March 27, 2024 • 21 mins
Buck Sexton breaks down the latest headlines with a fresh and honest perspective! He speaks truth to power, and cuts through the liberal nonsense coming from the mainstream media. Subscribe to never miss an episode of The Buck Sexton Show.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Buck Brief.
Everybody on this episode our friend Oron McIntyre, host of
the Orton McIntyre Show at the Blaze and now author
of his latest book, The Total State. It is total
(00:32):
and it is a state. He's gonna talk to us
about it. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oron? Hey man, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
So total State? Walk me through this one feels like
these days we talk about liberty and constitutional rights and
the system in charge treats that all like it's a suggestion,
if not a joke. What is the total State?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah? Exactly, man, I like you, I probably you know.
I grew up listening to talk radio as kind of
a standard issue talk radio Republican, and then twenty twenty
happened and we all got locked in our houses. We
couldn't go to church, we couldn't go to work, you
couldn't go outside. And then everything happened with BLM, the riots,
(01:16):
the election, and I just looked around and I was like,
what happened all that liberty? Right? I was told the
Constitution was going to stand in the way of all
this stuff. We were going to have this separation of
powers and everything that was going to stop the government.
When tyranny came and nothing happened, and I was kind
of blown away, And so the Total State the book
is really my attempt to kind of document that crisis
(01:39):
and my faith of like the Constitution, the American system,
and what went on, like I think a lot of
people had during that time. And so I walked through
this journey of how liberal democracies around the world kind
of randomly became tyrannys in the year twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You know, there's that Fukuyama End of History essay, which
I think started out as or it was an essay
in Foreign Affairs. Is also a longer version of it
that's sold the thinking book form, or maybe that maybe
the essays just sold as was bo camera, but it's
Fugiyama End of History. It's like democracy is basically one world.
What if we're at the end of liberty, meaning what
if we're at a place where, you know, America is
(02:19):
the only country that I can think of where there's
any real sense of get off my law and government,
leave me alone. I'm going to keep my guns. And
there are some lines you shall not cross. I think
the I think some of those lines were crossed your
point in twenty twenty and beyond during COVID pandemic. But
we're the outlier. So if we're not really free, is
(02:40):
anybody really free? As in, does everybody just want a
total state now? And they don't know it yet.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, the things that happened in America were egregious, but
you're right that here we got off better than most places.
It was even more insane in places like Canada and Australia.
And Fukiyama's thesis in the end of history was that
liberal democracy and capitalism had kind of solved the government question, right,
the USSR had collapsed. All meaningful opposition to the ideas
(03:10):
of America and the wider West was over, and so
the only question was how much better would we get
at democracy? How much better would we get at capitalism?
History was over and now was just about perfecting the
institutions that had proven to be the best. But what
we saw, like you said in twenty twenty, was that
actually that battle isn't over. In that many people who
(03:32):
thought they lived under this system of freedom and rights
actually found themselves snapping right into line when the jack
boots came. And so, as you said, the question really
becomes what is in charge if it isn't this liberal
democracy that we believe in. And the answer I come
to in the total state is that actually we've all
(03:53):
been conquered by system called managerialism, and that managerialism manifested
itself differently in say, communist Russia than it did in
the United States, but it slowly come to dominate all
of the governments in the modern world.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Tell me more about managerialism. That's an interesting concept.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I mean, yeah, sorry, yeah. James Burnham is a guy
who many people might be familiar with. He's actually one
of the people, along with William F. Buckley, who started
the National Review, but many people forget that his most
influential book was about the Managerial Revolution. His thesis was
that while we looked at these different governments communism, fascism,
(04:36):
liberal democracy, actually all of the governments in the modern
world at the time he was writing, which was the
nineteen forties, kind of fell under the same system, which
was this idea of managerialism where the power of the
democracy the people actually needed to be managed and needed
to be channeled through experts, Experts who were good at
(04:58):
mass consumption, mass production, transportation, communication, armed forces. Everything had
to be funneled through these large managerial bureaucracies, and so
we did have different flavors of managerialism. It came to
dominate all of these different countries because if you wanted
to become modern, if you wanted to be able to
(05:20):
mass produce things, distribute things, scale up your society, and
go ahead and create larger institutions, you needed to deploy
the expertise of managers. And these managers created reliable systems
that we depended on to deliver the food and the
entertainment and everything else that we now think of is
kind of ubiquitous in our society. And those forms have
(05:42):
particular things that they produce, particular behaviors that they favor.
And that's why even though you would think that communist
China and I don't know, the government of the United
States should have different goals. They say they have different
ideological structures, but we're seeing that they're getting closer and
closer together at every step. And the reason why is
(06:04):
that they're both embracing this idea of managerialism.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
What freedoms do we really have still in this country?
I mean, we we've run the experiment. We ran kind
of the stress test with COVID where you don't actually
have the freedom to worship right because you know, somebody
could sneeze on you and then everyone dies because COVID h.
So you didn't have the freedom to go to church
in agog, mosque, wherever, you know, temple, whatever religion you are,
(06:32):
You don't have the freedom of religion. Clearly don't have
freedom of speech because we have the government colluding with
big tech to shut people down these days. You know,
whether they say it's hate speech or it's disinformation or
just wrong think, they will use government and private sector
mechanisms to shut you down and do those in conjunction
and act like somehow that's not just using agency of
(06:55):
the private sector for government means. And I mean I
go down the list, right, I mean, the right to
bear arms kind of sort of depends where you are,
do you know what I'm saying? Like it feels these
days that we talk about the Land of the Free,
the home of the brave. Yeah, we got a lot
of brave people still, But are we free. I don't know.
I increasingly feel like we tell ourselves that we're free.
(07:15):
And you can say that to yourself even if you,
let's say, own your house outright, but you got to
rent it from the government every year in pay taxes.
Do you know what I'm saying? Like, what exactly can
you do where you are actually free?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah? Not much anymore? Right, The state has grown again
to this massive size and this level of intrusion that
it feels like it controls every aspect. And you're right
to point out the collusion between the public and the
private sector. One of the things we tend to pride
ourselves about in the United States is this idea of
the division between the state and the private sector. And
(07:50):
we know that the Bill of Rights and constitutional limitations
primarily pertain to the government itself. That's where all of
these careful restrictions that the founders built in are supposed
to be applied. However, what the government has figured out
is really that it can go ahead and collude with
the private sector. And the private sector is happy to
do this because it gives them additional power and influence.
(08:13):
It tends to give them monopolies and the different areas
that they run things. And so they go ahead and
weave this pattern together of these different managerial bureaucracies and apparatuses.
And this is why we see a revolving door between corporations,
government entities, non government entities all working together. The same
personnel tend to shift from one to the other. They're
(08:35):
all connected, and the reason is that they're all working
in a similar direction. I don't think there's one large
over arching conspiracy between these people where they kind of
hand down their orders from some kind of Buildeberg cheat sheet. However,
I do think they all share the same value set,
which is kind of the progressive morality that they got
(08:58):
from the institutions that they all tended when they we
were young, which was college. And this serves as kind
of the church of the progressive total state, which gives
them all kind of the marching orders, the moral basis
on which they're going to make their depinion their decisions.
And then when they start working, they kind of just
naturally network and work together or as the same goal. Though,
(09:19):
as we can see from things like the Twitter fires files,
that collusion is getting more and more explicit in its nature.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
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in Do people think that they want a much bigger
state than they realize? Or rather, do people want a
(10:31):
much bigger state than they think? That's why I meant
to ask that question, as in, we're thirty four trillion
dollars in debt. Everything, Oh my gosh, the debt's so bad,
and Republicans will say, oh, the debts and it is right.
I mean, just as a function of numbers, you look
at what interest payments look like. It's effectively intergenerational theft
that's going on. But put that aside for a second.
Anytime you talk to Republican about this, you say yeah,
(10:52):
they say it's terrible. I say, oh, I agree, it's terrible.
They go, well, maybe we should do something about it.
And then we say, let's cut something. And if you
want to cut anything, that would be meaningful to the
trillion dollars extra we're spending each year now give or take,
to add to the thirty four trillion dollars we're already
in debt. You know what happens, people scream and freak
(11:12):
out at you on the right. So do we just
do we all want a bigger government than we're willing
to admit. Is that where things are now I start
to get a little a little cynical about this.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, I think what it is is really the incentive
structure of democracy. In democracy, let's be really clear, vote
buying is the most effective strategy. Nobody wants to vote
for rosterity mode. Nobody wants to vote for fiscal responsibility.
We all like it in theory. But as long as
we can go ahead and hand that buck down to
(11:43):
the next generation, like you said, we can go ahead
and pass it down and do this intergenerational theft, then
we don't really notice. The truth is that if people
have the option to go ahead and choose whether to
get the money now and worry about the consequences later,
they're almost always going to do that, especially in a
democracy where we kind of get to collectively hand that
(12:05):
responsibility over. Maybe you wouldn't do that individually, maybe you
wouldn't go ahead and get a payday loan as an individual,
but as a massive people, yeah, we do that over
and over again. And Alexis to Tokville warned us about
this when he observed the beginnings of democracy in America
He said that as soon as the people can go
ahead and figure out that the convote themselves money, you're
(12:26):
in a lot of problems because that will always be
the way that people choose to go. Especially as we
go ahead and remove that connection to the consequences, Fewer
and fewer people in the United States effectively pay access,
so they don't really feel that burden. It's spread across
a smaller and smaller handful of property owners, and that
has its own problems. It means that the individual is
(12:49):
less invested in the country that they're supposed to be
paying for.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It just feels like the situation doesn't improve at all. Right,
it continues to get like the state. We're always on
defense against the encroachments of the state. So I assume
in the book, which I have a copy of, and
I will read, uh, you get in to some of
the how do we at least start to you know,
I always tell everybody if you're looking at a conservative
(13:15):
political book, the last chapter is usually you know, how
do we turn this around? Everybody get more involved, like
get involved in your school board. Right, okay, fine, how
do we start to turn the trajectory in the other direction?
It's going to take out. There's a long term project.
We've been getting our butts kicked on the right in
terms of the encroachment of the state for a long time,
in part because the left is doing it and we
(13:38):
do it too. We just think we do it for
better reasons.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, I have a maybe a less hopeful last chapter
on this one. I do think there are steps that
we can take, but I think we are going through
a process. I think that the things that are happening
to us are actually part of a larger movement that's
happening to all societies, which is the scaling up and massification.
I don't think countries were meant to grow into these giant,
(14:04):
world spanning empires. I don't think everything can be connected
this way. I don't think that we can go ahead
and spread out our responsibilities as individuals into a million
different organizations and expect them to continue to function. The
truth is that we embrace the total state because it
took responsibility off of our shoulders. We no longer have
(14:24):
to care for our parents, We no longer have to
educate our children. We no longer have to take care
of the person next to us. We don't have to
care about our community because eventually we can go ahead
and hand that power over to the state. And as
much as we might whine about that as conservatives, really,
in truth, most of us are not willing to take
on that individual responsibility. John Adams told us who the
(14:46):
Constitution was there to govern. It was there to govern
a moral and religious people, and it was inadequate to
govern any other. Well, now we're the other, and the
Constitution is not governing us well because we are not
virtuous enough to take on the responsibilities of the Constitution.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So we're screwed. Basically. Good to know. I'm not the
only one who thinks us. I mean, people keep asking
me like, what's the and I always say, you know,
in the long run, we're all dead. Got to enjoy
your life as much as you can and do the
best stuff you can. But if you're worried about the
trajectory of the country, history is comforting. It's for me
at least, like being somebody who enjoys reading history. It's
comforting because you get to learn about what's happened before,
(15:22):
and everyone's been through everything in some way or another,
and people have been through much worse than any of us.
But also everybody who's come before us has died, and
nobody even really remembers or cares all that much at
the end of the day, and then you start to
feel a little nihilistic about things. So I feel like,
if you're gonna worry about the American Empire and its future,
you know, we'll do the best we can. But quite honestly,
(15:42):
I don't know. I don't know how this thing is
going to turn out at this point. You know, most
great empires fall. Look a look at the show. Do
you ever watch The Crown?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I have not seen that one.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Now, Oh, okay, it's funny because people love the show.
It's really just a very well shot, like visually pleasing,
long slow death of Great Britain. Like that's what sure
from from the end of World War two to basically
close to modern day or you know, maybe it stops.
I don't know, I haven't finished it yet, but twenty
years ago or something, think and you're just watching Great
(16:12):
Britain become a second rate power that is becoming obsolete
and like there's nothing anyone. It's kind of like, oh, well,
here we are. It's getting just getting less wealthy and
less influential every year. I feel like, Eh, it happens.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah. The one thing to remember is that every civilization
does have its moments. It rises, it gains in greatness,
and then eventually it does decline. Now, hopefully we're not
in that situation. The Roman Republic did in but the
Roman Empire rose to greatness and continued for a very
long time. I don't want to say that's where we're at.
(16:47):
I'm not sure exactly you know, how our history will unfold,
what the morphology of our civilization will be. But I
think we do need to recognize that we are in
a turning point. We do have kind of an epochal
change that is happening in society, and one thing we
can do is to go ahead and assume personal responsibility
in our own lives and our own communities that can
(17:09):
at least sheltered to some extent from whatever comes next. See.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I have a theory about this as well, about the
personal part of that. I want to come back to
it and throw it your way. Total State is the book,
or as you can tell a super smart guy, so
get your copy of it. But you know, I keep
hearing about people that are like, oh, well, why should
I have gold and silver. I have gold and silver
at home. Gold and silver talking about history before over history,
you see, it maintains value. It's store of value. And
(17:33):
when things get really tough financially, when big changes come economically,
precious metals do very well. Here's why you can have
precious metal, to have tangible currency on hand. It's just
part of a bug out plant or to whether the storm,
so to speak of a real financial calamity, Portfolio diversification,
(17:54):
hedge against inflation, store of value, gold increases over time.
There's all these different reasons why you can have gold
and silver on hand. I'm not saying, you know, pile
everything you have into these things, that's crazy. It's have
an appropriate amount on hand for your portfolio. Global events
just show you how quickly instability can spiral out of control.
(18:15):
But there are countries out there, countries, nation states that
are hoarding gold and silver and buying more and more
of it. So nobody can predict the future with any
real accuracy, but you can take steps now to prepare
for any uncertainty. The Oxford Gold Group, that's who I
trust for my gold and silver. That's how you should
go to. They make owning gold and silver simple and
(18:35):
easy call the Oxford Gold Group. You might qualify for
up to ten thousand dollars in free precious metals the
numbers eight three three nine nine five gold eight three
three nine nine to five g O l D eight
three three nine nine to five gold or in. So,
you know, people become all obsessed on the left with
climate change. I mean, I've been given the right a
hard time here, but at least the right lives in reality, right,
(18:57):
I mean, you know, we all have our weaknesses, like
I eat too much chocolate, Like people don't ever want
to change medicare, Like I understand right like this, but
that that's those are real things. The left will get
all upset about climate change and they'll say I can't
have kids because or I shouldn't have children because you know,
climate change footprint and all this sort of stuff. But
to me, people like that, people like to wallow in. Oh,
(19:19):
massive events are going against me. Everything is falling apart,
so therefore it doesn't matter that I'm personally a mess
and like, don't take care of my people and don't
take care of myself. And I feel like that's one
of the root fallacies we have in America. These days.
That's my thought for you. What do you make of it?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
No, that's absolutely right. Like I said, much of the
power that we've given up to the government, A bunch
of the reason that the government has been able to
expand the way it has is that we have slowly
given up on our ability to take care of our own,
take care of our community, do the things that we're
essential to our own liberty. And while I don't think
(19:57):
we're going to suddenly retain all of that liberty or
regain all that liberty simply because we go ahead and
you know, take care of the guy next to us,
or attend our church more, or you know, run for
school board or anything. I do. I think that there
are key steps that we can take when things come apart.
We've noticed that it does matter who's in charge of localities.
(20:17):
I mean, think about the COVID experience. Right, A lot
of people put their eyes on Ron DeSantis and Florida.
Many people move to my home state because they recognize
that who was in charge mattered, And the fact that
Florida was able to go ahead and take serious action
on its own to protect its people during that time
made a real difference in the way that they live
(20:38):
their lives. It doesn't solve every problem. We're still subject
to a lot of serious issues that have a more
national character, like mass immigration. But the quality of life
in Florida is notably different, and there's a reason people
make the choice to move here. And so if we
go ahead and take action, especially think about something like
a local sheriff has a big control over whether or not, say,
(21:00):
violations of the Second Amendment get enforced. Inside is jurisdiction
that can have a real impact on your life, your community,
the well being of your family. And so while general
fate of the United States may be in question, you
can still take very serious and important action to take
care of those around you. And I don't think anyone
should despair or shirk that duty just because you know
(21:24):
the federal government of the United States is incompetent.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
There we go. That's about as hopeful as we're going
to get here. So orin thank you so much the
total state, great work. Appreciate you being here. Checkout ooron
show on the Blaze at well as well. Thank you,
my friend, thanks for having me
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Buck Brief.
Everybody on this episode our friend Oron McIntyre, host of
the Orton McIntyre Show at the Blaze and now author
of his latest book, The Total State. It is total
(00:32):
and it is a state. He's gonna talk to us
about it. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oron? Hey man, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
So total State? Walk me through this one feels like
these days we talk about liberty and constitutional rights and
the system in charge treats that all like it's a suggestion,
if not a joke. What is the total State?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah? Exactly, man, I like you, I probably you know.
I grew up listening to talk radio as kind of
a standard issue talk radio Republican, and then twenty twenty
happened and we all got locked in our houses. We
couldn't go to church, we couldn't go to work, you
couldn't go outside. And then everything happened with BLM, the riots,
(01:16):
the election, and I just looked around and I was like,
what happened all that liberty? Right? I was told the
Constitution was going to stand in the way of all
this stuff. We were going to have this separation of
powers and everything that was going to stop the government.
When tyranny came and nothing happened, and I was kind
of blown away, And so the Total State the book
is really my attempt to kind of document that crisis
(01:39):
and my faith of like the Constitution, the American system,
and what went on, like I think a lot of
people had during that time. And so I walked through
this journey of how liberal democracies around the world kind
of randomly became tyrannys in the year twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You know, there's that Fukuyama End of History essay, which
I think started out as or it was an essay
in Foreign Affairs. Is also a longer version of it
that's sold the thinking book form, or maybe that maybe
the essays just sold as was bo camera, but it's
Fugiyama End of History. It's like democracy is basically one world.
What if we're at the end of liberty, meaning what
if we're at a place where, you know, America is
(02:19):
the only country that I can think of where there's
any real sense of get off my law and government,
leave me alone. I'm going to keep my guns. And
there are some lines you shall not cross. I think
the I think some of those lines were crossed your
point in twenty twenty and beyond during COVID pandemic. But
we're the outlier. So if we're not really free, is
(02:40):
anybody really free? As in, does everybody just want a
total state now? And they don't know it yet.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, the things that happened in America were egregious, but
you're right that here we got off better than most places.
It was even more insane in places like Canada and Australia.
And Fukiyama's thesis in the end of history was that
liberal democracy and capitalism had kind of solved the government question, right,
the USSR had collapsed. All meaningful opposition to the ideas
(03:10):
of America and the wider West was over, and so
the only question was how much better would we get
at democracy? How much better would we get at capitalism?
History was over and now was just about perfecting the
institutions that had proven to be the best. But what
we saw, like you said in twenty twenty, was that
actually that battle isn't over. In that many people who
(03:32):
thought they lived under this system of freedom and rights
actually found themselves snapping right into line when the jack
boots came. And so, as you said, the question really
becomes what is in charge if it isn't this liberal
democracy that we believe in. And the answer I come
to in the total state is that actually we've all
(03:53):
been conquered by system called managerialism, and that managerialism manifested
itself differently in say, communist Russia than it did in
the United States, but it slowly come to dominate all
of the governments in the modern world.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Tell me more about managerialism. That's an interesting concept.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I mean, yeah, sorry, yeah. James Burnham is a guy
who many people might be familiar with. He's actually one
of the people, along with William F. Buckley, who started
the National Review, but many people forget that his most
influential book was about the Managerial Revolution. His thesis was
that while we looked at these different governments communism, fascism,
(04:36):
liberal democracy, actually all of the governments in the modern
world at the time he was writing, which was the
nineteen forties, kind of fell under the same system, which
was this idea of managerialism where the power of the
democracy the people actually needed to be managed and needed
to be channeled through experts, Experts who were good at
(04:58):
mass consumption, mass production, transportation, communication, armed forces. Everything had
to be funneled through these large managerial bureaucracies, and so
we did have different flavors of managerialism. It came to
dominate all of these different countries because if you wanted
to become modern, if you wanted to be able to
(05:20):
mass produce things, distribute things, scale up your society, and
go ahead and create larger institutions, you needed to deploy
the expertise of managers. And these managers created reliable systems
that we depended on to deliver the food and the
entertainment and everything else that we now think of is
kind of ubiquitous in our society. And those forms have
(05:42):
particular things that they produce, particular behaviors that they favor.
And that's why even though you would think that communist
China and I don't know, the government of the United
States should have different goals. They say they have different
ideological structures, but we're seeing that they're getting closer and
closer together at every step. And the reason why is
(06:04):
that they're both embracing this idea of managerialism.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
What freedoms do we really have still in this country?
I mean, we we've run the experiment. We ran kind
of the stress test with COVID where you don't actually
have the freedom to worship right because you know, somebody
could sneeze on you and then everyone dies because COVID h.
So you didn't have the freedom to go to church
in agog, mosque, wherever, you know, temple, whatever religion you are,
(06:32):
You don't have the freedom of religion. Clearly don't have
freedom of speech because we have the government colluding with
big tech to shut people down these days. You know,
whether they say it's hate speech or it's disinformation or
just wrong think, they will use government and private sector
mechanisms to shut you down and do those in conjunction
and act like somehow that's not just using agency of
(06:55):
the private sector for government means. And I mean I
go down the list, right, I mean, the right to
bear arms kind of sort of depends where you are,
do you know what I'm saying? Like it feels these
days that we talk about the Land of the Free,
the home of the brave. Yeah, we got a lot
of brave people still, But are we free. I don't know.
I increasingly feel like we tell ourselves that we're free.
(07:15):
And you can say that to yourself even if you,
let's say, own your house outright, but you got to
rent it from the government every year in pay taxes.
Do you know what I'm saying? Like, what exactly can
you do where you are actually free?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah? Not much anymore? Right, The state has grown again
to this massive size and this level of intrusion that
it feels like it controls every aspect. And you're right
to point out the collusion between the public and the
private sector. One of the things we tend to pride
ourselves about in the United States is this idea of
the division between the state and the private sector. And
(07:50):
we know that the Bill of Rights and constitutional limitations
primarily pertain to the government itself. That's where all of
these careful restrictions that the founders built in are supposed
to be applied. However, what the government has figured out
is really that it can go ahead and collude with
the private sector. And the private sector is happy to
do this because it gives them additional power and influence.
(08:13):
It tends to give them monopolies and the different areas
that they run things. And so they go ahead and
weave this pattern together of these different managerial bureaucracies and apparatuses.
And this is why we see a revolving door between corporations,
government entities, non government entities all working together. The same
personnel tend to shift from one to the other. They're
(08:35):
all connected, and the reason is that they're all working
in a similar direction. I don't think there's one large
over arching conspiracy between these people where they kind of
hand down their orders from some kind of Buildeberg cheat sheet. However,
I do think they all share the same value set,
which is kind of the progressive morality that they got
(08:58):
from the institutions that they all tended when they we
were young, which was college. And this serves as kind
of the church of the progressive total state, which gives
them all kind of the marching orders, the moral basis
on which they're going to make their depinion their decisions.
And then when they start working, they kind of just
naturally network and work together or as the same goal. Though,
(09:19):
as we can see from things like the Twitter fires files,
that collusion is getting more and more explicit in its nature.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
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in Do people think that they want a much bigger
state than they realize? Or rather, do people want a
(10:31):
much bigger state than they think? That's why I meant
to ask that question, as in, we're thirty four trillion
dollars in debt. Everything, Oh my gosh, the debt's so bad,
and Republicans will say, oh, the debts and it is right.
I mean, just as a function of numbers, you look
at what interest payments look like. It's effectively intergenerational theft
that's going on. But put that aside for a second.
Anytime you talk to Republican about this, you say yeah,
(10:52):
they say it's terrible. I say, oh, I agree, it's terrible.
They go, well, maybe we should do something about it.
And then we say, let's cut something. And if you
want to cut anything, that would be meaningful to the
trillion dollars extra we're spending each year now give or take,
to add to the thirty four trillion dollars we're already
in debt. You know what happens, people scream and freak
(11:12):
out at you on the right. So do we just
do we all want a bigger government than we're willing
to admit. Is that where things are now I start
to get a little a little cynical about this.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, I think what it is is really the incentive
structure of democracy. In democracy, let's be really clear, vote
buying is the most effective strategy. Nobody wants to vote
for rosterity mode. Nobody wants to vote for fiscal responsibility.
We all like it in theory. But as long as
we can go ahead and hand that buck down to
(11:43):
the next generation, like you said, we can go ahead
and pass it down and do this intergenerational theft, then
we don't really notice. The truth is that if people
have the option to go ahead and choose whether to
get the money now and worry about the consequences later,
they're almost always going to do that, especially in a
democracy where we kind of get to collectively hand that
(12:05):
responsibility over. Maybe you wouldn't do that individually, maybe you
wouldn't go ahead and get a payday loan as an individual,
but as a massive people, yeah, we do that over
and over again. And Alexis to Tokville warned us about
this when he observed the beginnings of democracy in America
He said that as soon as the people can go
ahead and figure out that the convote themselves money, you're
(12:26):
in a lot of problems because that will always be
the way that people choose to go. Especially as we
go ahead and remove that connection to the consequences, Fewer
and fewer people in the United States effectively pay access,
so they don't really feel that burden. It's spread across
a smaller and smaller handful of property owners, and that
has its own problems. It means that the individual is
(12:49):
less invested in the country that they're supposed to be
paying for.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It just feels like the situation doesn't improve at all. Right,
it continues to get like the state. We're always on
defense against the encroachments of the state. So I assume
in the book, which I have a copy of, and
I will read, uh, you get in to some of
the how do we at least start to you know,
I always tell everybody if you're looking at a conservative
(13:15):
political book, the last chapter is usually you know, how
do we turn this around? Everybody get more involved, like
get involved in your school board. Right, okay, fine, how
do we start to turn the trajectory in the other direction?
It's going to take out. There's a long term project.
We've been getting our butts kicked on the right in
terms of the encroachment of the state for a long time,
in part because the left is doing it and we
(13:38):
do it too. We just think we do it for
better reasons.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, I have a maybe a less hopeful last chapter
on this one. I do think there are steps that
we can take, but I think we are going through
a process. I think that the things that are happening
to us are actually part of a larger movement that's
happening to all societies, which is the scaling up and massification.
I don't think countries were meant to grow into these giant,
(14:04):
world spanning empires. I don't think everything can be connected
this way. I don't think that we can go ahead
and spread out our responsibilities as individuals into a million
different organizations and expect them to continue to function. The
truth is that we embrace the total state because it
took responsibility off of our shoulders. We no longer have
(14:24):
to care for our parents, We no longer have to
educate our children. We no longer have to take care
of the person next to us. We don't have to
care about our community because eventually we can go ahead
and hand that power over to the state. And as
much as we might whine about that as conservatives, really,
in truth, most of us are not willing to take
on that individual responsibility. John Adams told us who the
(14:46):
Constitution was there to govern. It was there to govern
a moral and religious people, and it was inadequate to
govern any other. Well, now we're the other, and the
Constitution is not governing us well because we are not
virtuous enough to take on the responsibilities of the Constitution.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So we're screwed. Basically. Good to know. I'm not the
only one who thinks us. I mean, people keep asking
me like, what's the and I always say, you know,
in the long run, we're all dead. Got to enjoy
your life as much as you can and do the
best stuff you can. But if you're worried about the
trajectory of the country, history is comforting. It's for me
at least, like being somebody who enjoys reading history. It's
comforting because you get to learn about what's happened before,
(15:22):
and everyone's been through everything in some way or another,
and people have been through much worse than any of us.
But also everybody who's come before us has died, and
nobody even really remembers or cares all that much at
the end of the day, and then you start to
feel a little nihilistic about things. So I feel like,
if you're gonna worry about the American Empire and its future,
you know, we'll do the best we can. But quite honestly,
(15:42):
I don't know. I don't know how this thing is
going to turn out at this point. You know, most
great empires fall. Look a look at the show. Do
you ever watch The Crown?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I have not seen that one.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Now, Oh, okay, it's funny because people love the show.
It's really just a very well shot, like visually pleasing,
long slow death of Great Britain. Like that's what sure
from from the end of World War two to basically
close to modern day or you know, maybe it stops.
I don't know, I haven't finished it yet, but twenty
years ago or something, think and you're just watching Great
(16:12):
Britain become a second rate power that is becoming obsolete
and like there's nothing anyone. It's kind of like, oh, well,
here we are. It's getting just getting less wealthy and
less influential every year. I feel like, Eh, it happens.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah. The one thing to remember is that every civilization
does have its moments. It rises, it gains in greatness,
and then eventually it does decline. Now, hopefully we're not
in that situation. The Roman Republic did in but the
Roman Empire rose to greatness and continued for a very
long time. I don't want to say that's where we're at.
(16:47):
I'm not sure exactly you know, how our history will unfold,
what the morphology of our civilization will be. But I
think we do need to recognize that we are in
a turning point. We do have kind of an epochal
change that is happening in society, and one thing we
can do is to go ahead and assume personal responsibility
in our own lives and our own communities that can
(17:09):
at least sheltered to some extent from whatever comes next. See.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I have a theory about this as well, about the
personal part of that. I want to come back to
it and throw it your way. Total State is the book,
or as you can tell a super smart guy, so
get your copy of it. But you know, I keep
hearing about people that are like, oh, well, why should
I have gold and silver. I have gold and silver
at home. Gold and silver talking about history before over history,
you see, it maintains value. It's store of value. And
(17:33):
when things get really tough financially, when big changes come economically,
precious metals do very well. Here's why you can have
precious metal, to have tangible currency on hand. It's just
part of a bug out plant or to whether the storm,
so to speak of a real financial calamity, Portfolio diversification,
(17:54):
hedge against inflation, store of value, gold increases over time.
There's all these different reasons why you can have gold
and silver on hand. I'm not saying, you know, pile
everything you have into these things, that's crazy. It's have
an appropriate amount on hand for your portfolio. Global events
just show you how quickly instability can spiral out of control.
(18:15):
But there are countries out there, countries, nation states that
are hoarding gold and silver and buying more and more
of it. So nobody can predict the future with any
real accuracy, but you can take steps now to prepare
for any uncertainty. The Oxford Gold Group, that's who I
trust for my gold and silver. That's how you should
go to. They make owning gold and silver simple and
(18:35):
easy call the Oxford Gold Group. You might qualify for
up to ten thousand dollars in free precious metals the
numbers eight three three nine nine five gold eight three
three nine nine to five g O l D eight
three three nine nine to five gold or in. So,
you know, people become all obsessed on the left with
climate change. I mean, I've been given the right a
hard time here, but at least the right lives in reality, right,
(18:57):
I mean, you know, we all have our weaknesses, like
I eat too much chocolate, Like people don't ever want
to change medicare, Like I understand right like this, but
that that's those are real things. The left will get
all upset about climate change and they'll say I can't
have kids because or I shouldn't have children because you know,
climate change footprint and all this sort of stuff. But
to me, people like that, people like to wallow in. Oh,
(19:19):
massive events are going against me. Everything is falling apart,
so therefore it doesn't matter that I'm personally a mess
and like, don't take care of my people and don't
take care of myself. And I feel like that's one
of the root fallacies we have in America. These days.
That's my thought for you. What do you make of it?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
No, that's absolutely right. Like I said, much of the
power that we've given up to the government, A bunch
of the reason that the government has been able to
expand the way it has is that we have slowly
given up on our ability to take care of our own,
take care of our community, do the things that we're
essential to our own liberty. And while I don't think
(19:57):
we're going to suddenly retain all of that liberty or
regain all that liberty simply because we go ahead and
you know, take care of the guy next to us,
or attend our church more, or you know, run for
school board or anything. I do. I think that there
are key steps that we can take when things come apart.
We've noticed that it does matter who's in charge of localities.
(20:17):
I mean, think about the COVID experience. Right, A lot
of people put their eyes on Ron DeSantis and Florida.
Many people move to my home state because they recognize
that who was in charge mattered, And the fact that
Florida was able to go ahead and take serious action
on its own to protect its people during that time
made a real difference in the way that they live
(20:38):
their lives. It doesn't solve every problem. We're still subject
to a lot of serious issues that have a more
national character, like mass immigration. But the quality of life
in Florida is notably different, and there's a reason people
make the choice to move here. And so if we
go ahead and take action, especially think about something like
a local sheriff has a big control over whether or not, say,
(21:00):
violations of the Second Amendment get enforced. Inside is jurisdiction
that can have a real impact on your life, your community,
the well being of your family. And so while general
fate of the United States may be in question, you
can still take very serious and important action to take
care of those around you. And I don't think anyone
should despair or shirk that duty just because you know
(21:24):
the federal government of the United States is incompetent.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
There we go. That's about as hopeful as we're going
to get here. So orin thank you so much the
total state, great work. Appreciate you being here. Checkout ooron
show on the Blaze at well as well. Thank you,
my friend, thanks for having me
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