Badlands Media - No Treason Podcast Ep. 22: Is Natural Law Certain? Spooner’s Case for Jury Power

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

In Episode 22 of the No Treason Podcast, Jonathan Drake continues his exploration of Lysander Spooner’s Trial by Jury, tackling the fifth and most commonly cited objection to jury power: the claim that if juries judge the law, the law itself becomes uncertain. Drake walks through Spooner’s rebuttal step by step, contrasting the supposed certainty of statutory law with the reality of an ever-changing maze of legislation, precedent, and judicial interpretation. The discussion centers on the difference between natural law and fiat law, arguing that the principles of justice understood by ordinary people provide far more stability than a system dominated by lawyers, statutes, and shifting court rulings. Drake explains how natural law forms the interpretive foundation for all written law and why removing that foundation has created the labyrinthine legal system people fear today. Along the way, he examines how representative government contributed to the centralization of power and the erosion of true jury authority. The episode ultimately argues that restoring trial by jury as the final arbiter of law would decentralize power, protect individual rights, and return the enforcement of justice to the people themselves.

of the badlands explain those badlands that's a hell of a name good evening and welcome to the no treason podcast this is episode 22 and we are live this evening i'm your host jonathan drake thank you so much for joining me i see people filing in uh and uh making themselves at home in the chat janis 20-22-20 as in the number 20 and then 22 said thank you for making me think I think and and thinking is dangerous that says Drake is so excited I always try to put on a good you know a good show deep down inside I'm really just a sad lonely little person or so some people would have you believe we have a an action package evening lined up for us tonight. I will be doing this show and then I will hopefully get done

before the end of the hour and then hop right on over and you should join me. I'm going to be the guest tonight on The Narrative with Burning Bright and that should be a wonderfully interesting and potentially disturbing to some conversation. But in lieu of making us think, if what we believe is true, it will withstand any barrage of questions that you can throw at it. And that's one reason why I think it's valid

to look at the Bible as the source of God's word because it has endured 2,000 years of every possible attack and subversion effort, and yet it remains because the word of God endures. So obviously the ideas that we talk about here are not on par with God's word. I would never claim to even remotely think of such a thing. But if what we believe is the truth, then we shouldn't be afraid of questions. and my father-in-law one time used as an analogy of someone had asked him when he's a pastor and he homeschooled my wife and her brothers and when they first joined the church that he's the pastor at 30 some odd years ago someone in the church didn't like the fact that they had decided to homeschool their children and took him out to lunch and made him aware of that like I really think you're making a poor decision here And my father-in-law's perspective on it was I felt confident in the things that I'd chosen for my family.

And I felt established in my beliefs. And I believe what I was doing was the right thing. And some people might have been uncomfortable in that situation with, I mean, the guy apparently came out, I'm pretty hard about it. And my father-in-law's response was basically, this is what I believe to be true. So if what we believe to be true is valid and is good, it can withstand any barrage of questions that are thrown at it. And if questioning makes you uncomfortable, then maybe you need the questioning.

If at the very least, just to have the mental reps, so to speak, working out your mind and trying out, you know, taking on the questions, taking on the trials to your ideas. and if they come out on the other end still standing, then great. You've gone through a, you know, Chris Paul would talk about a sifting process. You've gone through a sifting process and your ideas have come out on the other end. Either they've been destroyed

or that you've learned to look at them from a different perspective or they have been more established, in your own mind at least. So that is certainly what my goal is here is in challenging things that are usually perceived to be unchallengeable, sacred cows, as it were. And if those sacred cows deserve to be sacred, then after all of the scrutiny, they'll still be sacred when it's all said and done.

And we don't have to fret about that. I was mentioning the chat, too. It is a little bit weird because it's bright outside still, and it does not feel like it's 7 o'clock in the evening. But that's daylight savings for you. And I had the idea earlier this week that maybe we could try out as a trial run for a tax revolt. We could try out a daylight savings times revolt and see how much people can get on board with telling the government to go stuff it. But anyway, again, we're alive tonight.

And I see some familiar faces or names in the chat. As Heisler, good to see you. Of course, there's polymathinon. Kelly Loves Oak. Hey, good to see you. we've got Claire Cat Rad for Liberty late, but we haven't really got into it yet, so you're not too late. All right. Last week, we covered four out of the five objections that Spooner covers in his chapter entitled objections,

which is chapter five of his monumental essay trial by jury. And I keep mentioning that it really should be a book because it's quite a chore to read. but for your edification, the four that we've gone over are number one, it is a maxim that judges judge the law and juries judge fact. So this is an objection to the concept of trial by jury that Spooner is laying out. And of course, his simple answer to that is judges have had centuries to invent all sorts of maxims. And so this isn't really an argument against something. is just making a value claim to the opposite without any sort of argumentative evidential structure behind it.

Number two, if trial by jury is the way it has been described and the judge is judge of the law, then of what use are justices then? And his answer to that is that justice, and I think some of that comes up here in tonight's material as well, but his answer is basically. that, you know, they're an advisory role. They also play a role in the appeals process and helping to facilitate that. Because ideally, a justice or a judge is, they are sworn, at least in, you know, the Anglo-Saxon system and technically in our system as well, they are sworn to uphold justice.

So if it be the case that a jury has decided something that is contrary to natural law, natural law still is the higher law and the judge should step in and like we need to do an appeal here because you guys are wrong and then we submit it to a new jury so it's not that the judge himself issues a judgment it's just helping to push the jury in the direction of abiding by natural law at the end of the day though spooner does acknowledge that the jury has precedence number three it is absurd that 12 ignorant commoners should have more of a say about what law should be than the expert class and spooner's simple answer to that is basically that the people are able to from childhood a person that is capable of understanding the basics of natural law and we'll get it some more of that tonight the fourth was given their ignorance it's absurd to think that a jury's judgment

should stand determinately. And the response to that was that there was, of course, an appeals process, even in the Anglo-Saxon time. And so it would stand to reason that we would want to continue something like that. He did mention that it's possible for a jury to become the concept of a jury to become tyrannical. And the possibility of an appeal helps to spread out the moral hazard, so to speak of a jury being compromised or, you know, something to that effect. Because at the end of the day, the goal is justice.

It's not just to facilitate a process or facilitate a system. The goal is justice. But I'm not going to recap all 45 minutes of material from last week in answering each of these objections. So I would recommend that you go back and listen to last week's episode, episode 21, for that discussion. Or just read the entirety of the, of Chapter 5 in the essay. It's in the description below. It should be a link to the trial by jury essay. It's a free PDF at online library for Liberty.

Black Hat Destroyer I see in the chat, howdy. Urquhart DeSefano is this their argument for why jury trials should be only for cases where the penalty is more than two years in prison? The answer to that would be a much deeper and longer answer than I'm going to give here given the time we've got. So I recommend reading through the essay or go back and listen to the episodes starting at number 11 and up until today's episode for a full description of what trial by jury is meant to be. One thing I will highlight from last week is that a properly functioning jury or trial by jury acts as the ultimate decentralizing force by not being to hold into an arbitrary fiat legal standard. and the retardation of one part of the country, maybe due to a massive influx of people with a different culture, as we are seeing,

it is able to be isolated by a jury in your own community that is judging by their own consciences and not a bogus legal precedent that was set in that other compromised community. And the phrase that seemed to tickle people last week was isolate the, the retardation. So that's something that trial by jury can offer. The struggle session, we are ultimately fighting,

if you were to take a zoomed out view of what the infall war really even is, or what is it that we're doing as human beings in this world right now, is we're fighting the centralization of power into the hands of a few, which is the necessary consequence of an infatuation with a representative style of government. versus the decentralization of power into the hands of the people. We've been told that representative government is decentralizing power into the hands of the people, but as we have seen, the results of that system is a centralization of power.

So we need to kind of drop back and punt as it were and reevaluate. Those are mutually exclusive concepts, and with 250 years of the former yielding the mess, that we are in now, I think it's time to give decentralization a try and bring back trial by jury the way it's meant to be. And that is entirely up to us, since we are the ones that will be sitting on juries. So tonight we'll cover Objection 5 and we'll dive deep into probably the most effective argument that has been used against trial by jury insofar as it was employed by some of its most ardent adversaries to tremendously damaging effect. And the objection is that if a jury decides what the law is, and it's not bound to the judgment of any other jury or legal precedent, then the law will be uncertain and that's not good for any sort of civilized society. Spooner takes his time answering this objection and we will get into all of the nitty gritty. But first, and also stay tuned after the show because I'm going to be

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Let's dive right on into things and see what we've got. Objection number five. This is probably the most often cited objection. and was definitely the preferred reason that the man who did the most damage to trial by jury in this country, that is Justice Joseph Story, it was his preferred reason that he used to justify his successful temps at really gutting the heart and soul of trial by jury

and establishing legal precedent that made it to the point where if you bring it up in a courtroom today, you will face their wrath pretty quickly. But the objection is, another objection that will perhaps be made, made to allowing jurors to judge of the law and the justice of the law is that the law would be uncertain. Clercat says it's Gartlanders and I've heard it both ways. So Spooner goes ahead and launches his rebuttal. He says if by this objection it be meant that the law would be uncertain to the minds of the people

at large so that they would not know what the juries would sanction and what they would condemn and would not therefore know practically what their own rights and liberties were under the law, the objection is thoroughly baseless and false. And I could probably just stop there because at this point, you should all trust Spooner's judgment. But I'm sure he would even say, no, don't do that. Let's think this through. So how can he really say this?

He says, no system of law that was ever devised could be so entirely intelligible this is speaking of the trial-by-jury natural law system, and certain to the minds of the people at large as this, compared with it, the complicated systems of law that are compounded of the law of nature, of constitutional grants, of innumerable and incessantly changing legislative enactments, and of countless and contradictory judicial decisions,

with no uniform principle of reason or justice running through them, are among the blindest of all the mazes, in which unsophisticated minds were ever bewildered and lost. What is the final backstop? Thinking of this, the countless and contradictory judicial decisions, no uniform principle of reason or justice. What is the final backstop of any legal rationale that we are presented with today? What would you suggest is the United States legal systems true nor?

as it were. We are told that the Supreme Court rulings are backstopped by the principle of constitutionality. But we can understand by observing the way rulings will overturn decades or even centuries of precedent or how they can reinforce precedent that we can see are, to us, clearly a violation of what is constitutional, that that standard is not as rock solid or form. foolproof or dependable as we would hope it to be, as you would want it to be when deciding what is or what isn't binding as law. And again, when we're talking about what is binding as law, we're talking about the government's

excuse or the government's permission to take your life, liberty, or property. That's really what law is about. So not to mention much of the legal precedent of today. is based on constitutional amendments. Chris Paul talks about this all the time that were not legitimately ratified if you've ever looked into how the reconstruction amendments were ratified.

And from a common sense natural law perspective, there's no way those things, let alone the original constitution, but there's no way that those reconstruction amendments, the 14th being one that much of our modern day precedent is based on, there's no way that stuff was ratified in a way that is legitimate from even the constitutional setup or a natural law setup. Either way you slice it, it's not legitimate.

And yet much of our true north for our legal system today is based on that. This all leads to the significant problem of having an essentially uncertain legal landscape, which is exactly what this objection claims trial by jury would give. us. So one answer to that is if you're saying that the trial by jury is going to present an uncertain law, that's what you've already got. So let's try something different instead of doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results. Spinner goes on, the uncertainty of the law under these systems has become a proverb. This will ring true with many of you, I'm sure. So great is this uncertainty that nearly all men learned as well as unlearned

shun the law as their enemy instead of resorting to it for protection. They usually go into courts of justice, so called, only as men go into battle when there is no alternative left for them. And I'm meant to pull up the slide on that, my bad. compares the legal system to a labyrinth. And you can think of the ancient Greek myth with the Minotaur and the labyrinth. And labyrinth are designed to entrap you. And the common sensible person fears entering, getting lost in there and who knows what kind of monsters you might encounter along the way.

And so you are, instead of representing yourself or guiding yourself, which some people try, Ash in America will testify to that, but it wasn't easy. So you end up having to trust wholly in a guide that you have to pay to take you through the labyrinth. But the guides can get confused. And some guides are better than other guides. And so the outcome of a trial is basically a total guessing game.

And it also creates a legal system wherein if you're poor, then you're screwed because you're not going to be able to hire a better quality guide. And when you're talking about a system in which you can lose your life, your liberty, or your property, that's not a level of certainty that is sustainable. If you're talking about a society that is trying to promote justice and trying to establish and protect liberty. How many of us think of when you hear of some rich person being charged with something? thing and you're like, well, they'll probably get off because they're rich, they can afford to pay for better lawyers.

Spooner goes on. Was there ever such a fatuity as that of a nation of men madly bent on building up such labyrinths as these for no other purpose than that of exposing all their rights of reputation, property, liberty, and life to the hazards of being lost in them, excuse me, instead of being content to live in the light of the open day of their own understanding. Lizzie Boston says, bury them in paper, and Ash would tack on to that that the process is the punishment in a lot of cases. The word fatuity, by the way, means extreme complacent foolishness, stupidity, or inanity. So was there ever such extreme complacent foolishness, stupidity or inanity of building such labyrinths as we have in our legal system?

It was not created by our consent. It was foisted upon us under the pretense of being the result of legitimate representative government. It was justified by the false claims that A, natural law is uncertain. That was Justice Joseph Story's argument. And then B, codified law is certain. and then see, and this is what you voted for. The representative government provided the narrative cover for this complete and total destruction of liberty.

It kind of reminds me of an older sibling grabbing the hand of the younger and weaker sibling, smacking them with it and saying, why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? That's essentially our legal system in a nutshell. But many people will point to our system as somehow evidence for our liberty because we voted for it and we have representatives.

Spinner wonders what sort of man would willingly create such a system or acquiesce to the idea that it was created according to his will. And to that he says, what honest, unsophisticated man ever found himself involved in a lawsuit that he did not desire of all things that his cause might be judged of on principles of natural justice as those principles were understood by plain men like himself. He would then feel that he could foresee the result. These plain men are the men who pay the taxes and support the government. Why should they not have such an administration of justice as they desire and they can understand? People who are paying their taxes and supporting their government think that they are getting what they are paying

for, but instead they're getting an absolute quagmire that is depriving them. of their life, liberty, and process, or property, excuse me. In a natural law-based system of justice, there would be something like certainty because every man has himself something like definite and clear opinions and also knows something of the opinions of his neighbors on matters of justice,

and these being the people that would be potentially on a jury. And he goes on, and he would know, pull my slide up here he would know that no statute unless it were so clearly just as to command the unanimous ascent of 12 men who should be taken at random from the whole community could be enforced so as to take from him his reputation property liberty or life he goes on what greater certainty can men require or need as to laws under which they are to live So if you in your own mind can think of the basics of natural law, the basics of mine and thine, the science of justice, the basics of what makes for living at peace with your neighbors, everyone knows the phrase that good fences make for good neighbors. We all understand these things.

We all understand that truth, honesty, integrity are things that even if people don't live up to them. they understand that those are things that are worth pursuing and demanding of others. We all hold other people to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. So everyone understands that at the end of the day, if you're called to be on a jury, you essentially judge people the way that you would be judged. That's natural law. That's love. That's what Jesus talks about in the golden rule.

Referring back to the objection that natural law makes the law uncertainty, how is this not certainty that you understand what natural law you understand the basics of what makes for peace and you can talk to your neighbors and find out what they think works for peace and if 12 of them all agree then you can pretty much understand that the likelihood of that being something that could be enforced by the government would stand spooner writes if a statute were enacted by a legislature a man in order to know and this is what I was just talking about, in order to know what it's, what was its true interpretation, whether it were constitutional and whether it would be enforced, would not be under the necessity of waiting for years until some suit had arisen and been carried through all the stages of

judicial proceeding to a final decision. That's what we have now. He would only need to use his own reason as to its meaning and its justice and then talk with his neighbors on the same points, unless he found them nearly unanimous in their interpretation and approbation, that is the approval of it, he would conclude that juries would not unite in enforcing it and that it would consequently be a dead letter. And he would be safe in coming to this conclusion. And then rather than asking, this is my own commentary now if you're just listening, rather than asking for permission, which is what a statutory law system does, asking for permission to exercise your natural rights, you just exercise them, understanding that

your neighbors have your back in case the government decides to step in and usurp your natural rights. The certainty would also stem from the reality that under this system, very little legislation would survive. There would be very little statute. No Pavlovian training to always seek permission to exercise your own God-given rights. And my darling Sherry, I see you in the chat. Welcome. I saw this. Good to see you. UV-Mex. Melendi, good to see you. Hope you're feeling well. How can we be so certain with natural law? Again, everyone understands the basic. tenets of what mine and thine is. Everyone knows murder is wrong.

Everyone knows that lying is wrong. That's why you try to hide lies. Comparatively, the current system, by relying on Fiat statue, Fiat meaning just declared, it's not based on anything, by relying on Fiat statute communicated via a diverse language with myriad interpretations creates a problem of never truly knowing what the law can possibly mean because language. changes. Records for how language has changed are difficult to trust. And so we must rely on experts to interpret it for us and trust that they are meaning well in their interpretation.

They're not trying to pull one over on us. And the manner in which these courts, the court experts, the judges, the lawyers, etc., using entirely arbitrary standards means you can never be sure what the outcome of any particular case may be since the system does not operate from any sort of objective standard. While we're a nation of laws, the law is the objective standard. It's certain, and that's bullshit. Spooner argues that it is only certain if there is a commonly accepted interpretive rule, aka natural law,

but such a standard is absent in today's legal doctrines, which are primarily based on precedent, and we can see those often shift and change to the point that you can't predict with any measure of certainty. Like, man, that is clearly unconstitutional. Like here in Illinois, if you want to own a firearm, you have to have a firearm owner identification card, a FOID card. If you want to buy ammo, you have to have a FOID card. It has been struck down as unconstitutional, and yet they still do it. So what do you do then?

Spinner writes, the interpretive rule, that is natural law. What is true, the interpretive rule assumes what is true that natural law is a thing in itself. It's a higher standard. It's outside of us. He goes on also that it is capable of being learned. It assumes, furthermore, that it actually is understood by the legislators and judges who make and interpret the written law. Of necessity, therefore, it assumes further that they, the legislators and judges,

are incompetent to make and interpret the written law unless they previously understand the natural law applicable to the same subject. It also assumes that the people must understand the natural law before they can understand the written law. This is the objective standard of interpretive rule. And first, this goes back to the evil maxim that Spooner talked about that they use to justify their arbitrary authority, that ignorance of the law excuses no one. And this is of sane, of course, because if a jury is not learned enough to judge the law, then how can the common man be held accountable to a law that only the experts can understand? And yet they can't even understand it because they're not using natural law.

They're just using precedent and it's constantly changing. This goes back to Spooner's concept of natural law being the science of justice. And if you go back, I've mentioned this article a number of times. I'm fairly positive. I'll end going through it in a similar fashion as this. But he demonstrates that a child learns this. Before they even learn the words that we use to describe things like honesty, like theft, like, you know, cheating.

they learn those concepts before they even understand the words. They can't even learn the words unless they already understand the concepts. Saw this in the chat said, I understand the principles at play here, but I worry about the level of status and doctrineation we have endured for 100 plus years where the appeal to authority is the dominant principle, not natural law. That is certainly a problem. And, you know, I won't answer that now.

some of that might end up coming up in the discussion with Burning Bright on the narrative. Moving on, it is a principle perfectly familiar to lawyers and one that must be perfectly obvious to every other man that will reflect a moment, that as a general rule, no one can know what the written law is until he knows what it ought to be. How in the world could you know what a law ought to be? the answer is everyone understands at their core of their being the bible tells us that the law of god is written on everyone's heart that's we we engage in judgment constantly of other people's behavior and other people's actions and we we do it without ever having gone to a law school obviously that can be refined some people are maybe better at it than others but you can't even know what the written law is unless you know what it ought to be. And here's the kicker.

Though the words contain the law, the words themselves are not the law. Were the words themselves the law, each single written law would be liable to embrace many different laws to it as many different laws as there were different senses or different combination of senses in which each and all the words were capable of being taken. This isn't like taste, touch, and smell. This is interpretive meaning. But the words don't contain the law, or the words that are, the words contain the law. They are not the law itself. He goes on, but each written law in order to be a law must be taken only in some one definite and distinct sense. And that definite and distinct sense must be selected from the almost infant variety of senses which its words are

capable of. How is this selection to be made? It can only be made by the aid of that perception of natural law or natural justice which men naturally possess. Slide 15 here. Such then is the comparative certainty of the natural and the written law. So the natural being more certain and the written being uncertain because of the myriad ways that words can be interpreted. Nearly all the certainty there is in the latter, that is the written, so far as it relates to principles, is based upon and derived from the still greater certainty of the former. And this sets up one of Spooner's points we'll make here in a minute. But in other words, the supposed certainty of the written law is only possible with an already

established understanding by all parties of the concepts of natural law, and this begs an obvious question. If the written can only be properly understood through the lens of the natural, what good is the written law? Spooner writes, in short, the simple fact that the written law must be interpreted by the natural is of itself a sufficient confession of the superior certainty of the latter. The written law, then, even where it can be construed consistently with the natural, introduces labor and obscurity instead of shutting them out. And this must always be the case because words do not create ideas but only recall them. And the same word may recall many different ideas. For this reason, nearly all abstract principles can be seen by the single mind more clearly

than they can be expressed by words to another. This is owing to the imperfection of language and the different senses, meanings, and shades of meaning which different individuals attach to the same words in the same circumstances. He goes on where the written law cannot be construed consistently with the natural, there is no reason, apart from tyranny, why it should ever be enacted

at all. This is the case even if they're written be plainly understood because certainty and plainness are as Spooner writes, but a poor compensation for justice. And he

gives a for instance, let's say a law forbidding the drinking of water on pains of death is written so it's very plain, it's very certain, and there's zero ambiguity. But clearly, intelligibility and certainty are not in and of themselves argument in favor of a law or even a system of laws

because such a law would be an obvious violation of a person's natural rights of life and liberty to consume what they will it cannot be a law that people should harm themselves or harm others think back to the natural law standards for a contract that it cannot be a legal legally binding according to natural contract can't be to do unjust things. And forcing people to do their own hurt would be unjust. Think how many times you hear people like, well, I know what we're doing, you know, it was technically legal. We weren't actually breaking the law.

And yet there's a higher law that would condemn them. This goes back to needing a standard by which to judge the law itself. And the basic standard is simply, does this lead to peace? between men or does it lead to a status of war? And peace doesn't mean just absence of conflict, but actually the building up and pursuing peace through our actions with one another. Spooner writes, whether therefore written laws

correspond with or differ from the natural, they are to be condemned. In the first case, they are useless repetitions introducing labor and obscurity. In the latter case, they are positive violations of man's rights. Let's say that representative government is actually all that has cracked up to be and doesn't have its current history of undermining we the people. Through this lens, what do we really need them for if all they're going to do is pass laws that are useless repetitions of things that we already know to be unlawful? What does Congress actually do besides imagine new ways for government to borrow and spend and thereby justify tax taxing us?

okay you might say the people are retarded so we still need a government to write it down for us Spooner writes it is not necessary that legislators should enact natural law in order that it may be known to the people because that would be presuming that the legislators already understand it better than the people themselves the fact of which I am not aware that they have ever heretofore given any very satisfactory evidence I love the way this guy writes

The same sources of knowledge on the subject are open to the people that are open to the legislators. And the people must be presumed to know it as well as they do. And we have a system in which the representatives are pulled from the people. So how can it be if they're pulled from the people and are able to create laws, but the people themselves don't know what the law is, how can you pull from the people and have representatives that know where the law is? That is retarded. The objections made to natural law on the ground of obscurity are wholly unfounded.

It is true it must be learned like any other science, but it is equally true that it is very easily learned. If this seems impossible to you or scary to you or uncertain to you, then I'd bet that you've been conditioned to believe, maybe subconsciously, that the government should have a much larger role in our lives than we say that we think it should. and say you've been conditioned to ask for permission to the point you cannot bring yourself to take liberties, and it might scare you that others would do that as well. The realm of natural law is extremely limited relative to what we have now, which speaks to part of the problem, and I mentioned this before, is that we are interpreting a lot of this through the lens of the corrupt system that we have now.

We can't fathom a world in which we don't need permission to just live, do business, raise our families. And we are used to the fact that the government itself, which should be upholding justice, is actively refusing to enforce any semblance of natural law or even its own written law in a lot of cases. And it actively punishes people who try to enforce it for themselves. Think of the shoplifting in San Francisco where they don't prosecute under what was the like $900 or something and the people just going through the store and filling their backpacks full of stuff and the shop owners can't do anything about it.

And if the shop owners tried to do something about it, they would be prosecuted. Think of people getting arrested for defending themselves in their own homes in the middle of the night when there's an invader. And then for the question of the people coming over from a different culture, whether illegally or even legally, what culture are they supposed to learn? What about the current American culture is worth teaching anybody?

Vote so you can get stuff paid for by your neighbors is essentially the rallying cry of many political campaigns, although they dress it up in less obvious language. As we, God willing, switch over to a more natural law, which is within our power to do. We just have to do it as we get onto juries and as we make decisions to be more personally sovereign. Remembering back to quote that all political power, as it is called, rests on the matter of money.

So find a way to make your money secure. There just happens to be a designed system to that end. If a child has never learned to take responsibility for their actions, this applies to adults as well, they'll grow up never having learned valuable life lessons, and the first time they are out from under the protective umbrella, they have a rude awakening as the nature of reality. So there will be a period of growing pains as people exercise their liberties.

Trial by jury affords the best possible means of enforcing that rude awakening on a legal scale. It enables us to push back on any cultural differences that would cause issues. at least any issues that might be more pressing than our current tyranny because every culture understands murder every culture understands theft and of course the express concern is if like smallies or whatever get onto a jury but this goes back to objection four if those immigrants are so twisted of their minds as to not be able to recognize basic theft or murder and then be able to agree with the rest of a jury and bring justice, then the answer to that is the same answer that Spooner gave in objection for,

that that is a possibility, at least for now. But again, the potential for justice not being done, which would happen in that circumstance, is more preferable than a system in which injustice is regularly being done on the whole people, such as we have now with a statutory criminal system that is protected from a jury by being hidden on the civil layer. Trial by jury isolates the retardation.

But for those communities that don't have that exact problem, the fact that a bunch of Somalis are screwing up Minneapolis right now has no bearing on the hundreds and thousands of other communities that can decide on their own to stop enforcing bad law. We don't have to wait for everybody. like I mentioned a number of episodes ago, William Blackstone highlighted a county in England in the 1700s that essentially just decided to make up their own courts

that went back to the old hundreds in tithings and used juries that judged by their consciences, not by the statute, and it smoothed out a lot of their problems. So we could have communities in the United States that decide to be more aggressive in enacting this type of thing. Isolate the retardation. Clarkegat really wants a shirt

to that effect and I think we need to make that happen. Men learn natural law simply by interacting with one another. This forces a natural distillation down to the most essential aspects of what makes for peace between men. Think back to the five points of natural law contract

or relationship. It has to be voluntary. The consent must be explicit. parties both need to be honest. You can't defraud one another. You can't contract to do something unjust, so it must be just. And then each party to that contract, to that relationship, must be given opportunity to give consent, universally individual. So for any of us who may have a cultural concept that differs slightly or even significantly,

then the predominant cultural understanding of natural law will win out over time if we enforce it. I think it's the infinite player, so to speak. And remember, trial by jury is as much about enforcing liberty as it is preventing tyranny, although it's done in the same action. The problem is, we have bought into the idea of abdicating our authority to a Fiat system that is clearly unwilling to protect our rights. And I would argue this is an explicitly producing. outcome of representative government, as we are told it is, given its nearly 800-year history,

going back to the earliest days of English Parliament, we have not gotten any freer, the more predominant its institution has progressed. And the more we hand over, even just narratively, our power, the worse it is getting. Regaining that power is, of course, going to take some time. And 800 years of representative history has demonstrated that, regaining that power isn't accomplished by hoping that fraudulently elected representatives who have a vested interest in maintaining the system that put them in power will somehow divest themselves of all that power and just give it back because we voted a certain way.

That's not how human nature works. If this makes you uncomfortable, then ask yourself why. Do some personal deconstructing of your own ideas. Spooner writes, the whole object of legislation, because we don't need legislators to make legislation. The whole object of legislation, accepting that legislation which merely makes regulations and provides instrumentalities for carrying other laws into effect, is to overturn natural law and substitute for it the arbitrary will of power. In other words, the whole object of it is to destroy men's rights, at least such is its only effect and its designs. must be inferred from its effects. So if the results of statutory system of law, such as we have today,

is that you are trained to ask permission to exercise your God-given rights, that is a feature not above. Its designs must be inferred from its effect. Yet the advocates of arbitrary legislation are continually practicing the fraud of pretending that unless the legislature make the laws, the laws will not be known. The whole object of the fraud is to secure to the government the authority of making laws

that never ought to be known. This goes back to the question of centralization versus decentralization. Centralization is incompatible with liberty. And if our goal is actually to have liberty, real freedom, then we are kidding ourselves by thinking that we can gain it through the preferred action, the preferred political action of the centralized system.

There's a reason why trial by jury was destroyed early, and elections and delegation of power through them was established and promoted and pushed to the degree it is. This goes back to centralized versus decentralized. Okay. natural law is certain statutory law is uncertain so that's objection number five that wraps up this chapter chapter five next week we will look into um the the next chapter is that the juries of today are make sure i get the title correct here i forgot to write it down the juries of day, juries of the present day illegal.

So this will be interesting because I'll present some of my research on how trial by jury was subverted in this country. A lot of the content from this episode plays into it because this objection that natural law is uncertain was the primary objection that Joseph's story used. And he is the man that, the man that, basically stuck the knife in and twisted it on trial by jury. And unfortunately, people just weren't pushing back. But you know what? No time like the present. All right.

I am going to take a break for a few minutes. I will bid you all a fond farewell, but not forever. I'm going to hop over to the narrative with Burning Bright. So hop on over there as well. I'm going to grab something to drink real quick and probably be talking until Tuesday. So thank you so much for joining me. We'll see you all next week. It will be a recorded episode next week because I have to work, but I'll see you all then.

Take care. Why a spoon, cousin? Why not an axe? Because it's dull, you twit. It'll hurt more. Thank you so much for joining us, and don't forget to hit the thumbs up on this video. And a special thank you to all of our advertising partners. Please remember to shift your dollars to support those businesses that support Badlands Media.