giving their opinions are kind of fake on some level, but there are some real ones. 

Who are the real ones? >> Who are the real ones? That's, you know, I I I guess personally I spend a lot more time in spheres that are off the beaten path. >> Yeah. And so I think that there are some you know people out there that maybe don't have >> massive fan bases or you know big voices in in influential halls of power but are speaking some of the most important truths out there today. 

Well, I think you're one of them and that's one of the reasons uh that's the main reason I wanted to meet you and have this conversation because as much as I hate technology and electricity and all that stuff and I'm like I'm pretty um pretty kazinskied on all that uh modernity business. I do think the best thing about the modern world is the internet and the fact that people who, you know, don't have any connections to anything can succeed on the basis of the strength of their wisdom and of their opinions. And I just think you're a perfect example. 

So you were you work for the Blaze and um but you're very widely read on the internet. How did you get here? Like how did you do that? Was this something that you planned? 

No, not at all. I mean, I’ I've always been very interested in politics. I I've got a political science degree in college and I worked on a few campaigns, but there just wasn't much going on there. And so, I ended up falling into being a local reporter for a while. I covered news and crime or politics and crime. And then, uh I worked as a teacher, you know, for for a long time. 

But when CO struck, >> high school teacher. >> A high school teacher. >> Public school. >> Public school. Yeah. and and when COVID hit, you know, I had all the opinions you'd expect from a talk radio conservative listening to Dennis Prager and Sean Hannity and these guys. And then when I watched, you know, the churches were closed and the strip clubs were open and you you couldn't go see a dying loved one in the hospital, but Democrats could riot in the streets and burn down your neighborhood and nobody did anything, right? 

Like this is I've been told my whole life by conservatives, this is what the Second Amendment is for, right? Like the the government has closed the churches, guys. The the we are across the Rubicon. And I thought I was going crazy because all of the people who had been spouting all of this my whole life were like, well, no, you're probably fine. We gotta figure out how to work in the and I just realized, okay, the Constitution is not stopping any of this. So, I need to understand why. 

And so, I started reading a lot of political theory outside of the mainstream. I read that read this guy Curtis Yarvin. Uh he he just started writing under his real name. Used to be Menchious Mug. uh and he had a bunch of other you know authors that I needed to understand and the more I read that the more I wanted to share what was going on and so just in your spare time. >> 

Yeah. Yeah. And so that's that's kind of how I started tweeting and you know putting out material and writing. >> So it's just pure citizen like you don't you don't really know anybody. You're just reading the stuff and coming to your own conclusions and then you start tweeting them out and the next thing you know you're doing it full-time and you have a big following. 

>> Yeah. I I think it's a situation where there are a lot of really important thinkers and you know to be clear I'm just standing on the shoulder of giants guys like Samuel Francis and Joe sober and Pat Buchanan and Paul Godfrieded who were sitting in the wilderness for decades and decades and that's why I think the conservative movement was so intellectually impoverished for so long we forced all of our brightest minds into the wilderness because they kept saying things that didn't jive with kind of a neocon agenda and they had to be driven from polite society 

>> and nobody said anything and at the center So much of that was William F.B. Buckley Jr. who, you know, I think had good qualities for sure. I'm not, you know, it was awfully nice to me, I will say. So I'm not I don't hate the guy or anything, but it in retrospect, I mean, he really served one meaningful role in his life, which was to keep a certain variety of nationalism out of the conservative cannon. 

>> Yeah, I think we can see this over and over again. I mean, you even think of a guy like Russell Kirk, right? wrote the conservative mind, one of the intellectual giants defining the movement and more or less got cancelled because he kept made one too many jokes about the capital of the United States being in Tel Aviv. You know, like that that that's all it took for you to get shoved off. 

You you can have this monumental career and this critical position and you can, you know, no longer be allowed in polite society, get no longer get invited to the right dinners if you have, you know, the wrong opinions. 

It feels like things are changing fast. Do you feel that? Absolutely. >> Where are they going? 

Uh they're going to go to a lot of interesting places. As you pointed out, the you know, the news sphere and more importantly the narrative sphere has disintermediated, right? We're no longer completely reliant on a couple news channels and a couple big newspapers. And you know, at first the right really liked this because it meant that they could get around, you know, the left-wing control of all of these critical centers. But now people on the right are getting panicked because their narratives are also breaking down. 

They can no longer you can't use the National Review and a couple of think tanks to to kind of dictate how people understand the >> I don't even criticize National Review. 

I feel you know it's like so I don't think people even know what it is, do they? >> Uh no no one my age at this point. No. >> No. 

Um so they're panicked like Megan McCain's all upset that people are saying things are >> just she's never heard before. Um but I feel like people like that are irrelevant now. Or maybe I'm just hoping that's true. 

>> No, I think that's increasingly the case. Again, I can't think of anyone who isn't paid in the beltway uh who is under 50 who cares what any of those people think, right? And so I think we're really going through a generational switch. I think the end the tail end of the boomer generation is still very much tied to the conservative institutions. They've had that, you know, cultural foxhole mentality for a long time and they see those people as their champions. 

But I think everyone behind them recognizes that, hey, I followed these, you know, platitudes for decades and they never did anything for me. And you know what? I want to conserve the ability of my family to have children. Ah, amen. Amen. I completely agree. I've reduced my whole life down to that. That's it. That that's my worldview. Can my kids have kids and live in this beautiful place called America? Will it still be beautiful? 

You know, will it be all low-income housing? No. You know what I mean? I I think more and more the message that we don't live in an economic zone but an actual nation is really resonating with people. We we successfully somehow turned the right-wing into the party of just disposable culture, disposable identities, disposable people. Uh who cares if you know uh the the trade policy revolutionizes your town and gets rid of all the jobs and everyone gets hooked on drugs? At least the free market one, right? No, I don't care. I care about my neighbor. I care about my family. 

I care about the community that we've built for generations. I shouldn't have to pick up my entire life and the many many generations of social fabric that exists there to go move somewhere else every time you decide it's slightly cheaper to make something in China. That's not the way that's not a conservative way to understand our society. And I think that's why you're seeing all of these institutions lose their power because ultimately what people really care about preserving is the American people, the American way of life, the tradition and existence of the people around them. 

And I don't think you can sell them the idea that like infinite foreign labor is worth taking a bunch of cruises at the end of your life and then making sure your kids can't own a home. Like those things are no longer something that actually sells to I think the coming generations. >> No, I think they're rejecting it with real hostility. >> Yeah. 

Um, do they believe in democracy? Do they believe the current system can ever improve the country? >> I think at this point democracy is just a shibilith. I don't think it really means a whole lot to people. It's, you know, what is our democracy? It's throwing the major candidate of the Republican party in jail. That's democracy. That's how we protect our democracy, right? 

What what does that phrase even mean at this point? I think people are ready for a government that cares about them. Elites that care about them. Elites who know that they're ruling and know that they have an obligation to a specific group and are no longer just, you know, using these people as pieces of exchange. 

So, it sounds like what you think, not to put words in your mouth, but what you think is being rejected or going away is a fundamentally theoretical understanding of politics in the world that is just not satisfying in the end. It doesn't serve anybody except for the people peddling the lie. What we're gonna be staring down, living through is an understanding a world that's like much more practical and real. Like, are you improving my life? If you're not, leave. 

Yeah. Again, this is where we understand that the core the foundation of politics is really patronage. What can you, the the ruling class, those in charge, what kind of life can you provide for us? What can you protect? What are you doing? A very direct relationship, not abstractly. Are you signing a piece of paper, a treaty somewhere, you know, in in Western Europe that will theoretically secure my right to No. What can the person next to me have children? Can can the guy down the street take his kids to church, send them to school without worrying about whether they'll be shot? Is that an option? Because that matters to me way more than the idea that you're defending democracy in Ukraine. 

Exactly. But it was I remember watching Biden who obviously was um you know an elderly man who was didn't have his full faculties and all that. But I I still detected like sincerity on his face when he talked about Zelensky and his heroism and how he was Churchill and this is the fight of our lives. You know, democracy once again triumphs over darkness. Like he really seemed to mean it. I I did I thought that was real. 

Like the emotion coming out. Do you remember any of these pressers? I I still >> the boomer brain always reverts to some to the most tired cliche. Why is that? >> Well, I think they came into the world at a time where America more or less conquered the world. And when America conquered the world, we received all the benefits of empire. And so they think of themselves, you know, and we're we started as a country rejected empire, right? That's our entire foundation. We led a revolution against an empire because we had the right to be governed by our peers, by those elites that are part of our society and not across an ocean. 

And so it's a very hard story to tell yourself that you conquer the world in the name of freedom, right? And so I think for there's a lot of cognitive dissonance there and that requires a very cartoon, you know, Marvel movieesque understanding of the world. We're Captain America. We fought for freedom. >> Exactly. And and but that's that's going away. That's going away with that generation of >> it is going away. 

I mean, I do think there's something about and I always beat up on the boomers. There are a lot of great ones, wonderful people, but you know, broad strokes here. This really was the first generation in history to have basically every part of their life dictated by popular culture. I mean, it's the television generation really, right? And and regional differences just went away during those years 1946 1964 and they kind of lost the capacity to think critically or something. 

Do you know what I'm talking about? Again, I think it's because it's disembodied as you say the the the the radio and then the television, you know, the train and then the automobile. These things collapse the space inside of America that used to be regional had specific understandings and ways of life. And when that happened, you like you said, the only way to have a singular culture was through this kind of mass media projection. And so, yeah, I think you know the people make the joke, but you know, the old person screaming at their television with the news is a stereotype for a reason because that's the only way they understood how to absorb the wider culture. 

Yes. No, it's right. And I I saw it with Republicans with Reagan. I'm not against Reagan or anything. don't agree with everything but um I don't hate Reagan but I mean they get so and there are you know former colleagues of mine at TV channels who like they talk about him and they just repeat the same eight phrases Mr. Corb this wall or whatever and they're kind of carried away in a sincere way like they seem to experience life in the shallowest possible way does this do do you feel what I'm saying? 

Sure. And and you know, a lot of that is the medium itself. There's there statesmanship doesn't sell in sound bites, right? That that yeah, that that's not really how that works. To be thoughtful, to be deliberate, to have that level of prudence requires deliberation and time and you can't sell that uh you know, in between ads. And so that's harder and harder for political voices to really show. It's easier to just repeat the slogans. 

And we can hate people for that, but I don't think we should because I think ultimately that's human nature. Oh, I agree. I I don't hate them. I just don't want them in power um at all. And I just want people to remember that so much of what they hear is misleading, but what they experience is the truth. That is the truth. And if your children are addicted to drugs or your, you know, nephew dies of an OD and your kids can't get married and the best they can hope for is to work at some freaking bank, like that's not that's not the life that you want for your family. 

Like that's reality. And it's nothing to do with bombing Iran or democracy or some nonsense like that. Like how are your kids doing? I just think it's important to notice the world around you. 

Well, it's so amazing because so many people got angry with the uh with a Zoron mom Dani in New York, right? Yeah. They, oh, the socialist is winning. How could a socialist win? It's like I don't know, guys. Have you looked at the fact that the average first-time home buyer thing is now 38 years old? Have you understood the fact that no one can get a decent job without going $100,000 in debt for a degree that objectively taught them nothing and they're actually just doing any learning they actually do on the job anyway? 

Like you've built a society that shows people your system doesn't work. Now, I think there is a much better way than communism. But you... 

Oh, I agree. But... but you have to show them. You can't just sit there and obstinately say, "No, we're this system ride or die. We don't care if you you know if you're homeless. We don't care if you can't have children. Like my bloodline will end." 

Your bloodline will end, my religion will fade and my community will collapse. Those are the things that you are programmed by nature, in fact, in my view by God to care about. That's what matters. 

Absolutely. And that the idea that we almost never talk about any of this that any discussion on any of these ideas is completely deeply forbidden. You know what then what are you trying to do to our society? I think it becomes pretty clear. 

Well, of course, they're trying to eliminate it. Um, right. And that would include like my whole family. So no, I. How radical are young people getting? 

>> More radical by the day. And you know, I'll say this after CO my idea that we're going to have some kind of revolution really faded pretty quickly, right? I I don't think we're going to have some, you know, 1776 revival here. I don't think that's going to be what happens. I think what's going to happen is >> 1789. >> I I think what's more likely >> I hope not. >> Let's hope not. Yeah. I don't want to go on the guillotine either, but I I I think more and more what's going to happen is people are going to check out. We're already seeing this, right? We hear hear people men walking away from uh the workforce, walking away from forming families. We're going to keep eating out the center of what actually holds our society up. We think it's abstract ideas. What it actually is is young men going out working, forming families, finding, you know, worthy women, creating families, building societies together. That's what actually holds these things up. 

And it's all gonna haul out from the center and you can't import foreigners fast enough to solve this problem for you. And so what we're going to end up with is a is if we don't take radical action, I don't think it's some kind of armed rebellion. What we're going to see is a society that falls apart from the inside because it loses its capacity. It loses its ability to do complex tasks, to coordinate all the things that require this vast empire to function. And when those things start dropping out, then we're really going to be up a creek. 

>> Well, we're there. >> Yeah, it's already started. You can't fly across the country right now with a single stop and get there on time. It's not, you know, or the whole air I know nobody seems to care, but like our air traffic system is like collapsed. Have you flown on a plane that's been on time recently? >> It's this was the getting here is probably the first time in a long time. Anything with a connecting flight is possible. This is just the competency crisis because we're we're specifically checking out all the capable people from our society while we're simultaneously importing a bunch of people who have not had that ability and are going to be automated out of existence for most of the jobs we're hiring them for anyway. And in no way are we cultivating a set of people who are ready to face the challenges of a complicated world that we're existing in. 

>> Yeah. So that I mean I I do disagree with you on one point when you say that there will be no rebellion, there'll be no violence in response to all of this. I think there already is a lot of violence, but it's it's self-harm. So like, and you see this in formerly England, now the UK, but uh you know, people are not fighting the government, they're not killing the tyrants, they're killing themselves. 

>> Yeah. Well, that's the beauty of importing factionalism into your society. The factions can fight each other and not you again. >> Right. But I'm saying the native population, the indigenous population of that island has decided to just kill itself. 

>> Yes. And then then that's been the horrible tragedy is it either resigns itself to something terrible or like you said, they just turn on each other. They never blame the people in charge. But again, that's the beauty of democracy. 

There's always another level at which there there's another voter, there's someone else or some other faction. You just didn't, you know, select the correct people. It's never actually the people who are benefiting making money, you know, off of your misery. 

So, democracy is like a perfect way to dodge responsibility for your crimes is what you're saying. >> It's an incredible pressure release valve when done. And again, I do think that small-cale Republican government can work. We have seen that work. I think that was initially the intention of the United States and how it operated. But mass democracy, the idea that I mean look what they're doing in the UK. 

They just unilaterally expanded the franchise to 16 year olds. Why? What's the What's the purpose for doing that? >> Pakistanis. >> Well, yes, the younger population coming through. Also, they know they can control those people easier. These are this is a younger population is going to be more susceptible to mass media and manipulation and it's going to increase their control over that country. 

It's not it's not a democracy a republican in the sense of a smaller group of people all who have a serious investment society and have a proven track record of taking care of their community. Instead, it's just literally anyone with a telephone or a television. That's all that matters. 

So, democracies come to the end is what you're saying. >> We will continue to have elections. uh you know that we'll continue to go through it, but it's increasingly a ghost dance. It's increasingly a dead form of something that actually doesn't impact our society. 

Are you familiar with the the ghost dance? >> Yes, I am. >> Okay. So, one of the saddest stories in American history, right? >> Yeah. This is how you got the mask. 

Can you tell it? >> Sure. Of course. So the so uh there was this idea of course uh for many Indian tribes that they were communing with spirits when they went through a particular dance that this was going to bring the power of their ancestors and there was going to help them to reclaim uh their land and this this was at the end of the Indian war. This is after they lost. 

>> Yeah. This this this is after the Indians had lost the majority have been forced on reservations uh and you know continually over and over again. But the idea is they could reconnect with the spirit of their society by going through this ritual and they their ancestors would protect them. And they actually all gathered together, mainly the Lakota tribe. And uh when the US army was sent to respond to this gathering, this is you know they performed the ghost dance thinking that this would protect them from the bullets of the soldiers. And instead you got the massacre and wounded knee. 

And this is in many ways what we are doing with liberal democracy. Now we keep going through the motions. Oh well, you know, the there is a democracy. We vote. We we do this and this will change society. This will fundamentally change the way things work. But over and over, we just keep running into these hail of bullets because the thing we're using, the power that we're trying to leverage, the power of the republic that existed at the founding, it's no longer connected to the actual rules here. We're people turning a stealing steering wheel or mashing a gas pedal on a car without an engine. 

And at this point, the question of the Trump administration is, can you make America work like a Republican? Is that even possible anymore? I think they're trying. I think they're actually trying by stripping away much of the bureaucracy, attempting to take direct action whenever possible to improve the lives of Americans, but they're running into every possible barrier you can imagine, legal, cultural, everything. 

And so I think that, you know, that they're going to have to undercome a mass overcome a massive barrier if they want to attempt to return us to that system. And I'm not sure that they can. 

So if democracy is as kind of desiccated and useless and fake as you described then you know nothing that fake can last. It's going to be replaced by a new system. What will that system be and what will we call it? >> You know there's a lot of people and I think there's probably some truth to this who think that we're all converging on the Chinese system. uh that ultimately the thing that allows for hegemons to operate globe spanning or at least large regional powers to operate at the scale we're looking at an advanced society like our own is a kind of soft totalitarian >> requires it is what you're saying. 

You can't actually run a country this big unless you're totalitarian. >> This is a systems issue and and again we like to some things are virtue issues, some things are principal issues, but some things are just system issues. >> What can you describe what that means? When we're looking at different political forms, they have limitations. And like we said with the republic, in the republican tradition, everyone from Aristotle to our founding fathers recognized that scale is an issue. 

And that if you try to run your large empire as a republic, you're going to run into issues very quickly. It's going to start to come apart. The same is true when we get to these vast empires. They have to be run in a specific way. If you want to control the opinions of people, if you want to leverage popular opinion and a particular understanding, if you want to use the economies of scale that you need in those type of societies, there's only so many ways you can operate. And one of them is the Chinese system. And that seems to be one of the most successful ones at this time. Again, I wouldn't want to live under it. It's not our way of being, but it is one that our global elites seem to be settling on as the model. 

Of course. Of course. Um where your prison is invisible, but no less real. >> Yeah. You don't have to take anyone