The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Rumble in the State of Nature Jungle

We were finally able to schedule a taping with enough lead time to get a special guest we've been wanting to have on for a long time—the great Hadley Arkes, emertus professor of jurisprudence from Amherst College and founder of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, and co-host of his own very fine podcast, the Natural Law Moment. We've abused Hadley in absentia in some of our podcasts over the last few months, so now he got hsi chance especially to attempt to sort out the very stubborn John Yoo. 

John was delayed a bit joining us, so since this podcast is partly anchored not only in the truths of natural law, but also libations of a scotch variety, we decided to take advantage of Hadley's advanced expertise in gin martinis. Plus some "origin story" of how he came to political philosophy and in particular natural law as the primary focus of his mature work.  And once John showed up, it was ON! 

We rounded off this episode with an AI-generated parody of Hadley, which begins as follows:

“On the Ontological Status of the Ham Sandwich: A Moral Inquiry into the Lunchtime Crisis”

By Gladly Harkness, Edward Whiskers Professor of Ontological Jurisprudence

It is a curious feature of our current jurisprudence that the simple act of consuming a ham sandwich has not yet been subject to rigorous philosophical analysis. . .

For the whole thing, you'll need to head over to Steve's "Political Questions" Substack.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, moneys, my ry,
oh whiskey.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Why think alone when you can drink it all In
with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders, Steve Hayward,
John Yu and the international Woman of Mystery Lucretia where.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
The lapped it up and David hain'ts you easy on
the show? Top guy a giving and let that whiskey flow.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, Hi everybody, and welcome to a special episode of
the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Because we have a martini
drinker interloping on our festivals, and you know that's rare
and of itself. John, you will be joining us a
little late. He's on Fox News right now and we'll
join us as soon as he can to have what
I'm calling the Rumble in the State of Nature Jungle.

(00:56):
That's my tentative title for this episode, because we have
Hadley Arkis to be introduced more properly, and d of
course Lucretia here as always. How are you this morning, Lucretia?

Speaker 4 (01:07):
I'm well, Thank you, Steve, it's lovely to see you
and Hadley. I have to say very quickly before he
does his origin story that it's very difficult for me
to even consider calling Hadley by his first name because
I remember him. He doesn't remember me. For absolutely clear reasons.

(01:27):
I was nineteen years old and attending a Claremont before
Clemar had its summer fellowship program. It had a summer
fellowship program that was much much smaller, and I was
attending that as an undergraduate, and the great Hadley Archist
was one of the speakers speaking on the First Amendment.
And it is actually probably the thing that got me

(01:49):
most interested in studying constitutional law because of the way
in which constitutional law was our avenue, shall we say
to the warm important questions in America at least anyway,
So I'm going to do it, but understand it. It
kind of rubs me a little the wrong way because
out of respect, I should be calling you professor Arcis.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
I think that's one of my of my students school.
You can call me your excellency something like that, right right,
but none that that just melts me that you were there.
I think I remember when I gave that talk, maybe
the first time I gave to talk about the original
argument against the Bill of Rights, and that was that.
So you were there then.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
A long time ago that is so sweet.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
That is so sweet in the world of coincidences or
near coincidences, if that's the program I'm thinking of. Summer
of nineteen eighty, right nineteen eighty I almost went to that.
Peter Shram had gotten a hold. I was just out
of college. Peter Shram had gotten my name somehow and
kept telling me, you got to come to this program. Instead,
I took off to Europe with my backpack, and I've

(02:56):
always regretted that I didn't go, because first of all,
I would have encountered the lovely Lucretian age of nineteen
which might have wrecked my life. I don't know. But
later on saw that, you know, as I recall Hadley,
that program was you Jaffa. I think Russell Kirk was there.
And I have a couple other terrific people.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
The only other thing I really remember about the program,
just so you know, other than what I said about
professor artists really is true. But the other thing I remember, okay,
was two things that that Jaffa said, that Harry Jeffa said.
And one was that and and I was very young

(03:34):
and very naive and and did not have much discernment
nor understanding. He said that he was very happy that
Ronald Reagan was likely to be the next president of
the United States, but that Ronald Reagan had indeed signed
into law the most immoral statute in the history of
the books on California. Yes, And then the other thing

(03:55):
he said was that nobody was sorry than I was
when Martin Diamond dropped dead in the middle of our debate.
He meant argument, not person. And I remember those two things,
and you and that's and that people were going out
running at five o'clock at night in the worst smug

(04:18):
I can ever remember.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
In Clarimonta, those are the things I remember.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
I remember giving my talk, and Harry thought it was
the first pick. They usually open to the first pages
of Aristotle combined with Lincoln Douglas. Harry said, I told
you you could do a terrific talk, of course, based
on the first page of Aristotle's Politics, and Professor Arkins
did it. I liked. I like to go every here,

(04:43):
visit everybody else, stay for everybody else's talk instead of
darting out. So Harry was down for five talks. On
John it was John Marshall. He never got the John Marshall.
It never got to something else came up. Every Crystal
said something, So we have to go go chasing chasing

(05:06):
that one. Yeah, oh no, that was okay.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah. So first of all I attempted to lucretia was
was was Jaffa's two statements the most shocking thing? Or
was Hadley the most shocking?

Speaker 4 (05:17):
No? No, no, Hadley Hadley actually because I had just changed
my major from psychology to science, and I was sort
of very I mean, I really knew nothing about anything.
I got into that conference because the essay you had
to write was what about conservatism? And I don't remember

(05:41):
the exact question, but my answer was, it really depends
on what it is conservatives they're trying to conserve. It
was that's what the conference was on. But I was
very very new, you know, I had really loved sociology
and psychology in high school, and I got to college
just say, oh my gosh, this is boring. And I
changed to political science in part because of Ed earlier,

(06:03):
actually a lot because of Ed earlier. But I was
still very young and very naive and very uninformed, and
so what hardly brought and I remember this, I don't
remember anything else other than the things I told you was. Wow,
he's really explaining to me why constitutional law and studying
constitutional law has to be part of what interests me.

(06:24):
But I was never interested in studying law, simply speaking.
So that's what I remember.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Well, I think we should quit there with that kind
of an endorsement. I could only ruin anything else.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
No, I don't think you do that. But let's do this,
since you know, we do call us a three whiskey
happy hour, and occasionally, you know, we actually if we
take in an evening, we actually have whiskey at our
elbow and we'll debate about it because of.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
The earlier the day from that martini. For me, Yeah, yeah,
WELLO could be.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
But you are a martini man, and I have to
say that in recent years I'm pretty late to this,
but in recent years I have come to appreciate the
virtues and charms of the martini. But there's quite a
lot of variation, not just in the gin you use,
but how they're made. And so i'd like to hear
from you. What is your idea of the Aristotelian idea
of the best martini.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Well, actually I was I was introduced to the martini
actually by the Great Washington lady Annie Wilson Marx was
the daughter of an admiral, and she I think she
was getting all A's at Berkeley, thought it was a phony.
And she she met General Gates at the at the
Admirals Club, and he said, come with me to Los Alamos.

(07:35):
Some interesting things are going on there. And she went there.
She got she was in and everything with the Oppenheim
and everything. She became very close to Dean Atchison and
Felix Fangfitter and Annie got me onto the Dean Atchison
vodka martini. M honest, and I switched later to Gin.
But I told people I used the George Goebel principle,

(07:58):
which is I know my li but I just pass
out before I get there. And and what I was using.
I love B feeder B feeder gin, except that I
was at the university. We're visiting my friend Dick Helmholds
in the unvents of Chicago. He gave me London's Gordon's Gin,
one of the cheapest gins out there, and it's marvelous. Yeah,

(08:23):
kind of I've got what effort is now. The best one,
of course is Hendricks. That's what's That's what you get
at the Elita household. You get you get Hendricks. That's
that's that is, that is the best. But I have
to cash in a bomb to buy that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Uh? And then how do you make it?

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yes and removed?

Speaker 3 (08:45):
No, no, no, no, I just heavily iceed, heavily iced,
and don't don't don't shake it, you shake it, you
water it down.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
So when I said when I'm out there, I just say,
straight up, just just stirred. Please give me some ice
on the side and I'll call it off. But what
I want is that it's you know, was Berdie Worcester
the kind of drink that will restore the tissues? Or
that that that martini at six pm that will pick
your right ap off the floor?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yes? Right, well now with a twist or with a
knowlives with a twist.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
I have a twist.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, Okay, So I had a I had a bartender
just this week in Los Angeles at one of those
fancy boutique hotels that I always inhabit, who he had,
you know, sort of skimmed the lemon for the lemon, uh,
you know the acids that are in the rind, and
stuck it at the in the middle of a spear
like thing and then poured the gin out of a

(09:42):
tumbler along the railing of this h It was long
stick to and he said that infuses the gin better
with the essence of the lemon oils. And I have
to say it was a great Martini affectation. I know,
maybe so, but what it's.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
It's oh my gosh, thank you.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
I mean fireworks goes along with his things. It's like
the ice capades. Okay, it's does pour the gin and.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Okay, and you don't do remove all drop in the
glass o removed? Are you what's yeah?

Speaker 3 (10:21):
I just I just glanced at it. I glanced at it.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
Wave it over.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, that's Churchill's line. Is the way to make a
dry Martini is to cast a reverend glance at the
bottle of removed. Right, Yeah, that's okay.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
You know what is good for what? Saut mushrooms and
saute onions?

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Is that true? Yes, I've learned.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
I've learned something already. It was worth getting on this.
I've got air pods and and from move for a mushroom.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
Okay, Yes, when you need just at the beginning, just
a little bit of moisture so that it doesn't stick,
because it makes moisture a little bit of remouth and
it just gives us lovely flavor. And I don't know, Steve.
We only have driver moveth in our house. But right, okay,
I imagine, I don't know. I've never tried sweet.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, well we have both kinds for various reasons which
I'll skip over. But let's do this, Hadley. I know
most of our listeners have heard of you, and many
are quite familiar with you. But I think we ought
to do for actually, for all our listeners, just a
little bit of very brief biography on what I like
to say is origin story. So I know you grew
up in Chicago, and where were you an undergraduate? I'm

(11:31):
not sure I know.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
That University of Illinois. First couple of years, I took
two buses and two trains across town to make an
eight am class at the Universal University of Illinois at
Navy Pier. I just can't believe I did that. But
we've finished where Judy and I were married in our
senior year. My senior year, she came back to Illinois

(11:54):
were so we finished at the University of Illinois. But
there's only one place I wanted to go for graduate
work I have. I had my marvelous professor as an undergraduate,
Milk ray cove the father of Jack raycove Right, worked
with with Consin Morgenthal at the University of Chicago. So
I got very hooked into Morgenthal as an undergraduate. And

(12:14):
of course I heard of Strauss and he told me
is Strauss, and I read of it of Strauss before
it got to Chicago. But Chicago was just a transforming
place transfer.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I mean, well, why you've written a couple of times
about you know, maybe it was your first it's been
a while now, but your first experience in the classroom
was Strauss, like so many people have. And who was
there a lot of Jesuit you know, Jesuit stud right,
and then uh and also herb Storing I think was
another important figure for you, wasn't he?

Speaker 3 (12:44):
That's right?

Speaker 4 (12:45):
He?

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Uh. When I landed at Chicago, I don't believe Fall
of sixty two, one of the first classes I had
was offered was Horse corseber harpstory on the American Founder.
I never heard science a course like that, never saw
that it was wonderful course. It was so good that

(13:07):
the architect Alan Greenberg kept prodding me in later years.
He's a he's an immigrant who wrote on Washington is
and why aren't you doing a course in the American Founding?
And it took me a lot, I thought. I thought
it was a very demanding thing to do. I didn't
summon my nerve to do a course on the founding
too much fuch much later. So, yeah, Herbstoring was there

(13:29):
and I encountered him there. He was on my dissertation
and the one who was giving most trouble about the dissertation.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Uh, well, yeah, your your dissertation was about if I
recall the Marshall Plan, which sounds a little different from
what we know you for ever since.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Well, actually because the beginning that it makes it Mainly
it was about the regime. It was kind of my
good bye letter to Hans Morgan found ah Bok did
but to say that what is the center of natural
interest for a policy? But what do you trying to
preserve and protect not simply the territory, but the nature
of the regime. So you could say that those Allied

(14:08):
armies that crossed the border in Germany to displace the
murderous regime really were serving the interests, the national interests
of the determined people by removing a vicious, a vicious,
murderous regime. So that line of struss Hey twent thirty seven, God,
this comes started in the middle of the book that

(14:31):
when the when when the classic philosophers were concerned with
the question of the best regime, they gave us to
understand that that's social phenomenon then, which only the natural
phenomena were more paramount was the nature of the regime.
I used to tell people, some of us think that
the most consequential data of political life are involved in

(14:53):
the shift of regime from the Germany of Weimart to
the Germany of Hitler, for the Cuba of Batista to
Cube of Castrum. Now that book, the Marshall Plan, it
was it was that the curious thing was that bureaucracy
as Congress was trying to create an administrative structure for

(15:15):
the Marshall Plan. What they're doing is trying to figure
out where the Marshall Plan fitted in the American regime.
Do you take export controls away from agriculture, How to
take the whole thing away from the state. How important
was this? And it was a remarkable way which they're
giving gradations and actually affecting the whole program with kind
of operating presumptions. You presume in favor of this, you

(15:38):
put the burner proof on that. So what it was
doing was saying, here was how did the Marshall Plan
fit into the American regime. So the course of the
thing was called bureaucracy, the Marshall Plan and the American regime.
My friend George Will talks about one of his books
that has sold dozens, right, and yeah, this is a

(16:01):
book that sold And I looked back and I said,
my goodness, I wrote this one. I was, what twenty five.
It's not bad. I mean, isn't that I really know
that much about about about about Europe and the economy then?
But it was. But it did move me into all
the other things, because it was so back for fact
to me that the question of the political regime was

(16:22):
the central problem in political life, and that would move
me into the moving out into the other courses I
was teaching, of course, on political parties. It was what
was that that was at the heart of political parties,
that they were a real party. Would develop a perspective
on the nature of the regime itself, so that at
certain times, within the within the framework of a constitutional order,

(16:48):
a shift, a realignment, bringing about a shift from one
party to that there could be the equivalent of a
change of regime within the structure that the Democratic Party.
That's what was saying with the Socialist one in nineteen
forty five in uh in Britain. And they're rationally everything, racial,
women's close everything. It was. It was real that. So

(17:10):
it was the question of the regime became central to
everything I did after that.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Oh so you just helped me. By the way, before
I press on finish something that I'm writing right now,
I'm writing a comment, maybe letter of the editor to
a rather unusual article in the Claremont Review of books
by Sean mckekon who's terrific? He is terrific? Oh yeah, yeah,
Oh no, he's I think he's the gibbon of the

(17:36):
rise and Fall of the Soviet Union. But this article, well,
I don't know if you've seen it yet in the
latest Claremont Review, called Goodbye to the Good War and
the Traffics and a lot of the tropes about World
War Two popular with people like John Charley, is the
best of them from forty years ago. But I think
he's got some things badly wrong in the article. And
you just put your fingers.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
What's what's the pitch well that you know.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
The Holocaust really wasn't that important as a moral reason
to fight the war. A whole bunch of them. Oh
you know there wasn't a war against aggression because you know,
Roosevelt did nothing for most of the thirties. I think,
highly contestable historical judgments, but missing fundamentally the regime.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Question you just made. Oh my god, Oh my god, Churchill.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
It looked yes, Oh it doesn't like Churchill too, he says,
you know, we might have doubts about Churchill not negotiating
that church I don't know, it's.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
Very popular these days. I don't know why very popular.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Look, if it weren't, If it weren't, we have lots
of re reservations. But later in on FDR. But if
it weren't for that executive power started to be used
in nineteen forty and Churchill, there probably wouldn't be anybody
in my family's still alive if Churchill didn't hold on.
I mean, they would have been made an accommodation with
Hitler with the seventh would have come back and then

(18:56):
perhaps but he was the one who held out.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
And yeah, well, I'll just ask a question, let me
just let me just round this off. And then I
was going to ask you, Lucretia, for questions. At this point,
I'll just uh, I'll just share with you and listeners
who know that my opening of my response is to
quote Jaffa is saying history is too important to be
left to historians, remember that famous provocation. But then also noting,

(19:23):
and this is something only an old guy like me,
recall that on the fortieth anniversary of the end of
World War Two, the CRB published a long article by
Harold Rude and oh my god, it's completely op He
mentioned some of the same facts and circumstances, but to
completely opposite conclusions. And so anyway, I'll finish this up
hopefully this afternoon, but much on my mind, Lucretia. Yeah here,

(19:46):
and yeah, I just.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
Want to go back to one couple of sentences. You
said that the business about changing parties with different principles
can can bring about regime change. And then your example
was my teen forty five in Britain with the Socialists.
What I want to ask you, is if you believe
that the American constitutional system, as say, opposed to a

(20:11):
parliamentary system, has in fact insulated to some extent complete
regime change from happening because parties have changed principles and
so forth, that even with all of the progressives have
done to try to destroy our constitutional regime, they have

(20:34):
been only so successful, and that the constitutional principles, the
constitution itself has actually stood pretty well against those kinds
of assaults in a way that, for instance, and obviously
parliamentary regime might not do. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Does make sense of the sense that what we do
is we create so many for acquiring people to justify
what they're doing. You have to get that thing passed
through the House. You have to grant and sell the bill.
And at any moment of time, a kosher butcher establishment
in Brooklyn. You can come into court and tell me,
tell me the ground of law. Would would you tell me?

(21:18):
I can't. I can't let my customer choose the chicken
he wants.

Speaker 4 (21:22):
And the.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Fact that the regime is structured in this way it's
quite at But I remember years ago when I was debating,
ACU called me and to have to dobate the other
side on the question of the Nazis and Skokie, and
it was I've got the lawyer from the Ah said,
we must be free to hear the Nazis because we

(21:44):
must be free to choose the Nazis. Really, to choose
the Nazis, that would destroy a government by consent. He said, no,
the Nazis may not. We can elect Nazis. They may
not enact their program. Really, they may not enact their program.
They they appoint the judges, they have control, they may
not attact the program. But you're right, it is a

(22:05):
little harder. I think when people worry about Trump, you know,
as a tyrant, look at all the barriers, all the courts,
and they have to go through, run through all all that. Yeah,
this the regime casts up these the need to have
kick encountering these faua in which you're going to have
to come forth and give reasons for what you're doing.
And that that becomes it. That's right, that becomes a barrier.

(22:28):
But see what happens. The thing about about parties is
that in a public competition, you can't be everything to everybody.
You know, William Howard, William Sewart in the eighteen forties
was faced with this defection of the know nothings reacting
to immigrants. So what does he do. He goes out
to recruit Catholics with a program of aid to two

(22:50):
Catholic schools, and the parties can reassemble the constituency to
fit their prison. This fitted the Whigs at the time,
who were We're willing to use the powers of the
government to develop the economy and to do things like
a parochial schools. So you you if you've fit these things.

(23:11):
And what happens is that the parties is they created
a ensemble and reconcile these groups they have they have to.
They cultivate a perspective on the regime. Who are the
kinds of people, what are the ends, the rightful ends
of a decent government? Who are the were the kinds
of people who fill those executive and legislative posts. And
over time thirty forty years, the executive and judicial posts

(23:35):
are filled with people like Scalia Rankless, Roberts and so on,
instead of of Elena Kagan and Stephen Bryer. That makes
a notable difference. And we right now, right now, we
could right now I had never seen a division between
the parties as sharp as we have now. And if
I mean, if if Harris Wan, I mean the powers

(23:56):
of the gunment had been used to promote transgender surgeries,
to sweep away any lingering inhibitions on abortion, it would
have been the change. The changes would be remarkable.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
I would I to the extent progressives have been in
very very many ways successful at undermining our politics and
constitutional principles, and those four that you speak of, I
would argue that it's because they understood the importance of
I'm going to call it education, I actually mean something

(24:30):
bigger than that. And I'm just gonna I just happen
to notice it on my bookshelf for some reason this morning.
I was looking for something else. Charles Beard. It was
necessary for Charles Beard, for instance, to come along and
convince a generation of Americans with all of his faulty
arguments that are our you know, sort of almost a

(24:52):
Marxist perspective, that our founders were just greedy capitalists and
that's why. And so reverence for the constitution, reverence for
the operation of powers, reverence for those protections that kept
the government from becoming tyrannical, and the belief that government
would become tyrannical. That was undermined in a way that
allowed those parties, and in my opinion, eventually both parties

(25:15):
to see government as much too good of a thing
and the constraints that were built into our constitution as problematic.
Is that fair? I still think that the constitution is
much stronger than it would be if they had adopted
some kind of parliamentary system. But it was changing public

(25:36):
sentiment that allowed progressives to get beyond some of those
for us, some of those constraints, and they were pretty
successful at it to some, at least in some areas
and some cohorts of the population.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Oh, I think that's right. It took hold that the
government's going to be administered by these by civil servants.
Right the what's that line from the the George run
about the socialists in Britain. I thought the idea was

(26:14):
that the government would be the government will be run
by civil servants and uh and the police, right and
uh uh and and that's and that and and that
that thing too. Torefore we even called it a surprise
that Frankfurter and and branda Is had a time will
you favorite just maybe doing away with the due process
clause of the fourteenth Amendment. And but.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Add homes to that list home stock.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Right, right, right, But no, I think it really it
was just winch Wilson was a key figure here after,
wasn't he?

Speaker 4 (26:47):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (26:48):
And and part of the sense. But now we have
the we so we now have the deep state. But
they thought they'd be neutral, But of course there's nothing
neutral about this people.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Churchill's warning in that Infamo speech in June of forty
five was under socialist government, our civil servants will no
longer be civil and no longer be our servants. And that,
certainly I think, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
That's a good line, right, that's so good.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Well, let me add, well, we're still waiting for John Yu,
I think has been detained at Fox. Let's ask one
more question to set us up for the main event,
which is, was there a particular moment or particular chain
of events or thoughts that led you in the Certainly,
I think the second half of your career at least
to focus in on natural law as the heart of

(27:32):
the matter of just about everything.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Well, what I did come out of my own argument
against marcantone, picking picking up what was in what was
in the air and straws. It did come to the
notion that the regime was a central point in political life.
But you know, just as they said Socrates brought philosophy
down out of the clouds to bring to bear and

(27:57):
those questions of right and wrong and just unjust the
people face every day. It was Harry, Harry Jaffa who
brought Strauss down out of the clouds. For me, that Christ,
the Christ of the House Divided was a beautiful book
and it had a profound effect on me, and I

(28:18):
found myself as Stras wasn't cited, was with the Strachs.
Later on they tell me, yeah, you really are remember
the family they were often times an arrogant budge, cackling,
and all the other people professors. You know, you think

(28:40):
you're doing something beautiful, But it was I remember at
one point earlier on in my amatest Ah, I think
I could explain this. But if I could explain this,
why did mister Strauss explain it to me? And I
thought the answer was he would mark off an ellipses,

(29:02):
and if you were attentive and good enough to do
you could kill it in yourself. But if you didn't
fill it in you're not going to go off into
the world proclaim yourself to be a Straussian with announcing
all kinds of other cocamane doctrines. But I mean it
was Harry with a with you know, I think it
actually was actually Harry who contributed to the opening of

(29:24):
the Natural Distress's book. Uh, that's right in history by
bringing in that a preference and the Declaration of Independence.
We talk about those self, those self evident, necessary moral
truths anchoring everything else. Do we really still believe that,
you know that was you know, you asked about your cargo.
You call that the first scene when I counted saw

(29:47):
strass for the first time, and you you caught the
sense of it. It was. It was a it was
ascending ascending row of rows of seeds, hemisphere, hemicircle. And
you found in the room gray haired retired people from
the military, seminarians, Catholic seminaries, and young aggressive Jewish kids

(30:09):
like very dry and me. Okay, he say, what what
did this group have in common? And what was at
work is that as they were standing contramundum, they're standing
against the currents of relativism that we were corroding all
arsators including the schools of philosophy. I think, I just

(30:31):
I think that must have been in I came away
with that, and of course Harry led me back to it,
and then my own writings, in my own writings, more
and more came back to it, trying to find so
I've been trying to find. I was quit not quite
invoking the N word that that conservatives dread, the N
word natural law, you know, scary N word, but just

(30:52):
trying to find the most defensible account you can give
for the judgments of these things on racial discrimination so on.
And what do WAY know that I found out I
was backing into let's it had to be, uh, those axioms,
those axioms that have turned their every anything we as
James's say, everything everything we know has to begin with

(31:13):
their axioms necessary truths, and move from things known to
the things we're trying to know.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Well, now, uh, I think I've heard you once say
some years ago that Harry's Crisis of the House Divided
is like your Desert Island book, right, it was?

Speaker 3 (31:30):
It was the book, remember that, you know? New York
Times said if you could take one book to the movie,
what would it be? And I said, you have to
mend it for writing if you take one book apart
from one of your own, well, I mean, I mean,
let me, let me take one of my own. Okay,
I'd say that, because what it did was show how

(31:51):
the whole political philosophic traditions Aristotle Aquinas was brought to
bear and the gravest crisis of the American regime that
Christ in the House divided. It was a matchless you know.
And so Lincoln, Lincoln, move along? Is there's all reflections
move along the lines of a queas. We couldn't give

(32:11):
the bibliography, right, Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
I always go with Chesterton's answer, which is the one
book for Desert Island is Hawkins Complete Guide to Shipbuilding.
But aside from that, I won't go with Harry's moving too.
The sertain observation with you that comes from our great
friend Glenn Elmers, who in a long piece not yet published,
makes an interesting observation which I had never thought of,

(32:37):
and it is that the structure of crisis and the
House divided parallels very closely Strauss's one long essay on
Thucidides in the City and Man. And so I went,
and I haven't read that essay in thirty years.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
And my god, this is this is really the fine
for it?

Speaker 5 (32:56):
Well, I don't know, I mean, okay, you know.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I'm remember you know, the way Strauss opens that chapter
on through Cynides is is that, you know, he observes
the Peloponnesian wars the greatest motion, you know, states being
in motion. So you know, our civil war, as you
just stated, is you know, it gets the fundamental regime questions.
But then the structure of the of the article is
Strauss first of all giving the case for Sparta and

(33:20):
then the case for Athens, just as Harry gave the
case for Lincoln and the case for Douglas, right, and
then goes on, you know, and builds from there. And
but ah, I think he may be onto something here.
But it bears a lot of thought because that essay
of Strauss is very dense as usual as is Anyway,
I just sort of passed it along as that's original observation.
I've never did anyone make before creation, have you?

Speaker 4 (33:43):
Yes? I actually heard Gun make it. But anyway, my
question to you both now would be, would you substitute
a new birth of freedom for crisis of the House divided?
M I think I would. But it is because probably
the most interesting question to me remains the theological political question,

(34:11):
and the American regime's answer to that question, and Jaffa's
discussion of it there is to me compelling. And you know,
there are people who say this isn't true, but slightly
different from what he determined in Crisis of the House Divided.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
What do you think?

Speaker 3 (34:34):
I just I saw the letter book. I really asked
the continuation of the second one he had. He took
a different view of Locke in the later on he did.
Strales had a let's adult dolatory view of Locke, and
he could see that, you know, the Locke was quite

(34:55):
consistent with our tradition of moral reasoning. But Harry's sense
was it was it was. It was the argument, this
was now the best practicable regime, wasn't it. Uh? They
that went away dealt with the religious political problem. The
I was just recalling somebody else. There's a piece. I
just they saw this born and and Strauss on the

(35:17):
religious problem. And I remember when he died, Milton himmel
Farmer said he was not much Strauss is much not
not much seen in the synagogue, And I called lilt.
I said, you know, Strassen given a talk of Amherst
just a few years before I arrived there, and one

(35:37):
the guy knew in English, came up there and said,
wait a minute. If I can't take what you say,
you'd have to believe in revelation. And Straus says, I'm
a Jew, and he said. The other one said, well,
what does that mean these days? And Straus says, that's
not my problem. So I meant, I mentioned that. I

(35:59):
mentioned that to Milton. He said, have they look? Look
it was Athens in Jerusalem, Athens, Jerusalem. His head was
in Athens, his heart was in Jerusalem. But the premieer
organ of the philosopher was the head. Yeah, that that.
But but it's it's uh we we we no. I
think we can't be argument. We can indiate reason through

(36:22):
these things. It's the logos. I mean, I mean, what
what was what was going on when when Abram was
negotiating with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. You know he said,
he said, the Lord of not.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Himself by people?

Speaker 3 (36:35):
People fine, and they didn't. Uh this was brown White
was doing with the Pentagon papers. What if I found
that ten people would be dying as result of these
papers there he said, Okay, what was what was Abraham
doing arguing with God as whether God understood his revelation

(36:59):
or are with him in terms of a of a
body of principles that assume everyone would understand. Ah, who's
a handsome guys.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Just I'm so sorry, I'm late. That's okay, Jo, We've
been having a great time. That's quite all right. But
I do think we ought to join the main event
because we want to kind of end on time about
twenty three minutes from now or so, uh and uh
so that there's a lot of ground to cover here.
And we've done a lot of preliminaries about Hadley got,

(37:31):
how had they got? Interested in natural laws? The central question?
Just about everything.

Speaker 5 (37:36):
I missed all the good stuff. It's all downhill. Now.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Well, here's why I might just go.

Speaker 5 (37:42):
I'm leaving.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
Rise to the occasion. We haven't used all the good
lines yet.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
I know.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
If you do that, John, well we'll have to have
Hadley back and then spring him on you unawares. You can't.
You can't dodge me.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Five.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
You can be like the Spanish Inquisition, which I'm sure
he approved of.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
No One hide, No one hides from the Spanish.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah, that was James Wilson's line that those writs from
the common look and we we didn't that rid on
on burning heretics. That didn't make it across that we
didn't we we didn't, We didn't use that one.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah. Yeah, let me let me do this and set
the scene and then let you guys go back and
forth for a bit. So, John, I think I want
to have you make a statement, but I'll preface it
by saying this. You're a stubborn guy and lucretian, and
I have had very little luft trying to persuade you
of natural law, which you like to say to the
extent that you agree with it or understand it, you
think is reducible to you know, utilitarian costs benefit analysis,

(38:42):
you think, I think the same thing of prudence? Is
that roughly accurate? Do you want to extend that as
an opening proposition?

Speaker 5 (38:49):
Sure? So I wasn't prepared to make a statement, but
I let me let me instead put it to the question.
Had the question I've been asking them is they say
to me that we should use natural rights and natural
law to interpret the Constitution, which I agree with up
to a point, which is, to the extent the founders

(39:11):
agreed with it. Then is that they incorporate that into
the way they understood the words of the Constitution. That
seems perfectly appropriate to me. Where I ask them, where
I question them is when they say, but beyond that,
just because it is the correct moral philosophy. So I
say to them, well, what happens if a great majority

(39:31):
of the American people don't believe in natural rights or
natural law anymore?

Speaker 2 (39:36):
What right do we have to.

Speaker 5 (39:40):
Use this external, external moral philosophy external to the Constitution
to use it to interpret the Constitution? Why does it
have a better claim than say, you know, things I
don't agree with Rawls Marx, any other external philosophy. Why
is natural or natural rights superior to those other philosophies

(40:03):
in terms of interpreting Constitution? Just making moral choices? To me,
I worry that we will be guilty of the same
sense of which we accuse the Warrant Court right, taking
an external political philosophy that the American people did not approve,
and then using vague terms of the Constitution to drive

(40:23):
these moral results.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Can I just add, as sharpening observation which is I
once accused you, John of being a closet positivist. You said, wait,
there's no closet. I'm completely out in the open, right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:34):
OK.

Speaker 5 (40:35):
I mean I think that you know the constitutions. You know,
we enforce the Constitution's terms, but we don't enforce things
that are not in the Constitution. That I think we
leave up to democratic deliberation and enactment by legislatures.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Well, happily we won't have a time where the American
people don't understand that actual law. It's you know, I
don't know if you saw my new book job, but
I believe go with with James wilst I did, I
read it? Okay, all have Thomas Reid and those James
Wilson and Chish versus George in the first case of
the US reports invoking Thomas Reid and his teachings on

(41:11):
common sense about those precepts of common sense that the
ordinary man has to know before he starts trafficking and theories.
So before the ordinary man will start dantering with David
Hume about the meaning of causation, he knew his own
active powers to cause his own acts they happen. The
ordinary man never had what have a problem about what

(41:35):
cont Thomas Reid others would take as the very first
principle of all moral and legal reasoning is count what happened.
It makes no sense to cast judgments of praise on
people for things they were powerless to do. You don't people,
but hope people blameworthy for actor powerless to effect. If
you told the ordinary man that Jones was in undergoing

(41:56):
surgery the time the crime was committed, the ordinary man
would wonder why is he being prosecuted? The order man
grasps that the main precepts of is a kind of it's.

Speaker 5 (42:06):
A kind of like inherent moral sense that people have
when they're confronted by basic questions, and that you're saying
that most people will respond right like they just know
murder is wrong. But the problem I have is things like,
you know, you look at opinion polls and a majority
that people think things like gay marriage is fine, and
the majority of the pole seem to suggest people be

(42:28):
willing to allow abortion.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Well, we could, we could make all kinds of mistakes
moving from from first principles, so you know, to have
those anchor chooses not believe us of the need to
make the argument but that all the indicates is that
the fact that there's disagreement is not an argument stopper.
We have people who don't understand where do you support abortion?
We pick up the conversation, well, what is there about

(42:53):
that nascent life of the womb that makes it less
than human? Doesn't speak it neither, the deaf mutes doesn't
have arms, selects other people, you know. That's how the
conversation goes, simply principal reasoning and what you know. I
used topend Courtney. I used to give my course at
amates John on political obligations, which gave rise the book
called first Things. I used to say, look, and.

Speaker 5 (43:16):
I made a great book, a great book. All the
book never took the course, thank god. But I've read
the book. They saved me the time of sitting in class.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Oh, you'd love the job. You had been a fine
There had been a five presents in that class.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
John, Wait, wait, did you just say I would be
the equivalent of an under Amherst undergraduate. Then's fighting words
they called worse, but not much worse.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
And I was on the way to say the course
could proceed under the console, that everything here could be wrong.
But to say that this to say, we get with it.
Recognition that it all depends thee will be the giving
of reasons. If you accept it could be wrong, you

(44:05):
there must be standards that look a C. S. Lewis.
Let's say you see kids arguing and they see they work.
They're not arguing over likes in this like, they're being
a real argument and an argument that doesn't make any
sense unless people on both sides are assuming they're right
or wrong. Answers that we have access to the stances
of judgment, and that's what's in play here. Yeah, we
may find people disagree. The fact that people may disagree

(44:27):
does not mean minds not cannot be changed. The reasoning
of this over the years, But you know you ask
the if you ask the are ordinary man, why is
it in this age of animal liberation, we're not signing
labor contract with our dogs and the horses, or seeking
the informed consent of our household pets before we authorize surgery.
The order man would just be puzzled by it. You know,

(44:50):
you don't take these dealings with these creatures who can't reason.
We say, the ordinary man understands the declaration that depends
from the declaration that no, man is by nature the
rule of other men the way men must be by
nature of the rule of dogs and the horses. He's
got it. The main the main pencils are they're easily accessible,

(45:12):
so we have we have the ground on which to work.
So uh, from that point forward, Steve, what we were
going to think?

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Well, well, I just want to sharpen this question between
the two of you and and do a sort of
second round. Hadley, I use that argument about we don't
enter in the labor contracts with the horses and our pets,
or ask for consent from our pets the way we
do human beings. At a seminar of graduate students in
philosophy when I was at the University of Colorado at Boulder,

(45:40):
they erupted in outrage at the proposition. Really, oh, but
by the way, I mean, they're completely incoherent and response
to it. And I add some sequels to it and
all the rest of that. The point is that this
is a microcosm of a wider phenomenon which I think.
I think John either doesn't perceive or doesn't want to
grapple with. I don't know, John. I don't want to

(46:00):
be too uncharitable having already beat you up so much.
Is that, Uh, this is entirely typical of the phenomenon
of more than one generation of Americans being systematically misinstructed
or confused about basic moral reasoning. And so you know,
the preference for the say majority.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Was the opposite. Why were they be followed by what
you said?

Speaker 4 (46:23):
What?

Speaker 3 (46:23):
What did they understand?

Speaker 4 (46:24):
What?

Speaker 3 (46:24):
What? What made them declile?

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Well, it's this very sloppy egalitarianism that animals have rights too,
because you know, we say so, Well, I mean, really
I think that, Steve.

Speaker 5 (46:35):
But Steve, you can't say.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (46:38):
On the one hand, we think natural or natural rights
should be the governing moral philosophy because we witness human
beings reacting in a certain way in the same way
to you know, moral problems like murder, for example. But
then when a lot of people don't, you say they've
been morally misinstructed. Yes, right, I mean that that's that's

(46:59):
not consistent. Well, I think it's just because you've already
decided that the correct view is a and whenever they
deviate from whatever you think the correct more view, then
it's not their genuine rights misinstruction. Well all right, Well,
my answer to that is well, even though I agree
with you on the Morrow point, I don't think we

(47:20):
should be I agree with that we should be making
contracts with dogs.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
And.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
We have a concession from John. You know, and you know,
and you know, and you know.

Speaker 5 (47:28):
I hate all of Lucretia's dogs. There's little furry rap
dogs that she has made that view clear on the
podcast many times.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
And my god, one of the things I'm enjoying about
this is the banter, but the date, the John and
and and the Lucretia as the Groundler says, you make
a lovely couple. If the if these students said, look,

(48:03):
you remind me of this. I think what earlier to
part John Evanvestor Mark that great culture, uh that culture relativists,
culture reliant. He had one of his accolytes saying, no,
it's not true that people may not be held blameworthy
for X they were parts. That's something that too varies
with the culture in Investor Mark said, no, no, no, no,

(48:24):
you don't understand that one does not vary with the culture.

Speaker 5 (48:29):
We've got to get clear which ones That's what I'm asking,
Which ones do which ones don't. How do you know
the difference?

Speaker 3 (48:37):
He knows you know that you can't deny a necessary
truth without fogg in the contradiction. It's like the it's
like the primate who comes up after classing there is
no truth in the philosopher? Or what about that one? Oh,
we've got that one, don't we? Uh? Will you find
yourself coming forth with We've got at least one. Okay,
we find with these lines that it or by fred Scalia,

(49:02):
Uh did I we cannot have natural law because we
have too much disagreement. It means, oh, the presence of
disagreement marks the absence of truth. So I register my
disagreement with that proposition and its own terms that establish it.
It's falcinate, or we have no consensus, or as Bob

(49:22):
Destemud said, really you took a vote. What do you
get a consensus on that proposition that you needed a
consensus that some of us didn't get our balance, We
had our ballants. In other words, you keep you keep
falling into conscious self contradiction. Some of these things are
just anchory truths you have to deal with. Now. That
doesn't mean look, we can have that, we can recognize

(49:45):
that as we deliberate these things may be manly invariable.
How was Johnson really under hypnosis when he'd committed that act?
How disabled was he? These things can be remarkably contingent.
But john the one thing I I point out is
the one thing in the mix that can never be
contingent or on statement, is the principle itself. Once we're

(50:09):
clear on the underlying principle, the people cannot be held
blameworthy or response for extra parlis effect. They will always
be there. It will always be there. We can deliberate
that many other things, and and set the arguments.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
For many other things.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
So where are we with this? But we do you
til termism? You say, remember this came up confidence in
Saint Louis. Well go, we say, look, yes we can.
We can expropriate all the Jews redistribute their property. Everybody
goes up. We've we've satisfied the good, the material good

(50:46):
or the many or we we we expropriate.

Speaker 5 (50:49):
Uh uh.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
The the of the millionaires are the people who who
are with outsize incomes and we redistributed.

Speaker 4 (50:57):
No.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Uh, it's it's it's the terms of principle which we
we we achieve that racist standard of living. It's of course,
of course, it must be implicit natural and of course
you all things are better. It's better do more good
and less Remember Blackstar it had that as a principle
that in international relations people are to do less harm

(51:19):
less harm they can consistent with their interests. So a
plane violates Cuban airspace and the cashier regime shoots it down,
and others of us would say, well, no, you have
an obligation to use less force, less violence in achieving
your ends. I mean that that's an app that's a

(51:40):
principle of natural aud that's in place. All things being equal,
you should be advised to do more good, less or
less harm. But again con simply satisfying the interests of
the many, raising the interest raising, raising the material benefits
of the man. It depends on the terms of principle
which we do this.

Speaker 5 (52:00):
Just see, I have a utilitarian account of some of
these things, and sometimes it's right, especially like the use
of force. Sometimes, and I'm sure Lucretia, instead of slapping someone,
even though that'll do, sometimes you might want to punch
another country right in the face so they won't do
anything back to you against us. I was giving a
talk to these wonderful ladies. They make Lucrege. I gotta

(52:22):
tell you this is a great story. They make Lucretia.
They're Lucretia's people. It was the San Francisco Women's Republican Club,
So if you're a woman Republican in San Francisco, you're hardcore.
I mean, they were asking me all kinds of crazy
ask questions about, you know, throwing poblical prisoners into all
kinds of stuff. Anyway, who's committed treason? But one of

(52:42):
them asked about the prosecution of Jim Comey, the prosecution
by the Trump administration's enemies, And I said, look, I know,
probably the Christian moral view is two wrongs don't make
it right. But those people have never been in politics,
because sometimes two wrongs do make a write in politics,
because we have to deter people from doing bad things

(53:03):
against us.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
In the future exactly.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
But that's not moral view, it's just.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
Deterrence.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Look, look, the Democrats had their passion for the Independent
Counsul until it was used against Clinton, right, and it
brings home, it brings home to people. Are you really
willing to accept this when it's applied with stringent force
against yourself? So you know, John Sagon. These people have
to pay it. There's got to be paid back, is

(53:32):
not They're gonna They're gonna keep doing it. So the
other the point we're making is, are you ready ready
to live by the rules you're setting down for others?
Didn't you use political warfare? You're gonna have to. You're
gonna have to absorb some of your your audition out
on our side too.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
I mean, let me try and as we need to
draw it would end here in a few minutes. Let
me try and draw in one uh aspect of this.
And my proposition is maybe part of the problem is
we simply don't make law studentstff Blackstone anymore. The reason
I say that is before you got here, John, we
spent a couple of minutes talking with Hadley about one
of his great teachers, Herbert Storing. Herbert Storing wrote the

(54:09):
chapter on Blackstone and the famous Strauss crops you reader
on holding up For the ten people who may be
watching us on YouTube, John's gonna find his copy watering
off into my library.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
And yeah, I've got to find I don't have that
book with me. Yes, great, ye oh, he's got it.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Memorize.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
He doesn't need a copy.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Well, well, Blackstone was not just a firmly higher law man.
But when you get into some of the detailed subjects,
my particular favorite chapter is the chapter on homicide, and
I think book four of his commentaries, and there he
goes through these very careful distinctions about different gradations of homicide,
which now we've cast in statutory form for the most

(54:46):
part right first degree, second degree, self defense, so on
and so on. And I'll just stop there and say,
but that there's I think that is a good example
of applied moral reasoning that John effect to be allergic to,
although I think he really isn't what part what part?
I found it?

Speaker 5 (55:05):
Look, look look at how look at all that look
it says look it says nineteen eighty nine on it.
You make me feel like that, you make me Look
how closely I studied this with Mansfield. Oh, I should
sell it as a as a you know, as a
talisman to the Claremont Straussian School, the manual of propaganda itself.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
You guys, you make me, you make me feel like
that cartoon in Larson where Smedley realized he's the only
one of the audience who didn't have a chicken I'm
the I'm the only one here without my copy.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
I was crossy.

Speaker 5 (55:55):
Will But I will say this, in law school, we
primarily teach Blackstone not as a unified thinker. We teach
almost treat them like a dictionary. Right, So you know,
if you want to figure out, oh, the Constitution uses
the phrase executive power, then look at Blackstone because he
wrote about what executive power was in the eighteenth century.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
That's right, and the part of parts of prerogative, you know.
But James Wilson was always announced with Blackstone. He said.
Blackstone would say that the law cannot contain a principle
of revolution. Laws settle things, revolutions unsettle them. But as
Wilson said, look, no, the American regime can begin with
contain a revolutionary principle, because the American regime begins with

(56:36):
the recognition that could be an unjust law. It begins
with the recognition that we have standards of judgment outside
the positive law, but which to gauge the positive law. No, so,
but I remember the line that comes back to me
Blacks was that in Malitia, I taught them in Malice

(56:57):
there is age when you see an eight year old
kill somebody and hide the body. You knew that he
knew what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
So we need to draw to a close very soon.
And I but I want to give I just let
me do that. Let's just say this. I think we
need to do a sequel. But I think the form
of this.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
John John wanted to do something to protect the American flag,
and I think, yeah, I'm ready to sign on to that.

Speaker 5 (57:24):
We ought to go back to that, right, Well all right,
well I thought we might wait for and we want
to discuss schoping.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
Well, then we've already got our sequel. Lucretia, you get
the last question of comment here.

Speaker 4 (57:34):
You just have real quick action. It's more of a
comment in an email. Badly, you accused me of not
of a bizarre notion that the courts should not get
involved in securing natural rights. If I gave that impression,
I did not mean to. And I would only ask

(57:55):
you to consider the the the format of a podcast,
especially with these two knuckleheads, where I can barely get
a word in.

Speaker 5 (58:05):
Edgewaye, is knucklehead a natural right concept that has existed
Lucretian positive law creations, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (58:17):
It comes directly from the philosopher Charles Barkley.

Speaker 5 (58:23):
See now we agree see Lucretia and I agree on
so much.

Speaker 4 (58:28):
But my point is is, Hadley, I never meant to
say that. Probably did not get it across very well.
We can pick that up next time.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
I can't imagine ever reproaching you for anything. I think
I assume that you said that. I must I must
not have heard you the right way, or.

Speaker 4 (58:46):
I must not have explained myself the right way, which
is very often the case, because as you can see,
we go off on tangents and we and and often
it means we haven't fully explained ourselves. I will say
quick in three sentences, asolutely believed that judges should have.
Judges on the Supreme Court shouldn't even be judges if

(59:06):
they do not understand the natural law basis of our constitution,
and of course the natural law basis of our constitution,
specifically the notion of human equality. Government exists to secure rights.
The government is basically a tyrant and less restrained All
of those things ought to inform every decision that the

(59:28):
Supreme Court makes, and our entire government.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
I never expect that I've persuadive Jonathan Gina this historian
brings us back to Thomas Cooley, who thought that the
due process clause was really the great device for bringing
in all those princips of natural and the founders didn't
think they'd have to set down, could not set down.
So our dear friend Dick Hammeolt's in Chicago says, what

(59:51):
of natural law A summons, a summons? Don't you think
that people who are being targeted for prosecution be alerted
to be targeted? They said, yeah, summons is part of it.
So under the due process and course you come along
with Cardos saying, yeah, there's got to be a verdict
before punishment. It's got to be a real trial, a
serious one, and yeah you ought to have a summons. Well,

(01:00:13):
once you have that, you realize, yeah, it's there. Those
principles are there to be drawn upon. The due process
CAUs just happened to be one device to do it.
But look, even if there weren't due process closed, you
find somebody. You have these these judges saying trying to
invent them right to abortion, and they say it must
be implicit in any constitution that equal cases must be

(01:00:37):
judged by the same rules. There must be the logic
of eco protection implicit in this constitution, and because there is,
there must be something wrong with bargus surgery applied only
to women. I mean they they could find access to
the deepense, but if it was not there, so we
say it is there and we'd have access to it even.

Speaker 5 (01:00:58):
I mean, that's your word are exactly the same ones
that people on the other side us different world princes.
Next time Brown Jackson thinks she's doing the same thing,
she just thinks natural law is different. All right, I'm
not on her side. I'm not defending her. I think
she's wrong, but she believed she's wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Let's let's get out till we meet with a couple
of babylon Bees, just a couple.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
I have ready to you guys, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
No, don't go away, have last word for you. Don't
go away just okay, okay, I.

Speaker 5 (01:01:32):
Don't when Lucretia starts talking, I usually run for the
exits too, But you're not getting away so easy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
True.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
I love the babylon Bee part of the show.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Okay, you're gonna have to let me have just a few.
But it's not to the Pope condemns God for instituting
the death penalty. We didn't even get to that. But
many of you will understand the United Kingdom prosecutes thee
for provoking attacker by being openly Jewish? Are not even funny?

(01:02:06):
Or Yeah? Hamas rejects deal to end genocide after learning
it would require them to stop killing Jews. Okay, this
one we didn't talk about either. This was going to
be part of my Darwin effect for the week. I'll
have to save it. But NFL hoping to win back
conservatives with Super Bowl performance by Spanish speaking man in dress. Yeah,

(01:02:31):
boycott the NFL folks, Pete Hans, who would they play?

Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
It doesn't matter who they're playing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Don't boycot?

Speaker 5 (01:02:40):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
I mean if you booked the nevermind Pete Hagg theft
hires Hans and Franz to get generals into shape like that.
And then my last one, this is for John. New
report indicates only three people in January sixth crowd were
not FBI agents On.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
All right, John?

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Okay?

Speaker 5 (01:03:04):
Everybody always drink your whiskey meat, buy more books and
Steve what guidance? What what have our robot overlords and
i AI world have given to us from Mount Olympus today?

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Okay? I asked chat GBT to give us a parody
of a Hadley Arcis article, and it's pretty cool. I'm
only gonna I'm only gonna share two x. I'll post
the whole thing on our show notes. But yeah, oh,
this is great fun. I think it's great fun. Lucretia
thinks it's too harsh. I disagree. The title on the
ontological status of the ham Sandwich, A moral Inquiry into

(01:03:38):
the lunchtime Crisis.

Speaker 4 (01:03:40):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
The first paragraph begins this way. It is a curious
feature of our current jurisprudence that the simple act of
consuming a ham sandwich has not yet been subject to
rigorous philosophical analysis. The positivists, of course, remain content to
observe the act as a brute empirical datum meet between bread,
while the progressives, those gentle souls and rebel against reason,

(01:04:01):
insists that what one feels about the sandwich determines its
moral content. But then a few paragraphs down, and yet,
my dear reader, one must ask if a hand sandwich
is made, but no one consumes it is its dignity preserved. Ah,
but that is a question the positivists dare not ask
for to admit that things have a meaning beyond what

(01:04:23):
the state says is to flirt dangerously with race yourself
natural law. The late Justice Scalia, may his footnotes rest
in peace, once quipped that if the Constitution doesn't speak
the sandwiches, then leaders should the court. But I submit
that is precisely where the court must speak. If the
state can redefine marriage, why not the sandwich. If a

(01:04:45):
man can identify as a woman, what stops him from
identifying as a panini? And there's more? But I kind
of liked him.

Speaker 5 (01:04:53):
That's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
That's pretty good, you know, But I should say, I say,
there is that line from AMers. Think you might have
had the wrong Reverend Jackson there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
All right, we'll have to tell that story next time. Haddie.
Thanks for joining us, and we will do this again
because it's been way too much fun fun. Thanks, thanks
for everybody, Sorry everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
I get no kick from champagne, mere alcohol. It doesn't
move me at all. So tell me why should it
be true? Did I get a kick?

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
Got of you?

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
Some like the bop type refrain? I'm sure that if
I heard even one riff Twitter bar me to riff
thickly too. Yet I get a kick got of you.

(01:06:00):
I get a kick every time I see standing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Very Ricochet join the conversation.