[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Scott Schiff with the Atlas Society. We're very pleased to have Atlas Society senior scholar Richard Salzman with us today on the virtues of republicanism and constitutionalism of American Republicans. After Richard's opening comments, we'll take questions from you so you can request to speak if you have a question, and we'll try to get to as many of you as possible.
Richard, great topic.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Great. Thank you, Scott, and thanks for hosting and thanks everyone for joining. This is a companion, Twitter spaces, if you will, to one I did last month in September, and that one was titled the Vices of democracy and the illiberalism of American Democrats. And notice how I set it up, this one being obviously the virtues of republicanism and constitutionalism of American Republicans for those. So you can compare these two later if you wish. That one was September 19, 2024. Now, as I did before with the Democrats, I'm going to have the same structure to get some parallel here for treating of the Republicans. These are obviously the two major parties in the United States. Now, the way I handled it last time for the Democrats is I had three parts. The first one was just the philosophy and just the political theory of what's at hand. In the case of the democrats, it's democracy.
What are the philosophic roots of democracy? What are the arguments for? How have they changed over time? How far back do they go?
And then I did democratic party history, and then I did something on the party where it stands today. And obviously I set these up in anticipation of the election in November in America. Now I'm going to do the same thing tonight with the same kind of structure for Republicans, meaning I'll start with a philosophy of republicanism, and then I'll give a history of the republican party in America and then turn to the party today.
A couple of things. The republic, the idea of a republic versus democracy, if you go to the latin roots, republic actually does spur to people the idea of public, even a publican, if you go back, is the people. And it's interesting because democracy has the root demos, and demos means the people, or sometimes it's referred to as the majority of the people. So first off, that's interesting is both have names. They're different names, of course, but they do refer to, and I would say in the american context, we'll call it the anglo american context. There is the basic premise, and this is totally enlightenment based, that sovereignty derives and the legitimacy of government derives from the people. Now that sounds like populism, but it's really to distinguish from the idea that it comes, say, from God, which was the medieval approach, the divine right of kings, if you remember, or that it comes from monarchs who have the divine right, or conquest and fighting and all that kind of thing. So they are two rival theories of governance, but they are an attempt to govern based on consent of the governed, what's called consent of the governed. That's a fairly new thing in human history. We didn't even have it in the ancient times.
And so the idea of consent of the governed now is a big question, of course, who are the governed? How intelligent are they? How informed are they?
What kind of decisions are they asked to weigh in on? And if you remember from last time, their theories, Rousseau type theories of direct democracy, where people vote on issues directly. Today we have that as like a referenda in California and elsewhere, ballot issues and things like that, versus indirect democracy, would be you vote for your reps and they vote on things and they specialize on things. But then there's this third level of, well, what about constitutional? Sometimes it's called constitutional democracy, or republicanism, where yes, you vote for reps, but the Reps can't just do anything they want. They're restricted in some way by a document, by a charter called a constitution. And of course, there's no guarantee that just because you come up with a constitution, that it will be liberal, that it will be pro liberty. I mean, the Soviets had a constitution, but you get the idea that on this spectrum, if you will, on this lineage, there's this idea of direct.
Athenians had direct, they had like 6000 people in the assembly meeting every month, deciding on things. Just crazy, including let's execute Socrates.
So that's just as context. Now, republicanism is actually newer, I would say, than, in theory at least, than is democracy. But the oldest republic ever, and one of the longest, most successful ones, is the roman republic.
So Livy and others wrote about this, but it ran from. And the founders, I'm mentioning this only because the american founding fathers knew this very well. The Roman Republic ran roughly for 500 years. I mean, so that is twice the age of the United States. The United States is just a baby compared to the roman republic. It was about 450, roughly BC to 50 ad. Now, the more famous roman empire of Caesar and others, which was brutal and statist, succeeded, I should say, followed the roman republic. So the roman republic did fall, but it lasted a long time. And it was because it had this idea that people should be free, the government should be fairly limited, and there also should be a kind of mixture of. This was a very common theory at the time called mixed constitution, meaning some parts of the government might be more democratic, like an assembly or a legislature or house, what we call House of Representatives. But then the leader would be more like a monarchy, would be among a singular head, as we have the president today, and then more aristocratic positions like the Senate or the judiciary, which checks the other branch. So the whole idea of branches of not pure democracy, but neither pure monarchy either goes all the way back to Polybius and to Aristotle and to others. And I mention all this because this is very much of an animating theme of republicanism, and indeed of the republican party in America, much more so than the Democrats.
And again, I'm going to try to avoid rehashing all I said about the Democrats last time and focus more on the positive argument for republicanism.
Now, who are some of the names that most influence the founders? And then I'll get into the history of the republican party.
Montesquieu, the french theorist from the 1750s who wrote spirit of the laws, he was the first one to come up with the idea that there could be republics and they would be much better than democracies, not only because they were more inclined to protect rights, but because you could have a bigger country with the republic.
Democracies are known for, you know, to the extent you have direct democracy, just unwieldy, just not able to handle, you know, x number of people in the room, all deciding on something. But if you can set up a system where you're voting for reps, you can expand your nation. Now, of course, that's what happened in the US, and it wouldn't have happened without republicanism as a theory, the 13 colonies becoming what we know today as the 50 states made possible by this setup, not possible if it was democracy or pure democracy. So Montesquieu is important. Locke is important. The 1690 treatise on government, second treatise on government, arguing for the same kind of thing, but that government's primary duty, and again, this is much more of a republican party theme. Historically, government's main duty is to protect individual rights, to life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness. So that famous trinity, or I guess you could call the four things, comes from Locke. Locke does not give us separation of powers. Montesquieu does. But in tandem, together, they very much influenced the people who put together the United States of America. Now, this is important to know as well. Last time, last month, I noted that the origins of the democratic party, which are largely jeffersonian, although they wanted independence from Britain and got it. They really were not advocates of joining the 13 states together. They really were. They were called anti federalists. They were against having a federal constitution. They were against creating a federal government that united the states.
And the federalists, which are the origins of the republican party, did advocate that. So who were they? Washington, Hamilton.
Lots of northeasterners from Massachusetts and Connecticut. Hard to believe today because the Republicans have no power up there anymore, but the whole New England area was a federalist hamiltonian, and it was Alexander Hamilton, of course, the great foe of Jefferson. Not just personally, these people differed philosophically. And Hamilton, as you know, working with Madison, who eventually went over to Jefferson, later helped create the United States of America. They wrote the federalist papers, they pushed for conventions that ratified the constitution, all the while facing opposition from the Jeffersonians and the Democrats.
And so that's one thing, important thing to remember, that the United States of America itself, the U in USA, is totally due to the federalists. Now, why do I mention the Federalists are supposed to be talking about the Republicans? The lineage is Hamilton, the Federalists. After Hamilton died, the Whigs, then Lincoln. The party actually starts in 1854 as a single issue party. The obviously single issue was slavery. The Republican Party began in 1854 in response, by the way, to the Kansas Nebraska act, where they noticed that the Democrats were trying to push slavery westward. And a small group started out saying, we can't have that. We need to get rid of slavery, and that is not going to happen if we keep admitting new states, you know, into the Louisiana purchase. We're half slave, half free. So they drew a line in the sand, and they basically said, we are going to start a party that is anti slavery. Now, in the beginning, they wouldn't say, well, we're going to dislodge slavery in every state that currently has it. Their beginning power, limited as it was, was simply to stop the expansion of slavery. So this is a very virtuous thing, obviously. And Hamilton was anti racism and anti slavery, and so, frankly, was Ben Franklin. And so the early federalists were advocates of liberating blacks from slavery, and they started manumission societies and things like that. Definitely a republican thing going all the way back to Hamilton. And, of course, that's at odds with the view of Jefferson and the Democrats.
I don't need to recount for you how amazing and almost tragic but wonderful it was that the republican party eventually succeeded with Lincoln and unfortunately had to fight a civil war to get rid of slavery in Britain, by the way, they basically just ended it by parliamentary vote. And in some cases by paying off people. There was no war when Britain got rid of slavery in its dominions. And unfortunately, the Democrats were so insane on retaining slavery that war resulted. So again, I'm not going to recount this, but I count this as a major virtue that hundreds of thousands, if you want to put it in racial terms, I hate doing this, but people go here now of white men from the north fighting and dying. 675,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and the Republicans pursued it to get rid of slavery. And of course, Lincoln's view was, we're not going to allow secession. Of course, the south hates this idea. Their view was, we get to secede and have our own slave states.
And Lincoln said, there's no such thing in the Constitution that allows that we're going to preserve the Union.
And that they did. They won the war because they was killed at the end of the war in 1865. But even after that, Grant, who was the great general, the great republican general, was elected president for two terms and put in a system called Reconstruction. What was reconstruction? It was the north and the Republicans going down south and trying to get the Democrats to basically concede that they had lost the civil war and that they should stop discriminating against and preventing the votes of blacks. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution made possible by the GOP getting rid of slavery. Sorry about that. Apparently I'm near a train. 1 second.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: That's all right. Go ahead and move to where you need to, or we'll get going with this in just a moment. But Richard is just getting past the train.
I'm going to be curious when he gets back about.
Go ahead, Richard.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Apparently that was the underground railroad moving slaves. I'm up in Massachusetts.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Outside anyway.
1314, 15th amendments to the US Constitution. The first one, get rid of slavery. Second one, equal protection clause. Everyone should be treated equally before the law. This is another theme you find in republicanism and the history of the republican party. A real respect for the rule of law, a real respect for constitutionalism, a real respect for equal treatment under the law, not discriminating, not targeting groups for unequal and bad treatment. The 15th amendment actually gave black men the right to vote. Now, why were there a Voting Rights Act 1965? Why was there a civil Rights act in 1964? This is a hundred years later. Answer. Because still in the south, the Democrats resisted the rights of blacks even after the Republicans had gone to war and freed the slaves. And people don't know this, but in 1950s, under Eisenhower, who was president, the Republican congress dominated by Republicans, repeatedly brought up civil rights legislation to stop the discrimination and racism against blacks going to schools, lunch counters, the buses. You know the story. The Rosa park. Everyone thinks that's a Democrat crusade. It was not. It was a republican crusade, and the Democrats opposed it every step of the way. And even in 1964, when finally the Civil Rights act was passed in Congress, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for it compared to Democrats. Really incredible. But that's not what the history teaches us. The history says it's the other way around, that the Republicans were the intransigent ones. By the way, before I forget, let me just throw in women as well. The women federally, not statewide, federally, got the right to vote, as you know, in 1920 due to the 19th amendment. How did that happen? Totally due to Republicans, and nobody knows it. So in the Senate, 82% of the GOP voted for. Only 41% of Democrats voted for a woman's right to vote. In the House, 91% of the GOP said a woman should have a right to vote. Only 59% dems.
While I'm on this topic, let me fast forward to Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade, 1973.
The Supreme Court says a woman has a right to choose on reproductive choice. How did that happen?
The decision was six three. The three were Democrats who opposed. The six were predominantly republican nominated justices.
Blackmun wrote the opinion. Who was Blackmun? He was nominated by Nixon in 1970.
Warren Berger was pro. He was nominated by Nixon in 1969. He's a Republican. Potter Stewart said, yes, women have a right to vote. Who nominated him? Eisenhower in 1958. This stuff is just not known. The Republican Party is not only anti racist, is not only pro women's right to vote, it was pro women's right to choose what to do with their bodies.
It's an amazing, virtuous history.
A couple of other things kind of morphing here into the history of the republican party.
Before I had gone through the lineage for the Democrats, I was starting with Jefferson, then Andrew Jackson, then Jefferson Davis, then Woodrow Wilson, then FDR, JFK, LBJ, Clinton, Obama. Now, if you know those names, you know, Woodrow Wilson was a big advocate of expanding the size and scope and power of government during the quote unquote progressive era, including getting the US involved in World War one. FDR known for what? The New Deal. Another great expansion of government power in the thirties. LBJ, known for what the quote unquote great society in the sixties, expanding Medicare, Medicaid, and a whole bunch of other things. What is the lineage of the Republicans? Well, it starts with Hamilton and the federalists. And what's after that? The Whigs. I already mentioned Lincoln, so we're talking about Lincoln in mid century, but after that, Grant, Ulysses S. Grant, who was general and also president for eight years. But now fast forward the end of the century. McKinley, a very decent republican president, and one of the worst on the republican scorecard is Teddy Roosevelt. And Teddy Roosevelt was basically a progressive in the sense of sympathetic to socialism, sympathetic to trust busting, sympathetic to environmentalism. They didn't call it at the time, but he was a big viewer that had this big view that everything should be preserved. So, I mean, Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, but he represented a splinter in the party. Half the party was against that approach.
And by 1912, they ousted him from the party. They wouldn't have anything to do with him anymore. A lot of damage had been done at that point, but he had to go start his own, I forget what it was called, bull Moose party or something like that. And he lost, never to be seen again. So it's not that the republican party has not had bad actors. It certainly has. All right, let me name another bad actor before I forget. Hoover.
Just awful. The 1920s had been called the roaring twenties. Prosperity, invention, lowering tax rates. Who did that? The Republicans. Harding. Calvin Coolidge. Secretary of the treasury was Andrew Mellon, the banker from Pittsburgh. So from 1920 to 1928, there was an enormous expansion of capitalism and vibrancy with very limited government. There was no New Deal welfare state, there was obviously no great.
And when Hoover succeeded Coolidge, he instituted tax hikes, he instituted protectionist measures, he instituted this. He signed the Smoot Hawley act. There was a range of things that Hoover did which were not, as is painted today. Hands off, laissez faire. Don't do anything. No, he was a very much of an interventionist, and Coolidge wanted nothing to do with him. Hated the fact that he basically ruined the track record of the roaring twenties. What did Hoover make possible? FDR, who just simply doubled down on what Hoover had done. So I would put down Hoover as after TR, after Teddy Roosevelt, as a complete black mark for the Republicans. And fast forward a little bit beyond Ike, who's in the fifties, and pretty decent.
Not great, but decent.
The Nixon Ford years were just awful. So Nixon won in 68, thankfully, with a kind of a law and order argument, but also, by the way, with an argument that I'm going to get us out of Vietnam. Why was the US in Vietnam, by the way, a war that Ayn Rand even thought was self sacrificing and not an anti communist like Ayn Rand still said, no, that is not in the us self interest. JFK and LBJ had gotten America into Vietnam war.
Nixon didn't get us out of the war, just like Trump didn't get us out of Afghanistan, even though he promised to do so. So that was a complete disaster. And Ford, who followed him after Nixon resigned due to corruption, was also pretty much of a disaster. But he didn't last very long. He was only there a couple years. The one good thing that did happen during Nixon, the bad stuff was going off the gold standard and imposing price controls and signing off on things like the EPA. Just awful stuff. They did end the draft.
The Republicans ended the draft in 1973, and objectivists had a lot to do with that. Marty Anderson was an objectivist from Columbia University who worked on the Nixon campaign.
And Milton Friedman and a few others convinced Nixon to end the draft, which actually happened in 73. And by the way, that put an end to, pretty much put an end to all the campus violence that occurred. Because the campus violence, when you think about it, the draft card burning the opposition to going to Vietnam was largely due to the fact that they were being kidnapped, that they were being forcibly conscripted and told to go to these rice paddies in Vietnam. So it was very smart, actually, for Nixon to do that. The war ended two years later.
Okay, now, the next thing I think to mention on the history here is the Reagan revolution.
The 1970s, bad as it was under Nixon and Ford, the Democrats were worse.
We had McGovern trying to redistribute wealth in the 72 campaign. We had the idiocy of and the incompetence of Jimmy Carter, an evangelical, who, by the way, got much more of an evangelical vote in 1980 than Reagan did. So there is this kind of myth out there that Reagan brought religion into the republican party. He did not win anything close to the evangelical fundamentalist vote in 1980. That went to born again, quote, unquote, air quotes with my fingers here, Jimmy Carter.
But Reagan, again, for those of you who know, I shouldn't have to recount the details here. Supply side economics, throwing off the keynesianism of the Democrats. Tax rate cuts, deregulation, a slowing, not a reversing, but a slowing of government spending.
And more than that, standing up to the Soviets, calling them an evil empire.
Whereas the Democrats and Nixon, Ford had spent a decade saying, detente, work with them, coexist with them. Reagan said, no, we win, they lose. That's my foreign policy. I'm going to create a dome called Star wars. Or derogatorily called Star wars, and I'm going to beat the Soviets. I can see that they're weak. I don't see them as a monolith. And that is indeed fast forwarding. Now here, that is indeed exactly what happened. Amazing. The republican party is singularly responsible for ending the cold War and ending the Soviet Union.
And you only need to look back to the cuban missile crisis of October 1962, where Jack Kennedy, a Democrat, showed such weakness versus Khrushchev that we almost had a nuclear exchange over Cuba in 1962. They had a policy called mutually assured destruction, where they deliberately made the US prone to attack from the Soviet Union. Reagan rejected all that. The Reagan poor and policy people rejected all that. They said, we are not going to expose the american people to nuclear assault for the Soviet Union. We're going to go the other way and try to pushed them into, what did Reagan call it? The ash heap of history. Reagan, if you know, became famous. He was semi famous in Hollywood, but he really became famous politically when he stood up for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Barry Goldwater, who was adored by Ayn Rand. Barry Goldwater, who lost on a landslide to LBJ, but was really the first kind of libertarian oriented Republican in modern times. And he, you know, he remained in the Senate, I think, until at least the late nineties, as a kind of standard bearer. For famously said in San Francisco at the 1964 convention that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue. A very principled man, a really wonderful standard bearer. And Reagan radically. It was not easy to do in 1964, campaign for him, made a public televised speech in favor of Barry Goldwater. Made a name for himself, really ideologically in the republican party.
Oh, by the way, on Reagan, one thing worth mentioning, of course, he worked with Thatcher, who was of similar spirit in Britain. So I don't want to ignore that Thatcher was elected before Reagan was, but they both in unison said, we're for capitalism, we're going to move in that direction. And socialism sucks and communism sucks, and maybe we can get rid of it. They did without a mushroom cloud. Amazing. They're still not giving credit for this. Reagan's first Supreme Court nominee, if you remember, was Sandra Day O'Connor. I think his second one, if I get this right, is Kennedy.
They were both pro choice.
A number of cases came up trying to overturn Roe v. Wade. He appointed Sandra Day O'Connor, I think, in 1981. So this is only eight years after Roe. And remember I told you Roe v. Wade was made possible by republican appointed justices.
Reagan, I think, knew Nancy Reagan, by the way, was pro choice. So was Barbara Bush, and so was Laura Bush. So is Melania Trump's wife.
I think Reagan knew. The evidence shows he knew that Sandra Day O'Connor was pro choice. And when decisions came up, especially in Pennsylvania in 1992 and elsewhere, she voted for women's right to choose. So did Kennedy. So again, back to the issue of the treatment of Reagan, not just by libertarians, but objectivists.
Just a quick insert here. The objectivist sequencing on the republicans is very bizarre to me because Rand and Greenspan and even peekoff to some degree. This is a little inside baseball here, but just a little objective stuff, were four square, four Nixon and four Ford, and they hated Reagan.
Hindsight is 2020, of course, but when you look at the history of those three, which of those three brought us closer to capitalism? I don't mean pure capitalist. I mean, what direction were they going? Nixon and Ford in a very bad direction.
Not only just corruption, but doing nothing to move the country toward capitalism. And yet Reagan did. And not only did Reagan do that, I think it can be argued that he substantially contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. But if you look at the history of Ayn Rand, who I adore, you know I adore her, and I think she's the greatest philosopher of capitalism ever. And her student and the wonderful philosopher Leonard Peacock. If you track their comments all during the Nixon Ford Reagan years, it is a bizarre adoration for Nixon and Ford and a distaste for Reagan, mostly on the grounds that he was allegedly pro restricting women's right to choice, which, as I told you, was not actually how he governed.
Let me now just finish with. I don't want to take up more than a half an hour here. I promised the philosophic approach, history of the Republican Party. And now where we are today with Trump, the 20 year period from 1980 to the turn of the century, if you think about it, the first twelve years of that 20 year stretch. So that's a. That's a long stretch, is Reagan Bush. And although Bush was not really a reaganite, the first Bush, the senior bush, was much better than the junior bush that we got from 2000 to 2008. And to his great credit, George Bush, by the way, who was also pro choice, at least handled the decline and dissolution of the Soviet Union, because that didn't quite happen under Reagan. The wall came down right after Reagan left. Great coup, I think. Go to George Bush senior, a gentleman and a perfectly decent man who diplomatically he had been at the CIA and the UN handled that transition. And it could have been much worse. It could have been a botched transition. He really did it very well. And interestingly, the Republicans had achieved so much from 80 to 93 when Bush left, that for all intents and purposes, Bill Clinton and Al Gore copied them.
Bill Clinton, the Democrat, Al Gore, his VP, basically didn't change much after Reagan Bush. So that stretch was what, 93 to 2001? So we had a wonderful 20 year period where America was going in the right direction. And by right, I mean literally rightward toward a freer system. And that's my standard in judging all these candidates and these parties. I don't know how not whether they're perfect and pure in the objectivist sense, but are they moving America toward constitutional limits on government? Are they for that? Are they moving America toward a greater respect for individual rights? Are they moving America toward a more capitalist, vibrant economy? I think it's hands down true. If you look at the history of both these parties that that's been the Republican Party history. It's not been, sad to say, the Democrat party history. When you look at the two now, it's very odd because none of them we know, really oppose the welfare state.
They go on record saying we endorse all the new deal stuff, Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, EPA, the regulatory state, but not, in Trump's view, not forever. Wars abroad where the constitution is violated, in effect, because the US is supposed to provide national defense of America. That's what it says in the Constitution, to provide the national defense of the United States, not the defense of 32 other countries now grouped in NATO or Ukraine or anyone else. And I think that's one of the reasons Trump is despised, and not only by Democrats, who I showed last month, have had a history of being the war party, sad to say, not just the war of 1812, not just the civil war, not just world War one and two, all of which the Democrats got us in the. But the Republicans are really not the war party. And the only part I've noticed in the last 40 years of the republican party that seems like war mongering is what's called neocons or neoconservatives, but the neoconservators are former Democrats. That's who they are from Gene Kirkpatrick onward. And there's still some of them left. Dick Cheney is one of them. Who's endorsing Kamala Harris, right, hates Trump. Why do they hate Trump? Trump has some defects. His policy mix is very mixed. But one of the things he's very good at, and I think reflects republican principles, is the job of the United States is not to protect other countries, especially other corrupt countries. The job of the United States on military is to protect America, including its borders.
That's a foreign policy issue. That's not just an economic issue. And he's hated for that. Notice, he's hated mostly by the Democrats, but he's also hated within the party by Republicans who want this more imperialist, colonialist treatment of foreign allies.
Now, one of the bad things about Trump is the protectionism. So that's very Hoover like. That's what Hoover did. Hoover imposed the Smoot Hawley act and protectionism, which contributed heavily to the Great Depression. Now, when Trump came in and imposed tariffs, he didn't cause the Great Depression. But it is a very, it's playing with fire. It's a very dangerous thing to do. It's a stupid thing to do. Most economists will tell you that you need to have free trade, even if the other side, by the way, is not practicing free trade. You benefit by practicing free trade. So that's a defect. Now, you could say it's a defect also that he's not dismantling the welfare state, but he never promised to do that. And unfortunately, the Republicans have not promised to do that, at least since Goldwater. I think it was Goldwater who said we should get rid of Social Security.
This is in 1964. And even Reagan realized later, okay, that's a loser. We could have these positions. It's not like we don't believe them in principle, but what good does it do to hold to that? And you never hold office.
One more thing on the Republicans worth mentioning in terms of policy, because Trump does this as well, and Reagan did this, and Jack Kemp urged him to do this. But this goes to the fiscal insolvency of the United States for many, many years, starting with FDR, Democrat approach, Washington. Spend, spend, spend. There's no end of the things they would spend money on. And the Democrats, excuse me, the Republicans, until Reagan would go fund it sounds like go fund me page. They would go and raise taxes because they were like fiscal conservatives and they kept losing elections. Guess why? Because the Democrats would play Santa Claus. Spend, spend, spend. And the Democrats and the Republicans would play Scrooge.
Reagan and Kemp said, listen, we're against the expansion of the welfare state. We are never going to win another election unless we come out for tax rate cuts on the grounds, by the way, partly of people have a right to their wealth. Entrepreneurs are great.
Prosperity is great. Keynesianism is wrong. So the whole art laugher supply side revolution, which Reagan took up with Jack Kemp, was wonderful. But notice it led to a kind of bias toward deficit spending, because if you're not going to shrink or slow government spending, but at the same time, now you become the party of tax cuts. You see what's going to happen here, and it is happening. There are chronic and perpetual budget deficits, and that is leading to a buildup of government debt, which is unsustainable. So now whether the Republicans are responsible for not coming in and raising taxes like they did before, if they did that, they would never win another election. So a couple of other things, and then I'll stop right now. Some of the top issues, which are totally Democrat and totally republican, I've noticed, is the Democrats have a three, four, five point plan to eviscerate the rule of law.
It starts with getting rid of the filibuster in the Senate. It consists of maybe packing the Supreme Court and adding their favored justices, as, by the way, FDR tried to do in 1937. It includes adding states, maybe like DC and Puerto Rico, which would immediately add four Democrat senators. It includes giving a sweeping amnesty to the 25 million illegals that they largely put into the United States. If. Now, that's a lot of things. And get rid of the electoral college, by the way, that is a lot of stuff to say in just one sentence, but it's a fact that the Democrats support all those things. And America would end. If those things were enacted, it would just end. There would be no constitutionally limited government in America anymore. There'd be a one party state. It would be Democrats forever. Always afterwards, I fear that the US would tip into something like a Venezuela situation where there just aren't real elections anymore.
It's a little weird for me to say this, because I am aware that there are not only libertarians, but never Trumpers, but then also that within objectivism, who think Donald Trump and the Republican Party is the devil and that they're the ones who are a major threat to our liberties. Obviously, I do not believe that. I think it's the other way around. But, Scott, I know you interviewed me maybe a year ago or so, so I wanted to just a shout out for. There is a session we did on the Ayn Rand fan club, I recall, called an objectivist take on the left versus the right. I think our discussion, Scott, if you remember, was entirely on which is the greater threat to liberty.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Right?
[00:39:10] Speaker B: So if anyone wants to look at that, they can. And lastly, I'll leave, I did on spaces in August, discuss how the GOP has shifted for the better on abortion. So we can talk about then Q and A, you know, going from Roe v. Wade to Dobbs, but I'll leave it at that. I hope that helps. Thanks, Scott.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Great. Yeah, that podcast is on YouTube, but I just, you know, if anyone has questions, I encourage you to, you know, request a speak. We'll try to get as many of you up here as possible.
I have some questions myself. I mean, in, you know, take abortion, for example. I mean, even though they may have been anti Roe v. Wade, I mean, or they were pro Roe v. Wade, I mean, they've changed and now they are the anti abortion party. You're right to say they've gotten better. But, you know, I mean, how, how much of this is the Republicans saying that, oh, well, the reason we're against Trump is we want him to lose. To go back to the old Republican Party that you were speaking about.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Well, it's a good question. I think it depends on what people mean by the old. I have noticed in the party today, and there are factions that some, some of them are called free cons, which means they're conservatives who care about freedom. Others are called Nat cons. Some of them care about nationalism and borders and protectionism and stuff like that. There's three or four other examples of this, but I do not see many of them, except maybe the free cons saying we need to be reaganesque. Now, even, we all know even Reagan esque just means a move of all the Republicans since Coolidge toward capitalism or slowing down socialism. It isn't really an aggressive plan or policy to get us back to capitalism. By the way, Trump does say we should get rid of the Department of Education, but so did Reagan, and it didn't happen. But the fact that he even says that, the fact that his team even says that today, and the Department of Education was started under Carter, of all the 16 cabinet agencies, that's the one I would start with. It's a very symbolic and important step. If he wins and they do that and he only did that, I would consider that one of the major accomplishments. Just showing Zimbabwe that you can actually get rid of a major department like that, it doesn't mean, I don't think that the entire public school system would be privatized, but to get rid of the department of education would be. Yeah, huge. But anyway, Scott, back to the point when they say go back to the old, I don't see a great groundswell within the party to revive reaganism. I mean, in part they'll say it's because, well, there's new issues now. We can't revisit history. The Cold War is over. I do think it's interesting, though, that during the Cold War, the Democrats were all for kissing up to the Soviets.
Then when the Republicans won the Cold War, all of a sudden the Democrats thought Putin and everyone else post Soviet were the worst dictators they'd ever seen. It seems like the Democrats are like, 50 years behind, or, like, barely catching up to what the risks are. They were the ones who appeased the Soviets and made the cold war last longer than it should have. And now that the Republicans have won the cold War, and people like Putin and Xi have to say, Putin and Xi and others, they're not pro capitalists, but they're not Stalin and they're not Mao.
But the Democrats pose as that they are. And that is a huge divide, I think, right now. And I think part of the reason they do that is they want the US at war all the time. It was Wilson, Woodrow Wilson, who said, we're going to make the world safe for democracy.
Well, if democracy is just unlimited majority rule, or as Ayn Rand said, it is a form of government which is thoroughly collectivist, that is just going to be disastrous, foreign policy wise. But that is still the democrat view anyway. I wish there was an old form republicanism of the Reagan kind that they would have looked to. I'm not even saying that's what they should look to, but there is no push toward capitalism from the current GOP, and that is a problem.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Sure.
Well, you brought up Montesquieu, and I'm curious, how much of our problems today do you think are because the powers are less separated, like an establishment friendly media?
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Oh, totally. One of the great insights about separation of powers, checks and balances, preserving liberty.
And over a long period of time and over a larger country, this is also relevant to Trump in a way that I don't even think Reagan realized the whole regulatory state, what's called the regulatory state, the listeners will know it as what we call the Alphabet agencies. EPA, FCC, FAA. There's thousands of them, are cases of, what's the opposite of separation of powers? Integration of powers. They've been delegated by Congress, and it's. And they're in the executive branch. How weird is that? Congress passes a law, then they tell these regulatory agencies to fill out the details.
What are the details? They're writing regulations. What are regulations? They're a kind of law. But these are unelected bureaucrats. And not just that, they have enforcement mechanisms. They can penalize you. They can throw you in jail for breaking their regulations. They can stake your property. Well, that sounds like an executive function. They do have courts. Like you can go to tax court with the IR's and dispute something. So think of it. The IR's, the EPA, the FCC, the FAA, they, all of them have these three basic functions of government under one roof, and they're tyrants.
Now, Trump comes in and basically says, it's the swamp. That's what he means by the swamp. It's the deep state. People say, what are you talking about? What is the deep state? He's talking about this fourth branch. That's too nice a word for it, this fourth branch of government, where they specialize in integrating power, and it's very difficult to dislodge. And I'm not sure even. I haven't checked the numbers, but I'm not even sure Trump, in his four years, deregulated that much. But he tried to. And Vivek Ramaswamy, who was younger and much more pugnacious and I think, knowledgeable about this. His view is, you need to get rid of these entire. You need to get rid of these agencies, not just pare back their budgets, not just tell them to get rid of, you know, two regulations for every one that was, or ten for everyone that was Trump's approach, but the malay type approach, the argentine president, Malay, said, no, just get rid of him entirely. So they aren't capable of this. But that is a. It's a good question, Scott, because these regulatory agencies are in direct defiance of what this. Of what the founding fathers knew, what Montesquieu knew, what others knew about the importance of separation and powers.
[00:46:47] Speaker A: Great answer. Our CEO, Jag, is here. Jag, do you have a question for Richard?
[00:46:56] Speaker C: Hey, sorry about that. No, but you know, Richard, as you were talking about Reagan, and of course, we are big fans of Reagan here. Our actual last draw, my life video, was of him and his story. But I read an interesting book, recently targeted Beirut by Jack Carr, who is, you know, the author of the Terminalist and also a big Iron man fan. We've had him on.
You know, in reading about our adventures in Beirut under Reagan, I was struck that at least that aspect of his foreign policy was much more sort of self sacrificial and became literally so with the bombing of the Marines Act 1983.
And one of the strongest voices and consistent voices calling for the administration to pull the troops out of Lebanon was actually Goldwater.
And because, you know, everything else was very muddled, and it was just, you know, not, not meaning to nitpick. That was kind of, that was kind of a big screw up.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Yes, agreed. Totally. Yes. That was a screw up. Yeah.
[00:48:20] Speaker C: And it was all about, like, you know, well, it's about this humanitarian thing and it's about peacekeeping, peace and all of this. And it's about, you know, our reputation. But it really wasn't about keeping America safe. Of course, there were other considerations, including moves that the Soviet Union was making in the area and its alliance with the Syrians and with Iran. But anyway, just interesting to see that Goldwater was, again, the one consistent voice for an America first foreign policy.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Yes, he was definitely for that. One of the great things he also said was during the Bill Clinton years, there was a silly controversy about whether gays in the military should be allowed.
And Senator Goldwater famously said, I don't care whether they are straight. I care whether they shoot straight. I love that. Basically, you're right, that was a Reagan failure. He was trying to help Israel. Of course, that attack, by the way, was by Hezbollah, who still exists.
I once wrote a history of Reagan's success when he died. It was called the secrets of Reagan's success. And one was on his view of government, the other one was on economic policy, and the last was on foreign policy. And one of the things I noticed is he was so preoccupied, as he probably should have been, with the Cold War and the Soviets, that he did not, and his team did not spend a lot of time on the islamic threat.
And it's interesting because he knew when he came in that Carter had appeased the Muslims in Iran. Remember, the hostages were released the minute Reagan was inaugurated, but he just did not focus on that. And his view was totally, let's help Israel. If that means we need to be in Beiruthen, let's put our troops there. But yes, the night they were attacked and 283 of them died, they weren't even armed. It was just, it was terrible.
And on this theme, jag also, I should not neglect to say that I am very angry that Trump enabled the whole COVID lockdown thing.
I think he went into it gradually and thought it would be brief, and then by the time. But he was parading birks and fauci in front of the microphones every single day. And that is a real dark mark, aside from the tariffs and the protectionism. But it's a really a dark mark that he permitted an entire year. I think, of the COVID craziness. And you could say also maybe did nothing really to squelch the violence in places like Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis.
On the other hand, I thought at the time, because George Bush did, that George Bush Sr. Did send in the military or National Guard, I should say, when south central LA was ablaze in 1992 after the Rodney Kingdom verdict. And. But if you remember, if anyone remembers summer of 2020, when, when all these violence occurred, Trump really didn't do anything to send in, and I think he would have been roasted for trying to do so. So maybe that's why. But that is not a. That is not a good record for him, and that may be relevant to him winning. If he does win three weeks from now and there's violence, as I'm guessing there would be, the question will become, what's he going to do about it? They start burning down cities again.
But I just wanted to get on the record that I certainly do not endorse Trump's appeasement of the lawlessness, I call it the rule of lawlessness that the Democrats spread, including Tim walls in Minnesota in 2020.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: Great. Well, speaking of Reagan, I've heard objectivists claim over the years that much of Rand's animosity to Reagan stemmed from him running against Ford in the 76 primary. Cause Ford to lose to Carter.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: Is there possibly anything to that?
[00:52:38] Speaker B: I think there might be, but Ford was never elected. As we know, Ford got the Oval Office because Nixon resigned. So even for democrats who care about democratically elected officials, I mean, Kamala Harris would fall into this category. No one has voted for her. I. And no one voted for Jerry Ford. So I think. I have to say, I think she was biased because Ford did pick Alan Greenspan to be his economic advisor. And nine Rand visited the Oval Office for the first and only time under Ford. You can see pictures of this on the Internet. So I have to say, I think she was a bit biased toward Ford.
But, of course, prior to that, Greenspan, I think as early as 68, 69, was working for the Nixon campaign, at least not in the administration. But Greenspan was the economic advisor, the formal chief economic advisor under Ford in 74, 75, and then the election was 76, notably, by the way, a terrible stretch. Inflation was still going high. It was above, I think, 10%. And it was Gerald Ford.
I don't think Ayn Rand ever commented on this, who came up with the idea that inflation is caused by greedy businessmen and labor unions, not by the Fed. And so he concocted this scheme of printing up win buttons, Win was an acronym for whip inflation. Now, businessmen and labor union leaders are supposed to wear these pins on their lapels to remind themselves that they should restrain their greediness. Alan Greenspan was the economic advisor of Ford during that ridiculous campaign. That is, Mister Gold standard from the sixties allowed that to happen. And I think, in general, was a terrible Federal Reserve chairman as well. But Reagan appointed him. I mean, Reagan thought, knew of Ayn Rand, said nice things about Ayn Rand, Reagan did. She never said anything nice about him. And I think he thought, well, Alan Greenspan, I don't like the Fed, but Alan Greenspan, of all the people I can think of, seems to be the most pro gold standard, anti Fed guy. So let me appoint him head of the Fed, which he did in 1987.
That's just his background.
I think her objection to Reagan, she actually said once, anyone who does not recognize, I'm paraphrasing her, a woman's right to choose doesn't believe in any rights whatsoever. So it was a very broad, sweeping view of, well, if he's bad on this issue, he's not to be trusted on any other issue. And the Reagan case is very interesting because, of course, she died in 1982, and Reagan was president, so he was president in her last speech in 1981, she condemned him as well. But if you just told her in 1982, just before she died, if you said to her, you know, Ronald Reagan will stand up in the next seven or eight years, the Soviet Union, he will call them evil, and this cold war will end, and St. Petersburg will be liberated where you grew up, and 14 satellite countries, Romania, Bulgaria, will be liberated, and the Berlin Wall will fall.
And I'm not sure what she would have said. She probably would have said, not due to Reagan, it's due to somebody else.
But it's a weird, when you think about it, to look back and say, and by the way, the only reason I bring this up is not to besmirch the memory of Ayn Rand or her views, or to go hindsight, I'm saying today, you could say certain objectivists who are so hateful of Trump and are advising that people vote for Harris, I think five, six, seven years from now will go down as ridiculous and terrible and bad for american liberty. And they're supposed to be champions of liberty, and they're just missing the point, they're missing the context. They're totally narrowly focused. You could call Ayn Rand, would call it concrete, bound on particular peccadilloes of Trump and personality issues of Trump, but relative to the alternative, it is so obvious to me that Trump should be elected over Harris, that the Republican Party, for all its defects, remains the most amazing and wonderful political party that America has ever had and is hands down better than the Democrat Party. Even to this day, even though we don't have the roaring twenties and a limited government still in competition with each other, I think it is hands down the Republicans. That's why I call it a virtuous history and a virtuous party, but basically, fundamentally based on a virtuous political theory of how we should govern ourselves.
Sure.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: Well, just going back to history a little bit, you talked about Rome a little bit. Even Augustus called himself a champion of the republic, as he was first, you know, the emperor.
Would we know when our republic dies?
[00:57:55] Speaker B: Ah, that's a really good question.
I think it's being eroded over time. I mean, there are literally some people who will say, wow, the first time you had direct election of senators, change the constitution over that. Right. So people say, well, that is the beginning of it's more direct democracy.
Yes. I think the.
I think I would put it down as if there's a supreme Court packing.
If there is anything that eviscerates the electoral college.
This will sound weird, but one of the last things I would say, if there's a sense that the border closed not to people coming in, but to people leaving. I know that sounds weird, but if America gets worse in terms of not protecting rights and property rights, the rich and the atlases will start leaving and they'll change their citizenship. And there have been things like exit taxes and other punitive measures to prevent, you know, how now some, someone like Elon Musk will go from California to Texas. Well, what about an Elon Musk who goes from America to some other country? They are not going to let him go without penalty or arrest.
And so if you start seeing things like that, then we'll know we have a one party state. It's very hard for me to imagine ten years from now, and I'm 65 years old. So if I was 75 years old and looked back, I have a hard time believing, if we're a one party state, it's because we're all Republicans. If we're a one party state and elections are a joke, it's because we're all Democrats. So people can dispute me on that, but that seems the direction we're going. Unless something is done to stop it.
[00:59:51] Speaker A: Wow. Well, that's something. You know, people have questioned why Elon is putting himself out there there.
Is it because he's gamed all this out already.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: He's a very courageous guy. And when he's asked, I was asked in some interviews, if Kamala Harris wins and tries to censor X, what are you gonna do? It's interesting because he's not afraid. He's literally fearless. And I think he's prince. It's amazing. He's principled enough to say, I'm gonna fight it or I'm going to escape it or I'm going to laugh in their face.
He's a wonderful figure as a role model, especially among the rich who are so scared.
We'll see. I have had sessions before. You know, Scott on, I'm encouraged by certain rich alums who are saying to their colleges, no more, I'm going to, I'm not funding you anymore. You're so not just anti semitic, you're so anti capitalist. I'm done with you. It doesn't mean they won't go back and fund them when things quiet down. I think the better approach would be turn around and fund better people and better groups like the Atlas Society. That would be nice.
But they're starting to recognize that the colleges are so far gone and corrupt that they shouldn't be funding their own destroyers. And that was the theme of Ayn Rand's last public talk, the sanction of the victim. Right. Very interesting.
[01:01:26] Speaker A: Well, this has been a great topic. Thank you so much, Richard, for talking about it. Thank you, Jag. Thanks, everyone. Fountainhead form sorry we didn't get a chance to get to you, but if you've enjoyed this or any of our other materials, please consider making a tax deductible
[email protected]. dot thanks, everybody. Take care.
[01:01:47] Speaker B: Thank you, Scott.
