Badlands Media - The No Treason Podcast Ep. 24: Who Really Determines Justice? Jury Power vs Judicial Authority

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

In Episode 24 of the No Treason Podcast, Jonathan Drake continues his breakdown of Lysander Spooner’s Trial by Jury, focusing on the question of who truly determines justice within a legal system. Drake examines the tension between judicial authority and the role of the jury, challenging the assumption that judges should have the final say on the meaning of law. The episode explores how shifting power away from juries and toward centralized legal authorities has reshaped the justice system into one that prioritizes procedural control over individual judgment. Drake walks through Spooner’s argument that juries were originally intended to serve as independent evaluators of both law and fact, acting as a safeguard against government overreach. Throughout the discussion, he highlights how modern courts have narrowed the jury’s role, creating a system where citizens are expected to comply with laws they may not fully understand. The episode ultimately argues that restoring the jury’s full authority would reintroduce accountability, decentralize power, and better align legal outcomes with the common understanding of justice.

That's a hell of it. Good evening and welcome to the No Treason podcast. This is episode 24. I'm your host, Jonathan Drake. This is a live broadcast and we're early. Thank you for everyone who has showed up early, although I guarantee you none was as early as Funky Pam. She said she was in the chat an hour ahead of time.

So gold star for you. I asked the powers that be if I could have an extra half an hour because we have a lot of material to go through. And let me get this pulled up here. Yeah, I've got this. I'm going to get through this whole chapter and there's just too much material to cover. Beautiful day. We had like last weekend, it was like 14 degrees and then we had beautiful 70s and then it was like 84 degrees. day. I was down here kind of getting the studio set up and getting my ads and stuff together.

Went back upstairs to check on my daughter, my wife's out and about with the older daughter. And it was like 59 degrees in the house. We had all the windows open. It was such a beautiful day. And a storm is rolling in and the temperature dropped like 30 degrees almost. It was like, whoa. Okay. Got to close some windows. But anyway, good to see everyone. There's Claire Cat, Aob, Eleanor. Andy Patriot S. Heisler saw this. Lizzie Boston made it here. Wonderful. I'm glad everyone got the memo. I'm sure there'll be a few people who will filter in and be like,

what? Where are he going? But, oh, April and good to see you. Let's see. What are we going to start with? All right, well, let's just go ahead and get into the recap. A little discombobulated. Last week, we did a recap on authentic trial by jury. and like bank tellers using their trained understanding of the real thing to spot counterfeit, we then examined how the jury selection process has been bastardized away from its original form.

I have made much of the fact that the Constitution does not define trial by jury. It just simply acknowledges it. And I use the example of that you don't have to define really what Legos, are, you know, the plastic building blocks, they just are what they are. And cheap knockoffs may look like Legos, but everyone who's handled them knows they're not anything like the original.

And if you give your kid a knockoff brand and still call them Legos, that's disingenuous at best. And as a kid who received some of those back in the day, I can assure you it's much less satisfying Jen Jen, good to see you. We're live. Halo Daisy, good to see you as well.

So to the point about the fact that the Constitution just acknowledges it, Spooner argues that when it does acknowledge trial by jury, it is the thing itself that is being acknowledged, not just the name being applied to whatever nonsense the government creates. any attempt by the government, particularly the judicial members, to redefine, shape, mold, curtail, or stifle the original should be viewed with incredible skepticism. And those pushing for it are either stupid or they are evil. I've used that sort of binary rubric for judging people in power because either they don't realize their policies are destructive and they're they're stupid and they shouldn't have control of the levers of power, or they do know that their policies are evil and they really shouldn't have anything to do with the levers of power. In light of that, recall Supreme Court Justice Joseph's story, the man that I identified as being the beginning of the end of trial by jury here in this country.

So recall his comments about what would happen should the jury exercise its right to judge of the law that it would in quote overthrow the whole system of jurisprudence now although he is clearly positing that as a negative he's accidentally acknowledging the actual power of the jury to put a stop to fiat maxims the arbitrary statutes the ability of the government to criminalize whatever it likes. In other words, trial by jury is the only check and balance that actually matters. Story, Lizzie Boston, I just saw this comment. Ooh, the Duplo thesis. Duploes are made by Legos, which is why they are also awesome. They're just really big Legos. So it's not dupl. I was more thinking of Magna blocks with the knockoff comments. So stories, denial of the

right of the people to tell the government no, tells you what he believes about where rights actually come from, who gets to define those rights, and then, of course, what authority the government really has. Plainness and certainty were the virtues that he valued the most rather than actual liberty. But the implementation of his system has produced an... anything but plainness and certainty. Recall Spooner comparing a person getting ready to go to court as one who prepares to enter battle

or entering into a terrible labyrinth with all kinds of hidden hazards and dangers. Stories system has most definitely not produced more liberty in the long run. Borrowing from Spooner's wisdom, the design of a thing being inferred by its effects, we may reasonably assume that Joseph's story and all who walk in his footsteps are not friends of liberty and are the tyrants they claim to be protecting us from. How far we have fallen as a country that claims to love liberty.

G.A. Nana, hey you guys, hey you, G.A. Nana. And Halo Daisy, enjoy your lurking. We'll be here holding down the fort. Eleanor, how would you characterize the D.C. grand juries who could care less about the truth and have such hate that they always side with evil? That would be answered in the objections that Spooner went through. And that's the beauty of a trial by jury system is that if a certain part of the country wants to be retarded to invoke the phrase that people seem to enjoy, we can isolate the retardation. in our own communities by exercising our natural rights to resist tyranny through trial by jury. Tonight we will examine Spooner's particular loathing of the concept of majority rule

and how trial by jury operates as the lawful and explicit and necessary check on, as he calls it, the last lurking place of tyranny. But first, Badlanders, you are all familiar with, loaded gun coffee. They have been longtime supporters of Badlands, and you may have met them in person at Gart. But did you know they are a veteran ran family-owned shop in Lake Havasu, Arizona? Every bag of their whole bean coffee delivers a high-octane patriotic punch of flavor. With a long family history of commitment to freedom, every bag is a testament of pride and honor. From the skilled farmers who cultivate each blend to their roasters that handpick the finest coffee beans from around the world,

Loaded Gun Coffee has mastered their unique brewing methods resulting in the best tasting coffee around. This coffee is smooth and delicious, the perfect way to start your mornings. Get over to badlandsmedia.tv forward slash loaded. Use promo code Badlands to get 10% off your order. If you are in the Lake Havasu area, stop in their newly renovated store and say, hi. That is Badlandsmedia.tv. Forward slash loaded promo code Badlands.

stay loaded with loaded gun coffee. Beth says, your love of Legos is weird. No, it's not. Legos are awesome. I still have all the Legos that I had as a kid. And when my first daughter was born, I got them from my parents,

and it's quite a number of tots that are full of them. And when she was old enough, we were playing with them, and we started having horrible allergies. And I realized that they had been in storage, to my parents' house for, you know, a couple of decades and probably had accumulated a number of weird critters and mold and stuff in there. So I end up soaking them all in bleach and then spreading them out on the entirety of my basement floor with a fan blowing over them to dry them

off. And after that, we're fine. But they get used quite a lot, actually, even with girls in the house. Next up, we have Pet Club. Science proves that a healthy immune system is the body first offense against the smallest of ailments to the most catastrophic. Coriola's Versacolor is the most sought after all-natural supplement for both humans and pets to help boost the immune system. There are over 400 studies worldwide on its effectiveness in humans, including Sloan Kennering Cancer Center, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and now from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary and Medicine. Together, we can help reverse this terrible tide now. plaguing your loved ones and give them the immune boosting supplements that they need.

And then next up we have Badlands very own. Soft to disclosure. Get you some of that beard oil. Now that I'm alone at the close up, do you see how awesome my beard looks right now? I use the beard oil every single day. First thing comes out feeling all silky smooth. I take the dropper and I manually apply the oil directly to my mustache. Nice and, oh man, I love it.

And then I do drops all throughout the hair, and then I just rub it all in, and then I top it off with the tallow stick on the face. I feel like I have to grow a beer just to try this beer with. Do it, Jay. It's all from Soft Disclosure.com, and the best part about it is you'll be supporting Badlands Media, Annie from Willowen Farms, and basically three of Annie's neighbors. So that's five total American companies that you'd be supporting with one purchase. I have been using the soft disclosure scentless beard oil every day after the shower.

It looks unkempt, but it feels silky smooth. I want to look a little wild and unapproachable, but for the woman I trust, she'll be like, oh, it's actually kind of soft. He is approachable after all. Otherwise, stay away. And soft disclosure will help you too with that, if that's that. That's the very specific vibe you're going for. That is very specific, yes.

You guys are supporting American businesses when you do that. It's absolutely incredible and you get a great, great product. So don't forget the 10% off promo code Badlands that you can use at softsclosure.com. And I don't have to pretend I really enjoy the products. My wife uses the lotion and she really enjoys the lotion. and she really enjoys the lotion. When my hands get really dry, I've mentioned I use the lotion when my hands get dry in the wintertime. And I've had very little of that problem since I've started using the lotion.

And, of course, I love the beard oil. In fact, I can kind of smell it right now. I used it this morning before I went to church. And it still is giving me that nice spiced vanilla smell. Barry Depatriate said in the chat, I forgot how over my head this podcast is. And I don't think that's true. Don't sell yourself short.

If you have questions and want to parse it through, I love engaging with this topic. So come over to my telegram channel, t.me slash the no treason podcast. The link is also in the description down below. You can also find my ex account there. You can shoot me a DM or just tag me and ask a question there. and if there is time at the end of this, then I'll try and take some calls if there's time. It depends on how much time we end up having.

I've got a lot of material to cover tonight. But yeah, I'm always willing to answer questions and engage. I think that stuff is important, and it's not just the trial-by-jury stuff. It's the natural law stuff. It's actually what liberty really is and all of that that needs to be discussed. And brought back, we need to regain our heritage. Then next up, we have GART 11 coming up in Nashville.

Patriots, the fight for truth doesn't stop at the screen. It's hitting the road again. Badlands Media is rolling into Nashville on April 9th through 12 for the next stop on the Great American Restoration Tour. Join your favorite Badlands hosts and like-minded Americans for three powerful days. packed with unfiltered discussions, deep-dive panels, and real debate. Hear the raw truth, ask the tough questions. No topic too hot, no question too bold. Guard is where our community comes alive.

Tickets are on sale now at badlandsmedia.tv slash guard, where you can also grab a virtual pass and watch from home. Join us to question narratives and fight for America's future. Nashville is calling. The restoration continues. Get your passes today. See you in Music City. Beth says,

Drake is available, not a celebrity just yet. I don't ever want to be a celebrity. I will make myself as available as my wife allows me. Overbuilt Automotive commented on the stereo I've got behind me. It is a Pioneer SX 980. I forgot what year. It's mid-70s.

I got it from my uncle. He's a big audiophile. AOB says, I do have to get my mushy brain working on the spooner and definitely appreciate your passion and presentations. Well, thank you. And I'm always glad to see you in the chat. And I see Matt BK.

Welcome. Let's see here. Yeah, so Gart's coming up. Get your tickets, badlandsmedia. Dot TV forward slash events. That's coming up in just a few weeks. And looking ahead, the end of the trial by jury series

will wrap up the Sunday prior to Gart. I will not be doing an episode, the Gart weekend Sunday. and then after that, Polymath and I are discussing starting up the Ether series. There might be some scheduling conflicts with that, so we'll call an audible if we have to, but that will kick off after GART. So we'll be wrapping up trial by jury, including today, we'll have three more Sundays to get everything wrapped up. Okay, before we get into the meat of tonight,

Saad this had asked a question in the chat last week. She said, one thing I didn't understand about your appeal to the benevolence of monarchy is this. How can a sovereign man have a sovereign? And this is coming because I've kind of gained a reputation for saying we should go back to a monarchy or something to that effect. and there's two things at play here. First, I'm not actually advocating for a monarchy, and then secondly, a monarchy is not a monolithic concept, which is how I can make the first statement.

For instance, Norman versus Anglo-Saxon monarchy were strikingly different systems. For the former, the king was the absolute sovereign. for the latter, they were the guardian of the realm, the protector of the law with the Anglo-Saxon versus the lawgiver in the Norman sense. When we think of a monarchy, we tend to think more of the Norman version. That's the one that typically gets the most press. And then obviously later on, King George and all of that.

But trial by jury and the legal freedom that it affords thrived under an Anglo-Saxon monarchy. there was a character called a king. But as I mentioned, he wasn't a sovereign in the same sense that the Norman monarch was. Normans came in and they immediately claimed ownership of all of the land. They got rid of the concept of freeholders, people that were legally free, that owned their own property and paid allegiance to no one, other than who they consented to give their allegiance to. So the Normans came in and they claimed ownership of all the land,

and then they charged property tax for anyone who owned their own property. They still had to pay rent to the crown. The kings would interfere in marriages. They would interfere in contracts. They would interfere in normal business operations. They especially would interfere in the legal system with the installation of crown-friendly judges and other officers of the court. And they, in general, usurped trial by jury, which is why ultimately the Magna Carta end up becoming a necessary restriction placed on the crown.

And if you read through Magna Carta with that perspective, you can see that it's basically just a list of overreaches that the king, it wasn't just John, he was building off of his predecessors in their overreaches. And so the Magna Carta was the list of the people's demand in response, and you can figure out what types of problems they were having, based on the demands that they were making. Now, we don't have a king, but our system is more of a functional monarchy in like the Norman sense, really, than anything else.

We have a property tax. If the government wants your land for a road or whatever else, they're just going to take it. Oh, well, they'll pay you, but you don't have a choice. There's legal oversight of marriage. There's the state dictates the terms of your employment. They dictate how many hours you. you can work. They dictate, in my industry, there's OSHA, you know, all the safety requirements that employers have to provide. And so the state has interposed itself in a very micromanaging

way into our culture, which is more in line with a Norman system of monarchy, even though we don't call it that. That is what it is in practice. What the Anglo-Saxons actually had in their king is what we imagine we have with a representative government, but we obviously clearly do not have what the Anglo-Saxons actually had. There were Anglo-Saxon kings who overstepped their authority, but they were not tolerated very well. They were deposed often, and history likes to look back on that as a weakness of the system because there was all this squabbling and civil strife that would happen, which primarily was happening more like on the elite level as barons and whatnot would kind of push back. But as far as the continuation of the administration of justice, because that

was handled at the local level, it wasn't really impacted as much by the larger national scale political drama. And because of the local nature of the administration of justice, it didn't really depend on having a king. The king was the outward facing protection against external threats to the realm. So the bottom line is, I point out the monarchy question because it is possible to be legally free, legally sovereign, while having a person called a king as the face of the government with that outward facing role towards external threats and so on, rather than the micromanaging inward facing that we have become accustomed to with even our former government that we're

so proud of ourselves is not a monarchy. English citizens during King George's reign, you could argue, had more liberty than we actually do today. And that's not to say that we should return to a monarchy. Certainly not the King George style, because he was not a friend of liberty either. But it's more to say that to Spooner's point in the appendix of the no treason essay, what we have has either failed to prevent the erosion of liberty or it was designed to erode liberty, in spite of not calling it a monarchy. if the net effect of our system of government is that we have become enslaved as we imagine we would under a monarchy,

then being a stickler about what we call our system of government seems totally irrelevant to me. There's obviously a lot more nuance to discuss in there, and some of that will come up tonight, but that is my not-so-short answer to your good question. So thank you so much for posing that, and I hope that was satisfactory to you. Okay, let's get into chapter 12 entitled Limitations Imposed on the Majority by the Trial by Jury. And the reason why this needs to be talked about is for all of our talk about a republic being better than a democracy, or we have the rule of law, we need term limits, we need election integrity, and so on. The American system of government is functionally a majority rule system of government. And this is the case whether or not elections are totally fair and transparent or they're stolen.

It does not matter because at the end of the day, we have a majority rule system of government. And as such, those things I've just listed or any other concerns that we have are ultimately meaningless. For instance, we take pride in being a country that follows the rule of law. No one is above the law, right? But those laws are created and decided by whoever holds the majority in the legislature. They're wholly arbitrary. There's nothing about the vast majority of those laws that make them inherently the law. Spooner will bring up a term later, Mala Prohibita, which is basically it's wrong because it's prohibited.

and that's the basis of the majority of our laws. We don't like that. We have made a law against it. It's now wrong for you to do that. The only reason why these things are the law and then can be used because this is the purpose of law, ultimately is to take your life, liberty, or property is because the larger group said so. And then your job, if you happen to be in the minority, is just to obey or endure or suffer

the arbitrary consequences that they attach with their laws. Spooner will demonstrate that such a system is woefully flawed, predictably inadequate in the context of justice, and utterly and completely immoral. So this should be fun. Saw this, were the Normans, a feudal society where peasants were forced to pay tax to lords and serve in the military. I don't want to derail the ongoing discussion so we can take this offline.

A quick sidebar on that. There were people in the Anglo-Saxon era. They were called Villains or Villains. I'm not sure how I would pronounce that. It's V-I-L-L-E-I-N. And they were people who, for any number of reasons, were beholden to a lord. They would pay rent to work on his property and so on. They were not the freeholder class.

and they were actually excluded from the system of justice, but that was because they were seen as being beholden to people who had the power of the sword, and so therefore they were not legal peers of freeholders. What we typically think of in a feudal society was developed more strongly in the Norman era. So when you think of serfs and people who basically had no life or liberty that they had any control over, that was more in the later time. that gets projected back onto the Anglo-Saxon culture, but there is a clear distinction that happened once the Normans invaded.

Spooner kicks off the discussion. The principal objection that will be made to the doctrine of this essay is that under it, a jury would paralyze the power of the majority and veto all legislation that was not in accordance with the will of the whole or nearly the whole people. So this is an objection. He could have included this in his chapter objections, but given the size of this chapter,

it's understandable why he gave it its own treatment. The last part of that quote is, of course, a definition of what trial by jury essentially accomplish and it must accomplish that the veto of any legislation that was not in accordance with the will of the whole or nearly of the whole people. That is one of the, the principal elements of trial by jury.

It is proposed in a republic, and this is not even taking into consideration direct democracy because we all agree, we tend to agree that direct democracy leads to mob rule and so on. Some states dabbled with that. You know, Beth can talk about, you know, the California has proposition

where they place things on the ballot for the people to have a direct say on in totally free and fair elections. But speaking of a republic, it is the basic idea, as I understand it, and I'll do my best to give justice to this, is that it isn't feasible, efficient, or even desirable to have every single person weigh in on every legislative process big or small. But we still want to have a government that is by consent of all the people, because in general, we at least give lip service or understand that consent is important or is an absolute necessity.

A republic's proposed solution is that the people's consent is adequately and appropriately obtained by the election of representatives who, being smaller in number, can more efficiently conduct the business of government. And this is, of course, the answer to the concern about mob rule, where you have people who are supposedly elected because of maybe their wisdom or whatever, and they can get in there and do the business of government without the passions of a mob. Therefore, whatever the majority of those representatives decide, after passing through a number of procedural hurdles, you know, think of the different tribunals that a law has to pass before

it's actually enforceable as law, whatever those, that majority decides, it becomes a law that is ostensibly agreed to by the whole people and enforceable against the whole people. I think that is a fair description of what people tend to think of with a republic. Spooner does not share the enthusiasm for that system, and I would agree with him, and he still insists that it needs to be guarded against. He says the answer to this objection, and this objection being the, that trial by jury paralyzes majority rule, is that the limitation, which would be thus imposed on the legislative power, whether that power be vested in the majority or minority of the people,

is the crowning merit of the trial by jury. It has other merits, but though important in themselves, they are utterly insignificant and worthless in comparison with this. So his answer is, yeah, that's the point. The ability of the jury to nullify any law that the majority installs is, the crowning merit of trial by jury. He goes on, it is this power of vetoing all partial and oppressive legislation and of restricting the government to the maintenance of such laws as the whole or substantially the whole people are agreed in that makes the trial by jury the palladium or protection, the security of liberty. Without this power, it would never have deserved that name. In other words, trial by jury has

the ability to render the law created by the majority to be moot. And that is a feature, not a bug. It's a primary feature. And it is an essential feature. Why does he think this way? Because a law that isn't agreed to by the whole people cannot be binding on the whole people if consent actually matters. And because the will or the pretended will of the majority, and I quoted this earlier, is the last lurking place of tyranny at the present day. The dogma that certain individuals and families have a divine appointment to govern the rest of mankind, that's the divine right of kings, is fast giving place to the one that the larger number have a right to govern the smaller, a dogma which may or may not be less oppressive in its practical operation,

but which certainly is no less false or tyrannical in principle than that. the one it is so rapidly supplanting. So first, I would argue that may or may not has proven to be may, in that under the protection of representative government, mankind is under the most excessive taxation and deprivation of liberty that we've ever been under. And think back to even as recently as the COVID era, how many representative governments around the world, including the United States, completely and just... wholly pull the rug on liberty and impose themselves as the dictators they've been pretending not to be for so long.

Secondly, Spooner is acknowledging a shift in the political environment away from the divine right of kings, and this was a movement that was in full swing during his day. All throughout the 1800s, you can go back and read and just look up how many countries were undergoing revolutions to get rid of monarchies and institute representative governments. considering the color revolution playbook as we know it today, I believe that shift was done intentionally by the true rulers since divine right of kings had run its course and people were kind of getting worn out of the concept. And if the true rulers rings a bell to you,

go back and check out episode eight from the no treason series for a more in-depth discussion on who the true rulers are. and if you recall, he mentions people like the Rothschilds and others in the banking cartels that effectively rule the world. If you don't want to listen to the episode, Section 18 of the No Treason essay is where you will find that discussion. Spooner notices that the divine right of kings is essentially being replaced with the divine right of the majority. the end result of both is the same and going back to his comments regarding inferring a design by its effect, I think that we can take some wisdom from that. Remember that the goal of any government should be to uphold justice, punish injustice,

and provide an environment in which liberty may flourish. And Romans 13 is a passage in a script. that's often used to support the support of any government. And the description of what a government should be in there certainly does not match most human governments. So that's obviously a topic of deep study that many people have undertaken and personally done a lot of thought and process on that.

Maybe that's something we'll cover at some point in the future. In other words, government should exist primarily because of the rights of the minority thinking of making liberty flourish, which are the same as the majority, but they are so often abused by virtue of the fact that the minority is often unable to protect themselves. And in light of that, Spooner holds the notion that leaving matters of justice,

including the creation of legislation, i.e. law, up to a majority vote, either of the whole people or just their representatives, so direct democracy versus republic. is playing with fire because the majority has all of the same moral weaknesses as the minority, but has none of the natural physical restraints. He writes, obviously there is nothing in the nature of majorities that ensures justice at their hands.

They have the same passions as minorities, and they have no qualities whatever that should be expected to prevent them from practicing the same tyranny as minorities if they think it would be, for their interest to do so. Beth says, ooh, a conspiracy theory. They removed monarchs. Yes, that was actually part of the discussion in when I was talking about the circumstances leading up to the Civil War.

I think that there was a multi-decade long plan to do to America what they ended up doing. And that goes for around the world as well. It was a lot of the similar activities going on. Now, we've been raised to take for granted. majority rule concept, but how often are we encouraged to think critically about it, about leaving the determination of such critical things to the whims of whoever happens to be the most in number, especially when the things in question are the ability to have your life, liberty, or property taken away from you depending on the counting of the parties at play.

I would argue that we have been duped into believing that somehow majority rule is desirable and even somehow moral. Or the primary argument typically is just, well, that's just the way it is. If you don't like it, you can leave. And we say that because really that's all we've known. But if we're honest about it, if we're going to argue for it, we only really like majority rule when we are the majority. when we're the minority we tend to cry foul. That's just human nature. That's a rational human response.

But the problem with appealing to majority rule is that it actually removes all grounds for disconsent or discontent and frustration, as we'll see in just a little bit. To the claim that the majority have the right to rule, Spooner writes, there is no particle of truth in the notion that the majority have a right to rule or to exercise arbitrary power over the minority simply because the former are more numerous than the latter. Two men have no more natural right to rule one than one has to rule two. And this is what I mean about thinking critically about this type of thing. Because when you start to do that, the system begins to fall apart. Recall that your natural rights are your claim against the whole world. It's one man's claim against literally everyone.

And natural rights must be that way. Otherwise, they would not be called rights. That's the very essence of what a right actually is. It is predicated in an objective, external truth, not the ability to defend it. If your natural rights are predicated on the ability to defend them, then there is no argument against the minority or the majority taking your life, liberty, or property. If your natural rights are predicated on the ability to defend them,

you could kill a baby with zero moral compunction because you are bigger and the baby is unable to defend itself. It wouldn't be murder in that case. It's just killing. And one can conjure up all sorts of rational reasons why killing or such a killing would be not justified because the word justified implies a standard of justice outside of your own sense of morality, but practical or reasonable. If majority rule is legitimate, then we, like that baby, have no natural rights if we're unable to defend ourselves. We only have the privileges that the

majority at that time decides that we may have. And what sort of security is that? What sort of morality is that. A new majority might arise and then change those privileges. And if the majority has the right to rule, we would have zero basis for crying foul if they do. It just is what it is. It's like the gazelle being chased down and being eaten alive by lions. That's just the way of nature. We like to fancy ourselves as civilized, and yet that is the way we structure our quote-unquote civilization. Tattooed teacher sneaking in and catching up. Not so sneaky when you announce it, but good to see it. Spooner writes that based on natural law, any single man or any body of men, many or few,

have a natural right to maintain justice for themselves and for any others who may need their assistance against the injustice of any and all other men without regard to their numbers. And majorities have no right to do any more than this. The relative numbers of the opposing parties have nothing to do with the question. of right and no more tyrannical principle was principal was ever avowed than that the will of the majority ought to have the force of law without regard to its justice or what is the same thing that the will of the majority ought

always to be presumed to be in accordance with justice such a doctrine is only another form of the doctrine that might makes right and therein lies the heart of majority rule. You're bigger than you, stronger than you, and we outnumber you, therefore we are right. This is essentially nine men and one woman stranded on an island. Do the men have a right to rape her because they outnumber her? If majority vote is what determines the law by which your life, liberty, or property can be taken away from you and thus your consent ignored and violated, then those nine men have every right to rape that woman.

And in fact, the very concept of rape becomes meaningless since the concept of rape is intrinsically rooted in the right of consent. Because if the majority rule makes right, then you do not have the right of your consent. You do not have authority over your own body, your own property, your own life. And rape is just you playing your rightful part, is the weaker minority. The difference between rape and normal sex isn't a moral one in this case.

It's just whether or not the raped person preferred it or not. It has nothing to do with their consent, as it should, because consent is a natural outflow of your natural right over your own life, liberty, and property. But if majority rule makes right, if majority rule makes law, then you have no legal claim to any of those things, and the majority may, to quote the Satanists, do what it wilt. But we know intrinsically that that is wrong, and how do we know that? Natural law. God's law written on our hearts. We understand intrinsically that there is an objective standard of basic morality.

It is written into the fabric of reality. And the logic, we can understand how that is wrong. We have scripture, obviously, but then even a person who is out in the middle of nowhere, this is the whole point that Paul makes in the early part of Romans. You don't even need to have God's law handed down on tablets. You know this stuff in your own hearts. And we can use our own logic to create an outflow from that knowledge, just as I just demonstrated regarding consent and rape and so on.

Spooner chooses his own less provocative thought experiment. When two men meet one upon the highway or in the wilderness, have they a right to depose of his life, liberty, or property at their pleasure simply because they are the more numerous party? Or is he bound to submit to lose his life, liberty, or property if they demand it, merely because he is the less numerous party? excuse me, or because they are more numerous than he? Is he bound to presume that they are governed only by superior wisdom and the principles of justice

and by no selfish passion that can lead them to do him a wrong? Yet this is the principle which it is claimed should govern men in all their civil relations to each other. This is why I keep hammering the point that we don't live in a system that we were all raised to believe that we were. and I don't think we benefit from clinging to a false reality. I refer back to our conversations in the No Treason essay because I believe that Spooner's analysis of the Constitution in that essay is unavoidable. He forces you to examine the supposed core values of this country.

Social contract theory, I discussed that in the first episode, consent of the governed, natural law, no taxation without representation, and so on. And then he forces you to compare those values with the practice of the system, voting at all against those core values. You cannot hold as true to competing truth claims. This is different than, you know, Burning Bright's concept of bicameral of holding them in your mind to consider them, but you can't hold them both as true if they're competing truth claims. Majority rule, as I believe I already demonstrated, is incompatible with natural rights. A very concept of natural rights does not exist if majority rule is the way law is decided. This is a point that is made more emphatically in Spooner's Science of Justice essay, but if we want to ignore his analysis and therefore continue to cling to the majority rule system,

then we are de facto acknowledging that there is no such thing as an objective moral standard, there's no such thing as objective justice, and our grounds, therefore, for crying foul are completely removed. The woman raped by nine men on the island wasn't actually raped because rape implies, as I said, of a violation of consent, something that she doesn't have by virtue of being the minority. And therefore, she can't even claim to have been wronged. He makes the same point in this next quote with the added flavor that if the majority rules, there can only be one kind of crime, and that is disobeying them. He writes, if such be true, the nature of the relations men hold to each other in this world, it puts an end to all such things as crimes, unless they be perpetrated upon those who are equal or superior in number to the actors.

All acts committed against persons inferior in number to the aggressors become but the exercise of rightful authority. And consistency with their own principles requires that all governments founded on the will of the majority, should recognize this plea as sufficient justification for all crimes whatsoever. Now, if you do not like that framing, you might call that a straw man, although it's not, you might say that we have checks and balances that prevent bad laws. It's not just the majority that decides what a law is because we have a constitution as a higher standard by which the majority must abide. but the judicial system that is in place to verify the constitutionality of a given law

doesn't require unanimity. Last I checked, cases are decided by a simple majority of the justices, and therein lies the whole game of stacking the court. And then think back even further, the Constitution itself was ratified not by the entirety of the states, but by virtue of majority of voting. votes, majority of the states, within the states, majority of the legislations within the states, and so on. All legislation is passed by a majority, and sometimes it's just barely.

And as Spooner points out, words do not create ideas, but recall them, and one word may recall many different ideas. So the interpretation of that higher standard is thus fluid and insecure, and history has shown us just how easy it is to finagle or outright ignore that original source. source, which means at the end of the day, it's just a majority in that moment that decides what's law. And I see, Beva Frey has rated the stream. Welcome to those who have wandered into this natural law trial by jury discussion.

Now, let's say that you do not believe in a higher standard of justice that the actions of men may be judged against, but that allowing the majority to decide gives us a better, or no, it's that you do believe in a higher standard of justice, which I would say, I would say that most of us here would say that. But that you think that allowing the majority to decide what law should be gives us a better chance of achieving that higher standard. Do we really want our lives, liberty and property to be at risk with every election, with every congressional session, hoping that we either become the majority in that election or

that the new majority will treat us fairly? Think of all the fear and loathing gets whipped up during election season. Spooner writes to that thought, if it be said that the majority should be allowed to rule, not because they are stronger than the minority, but because their superior numbers furnish a probability that they are in the right, one answer is that the lives, liberties, and properties of men are too valuable to them, and the natural presumptions are too strong in their favor to justify the destruction of them

by their fellow men on a mere balancing of probabilities or on any ground whatever short of certainty beyond reasonable doubt, referring, of course, to the standard that a jury is supposed to make their judgments on. Have we noticed anything about the nature of modern-day party politics, either here or in other democratic countries, that would give us any confidence that such a rolling of the dice is a good idea. Instead, we have seen that all manner

of despicable motivations drive men to achieve the awesome power of the sword. Historically, we've seen murder of family members, backstabbing, conniving, rivalry, intense greed seeking after that power. And in the present day, what is the common and verifiable accusation with regards to who funds and controls members of Congress? Is that something that we can safely rely on to find justice?

That would be like gambling your life against someone throwing weighted dice or asking the magician Ricky Jay to shuffle cards for you. You can look up some of his stuff on YouTube. When you watch a guy like that who's practiced so much shuffle cards, make you really raise your eyebrows in anybody shuffling cards. It's like you haven't been doing this long, have you? Tropical Rock get dropped $10, thank you. The point of the Republic is to neuter the willy-nillies

of the Senate, right? Hold on to that thought. If you want to have a republic, that's fine. You just can't be by majority rule, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a republic, which is by trial by jury is so important. PJ Corrigan, welcome, bud. Good to see you.

And to dispose of men's properties, liberties, and lives by the mere process of enumerating counting such parties is not only as palpable gambling as was ever practiced, but it is also the most atrocious that was ever practiced except in matters of government. And where government is instituted on this principle, as in the United States, for example, the nation is at once converted into one. Great gambling establishment where all the rights of men are the stakes. A few bold, bad men throw the dice, loaded with all the hopes, fears, interests, and passions,

which rage in the breasts of ambitious and desperate men, and all the people from the interests they have depending, become enlisted, excited, agitated, and generally corrupted by the hazards of the game. Does that sound familiar? That's every election season. If you don't go out there and vote, the other side is going to win. They'll become the majority, and they're going to ruin your life as the minority. So we have to become the majority so we can ruin their lives as the minority.

Trial by jury and the mindset that truly grasps it rejects this ridiculous notion. And proceeds upon the ground that every man should be presumed to be entitled to life, liberty, and such property as he has in his possession, and that the government should lay its hands upon none of them, except for the purpose of bringing them before a tribunal for adjudication, unless it be first ascertained beyond a reasonable doubt in every individual case that justice requires it. Trial by jury presumes an objective standard of justice that can be discerned,

and by its design, with the requirement of impartiality, the requirement of unanimity for the removal of all reasonable doubt, provides the best option ever devised by men for achieving it. Juxtaposed with majority rule, the difference, in short, between the two systems is this. The trial by jury protects person and property in violent to their possessors from the hand of the law unless justice beyond a reasonable doubt require them to be taken. The majority principle takes person and property from their possessors at the mere arbitrary will of a majority,

who are liable and likely to be influenced in taking them by motives of oppression, avarice, and ambition. This is what all representative systems of government, call them what you want, devolve into if the primary basis for creating law is majority rule. PJ Corrigan says, I love the word juxtaposed. It is a wonderful word. My older brother was a software developer, and he worked for a company called Juxt Interactive. And that was a play on juxtaposition. we seem to be satisfied with the majority rule being applied to the legislative layer. But if that's true, if that's okay, if we're okay with having laws created by just the simple counting of who is and who isn't in favor of it,

why would we leave it there? Spooner writes, if the relative numbers of opposing parties afforded sufficient evidence of the comparative justice of their claims, the government should carry the principal into its courts of justice. Now, to some extent, this is happening. But Spooner sarcastically suggests that if the plaintiff and the defendant, like in this setup, all they would need to do is just line up on one side of the room and on the other side of the room, and then the judge just counts which side has more people, and then award the case to whoever has the most.

If such a principle is suitable for the creation of laws, then why not in the enforcement of them? It's, of course, absurd. But why is it not held as absurd in the creation of the laws? With the instructions from judges that are given to jurors that they must obey the law, they're not allowed to judge by their consciences anymore, they must follow the law, that's what you're told if you are on a jury. then this is what is actually happening in our courts. It's just indirect.

The judge is essentially saying to the jury, a majority of legislators, none of whom can prove that anyone actually voted for them because of the secret ballot, they all agreed that your life, liberty, and property can be taken away from you if you disobey what they as the majority, all agreed that you should obey.

and I, who was appointed by them also by majority, decree that you are duty bound to obey them. What an absolute farce. That's not liberty. To state the obvious answer for why we wouldn't want our courts to be governed in the same way that laws are created. Spooner writes, If this mode of decision were introduced into courts of justice,

we should see a parallel and only a parallel to that system of legislation which we witness daily. We should see large bodies of men conspiring to bring perfectly groundless suits against other bodies of men for large sums of money and to carry them by sheer force of numbers, just as we now continually see large bodies of men conspiring to carry by mere force of numbers some scheme of legislation that will directly or indirectly take money out of other men's pockets and put it into their own. He goes on.

this system of combination and conspiracy would go on until at length whole states and a whole nation would become divided into two great litigating parties. Each party composed of several smaller bodies having their separate suits, but all confederating for the purpose of making up the necessary majority in each case. Does that sound familiar with the two corporate entities known as the political parties? Narnia Patriot, I like the word disestablishmentarianism. That is a mouthful. Hey, polymath. Good to see you, bud. He said, not to mention large-bodied men who force you by threat of violence, absolutely.

Eleanor 2000, we have this very thing going on in the Senate who won't vote the way 80-plus percent of the people demand and vote to protect our elections in accordance with the Constitution. Well, the Constitution isn't binding, so I actually would. agree with them on that part, but I understand your point. And that also throws the concept of representative government into the realm of reality that they're not really representing you. If the majority of the people are telling them to do one thing and they do the exact opposite, that's not representative government. But I digress. So the courts, again, they don't function this way exactly where they don't line people up and count them. But if you use it. But if you Zoom further out and you consider how laws are made today and then how the courts enforce those laws, then that is the way the American legal system functions in a de facto sense.

With courts structured as they are now, what motivation is there really for anyone involved in the entire process to actually pursue justice? The way we do it now is just too lucrative. Think of all the lobbying. That's what regulations are. They create Fiat standards to essentially run competitors out of business. That's why you end up having massive large-scale corporations that get behind regulations that would hurt them. But really, it hurts the smaller competitors that don't have the ability to afford large-scale legal teams that help them to comply with the ridiculous regulations. The whole thing just becomes a predictable lust for gaining the power of the majority. This conversation forces some much-needed introspection as a nation because natural law, or as Spooner calls it, the science of justice, that is, the science, the learnable, the studyable, the experimentalable actions between men that lead either to peace or lead to war, tells us that majority rule is absolutely incompatible with liberty.

it's incompatible with the stated values upon which this country claims to have been founded on the consent of the governed. He writes, again, the doctrine that the minority ought to submit to the will of the majority proceeds not upon the principle that government is formed by voluntary association or for an agreed purpose on the part of all who contribute to its support, but upon the presumption that all government must be practically a state of war and plunder between opposing parties. And that, in order to save blood and prevent mutual extermination, the parties come to an agreement

that they will count their respective numbers periodically, and the one party shall then be permitted quietly to rule and plunder, restrained only by their discretion, and the other submit quietly to be ruled and plundered until the time. of the next enumeration. I'm going to stop calling them elections and just start calling them enumerations. Now, this should remind you of Spooner's 10 reasons why voting does not equal consent. And that is in episode two. It's section two of the no treason essay.

And one of the reasons that he brings up is that a man might vote because he knows that if he doesn't vote, then the other group that's seeking the majority will gain the, the majority and subject him to slavery. As such, his consent is not purely voluntary, which is a requirement of natural law, that your consent must be voluntary, but it's more of a self-defensive action. He gives the example of if you walk up and you see two people fighting, you can't assume that they both entered into that willingly. One person might have attacked another person, and that person is acting out of self-defense,

but if given the option, they would have chosen not to be in a fight in the first place. That is a basic description of what happens typically in an enumeration year because people are often compelled to vote because, well, if I don't, then I'm going to get screwed. That's not a legitimate motivation. That's not a natural law honoring motivation for a person to vote. PJ, yeah, I did start early this today because I have too much material to get through in just a simple hour. We're already at an hour right now. So the consent being not voluntary in that case is therefore it's not liberty. If you're being forced into an action against your will, that's not liberty.

Or if you see the hopelessness of the situation, like there's just no way we can win back the House. There's just no way we can win back the Senate. There's no way we can win back, you know, whatever. Think of the plight of any number of states like California or New York and the wannabe states, like Illinois. And so seeing that hopelessness of the situation, we could just stop struggling and then give in, which of course many people have actually, you know, have done that throughout history. And Spooner writes to that point that mankind might agree upon a cessation of hostilities upon more rational and equitable terms than that of unconditional submission on the part of the

less numerous body. Unconditional submission is usually the last act of one who confesses himself subdued and enslaved. So the system de facto creates another layer of slavery. You recall back to the discussion on the true rulers and how the way they use the borrowing and taxing to turn us all into a bunch of tax slaves. There is such a thing as being a voter slave. And if this is true, which I believe it is, then let's stop pretending that it is freedom. Spinner writes, How anyone ever came to imagine that condition to be one of freedom has never been explained.

And as for the system being adapted to the maintenance of justice among men, it is a mystery that any human mind could ever have been visited with an insanity wild enough to originate the idea. Everyone doing all right? We're already an hour in. I don't know if I'll have time for phone calls. see. Let's break this down even further. Spooner writes, the doctrine that the majority have a right to rule proceeds upon the principle that minorities have no rights in the government. For certainly the minority cannot be said to have any rights in a government so long as the majority alone

determine what their rights shall be. They hold everything or nothing as the case may be at the mere will of the majority. And this goes back to what Spooner said about rights being your claim against the whole world. If we hold that they can be ignored or violated, it's simply because 51% of whoever happens to be voting, which is never the whole people. So it's 51% of a minority of the population. if we say that our rights can be taken away by that 51% then we cannot call that a free society but we want to believe that we are a free society

we want to believe that we are the glorious the result of a glorious social experiment in human liberty that exists as the pinnacle of human political evolution but we acknowledge because we're not wholly insane that there must be some means by which the majority may protect themselves, because, as Spooner points out, getting to the purpose of government, it is indispensable to a free government in the political sense of that term that the minority, the weaker party, have a veto on the acts of the majority.

And this is true for a rather obvious but needs to be stated reason, and Spooner gives it. political liberty is liberty for the weaker party in a nation it is only the weaker party that lose their liberties when a government becomes oppressive the stronger party in all governments are free by virtue of their superior strength they never oppress themselves that made me think of when I read that, the theme song of the Vietnam War, Creedon's Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son. I ain't no Senator's son. That also calls to mind when Jesus tells Peter to go catch a fish

and find the coin to pay their temple tax. He's like, do the kings tax their sons or do they tax other people? And they're like, yeah, they tax other people. In a majority rule system, legislation, as Spooner writes, is the work of this stronger party. And if in addition to the sole power of legislating, they have the sole power of determining what legislation shall be enforced, they have all the power in their hands, and the weaker party are the subjects of an absolute government. You're not really a citizen.

You're a subject of an absolute government if majority rule also controls the power of enforcement. which, hey, that's the way it is today. Spooner goes on, unless the weaker party have a veto, either upon the making or the enforcement of laws, they have no power whatever in the government, and can, of course, have no liberties except such as the stronger party in their arbitrary discretion see fit to permit them to enjoy. How nice of them.

Trial by jury then is the refuge of the minority, because when the people understand what is actually happening in a jury trial, then those left out in the cold of legislative deliberations, or as the ratio of representative to representative, represented gets more and more lopsided as it is today, then those marginalized voices can find power in the final tribunal, that is trial by jury, unanimity. It's either that or we just suffer and endure until because of the suffering and enduring,

the minority grows enough to become the majority and turn the tides of power. And that's a process that we believe is accomplished at the ballot. But what about voting? I believe there's already sufficient reasons presented so far to compel you to accept that justice isn't the prerogative of a majority wins competition, like an enumerations, election. And if you go back to the five standards of a natural law contract, which I covered in the no treason series, those five standards condemn majority rule if the majority is participating in violating your natural law. That's that higher standard that laws must be abide by.

So the concept of taxing being theft, unless the people agree to it, which would make it not theft, then the majority imposing attacks is violating natural law because one of those standards of natural law is that the contract must be just and stealing from people is not just. But Spooner makes it plain that the purpose being given being to give the minority a veto through the trial by just a jury system is that suffrage that is voting, however free, however transparent, is of no avail for this purpose because the suffrage of the minority is overborne by the suffrage of the majority and is thus rendered powerless for purposes of legislation. The responsibility of officers can be made of no avail because they are wholly or because they

are responsible only to the majority. The minority, therefore, are wholly without rights in the government, wholly at the mercy of the majority unless through the trial by jury they have a veto, upon such legislation as they think unjust. This is also why it is utterly wrong to assert that the act of voting equals consent. Any man, when faced with certain tyranny, this is a point that Spooner makes in his section 2 of the no-treason essay, any man faced with a certain tyranny and given option to voice his disapproving opinion will likely do so. especially if it has made clear that that is his only option. Therefore, his vote for what ends up as the minority could very well be a vote no against the entire system.

And therefore is actually that person, even through the process of voting, withdrawing his consent, saying, no, I don't agree with that. And how would you know, if you're looking at just a straight list of voting, how would you know that that's, was his motivation in voting. That's a point that Splinter raises. Do we have comment sections on ballots for people to explain their full reasons for why they voted? That voter may well feel like the person who was accosted by a mugger and that mugger declared your money or your life. Are we to infer from the person being mugged that their compliance means that they consented to the mugger? are we to infer from the woman who was raped by the nine men on the island in that hypothetical

scenario that she consented to it because she gave in instead of fighting of course not and again go back and read section two for a full breakdown of that conversation if we believe that government is established as spuna rights for the protection of the weak against the strong this is the principle, if not the sole motive for the establishment of all legitimate government. If that's what we believe, then we cannot believe that laws are the prerogative of majority vote, nor is enforcement to be dictated by judges who derive their authority from that same majority. And then we must affirm that the minority may reject an edict of the majority, and there's no danger in them doing that as far as maintaining a just or functioning society

because Spooner writes, laws that are sufficient for the protection of the weaker party are, of course, sufficient for the protection of the stronger party, because the strong can certainly need no more protection than the weak. It is, therefore, right that the weaker party should be represented in the tribunal, which is finally to determine what legislation may be enforced, and that no legislation be enforced against their consent. He writes, there is still another reason why the weaker party or the minority should have a veto upon all legislation which they disapprove. That reason is that that is the only means by which the government can be kept within the limits of the contract, compact, or constitution by which the whole people,

agree to establish government. Now, if there is to be a document, like a constitution, it would only be useful to refer to it as descriptive of the relationship, rather than prescriptive, as in like determinative. This was one of the takeaways that Spooner had in No Treason, that we can look at the Constitution as just describing I used in the first episode, kind of like a no-treaty.

trespassing sign. Hey, government, this is your bounds. You may not go beyond them. And this is because consent is an ongoing exercise. It's not just one and done for all time, all generations. Liza 007 said paper ballots, one day voting. To that point as a sidebar, Lysander Spooner writing 150 years ago, fully believed elections to be 100% illegitimate. The technology that was used for voting in that day was paper ballots

and they had one day voting. That was even prior to the modern concepts we have of registering voters. That was not a common practice in his day. That developed since his day. So the notion that

like the Save Act, for instance, is somehow going to save our elections because it's going to give us one day voting and paper ballots and voter ID and all that. That was all stuff that existed in Spooner's Day and his takeaway was that the elections are fraudulent. He made that accusation directly, not to mention all of the rest of this. The Save Act is not the Save Act because, as I made a point on Substack a while ago, the word fix has more than one

meaning if you think of, say, fixing a fight if you're of the betting type. So Save Act will fix our elections. That can be taken more than one way. What we have had since the beginning of this country is anything but consent being honored. The Constitution is viewed as binding, but only because a supposed majority agreed to it. That is the exact opposite of what it means to honor consent. consent. And this can be clearly seen in the fact that the theory of voluntary government, as we are told we have, has never actually been applied. And Spooner speaks to that. And he says,

this theory supposes that there may be certain laws that will be beneficial to all, so beneficial, that all consent to be taxed for their maintenance. If, for instance, there was needed funding to pay for the enforcement of the verdicts against murder or theft, etc., then I would imagine very few would actually object to paying a tax. It would be more like a subscription service. But that would only apply to laws that you agreed need to be enforced. Smith writes, for the maintenance of these specific laws in which all are interested,

all associate. And they associate for the maintenance of those laws only in which all are interested. Excuse me. It would be absurd to suppose that all would associate and consent to be taxed for purposes which were beneficial only to a part, and especially for purposes that were injurious to any. A government of the whole, therefore, can have no powers except such as all the parties consent that it may have. It can do nothing except what all have consented that it may do. We either believe in consent or we don't.

who are you to determine which person's consent matters and which persons doesn't? How large of a government do you suppose would exist if we actually honored what Spooner is describing here? Under the current system of majority rule, then you as the minority may not withhold your consent. You must submit to the will of the majority, and thus government grows and grows and grows and grows and always finds excuses to borrow more money and tax more, and because the majority, gets to decide and the majority is bought and paid for by the true rulers of this country and of all the countries, then there's a predictable outcome that we are experiencing and living in, not just here in America, but everywhere else. And if you want to withhold your consent,

you're certainly welcome to. That's your prerogative. But there are intense consequences to that. And Spooner points to the Civil War as the dramatic evidence for what a government that is supposedly built on consent, what lengths it will go to to prevent people from leaving. How many thousands, hundreds of thousands of people it would be willing to kill? Governments are not easily told no. Spooner writes, such being the principles on which the government is formed, the question arises, how shall this government, when formed, be kept within the limits of the contract by which it was established. How shall this government instituted by the whole people, agreed to by the whole people,

supported by the contributions of the whole people, be confined to the accomplishment of those purposes alone, which the whole people desire? How shall it be preserved from degenerating into a mere government for the benefit of a part only of those who established and who support it? how shall it be prevented from even injuring a part of its own members for the aggrandizement of the rest? Its laws must be, or at least now are, passed and most of its other acts performed by mere agents, agents chosen by a part of the people and not by the whole. How can these agents be restrained from seeking their own interests and the interests of those who elected them at the expense of the rights of the remainder of the people, by the passage and enforcement of law, laws that shall be partial, unequal, and unjust in their operation. That is the great question.

And the trial by jury answers it. So, with a representative form of government, certain people are elevated above the rest. They're given power. They're given access to money. They're access to temptation. How do we prevent them from turning into a ruling class from becoming dynastic political elites. Trial by jury is the answer. And how does that answer it? Because trial by jury says that the agents selected by only a few of the people shall not have unlimited authority to make laws

binding on everyone and that they should not control all of the government, especially not, the enforcement of whatever laws that they created. Liza D.O7. you impeach their asses by a majority. That's the problem. And here's the thing. Trial by jury does not care what system of government you have. If the people through trial by jury can say no, you can have a king or you can have a despotic majority, but the majority can't go around enforcing everything.

You have to have enforcement. And ultimately because of a trial by jury system, it's the people that do the enforcing. And the people can say, we're not going to enforce that. yes the person who was accused actually violated the written law but we don't want that to be law therefore we acquit them and they're not guilty spooner writes it says that is trial by jury says that they shall never exercise that ultimate power of compelling obedience to the laws by punishing for disobedience or of executing the laws against the person or property of any man without first getting the consent of the people

through a tribunal that may fairly be presumed to represent the whole or substantially the whole people. Because the point at which a law becomes meaningful is when it is enforced. And if we are to be a country that is governed by consent, then the whole people must give consent. This has to be a line in the sand.

Those seeking power are always inventing new justifications for why you should give it to them. And this answer should always be no. Eleanor 2000, Spooner equals idealist. Spooner is a mirror. And that's why I keep saying, if we want to pretend we're a free country, if we want to pretend we're a country that rules based off the consent of the governed, then we have to reconcile what he's talking about here. and if we decide that this is too hard to live up to, then we should cease with the pretense, strip away the euphemism, and just admit what we are,

which is competing majority class or competing groups of people, each seeking the majority so that we can lord it over the minority, and in which case, all morality goes out the window. You're giving up any claim to a higher standard of justice if you're saying that laws can simply be chosen by the majority and the minority just has to suck it. I don't really want to live in a country that's like that. On a personal level, we all would hold to a standard of morality or justice,

but there's this weird disconnect in our minds where, well, it's the government they exist on a different moral plane. No. That's not true. Let's be honest about it. Spooner rehashes the primary concern against such a concept as the minority telling the majority to stuff it. He didn't use that exact term, but same idea. He writes,

But it will perhaps be said that if the majority can defeat the will of the majority, the minority can defeat the will of the majority, then the minority rule the majority. But this is not true in any unjust sense. I love this. The minority enact no laws of their own. They simply refuse. their assent to such laws of the majority as they do not approve. The minority assume no authority over the majority.

They simply defend themselves. They do not interfere with the right of the majority to seek their own happiness in their own way, so long as they, the majority, do not interfere with the minority. They claim simply not to be oppressed and not to be compelled to assist in doing anything which they do not approve. They say to the majority, we will unite with you. if you desire it for the accomplishment of all those purposes in which we have a common interest with you, you can certainly expect us to do nothing more.

If you do not choose to associate with us on those terms, there must be two separate associations. You must associate for the accomplishment of your purposes and we'll associate for the accomplishment of ours. This was the basic and clearly stated reason for leaving the union by the southern states. As the minority, they just simply withheld their consent. It's not aggression. It's not dominance. It's basic self-defense.

It's the natural right of association. I don't want to be your friend. I don't want you in my house. I don't want you in my store. I don't want you making laws that take away my life, liberty, or property simply because you have more people than I do. And as I, going back to that horrific hypothetical,

it cannot be said that a woman refusing to be raped is ruling over the men who would rape her. But how can we trust that the minority won't be capricious in their withholding of consent? The first answer is that that's kind of just the nature of consent. The majority don't have any right or claim to the consent of the minority. The minority do not owe their submission to the majority. And then secondly, it may be asked, how can the minority, as Spooner rights, be trusted to enforce even such legislation as is equal and just.

The answer is that they are as reliable for that purpose as are the majority. They are as much presumed to have associated and are as likely to have associated for that object, that is to create just laws, as are the majority, and they have as much interest in such legislation as have the majority. And in fact, Spooner argues that they have an even greater motivation to enforce actual justice by virtue of being the minority and therefore the weaker. Spinner writes, but it will be asked what motive have the majority when they have all the power in their hands to submit their will to the veto of the minority? And we're going to still end up running into the narrative time

slot here. Spooner provides four answers to this question. The first is that the majority, it benefits them to be just. And it would be unjust for them to compel compliance, tribute or taxation from the minority in the support of laws that they don't agree with. That's the weaker of his reasons, but it's still a reason. The second is if the stronger party

is actually acting in accordance with justice, then they don't need to fear the veto of the minority. As Spooner says, for the latter have as strong emotives for the maintenance of just government as have the former. The third reason why the majority would submit their will to the veto of the minority is that if the majority is unjust, then eventually they will foster conditions of a more forcible rebellion. This has been the story of the rise and fall of empires for as long as human

beings have been making them. And then the minority over time may grow its own numbers to the point of capturing the majority position, or at least the weaker party instead of living peacefully, will take every opportunity to antagonize and pest them to the majority. And then once they become the majority, then they'll turn around and they'll lord it back over the previous stronger party. Maintaining order, maintaining compliance also requires enforcement and enforcement is expensive. Being just and only enforcing laws that all the people agreed to creates an environment of peace, which benefits everyone.

And that is predicated by obeying natural law. To that point, even the worst of tyrants recognize that they need to throw their subjects a bone now and again to prevent a complete armed uprising. Because in general, going back to points that were made by David Hume that I think I covered in like episode two, in general, people go, as long as it's relatively, yeah, this kind of sucks, but it's relatively easy to live under, they will tolerate quite a lot. it's in the majority's best interest to be appeasing every now and again. The fourth answer to that concern is that it is possible that the majority is not entirely

a monolithic entity. They may be a majority on one issue, but a minority on another. It behooves them then not to lord it over those who are weaker than them. And at some point, as I said, the power of the veto will be needed to be used by the majority because they'll suddenly find themselves in the minority. So if you deny the minority of the right of veto on one day, that could very well be denying it for yourself the next day. The alkali says trying to disobey natural law usually fails. I think maybe you meant trying to obey. The difficulty in obeying a natural law is not an excuse to not obey natural law.

So my own answer to the concern that Spooner raised there that he gave four answers to would be that it's also quite possible that if the majority ignore the veto of the minority off enough and egregiously enough and insist on creating conditions of war by their own actions, such as the bastardization of trial by jury, wherein they're using civil law as the primary vehicle of violating you of your life, liberty, and property, often without the protection of a jury in those civil cases. And then even with the jury, oftentimes they're not even requiring unanimity anymore or they're lessening the number of jurors. And then, you know, strong-arming the juries and defollowing the laws that the majority created. Then eventually, there does need to be a time when the minority take more extreme action. Bear in mind that the Declaration of Independence listed the deprivation of trial by jury as one of its key grievances. you could certainly make the case that we are living in similar circumstances, if not worse, than the founding fathers were in. To be clear, this is not a call to violence, because I think there are a number of things that we can do that are wholly nonviolent, that if enough of us did them, would affect dramatic change.

Those would be, and this is not an exhaustive list, don't participate voluntarily in any aspect of their system. It just feeds power into their system. Take out your money. Take any possible semblance of consent away from the system. Exist on as many parallel communities, parallel financial rails, parallel economy rails, as possible. Buy local food. Find people that are here in the United States that have a same mindset.

Go to badlands shop.com. I think it's or badlandsmedia. TV forward slash shop. There's a number of America first vendors there that share values of liberty

that would allow you to disconnect from the system at large. Ultimately, it's a personal choice. It's up to you. There have been a lot of conversations on badlands about things like Bitcoin. I think that's a huge part of it.

Now, in conclusion, Spooner acknowledges that the limitations he describes being placed on legislation would be exceedingly narrow. But those limitations are worth it because monopolies, all monopolies, all special privileges, all sumptuary laws, all restraints upon any traffic, bargain or contract that was naturally lawful,

all restraints upon men's natural rights, the whole catalog of mala prohibita, that is just wrong by virtue of we said so, and all taxation to which the tax, parties had not individually, severally, and freely consented would be at an end because all such legislation implies a violation of the rights of a greater or lesser minority. And this end is achieved because this minority would disregard, trample upon, or resist the execution of such legislation, and then throw themselves upon a jury of the whole people for justification and protection.

In this way, all legislation would be nullified except legislation of that general nature, which impartially protected the rights and subserved the interests of all. And I forgot to pull the slides up on that. The only laws that would persist in that case would be laws that the whole of the people would agree to. And given that strict standard, it is more likely that such laws would be more friendly to liberty, or more conducive to justice than not. A person might just exercise their natural rights without seeking permission or paying a fine

or obtaining a license, actual legal freedom. And as Spooner says, I'll pull this one up, in short, government in practice would be brought to the necessity of a strict adherence to natural law and natural justice instead of being, as it is now a great battle in which avarice and ambition are constantly fighting for and obtaining advantages over the natural rights of mankind. This is why, in any discussion on voting, I ask people who look to voting and talk about voting

for a representative, representative, to what end? if the end is to create arbitrary laws simply by virtue of being the majority that everyone has to obey and there's no way to get out of it if that law is a violation of our natural rights, you don't have that right to do that. You are participating in the violation of your neighbor's rights by delegating that violation to someone else. in essence, and I'll piss people off with this, you're too chicken to go to your neighbor with a gun and demand money from them to help pay for a road you want,

so you delegate that moral hazard to someone else, who also is too chicken shit to do that themselves, so they hire police officers and soldiers to come and do that for them. That's what's going on. Unless you're someone who's voting because you're like, I don't want that to happen to me, and I'm trying to say no. Again, there's no comment section on a ballot. go back to Spooner's section two of the no treason essay for the 10 reasons why

voting does not equal consent so I'm willing to give people a benefit of the doubt on that but if I hear people talking about it in like a positive sense like this is what I actually want I understand what's going on like please reevaluate your motivations think about all this stuff because it does it does matter because majority rule is not compatible with liberty justice is not a popularity context it is codified in nature There is an objective standard we can appeal to, and we don't get there by just counting people and who has the most number, which position has the most number. That's not the way it works. I mean, that's the way they want it to work, but that's not compatible with consent.

That's not compatible with all of the values that we say this country was built on. I see Matt V.K. dropped a couple of rants in there. Thanks, bud. Appreciate that. He said, give a man 60 minutes. He'll speak for 61. Give a man 90 minutes, he can change the world or something. Yeah.

The time constraints, man. They're just hard to live by. He also dropped another 20 bucks. Great show, as always, John Drake. Thank you. And thank you, sir. All right, with that, I'm going to go ahead and split. Thank you so much for tuning in early if you did.

These things are always on replay. I appreciate the comments of Burning Bright a while back saying that my show is kind of timeless in that. it's not tied to the news of the day. Tropical Rocket for another $10. I don't really agree with you on this. I think a consumption tax makes sense for citizens. And you know what? We can disagree.

But if you're going to force someone to pay that tax, then your justification needs to be moral. And there's no justification for violating someone's consent. There's no moral justification for violating someone's consent. You better have a good one for that. otherwise you are the very thing that we claim to be trying to prevent through the representative government system and that's a problem okay with that I'll see you all next week I haven't decided what the topic will be yet there's a couple of chapters left that I want to get through

and I'm not entirely sure which one I'll pick so it'll be a surprise thank you all for joining me and I'll see you all later 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.