Pathological Gigantism and the Demise of the West | Senator Mike Lee | EP 346

should accept yourself just the way you are what does that say about who I should become is that just now off the table because I'm already good enough in every way so am I done or something get the hell up get your act together adopt some responsibility put your life together develop a vision unfold all those manifold possibilities that lurk within be a force for good in the world and that'll be the adventure of your life [Music] we are getting dragged into the band saw like one inch of cloth at a time right and there's movements forward incrementally towards the abyss with the continued provision of more and more sophisticated Weaponry to the ukrainians we're spending money like a drunken sailor and and facilitating an endless degree of criminal Enterprise and also funneling money into the military industrial complex at a heretofore unprecedented rate we have no vision for victory that's laid out that's realistic in any real sense and we also have no vision for what might constitute peace it's hard for me to see how this doesn't culminate in at least a significant Regional war and heaven forbid a World War that's why we've we've got to turn this around as far as why it's happening the only thing I can speculate here is that for whatever reason it's popular it's popular with the American people they see many see it as a conflict between good and evil the problem with this narrative this story that allows the effort to be so popular as popular as it has been so far is that I don't think the Amer who are being told the whole story I don't think they're being adequately advised as to the risks [Music] hello everyone I have the pleasure today of speaking with Senator Mike Lee from Utah Mike and I have spoken before on my podcast we've got to know each other a little bit as a consequence of being involved in various Endeavors and uh I thought he would be an excellent person to help me think through well what I'm interested in not least today is how to understand the situation in relationship to Russia and the Ukraine because I don't understand it so Mike I'm going to ask you some questions about that situation what's been disturbing me most particularly I would say is that I don't understand what it is that the West is aiming at precisely you know when when you're aiming at Victory because that's hypothetically the aim here you need to specify what a victory would look like and so I've been trying to game that in my imagination it's like if we got what we wanted whatever that might be what would that look like in any realistic sense and so what I see being emitted from the Biden Administration and for the people who are beating the pro-war drum hard and that would include my idiot government in Canada is a very banal form of dimwit flag waving which is well the ukrainians are great Democrats and we're supporting democracy and we're on the side of freedom and I heard a fair bit of that in about Afghanistan and I heard a fair bit about that relationship to Iraq and it isn't obvious to me that that worked out particularly well and I don't buy the the shallow moralizing flag waving and Ukraine is this country that is so corrupt that it's almost Beyond Comprehension and so the idea that there's an easy Pathway to democracy there is utterly preposterous which isn't to say that no I'm without my qualms let's say on the Russian side Russia's being a very Troublesome country for a good 150 years and probably before that and so it's not like the situation is straightforward but here's what I've been walking through in my imagination and you can help me maybe clarify where my thinking is inappropriate so the Hawks that I've talked to on the American side have basically laid out the most reasonable case for war for me I suppose and have claimed for example that it's in our best interest in the west to keep Russia relatively weak militarily to minimize the threat they might pose now and in the future and this war gives us an opportunity to do that just that to Cull their conventional forces and to keep Russia back on its heels which is a different proposition than expanding democracy in Ukraine and so I have some problems with that approach conceptually because I think that's what the Allies did to Germany after World War one we attempted to weaken it and then to keep it weak and that was not a good idea and you know history doesn't repeat but it Rhymes as they say and so I think it's dangerous to weaken Russia partly because Russia has natural resources that we actually need especially natural gas which produces the ammonia that feeds four billion people and they produce ammonia and they produce food high quality wheat in particular and so a devastated Russia doesn't seem to me necessarily in the long-term interests of either the west or the planet and then on the alternative side well let's say Putin is deposed because he loses this war in a conventional sense and a new leader emerges the probability as far as I'm concerned that we'll get a new leader in Russia in the midst of chaos who's better than potent is virtually zero given the historical precedence and then if we reduce Russia to something like a state of chaos which also could happen and the country fragments in the worst case scenario then we have a situation where we have a fragmented Russia with 25 000 nuclear weapons uh floating around let's say and that also seems like a rather dismal outcome so like what the hell is our plan for victory here as far as you're concerned look I think starting out at least from the U.S perspective the idea was first to deter Putin from invading once he invaded the idea was to weaken him and cause him to decide relatively quickly that it wasn't worth the effort and to retreat with good reason people in the United States and in many other countries one want to make sure that we stop Vladimir Putin he's a bad guy he's someone who has Ambitions that aren't good and so everyone sees in him uh the the this bad person which he is who could do a whole lot of bad things the problem is I think we're long past the moment where what we're doing uh is going to do anything to stop him from aggressing if anything we've made it worse we've driven him into the arms of China and that loving of embrace that Alliance that's resulted from it economically with energy uh in many respects ultimately I I think militarily that could create a much bigger problem than existed prior to the beginning of this war and so look he is a a bad guy he I wish he would go away but I'm not sure that the U.S involvement in it um is necessarily going to endure to the benefit of the American people and I think we've lost sight of that precisely because of the factor you described I I don't think there is a coherent cogent game plan and end result of peace that we're trying to get out nor do I think that what we've done so far has brought us peace quite to the contrary it's it's continued the effort okay so you brought up the China argument so here's a way of conceptualizing that I mean China has its problems to say the least they're facing a demographic collapse their real estate market is to call it shaky is to say almost nothing they're actually facing by Chinese standards quite the Rebellion on the home front I mean things don't look that bright for the Chinese Communist party and having them Ally with Russia I would say seems to be something that could be in their favor economically because it also it gives them access to the immense resources of Russia and if you think China is uh a good Ally of the west then you've got another thing coming anything that's done to help them survive in their current form the CCP in particular the Chinese Communist party is definitely not in our best interests so having Russia establish an alliance with China that helps China limp along into the future I mean that's a country that supports North Korea which is about all you need to say about the Chinese Communist party and so that seems like a dim-witted strategy in the long run especially because China is at least as much of a threat now it's more of a threat in any reasonable sense than than Russia should be I mean talk about systems out of Alliance we're not Allied very well with the Russians philosophically let's say but we are absolutely not aligned with the Chinese so that seems like a Preposterous Endeavor and it's an uneasy alliance between the Chinese and the Russians it's not a natural Alliance we'd really have to force both the Chinese and the Russians into a corner in some real sense in order for them to be able to hammer out something approximating an agreement so that seems rather dim-witted so and then let's also talk about the cost of War so first of all how much money do you think the U.S has poured into Ukraine so far 113 billion dollars to date 113 13 million dollars is an enormous sum of money this represents a sum of money that's I I think between 20 and 25 times what Ukraine typically spends on defense in a typical year uh this is a sum of money roughly double nearly double of what Russia spends on defense in a typical two-year period And I believe it's an it's even 30 40 percent larger than what Russia spent on defense last year given that you know they had a significant war effort going on what concerns me there Jordan is that we're getting into this with our funding and with our contribution of weapons if we're going to get involved uh through what could barely be described by some or perceived by some as a proxy war we need to understand what our objective is and if the United States uh we're supposed to have a declaration of war before we get involved in that this becomes especially important uh especially important when you're dealing with a near-peer nuclear-armed geopolitical adversary these guys have got nukes and to say they've got nukes uh is a vast understatement uh they've got a lot of nukes and so we've got to be really really careful When approaching that monster and I don't think we're showing caution in that regard okay so a couple of things there the first thing we might want to make these numbers reasonable or realistic for people so 113 billion dollars is twelve hundred dollars per full person family in the U.S so that's what every every family in the U.S is now spending 100 a month on the Ukraine war now now now there's an additional problem with that too because Ukraine by everyone's standards including um such reliable sources let's say it has the New York Times everyone knew perfectly well before we started flag waving how corrupt Ukraine was and now 113 billion dollars has been dumped into that economy with what I presume has been an extraordinarily lack extraordinary lack of oversight and so my sense is strong that God Only Knows What proportion of that money has been funneled into truly reprehensible criminal Enterprises and if you think it's none of it then you're naive Beyond Comprehension and so and when my when the government spends money like a drunken sailor which is what it's doing in Ukraine you can be bloody sure that most of that money isn't ending up where it's supposed to it certainly didn't on the kovid front for example I think 40 percent of covid government claims for subsidy were fraudulent something like 40 percent and if it's only 40 of what we're spending in Ukraine that's going to criminals that would be a bloody Miracle it's probably more like 95 five percent and then there's Kickbacks to what Eisenhower described as the military industrial complex which he warned about back in what 1960 was it three something like that and a little earlier pointing out close something late 50s early 60s pointing out that that emergent collusion at the upper echelons between let's say defense contractors and government was what he believed would pose the most signal threat to the stability of well American democracy certainly but also the world in the decades moving forward and so some people are making an awful lot of money off this war um and that they might consider that extraordinarily advantageous in the short term but we're facilitating criminal Enterprises on a scale pretty much unheard of in the in the past and we we have no idea exactly what our money is being spent on in relationship to uh the furtherance of the military-industrial complex and so that's also a negative consequence of the war that that this false you know democracy flag waving masks and that that strikes me as additionally naive over and above the fact that we're flirting with like as far as I'm concerned we're already in World War Three the issue is how far we're going to take it the notion that this is a war between Russia and Ukraine it's like just is there anybody who believes that and then you also pointed out something that people should be jumping up and down and screaming about in the United States which is that well there's no declaration of war here and so but you're in a war and so how the hell did that happen well we're pretending it's not a war well I don't know if that's sufficient reason to bypass the constitutionally is it constitutionally mandated requirement that war is declared by Congress yes it's one of the things that changed in our form of government after we left the United Kingdom uh one of the things that we made sure was that the people's elected representatives in Congress and not the chief executive would have the power to take us to war now to be clear Congress did appropriate this money so it's not as if Congress were bypassed and deciding to send money to Ukraine my point is not that it happened entirely by the executive it is rather that what we're doing is tantamount to war it has many of the same consequences as war and so I fear that we're not adequately debating And discussing as Congress funds these Endeavors the the fact that this puts us in a de facto position of War and then you to your point about the corruption the possibility of waste fraud abuse uh and another corrupt developments with this money last weekend zelenski was quoted I don't speak Ukrainian so I'm relying on interpreters but he was quoted as suggesting it was somehow dangerous for Americans to question how that 113 billion dollars was being spent in Ukraine that that's dangerous well I think that suggestion that it's dangerous is itself Beyond dangerous and we ought to be very very leery of anybody who describes it that way okay so when this money is spent we're talking about a tremendous amount of money what exactly you know it's not like there's bales of money being sent on aircraft uh on on aircraft transport with aircraft transport to to to Ukraine the money is being spent on good Services military equipment who exactly are the recipients of this money like it's not the brave Ukrainian people it's not like there are Americans on the ground they're handing out dollar bills to Starving ukrainians in the streets right which is I suppose the naive image of the same kind of flag waving pro-democracy idiocy that we're seeing the propagandists generate where do you think this money is going and does anyone know yeah so it's it's outlined in the legislation we don't know that particulars of exactly where it's going but the the generalities of it uh are laid out in the three or four pieces of legislation that have been passed in order to keep the funding going uh in some instances the money um uh goes to to uh uh the U.S military in order to acquire weapons so that they can send weapons over to Ukraine and other instances it goes to other U.S agencies uh that are providing some form of relief or another to the Ukrainian people um it's spread out in Myriad ways and I think some of those expenditures are are more defensible than others but uh in the final analysis it is a huge sum of money and that's money if it has the ability to be corrupted even where it's not cash in some instances uh uh they're they're getting money in other instances they're getting material but regardless that material has a value attached to it and so that's not to suggest there's no corruption possible there right right so if you had to make a strong case for the kind of NATO involvement because it's obviously not just the U.S although the U.S is the primary mover here probably followed by the UK I would say that's how it appears to me um if you had to make a strong case for what NATO is doing what would the case be I mean we talked about the necessity of deterring Russian aggression especially in relationship to Ukraine it's do you believe that it's reasonable to assume that Russia presents a credible threat to the Integrity of the NATO alliance or the West outside this specific case of Ukraine and I mean we should point out that Ukraine and Russia have been integrally tied together for the entire history of both countries it's there's less separation there than there is between Canada and the U.S and we're two countries that are very tightly tied together so the the relationship between Russia and Ukraine is not of Thoroughly independent sovereign states with an immense history of political and cultural difference so so the the involvement of Russia in Ukraine is unbelievably complex and vice versa but we might say well Russia is an expansionist state in the style of the Soviet Union um and therefore poses a potential threat to the Integrity of eastern and western Europe and of course the Russians made all sorts of incursions into Eastern Europe so there's some historical president for that but and so we could say well you could make a case for keeping that threat at Bay is there another case that can be made for our involvement in this war yeah so look the the mindset of the objectives of NATO here there has been a legitimate Viewpoint that suggests that if Putin moves into Ukraine if he takes over some or eventually all of Ukraine uh or even just part of it that this could reflect uh uh the fact that he's hell-bent somehow on expansion is on an expansionist ambition and that that expansionist ambition is going to spill over into uh other NATO countries so Ukraine isn't in NATO but it is as some describe it NATO adjacent and so there is concern that this could spill over into those countries I get that and I I understand that we have an obligation as the United States to defend our NATO allies and protect them the problem with that is it's at once very speculative we don't know that to be the case and as you point out there is a lot more history uh between Russia and Ukraine especially parts of Ukraine a lot more of a cultural historical uh connection in some cases a linguistic connection between Russia and Ukraine then there is a lot of these other countries but secondly we could just as easily it seems to me be bringing about the very thing we're trying to avoid now I I don't count myself as an expert in this area by any means I'm just trying to outline the two viewpoints because the other Viewpoint is also valid which is that if we get involved in this if we fund a proxy war against that same adversary Russia oh we could be inviting more of the same especially if as I suspect I I don't know that the United States has the intestinal fortitude to go into a full-blown war with Russia and if it doesn't then what happens then what have we done have we provoked Russia to become even more expansionist could that undermine the security of our NATO allies even more than just staying out altogether would have done I I don't know the answer to these questions but the fact that they're not being seriously asked and debated and discussed in the halls of Congress is deeply troubling to me as is that whenever anybody including me raises questions like this uh were immediately tagged on Twitter for example uh as Putin lovers which is absurd and Preposterous I have a distinct loathing for the man I think he's awful but it's because he's awful not in spite of it that I I've got real concerns about our involvement here I'm not sure it's going to do anything like what those advocating it believe it will do for us or our allies for that matter so so Putin as well this is an additional complication Putin is actually quite popular among Russians as far as anybody can tell and part of the reason for that and I've read a lot of his speeches over the last 10 years trying to understand how he thinks because my sense of people generally is that they do what they say they're going to do it's very hard to generate a facade of continual lies for decades to say one thing publicly and even privately in speeches and then to go off and conjure up an entire new theory of the world and operate within those confines Putin is popular partly because he's been presenting this war against Ukraine as uh defense of the Traditional Values not only of Russia but also of the West and because Putin is no fan of let's say the woke idiocy that script the west and that's a sentiment that's echoed quite profoundly among the Eastern Europeans who would otherwise be our staunch allies and who generally are and so that's the drum he's been able to beat to keep himself uh popular in Russia and you can be cynical and say that that's merely maneuvering propagandistic maneuvering on Putin's part but I think the simpler explanation is that he actually believes that the West have become untrustworthy on that front and is aren't and he isn't interested in the accursion of that kind of ideology into the into the Russian sphere um so I'm not exactly sure what to make of that and then the notion that we're enabling the very conflict that we're trying to avoid brings me back to the problem I had at the beginning of our discussion which is I can't figure out what the hell constitutes our Victory here it's like even if we do win what in the world does that mean we want a permanently weakened Russia on the Eastern front and do we want them so weak that they start to lose their integrity as an economy and then what do we do on the energy front for example or on the fertilizer or food front and I don't see as you just said I don't see anybody talking about these things with any degree of seriousness it's actually quite jaw-dropping to me that what we are getting is uh it's something like governance by single Pixel tweet you know we're in it with the freedom loving ukrainians and like as far as I can tell there aren't held a lot of those by the way we're in it with the freedom loving ukrainians till the end it's like well what do you mean the end here I don't understand what a Russian loss would look like I mean if the Americans were on the other side there's no damn way there's no way you guys would lose like you might not win and maybe no one will win but you certainly wouldn't lose and am I missing something here or is this is is this discussion as shallow as it appears your comment that when you whenever you say anything that questions the story that's being laid forth about the war you get immediately labeled you know as a satanic Putin worshiper so to speak all that is to me is evidence that this debate is being handled at a very juvenile level that's what happened in World War One by the way I mean people reacted incredibly stupidly as World War one unfolded and got their arm caught in the band saw let's say and tore the entire continent apart for four years for for basically no gain whatsoever that's right so it looks to me like that's the right historical analog here and you know that's that's exactly right I think we have a very high potential here of everyone losing a lot and what disturbs me greatly is that I I have yet to are to have anyone articulate to me any sound uh argument for what the end looks like what the how this culminates in making the world a better place in in added peace to the world um what you you certainly don't hear that within the US government I haven't heard that nor do you hear peace talks going on let's let's find a way to uh resolve this so that we have as a few people dying at the end of the day as possible and we don't hear that at all what you do here uh it hasn't been that long since you heard Solinski and other people in his government talking about things like you know this is going to end with with our tanks Ukrainian tanks on moscow's uh uh Red Square now that raises all sorts of questions like how is that going to happen whose tanks will those be will those be American Tanks i i that's that's certainly not a vision shared by Americans I don't think I've never heard our president or any of my colleagues in the senate or counterparts in the House of Representatives uh uh envisioned that kind of outcome I don't know what victory looks like under their plan and that's deeply concerning because if you if you don't have an end in mind you're going to be taking in all sorts of of strange directions I guarantee you Putin's got an end in mind and it's not favorable to us well so what what do you suppose Putin would be willing to settle for and and what do you think he could sell his people as a sufficient Victory if peace talks were to proceed now I also know by the way as far as it's possible to know these things and I've been told by very reliable observers who should be in a position to know that there were peace negotiations on the table last March and that those were scuttled primarily on the American side by the Biden Administration so that's rather disturbing and so I it would also be very useful for me to be able to conceptualize something approximating what the West might accept as terms for peace given that as you pointed out the ultimate extension of the war in the direction that zielinski's more extreme statements have indicated well it's just a non-starter first of all many people have tried in the last 200 years to advance their tanks all the way to Moscow and that tended to end very badly for anyone who tried to do it and that happened a minimum of three times and the same thing happened every time and then we should also point out with 100 certainty that there isn't a chance in hell of Ukrainian tanks say made in the west ending up in Red Square without the Russians doing everything that's in their power to make absolutely certain that that never happens so yeah no so go ahead well I I was I I'm interested in the fact that there seems to be virtually no negotiation whatsoever on the Peace front you know this should be Biden's number one concern as far as I'm concerned it's like what the hell are we doing here in the west why aren't we negotiating for peace you know on our terms let's say because I think the Russians are in a bit of a corner with with 100 percent uh purposeful intent and then so so let's talk about that why aren't we negotiating negotiating and then let's also talk about how this war escalates as it moves forward and when it actually moves from a proxy war which it is now to whatever we now are willing to Define as an actual War so let's start with the why are do you know of any negotiations that are occurring in good faith on the Peace front and if not like why not no I don't and it's perplexing you know in the early uh months of this conflict uh there was speculation in Washington I don't know how much truth to it but there was some speculation in Washington that a negotiated peace could look something like um formal recognition uh by the west of uh the Russian occupation from eight or nine years ago in Crimea and then uh perhaps a partial partitioning of parts of the russian-speaking areas of the donbos region and that there would be perhaps not formal recognition there but a negotiated ceasefire of Russia's occupation of some of those areas but no one has been talking about any of those outcomes for many months I if there are peace negotiations going on which I I really hope they are they are I haven't heard any of them I haven't heard about them and they're certainly not inclined to talk about them in public and that's one of the things that's most concerning about this is that you're picking a fight with a huge bear uh and look people were fond in the United States of saying you know Russia's economy can't support a full-blown War yeah well that's true true but as you pointed out there's no end to their nuclear stockpile and their their weapons do pose a formidable threat uh to the entire world should they choose to use them that's why we've got to be so careful here so to enter into that without a strategy for achieving peace for a resolution of it is a Fool's errand uh if ever there were one right so okay so here's what we've established so far as we're spending money like a drunken sailor and and facilitating an endless degree of criminal Enterprise and also funneling money into the military industrial complex at an heretofore unprecedented rate we have no vision for victory that's laid out that's realistic in any real sense and we also have no vision for what might constitute peace so then you again you have to throw up your hands and think just what the hell is going on here and I really can't understand it as much as I try I like what in the world are we doing is it truly as shallow as posturing morally in this opinion poll driven way that says well once again we're champions of democracy and freedom and you know we're putting our military might Behind These wonderful Freedom Fighters which as I said are ingenuely certain Supply in Ukraine it's hard for me to believe that we can possibly possibly be that preposterously shallow and stupid but and venal and greedy as well but it does seem to be the simplest explanation for for what's going on um how do you see like the other thing I'm seeing is that we are getting dragged into the bandsaw like one inch of cloth at a time right and there's movements forward incrementally towards the abyss with the continued provision of more and more sophisticated Weaponry to the ukrainians now at some point that becomes war and I suppose that that the point of no return is reached when when it's when aircraft are being supplied or when there's what there's movement of NATO troops on the ground it's something like that how do you see this if this doesn't cease if it doesn't move towards peace even if the ukrainians do advance and the Russians Retreat so we're winning how do you see this war escalating in the most realistic sense over the next few months well look uh the early hope was that Putin would get bored or Putin would get frustrated or he'd get worried and then that he would withdraw I don't see any of this happening right now and so I I uh unless the United States and other serious outside actors who have played a serious role in it so far dedicate their efforts to trying to resolve this uh trying to achieve a peaceful resolution I I it's hard for me to see how this doesn't culminate in at least a significant Regional war and heaven forbid a World War that's why we've we've got to turn this around as far as why it's happening as far as why there continues to be U.S support for it in the absence of a peace plan the only thing I can speculate here is that for whatever reason it's popular it's popular with the American people they see many see it as a conflict between good and evil Russia is the villain Ukraine is the uh innocent victim The Virtuous victim and the United States is the hero it can uh from a vantage point thousands of miles away use its immense Force it's immense resources financially and militarily to try to influence this supposedly without a single American life being put at risk the problem with this narrative this story that allows the effort to be so popular as popular as it has been so far is that I don't think the American people are being told the whole story I don't think they're being adequately advised as to the risks you know if you uh you go to a doctor you go to a surgeon who proposes a surgical intervention of some sort uh usually there will be a series of benefits and risks that the doctor would weigh out with you going to war should involve nothing less than that certainly and I I don't think the American Press is reporting on what the risks are many politicians are very content in fact they're they're really eager to continue to perpetuate this uh um villain victim hero uh Paradigm because it sells it's it it it's it's swelling it rings a certain um uh populist chord within us but I think over time that's going to fade it's going to fade because among other things we we've got problems here that are becoming apparent you know Jordan last year at the United States just just 2022 alone we we lost 110 000 Americans to fentanyl poisoning that fentanyl is being manufactured in Mexico being uh flooded across our borders by the drug cartels as they traffic humans and with them drugs including fentanyl 110 000 Americans died of that last year uh looked up a a un report recently you know how many civilians have been killed in Ukraine since this conflict started if the source from the U.N is accurate it's less than 8 000 uh uh since this war started and so it's not to say that that isn't tragic it's not to say that they are the same they are not they're very different but I I think the American people are are starting to see number one that there are grave risks uh uh to what we're doing in Ukraine and that unless we decide not to we're going to get drawn into a massive war yeah well it's a okay so you have a convenient distraction hypothesis there I mean one of the things that really uphold me in recent weeks you know I was remembering that speech that Biden gave in front of the red stage you know with the military people behind them and not creepy at all not creepy at all no no no no well and I have some insiders in the Democrat Party talking to me about why such things happen and I know that Biden's idiot advisors were playing with this I mean this is so Preposterous but it happens to be the case with this dark Brandon idea the propagandistic idea that Biden has been seen by people as relatively ineffectual in the sort of classic masculine sense and it was time to crank up the imagery in relationship to his shadow side like his sort of militaristic tough guy Shadow side and if you go look up Darth Brandon on the web you can see all these memes that people have produced putting them forward is kind of an action hero and this is exactly what I saw with him posturing in Ukraine he was wearing his black trench coat and his uh you know military Ray-Ban sunglasses with reflective coating and there's a nice air raid siren going on in the background and it looks to me like it looks to me like shallow narrative drama of the sort that you just described and then that makes for a very convenient distraction when there were important things that should be being dealt with that aren't being dealt with and I do believe that the people who posture and strut in front of the world stage and who think image is everything are willing to do whatever they need to do to put forward the Right image independent of the material reality that brings me to a specific question I had for you too you know I was surprised actually when I reached out to you to talk about the Russian war that you would actually speak not because I don't think you have the courage to because I think you do but I don't see there is anything in this for you at least in the short term except loss as you already pointed out if anybody at the moment stands up and says hey guys I don't know what the hell we're doing here but uh something's rotten in the state of Denmark all you get out of that is uh the kind of abuse that's generally reserved for people who are being straightforwardly traitorous you know because we've already decided who the good guys are here and it's us and you know if you're anti-war in Ukraine you're pro-putin and God you could hardly that's as bad as being pro-hitler let's say or being pro Stalin and so why in the world are you willing to talk about this so yeah there's a lot to lose uh by talking about it there's far more to lose by not talking about it look Jordan I can't know what I know uh and not say something because what we stand to lose if we say nothing and if we continue down our current path is so much greater than whatever discomfort a politician can endure uh when people uh scream things that aren't true uh this really is a significant problem and and I don't mean to minimize in any way the threat that Vladimir Putin May pose to the world I I actually feel the way I do not in spite of the fact that he's a villain but because of it because he's a villain because he's got nuclear weapons uh uh uh more than anybody else in the world in terms of counting up the number of weapons the number of warheads um we've got to be very careful and because he's a villain we've got to make sure we know what we're doing if we're gonna fight for Ukraine on Ukraine's behalf to the point where we're committing ourselves essentially uh in order to defend our own honor now that we've sorted into this if we're committing ourselves to war we need to be clear about that with the American people otherwise this is going to cost a lot of lives okay so so on the GOP side of things are you like are you a lone voice in your depiction of the danger that's associated with the escalation of this war or what's the situation on the Republican side in terms of attitude towards this war is there anything approximating a consensus how much of the Republican party is more hawk-like um what's the situation on the ground on the Republican side there's a small handful of Republicans uh but a growing number of Republicans who are starting to Express concerns a few of us in the Senate uh probably uh two or three dozen maybe four dozen in the house who have started to express concerns about it uh and I I think the number is building because people realize uh what's at stake well what's surprising though Jordan is the number of Democrats who are not raising these questions I've got allies uh who I've worked with for years on the Democratic side um issues dealing with the War Powers I've teamed up with Democrats I've teamed up with some very unlikely allies like uh like Bernie Sanders uh we we've run measures under the War Powers Resolution uh the first time the War Powers Act was successfully invoked by passing a resolution you know in that case to get us out of the undeclared war in Yemen uh uh was with with me and with Bernie Sanders but this time around I don't see any Democrats in the congress not in the house not in the Senate who are at least not publicly raising the concern saying hey maybe we shouldn't be doing this I hope that will change I frankly expect that to change but it I haven't seen it yet we'll be right back first we wanted to give you a sneak peek at Jordan's new series Exodus so the Hebrews created history as we know it you don't get away with anything and so you might think you can bend the fabric of reality and that you can treat people instrumentally and that you can bow to the Tyrant and violate your conscience without cost you will pay the piper it's going to call you out of that slavery into Freedom even if that pulls you into the desert see that there's something else going on here that is far more Cosmic and deeper than what you can imagine the highest ethical Spirit to which we're beholden is presented precisely as that spirit that allies itself with the cause of Freedom against tyranny I want villains to get punished but do you want the villains to learn before they have to pay the ultimate price that's such a Christian question well you'd think the lefties would at least be worried about government corporate military-industrial collusion right at minimum now we've seen this weird shift on the left too because we've also seen the left radically support big Pharma which is definitely not something I ever thought I would see in my lifetime it's so utterly preposterous but independent of the other risks that the war presents the risk of dumping 113 billion dollars into the hands of the corporate military the corporate part of the military industrial complex you'd think would be something that would raise the hackles of let's say people like AOC and Bernie Sanders and as you said there's been radio silence on that front or perhaps even the opposite of that like full-fledged support for the you know the uh the brave Ukrainian Democrats and those on the side of democracy in Ukraine let's say so that seems a bit Preposterous now you and I also talked about the fact that there are material risks in the escalation of this war to the Integrity of the American state you know you're not a big government Advocate and anytime there is a war what you generally see is not only a tremendous amount of tax money dumped into the hands of the corporate side of the military-industrial complex but a huge growth in government bureaucracy and overreach that's very seld ruled back so where what do you see um unfolding as a danger on that front the modern nation-state by necessity when it when it fights Wars it necessarily needs to consolidate as much power as possible and so that concentration of power tends to cause the government to become larger taxes to be more intrusive and and I can use the word taxes here broadly because in the United States the way we Finance our government more government spending and ends up producing a backdoor invisible tax because we've just been inflating our currency and people are are making the same amount of money but it it buys less and once that happens in order to fund a war uh when the war ends to the degree it ends government tends not to recede the taxes tend to be in place at least for quite a while and the general levels of government funding might Retreat some but never do they return to pre-war levels there was a Harvard Professor named Roger Porter who wrote a book about this about 30 years ago called war in the rise of the state and I think we're seeing it on display so yeah that's that is another concern is that as as we do these things we become accustomed to spending this much money for Ukraine some of which is funneled through this or that entity within the state department or the U.S u.said program or or some other program through the Department of Defense some of those funding levels might go down but I doubt they will ever Retreat to the levels where they were prior to this particular conflict and that's a deep concern it might also explain why some progressives are more inclined to be supportive of this along with the fact that it happens to be their president a Democrat who's in office at the time if this were Trump doing this uh I can only imagine there'd be many of them at least would be calling bloody horror over it right yeah well Trump and his recent statements have come out very um bluntly because after all he is Trump on the war front claiming such things as with if he had been president this wouldn't have happened which I think is a somewhat credible claim but also that if he was President which is a non-zero possibility that he would end the war in 24 hours you know and I'm I'm not remarking on that because I necessarily regard the 24-hour claim is valid but I am remarking on it because Trump has come out very bluntly as opposed to this war and also highlighting its dangers and so that's an interesting development I don't know what's happened with the other people who've thrown their hat into the Republican primary ring so far on the foreign policy front do you have any sense of that uh they've been fairly quiet on this war as far as I can tell I think he's the only one so far who has raised a lot of uh concern as bluntly as he did I believe Governor DeSantis has expressed some concern with it I I don't know exactly for how far he's delved into it but this is an early indication of where I think the Republican party is going uh to be expressing as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have both done expressing skepticism about our involvement in this conflict okay okay so let's go back to the peace issue now because I've been trying to figure out what might constitute the broad low resolution outlines of an acceptable um stalemate or even well we could even aim for a productive piece with Russia over the long run and with the Ukraine Integrity involved in that that would be a lovely stretch goal let's say but what you laid out was something like recognition of Russia's dominion over Crimea and then now so everyone who's watching and listening knows that in eastern Ukraine the majority of the population are Russian native language speakers now Ukraine in Ukrainian as a language is quite allied semantically with Russia so but there are a lot of Russian speakers particularly in eastern Ukraine and the Russians have claimed that they have been targeted they have been the targets of persecution for their linguistic minority status or within the broader Ukraine and that that's been a problem and that part of the reason Russia made its incursions into Ukraine was to protect its people it really regarded as citizens in the broader sense now you posited that one possibility on the Peace front would not only be the recognition of the Russian uh possession of Crimea which happened about nine ten years ago but also that the some of the territories that are subject more to territorial dispute in the East might be placed on the negotiating table with regards to Russian sovereignty and you can imagine a situation where the deal was well why don't we open up the discussion to something like a true plebiscite or referendum and let the people in those areas vote for who they would rather be allied with and if the U.N could get its act together and act something like a true uh objective Arbiter which strikes me as highly unlikely given the dysfunction of the UN but in any case then the people of the Dawn bass region for example could exercise their right to self-determination and that could be part of the negotiating strategy now do you think that that tentative vision of what might constitute a peace plan do you think that that's to put forward something like that is indicative of the kind of weakness that might embolden Putin I mean if we're trying to be critical about that notion it could perhaps and and as I said when we talked about that a few minutes ago this was speculation that occurred during the first um uh two maybe three quarters of 2022 speculation that that's that might be where we ended up uh speculation on that front has died down since then uh particularly in the last month or two uh as you've seen Ukraine making increasingly bold uh sometimes unrealistically bold assertions about what it's what it wants to do for example uh Ukraine has been talking about the fact that it now wants to take back Crimea completely and it wants to completely uh Purge all of Russia from anything that you know until fairly recently was considered Ukraine uh most of my colleagues even those who were very supportive of uh this conflict and of what we're doing with regard to the conflict don't regard that as realistic Russia is now so heavily invested in Crimea but that that seems unlikely I I wouldn't want to rule it out but my point is this given how aggressive I think it's worth probably worth ruling out I mean there isn't a chance that Russia will allow Crimea to be retaken by Ukraine without without pushing this right to the brink right I I certainly don't see it and now that Ukraine has been has gone into this posture of being very aggressive talking about taking back Crimea pushing them out off the dunbas and everywhere else and then sending tanks to moscow's Red Square if all of a sudden Ukraine were to do an about face and say okay never mind we'll give you recognition of Crimea now let's talk about what else you would need to do it perhaps Russia could see that as a sign of weakness and then become further embolden in his efforts that's why I think this is so unfortunate and I think one of the reasons why zelenski has felt so comfortable being so bold in this is that he's seen the the gravy train he's he's seen the immense support from the United States and I guess somewhat understandably has assumed okay they're they're with me I've got the world's greatest superpower behind me so I can afford to be bold but being bold in that circumstance might just ultimately worked to everyone's disadvantage okay so I want to flip this now a bit if you don't mind into a more metaphysical domain so I've been recently um completed a seminar on the biblical Book of Exodus with a group of Scholars in Miami and that's available on The Daily wire plus platform the first eight of those and the last nine will be released very soon and one of the things we talked about given that we were discussing the book of Exodus were was the nature and the meaning of the Ten Commandments and one of the most mysterious Commandments but also one that I think is incredibly Jermaine at the moment is do not take the lord's name in vain now you know Skeptics listing might say why in the world are we talking about such Arcane matters but the reason we are is because I think you can make a very strong case that the Commandments constitute part of the set of implicit and explicit a priority axioms that govern the polity of free western states and in any case their Elementary moral rules that's one way of thinking about it do not murder for example that seems you know reasonable do not envy what your neighbor has so no covetousness which would be a good thing for envious people contemplate for a very long period of time but this do not take the lord's name in vain it's very interesting one because people generally mean think that means don't swear you know don't say God damn or something like that and that isn't what it means what it means is do not assign holy motivations to things you're doing for your own nefarious purposes that's what it means and I think that's the cardinal sin of our time and that's what people do when they claim unearned moral virtue so moral virtue is very hard to establish and you can take it out of the religious domain and say that your moral virtue is actually the same as your social reputation now it's a little more complicated than that but if you're a good person and you act productively and generously and reciprocally then you get a reputation for doing so and that reputation is of incredible value it means people will trade with you they'll interact with you they'll trust you it means that if you run a business that your customers regard you as reliable and will spread your name around in a positive way and that's brand value fundamentally in every business person knows how integrally important to their economic success brand value it's that's earned moral virtue honored moral virtue is what you attempt to Garner if you're narcissistic Psychopathic Machiavellian and sadistic and that's the dark tetrad group of personality traits and what I see happening continually on the political front at the moment and I would say this is particularly the case on the left is that there's a battle for the acquisition of as much unearned moral virtue as possible and I think that's what's happening in this situation is that we can collapse the situation in Russia Ukraine into this simple narrative which you just described which is you know heroic ukrainians uh embattled by demonic Tyrant supported by equally heroic allies that those being the you know shallowly pro-west pro-war westerners and that's a good distraction for more serious issues you mentioned the fentanyl crisis and that's only one of many things that we might be attending to carefully if we were wise and it also enables everyone to stand up and wave wave flags and be heroic and virtuous without doing one bit of the effort necessary to actually undertake that in their life and I think that is a compelling motivation for the acceptance of these three pixel narratives so and that just seems to be happening continually and so we're walking ourselves ever more blindly towards and what incalculable Abyss proclaiming all the way that we're only doing what good people would be doing because after all we're the good people and we have you know nobility democracy and God on our side so well what do you think about that well as I mean you're a religious man you're a metaphysical thinker to some degree what do you think about that as a set of metaphysical presumptions you think that bears any relationship to our current circumstance without question it does look biblical teachings and certainly The Ten Commandments are instructive they're anything but Arcane or esoteric or outdated in in addition to regardless of one's religious worldview many of us as religious people also regard them as Eternal truths that are important to our Eternal progression and salvation but even if you didn't if you look at those Ten Commandments in including those that you just described they also outline a formula for happiness uh they because they prescribe the manner in which you interact with your fellow human beings there's no more evil that can come from humans than when they view themselves as virtuous and their actions in a particular cause as so unmitigatedly uh right that everyone else must be wrong and when they're confronting a fellow being or a multiple fellow beings or a huge nation of them as undeserving of virtue there's no more evil that can come in this world than when that Paradigm comes into play when that contrast comes into play and so that's one of the reasons why uh I I had not heard uh before that particular analysis of taking the lord's name in vain when you add that to other Commandments uh biblical Commandments including uh covetousness for example uh admonitions against theft against adultery against killing those all kind of have a consistent theme in them and so yeah I I think that can come into play in circumstances like these in fact I think that's what drives most Wars people start to think of themselves as virtuous assign immense unmitigated virtue to their own cause and assign evil to their adversary and that's how people get involved in massive conflicts mm-hmm yeah well that that's the two dimensions of unearned moral virtue the first is we're all good without any effort and so that's pretty damn convenient because it actually turns out to be an extraordinarily difficult Endeavor to actually be good because the devil's in the details and you have to set your house in order from the levels of the personal all the way up through the levels of the social to actually be good and that requires a lifetime of commitment but also falling into that narrative also gives you a very convenient place to put Satan himself so instead of having to scrub your own conscience and determine where you might be let's say falling short of the glory of God you can say well no all the evil is aggregated conveniently in the in the body of our enemy and this would be potent in this particular case you can Heap nothing but derisive Hellfire and Scorn upon them and then you're scot-free on that front too and so all that's a little too convenient I do think this interpretation by the way of taking the lord's name in vain I think it is in keeping with the original intent of the formulators of The Commandments because I've looked at a lot of different translations and we beat this idea to death in this seminar and this notion that well and you could it makes sense conceptually too right I mean you can't imagine that there could be a greater evil than doing the easy thing for you and then claiming that that's actually ordained by omniscience omnipresence and omnipotence itself that's right and I and I certainly think your your conclusion makes a fair amount of intuitive sense particularly if I don't understand you to be saying uh that blaspheming is also not a bad thing I think blaspheming uh uh uh uh desecrating the name of God is not something that he smiles upon but I also think there's a lot of Truth within what you're describing and this can come into Focus I I like the framework that you put together when you think about something like a national social credit score like what they've been doing in China or with an ESG score as is starting to exist in the corporate world if you can assign yourself a number under uh something that purports to be an objective standard that can dramatically accelerate the degree to which you assign virtue to yourself and other people like you and provide an equally dangerous mechanism by which you can assign evil to others and that's why it's it's so important as long as we're within the realm of biblical teachings to also remember admonitions about uh you know looking first to remove the being from your own eye before trying to remove the mode from your neighbor's eye right right yeah well that but I and I also think that this this easy moral virtue that we're describing does lift that burden from people right and I can understand why people want that burden lifted because if it is a beam in your eye and an emote and a beam by the way for people listening is essentially a log the in the biblical injunction there is you might want to be assured to begin with that you're a hell of a lot Blinder than you think and that you're a signation of evil to nothing but your opponents is so unbelievably corrupt on your part that you can hardly imagine it and that's you know that's a very shocking thing to realize in yourself if you ever do realize that and it's no wonder people want to avoid that but I really do think it's the moral conundrum of our time you know because you pointed out you talked about esgs and social credit scores and so forth because we're also doing the same thing on a broader on the broader metaphysical front so for example there is a panoply of environmental and economic concerns that beset us for example we've overfished the oceans terribly and there's a variety of things we're doing environmentally that are less than wise a multitude of complex problems that beset us that would require some diligent effort and sacrifice to set right as well as wading through the cognitive complexity necessary to actually detail out the problems something that people like Bjorn lomberger particularly good at doing and instead what we do is we collapse all of the apocalyptic threats into a single threat and so that's the threat of environmental disaster we collapse the multitudinous causes of environmental disaster into a single variable which is carbon and then we collapse all the necessity for pursuing more moral virtue into doing nothing but being opposed to carbon and then we proceed merrily along our way and there's something there's something truly and catastrophically dangerous about that particularly when one of the consequences and we started to see this unfold in Europe is that not only do we put idiotic virtue signaling policies in place that raise energy costs for everyone falling most heavily on the poor we make energy much more unreliable than it has been in the past we increase our dependence on tyrants um who the tyrants who control the fossil fuel industry let's say outside of the West and uh we actually increase the amount of pollution we're producing and so that's pretty much um failure on all fronts including those defined by the people who are putting forth these propositions we see this on the ESG front too environment uh what is it social and governance this idea that capitalists have a moral um what there's a moral imperative for capitalists to subsume their capitalist Enterprise to a broader stakeholder Vision which is essentially a vision of State media and corporate collusion and that virtue is then defined as that I see that happening on the ESG front is that there are no shortage of people who've gained the capitalist system out there those are the sorts of people that you know Russell Brand and Joel Rogan and Bernie Sanders in his better moments object to they've gamed the damn system a hundred percent they've accrued a tremendous amount of wealth through mechanisms that are essentially corrupt they're guilty as hell about it and now they're looking for an easy moral out and and some of that's genuine attempt to deal with the guilt they actually have and should have and some of it's just for show but it's extraordinarily dangerous we can make it for you into that uh was it yesterday that a resolution was passed um tell me about the resolution that was passed with regard to ESG policies in the in the Senate and the house yesterday right yes so there was a regulation put out by the Biden Administration uh trying to move ESG forward in the way 401K accounts retirement accounts are managed and there is a process under something called the Congressional review act that allows us to pass a resolution disapproving of it it's called the resolution of disapproval that if passed by both houses and submitted to the president if it's unless it's vetoed by the president then the regulation in question gets taken down so both houses pass it past it and it'll now have the president's desk the president is widely expected to veto that resolution and we in all probability with the virtual certainty will not have the two-thirds super majorities in both houses necessary to override that veto this illustrates a problem within our system of government and that we've allowed executive branch regulations to make new law and then uh the the way the Congressional radio act is written Congress has to undo it with the acquiescence of the same president whose administration put out the regulation to begin with in our system of government no one can make law you cannot make federal law under Article 1 Section 1 and Article 1 Section 7 of The Constitution without Congress passing the same piece of legislation in the house and of the Senate and then presented to the president so we need to flip that we need to take away the ability of the executive branch to make new law new policy uh tantamount to law within the executive branch but this was a good exercise with regard to ESG what we've signaled is that a majority of the house and a majority of the Senate opposes ESG at least opposes forcing ESG onto the American economy uh through things like this okay so just so people who are listening are clear about this so large companies Vanguard BlackRock Etc who aggregate Pension funds primarily but more than that so that would be the Pension funds that all of you listening and and watching are dependent on are almost all of you your own personal pension Investments they have decided to subordinate the interests of the companies who's uh whose Enterprises These funds are invested in to the demands of the climate apocalypse essentially so the notion is well the environmental catastrophe that besets us is so severe that mere fiduciary interest which would be growing your pension is not sufficient you have to adopt the um the Net Zero Paris Accord goals and your corporations have to devote themselves to that and then in addition it's not only on the environmental front it's also on the social front which means that corporations have to buy into the entire diversity equity and inclusivity movement which is essentially a radical left-wing movement or they're not doing their Duty properly at the highest moral level now the problem with that is that the responsibility of investment funds is to grow the is to preserve and grow the Investments of the people who are for example going to be dependent on their pensions and that that shouldn't be subordinated to any other interest now the ESG pushers have said oh look we can have our cake and eat it too because if we invest responsibly whatever the hell that means we're actually going to see greater returns now there's no empirical evidence for that whatsoever in fact the CEO of Vanguard in the last two weeks Vanguard was doing was pushing the ESG cart assiduously just like BlackRock the Vanguard CEO came out and said that there's no evidence whatsoever that ESG investment outperforms non-esg investment over any stretch of time and so that's that whole story is starting to fall apart but people should pay very close attention to this because your financial Futures at stake here the ESG pushers Vanguard somewhat less so now BlackRock State Street Etc own 25 of the biggest 500 companies in the U.S these are major league players and so the fact that their gerrymandering gerrymandering their financial responsibility in a very crooked and underhanded way aggregating the votes of all their individual shareholders into their own hands and using that to warp and demand the structure of the market this has real world consequences for virtually everyone or anyone who has a pension we might as well just go with that and certainly many many investors other than that and so that's another example of this the pathology of this proclivity to pursue under moral virtue you have these great fund managers who are guilty about their crookedness and so they're trying to atone in a false Way by by pretending to Ally with this radical leftist narrative which is insanely Preposterous to begin with they're doing that in a way that's destructive to the financial interests of the people they're supposed to serve and uh they're doing that well instead of doing the hard work of actually trying to put their moral houses in order anyways that was pushed back against a bit in the last week by now how many Democrats were in favor of the disapproval measure in the Senate I think it was two or three uh I'm gonna have to check the final vote Talent yeah there were two or three as at the moment I voted who who were with us on that one and uh and I'm not sure about in the House of Representatives I assume they were a small handful over there as well but the right but there were some which is very interesting yes that were that there were any right and so they're seeing this thing that that you're describing which is that the these fund managers are subverting the interests of investors from truck drivers to teachers from uh uh surgeons to service station attendants uh people who have put their retirement money into a fund and are expecting a return or getting less of a return than they would otherwise get because they're betraying their fiduciary obligation but do not fear they they probably say to themselves we're virtuous they assigned this unearned moral virtue to themselves and doing it and therefore say not only is it not wrong for us to do this it would be wrong for us not to do this and people who don't do this are themselves wrong and so we must crush them that's what ESG is about it's not just about them wanting to assign virtue to themselves it's about wanting to crush anyone who doesn't do that you see if because if you don't crush them then they will beat you in the competitive race because they understand that what they're doing is is is not going to make them competitive in the free Marketplace of ideas right now you tangled up the Chinese social credit system in this discussion and so I figure we should unpack and elaborate on that so one of the things that gives a company competitive Advantage for example with regards to being prioritized for loans under the ESG framework is that they're they regulate their activities so that they minimize such things as their carbon footprint their so-called carbon footprint and they abide by these diversity equity and inclusivity mandates that are radical radically leftist in in the most fundamental Manner and people still might say well you know I don't have time to think about this even if it has to do with my pension but what people should think about is that this is going to start to affect them personally on the personal front very very rapidly because if corporations are held to account on the moral front for their um environmental footprint let's say and their failure to comply with the radically leftist dictates of the Dei apparatus there's no reason at all to assume that that's not going to be extended to typical citizens and the probability is very high that it's going to be so for example if we put in place digital currencies which we're trying to do very diligently at the moment and that's already happened to some degree in the form of credit cards because they're a digital currency of sorts then what will happen and this is already happening in places like China is that all of your individual spending is going to be assessed for its concordance with these apocalyptic environmental goals and your compliance with such things as Dei as the Dei ethos and that if you don't abide by those Norms you will be punished but through taxation um first of all through moral warnings but then through taxation that's as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow and the there are already plans of foot in all sorts of different domains on the international governance front to ensure that consumers do bear the brunt of their anti-environment consuming decisions and that'll mean Less meat it'll mean lower number of calories per day it'll mean something approximating rationing because that's already being contemplated in places like the UK it'll certainly mean radical limitations on private transportation ownership whether that's a gas fossil fuel powered car or an electric car because people who are pushing this already know that we don't have the power grid to support widespread distribution of electric vehicles it'll mean that you won't be able to travel by air except insofar as use you don't exceed your quota for air travel and people might think that's all conspiratorial but they could go and do their own research and find out very rapidly that it's not conspiratory at all and so that's all part of this problem of the demand by the top-down globalist utopian types to accrue to themselves under moral virtue it's like we're going to regulate your behavior to a swash our guilt and that's a that is an absolutely appalling sin let's say to put it very bluntly and so it was heartening to see that some Democrats even are starting to alert themselves to the fact that you know this might not be in anyone's interest our entire system is built up on the idea in fact the American Experience from the beginning has been built around the idea that danger Dangerous things happen with the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few that's true in government especially it also has its own manifestations in the business world that's why American antitrust laws are built up around consumer protection they're built up around ensuring consumer choice because when consumers have options there is competition and competition tends to bring down prices and increase quality when any of those things are destroyed that is when the the levers we have in place to control to protect us against the dangerous accumulation of power even either in government or in business uh the the Common Man and the common woman suffers uh and ultimately all of society suffers what you have with the ESG movement is something that could easily combine the the the the worst of the accumulation of power in business and the accumulation of power in government into one so there they understand that uh they're running working against the clock they're they're on a collision course with reality unless they can somehow get government to strap on the ESG effort and to make it the government's own because otherwise uh ESG and the United States could face a demise as a result of antitrust actions because ultimately the ESG agreements uh presuppose agreements not to compete you've got entities saying we're not going to compete in this way for these customers let's all agree that we're not going to do that and exclude anyone who doesn't that's illegal in fact that carries potentially criminal penalties under antitrust laws uh and then they could also face lawsuits from shareholders whose value has been diminished as a result of a betrayal of their fiduciary obligation to their investors both of those things could find their antidote in government again taking on the uh the uh they are taking on the objective of ESG and mandating it through reporting requirements immunizing it in one way or another refusing to to uh go after people who have engaged in agreements not to compete and that's why this vote yesterday was so important it was one of the first volleys in the war about incorporating ESG into government strapping it on the apparatus of government and forcing it on the American people even though it is likely to be vetoed I think that veto uh is going to lead to a lot of change because I think a lot of Americans are tired of this thing people who in the past maybe even voted consistently Democratic are being frustrated by this as well they should be so over what time span is this process going to unfold I think it'll happen over the next two years I think it'll end up being a big uh topic of discussion between Governor DeSantis president Trump and the other Republicans running for president I think all of them are going to latch onto this and present it to the American people as hey we know you don't want this we don't we know you you don't want your entire fate decided by this awful combination of a few big corporate Titans on Wall Street and a small handful of executive branch bureaucrats in Washington so let's do it a different way let's let the free market work and let's let's let our system of government work so that power isn't dangerously combined in the hands of the few right well that's a true fascism that that Union Yes corporate and government and media interests at the very Pinnacle of power it's what fascism means it's the definition right well in it if antifa was the real thing that's what they would be or that would that's what they would be opposing right now and so so how about the veto uh um decision over what time span will that unfold in relationship to Biden he's got 10 days 10 days to to veto it I suspect it won't take it long okay okay so that's coming down the pipelines very quickly well one of the presidential candidates Vivek ramaswamy has made much of his career out of battle against ESG corporate government collusion right they set up the strive funds which are analogs of I think the BlackRock investment strategy essentially that but with issuing entirely any ESG governance requirements and he's had a fair bit of success with that in the free market and is certainly making that Central to his platform for presidency so I'm going to release a discussion I had with Vivek on this channel this is definitely going to be a Hot Topic it's too bad because it's quite Arcane it's hard for people who are not centrally involved on the economic or financial or political front to understand why something as apparently mundane as whatever constitutes ESG might have real world consequences for them it's hard to make it a you know a trenchant point in the imagination of Americans but it's a good thing to try to alert people to just exactly how dangerous this is and exactly what's at stake for them the subversion of their savings to a radical anti-human environmentalist apocalyptic agenda allied with this radical leftist approach to the amelioration of social problems Equity diversity and inclusivity make no mistake about it ladies and gentlemen that's precisely what ESG mandates do and that's exactly their purpose their conscious purpose and that is exactly their outcome and so okay so Mike please go ahead and the American people are not dumb they may they may have a lot on their hand chance a lot of things to accomplish and therefore not a lot of time to delve into exactly how ESG works or what it is but they're not dumb and they're smart and they intuitively know that it's not a good thing to have a small handful of corporate Elites making decisions that will make life more difficult for them making life more expensive and less lucrative in terms of any Investments they may have and so they get that and they also get the fact that these big business Elites who are being facilitated uh who want to be facilitated by a government that wants to help them in in making the people less poor American people don't take kindly to that and that's why I think we win this at the end of the day but it's going to require some effort and some explanation as to how this works right well DeSantis has been pushing hard back against ESG with certain amount of success and there's other states that are starting to join in that fight the uh the association of Chief Financial officers State Chief Financial officers I think there's 28 States involved in that Enterprise they're also um vociferously vociferous critics of the ASG movement and so there is gathering there is gathering impetus on that front so that's a good thing to see so what's what are your plans for Action at the current moment like what how are you setting your priorities and how would you describe them to the people who are watching and listening look my priorities always uh stem ultimately from a desire to restore the Constitution's twin structural protections uh twin structural protections one operates vertically uh we call it federalism it defines the relationship between our national government the federal government of the United States and the states and their political subdivisions like cities towns and counties the other is horizontal and it defines the relationship between the executive branch headed by the president the legislative branch where I work uh Congress and at the judicial branch that interprets the laws headed by the Supreme Court we've drifted far since the mid to late 1930s in this country from both the vertical protection of federalism and the horizontal protection of separation of powers we have done that as part of this effort to consolidate government power into the hands of the few what it's done is it's taken power away from these states and localities and moved it to Washington and then within Washington we've taken lawmaking power the power to set federal policy embodied in law and hand it over to unelected unaccountable bureaucrats or in some cases the president himself all of this has endured to the benefit of the wealthy the well-connected the political class but it's been harmful to everyone else you know as of a few years ago a disproportionate number of the wealthiest counties in the entire United States were suburbs of Washington DC this is an area that manufactures nothing there are no gold mines here is it's not a technological innovation Hub necessarily the money is here because the power is here concentrated in the hands of a few Elites So to that end I've been pushing for years a reform that I'm going to push aggressively in this Congress a series of reforms sometimes known under the banner of The reigns act that would require that anytime an executive branch regulation in effect a law put out by an executive branch bureaucrat for that to take effect if the rains act were to be passed it would have to first pass both houses of Congress and then be signed into law by the president otherwise you're circumventing the whole process I'm going to be pushing that over and over again I'm going to be subdividing it out incorporating many Reigns acts into other legislative Provisions whether we're talking about a farm bill or a general Appropriations bill or something else I I want to see executive branch Authority uh subjected to a review by Congress and to not take effect absent Congress enacting it into law and do you are you optimistic about your chances on that front how is that battle progressing and can you detail out a little bit more how it is that the specific changes that you're making on the legislative front would in principle limit the continued growth and expansion of this centralized power elite that you're describing it would decentralize power to a very significant degree it would do so for the simple reason that as Congress has to vote on things uh say like the the clean power plan rule uh something like that or the Waters of the United States rule these are all uh well-known uh large-scale executive branch edicts issued over the last few years that have a dramatic economic impact on the American people uh as as those things get noticed by the people and as they have more and more of an economic impact As Americans realize that they're shelling out an additional two to three trillion dollars a year every year uh an increased cost of goods and services diminish wages unemployment and underemployment because of this Outsourcing of government they're not going to be tolerant of Congress just letting the executive branch continue to make laws more importantly once we get things like this passed Congress won't have the temerity it won't have the the the the the crazed uh megalomania necessary to inflict uh patently bad policies that are going to hurt the American people on the American people and there will be accountability for those who vote for them uh this coupled with the fact that we'd have to cast more votes on more topics some of which would be controversial would I believe ultimately in order to the the benefit of the people as Congress would say you know what we don't have to weigh in on every area we're supposed to be a limited purpose national government established for the purpose of uh uh uh adopting laws on National Defense weights and measures trademarks copyrights and patents regulating trade or commerce between the states and and foreign countries um and there are a few other powers but it's a it's a relatively small box that those fit into we have made our federal government almost a general purpose national government and once we've done that Congress has not wanted to cast all the the votes that would have to cast so we've outsourced the actual thinking on that to the so-called experts this is the pipe dream of the Progressive Movement we're going to have government by experts and those experts will rule us without the um without the interference of the unwashed masses as they see it right yeah without the messiness yeah well so a couple of comments on the psychological front relationship to that it's like first of all you might ask yourself well why wouldn't it be a good thing for a centralized federal government to offer largesse to its populace and I would say well first of all that's actually very unlikely because that's a difficult thing to manage and there's no real evidence that centralized governments have done a credible job of that in the last 150 years and there's plenty of counter evidence the more widespread that attempt the more likely it is to end cataclysmically but then there's another thing to consider too for everyone who's watching and listening is that you know a lot of what gives your life meaning at the individual level and the family level and the local community level the town level the state level all of that is the adoption of responsibility that's requisite for your level in the hierarchy you know and you might say well what the president does with his time is much more important than what the local plumber does with his time but I'm not so sure that's true at all you know each individual has their bailiwick of divine responsibility and so does each couple and so does each family and so does each Community all the way up that hierarchy of responsibility and if we devolve power and responsibility up to the highest echelons of government we Denude our own lives of of psychological significance and meaning and that's all found through the adoption of responsibility we also run a foul of the distributed intelligence that all sorts of local decision makers allow for right because you should be dealing with those things that are right in front of you because you're the only person that can see them and if you seed that power to abstract authorities they blunder around stupidly like blind Giants so one of the things that conservatives can consider you know I've had a lot of success with this on the lecture front is that I've made the case continually in my talks around the world that's about 400 of them now that the sustaining meaning in people's lives is developed as a consequence of the adoption of maximal personal responsibility so there's a direct relationship between responsibility and sustaining meaning and then if you seed that to authorities above you in the hopes that they'll deliver you from the hands of your enemies you know genuine and metaphysical then you actually exhaust your you exhaust the possibilities of your life and you you leave yourself with something like a sterile shell you know and conservatives could do a lot better job on that front of communicating that to young people it's like don't look to the government to save you partly because you should be saving yourselves right you should be putting in the effort as an individual as the member of a couple as the member of family to setting your own house in order and if you allow others to intercede on your behalf you put yourself in a state of like childhood abject childhood dependence and slavery and that's and you develop tyrants around you too it's a really bad solution yes absolutely uh you know my my friend Arthur Brooks has written a lot on this topic on the on the topic of uh finding Joy including uh happiness as it relates to one's profession one's work in life and he said that um if I'm remembering it correctly to have happiness associated with one's work one needs to have a job that's sufficiently difficult and complex that that it's not monotonous uh that has it presents at least the opportunity for Upward Mobility for uh for for getting ahead whether you actually realize that fast forward right right even if you don't realize that or send at the highest levels the the the possibility of it is a significant factor and then there has to be a a close Nexus between the amount of effort or work someone puts into it and their ability to ascend and so it when those factors are in place people find enjoyment and and happiness in their lives and their work coincides well with their lives if on the other hand you're made an object to be acted upon as happens to whatever degree a government incorporates and Embraces socialism then then you really are the the object to be acted upon by the government you're not the hammer you're the nail with government being the hammer somebody else is deciding your fate deciding the circumstances in which you and your family find yourselves and it doesn't contribute to happiness we've also found that it's it's not an efficient means of running anything and so there ends up being less wealth less Prosperity overall and so as you mentioned over the last 150 years I can't think of a single example where uh on a large scale uh something tantamount to socialism has made people better off but I can think of a whole lot of examples where lots of people have died from hunger and other maladies that are directly traceable to that kind of system of government so it's yet another reason to issue socialism you know when uh when Alexis to tocqueville took his tour in the early 1830s through America trying to explain why the American Revolution worked you might put it where the French Revolution hadn't worked as well uh one of the things that he observed is that a government that is this brooding omnipresence over its citizenry uh it ends up being um a keeper of people much like a farmer is a keeper of of sheep and if you want your citizens to grow up like farm animals and to not have as much of their own will their own initiative their own enjoyment uh then that's how you would do it otherwise the government needs to not play that role cool and I I think that's been one of the secrets to America's success is that our form of government was designed specifically to avoid that kind of accumulation of power right right well we could we could discuss that technically too you know there's two forms of reward technically speaking there's satiation that's the reward that you might experience let's say after consuming uh you know um uh well-provisioned Thanksgiving feast and basically what you do when you're satiated is drift off drift off into unconsciousness right you're prone to sleep because everything is satisfied that's the same word as satiated and that is one form of contentment but what people generally regard as happiness is a different form of reward and happiness emerges in that Arthur Brooks fashion that you just described is that people experience enthusiasm and joy hope engagement meaning so forth when they see themselves advancing towards a valued goal and that means they have to have their own personally valued goals so their own domain of expertise and striving and then the landscape has to be open so that they can see themselves moving forward and uphill and the joy that sustains people in large part is a consequence of the chemical consequences of that form of advancement you know so the drugs of abuse that attract people like cocaine and amphetamines and so forth activate the systems that indicate Pathways forward and up and so you do want to constitute your country so that people have the opportunity for forward movement that's well that's the frontier myth in some sense that allowed your country to be settled in in the first place to be settled in in the manner that it was settled and so the notion that what the government should do is provide large yes so we can all become satiated infants is a damn it's it's the kind of state you want to inculcate if you wanted everybody to be unconscious and asleep and you regarded that as the highest form of human achievement instead of being alert and striving and awake and walking consciously uphill and so it's necessary to distribute all that responsibility and power down the hierarchy to the most local levels possible it is the antidote to tyranny and to slavery and so I wish you success in your attempts to make that case to your colleagues and to the public at large are you optimistic about the possibility of success for your Ventures look um for reasons that escape me we haven't had as many Democrats jump on board with the ideas I I would have hoped I do think it's coming it's coming at some point and so that's why I'm breaking this rains act approach into smaller pieces to see if I can work it into other legislation we might not be able to get it for the whole whole government but we might be able to get it in this or that agency or this or that department uh at least in in specified ways and once we become more comfortable with that I I think there's a real opportunity uh to get it in there there also may be some opportunities in connection with debt ceiling increased discussions spending Bill discussions in order to bring in a shorter term version of Something Like The Rains act and once the American people see this and see this in motion I think they're going to like it and I think it will prove to be popular and I I it it's with very good reason the American people many of them feel very distant from their national government with good reason it is itself distant from where most of them live physically but it's also outside the hands of many of the people they just elected to make their laws if I had a nickel for every time the following scenario unfolds an executive branch agency makes a new law is laws many of them carry criminal penalties they are otherwise enforceable against the American people they are for all intents and purposes laws they make a new law and then constituents write letters saying uh or make phone calls saying hey this is killing us this is making it impossible for us to run our business uh it's irrational what do we do members of Congress are notorious for writing back saying you know dear sir dear Madam uh those barbarians over there at that agency X Y or Z they're barbarians and and I'm I'm going to write them the agency a harshly worded letter and that's most of the time the end of it the American people have been sold short on this they have had their birth rights sold out from underneath them as the task of law making has been outsourced to people who cannot be fired this is the closest thing to despotism that America has ever seen and once the American people realize what's been happening over the last eight and a half decades uh they're going to demand this okay well we also we can tangle up the first part of our talk with the last part then and say well all of the excess spending and emergency procurement on the part of the Russia Ukraine conflict as well as the war against environmental degradation is producing more and more concentration of power in the hands of fewer and fewer people at the corporate government level and that's a recipe for tyranny for sure it's also a recipe for the kind of slavery that that deprives people of their requisite responsibility and therefore their Destiny and so that seems bad on all fronts unless you want to be an unconscious infant and so that's also a pretty dismal view of of the of what would you call it the Great Adventure of humanity so all right Senator Lee we covered a lot of territory today wandering through the complexities of the Russia Ukraine and broader Western proxy war that's one bloody abysmal uh Chasm to glance into and I really appreciate the fact that you were willing to speak forthrightly about it today as I'm sure the people who are listening um will also appreciate thank you to all of you who are listening and paying attention and I hope you keep listening and paying attention because there's a lot at stake here more right now than perhaps there ever has been in some real sense so to the Daily wire plus folks who facilitated this conversation thank you the film crew here in Winnipeg because I'm in Winnipeg today uh much appreciated and um I'm going to flip over now to the Daily wire plus platform and talk to Senator Lee for another 20 minutes to half an hour about issues related to our discussion today but um if you would like to join us there and provide some support to the Daily Word plus folks that would be useful if you're inclined and so thanks again Senator Lee it's always a pleasure talking to you pleasure is blind thank you hello everyone I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 674,075

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, existentialism, maps of meaning, free speech, freedom of speech, personality lectures, personality and transformations, Jordan perterson, Dr Peterson, utah news, mike lee, evan mcmullin, russia-ukraine conflict summary, russia-ukraine conflict explained upsc, russia-ukraine conflict live, psychoanalysis explained, free speech tv, dr peterson interview, dr peterson motivation, un security council presidency

Id: Q5UovuNlIC4

Length: 103min 42sec (6222 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023