SPEAKER_02 0:00

First, thank you for being here. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I wanted to get to know you a little bit. We we did have our initial conversation, but I wanted to talk about, you know, where are you from? You're a Navy veteran, so what led you to join the Navy? Let's start there.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Um I mean, I don't know. I guess like I'd say serving my country always seemed important to me since childhood, right? Like, um I don't know. I guess I've always kind of looked at it from a philosophical perspective, you know, that the we have an all-voluntary military for a reason, but then I I felt personally obligated that like if I'm able and willing, I should serve my country. Like um, not a whole lot of like pressure or anything from family, nothing like that. My dad didn't serve. He was drafted in Vietnam, but had like a um college deferment, and then it was canceled before he finished college, so he never actually served. So like, you know, the the pressure wasn't there, I guess. But there was interest for me. Um and my my interest originally, to be honest with you, was Air Force. So to end up in the Navy was a little unexpected. But when I was doing research and like, like, okay, so out of high school, I almost enlisted right out of high school, almost went into um, well, like the recruiter, I guess, basically talked me out of it, unfortunately. Like he he was trying to hit his quota. So I went to the recruiting office, I took the ASVAB test and everything, and then like, you know, the then the job he told me, Well, with that ASVAB score, this is the job you have to do. And I was like, I don't get to choose, like, I got a perfect score. Like, how do I not get to choose my job when I get to score that high? And he's like, Yeah, no, no, you have to have this job. And I was like, Well, I don't want to do that job, so have a nice day.

SPEAKER_04 1:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Um so then I ended up going to college and stuff. And uh while I was in college, like my wife got pregnant with our first child, and um life kind of changed, and it got to the point where I wasn't gonna be able to stay in college if I didn't make didn't have some income. Um so then I started looking at Navy programs and other branches of the military to see what might exist to help me finish college, and I found the nuclear program in the Navy and submarines, and I was like, oh, that sounds cool. Like which I was I was right, but I was wrong. Like, you know how it is. Yeah. So I I ended up finding this program. It it ended uh it was a great program, helped me finish college. Like I was earning a paycheck while in college, and then went straight to training after I finished college, so then was um you know commissioned and got my uniforms and and started my service, but it all kind of started technically while I was still in college and then went into training after that. So it was because it was the science and the um engineering piece of of the nuclear power program and submarines that just seemed so cool to me that um that's why I I went that route instead.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

Yeah, you guys are like the smartest of the smart, in my opinion. I have a a friend who uh her and I met in boot camp and she was a Navy nuke on carriers, and man, yeah, she her and her now husband, they were both nukes and they're just super smart. They don't even consider themselves surface navy because of what they do. They're in the like the bowels of the ship. Um it's pretty interesting. They consider themselves submariners because they're typically below the water line.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Like well, they still operate in two dimensions. Like to be on a submarine yet, like you operate in three dimensions. Like a really, really slow-moving airplane. That's like the submarine. Kind of maintain altitude and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you're right. I mean, I guess like the the nuke program is is quantifiably, like justifiably, it is the most academically difficult program in the entire military. I'm not convinced that makes us all the smartest people, but at least academically capable.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

So there was a and on it was a joke, like you knew who the nukes were because they were the ones who like were like the palest. They never see light, like they're always working in the reactor room. You know, you know, we poke fun at each other, the different uh ratings and and whatnot. But um yeah, I also found it extremely impressive, especially for captains of nukes. I didn't I learned this after I actually I got out because I had been on ANFIBs most of my career when I was in the Navy, and um I learned that the COs, the captains of the ships, have to go through the nuclear program before they can actually command a nuclear vessel. And a lot of those uh commanders Yeah. Yeah, those commanders are like avi aviators of some sort, right? They they flew planes at some capacity, and then they go through the nuke program. I'm like, that's important.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Well, those are the interesting ones. So so on submarines, yes, all any CEO of the submarine has climbed to the ranks of the submarine community, so that that's obvious. But but the aircraft carriers, um, as as I recall, you you have to be an aviator to be the captain of an aircraft carrier. You can't that no one else can be the captain of an aircraft carrier, has to be an aviator. But to be the captain of an aircraft carrier that has nuclear that is nuclear powered, you also have to graduate the nuke program. So they've the guys that when I was in the nuke school, the captains or the captains to be for aircraft carriers, they had their own wing of the school, their own rooms to study in. They had tutors like they weren't gonna let those guys fail.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Yeah, maybe invested decades into them at that point, probably.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

So so where are you from originally?

SPEAKER_00 6:02

What part of the Denver, Colorado area?

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Oh, nice. Okay. I'm actually gonna be there next week um for for job stuff. But um Yeah, that's pretty cool. Let me know.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

We'll we'll get coffee together sometime.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Oh, are you you're still in Denver?

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Oh yeah, okay. So after this, yeah, I'll shoot you a text. I'll be there um like next Thursday. So cool. Yeah, I'll be there for the whole day. I'm only flying in for the day because it's just such a hopper flight from California, but I'll have a ton of time in in the afternoon. Um yeah, so I wanted to also okay, so you were in the Navy, you met your wife in college, or no, I actually met her in high school. Wow, aww.

unknown 6:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Okay. Were you guys like high school sweethearts or yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Started dating our senior year of high school and been together ever since.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

And how many kids do you guys have together?

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Two boys. They're both teenagers now.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Oh wow, okay. So they're are they like about to fly the coop? Like where are they how old are they?

SPEAKER_00 7:03

So 18 is the older one and 16 is the younger one. The 18-year-old turns 19 next month, so uh I guess I have to get used to that. But still a teenager, so I'm okay. I th I feel like I'm gonna struggle when he gets to 20 next year. And like and then I'm gonna be like, well, I have a son, he's not a teenager. That's kind of I don't I'm not old enough for that. Look at me. Yeah, really? Who who decided that I should be in charge of other human beings? Like that was not an intelligent I don't know where that choice got made. I guess the Navy started it.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Yeah, that's that's awesome. Yeah, the adulting aspect of it is can be jarring. But um is he is he going to college as well?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Sort of. So actually, my my our whole family, all four of us, are moving to Portugal at the end of August.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Oh wow. So is he so they're all going? Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

So the 18, soon-to-be 19-year-old, he's gonna be doing a a college certification kind of program out there, and then the younger one's doing um equivalent of high school.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Yeah. Um why Portugal?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

It's a fair question. I guess it took a while for us to sort of settle on or decide on uh Portugal as the official for sure destination. Um I mean it's it goes back, I guess, the whole story. Like, I mean, I guess we've got time. That's the point of this conversation. So I'll I'll go back a little bit. My my wife and I always wanted the experience of living overseas. Um I volunteered for orders every time I had the chance in them in the Navy to get stationed in Japan and Germany, Italy. Um I ended up getting orders to Japan, but a month before we were supposed to move, needs of the Navy, you know how that goes. And they sent me to Virginia instead. Um So at this point I've never actually been to Japan, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Japan and Virginia are not the same. Um so I did not get the experience of living in Japan, but we've always wanted to. Like we've like I said, we we volunteered and and have tried for it multiple times, and then um recent times, like I guess at first we were thinking like let's just hang out in the US and stay put for a while, because I moved seven times in seven years for Big Brother Navy, but um so we were trying to stay put and like maybe just let the kids finish high school and then figure it out. And uh and and the kids were interested in making it happen at this point, and uh I mean to be perfectly honest with you, like the the subject matter of my book, the politics involved, like politics is certainly part of the motivation to to leave now, I guess you might say. And uh so yeah, we started the process, I guess, about a year ago of looking at if we could move anywhere, where would we go?

SPEAKER_02 10:02

So you were deciding on moving to Portugal, and one of the some of the things that you were considering were just the politics, which is also a part of your book of the US. Um so what other countries did you consider beside when before l landing on Portugal?

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah, we we started with places like Norway, um, Ireland, Iceland, maybe Sweden, um Switzerland came up somewhere in there, the Netherlands came up, um France, and we even looked at like Uruguay. Um predominantly, yeah. Yeah. There was a there's a few more in there somewhere that came up, at least briefly. I think the ultimate like deciding factor on most of it was kind of the process for the visas. Um so in a lot of countries in the European Union and Europe in general, the the best and maybe only way to get a visa is if you first get a job offer, and then they'll get the visa kind of built in. But getting the job offer is complicated because most of those countries have rules around like those companies can't offer a job to an American, for example, on unless they can show that there's a skill sort shortage for what they're hiring for. And most of those countries like Ireland, Norway, et cetera, they have um a lot of the high-tech skill set. So it's hard to show that the skill set is in shortage and then and then if there is, like there's obviously a lot of competition from Americans and other immigrants who want to go to those places. So and my goal all also was to not have to work. Like I want to kind of transition to being a full-time author and start working on on my next book. I won't I won't call it a sequel exactly, but you know nonfiction doesn't, I feel like doesn't have sequels. Like it's it's just continuing the story, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

You know, but then you have folks, well, it's more of an autobiography. I was thinking of um what's his face? Stan Lee. He uh he you know, because he lived to be like 80. He wrote his biography when he was like 50, so he had to come out with a sequel, essentially, the second half of his life. Um Yeah, no, that's a so I I have I do know of a a decent number of veterans who um like John Davis, who are you know expats, they are veterans who have left the United States, and I know for John, he will live in country for whatever number of days the visa allows, you know, a visitor to be there or tourist, which is like I think in Dominican Republic it's like 90 days. I could be making that up. So on like the 89th day he would leave, you have to pay for every day that you were there when you leave, and then he'll come back to the United States for like a week and then he'll go back uh rather than applying for citizenship or whatever. But um, yeah, it's it's interesting that you chose Europe because I know most of the veterans that I know that have left are in like Costa Rica, Thailand, the Philippines, Colombia, um, you know, the Dominican Republic, um, Peru. I know a couple of veterans who have moved to Peru. Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 13:25

Um I don't think that's considered Peru.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Yeah, one of the writers for W3 magazine, my magazine, uh, Luke Jensen, he's a Marine Corps, then army veteran, moved to Peru. I believe he's in Colombia now. But John Davis, he went from Dominican Republic to Colombia. And then through him, I know of a couple others that, you know, but we we all know the veterans who moved to the Philippines, right? Um, a few in Thailand. Uh I have some Air Force friends who decided to like stay in South Korea, which is an interesting choice. But um yeah, I think Portugal is the best place, not just because of their awesome extraditionary laws, right? Like you can't be extradited from Portugal. So um it's also like a safe haven for most for most folks. Um but um it's just so rich with history. I am a big World War II buff, and there's so much World War II history there, like Soviet um pretty much from the Soviet side and all the the um bases that they set up, the mines that they set up, like a lot of the stuff that they did in Portugal, and I'm still learning about it, but um you don't hear about Portugal in the history books a lot.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, I agree. I mean, as in the Navy we heard maybe a little bit, um you know, because Portugal had s has such a rich history of um seafaring discovery and um and inventions and stuff like that that benefited sailing ships and navigation and stuff for centuries. So um but some of the stuff that I've I learned just in the short time that I've visited there, like uh Portugal for decades was the only Western country that had found the navigational route to Japan. So Portugal and Japan have this like lengthy history of trade and um dip diplomacy between them. And and one of the things that I thought was fascinating is like when you think of tempura, um that's like this like definitively Japanese cuisine style, right? And the Portuguese introduced tempura to Japan.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Oh, that's interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Who knew, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Yeah. I mean, I have never been. I've watched probably too many documentaries on World War II, and the ones that do mention Portugal, you know, will visit those some of those sites uh and landmarks.

unknown 16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

I'm like, man, that is just a pretty country. Plus it's you know close to everything, right? Everything's a hop or flight once you're in Europe for the most part.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Um I had actually considered like Oslo or um or even Switzerland, like Geneva, um, when I had considered leaving the United States, which I I still am. But um yeah, so that's awesome. So were you able to get a job? Are you still in the engineering field? Um or no.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Um I mean I'd I I worked in the tech industry for a while for like program management. Um not an engineer directly, but working with engineers and sort of being that go between between the the super heavy head technical people and the leadership. I was always that kind of middle person. Um but at this point like I've transitioned fully to um first I do some um advocacy work with veterans. So I I do like uh I help veterans deal with the VA, basically.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Oh nice, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Um and then being an author, so those are my those are my primary things at this point. So no, I'm not gonna be doing a traditional style job in Portugal at this point. Um we'll see how long that lasts. I don't know. But that's where I'm at for now.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Is your does your wife work?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Um sort of she's self-employed, so I mean, yes, she definitely works, but um not for like a company or whatever. So she's a photographer, so that's what she does.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Oh, she's gonna love it over there, and I bet.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Is she like a nature photographer or is she like what kind of more like portraiture, like kids and pets and families and a big part of her business here was like senior photos for high school people and um family portraiture, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

What an awesome talent. I um I have this stupid fancy camera that I can't figure out how to use, so it's always on auto. Um, but folks like her, actual photographers, yeah. They you know start YouTube channels and teach people how to take photographs, and that's how I learn. But um, yeah, so I want to get into the author piece a little bit. When did you start writing? What would have you always been an author? Or have you always written pieces?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

I've always had some kind of enjoyment in writing, I guess, even like high school essays and stuff like that. My dad was an English teacher, high school English teacher for 20 years. Um I don't know, so he gave me an appreciation for it at least. And uh But no, I haven't been a writer until recently, I guess, by any kind of professional sense of the word. Um But it goes back to my military service for sure. So when I first took the oath and you know, the oath of the the oath is to the Constitution, the whether it's the oath of enlistment or the um oath of the oath of office for officers, like the same oath basically is to the Constitution, to a document, right? And it's not like it was just fascinating to me when I took that oath. Like it's not it's not a specific piece of paper, like that particular copy of the Constitution, like it's to the Constitution as an idea, right? And that's that's what was fascinating to me, you know, not to a particular person or um office or anything like that, but this oath to the document itself that provides the entire foundation of our country and our government. Um so to me that that needed to be studied. I had to I had to read into that a little bit, and um, and that took me down some deep rabbit holes, like that I that I mentioned in sort of the introduction to my book. I I talk about studying John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Baron de Montesquieu and these like brilliant thinkers in the realm of Enlightenment philosophy that was kind of the foundation that all of the founding fathers of the United States had studied and became the the inf informative, like the the Enlightenment philosophy definitely informed the philosophies per um communicated in the Declaration of Independence and how they structured the Constitution to be, you know, by, of, and for the people. All of it sourced in Enlightenment philosophy. So studying all of that, I guess for a long time that was my hobby, you might say. It was interesting to me. And then the the direction of things in our country in the last ten years um, and particularly the outcome of the 2024 uh election was what uh f forced my mind into a place where I I have to write this stuff down, I have to communicate this stuff, I have to share what I've learned in these studies because uh we've we've committed uh extreme departures from our founding principles. And we don't seem to be aware of it. Like we're not even having conversations around that, right? Like when we have these political conversations, like this is what I think really motivated me to write the book, is that I listened to the political conversations throughout the election cycle in 2024, and like the the missing piece of the conversation seemed to be our history, right? What is what is the true history of the United States? What is the actual founding principles on which everything else is bitten or is built? Um I don't know what I was trying to say, built and written at the same time. You know what I mean? But how how uh how how do we define those founding principles? Like we can't just say liberty, right? Like that everybody loves to throw that one around. It's like, well, I'm a patriot because I support freedom. Like, what does that mean? What does that mean? Like what is what is freedom when you really get down to it and define it and define it in a way that like American structures support, or at least the theoretical structures. I guess case in point would be like freedom only exists if all of us are free. Because you you being free is great. But is if other people in your society are not free to to live this live by the same um desire, the same pursuit of happiness or whatever, if other people can't do that, then are you actually free? Because it could just be taken away from you at some point when that other group bec gets into power and you know some change up happens in the government, and now it's not this group that's favored, it's that group. Like so it's not real freedom. It's just pretend freedom. So we got to define it. Like that's what that's what really drove me to write the book was realizing that we weren't having those conversations at that base fundamental founding principle level. What is the what is it that the United States is supposed to be built on and how is it supposed to be operating? So that's what I had to write down and share.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah, one of my favorite quotes by Dr. Martin Luther King is a threat to democracy anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

unknown 23:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

And it like that undertone, um, although that quote has been weaponized by our by the powers above, but it was the similar note, right? If freedom is not uh achievable by everybody, then there's actually no freedom. And I love the philosophical concept of what your rep of what your your book represents, especially or draws out from documents like the Constitution, is I had a conversation with somebody, and you know, we use all of these these adverbs, right? And these these adjectives describe certain things. And I'm like, but how are are we all defining it the same way? So like does what does liberty mean to you? And are you using it in the way that it was intended? I think we get hung up on um on the individual people design a constitution.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

What do you mean exactly by intended? Dive into that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah, so I think that using the liberty example and the enlightenment philosophy, the undertones that are in our in our constitution and in the documents that founded the country, the concept of what our great leaders were going for. Um defining liberty the same way, essentially, and is is that what was intended when they wrote the document?

unknown 24:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

So I think sometimes you to think about that a little bit further. Because uh I will I'll to put it bluntly, who cares what was intended?

SPEAKER_05 25:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Right. If some slave-owning uh white guys said some things that sounded good on in principle, but they still wanted it interpreted in a way that let them keep their slaves while who fucking cares what they actually wanted? What matters is the principle behind it. So when you say intended, it seems to imply a human intention, right? So the guys who wrote the Constitution and the guys who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the ones that signed it, like they're just a bunch of dudes. Like they're just guys. Like the and yes, they're all guys. But like so what? They're not that important. They're not, I mean, they're important, but they're not that important, right? They're just guys. They're not demigods, they're not kings, they're not monarchs, they're not ordained by God, they're none of that. They're just people. So who cares what they intended? What matters is the philosophy underneath it and if you believe that philosophy. And if you call yourself an American, you have something of an obligation to learn what that philosophy is and then decide for yourself if you can actually get on board with it or not. And that's that's the Enlightenment philosophy that I was talking about. So the Enlightenment philosophy, like I'll use a different example, but this one that everybody knows is like the Declaration of Independence says what? All men are created equal. That's the direct quote. Okay. So what was intended versus what does it actually mean underneath? Because the Enlightenment philosophy, the belief system that informed that quote when it was written, would better be stated in today's verbiage as all people are equal. Because it doesn't matter where you're born, it doesn't matter what gender you are, it doesn't matter if you become gender fluid later in your life, it doesn't none of those things matter because we are all equal at the human fundamental level. That's the belief system.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

So if you want to call it philosophy.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah, that's the founding principle. So even though the direct quote says all men are created equal, the actual principle is more like all people are equal. And at the end of the day, it doesn't fucking matter if Thomas Jefferson the man would agree with me, because I'm right. It doesn't matter if he would think the same way because he was biased by the uh society of his day that allowed for slavery and he himself owned slaves, right? So if the man Thomas Jefferson disagrees with me, it's because of his internal biases and the fact that he's an impure and imperfect human, as am I, but I have the benefit of 250 years of history that he didn't have. So I can't. That's a really good point.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

So I could sit here and say unequivocally that all people are equal is the principle we're talking about here. So it doesn't matter that the exact words are all men, it doesn't matter if the man who wrote them, Thomas Jefferson, would agree with me. What matters is that that's the philosophy built underneath it. And it and you can see it yourself, right? If you look at what they said in the const or in the declaration of independence, if like going beyond just that single little quote, they said that all people are created equal and by and endowed with certain unalienable rights. Like when you look at that concept that we are born with these unalienable rights, how can you then, from the world of natural order and natural rights and uh and nature's god that they mention, how can you argue that all of that applies to only one gender? Right?

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Like Yeah, you know, that's a really good point. And I'm I'm glad you challenged that because yes. I think that that yeah. I think that's a really good point, and I think that that is probably something that I did not initially look at or think about. Another really good reason why people need to read your book. Crack that book open and challenge your ideas. Cause I had always I had always looked at it as the intent behind the document, but I think I was misdef- I think I was not looking at it in that light or defining it that way. You're right. There's a second layer, there's an underlying layer, and it's that philosophy. It's not necessarily the intent of this human, this regular person. Although I will say, what is your opinion then on individuals who they kind of they look at the founding fathers in in their own right as like these martyrs, these these gifts from God who who founded this country? What's you know, I mean, I I have friends who just love like Mount Rushmore is probably tattooed on at least one of them. Like, you know what I mean? Like, what what is your opinion of of folks who kind of worship the founding fathers rather than that the philosophical concepts of of of what we should be looking at?

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Um my interpretation, I guess, the way you asked the question is first their heart is in the right place.

SPEAKER_05 30:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Because they're trying to think about something foundational, something fundamental. But you you touch on a subject that is is sort of um mentioned throughout my book. I I talk about this in the introduction because in all of the research that I've done over the years that that went into this book, I have found that behavior that you're talking about, that reverence for the founding fathers, to be somewhat curious, right? Like because again, they're just guys. They're just flawed individuals who had some good ideas. Well, isn't it the ideas that matter the more the most, not the men themselves? And I and I I I give this a term, what we're talking about, this interpretation of how do we treat and feel about the founding fathers. I call it the battle for the founders. Because we see that in modern political discourse all the time. Is that, oh, well, the founders would agree with me, therefore I'm right. And as I stated earlier, I gave a very clear example. It actually doesn't matter if the founders would agree with me, because they were flawed individuals, as I might be too, but I have that extra 250 years of history that they theorized a government. I've lived it my entire life. I've lived inside of that government, right? Like so it's a different perspective. That's all I'm saying. So when I sit here and say that I can see that the founding principle that they were touching on, with all people are equal, needs to be addressed rather than would Thomas Jefferson, the guy who wrote those words, agree with me or not? It doesn't matter. But that's the battle for the founders, is that if if people think that it's the like definitive gotcha moment in political discourse, is like if I could prove that the founders would side with me in this argument, then I win.

unknown 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

And I argue, no, you don't.

SPEAKER_04 32:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Because them they would agree with racists. They would agree with bigotry, they would agree with sexism.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

And I think that's the other side of the coin, right? Is the individuals who hate our founding fathers, who hate what they stood for because they don't agree with the slave ownership, they don't agree with the con that time period and those men in power. But they also are not looking at the philosophical concept either. Like, yeah, you should not like that. You know, that I don't think that I would agree with Thomas Jefferson if him and I were in a room talking about the intent, like you're saying, of the of the documents that were written. But I think that what where we would all agree is the point, right? Like I think the way you phrase it is amazing with all people are created equal and not necessarily just men. And I think that if it boiled down to brass tacks, that is the underlying um concept that would should bring us all together, that should lessen the divide between left, right, up, and down. I think that it's but we get so caught up in the people that we kind of forget that we're all we're all kind of going for the same thing here. So uh no, I really appreciate you saying that because this is, I will say, I love philosophy. I am not familiar with this area of philosophy, so I'm so eager to learn from you specifically, especially with the book, because I think what area?

SPEAKER_00 33:52

You mean enlightenment?

SPEAKER_02 33:54

Yeah, enlightenment. I I have protection.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

You're more familiar with it than you think. Because the Enlightenment is called that for a reason. It it has enlightened or informed all of modern philosophy, and certainly is a foundational philosophy behind the United States. So you will find that you understand it a lot more than you realize as you start reading into it.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Well, that's good to know. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time kind of in the weeds with Aristotle over the last several ye several years. And um, you know, I he I love his like uh pretty common question. You would ask townspeople, like, okay, you're you're rich, you're powerful, but what's the state of your soul? And that that ethics piece behind a lot of um, you know, Greco-Roman philosophy has always extremely like interested me. So I think it would be interesting to see the overlap with the Enlightenment piece because it's it's all about being a good person, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

So uh one of the modern contexts I find related very directly to that is um is when you so many of today's billionaires uh are investing massive sums of money in various ways of extending their own life.

SPEAKER_05 35:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Some of them are are putting that into like you know, holistic treatments, some of them are putting it into medical treatments, some of them are putting it into like cryogenics, like who knows what they're really thinking, but the reality that they believe one of the most important uses of their money is to extend their own life, I believe, is exactly back to what Aristotle was talking about, is that only here in this plane on this life does having that much money matter, and it doesn't even really matter that much, but to them it does. So they need to extend their life here so they can continue to enjoy all that because they know that the state of their eternal soul is not in a good place, so they gotta stave off like experiencing that judgment or whatever they think is gonna happen to them as long as possible.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Yeah, yeah, that's that's definitely put me down. I've studied theology and religion uh for the last 20 years, not because I partake in any particular religion. I I honestly don't think I I do, but the philosophy behind it, and honestly, it's the commonality between everything that's always interesting me. Especially when we look at like Christianity and Islam, um, who are you know like hot and cold in a lot of aspects, the way most people view it. But I'm like, there are so many simul similarities if we just put down the hate for a second, this pass down hereditary hate, and uh and and looked at the commonality, I think that we would again find that that common undertone. I always found it so interesting at at how divided we are when a lot of what we believe in is pretty similar. It should cause more union than division, in my opinion. But getting getting back to your book, because I'm super fascinated to read, and I wish the post office was open and I would go check my P box right now. Um Yeah, I I'm curious then. So you you had so to talk a little bit more about your book and kind of the we kind of mentioned some of the aspects that are in it, but what would you say is your thesis?

SPEAKER_00 37:20

That's a great question. So I think we've kind of touched on it. So the thesis of the book is is to first understand what are the founding principles of this country, and then second, how did we get to where we're at? So it is kind of on one hand, it's an ambitious view of like I look at the entirety of American history from the Boston Massacre, which is largely considered by historians to be the first shots fired of the revolution, to today, like all of it. That's a that's a pretty broad um brushstroke, I guess, to take from a historical standpoint. At the same time, though, I stay very focused on um what I pull out of the American experiment, like that's that's what I focus on. It is like everything that was the founders were doing was conducting this and establishing this experiment in self-governance. So the American experiment, I'm sure you've heard the term. There's this new thing on Netflix with that title, like go for it, check it out. But the American experiment is the thing I'm looking at, and it's this experiment in self-governance. And I dive into it and I find through that analysis of the founding principles that there are four tenets of the American experiment. And I'll come back to what the four are, that's not a secret, but the the idea of the book then is to track those four things through the history of our country. How did those four things work in connection, in tension with each other? How did when they got out of balance from each other, what happened? We had things like the Civil War, we had things like the stock market crash of 1929, like you know, those that's what I'm looking at is those four things and how they evolved and changed and progressed through our history. So, what are the four things? The first thing is individual liberty. That's the most obvious one that comes out of the Declaration of Independence is if everybody's born with these unalienable rights, that is individual liberty. But this takes us down an interesting philosophical path that I'll come back to. So the other three things are um popular sovereignty, that we're going to rule by the consent of the governed, uh, limited government. We're not going to give the government too much power because that would that would hinder the first thing, right? Individual liberty. And then because we recognize that we're a society, that we're not all just a bunch of individuals doing our own thing in our own lane, we're all working together, the fourth thing is economic liberty. But I will say without question and without equivocation that at the at the very beginning, that economic liberty piece was always meant to apply to individuals, back to the individual liberty part. So, no, corporations do not have liberty. And nor should they, because they're not people. They're not human beings. So the economic liberty of individuals is what should be protected. Corporations should be regulated like crazy to ensure that individual economic liberty is never infringed upon. Who's the dog?

SPEAKER_02 40:19

That's legend.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Hi legend. I love that name too. So in the individual liberty piece, I said I had a thing I was going to come back to. We talk about unalienable rights, you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness comes out of the declaration and the idea that our government then is permitted to exist by human beings. At no point does our government give us these rights. We have them intrinsically. That's what the declaration says. That's the philosophy that I think so many people get wrong in today's world. And what we continue to talk about in today's politics, like giving the perfect example is this attitude in modern United States right now about immigrants and whether or not they have rights and whatever. Of course they fucking have rights. They're born with those rights. They are unalienable to being human beings. Our government's requirement is to exist in such a way that it never infringes upon anyone's rights. That's what the Declaration of Independence says is the obligation of any government. And when a government fails to do that, what does the declaration say? It is our right and it is our duty to overthrow such a government. So no government at any point ever should be allowed to infringe upon the rights of the individual. That's the power of the first tenet of the American experiment.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah, that's interesting because I think that brings up another point, which is that the the document was written without borders. I think a lot of I think a lot of folks, um, including myself for a long time, were under the assumption that this document exists within the borders for people who were born here. And then well that last part I never thought, but that is the the consensus right now that I think we're seeing from a lot of folks, especially in our government, is that these these are our rights, they're not their rights and us us versus them type um type of mentality. And and I think that we forget that um as a society. I also I'm curious as to what your thoughts are to contributing members of society, right? It's something that was again me going back to ancient Greece, your duty as a um as a citizen of the democracy of ancient Greece was to partake, right? If you didn't like the government, if you had something to say, you said it in a way that that did exactly that to a certain extent. Do you feel as though that uh the American populace forget that they have that power or feel powerless? I feel like when I talk to folks, they they feel powerless. So like they don't, you know, they don't have any say. Oh, if I say something, it doesn't it doesn't make a difference. Um what what is your what is your opinion on that mentality and do you think that your book kind of reminds them of the power that they have that we have?

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Absolutely. I'm I'm pondering your question because it's a it's a it's a you're you're presenting your question from a slightly different perspective than um than I think my book takes. But I do I do get to a point. It's it's round about the time of the first Red Scare, right after World War I, where I talk about the the way the government started to separate itself from the people. Now it had done that in periods. pieces prior to this, but at this point in time the government really started to extract itself from the people. In other words, in my book I talk about it as this perception of it being an entity separate from the people. And the philosophy of it is that it is just the people. This is our government that is by, of, and for the people, right? It's not an entity separate from us. It does not need nor deserve protection from the people. Because we, the people, are what fucking matters.

SPEAKER_04 44:32

Right. Right?

SPEAKER_00 44:33

The government needs to adhere to our expectations of it, not the other way around. And that's what the Red Scare changed is that the government needed the people to behave in an acceptable way and stop speaking out against the government and against the war and so forth. And that really really started before that, but it the Red Scare, the first Red Scare really kind of caused it. And I think that's the driving force behind what you're asking is that when we perceive the government as this entity separate from the people, then we see it as this wicked powerful entity and then we question do my words, does my vote have any impact on that big powerful entity? Well it's not an entity separate. It is not. Nor should it be treated like it is nor should it be protected like it is from us. You know?

SPEAKER_02 45:24

One of the I just retired from government service. I retired early and what one of the reasons so in my debrief, you know, they you know they were asking like you know you have such this amazing career you climb the corporate ladder so well like you know you're at the upper echelons of the government. Why are you leaving? And my only response is we've all forgotten who we serve. I'm not here to serve you or somebody who sits behind a desk. I serve the American public and my job is to protect people, information and infrastructure. That person in the building that I'm protecting could be an American citizen, could be going there to apply for American citizenship, could be there to file their taxes. I don't care my job is to protect them and we got so far away from that I work for Homeland Security. We got so far away from that in my opinion over the last five or six years of service that I was like we are forgetting what we're here to do. I don't I don't serve you. So I retired early I retired at 20 and um I would say that that is something that I have always felt but I I I relate I relate to people who feel like I I had this conversation like less than a week ago with somebody who was having a problem and the um local elected official was not you know listening to not just her but a lot of other individuals that were having that problem. I'm like exercise your rights right they are they are an elected official you you know we put them in that position. We can also remove them from that position. You can, you know, voice I'm a big fan of attending protests like I think it's phenomenal that people do that. It's I don't even care what they're protesting, right? Exercising your rights, I think it's great whether I believe with the message or not. But she said something to me that I've heard before and it kind of like kind of broke my heart a little bit and she was like what does it matter she's like I'm I'm just a single mom. Like what does it matter? And I'm like dude it matters like it matters regardless of your stanchion you don't have to be this powerful person. You don't have to know somebody like I I don't know I just I I can't help but feel absolutely terrible for people who feel powerless.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

It's terrible feeling especially now with this administration I think like you're saying that separation seems so much more obvious um in terms of of what we what we think, what we're perceiving and what actually is one thing you said in there reminds me there's this brilliant quote from a movie in the 90s called The American President was a Rob Rainier film who recently passed away but in that movie the uh the president played by Michael Douglas I think he's uh he's talking about protest a little bit and he he says almost what you just said right supporting the right to protest even when it's somebody protesting a thing that I'm for right like and it I think the quote goes something like uh to celebrate the United States or something you have to you have to celebrate a person's standing a person's right to stand center stage and advocate for at the top of their lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

But that right to do that that political discourse that debate that protest that's what should never be questioned.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

We can disagree all day long but we can't disagree on the right to have the disagreement and I think our political climate right now is very much the opposite right that the disagreement's not even allowed. We're not going to entertain the disagreement. I mean we have we have uh an administration that's that's talking about the um the ways that they can get rid of the anybody who disagrees with them politically. How to weaponize against their political rivals and anyway so forth. Like it it it does lead to valid questions that like the single mother person you're talking about asking like what does it matter? You know and if if there if there does come a time where going to these protests could result in being arrested you know which which isn't new right if you've studied the civil rights era you know how many people doing these sit-ins at the lunch counters in the schools and the and the other places like got arrested for their actions right and that what were they doing?

SPEAKER_02 50:12

They were peacefully protesting okay so what's the real like action I guess or so what of it all yeah I think I would like I would I would love to see folks feel more empowered to remind them um to make them feel a little a little less helpless. That's kind of what my mission has always been I I I write I am in no way would consider myself a writer but um a lot of what I write about are I just challenge ideas. I try to find that commonality in in both opposing views just to get people to think a little bit more about where the other person is coming from. I was in the car the other day with a with a friend of mine and there was a um a pro-Trump rally at the corner of um a a very like uh popular street or a busy street um in my town and do I agree with the message? No, not necessarily but they were able to protest and I think that that's great. I think it's ironic that they don't like when other people protest but the the individual that was in the car with me, my friend, uh she was really upset that they were protesting. I'm like, you don't have to agree with the message. The whole point is that they should have the ability to protest and so should you and the next day there was the complete opposite protest that was there. And I'm like that's the beauty of our country uh is is that but you know you're both fight you're both protesting what you believe in on in the same exact spot I'm like and we're not we're not thinking that that irony is or coincidence is hysterical like I think that's great.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

But you know there's an important topic here that I want to come back to but you said something a second ago that I really I can't let it go.

SPEAKER_02 52:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

You said you write a lot but you don't consider yourself a writer what's what's the barrier? Why aren't you a writer in your own mind?

SPEAKER_02 52:18

You know I I don't know. And it's not that I don't enjoy it. I l I l I do enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

I don't know why I don't consider myself a writer um maybe it's because I'm not it's not a profession that I pursue but um I mean I I play basketball but I'm not a professional basketball player but I go out and shoot hoops sometimes right yeah but I can still say I'm a basketball player. I mean yeah you can I don't I but I mean I would never claim to be a professional basketball player. I've never been paid to play basketball but you know writing's the same thing. You write and you you share your thoughts like you're a writer. Give yourself the credit you deserve.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Maybe you're not a professional writer if you've never published a book and gotten paid but you're still a writer yeah I think um I think eventually I'll I'll accept that as part of my identity but it's been a while I've I have four published books and a magazine but to this day I don't I don't feel like I'm a writer I feel like I I write because I just kind of like the I think one of the things that I relate to I mean just just stop right there.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Like you have to call yourself a writer because you are yeah and and if if if you're not gonna be a writer until what you win a Pulitzer prize you're not a writer until you get a Nobel prize in literature like what are you looking for here? What is the barrier? Why what does it take to be a writer that you're not like and I I don't think there's going to be a valid answer to that question.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

You're not convincing me yet definitely rhetorical and you know it's just something that I either have to accept or draw that line in the sand and say okay once I pass this that I'm a writer I haven't I d I haven't identified that yet or established. Yeah until you draw that line you have to call yourself a writer because there is no one maybe maybe maybe I'll put a little like publish the author like yeah what's the difference you're a writer I don't know you know what's funny is uh I was um working on I just transitioned W3 magazine to Substack and uh we were on our own platform but I wanted um the platform didn't allow me to give folks access for free and I wanted most of the the items that we wrote to be free. So transition to Substack much better platform and I was working on my bio with um somebody that I hired to help me with branding and she put published author and I was like gross take that out of there I was like why she was like but the Amazon link in your profile goes to your writer page on Amazon um where my book is sold and then Barnes and Noble and all the other places and I was like I don't know I I don't know I don't know what the resistance is the internal crisis I will figure that out eventually but um but that I was viewers are viewers are going to get the benefit here of a little bit of therapy for you.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

Like you're I'm I've interested to think that your therapist is going to like what what would happen if you allowed yourself to call yourself a writer now? What what's the worst thing that would happen?

SPEAKER_02 55:20

I don't know. I think the more that I think about it the more I think it's I write because I want to and I think if I call my right if I call myself a writer I'd have to write because I have to there's something valid there.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

It would steal the joy from it. Yeah yeah if it's now an obligation and not a joy. Yeah yeah you you can bill me for the 15 minutes for this for this session we we've come to the conclusion yeah uh yeah maybe maybe it's a little bit of that yeah so so you have to give yourself permission to still only write because you want to not because you're obligated to but you are a writer and and what writer in the history of published authors or writers would disagree with that that you do it because do it when you're ready and when you love to and when you do it because you're obligated to guess what the stuff you write's probably not your best work.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

Right. Yeah yeah I also found that when I tried to give myself a a schedule I'm gonna publish one work a week and I'm like oh I don't want to sit down and actually write anything but when I removed that requirement and I changed like the W3 magazine to you know published whenever um I found it much more enjoyable and I actually was able to pump out more more meaningful pieces. But um and you know I don't writing a book is takes a ton of work. But one of the things that I relate to that you had said is that you know when you came to the conclusion like I need to write this stuff down right after the the election I kind of felt that same I don't want to call it a calling but essentially that same like feeling um that same desire to write stuff down. Because I was posting a lot of long form statuses on Facebook and I found that that middle line was appreciated and challenged rightfully so by a majority of my followers and I was like wondering if I unpacked this idea a little further aside from the limited space that Facebook gives me and created a little bit of a longer form would it still be digestible and easy to consume for for folks that were reading it but also trying my goal was to try and bring people together by challenging their ideas and I mean I had folks agreeing in the comments that I know for sure on are on both sides of the political spectrum and I I have a funny feeling that your book is going to do the same based on what we talked about. And I love that common ground. I love when folks are like this is this is good this is correct this is how I feel and so does the other guy the guy protesting on the odd on the odd weekends when you're protesting on the even it's like yeah that that guy that you hate to see holding up the the sign that you don't like has the same agreement with the philosophy of the foundation of this country.

SPEAKER_00 58:25

So um you mentioned the second book I'm curious what are your ideas for that what are you leaning towards it's like a terrible thing to ask somebody no no no I'm I love talking about my second book at this point because it's helping me formulate the the needed basis for writing the second book but um I have a couple things I need to say and then I'll and then I'll answer the question about the second book. The first thing was I've had a couple of reviews come back from the trades you know the Kirkus reviews and book life and stuff like that the like professional reviews um one of them called me not non-partisan anti-partisan is what they termed me because I am adamantly opposed to the two-party system it's neither it's neither permitted nor defined in the Constitution. Therefore the parties should have no official power in government whatsoever. And that and that shows up in a lot of ways right like there could there should be no rule allowed in Congress in the Congress of the United States that draws lines on party lines. And we have rules right now like why you have to have this many signatures from the opposing party before we can you know review this piece of legislation or whatever. And they have rules like like well the the party whip as a position the party whip goes around and makes sure everybody in their party votes the same way this should be fucking outlawed. We don't vote on party line the motherfucker we vote based on our constituency we vote our conscience that's how we're supposed to vote in Congress. Like that that's not acceptable to have a party whip. So I'm very anti-partisan the second thing though uh both review both of the the professional reviewers used the word polemic to define my book. I had to look it up I I consider myself to be a a person of fairly large vocabulary I had no idea what that word meant I had to go look it up. Yeah break down the etymology what what does the word mean for anybody who doesn't know it basically a polemic they're say they they're defined they're describing my book as one that takes a very strong position and does not leave a whole lot of space for an opposing position. And it's because of the philosophy right what we you and I have talked about at this point is that there's there's there's not an acceptable alternative to democracy right and any American who runs around saying we're not a democracy we're a republic you're a fucking idiot go learn your goddamn history and and understand that a republic is a form of democracy yeah yeah democracy's the umbrella republic is the the handle right like so we are a democratic republic all that means is that we directly elect our representatives right like the Roman Republic had their representatives chosen by earthright and other methods it wasn't election um we elect all of our representatives so it's a democratic republic uh coming back to this idea of it being definitive I guess I think that are there are like you said there will be people who read what I've written here and be like ah yeah I agree with that and that might come from any side of the political spectrum um but there are some later chapters in here where I make it abundantly clear that if you reside today on a certain side of the political spectrum you're a treasonous traitor to the United States if you're if you proudly put on that red hat and call yourself MAGA, you do not reside within the spectrum that is acceptable by the founding principles of the United States. I'll say that with definitiveness and I'll say that proudly so anybody who calls themselves MAGA is guilty of treason against this country.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:31

And I hope everyone listening to this episode who is mad at that picks up the book and then responds. Yeah I I do have a large conservative following and that's mostly because of the type of content and making them slightly angry is my favorite.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:49

Uh and vice versa I love challenging ideas and I will play devil's advocate for either side but um I love that and I think that's well and let's be clear for the sake of people listening that are that are interested in this conversation I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being conservative right there's there's always been a valid debate in this country between conservative the reason that word is used is to is to say conservative size of the federal government. We want the federal government to be small and one of the three or one of the primary the third of the four tenets of the American experiment that I listed off earlier is limited government.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:29

That is one of the tenets of our experiment we want the government to be limited in its power and therefore it needs to be limited in size, limited in its budget limited in very many ways. Yeah limited scope yeah yeah so it's so being conservative means that you are maybe focused on that tenet of the American experiment. How do we limit the government and its power? There's nothing wrong with that debate and we use the term liberal because people are wanting to give the federal government a little bit more liberal approach to its power so that it can better protect the individual liberties of the American citizenry. That's ultimately the goal is how do we achieve freedom for American citizens? How do we achieve a government that facilitates and acknowledges um enables maybe the exer the free exercise of our individual liberties that's what we're trying to achieve. Liberals say well we need to give the government a little bit more power so that it can do the things that will be necessary to protect our individual liberties and conservatives say no we need to pr we need to stop the government from having too much power so that it doesn't infringe upon our individual liberties. Okay. This has always been a valid debate from the very beginning Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had those debates directly in cabinet rooms with George Washington sitting at the head of the table like that conversation has been around since the beginning what I said a second ago about MAGA is a different statement. MAGA is not conservative MAGA is so far off the political spectrum to the right that nothing they stand for fits within the founding principles of the United States.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:11

I would agree with that I think the the more I have learned lessons learned especially from inside of the government the more I'm like what the heck is happening I mean there there are some things and I'll I'll tell you offline but there were some things that I experienced where I'm like are are we okay with this? Like is this a real thing that's happening? And everyone was literally terrified to say something amongst government employees were terrified to stand up and say something because of the powers that be and I think that again going back to that powerless feeling because we have a a group of individuals that are idolizing you know our our current president and it's it's giving a little too much If I want to say false power, but it's an exercisable power that clearly he's been he's been dipping into, and I I that's why I just I didn't like that either. Um that's also another, I guess, another concept that uh I'd love to pick your brain about is that yes, the institution, the government itself is supposed to be this branch of the people and it has become separated, but how how do we reel it back in, right? Like how do we remind them of of their their place?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:39

You're setting up the conversation so perfect because the answer to that question is the same as the answer to your question about my second book. So the second book coming out is going the title of the second book is The Five Amendment Solution. So in this book, I will be uh you know, it's it's sort of a sequel in the sense that this is the full history of the United States with that like that viewpoint on the four tenets of the American experiment that I talked about. It basically gives this this polemic of an idea of how we got to where we're at. And then if this is true, if everything I've said is is is what I've said and this is where we're at, well then what do we do about it? That's the obvious question that I think people will walk away from this book with. Is okay, so what do we do? If all of this is true and the conclusions that I come to in my book are are accurate, what do we do? And the answer is five amendments that I will propose fully. Like I will provide the exact text of the amendment, the way I believe it should be, should appear in the Constitution. I will give explanations as to why every single clause and every single one of those amendments is necessary. But I think we should start at the basic idea of amendments, right? Like we haven't passed very many amendments in this country. When you think about the fact that they wrote this, these seven articles of the original Constitution, and it says right there in Article 5, like, here's how to add things to this, here's how to change it. And oh, by the way, we're gonna demonstrate that to you because we want it to be very clear to the American people that this is an important power of the Constitution. So we're gonna go right ahead. The very first Congress of the United States says, here's 10, actually, they said here's 12, here's 12 amendments we think we should immediately add into the Constitution. And the United States and the the body politic of the United States said, well, we're gonna accept these 10 of them, because those 10 focus on our rights. That's why it was called the Bill of Rights, right? And but there were two other amendments on that um bill that they proposed that never got well, one of them got uh ratified in 1992. That's a strange story. Um the other one never got ratified. But the point is we did that ten times in the first few years of the uh of the constitution having been ratified. And then we've done it a total of 16 times since. And I would subtract out a whole bunch of those, right? Like it would subtract anything that's just like a like a structural adjustment to the Constitution. Does it really count? Like it's not expanding the rights of the people, it's just like updating the calendar. You know, the 25th Amendment does that, and like um, you know, the 12th Amendment just kind of fixed something that had nearly gone terribly wrong in the election of 1800, and like, you know, we we fixed some things. Get rid of those amendments. Oh, and by the way, there's that one amendment that then got repealed by another amendment. So those two just kind of cancel each other out. So so what are we down to here? We're down to like, I don't know, eight amendments over 250 years. Well, it's not that long, actually, but you know, since like 1790, 1791, whatever, like we've had that many amendments to the Constitution. And and the founders would be sitting here flabbergasted, they'd be like, We didn't we expected you get like we kind of figured like every generation would probably have some things they wanted to make sure they got worked in there. Like Yeah so so that's my point is that I'm I'm coming at it from this perspective of like adding amendments to the Constitution should be a regular thing. Like we should have no hesitation about adding something to the Constitution because I think it goes back to that original conversation we had about intention. If all we ever care about in the world of constitutional law, this is called originalism, if all we care about is the original intent of the Constitution, and we don't want to change it, we just want to hold it steady and keep it, you know, protected and keep what was actually intended and how it was originally built and interpreted only based on what the original intent is. That's all pol or all uh legal originalism is how that that's handled.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:02

Oh, interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:03

Yeah. So originalists are like, well, they didn't when they wrote the Second Amendment, they they expected all citizens to be able to carry guns. So originalism is not applied to the uh Second Amendment. I guess I misspoke. So what I mean is that the original intent of the Second Amendment was to protect the militias. So if you're not a member of the militia, the Second Amendment does not apply to you under originalism. If you interpret only based on original intent, they wrote it very specifically. That's what the words say. In order to maintain a well-ordered militia, the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. So if you're not a member of the militia, you don't have the Second Amendment, it doesn't apply to you. Um but we don't we don't want originalism because it forces interpretations like that. So again, coming back to the idea that uh intent and originalism, um, if we're trying to protect the Constitution and keep it minimal and keep it only what it was originally, that that doesn't make any sense. Why did they write the fifth article of the original constitution if that's how it was supposed to be done? So we should be adding amendments to the Constitution on a regular basis, right? Like every time new technologies come up, there should have been amendments dealing with the internet, dealing with AI, dealing with things over the years, you know, as as the country has progressed. Why are we not adding more amendments to the Constitution? So that's my first argument. And then, like I said, in this second book, I'm going to propose five specific amendments that come back to what you said about how how do we re-empower the people? How do we give the people something back to um to believe in, to realize that they have the power and that the government works for us. Right? That's that's what I'm gonna propose. And and and what and what I think would solve it is gonna require five amendments. So think of it like after the Civil War, we had three amendments we called Reconstruction or the Reconstruction Era amendments. I think we've reached a point in American history where we need a complete reconstruction of the American body politic in order to restore those true original founding principles of the country.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:23

Yeah, I think it's important also also to make that distinction. I I think that what you just said is is the true distinction between the I guess I would say between intent and where, you know, what it should be. I don't know that I feel like that document has such a stronghold on everybody in the country on both sides. And uh even now hearing you say that, and I I mean I know that, but at the same time, when you hear we hear someone like yourself say it out loud, it's like the malleability there, right? It's not this rigid document that we have to follow to the T as it's written, the intent that it was set out for. Um, we have the ability to to update it. And people complain all the time, oh, that doesn't apply now. It does, you know, it doesn't fit our current society. And it's like, well, well, there's a solution to that. It's it's in that same document that tells you to to amend it literally. Um that's uh yeah, you know, honestly, that's something that you know I just don't normally think about. And it's you know, we're all out here complaining about this thing, and it's like, well, there's a built-in solution. So fix it. Yeah, that's uh I'm I'm excited for your second book too, because that again, you know, it's things you don't think about, you complain about the institution. Um and I'm a big fan of if you don't like something or if you're gonna complain about something, at least also have an idea of what the solution should be, right? At least that's that's my own internal philosophy, is like I just don't want to bitch about it. Oh yeah, 100%. It's like you have this problem, don't just bitch about it. Like give give me a solution or you know, an idea, even if it's bizarre or completely unattainable, at least it's a starting point, right? We know we can't do that. Maybe that's the extreme of solutions. What else is there?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:18

Let's but let's look to those founders, those guys, those humans that we've been talking about for a little bit of an example on what you're talking about, which you just said. The Declaration of Independence, what is that? That's a statement of the problem. Right? I mean, aside from the philosophy, which we've already discussed here, what is the main meat of the Declaration of Independence? It's that list of grievances, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:50

Okay, so this is this this is twenty-seven grievances that they listed off there of like bullshit that the Crown of England had perpetrated against the American colonies that were were bad enough things to put them on a list and say, look, we just can't be part of your government anymore. So this is the problem. Here's the 27 things that have created the problem. But the Declaration of Independence does not define what's to come, doesn't provide the solution. Right? What you're saying is it's important to recognize the problem first. And I think that the Navy mentality is like a little goes a little overboard in all of us that we're like, you know, don't bring me the problem until you know that the solution is. That's just because I want to avoid having to do any thinking myself. And it's usually a good idea to keep thinking out of the hands of anybody with a butter bar or you know, even a even even up to the railroad tracks rank of lieutenant. Like it's it's dangerous to let those guys do any thinking. So like don't bring them too many problems that you haven't already thought out the solution to. Um I joke. I'm only making fun of Navy junior officers. But the point is the point is that like you have to recognize the problem. And sometimes it requires something definitive, like the Declaration of Independence, to write down we have a big problem. This is a big, big problem, requires some really intelligent solutioning. Let's get to work on that, but we're gonna state the problem first without any solution built in. And that's what the Declaration of Independence was just the statement of the problem. Later came the Constitution. But most people, I think, get this little piece of American history wrong, especially with this year as we've been celebrating 250, right? That's 250 years from that signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was almost it was more than 10 years later that we finally got the Constitution.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:54

And I feel like No, I was gonna say, would you say that the solution that was essentially presented to those grievances was we're gonna do our own thing. Wouldn't you say that in itself was the start of the solution, but the granular details came with the Constitution?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:17

Yeah, I mean, I think there's some truth to that. That there's the solution is implied. We're gonna do our own thing here. But how they do that. But we could we could very well have just established our own monarchy. That would have been a solution, wouldn't have really addressed any of the problems listed in the Declaration of Independence, but it would have been a solution. We could have just been like, hey GW, you're king now. And and actually there were plenty of people, like it there were a number of politicians in the United States who literally wanted exactly that. They wanted to crown George Washington the American king. And he had he been a different and maybe more ambitious sort of person, like he might have done it. But he was, you know, for all his faults, he had some wisdom about him. And he he refused the idea of um wearing a crown. But there were literally people talking about how do we crown George Washington because he's a great guy. Let's just meant let's just have our own monarchy and be done with it. And that was a proposed solution. But I think that comes back to what you're saying is that like, yes, we're gonna do our own thing, is the implied solution, but that's not nearly detailed enough to like. That's like saying that's like being in the Navy and going to the chief and saying, Hey Chief, this piece of machinery is broken. The solution is let's fix it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

Let's fix it, yeah. Yeah. Although that's yeah, let's fix it. That's what the chief wants. The tr wants to be like, okay, let me know when it's done, but in reality, it's like, well, shit, how are we gonna fix it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:49

How do you fix it? Do you just turn it off and back on again? That would be more like that would be how Air Force people probably solve most of their problems. But you know, like how do you how do you actually fix it is still the question. And that's the same thing here, is that the Constitution needed over 10 years to like percolate and mature the ideas within it, you know, and and don't think that for 10 years the the people who were part of our government were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and then finally decided, oh, okay, let's do something about it. No, they spent that 10 years reading and studying and debating and attempting various things through under the Articles of Confederation. That was the government established immediately upon our independence. But the Articles of Confederation and the um were inherently weak, and they knew that. But they were spending those years under the Confederation to like debate and design and come up with something better. And when they felt that they had they were kind of prepared to do that, that's when they proposed to the states, like, hey, let's have a constitutional convention and get this thing ironed out and actually create a government that's going to work for everybody here. Um But they were they were working that whole 10 years on trying to do this, you know?

unknown 1:21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:06

So it took a long time to get from here's the problem to what's the solution. And oh, by the way, when they proposed the solution, they were like, hey, we we also realize that our solution here is probably incomplete. So here's article five, and you can now make changes to the solution to make it even better.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:25

Would you say your books are kind of set up that way, minus the 10-year gap, and identifying the list of problems and the historical context of those problems while also providing a solution in what we'll call volume two?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:40

Volume two. Yes, absolutely. I think that's a that's a very astute way to put it. Like, you know, what one of the things I talked about in here that comes back to what you were saying about, you know, watching people do protests for various ends of the political spectrum and stuff like that. I think I think one of the challenges, though, that has reared its head in the modern United States, and arguments can be made for at least a hundred years back, if not further, but we have this thing called the paradox of tolerance happening real time and live in our country. So the the paradox of tolerance is this if your society is built to be a tolerant one, and one of the things it starts to tolerate is people who are very intolerant, then your society it so a tolerant society has to create space for these uh these varying opinions, right? That's kind of the idea of being tolerant. And if we create space for intolerance, how quickly does that space grow to the point that we become an intolerant society? So that's the paradox. You can't have tolerance without naturally becoming intolerant at some point. So the one thing that a tolerant society must be intolerant of is intolerance.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:06

And like therefore not tolerant. Hence the paradox.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:11

But No, but I don't think yeah, I mean, you're right. That's that's the paradox in in a nutshell. But I don't think that there's actually a contradiction there when you come down to it. Because if we sit here and say as a tolerant society, we're going to allow for all religions. Okay. Freedom of church and state, you know, First Amendment right, which doesn't actually say the words freedom or separation of church and state, but it says, you know, the government can't establish one true religion of the government. Okay, but then let's say somebody comes along with a religion and says, My religion is that all other religions are blasphemous and must be destroyed. And we're going to let that religion exist equally alongside all these other religions. And then it goes out and does hate crimes. But then those hate crimes that it claims are protected religious activity.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:06

We can't actually have that. So the whole point of tolerance is that you're allowed to believe what you believe so long as what you do does not infringe upon anybody else's right to do the same. That's why we say murder is wrong in our country, not because it's one of the commandments, right? It's not from religious doctrine. It's because murder is you taking away someone's else else's right to life, right? Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, right? Everyone has the right to life. So we can't take that away from somebody else. Like you might believe in your belief system that the death penalty is acceptable because of this crime and so on. Like it becomes convoluted and complicated, but you see the point, right? Like we can't we can't allow for belief systems that then violate other people's rights. That's the thing we can't do, but we have done in this country. We now have these massive groups of people in politics, even, who are attempting to institute their bigotry, their intolerance as policy.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:17

Yeah, it as you're saying that it reminded me of this this passage in Kite Runner where um I forget the protagonist's name, but his father is telling him that the greatest sin is theft. And he's like, I don't know what like what do you mean the greatest sin is theft? He's like, if you take a man's life, you s you steal his right to live. If you take a man's money, you steal his right to, you know, to pay for things. And like the list goes on. So it was like an interesting concept of by not giving someone the ability to to do what you can also do because you took something from them that you removed that enablement um that in itself is like the greatest crime against humanity was essentially the the point of that. Yeah. I um so I I did have a question. I I wrote a piece recently called um essentially it was Christianity will never be the religion of the United States. It was based off of a little bit of a disagreement I had on social media with uh a friend of mine who has um you know kind of had a little bit of a come to Jesus moment, is now a a Christian, you know, good for him and his family, but uh I feel like it's weapon he's weaponizing a little bit, and I uh expected more from my Air Force veteran, but I told him I was like, he presented this idea that Christianity is the religion of the United States. It will always be, it's what our Constitution is based on, was his argument was Christianity. And and again, I'm I'm not nowhere near as well versed in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution as you are, obviously, but I was like, that is I feel like that is the complete opposite of what of what those documents say and the word I use was intense. Take this to him.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:08

I mean, he'll he'll hate you for it, but take this to him. Uh 1797 saw that the ratification of the Treaty of Tripoli. The treaty was negotiated under George Washington's um administration, and then it was unanimously ratified by the Senate and then signed into law under President John Adams. Uh and many of those people who wrote and drafted and ratified, you know, obviously were among the group who would be considered the founding fathers. Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli says that the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion and has no enmity against Muslims. Not in any sense founded on the United States.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:03

Yeah, you know, I um again, my analytical brain. So I I wrote this very brief article, but it was based on a Pew research study that went out and surveyed uh a a very large number of Americans. I would say that the total when I looked at the raw data, I don't think it's a good representation of everyone across the United States in terms of like age and demographic, but I think it was a decent number of people looking at just straight end value and it looked into that. What what do Americans believe and would they like to see Christianity as the religion of the United States? And um it is trending upward, but it's still a resounding no, right? The percentage might be slightly higher, but you know, it's still a resounding no. But the the research was was interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:56

Let's dive into this some some details here. Okay, so first of all, I think um I think the founders said it perfectly uh clear that uh it's in the declaration of independence, right? Governments are the province of men, like humans, right? I I don't I don't mean that sexist, I meant that like in the colloquial sense of the word, right? It's not the province of males, it's the province of human beings, is what I meant. Um and it says this in the Declaration of Independence. Like the governments are just instituted amongst humans to secure their rights. And I don't think the govern I don't think God wants any anything to do with government. God wants a direct relationship, especially the Christian God. But I think an argument could be made for the the God of Islam, the God of Judaism, like and and probably many other religions as well, that that those deity beliefs, they want a personal relationship with the faithful. They want that um direct relationship. They don't need power in government, right? They're just let let the humans kind of govern themselves through the consent of the governed, that makes sense, and then a direct relationship that I can have. And all and that's only achievable if you have something like the religion clause of the First Amendment under a government that recognizes itself to be of the people, by the people, and for the people. So I think religion is best facilitated for that personal relationship with God. Like only if religion is not established by the government can I feel assured that my relationship with my God is real. It's not mandated by my government, it's not forced upon me by policy, it's it's something I chose and it's something I explore personally through my own spirituality and my own religious beliefs. So that's exactly what the Declaration of Independence tells us we're supposed to have in the context of religion and government in the United States, at least. I think beyond that, if we want to have a conversation around Judeo-Christian values, because absolutely many of the founding fathers were Christians, some of them deeply religious, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. And so, of course, the Judeo-Christian values informed their decision-making process and informed their contributions to the uh the first continental Congress, the second continental congress, the constitutional convention, and so on, like of course their religious values came into play. How would that translate into the modern United States? Well, honestly, my personal view on it is there's no question about the separation of church and state in my mind. That's not even a debate. However, if Christians were running around in the United States today arguing that the beatitudes of Jesus Christ needed to be taught in schools, needed to be on these tablets that were hung on the wall in classrooms, I'd argue it a little less vehemently than I do about the Ten Commandments. Because what are the Beatitudes teaching us? Like, like picture this. What if every courtroom in the United States had blessed are the merciful plastered on the wall behind the judge? What country would that be? Right?

SPEAKER_04 1:32:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:34

I I I have less of a problem of a Christian coming along, let's teach the Beatitudes versus the commandments, right? The commandments are just about control. And the commandments are not unique to Christianity. They're contained in the Old Testament, right? Like, so if you want something that is unique to Christianity and you want something that is going to teach our society to be better, why are you not arguing for the Beatitudes being taught in school? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful, right? Like these lessons are something that like people who are opposed to Christian nationalism and people who are opposed to religion in schools are going to be less bothered, right? Like, you want to teach my kid to be merciful through your religion? I mean, as long as it's clear that it's religious text, I'll allow it, right? Like that's kind of how I feel about it. But you want to force the Ten Commandments upon people, like it's a different conversation. And that and that's where I think it comes in, is that like it at no point should we ever have an established religion of the country because then you just destroy everyone's ability to have their own relationship with God. We don't want to do that. We just want to govern ourselves, manage life on earth, and let people have relationship with their God in whatever manner they think is best. As long as they don't take away anybody else's right to do the same. But if you want to make sure that certain belief systems are better understood, like why is the focus on something like the commandments instead of the Beatitudes? That's my question.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:10

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. I um I just finished reading the Bible cover to cover, I read it in order this time. Uh it it it took me 16 months, um, a very long time, because I tried to do my due diligence. I also looked at the various critical texts and the different translations, and this way I was able to cross-reference things that I thought were either meaningful or ambiguous with the the various other versions of the Bible and translations.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:42

What translation was it that you did the cover-to-cover reading?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:46

So that I did was the NIV, the study Bible that I had. But I cross-referenced it with the King James Version because I think that's my favorite version of the Bible or translation of the Bible. Um I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:01

I was just about to say that it's incredibly poetic. And uh, there are some lines that I found in the NIV that were, you know, um common vernacular. I was like, I wonder how this was actually written. Because if it's if it's this impactful to me reading it in um in this turn of phrase, or okay, let me back up. Actually written in the room. That's awesome. Yeah. So that so that's something I also found it all really interesting. I um I have the systemic theology books, so it kind of goes a little bit deeper into the themes, and that's the first time I've actually ever read the the Bible with a theology book. And I'm I think that each revision of the Bible has has an interesting layer of subjectiveness to it. So I also got a study Bible that has the um like historical references and like artifacts that have been found and archaeological references. I find the Bible to be a beautiful book, but I think the same about the Quran and I think the same about the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas. I think they're all beautifully written, and I think that like to your point, there are so many amazing lessons that can be taken from it to help you lead a happier, healthier life, right? And I mean healthier in terms of like emotional and spiritual health. But I do also find certain aspects of all of those religious texts to be pretty harsh, especially when you're looking at the Torah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:30

Um I would hope that uh because I I do agree with you about those books all having great value, the Quran, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, but I would I would hope that you put books like The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau into the same category. Because that's like I I mean I um what was the other one I was looking for? The Spirit of the Laws. That was Montesquieu. I mean, at least those should be covered under the same reverence because I've got to be the Spirit of the Laws.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:08

I have not read that.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:10

These are foundational to Enlightenment philosophy. So just bringing things full circle to that is like if we're gonna talk about these philosophical religious texts or theological texts that are, you know, the subtext is all philosophical, right? How do you live your life? How should you live your life? Why should you live your life this way? Like we have to include like in in the modern United States, I don't think you can have conversations like that and ignore enlightenment.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:40

Because so much of our foundation, our structure, our history is sourced in that equally as much as anything biblical, right? Like like I said, I quoted the Treaty of Tripoli about it's not founded in any sense on the Christian religion, but again, these many of these men were deeply religious Christian believers. So the philosophy they brought in was informed and influenced by their Christian faith. But so did all of that enlightenment thinking. Like so if you really want to. I mean, I know you were mentioning things from a like a broader sense of religious studies and theological beliefs, but I'm I'm I am tying it back to that kind of basic concept of what we're talking about with the founding of the United States and what are those founding principles. And and yes, I think it is absolutely valid to include Christian theological study, because it those things did inform the the founding of the United States, but more so even than that would be the Enlightenment philosophy. So you have to put those books in the same category as the Bible if you're gonna try to if your goal is to study the influencing powers of the United States and its founding, you have to include those things.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:00

No, that's a good point, and I haven't, and I definitely want to look into that. But I I honestly would argue that we should remove the Christian piece from the title, because I found that a lot of those basic principles are the commonality amongst a lot of the religious texts that I've read. Being a good person was kind of like the string that kept them all together. And what normally annoys a lot of my friends is I say that the Torah is book one, the old the New Testament is book two, and the Quran is book three. And they hate that, right? Because uh, you know, the Quran recognizes Jesus Christ, but says that Muhammad is the the most current Messiah. Um, you know, Jesus might have been first, but the newest I think that's slightly um off from a theological perspective.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:46

I think Muhammad is seen as a prophet, much like Abraham or so Muslim is more like Judaism the sequel, right? It's yeah it's the same as Judaism except it has additional books and additional prophets, but at no point do they I don't I don't believe um their viewpoint on Muhammad is messianic. I think it's prophetic.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:12

I think I yeah, I believe that that's correct to say. I I just I don't think that any one particular religion denies the existence of Jesus Christ. They just argue his importance and what he represents and who he actually was to the people. So when we look at the the founding principles, and again, speaking as a novice who hasn't really read anything else about Enlightenment philosophy, um, I I would argue that it's I wouldn't even call it a Christian value, I just call it a people value. You know what I mean? Like being a good person, being not kind to your neighbor, you know, all of those things. Um, I mean, I feel like that is the commonality amongst most belief systems. Yeah. So that's why I don't find it to be a problem, like you're saying, I'm I'm agreeing with you, to teach those things in schools, because at the end of the day, you could put any any religion there, you can call it the Christian value system, you can call it the Buddhist value system. It's it's kind of the same when you distill it down and how it's applied to the like modern United States if we were to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:17

But and I think if you if you could have a conversation with Jesus Christ, and he did let let's say you could have a conversation with the Jesus Christ that Christianity tends to believe in. So he is this messianic character um or person, right? If you could talk to that person and ask him about Christian nationalism, he'd be like, oh no, no, no, no. Don't please don't don't put my name on that stuff. Just like let people handle the government thing and just let me let me have that personal relationship. And then and and he might ask questions, I I feel he would ask intelligent questions about like what that government is doing though. Like, okay, what are what what amendment do you have that ensures the feeding of the hungry?

SPEAKER_05 1:42:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:05

Right. What what amendment do you have there that ensures the um you know what his his philosophy says is how do you treat the immigrant?

unknown 1:42:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:15

Do you invite them into your home? Like, is there an amendment for that, or is it just handled through legal policies? Like, how do you do that part? But it but there'd be no question in his mind that you should have those things because if you're gonna talk about his religion and his teachings in relationship to government policy, like the vast majority of American Christians today uh do not advocate for government policy that would align with Christian theological teachings. That's why I say about the Beatitudes, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:51

Yeah. No, I I definitely agree with that, and I think that that's uh uh interesting concept. I actually I um I was debating on what book to read next. I've been on this like religious tour, is what I call it. Um, because I also practice, right? As I'm studying a religion, I like to, you know, kind of immerse myself in the actual practice and the culture. Uh it is somewhat difficult for for some of the religions that I've studied, but it's kind of like getting the inside scoop, and I, you know, you spend all that time in the military and you have this picture of what the enemy looks like, and that enemy becomes familiar, right? You know, when you spend time in Afghanistan and you're given this picture of someone, that's the enemy, this is what the enemy believes in, they're an extremist of Islam. Um and then you come back to the states, but or even in country, you realize the enemy is one person, not a group of people. It's this this this enemy that we are led to believe. And I there was actually I've seen a lot of posts lately from from veterans who've served overseas and more so like combat veterans who like I wrote a piece on how beautiful the country of Afghanistan is. Because I think most Americans see it as this war zone. I'm like, it is a is a beautiful country. It is the plains, the mountains. It's just it's breathtaking. It's a place that people would vacation. But all we re all we see are the the burning cars and and the war zone. Uh same thing with Ukraine.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:27

We see all the we see the battlefield, but we don't yeah, just a yellow filter they always put on the camera lens to make it look desert. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:35

Yeah. And I did the same thing with Ukraine. I'm like, yes, we're seeing the conflict. I'm like, but there's this whole other half of the country. Like it doesn't, it shouldn't take away from the beauty. Uh not just the uh I there saw another post actually last week. Um another veteran posted uh the kids, the kids that they interacted with while they were there, right? Just regular kids playing and having fun, and it's like, but all you saw was the war zone. So um I think I see a lot of that too as religious intolerance, and I I cannot for the life of me figure out how we let it get that far, considering our value system.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:15

Well not that it helps, but it maybe lessens the struggle to a degree to simply recognize that religion throughout the entirety of human history has represented that kind of conflict. So it's not new, is all I'm saying. Like not that that makes it right, not that that makes it good or anything of that nature, but I just mean that maybe it help you accept it a little easier if you realize, well, it's kind of always been here. But that just makes the solution. If we're gonna talk about solutions again, like that much more complex. How do we find a solution to that situation? Um and I I I truly believe that America's the idea of what America is supposed to be is a eloquent solution to that. A government buy-oven for the people that does not play around in religious doctrine at all. Right? Go back to that clause of the Treaty of Tripoli. It was included for a reason. They wanted to be clear that religion was not a driving factor for how the government conducted its business. That's all. The humans within that government have to make their decisions based upon whatever philosophical or theological belief systems they hold, of course, but that's their personal relationship with God again, whatever God they have. The government itself is supposed to have no religious connotation to its functioning and operations. And I think that in the in the and what I what I was hesitating on a minute ago is like the idea of how the United States is supposed to function on that front is so much different than how it does right now. Like George Washington said in his farewell address about things relating to foreign relations, that like we should never have these deeply held connections to a foreign nation, right? They should always be loosely held because those governments are going to change their those governments are gonna change, right? Like what happened with France shortly after the American Revolution is the French had their own revolution, but it was the French monarchy that supported us in our re revolution. And then they got overthrown by the people, and then the people installed their own government, and we're sitting here like, well, wait, how do we how do we interact with that right? George Washington said let's stay out of it because it's not our place, right? Like that they helped us by their own choice. We're we're appreciative of that, but we that doesn't obligate us to but other people argued the other, the the reverse. They're like, well, now they're battling for liberty as well. We have to support liberty. Liberty everywhere is beneficial for liberty at home, or you know, I mean I think my point though is simply that our our government is supposed to function in this way that does not um glorify war.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:34

And I don't think that's been true for over a hundred years in how our government operates. But if our government did operate in that way, that fundamental base founding belief that that war should not be our primary operation or our primary function, um I don't know. I mean, I'm my my my mind moves a million miles an hour around stuff like this, but you know, like if the budget for the State Department was as big as the budget for the Department of Defense, like our diplomacy would be legendary.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:11

Yeah, or the Department of War, if you will, to completely contradict what we're saying right now. It's literally called the Department of War now. Um no, I think that is I think that's a really good point. Um I would love to see a moment in time where we're not in some sort of conflict or in someone else's business. I think we I think the undertone that's become extremely more apparent is that a lot of what we're doing, and when I said that the Martin Luther King quote was weaponized, it was because of that. A threat to democracy anywhere was taken out of context. He meant anywhere in the United States, and you know, the the world, but from a humanitarian standpoint, people should be treated fairly. And the government's like, oh yeah, that's good. That's a good reason to go to war. Like, and they took that, and I think that that context. Concept of, well, we need to establish a democracy here. We need to teach them the right way to do things, uh, rather than just appreciating the way that they do things and learning to work together with countries that are under certain l um not necessarily democracies, but like Afghanistan, how we interjected ourselves there in the 70s. I don't think that that's yeah, that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:24

I don't think that was necessarily our place, but we got ourselves in someone else's mix. And I I think that that's a good point. Although there is former CIA sorry again.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:35

I think there's something to be analyzed there around what you're saying in in the uh the realm of like what constitutes a threat to democracy anywhere, right? Like if we are gonna take that quote at face value and just analyze that, like like how did we come to the conclusion that some of these actions were necessary? What was the actual threat to democracy? Like what was the did did a threat exist? And I think a lot of times the answer is gonna be no. I assume this is probably where you were about to go, but what was this what was the CIA reference you were bringing up?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:09

Yeah, Sarah Adams is a um former CIA who uh Intel, um boots on ground type person operator who who talks a lot about our conflict overseas. And I think she's incredibly intelligent. I think she has some really good insight into current threat landscape as a security professional. What I don't agree with is that, you know, taking a potential threat, a nation state actor type thing, and using that as a reason why the United States needs to interject itself. Oh, well, we need to do this because that that guy's a bad guy and he's in that country. So we should go, you know, support this side of the conflict. Um, speaking about Palestine, we should go support that side of the conflict um because of this one bad guy, the Hamas. But I'm like, is that a true justification? Is that really a threat to our country? Or is it a potential threat if they exist? But does that does that potential go away once we are in that war and once the war is over? No. They're not, you know, that's not the only threat to the United States if we're talking about an a nation-state actor. So that's a part of of her philosophy and justification for conflict overseas and American intervention. Um I I didn't I'd never agree with that. I I think that unless there is a clear unless someone can clearly define why we need to do this as a threat to the United States, I don't see why we're sending our troops overseas.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:40

Yeah, I think you're asking the same question I said, right? What's the what is the actual threat here that that requires the spilling of American blood?

SPEAKER_02 1:52:50

Yeah. So kind of getting back to your book though, um, the the book that's coming out, or I guess by the time this video is released, we'll be out.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:01

What what was what's the goal? What's your goal? And not just writing it, because I I I can think of a million reasons why you would write in what I would love to see come from it, but what was your goal in writing it?

SPEAKER_00 1:53:14

I love that question. My goal has from the very beginning been to add to that conversation. I talked about what I saw, I believed was missing from the conversation, and I believe is still missing in large chunks, at least, if not almost completely in some ways. Still missing from the conversation today is what exactly are our founding principles? And I think and I think the reason that certain words were chosen by reviewers to talk about this book is that I come with the receipts. Like this is not an opinion piece. This is a conversation piece. This is meant to show some receipts that say, look, we've got let me give you a clear example. Okay, we talked about very briefly, we mentioned immigration, but we did talk at length about the Constitution and then the Declaration of Independence. We talked about the list of grievances. When you think of the grievances of the Declaration of Independence, is there one that stands out, like the one you remember from civics class or something like that? What was our big complaint?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:25

No, there's none that stand out. What stands out to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:54:29

The one most people would probably say, as soon as I say it, you're gonna be like, oh yeah, yeah, I know that one. Taxation without representation. Right? You've heard that. That was a big complaint we had. Okay. That's number 17 on the list here. Number seven on the list. So ten slots higher was uh that that the the Crown of England um had endeavored to prevent the population of these states for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners and refusing to pass laws to encourage their migrations hither. It was a high crime in the minds of the founding fathers. It was a high crime for a government to oppose immigration. That's that's right here. This is the Declaration of Independence. Direct text.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:29

This is what I say. I come with the receipts. Like, you cannot call yourself an American and be opposed to immigration. It's right here in the Declaration of Independence. That is a high crime.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:38

How do we talk about it then? Let's have a real conversation about it. Because of course it should be like controlled, like people talk about open borders and bullshit like that. But you know, like that's not what I'm advocating for. I'm saying it's a high crime for a government to oppose immigration.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:54

That that is foundational to the United States. If you oppose immigration, you know, get out. You don't deserve to be here because that is not foundational to the United States. So this is what I'm saying about the conversation. If we can sit here and have a conversation, if this is what my book can add to the conversation, that's the purpose of my book. If I can get people to sit here and say, okay, this is what the founding texts of our government say. We have to be for immigration. How can we do that effectively? That's the real conversation. But if the conversation is like, no, no, we should just be opposed to immigration. We just need to stop all people coming into the country. Okay, you're committing the same crime that the Crown of England committed. So, you know, get the fuck out. Like, that's not even a conversation. We've already agreed that the foundation of the United States is to say that that's a crime.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:46

So my guess would be you were you were outraged when the current administration stopped immigration processing.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:58

Outraged. Like, you know, you may you make me sound like some like you know, angry guy on his TikTok page. You're very even keel. The receipts are right here. Yeah. I would be I mean, it's not just outrage, they are committing treason.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:16

That like that's the word that I think doesn't get thrown around enough for with this particular administration because this is not this guy who wrote some book's opinion.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:27

It's in the Declaration of Independence.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:30

Now, of course, people are gonna be like, well, that's not law. No, it's not law, but it's foundational philosophy of the United States. You want to call yourself an American? You better understand what all 27 I legend.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:44

You know, you if you you want to call yourself an American, you should understand exactly what all 27 of these grievances mean. And you're gonna have a real hard time realizing that MAGA politicians have supported almost every single one of those grievances in our government in the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:05

Well, I can tell you that I was outraged. I'm not as even keel as you at certain times. I was outraged having at the time worked for immigration. And when I found out that we were just like stopping stuff, like, oh, you know what? This is not going very well, we're just gonna halt everything. I'm like, that's not how you fix stuff. Like, you have people that have been waiting 10 years, and then during the first Trump administration, he established this uh this fast track to citizenship if you could pay. If you could pay more, then you could become a U.S. citizen in a reasonable amount of time. And anytime an application came in from somebody who could pay, it went to the top of the stack. So anybody else who had been waiting and doing what they're supposed to be doing and going through the process, um, they were moved down because of those folks that could pay. And to me, I thought that was exploiting the system. Now, don't be wrong, it's most you know, immigration.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:01

Obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners. I mean, it sounds like he he that policy was exactly that. Obstructing the naturalization of foreigners by creating a pay-to-play system. So again, uh a president, an administration, and our government being guilty of exactly the grievances that the founding fathers said were so bad of a thing for a government to do that we need to sever ourselves from that government and have a new one. So now we're gonna commit the same fucking crimes and call ourselves Americans? No, you're you're committing treason.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:37

It's during his first administration.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:40

Bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:41

It was during his first administration, and then what I saw when Biden came in was like, well, shit, we this is already kicked off. How do we speed up this process? So he was like, Well, the fee-based thing is kind of working, we just don't have enough people. So the people who have been waiting 10 years now have to wait 15. So he went ahead and just hired as many immigration service officers as he could, as he could this way, everyone had a fair shot. So there's people dedicated to the fast track, and everybody, everybody else continue what they were doing. And we were actually able to process faster and the right way, right? Well, the right way. So we went through our criteria and the backgrounds and all that other stuff, and then I've probably been to a couple hundred naturalization ceremonies. I recommend that every single person go to a naturalization ceremony. It is the most beautiful thing, it's open to the public. It's at every federal facility that has uh a citizenship and immigration office. It's usually in a courtyard, it's beautiful. You know, they have or in a large room. We did it once at Dodger Stadium and naturalized 10,000 people, right? Sometimes they do like big ones, but I think it's absolutely incredible and like to really drive home what it means to these people to become American citizens. I think it's things that we take for granted because we're born here. A lot of them, you know, that had to hire people, work through language language barriers all while busting their ass to be here. Some of some of them weren't even here while they were fighting to become American citizens. They were in their home country, um, had applied multiple times, maybe not passed the test the first time, which the test just they made it more difficult, right? They added 150 extra questions this last couple years. So I think every single person to go to the right.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:26

And I've seen the analysis on those tests, how many how many high school graduates of America you know, born and raised in the United States citizens who can't answer those questions.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:38

Yep. And then the the test itself, just the test, not the process, went up by $250 this year. Um yeah, $250. So now it's I think it's $750 for test and application. And if you fail, you have to pay again. But you only have a short window. So if you know, because you're only allowed to, you know, be here to take that test or even in your country. $750 US dollars is a lot of money in most places, especially where a majority of our our application pool is coming from. Um not not always, I mean, but but yeah, it's still a lot, a lot of money. So I uh I f I find it interesting. But also going to those naturalization ceremonies, if that doesn't make you want to improve the process, like just seeing the people and how happy they are with their whole family here, yeah. I think I think every person should witness at least one naturalization ceremony.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:33

I agree. I mean, it I think it it puts into real life terms an understanding of what what's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, you know, bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. And to see these people like get through that process and now getting to breathe free is desired, right? That's that's exactly what we're supposed to be about. And and yeah, improving the process, making it less expensive, less of a barrier, less less of an obstruction, right? Like these are all debates that we can legitimately have.

unknown 2:03:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:11

But it's still this debate around how do we facilitate, not do we allow it.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:18

What's interesting and what I would love to hear more people talk about, I have my own opinion on it, but our citizenship office is a fee-based agency. They are not they do not receive funding from the government. They run and operate based on the application fees. And I think that is a huge fucking problem.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:40

Because they almost operate autonomously, like government shutdown, untouched, which is great. They can continue to work and process applications, but I also think that removes some of the government oversight. Now, they still have a congressionally appointed leader, if you will. Um, and there are still, you know, laws and things like that that come into play. But I think once you start to mess with folks' money, then you know, like all the other agencies that shut down that were in uproar. I think if that applied to the citizenship and immigration office, it's twofold, right? Like people aren't gonna work, so they can't process applications, so then we're stuck in that long timeline. But two, I think the American people would have more of a say and could pressure our elected officials to move that organization the way we want it to move. Whereas right now, no one's really protesting citizen citizenship and immigration because CIS is not on the Congress floor mad because their money was shut, they're you know, they're not receiving money because the government shut down. So it's like this vicious cycle of do you continue to be a fee-based agency or do you become congressionally funded, but then also be impacted by government shutdowns, which will impact the immigration system. I think there's a lack of oversight when it comes to that. And you know, that has always been a little bit of my problem. And they just citizenship and immigration was always an administration an administrative organization. But Trump just allowed them all to become law enforcement. So now it's a law enforcement agency like ICE. So the organization that's supposed to be helping folks naturalize and become US citizens is now also the police force. Sounds like conflict of interest in the it's now you know why I retired. I was like, this I have a problem with. And I just don't I think that there's so many conversations that need to be had, but it's like Where where does it end? There's so many things we need to talk about that are are so messed up because our government's operating independently.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:50

Well, I'll give you one little preview, like of the I talked about the Five Amendment solution, my my second book, and then so the third amendment that I'm gonna propose is gonna be this uh sort of sweeping change to how businesses and government interact and um taxes. And I think the tax question is very, very, very much related to what you're talking about because it's I think the f some somewhat of like a one of the deeper levels of political discourse in our country is like, but who's gonna pay for it? That's always what things kind of get boiled down to is like, well, universal health care sounds great, but who's gonna pay for it? That's what the opposition says. And then, you know, like uh immigration, like you're talking about, like, sure, we would love to be this like you know, paragon of immigration law in the in the world, but who's gonna pay for it, right? And um and I think the the preview that I'm gonna offer to you is that like I I do believe that the United States government should pay for it. And then but I I know what the the other people well, who where do they get their money, right? From taxes, right? And it's um and it's mostly income tax. Like, yes, that's true. If you look at the revenues of the United States government, the majority of it comes from taxing individuals. And I'm gonna propose in my amendment here abolition of income tax. Human beings exist above the government, right? We talked about this. I said that humans are born with unalienable rights, and then we we say in the Declaration of Independence that we're gonna allow governments to exist in order to secure our rights. So the government works for us, not the other way around. If we're thinking hierarchy here, like you know, you and I are military people, we kind of tend to look at things in a hierarchy, like at the very top is the people. Then comes the government. And then the government does a whole bunch of stuff, right? Like they allow corporations to exist, and they might be C Corp or S-corp or LLCs or partnerships or whatever. Like they have all these like processes and policies and stuff in place to allow all these other sort of entities to exist underneath the government. So all of those entities only exist by the grace of the government, and the government only exists by the grace of the people. So when it comes to hierarchy here, like how on earth is it allowed for the government to tax the people above it in the hierarchy? That doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:13

Right? The government should only be allowed to tax the things lower than it in the hierarchy. So there should be zero income tax. No human should pay income tax whatsoever, period, end of story. But businesses should pay tax regardless. And so I I I will propose this might go a step beyond what I will say in my book or in the amendment, but I would propose that like basically it'd be sales tax.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:39

That that we're not gonna tax corporations on their profit, because that's how corporations get away with paying zero profit, right? Is that they they set up some shell corporation in the Cayman Islands, and then they they make billions of dollars in revenue, then they report all these like fake or inflated expenses that get their profit down to a small amount, and then they have the shell corporation in the Cayman Islands that they pay some like fee to, and that fee happens to be exactly the amount of profit they have left over. So now they report zero profit in the United States, so they pay zero taxes. This is how corporations, and I'm not talking like you know, owned by the mob. I'm talking about, you know, Apple and Google, and these corporations are literally doing stuff like I just described to avoid paying sales paying taxes to the United States government. So my proposal is every transaction that every single corporation um makes gets taxed, like it's sales tax, right? And and if you taxed everything with like five percent sales tax, like a federal sales tax, you know, is what I'm saying. If you tax like every transaction that businesses conduct with like 5%, that would probably close to triple the revenues of the United States government.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:59

Would we remove state taxes and it would just be the singular tax, or would there also have to be a would it the state tax follow the same thing?

SPEAKER_00 2:10:07

Yeah, I think states have a right to like do things their own way. It's it's that that comes out of the Constitution, right? Like state governments are still necessary, still important, still valuable, and they need to make their own choices based upon their own constituency. But but my proposal is an amendment to the Constitution that would make in federal income tax outlawed.

unknown 2:10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:32

Basically force the government into a place where it has to tax corporations.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:37

And like and and I'm working in here in my mind, you know, I'm I'm not talking about taxing billionaires, which I know might offend some of those like you remember what I said, I'm anti-partisan, not non-partisan. So I don't I don't necessarily agree with either side of the political spectrum. I don't care about taxing billionaires because they're just individuals. So I think they should be equally protected. But those fuckers only have their billions because of what they own in the corporations, and they keep their wealth locked up in the corporations so that they personally have actually very little wealth.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:12

This is part of the this is part of the problem that we face because we can't actually tax these billionaires directly, the human being, because that human being is not actually worth all that much money. He's just the owner of a certain LLC or something like that. That the LLC in turn owns these umbrella corporations, and those corporations own all these stocks and these stocks and these big companies and so forth, but they have these convoluted structures to avoid actually having very much wealth in their own personal name.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:43

Right. And I don't care about Elon Musk, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:47

Yeah, exactly. I don't care what to mind. Yeah. I don't care about that. I'm saying change the whole structure to the top line.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:54

You know what I said? Every every corporate transaction, every bit of revenue they make gets taxed. At a very small amount, like four or five percent, whatever, right? Like we can do the math later. But the idea is that we tax the just like sales tax, just like everything gets taxed, sales tax. But I would want to tax both both uh services and products, not just physical products. Yeah. Every tran everything at the revenue line of a company gets taxed. And then beyond that, like who cares, right? Like they want to pay their shareholders great big dividends and and uh you know rich people want to keep their wealth tied up in their shell corporations and their umbrella corporations, and they want to do that kind of stuff for like, you know, whatever reasons they have, that's fine. I don't like I don't see a problem with that, because the individual should have that freedom, should have that right to keep things structured. But those corporations only get to exist and operate and conduct these transactions because our government lets it.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:55

So they got to pay to play, they gotta put pay for the right to operate in our country that we allow that government to exist. The people, we the people allow the government to exist. The government then lets the corporations do business, but they got to pay to play. So every single transaction should have that tax on it. And then whatever the corporations do with the rest of their money, you know, like yeah, there probably still needs to be certain regulations and things with the SEC to make sure that like the individual people are not being taken advantage of by the great big conglomerate corporations, sure. That's a different conversation. I'm just talking about the tax revenue of the United States government. And if you do that kind of thing, going all the way back to what you said, funding something like immigration services is like drops in the bucket.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:48

Right? Like we're we're taxing these corporations at such high dollar amounts for such low tax rates. Like we we could get rid of people paying income tax and fund our government better and pay off our national debt and fund additional services and like be able to give members of the armed forces massive pay raises that they deserve to have. Like we could do all of this and get rid of income tax. Yes, yes, we could.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:22

I do. I also I think the resistance is gonna come from elected officials who are lining their pockets. I follow um, what is it called? Um is it a politic trader, I think is what it's called, where it tracks the um the investments of elected officials, congressional officials. And yeah. And I I find it absolutely fascinating. I I've actually, you know, I was like, yeah, I'll throw a hundred bucks in this and see what happens. And it is insane what happens just following following the trend lines, especially that insider knowledge. And I I think it was AOC who proposed that we we remove the ability for can for elected officials to invest in corporations, like just completely taken out. And then there's obviously like a lot of back and forth with that. But I thought it'd be interesting, like what happens if you can't invest? Would you still be a billionaire or a millionaire when you leave Congress, if you ever leave Congress? You know, I'd love to see term limits. There's a lot there's a lot of things I think need to happen.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:23

Uh that's one of the other amendments that fixes some of those things. Yeah. In my book, in my second book, one of the amendments. I mean I I kind of have them lumped into groups. Like so each of these five amendments will be somewhat wide-reaching, but one of them is is I'm looking at term limits. I'm looking at um uh definitely limiting any ability for corporations to be involved in politics. Because go back to that hierarchy, right? Like the people allow the government to exist, the government allows the corporations to exist. Therefore, the corporations should have absolutely 100% zero influence in the government. Because the government lets them exist. The government does its job because it's serving the people. The government answers to the people. We all say that, we all think it, we all kind of know it's like theoretically true, but it's not actually how it operates right now because we let corporate money get into politics. So the amendment I'm going to propose would be a a like hardline 100% removal of all corporate influence in politics whatsoever.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:34

Yeah, the the economist, I believe, I'll find I'll find the video and I'll add a link. Um, they kind of backtracked after the last election where some of that lobbyist money was coming from. Because obviously they don't have to, they don't have to say, you know, who they're investing in. But through various means and methods and SEC reports, right, that are required quarterly, uh some of these reporters were actually able to track the money that was spent on certain political campaigns and what corporations it came from, and then how that's played out during that individual's term. And it's absolutely awful to see how influenced folks are by that money, but at the same time, it's like, well, no shit. They're not investing millions of dollars.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:17

Absolutely direct corruption. We can say the word, it's absolute corruption, and we know it, and we see it happening. And the only way to to to combat it is to 100% remove all possibility of corporate influence in government, right? Like that's what I'm gonna propose is that in in this amendment, is that and I have very specific mechanisms by which I think that's achievable. Um but it but it comes back to the democracy piece. Right? A corporation is not a democracy, right? It has its shareholders, its shareholders do some votes and select the C-suite members of the corporation, and then the C-suite members do the rest. So there's like a slight kind of resemblance of a democratic process there, but at the end of the day, the corporation and the C-suite executives are only then serving the shareholders, which is something. I mean, this this will come out in my third book by the time I get around to reading it, but it's it's called the sh the fallacy of shareholder supremacy, which is one of the downfalls of capitalism in the United States in the last 50 years, is that we have allowed for the fallacy of shareholder supremacy to become policy, to become standard. Like we we somehow made the argument that that fiduciary responsibility lead uh necessitates the fallacy of shareholder supremacy, and it absolutely doesn't, right? Like the reality is that these corporations serve massive groups of people, not just the shareholders, but the employees. The corporation has an obligation to its employees. And then it's customers, right? Like let's talk about customers, right? And we could be talking about global customer base, you know, something like Coca-Cola or Apple or whatever, right? Like they serve an almost global community and and they have an obligation to that community. My point about money comes back to the corporate influence, is that when the corporation decides that they're gonna give this money to some super PAC that's gonna fund a specific candidate, how many people are involved in that decision? It's undemocratic.

SPEAKER_05 2:19:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:22

Like the the amount of people necessary to generate the billions are not represented in the choice of which campaign to fund with those billions.

SPEAKER_05 2:19:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:35

So that's why we don't have a government by of and for the people today, because the people are not being represented in the choice of how to spend all that money. So that's why we need to eliminate the even the remotest possibility of corporate money being given to campaigns.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:53

I used to I used to say this thing when I was still in service, uh, when I was working for the government, I would say, I have a fiduciary responsibility to the American taxpayer, not to the organization, not to the agency. I'm not here to save you money or to report to Congress and ask Congress for more money. It's my responsibility to spend the American taxpayer money in a way that's that helps and supports the American taxpayer. And people hated that. Because I would say no to things, and I I would, you know, propose that we shift funding to in a different direction. And and folks hated that. And at one point I changed my my signature to that statement. I have a fiduciary responsibility to the American taxpayer, and it's usually around the the fiscal year, like the end of the fiscal year, and we were talking about next year. It was like, if you're gonna come with me because you don't agree with how I want to spend the money, read my signature block because I'm not here for you. I'm not here for you. And I think that um I think that folks in the in the government sector as well. It's just interesting to me because like if we if we went out even as as friends and you wanted to talk to me about the work I was doing and I was still a federal employee, I am not allowed to even let you buy me a cup of coffee because of conflict of interest. But, you know, we have elected officials who are getting flown overseas or taken to big corporate dinners by these these corporations, and and that's okay. But if if I go out into town to a conference and the local police chief wants to sit down and talk to me about policy and he wants to buy lunch, I can't do that. It's conflict of interest. Honestly, having the conversation would be would be an issue, and I'd have to report it through an official government chain to let them know that I sat down to talk about work stuff. And then, but then you see the people I'm reporting to not following that same policy because it doesn't it technically doesn't apply to them is how the policy is written. I'm like, that is so interesting. But that aside, so how many other books do you have in the pipeline? Because you just mentioned a third. What's the dream board looking like?

SPEAKER_00 2:22:04

Um the dream board, well, I mean it's like uh so there's these two books um about specifically about the American government. So the the the one coming out on the 14th, when any anybody will be able to pick that up by the time this video comes out. The uh the preview for the Five Amendment solution is at the back of this book, so you'll you'll get just a little taster of that one if you make it that far. Um and then um and then yeah, beyond that, I think the majority of my focus um is outside of government and more in the philosophy of business. Right. I talked about the fallacy of shareholder supremacy, but I mean like gov corporations have an obligation to serve their community. CSR.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:22:54

Yeah, yeah. It's and it and it and it's not like this is not ethereal, right? This is real. Like corporations don't actually make money unless they give something of value to their customer, right? Whether that's a service or a product, right? Like they have to provide something of value. But that leads to all kinds of problems, right? You know, things like planned obsolescence and um I mean, I digress. My point is that like, yes, all kinds of problems can come out of how do we um sorry, so what I guess I'm trying to say is that my books, beyond the government books, are going to focus on how do we hold corporations accountable to their role in society, right? We allow corporations to exist because we allow the government to exist. The government works for us, the government lets those corporations exist. At the end of the day, these corporations are just artificial constructs of humanity, and they exist to serve us.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:23:55

They exist only for the purpose of making our lives better.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:24:00

So how do we hold them accountable to that in a viable way? Like, I don't want to put corporations out of business, I don't want to like cause us to regress to the Stone Age or some shit, or you know, like nothing like that. I'm just saying, like, there are legitimate ways, absolutely, that we can hold corporations accountable to something other than profit maximization as a metric of success. So that's what my future books will look like. I mean, I think somewhere in there might be my own PhD program. Um I've been looking at uh various schools, including like Oxford and University of Edinburgh and places like that, as as places I might want to go for um for a PhD program, and my PhD would definitely focus on this corporate responsibility and society kind of viewpoint. So not so much on American government pieces. So it'll definitely be these two books on American government. And then beyond that, you you'll probably see a number of books from me about corporate responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:06

Yeah, it sounds like you you're moving to that next layer of of that hierarchy that you that you talked about. I um yeah, I would be interested. So I looked at corporate social responsibility in business school because I have a doctorate in business, although a specialization is in homeland security. But during that business piece, I I learned a lot, especially as an entrepreneur at that time. And one of the things that I found incredibly interesting was something that India actually did, where, you know, in the United States we say, hey, corporations have a responsibility to not just provide something of value, but to improve the communities in which they operate. So if you're building a Coca-Cola factory in the middle of somewhere, how are you what are you doing to improve the quality of life and to support the community that you're now going to operate in? But that's all we said. You gotta do something. India took it a step further and said, no, no, no. Like, yeah, you have to do something, but that do something has to be at least like 10% of your bottom line. So then, you know, there's that number fudging, and they came back and they said, no, no, no. Before that. Before that bottom bottom line, that that line right before that, you know, if you're if you're you know, if your revenue stream, yeah, if your revenue stream is 10 billion, 10% of that needs to go back into the communities that you're operating in. So they they gave them hard boundaries. Whereas the United States just said, hey, you have to have a CSR when your corporation reaches a certain point, and that also includes registration with the SEC, but that's it. So if Coca-Cola in the United States spends 10 bucks and plants a tree or a bush somewhere, they can say, Yep, did our CSR check in the box.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:48

Yeah. Because there's no minimum or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:52

Yeah, and that's where um India I thought was pretty interesting. There's other countries that have unique ways of doing that, but uh India turned around and said, No, we're we're gonna tell you how much. And it's it's gonna be a certain percentage of what you're making, profitable or not. So yeah. And obviously, that's it gets incorporated into prices and projections, but you know, if if a company is putting it's 10% is a a couple hundred million dollars, that's quite substantial.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:21

And Americans get so bent out of shape about that kind of thing. And I can't f for the life of me fathom why. Like, why do they get so upset about us regulating corporations? Like corporations are just these artificial entities that have no real purpose or value. Their their function is to serve communities, right? And and if we're just forcing them to actually do that, what's the I don't see the problem. And especially when, you know, India institutes a law like that, and guess what? Coca-Cola and Apple are still opening factories there, so clearly it's possible to do. Yeah, you know, otherwise, Coca-Cola, well, I can't make money now because of these laws, so I'm not gonna open a factory. That would be the decision-making process, right? But if they were like, well, okay, we're still opening our factory, clearly they're still gonna make a profit, even though they're required to do these kinds of things. And like so, what what are what are Americans all up in arms about? I just don't get it sometimes that we don't we we have all this like pent-up anger about like freedom. Urg in it like okay, corporations, like freedom for corporations. What yeah, they're not real, like they don't need freedom and corporations don't go in the same sentence because they're not the they're not like freedom is a human thing. Yeah, corporations just need to be regulated to make sure they're not fucking assholes. Yeah. Like, can we just get on with it?

SPEAKER_02 2:28:45

No, I totally get that. But so I want to wrap this up. This we'll probably have to have a part two, because I think you and I could talk and unpack a lot of stuff here. I know that I'm learning a lot, so that I appreciate that, and I would pick your brain all day. Uh, where can folks buy your book? And I'll include links once the once it's actually published, which it's only a couple days away. But yeah, where will your book be available for sale?

SPEAKER_00 2:29:09

Everywhere. So um I have recorded the audiobook myself. So if you prefer audiobooks, you can hear me read my own book. Um, and and that'll be available on all the audio platforms. The books, the books will be available on Amazon, be available through your local bookstore. You can have them ordered if they don't have it already. Um yeah, anywhere you buy books, you should be able to find the conclusion of the American experiment.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:33

Awesome. And I'll find a few links and I'll throw them in the video description. But yeah, I just wanted to thank you again. And yeah, you're like, hey, that's me. That's me. Um yeah, thank you again. I also want to highlight that this is an actual published book, not a self-published book. I know that there I got some hate uh last time I I didn't make that distinction. Uh some of the comments were like, this is self-published. And I'm like, it's still published. But um yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to uh to reading.

SPEAKER_00 2:30:05

I don't know where that will draw. I don't know where that line is. Like I self-published, I mean, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 2:30:11

Yeah, that's something that we could also unpack. It's interesting to me, but I think more so people are upset because a lot of folks are just generating books using AI and then slapping a cool cover on it and throwing it on Amazon. But I think that there are some people that are actually writing books and publishing them themselves. And uh and those I did.

SPEAKER_00 2:30:31

Yeah, it just represents this represents actual intelligence, not artificial. So maybe that kind of AI. But yes, this was years of study from me after joining the military and pre- the pre-military, but definitely after joining the like I I felt like I had to study our history. Like if I'm gonna take my oath to the Constitution that could result in giving my life for it, I better understand what I'm actually giving my life for.

SPEAKER_04 2:31:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:01

Or potentially giving my life for, right? Like, I mean, so yes, d uh over a decade's worth of study went into this book. So no, it is not AI slop.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:12

Yeah, folks are I think that's where the upright uproar is coming from, is that AI made book is thrown on the you know Amazon because Amazon has their own publishing platform, and then that's it. Um and then like 25 different variations of that book, each with a different cover and maybe a different title, also come out, and uh and and and that is the issue, and it becomes extremely apparent while you're reading it that it's there's a lot of issues with the content, obviously. Um, especially if someone's not actually reading through it. But you you are are not that. So there's the distinction. Um, I had somebody on who I had also published a book, but it was self-published. They put it on Amazon store and it was actually written by them. I had seen the manuscript, I had seen the edits. Uh, they actually hired an independent editor, but published it themselves rather than going through a publisher. And um I didn't I didn't say that, I didn't make that distinction. And I was like, well, because I knew the book was written by him. Like it was we went through the process you would go through if you went if you had it published by some some big corporation or some publisher, it's the same thing. The book's still cut, still quality content. Um, anyway, well, thank you for that. I'm gonna go ahead and stop the recording.