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Good morning everyone.

This is going to be the craziest podcast that you've ever heard from the Three Whiskey a Happy Hour because not only are John and Steve awall, nobody knows where they are.

A rumor has it that they're trumping somewhere across the glaciers in Iceland, and and I believe it's John who's in some castle in Switzerland somewhere plotting world dominance for the neo cons.

I don't know what they're doing, but they skipped out on the podcast and rather than listen to me the whole time, I have the very special guest with me.

Who is going who's a favorite of listeners.

The last time he was on, I got a lot of positive comments, and that is Vincent Philip Muno So better known as Phil at least to me, Phil tell us really quick, a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, well, thank thanks for having me.

Happy to spare the listeners A week from John and John and Steve.

So I got my PhD from Claremont.

Like I was the rest of us except for John, as.

One of the last undergraduate students of Harry Jaffa.

Doctor Jaffa was forced to retire in nineteen eighty nine and I arrived in nineteen eighty nine, so he wasn't teaching.

He was emeritus by that point.

He would just drop in on other people's classes.

So I wrote my undergraduate thesis with him, and then I decided to go back to Claremont for the PhD and been writing on the constitution and religious liberty ever since.

And now I've ended up at Notre Dame where I'm a professor.

Here, and also, as I understand, a fellow at the Civitas Center in Texas.

Yes, i was visiting a scholar visiting a faculty member at the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas, and I'm still a fellow there.

A great project with great leadership.

They're not perfect.

I think they are trying to hire John but and me, yeah and yeah, No, it's a wonderful.

It's a wonderful.

It's probably the most exciting thing happening in higher education.

There are these new schools of civic leadership, and the one at the University of Texas will be the best of them, I think.

Yeah.

The Chronicle is trying very hard to make it sound as if these are horrible plays is filled with with animosity and rife with all sorts of backstabbing.

There's an article every other day, which I because I think what they realize.

They're scared to death of them.

Because they're scared to death.

I mean these they're portrayed as you know, right wing conservative.

They're right wing and conservative because they teach things like the federalist papers, political.

History, or even even normal.

Economics, economics, philosophy, Western civilization.

They're actually doing what universities used to do.

And it is true that many of these are the creatures of red state legislators or public university University of Florida, Ohio State University, University of Texas.

There's a new one, University of South Carolina.

But it's true that they've been created by red state legislatures in red or purple states.

But the education they offer is it's an American education.

Well, my state started one that both of the big schools, and they've the one in ASU I think is it's pretty much a libertarian economics focus because it also got some Koch Brothers money.

I guess ours did.

To The one at my university is so lame.

It's run by some feminist and it's no longer even there's no conservative viewpoint to it at all, or even an American civilization we American slash Western civilization viewpoint.

So I don't have anything to do with them.

But well, this is always the danger in academia because even at Notre Dame, the College of Arts and Letters, it's overwhelmingly left in the faculty.

So there's always a tendency to drift left.

If you're not very countercultural, explicitly countercultural, you're going to drift left and really really drift left.

But I'm very optimistic about these new schools, in part because the leadership dean at the University of Texas justin Dyer is just phenomenal.

Yeah, there, it's a place where conservatives are welcome, which is a change, but really it's a place their mission focused, and their mission is restoring the principles and teaching the principles of the United States constitutionalism, and the and the debates, all the debates left and right, all sides.

So it's it's very exciting, I think, John, and hopefully you are going to be headed to text Steve Man Steve too, and maybe all in up there as well.

But we did something similar Notre Dame.

We've actually been doing it at Notre Dame for over a decade.

In fact, I was down at Texas to help them set up their curriculum.

So there are these pockets of a traditional education around the country.

So you listeners with college age kids or high school age kids, you should look for these new schools of civic leadership.

As I said, one of the most promising things, promising developments in higher education.

I think so.

And actually I believe it or not.

People do ask us all the time, where can I send my kid?

And you know, the usual answer was always his Hillsdale, But so there you go.

Texas Texas is another option.

Maybe we'll do a whole show on that.

One of these days.

I do want to mention a couple of things.

I'm very excited about the renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

They have already as a what was it two days ago that Trump announced this?

The website, the Department of Defense website is now war dot gov.

Yeah.

I saw the New York Times headline, and I immediately forwarded to John.

And John's response was, I might have to go back in the governor.

Governor.

Yeah, I want a business card that says Department of War.

I know, it's so great.

What are those crazy things this week?

I do want to talk a moment.

I don't even know what you think about all this because I had a we had a rather I don't even know if it's fair to say it was rancorous debate with Ken Green a few times ago.

But can Green considers me a conspiracy rfk nut?

But I'm I'm all.

In, by the way on eating clean, shall we say?

I don't need processed foods and this and that.

And I'm also becoming more and more suspicious about the whole vaccine thing.

Not because I think vaccines have always been a terrible thing or anything like that.

I mean, they saved America from smallpox and polio, But do you know how many vaccines a child gets now by the time they're eighteen.

You know, I have three kids, and I don't know how many, but I do remember the you know, the standard advice we got, and they just it's not only how many, but at the same time, yeah, yeah, it just overwhelmed.

It's a small body.

So we space We think we did all the vaccines, but we spaced them out differently.

Well, my daughter.

Is thirty six and when she was at her second I believe it's around two months old, her second appointment for vaccines, they wanted to give her a hepatitis B vaccine and her father was a had a degree in microbiology, didn't make him a medical expert.

But he's, you know, why would you do this?

I know what they had.

The nurse couldn't answer.

She said, well, it's really just experimental.

He says, you want to do an experiment on That was thirty six years ago.

Now they routinely give the hepatitis B vaccine to infants immediately on the off chance that their mother might have been excuse the expression a crack hor and transfer hepatitis b it's crazy anyway.

So RFK, it's funny because you also see the conservative world divided over RFK and even over his testimony.

New York Post had a New York Post opinion, the editorial board opinion just calling him a total quack and blah blah blah blah blah.

And then another article, opinion article by someone I forget, just saying how incredibly right he was because he's not saying no vaccines or anything like that.

He's just saying we need to follow the science.

But the senators, did you say, you're probably too busy to have watched even a moment of the testimony.

I didn't.

I didn't watch any of the testimony.

My general line on this is I'm distrustful of experts, all experts.

So the parts I like of RFK are his sort of hey, let's pause, I'm not sure.

And doctors, I mean, I have lots of friends who are doctors.

Doctors are used to being the smartest people in the room.

They rarely tell you what they don't know.

So I just have a real healthy skepticism.

So that skepticism I appreciate and I think is needed.

No, I don't know if he's right either, but I think we need a lot more skepticism.

I mean I grew up eating the food pyramid, right, stuffing myself with kicks and bread for you know, carbohydrates which we were supposed to I mean you remember the old food of course I do.

Oh And now they're like, that's exactly wrong or at least that's not right.

Well some people are at least.

Yeah.

Then remember fats were at the top, and you know, I make it a point to eat as much butter as I can margin, you know, yeah, yeah.

I'm almost told me she was supposed to feed his.

Margarin, right, you know, yeah, I used to.

I've told the story before.

I used to bootleg cases of blue bonnet margin to my grandparents up in the north shore of Minnesota, Lake Superior, Minnesota because they insisted you had to margin, but they lived in Minnesota so you.

Couldn't buy it.

Yeah.

Crazy.

I hope that they don't to actually force him out because I do think he's doing all the right.

People are leaving because of him, and I think that's a good sign.

If you go into just you know, if you go into a bureaucracy, that's you know, just just sclerotic and people are so upset they leave.

I think that's a really good sign.

Yeah, often it is.

You know, the person I trust in this realm more than anyone is Jay Batcheria, the director of the Nationalist super Health.

I mean, I've had vacation, I run a program here at Notre Dame, and we've had him come speak a few times, including just a few days before he was nominated for the head of the NIH.

And you know, he's a top scientist, he has all the credentials, but he's intellectually, epistemically humble.

Yes, I'm not afraid to say what he doesn't know, and to my mind that gives him great credibility, both his intelligence but his humility and courage.

Though at the same time along with the humility, remember he was he probably came close to losing his entire career over the Great Barrington Declaration.

And for people who don't know, he's a Stanford epidemiologist PhD in economics.

I mean, this guy is as credentialed as anyone could be.

And very early in COVID he said, hey, wait a second, and he did some studies that showed, you know, COVID is our there's no possibility of zero COVID.

I mean, it was out.

Everyone was going to get it sooner or later.

And he was saying these things in February March.

Remember we all shut down around mid March.

He was saying these things very early.

Then published a great Barrantine declaration, and his colleagues at Stanford just went after him.

It was terrible.

I mean, so I told him he needs to write a book.

There needs to be a movie made about him.

He's a real hero.

I mean I yeah, and his friends got at less did write a book.

It's a very interesting one, and.

Both those guys.

Yeah, deserves a lot of credit.

So, I mean, he, you know, Jay Batcheria, I hope before this term ends this administration and gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom because he he really is a hero for standing up for science but also freedom of speech.

And give Trump some credit here too, for being willing to say, you know, I considered the operation Warp Speed one of my great accomplishments, but hey, let's look at it given credit.

Yeah, you know, one of my one of my good friends here at Notre Dame sent me that statement and said, have you ever seen a president be willing to make himself so vulnerable in a way.

Well, let's you know, I did this.

I think it worked.

But let's let's you know, they're presenting me with all sorts of evidence, the President said, but they don't put it out in the public.

Let's put it out in the public.

Yeah.

I mean my response to my my colleague who sent me that was this is why people love him.

Actually, yeah, yeah, because there are a lot of his actual mega people who think that was his probably worst thing he did.

Many of them believe that he, you know, he was taking advice from people he thought he could trust, experts, experts like Fauci and Deborah Burghs whatever name.

Is, you know.

He he he thought he was doing the right thing.

He's not a doctor, he has no medical training.

And so he looks back on it and says, let's let's let's see what really happened there.

Good for let's see No.

So, I mean, I think when we're you know, the books are already starting to come out on you know what we got wrong?

And Steve Mosito, very distinguished Princeton professor, very much man of the left, has a new book out like we got it all wrong?

You know what, we the left got it all wrong for, you know, very lefty Princeton professor to say that.

I mean, that's something else.

So yeah, so tell me about your book.

Excuse me, your article I was thinking about.

You showed me the book.

We'll come back to that.

Tell me about so let me first say, I'll show it because if Steve does, this is uh an addition of national Affairs.

It's I don't know if it's going to show very well, but yeah, it's a little blurry, but it includes an article by John, an article by Steve and me, and an article by Vincent Philip Munos, and we're gonna we're going to just yeah, no, we're going to discuss that one article today because without John here, it's really awful that whenever we have to discuss these deep philosophical issues, it works better to school John when he's actually not in the room, because then he doesn't lawyer us.

But we'll give him, we'll give him equal time.

Tell us a little bit about the the thesis.

Of your article.

Yeah, well, thanks for asking about it.

It's called the American Revolutions of seventeen seventy six revolutions plural and in the article I try to explain sort of three core elements of the Founding political philosophy, all of which are encapsulated in seventeen seventy six.

The first revolution is that legitimate government is via consent.

Legitimate government is via consent because all men are created equal, all people are equal by nature, No one has a right to rule.

No person, no class has a right to rule by nature.

So that's the first revolution, and we can come back to that because that gets right to the part of the theological political problem which I know you've been talking in recent episodes.

So the first revolution is legitimate government is instituted via consent.

Second revolution is the purposes of government are to protect natural rights, not to save citizens souls, protect their rights.

The third revolution, connected to the first two, especially the second, is that why do we limit government to protecting rights, protecting natural rights and not saving souls?

And we limit government to those more limited ends to leave room for church authority out of deference to and respect for church authority.

Perhaps this is the most novel aspect of the article.

I say, I try to connect and I think this is the Founder's understanding.

We limit the authority of the state because the state doesn't have authority over our souls.

Who has authority over our souls?

Well, ourselves will to God and our churches.

And so we limit state authority out of deference in respect of religious authority.

Okay, that's the Third Revolution.

So those are the government by consent, limited government protecting natural rights.

We protect natural rights and due regard in deference to church authority, our obligations to our creator.

Okay, So the revolutions of seventeen seventy six.

Right, So I would only argue that in your second to revolutions, you don't go far enough.

And this is this is why I will say so.

First of all, the reason that that you don't have a government responsible for saving souls is because I agree with you, not so much out of deference to church authorities, but the absolute belief that Jefferson says, I should have pulled it up before this.

You know that it makes one half of the world fools and the other tyrants.

Right, is that that the phrase something like that if you try to force beliefs on people, you can't do it because Almighty God hath created the mind free.

So from the point of view of human nature, Madison calls the right to conscience a natural right, and Jefferson certainly thought of it, included it in the idea of the rights of the natural rights.

Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The reason that it's a revolution, and that I agree with you about this, is it's the first time it ever happened.

It's I mean, all throughout ancient history, the political authorities were the religious authorities and vice versa.

They were one and the same, and your piety was the same as your patriotism.

If you obeyed the laws, you obeyed the gods.

Christianity comes along and it's a universal god, monotheistic religion, and you could have a loyalty to God that might be different from your loyalty to your political authority, to the political SoC and even see some evidence of why that's problematic in the Gospel and in some of the letters the epistles.

But over the years those things became joined.

You had the Holy Roman Empire, you had the King of England becoming the head of the Church of England, where all of a sudden, now you have religious wars.

You have religious wars which define Europe, and even in many cases of wider conflicts for a thousand years at least, if not more.

And you know, America was founded by people wanting to practice their own religion here in America that they were prevented from practicing over in Europe.

So religion and politics is probably the single most important conflict in human history.

I would say, yeah, I mean, you're getting right at the heart of what we talk about limited government.

Sometimes conservatives confused limited government with small government.

I mean, we conservatives used to like small government, you know, lower taxes.

And I still do because the more government does, the less liberty you have.

But yes, I get your point.

But limited government is there's certain things that the state governing powers people who have the guns can't legitimately do.

An example I like to use is I'm in Indiana, the state of Indiana, or the state of California, or wherever.

We license doctors, we license lawyers, we licensed cosmetologists, we license everything.

To get married, you have to get a license, But preachers don't have to get a license the state from the state from the state.

The state of Indiana doesn't issue preaching licenses.

And why not.

You can imagine Governor Dowse some saying there's an epidemic of hate preaching, and so we need the licensed preachers.

And the correct response was would be, you don't have authority to do that.

You don't you the governor of California.

You don't have authority to determine who is and who is not a legitimate preacher.

Sure, that's what we mean by limited government.

There's certain things that the state can't do.

You were pointing to the foundation of that limit as a sort of government and competence, or you know, government can't So what Jefferson says, you know government, government can't make you believe in the true religion.

And I think that's true to some extent.

I mean, that's Locke's argument.

Jefferson gets it from Locke.

It's the classic argument of the letter concerning toleration.

I mean that's true to some extent.

I think it actually overstates the case.

Really, yeah, you know.

You mean, because you look at it, say, an is a Muslim country where they're actually pretty successful at it.

Well, yes, you could do that or sat Augustine actually writes about this and he says, experience taught me with the Donatis.

So these, uh, this is this heretical group.

He says, these people were confused in their in their in their laziness, confused on an account of their laziness, the accustom.

They had certain beliefs which were wrong, religious beliefs that were wrong, at least in Augustine's point of view.

And he said force can shake them out of their slumber.

So so it is true that compulsion alone can't can't make you believe something.

But where does that compulsion come from?

For Augustine, Well.

It's from the state, from those who have, you know, those who have the guns.

Force can make you consider arguments, it can shake you up, it can end customs.

You know.

Belief is a complicated thing, sure, suation of upbringing, and force can affect those background conditions, if I can put it in a sort of social scientific way.

So it's not that force is completely impotent.

So I think Jefferson and Locke maybe go to I mean, it's not what they say isn't true.

It's just not the whole story.

I get that.

I also think that it's in the rest and it's by the way, it's half of the world hypocrites and the other fools, not times hypocrites.

And and of course that is also an instrumental argument, because remember it goes further and says that God asks us for our our faith, our belief as a personal choice.

And so you are, in.

Fact legitimizing genuine religious belief.

That's not the right word.

You are by keeping.

Government out of the business of saving souls.

As you put it, if my soul is saved, it's genuine.

If my soul is saved on account of laws and regulations that will punish me for lack of faith, then it's not all that genuine.

And so he says, the true religion prefers this freedom of conscience, freedom of.

Will to choose it.

And I think again, to a great extent, that's an instrumental argument, because they want the separation of religious authority from political authority, because that gives human beings the greatest freedom.

I think it's not that I want to leave this subtopic, but it takes me to Steve asked us to consider discussing this article that our good friend Glenn Elmers wrote.

And I believe the name of the article is something like the Founders wanted Religion, but not I forget exactly.

What it is mister Wilson's article.

Yeah, I don't even know who that person is.

Sorry, I say one thing on the last point, just yeah, sure, of course there's a prudential argument and then a more principled argument about religious freedom and separation of church and state.

The prudential argument, as you were getting at, is, you know, when we have the union of church and state.

Religious peoples, my post liberal friends they say, well, if we had a closer connection between church and state, well, then church authorities, you know who we respect, or the churches we belong to, they'll govern the political authorities, and then the political authority can be used to, you know, to if not save souls, at least help form souls in the proper direction.

But in fact, history teaches us the opposite is true.

It's not for church authorities direct political authorities.

It's that political authorities direct the church authorities.

Yes, absolutely.

At the time of the founding, the class of people who are most against the American Revolution the Anglican bishops.

And why were the Anglican bishops the established clergy.

Why were they against the revolution?

Well because who was their patron?

The power came from the crib who owned all the church property, who their appointment?

They were government officials and Madison's argument.

Jefferson's argument.

Part of the argument is just prudential.

Look, when you have a union of church and state.

You can see this Catholic church in Germany right now, which gets its tax dollars, gets tax dollars from the state.

When you have a union in church and state, the state always ended up controlling the church.

Let me just add one small point to that.

Having lived in Germany and enjoying all of those actually not enjoying them because they didn't really apply to us.

There are more religious holidays in Germany that are federal national government sanctioned holidays.

I can't even imagine how to get anything done, to be honest with you.

I think there's two a week or something like that.

It seemed like.

But the point was, with.

All of that government sanctioning of religion and support for religion, the churches were empty.

There is in fact no discernible religious community in Germany anymore.

You know, my daughter was confirmed in a twelve hundred cathedral from that it was built in the twelve hundreds, and it was the most people because it was a bunch of military families there that that church had seen in like ten years in a mass.

You know, it's just which is.

You know, that kind of proves the point that if the state gets involved in religion, it no longer leaves it up to the individual to decide.

And I think it underminds and cheapens the religious experience.

But I don't think that was necessarily the founder's central goal.

I do believe it was.

They believed it was necessary to separate the idea of church and state.

And the way they did that is in some ways it's brilliant.

And I think it's all tied up in the phrase.

We laughed about it last week because Claremont has hats that say this nature and Nature's God.

So for the first time you've had a country founded on the idea that both revelation and reason supported the notion of human equality and the need for government based upon consent.

And my way of introducing that to students, and you saw that I wrote about it is I really do think that this is sort of revolutionary in and of itself.

When Jesus goes to the well and the he's by himself, as does disciples have gone to get food or something, and the Samaritan woman comes up and he talks to her.

We don't have a sense of what that means.

We talk to anybody, but for a rabbi to talk to a woman, first of all, an accompanied woman, second of all a Samaritan, not a Jewish woman.

And third of all, it's you know, they make it so she's probably a prostitute, and he talks her like she's a human being.

That to us, it's it's hard to fathom how revolutionary, how that single passage in the Bible was, but it's it's clear she and remember what happens.

Then he says, you know, I know you're a sinner.

You're living with a man who's not your husband.

And he forgives her, and then she goes back to her Samaritan community and talks about and so for the first time, what you see is not only that salvation is not just for the Jews or just for men, or you know, or it's the opening the recognition by Jesus that all human beings are equal, and that notion of equality takes a long time, but in my opinion, is embalmed in the Declaration of Independence, but not based upon religious authority alone, based upon the idea you said at the beginning that human beings, by nature are not.

Fitted with rulers and ruled.

You.

You can't tell by nature who is a ruler and who was born to be ruled, and therefore.

We are are our own natural rulers.

That's to me, the biggest revolution of all of them is that religion and reason teaches us that human beings are fundamentally equal and the most important respect.

Yeah, there's three interrelated ideas which you are articulated all of them.

I mean, the first really comes from the Jewish scriptures.

There's one God, a monotheism.

You mentioned this earlier.

I mean that there's so in the ancient world and the non Jewish world.

I mean, you can see this in the Old Testament too.

You know, when when you're when your country went to war, your gods were waging war against their gods.

That is, it wasn't a world of monotheism.

What Judaism brings to the world is there's the one God and he is the true God.

That is, those other gods are not really gods, they're false gods.

So okay, that's the first.

The second is there's one God and he's the god of everyone.

We are all sons and daughters of the One True God.

I mean that idea we don't appreciate.

The left especially does not appreciate how revolutionary that idea is.

I mean, this is why we have what we call human rights slots.

That's why we don't just we take prisoners of war.

We don't shoot them.

You know, why do so?

We're at war, they're in uniforms, the opponent is in uniforms.

We capture them.

Why don't we just shoot them?

Right?

We house them, we feed them right right well, because look, they may be our enemies in battle, and it's legitimate to kill them on the battlefield, but once we've detained them, taken away their guns, once they can't harm us, they are still children of God.

It's why my favorite Christmas song, I won't call it Carol, is Snoopy's Christmas.

To me, it's the perfect emblematic idea that our humanity uh and and the what Christmas means to humanity is even more important than uh, than than than enemies clashing exactly.

I mean that that our enemies are still children, sons and daughters of God.

That that is a as a revolutionary concept that Christianity brings, brings to the.

World and that Lincoln reminded us of and we use.

The language of human dignity today.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna get comments about that, but we're gonna leave that.

I get what you're all going to say.

Human rights today doesn't necessarily mean exactly what what Phil has in mind here, but I understand what he means by that.

It's the recognition of the natural rights of other human being.

And we all have them, not just Americans, but they're natural rights, we all humans.

And then the third idea, which is to connect to the equality idea, is so there's one God, it's a god of all of us.

But that God doesn't appoint political rulers for our political communities.

I mean, we participate, you could say, in the divine governance of the world.

I mean, I don't want to be flip about it, but God says, look, your social beings, by nature, you need to live together, figure out how to live well using your mind.

Right, I don't have to appoint rulers for you.

You're equal.

Right, form a community.

Do it on the ground of equality.

You're You're in the gospels.

Give to Caesar, what is Caesar's So Caesar has a legitimate authority give to God.

What is God's Caesar's authority is not appointed directly by God.

This particular ruler is not a pointed by God.

But it took seventeen one hundred years for call it political states and political philosophers to.

Figure that out.

Because remember what ruled Europe for centuries was the notion of the divine right of kings.

It was the controlling philosophy of government, call it that theory of government before.

Consent, a heresy that is convenient for those who want to have power or hold power to say, my power comes from God.

A very powerful heresy, very powerful heresy, very powerful heresy.

And as Jefferson says, you know, we finally come to the point where we're no longer being ruled by monks and superstition ignorant, right.

I mean, it's a dig at the Gallic Church, but it is No church is perfect.

So yes, you could say that you cannot go all the way back to Erstutle, that you can go to other earlier thinkers who understand that there's a problem with the divine right of kings.

But in terms of actual real politics, real governance, it's the great contribution of the American Founders to not only us as Americans, but to Western civilization to the world is the creation of a system of government that respects human equality, yes, and religious authority and religious liberty.

And I think this is the point you're driving at that the Founders in this sense solved the theological political problem.

They advised an arrangement that they devised an understanding and then a political political institutions that both respect religious authority and legitimate and legitimate political authorities.

And they showed how religious authority and political authority could coincide.

That by limiting political authority and saying that those who religious authorities don't get to govern on account of the religious character.

Right in a nutshell, that's how you solve the theological political problem.

I've really simplified here, let's be honest, So John will hopefully understand this.

But that's the genius of the American Founding.

One more addition to that, and that is it's very important.

I thought of it when you were talking about human rights.

It's also necessary, as the first paragraph of the Declaration tells us that that one people have to come together in recognition of those natural rights, with the goal of securing those natural rights.

And it is so that's why I sort of hesitate a little at the notion of calling them human rights, because human rights implies to me today the notion of a un or global global government.

It can't be done by global governments.

It cannot be done in a way that does not allow for the sovereignty of the people to exercise their consent on a continuous basis in some way.

And that consent is a mutual consent with each other, it is that's the important part.

It's consent with your fellow human beings inside of what you create as a political community.

And then you choose a government to secure your natural rights.

And never forget the Aristotilian ends of safety and happiness.

The government is there to secure your natural rights, to conduce to your safety and happiness, which of course are the alpha and omega of Aristotle's political ends political tilos.

So I want to move that discussion then to a discussion of how that informs our constitution, because I do think that that question may be the most important question not only between the left and the right today, but also between elements of the right itself.

Even my good friend John claims that our Constitution is not based upon these natural rights ideas.

He calls it the.

Natural law, and he says the natural law in seventeen seventy six is not the same as it was when the fourteenth Amendment was passed.

And you know, I think sometimes he just does that to tweak me, but he does say it.

Does our constitution have a basis that is greater than simply the agreement the consent that you know, the method of consent that the constitutional Convention decided, you know, or send it to the people, not to the states, send it to the people in ratifying conventions after elections in their state.

Does it have a greater force?

Are there more principles?

Are there?

Is there a natural law basis to the Constitution that is how would you say operative?

I hate to use that term, but I think you know what I mean.

Ken, Our politicians are elected officials, and our judges turned to that natural law basis of the Constitution to inform them on how to interpret the provisions of the Constitution in a meaningful practical way.

I think that's the biggest question, right.

So there are two issues here, and I think it's really important to at least analytically keep them separate.

The first issue is what are the purpose?

Why do we have the constitution?

We do?

Are the what are its purposes?

What are its ends?

Why did the founders design it as they did?

And here positivists and sometimes John who likes to flirt with positivism, says he thinks he is a positive.

He's not really, but he thinks he is.

He says, Look, it's simply a matter of will.

That's the constitution they gave us, and the people ratify, and so it's really the people's will.

We have the constitution we have simply because that's the constitution we gave ourselves.

I don't think that's right.

It's true the necessary condition of authority is that it was ratified by the people.

But that's not sufficient because the people could make a very bad constitution.

The purpose of our constitution?

Let me take one constitutional provision, the taking's clause.

Government can't take your property except for public use and just compensation.

Why is that provision in the constitution.

We's in the constitution because the founder said the purpose of the constitution is to protect our natural rights, including our right to property.

The problem of demand, and I especially yeah, you know, the fundamental problem of popular government or democracy is the many taking the property of thew And that's wrong.

It's wrong even if it's done lawfully.

You can't just the many.

Can't just plunder the few.

The fu shouldn't plunder the many.

But why do we have a right to property, a natural right to property?

Well, because if I pick the apple, it's mine.

No one owns the apple tree I'm out there.

If I'm out in the ocean and I cast a line and catch a fish, it's mine.

Why do I own my property?

Why do I own my labor?

But why do I get the apple?

Who made that rule?

That I own my own labor?

That's by nature.

That's what it means to be a person to own your own labor.

Slaves are people who don't own their own labor.

Slavery is wrong.

Now those moral pronouncements I just made that the apple, if I pick it is mine.

That slavery is wrong.

If I enslave someone, the slave picks the apple, I take it.

Those those moral pronouncements are not because of some positive law we made.

Those are that is the natural law.

Okay, So here's I'll be John for a second.

Yeah, he just says that that's a cost benefit.

The reason that we protect property is because it leads to economic prosperity, which it does.

It's true it does, but that's not the reason we protected The reason why we we think slavery is wrong is not because it's inefficient.

It's because, no, the slaves own their labor too.

I mean, Abraham Lincoln says, you work, I eat is the root logic of despotism.

Yep.

No different from kings or tyrants in the past.

Yes, so I want to read to you really quickly.

This was a story.

But you said you didn't have time to pay too much attention to the headlines.

Senator Kine from Virginia when he was questioning a nominee to actually the nominee was to I don't even Assistant Secretary of State and the Riley Barnes in his opening his I guess opening statement, Riley Barnes says, we are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator, not from our laws, not from our government.

He warned that when rights are untothered from that principle, they can be easily manipulated by authoritarians and bad actors.

OK.

You and I would agree with that.

I think it's true simply speaking, and that's a secondary issue, that it's problematic if you don't abide by that principle.

But Cain said that the.

Notion was extremely tru bling, that it should make Americans very, very nervous, because the notion that rights don't come from laws and don't come from the government, but come from the creator.

That's what the Iranian government believes.

I mean, has he not read the Declaration of Independence by our creator?

Our rights are endowed by our creator.

I mean, it's but it's an embarrassment that the United States senator would say that.

I mean he's directly contradicting the Declaration of Independence.

Of course, But is it not emblematic or symptomatic of the the rot in our government and amongst the left and left and so forth that he could say that and not be laughed off the stage?

Well, because he actually believe.

It's not just ignorance, it's what he actually believes.

I mean, it's the modern left.

I mean, this is intellectually you go back to Herbert Crowley and Woodrow Wilson.

They actually believe no rights are a product of historical development.

They're a product of the state.

You only have property rights.

To go back to our own example, you only get the apple because we made laws to say that you get the apple.

That your property rights are a product of the state.

They're granted by the state, and then they're readjusted over time, right by whatever the state decides as best for human development.

Sure, that is the modern conception, the modern progressive conception of government.

So Senator Kane, you know, we say it's laughable because it's against the Declaration of Independence, which he obviously is unaware of, but he's actually speaking of truth.

He actually thinks rights come from the state.

There's I think a secondary issue there too, and that is this is my bias against the left.

For all of their talk about all quality and equity, what it really means is if it's God who gives us our rights, or call it even nature, nature being some unchanging principle, then of course you're limited as a politician, and you're just not just a servant of God but a servant of the people.

That's the whole idea of American political power that is consistent with the Constitution that our representatives are senators, our president, even though our judges are our servants who have been given the sacred responsibility of governing the American people.

But of course Kine doesn't think of himself that way, not even I mean, not even close.

He thinks that, you know, if power comes from God, it means I don't have power.

Yeah, And if rights come from the government, he is the bestower rights.

Yes, yes, and so there's an incredible arrogance about this, but it's very because of course, then the other thing that that the left likes to do, in my opinion, that once you no longer believe that rights come from God or from nature, from from a rational understanding of human nature, then you can make rights and be anything you want them to be.

Like you talked about back back somehow, uh, turning us back to a place where the many can take away the property of.

The rich or vice versa.

Or turning us to a place where you can say, there's a right to health care, a right to uh, you know, a right to a fair and appropriate public education, a right here's.

Your gender, right to do whatever you want.

I mean that there's no nature, yes, right, there's nothing stable.

There's nothing fixed, there's nothing that limits the power of the government.

To get back to our earlier point or first point was one of the revolutions was we limit the power of the state.

But if there are no natural rights, it emancipates the state.

And that's really what Tim Kain thinks.

Yes, yes, and you know the idea that he didn't lose his seat, that he wasn't the whole Senate didn't censor him for saying those remarks.

Again, I think it's a rot at the center of our government these days, and I think, pardon me, that, excuse me, I'm so sorry.

That's one of the things to go back to the very beginning of our discussion that Civitas and some of these other civic education are trying to reintroduce.

I am.

Optimistic, not just because there are places like Civitas, but also because I believe that Trump's success.

I don't think Trump is perfect.

Don't anybody accuse me of that.

But Trump's success is that there's a lot more common sense out there in America that understands what Tim Kaine does not understand.

I think every day, everyday Americans are still a very sensible.

Bunch, and they may not understand it the way we do.

But we should get back to our point, because there's the first point you asked about natural rights and constitutional government.

Our first point was that there is a moral foundation in nature, Nature and Nature's God and human rights and natural rights that our constitution is meant to protect.

So there's natural rights.

The fact that I get to own my own labor, that's a natural right.

The natural right of property, or natural right to acquire property, that's part of the natural law.

The natural law is just to say what's reasonable.

It's not reasonable that if I pick the apple you can take it from me.

Right, you can't take my property.

We all understand that right, and that's that's the natural law.

We create a constitution to protect our natural rights.

So the natural law, the natural rights are inform the constitution.

Now John thinks he makes a quick jump.

He says, if you belie believe that, then a judge can always invoke the natural law to adjudicate a case.

And he says, well, but different people disagree about what the natural law is.

Therefore you're just emancipating judges to be policymakers, to be philosopher kings.

That's too quick of a jump.

Okay, So the constitution is informed by natural law.

Again, natural rights are just part of the natural law.

Right.

The natural law is simply the law of natural justice.

We create there on the hearts of men according to luck.

And the gospels, and the and the and the we create a constitution to secure justice.

The legislative power is the body.

The body that makes the law is to make laws, to make good, positive laws for the community that determine or effectuate the natural law.

So we have all sorts of laws to regulate property, to protect property right.

We divide up the land into parcels.

That's all done by the legislature so people can own it.

So law makers, when they're passing laws, how do we know if a law is good or bad?

What's the standard?

I mean, they're legal because they're laws as long as they're passed according to the due procedures.

But we can say some laws are good, some laws are bad.

Slavery was legal in the Southern States, but it was a bad law.

Why can we say it's a bad law, Well, because it's against the natural law.

So the political body, the institution that's most responsible for articulating and then instantiating the natural law for our political community is the legislature through passing positive laws.

So the civil law, when it's good, reflects the natural law.

This is exactly what Martin Luther King says, by the way, in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, he says, look segregation right, the dividing people by race by law, saying you know, no blacks can be at the public in the public schools, or the public swimming pool, or if you own a business, you must segregate on the race.

Those are laws.

They're just deficient laws.

They're unjust laws.

They're immoral laws because the positive law is not consistent with the natural law, and therefore those laws should be overturned.

They should be sorry, those laws should be rescinded.

As King's argument, Okay, now here's the question.

If you're a judge and you have to say the law of segregation or the law of slavery, what's your authority.

The law is the positive laws against the natural law.

But the institution that's responsible for instantiating the natural law is the legislature.

So here's where I actually agree with John.

It's not the role of judges to overturn the positive law into the in light of the natural law.

The role of the judge in our system is to articulate in a case by case basis, what the positive law is.

That's the role of the judge, simplifying a little bit, but it's to interpret the constitution.

The Constitution is a positive law, so the role of the judge is not to go over the positive law the Constitution to the natural law to strike down.

That's just not the role of the judge.

So you can have both a judiciary that understands its role is limited to articulating the meaning of the Constitution and say the Constitution is a product of the natural law.

Those are not incompatible positions.

Okay, now one.

Can't bring that up at the end of the podcast.

I'm sorry, Phil, that's unfair.

Go ahead.

One refinement.

Part of the positive law, part of the Constitution are natural law principles, so the freedom of speech or the free exercise of religion.

So you're judge and you say, well, the First Amendment says Congress can't pass a law a bridging the freedom of speech, Well, what is the freedom of speech?

That text, that constitutional text reflects a natural law principle.

The natural law principle is people have a right to say things that are reasonable, and they should not be punished for saying things that are reasonable.

But libel, saying false things, Maliciously saying false things about something someone is not reasonable.

You can't destroy someone's reputation that's actually a real harm to them.

So libel is not part of the freedom of speech.

So a judge in interpreting the positive law the freedom of speech the First Amendment.

When a judge is interpreting the First Amendment, to interpret it well, according to the text, you're going to have to understand the natural law principles that inform the text.

That's why a judge can say libel is not part of freedom of speech.

Publishing pornographic images is not part of the freedom of the press.

So it well, it's true that the role of the judge is only to interpret the positive law.

To interpret the positive law requires knowledge of natural law principles, because our positive law is informed by the natural law.

Yes, and I would love to carry on with this conversation quite a bit more because it deserves more discussion, but unfortunately, not only do you have to be someplace I'm to understand, but we are out of time.

So I thank you very much for joining us joining me today on the three Whiskey Happy Hour.

By the way, folks, I have to tell you that we didn't talk about whiskey because it's actually we started at six fifteen am Pacific time.

It's a little early for me because itself.

I do have my eighteen twelve commemorative death Wish coffee cups, so I guess that'll have to do for this week.

I'm gonna throw a few really quick Babylon bees because we didn't get to some of the things we were going to discuss, because you know, that's how it always goes.

But let me.

Start with report Chicago shootings are down.

As the official guy who keeps track of all the shootings got shot.

English Bobby's raced past five stabbings to tackle offensive social media poster man.

I don't know.

It's really the corruption of the West right there.

Yeah, I mean they're pushing back.

There's obviously it's similar I think in Great Britain, parts of you know, Scotland and Ireland, where the middle class, the lower middle class, the heartland people, if they have them there, they're a lot smarter.

They have a lot more common sense than their leaders.

Do that.

You know that gives me a lot of hope.

It's why I tend to flock with them rather than my elites.

Sorry, I know that's not very nice.

Newsome announces he is anti crime until the next election.

Kamala Harris last scene fleeing dozens of international assassins after Trump counsels her secret Service protection.

Just covering all those headlines we didn't get to Russia, Ukraine reached new type of truth where they just keep bombing each other and finally study finds women in denteds to make other women look stupid.

You won't appreciate that, but I do, all right, Phil, Hey, you want to take us out?

Well, I suppose I'm supposed to say, always drink your whiskey meat, but I actually preferred on the rocks.

Oh heresy, Thank you, Phil.

I hope to see you on here again soon because John's gonna want a piece of you.

Have a great week, everyone.

Ricochet join the conversation.