Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-10-25_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Greg Roberts from Rogue Weather has the Outdoor report for this week and we talk a bit of sportsball, too. Ryan McMaken, former economist for state of Colorado and editor for Mises Daily at the Mises institute, birthright talk, SUpreme Court and secession

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClouserDrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. Greg Roberts is here from RogueWeather.com. Mr. Outdoors. Greg, welcome back. And you were coming back yesterday from one of the sports shows, right? Sportsman shows.

And so you missed the first half of, or at least most of the first half of Super Bowl yesterday. And I ended up watching the whole thing, but you ended up seeing the whole second half. The way I'm looking at it, a halftime show forgettable in my view, but most of them have been for a while. Let's see. But as far as, everybody asks,

everybody talks about the ads. I wasn't all that thrilled with most of the ads except for maybe pringles and uh what was it little caesars those are the ones that made me laugh out loud but i don't know you see anything worthwhile actually for ads i did one the harrison ford jeep ad oh the one in which he, even though my name is Ford, you know. Yes. And the way the dog looks, the dog is a great actor too, because the way the dog looks when he says that, that was the best ad that I saw. I didn't get to see the Little Caesars ad, but Terry did, and she said it was great. Did not hear anything about the Pringles ad.

What I was shocked at was in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, I had been hearing so much, and I got to admit, on social media, that Elon Musk had purchased four ads in the Super Bowl, and he was going to do nothing but post some of the doge findings about some of the ridiculous amounts of our money getting spent, especially overseas, and then didn't see a single one of them. No, that didn't happen. Yeah, I think that was just an interesting rumor. You know the one that Betty up in Grants Pass sent me a link to the People magazine deal,

and they're saying the best throwback was Hellman's mayonnaise with Billy Crystal and and and well it's basically it was that Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal recreating that orgasmic deal to me that was just cringe that was cringe to me for some reason I don't that just they didn't fly I knew that one was coming I didn didn't actually see it. Well, sorry, poor choice of words. I knew that one was going to happen. I didn't see it. Terry didn't say anything about it. But, you know, there's been some publicity about they were going to do that and recreate the scene, the restaurant scene from, you know, when Harry met Sally and I'll have what she's having thing.

Yeah, I just thought it was to me. It just both Linda and I said, this is kind of cringy, I thought. But of course, in some ways, the original in the movie was cringy. So maybe it was sort of just matching that these days. Some things I think you can only you can only really pull that off once, even if you bring the original people back. That clearly would be one of those things. The game itself I found totally shocking because I think most people were buying into the belief that when you have Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes in the postseason, they pretty much were Superman, and they had never lost in the postseason until yesterday.

And then it wasn't just the losing. It was the way it happened. It was an embarrassing loss for KC, right? They weren't even competitive until maybe a little bit at the very end. And I think at that point, Philadelphia just started lightening up. Boy, they're already celebrating. You hear a term in sports. It's called garbage time.

The whole fourth quarter was really garbage time. And then especially the last seven minutes of the game. And that's when the chiefs finally really put points on the board to give them 22 total for the game. But when it mattered most, they didn't have a prayer. They just so worked. And then I put up a little ha-ha, snicker, snicker. I said the Eagles got their behinds kicked so bad so early, the refs never had a chance to get in the game. And a picture of Patrick Boach wearing a ref's uniform.

Oh, you mean Chiefs, though? Kansas City Chiefs adorned. Yeah, okay, yeah. Well, you know, the one thing I did notice, though, lots of penalties, lots of flags thrown in the game. Quite interesting. Both ways. This was definitely not a cleanly executed game in any way, shape, or form. So that end of it, you know, from that point, real sloppy game.

No doubt about that. But still, you know, I was pulling for the underdog just because. And just because any team that had been there twice, they'd say, okay, you've won enough. And just the way I look at it, I didn't really have a dog in the fight either way because I'm still a Pittsburgh Steelers guy when it comes to the Super Bowl. I think you and me both, aren't we?

Aren't we still that way? I mean, honestly, after the whole Neal episode, on top of that, actually, for me, the Pittsburgh Steelers had their own thing that they did. I really, being a fan, locking myself up on Sundays, Mondays, whatever, during football season, living, breathing, and dying by the Steelers and their outcome, I don't do that anymore. What I do, I watch the NFL. I just want to watch the NFL. I just

want to see good games. And if I'm not able to see it by whatever they're putting on locally, then I'll just watch NFL Network and watch their game-to-game coverage as they show the different games and what's going on in them. But if I've got anything better to do, no, I don't sit and lock myself up on football anymore the way I used to. No, and nor do I. And this is the only football game I watched all season. But like I said, an interesting spectacle. But, you know, certainly there were better.

I still say that any time that you are going to go out there and do the Star Spangled Banner, Whitney Houston is the one you compare to. And everybody always comes up short when you're compared to Whitney Houston. Well, again, you catch that true lightning in a bottle like Whitney did. And then from that point on, it's almost unfair for everybody else who will follow. But a jazzy piano rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner is not my favorite way of going. Just saying. Yeah, no, and Star-Spangled Banner is, it's actually, it's a difficult song to sing because of how the song is arranged and what you've got to do within it when you're the vocalist performing it. You know, by comparison, O Canada is a much easier song to sing.

Well, of course, it's socialist. It's for socialists. There we go. O Canada is for socialists. That's why. You have to make it easy. You have to make it easy so the diversity hires can sing it. Just kidding, folks. All right. We're just having fun. Hey, Greg, why don't we just break into now, since what you're doing over at Rogue Weather, and how are we looking here? It's kind of a calm start to the week, but are we going to be getting back into some heavy-duty real snow again? Are we just going to be kind of melting off or not melting off, according to the temps? What do you think? Well, I'm probably

going to start having a better idea about are we going to have any more snow in the valley coming up at the end of the week, starting on Thursday. There's still some question and doubt. You know, National Weather Service has taken snow levels to be 2,500 to 3,500 feet when the rain and snow resumes on Thursday. I'm still not as sure about that. I mean, there's still plenty in the models and the data to suggest we would see valley floor level snow again in Jackson and Josephine counties. We will not see what we saw a week ago today and yesterday. That's becoming very clear because the core of the moisture is definitely going to go into California on this next go around of storms. And up here and then points further north, just not going to see that same thing because last Monday and Tuesday, the main flow of the moisture was essentially coming right into northern California.

When the storms resume at the end of the week and in the weekend, the main flow of the moisture is going to be going in far more, I'm going to say Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto area. That gives you an idea. Tracking that far south, like I said, we get way up on the north end of that moisture flow, but it is much lighter in terms of the flow we had coming over us last Monday and Tuesday. So we may or may not see more valley snow. What we definitely will see, though, because we're really going to be in the cold air, there will be snow for the mountains. And again, the really cold air produces the really dry snow up in the mountains. So we're going to be calling for inches of snow up in the mountains, but it's going to be

dry snow. It's going to have a lot of fluff factor to it. There's going to be a lot of air in it. So, you know, it's going to sound impressive, you know, to say a foot of snow, but it's just really light, dry, what skiers and snowboarders call blower powder snow. It just will blow around all over if there's any kind of wind to it. But in terms of helping water content, no, it's not really great snow for that because it just doesn't have that much moisture. That said, remember how we've been talking about all winter, the lack of snow between 3,500 and 5,000 feet? Yep. Well, that's not an issue anymore.

That's good then, which means don't worry about low levels over at Applegate because that will likely fill up pretty quickly. Yeah, it likely will. And yesterday, coming back from Roseburg, just what you can see right alongside I-5, there are really nice streams of water coming down off the mountain as the snow melt is continuing. But there's still, I mean, especially the north facing slopes and the west facing slopes, there is still a lot of snow up there. I mean, coming through, I could see the top of Sexton, and even where direct sunlight is getting to the top of Sexton, you cannot see obvious snow melt happening up there

at all. So that's 4,100, 4,200 feet at the top of Sexton. So that was beautiful to see because ahead of last week, the top of Sexton had very little or maybe even no snow on it at all. Now, of course, for me being selfish, trying to maintain broadcast facilities, I'm just wondering if I can get the nugget and resupply the generator and get that tank filled up again. That's what I'm wondering. Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, all of this lovely snow, I mean, I saw some of your posts about having to get up and do some work at towers with now all the snow.

So I remember telling you that it definitely was going to be Steve Porter on speed dial to get you to some of these sites. Hey, Steve was working. I didn't tell you this, but Steve had worked his butt off over the weekend because 99.3 and Grants Pass went down, and he was out there working his tail off because, you know, one of those big trees fell on the lines on the three-phase coming up the hill, and he ended up having, you know, linemen over there working that all weekend

after he got the uh the generator back on but yeah he's he's he's retired only a little bit i guess except you know this time of year yeah you know and speaking of finally getting things going mount uh mount ashland is open today they finally reopened yesterday They did not get power restored until Saturday. And that also was true of the ODOT webcams and the CISQs. Those didn't come back up until Saturday. So, yeah, that was a pretty crazy situation. But then, of course, you know, for yesterday, for Mount Ashland, couldn't have been better. They had all of that powder that came down, and their parking lot absolutely filled up quickly. And it was just a beautiful day up there yesterday.

It's going to be another beautiful day up there today because, again, we have this low cloud layer over us, which, by the way, there is a trace, and I mean a real trace, of white stuff that came out of the sky. But it's not really constructed like snowflakes. It looks more like the little styrofoam puff balls, more like a grumble. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I noticed that on the way in this morning there, too, but not a big deal. Greg, I hope you have a great week, and if you could hang on. I just need to talk to you off air here for just a moment. Oh, okay.

Yeah, and have a great time. Which sports show are you going to go to this next weekend? Because I know after that it's going to be the Newswatch 12 show here in town. Actually, no, there is no show this weekend. We did Eugene and Roseburg. Now we have a week off. Then we're going to do Medford and Redding back to back, have a week off, and then we'll be over the hill for the Climate Falls show. All right, very good. That'll be mid-March. All right, we hope to see you soon then. Hang on. Greg Roberts, once again,

rogueweather.com is where you can follow him and keep up on everything atmospheric and fun and various other things. But, yep, just still a little bit of a dig out and looking better on the middle altitude areas. 27 after 7. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is your work truck and van headquarters. Proudly offering Adrian. First month, that's pound 250 keywords saved now from our friends at Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Hi, I'm Steven with Steven Westphal Roofing Inc.

And I'm on KMED. And I'll bet Steven is very busy along with every other roofing company too right now. Just the way that goes. Repairing. Repairing some of the stuff going on, right? It's 7.31. We're going to break for news here in just a moment and then talking with Ryan McMakin from the Mises Institute. He's the editor of their journal over there. And I really enjoy the thinking that's going on there. So we'll have a talk with him. Looking forward to it.

And we're able to get this together. Some emails of the day. Emails of the day brought to you by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry. CentralPointFamilyDentistry.com. While you wait, crowns, that's a thing they have there. In-house lab, beautiful thing, works really well. I highly suggest it and recommend them, okay? And that's CentralPointFamilyDentistry.com. Steve writes me, hey Bill, just lost the signal in talent uh good luck actually uh steve uh check the broadcast check your radio again i just went in the moment you said that i went and checked it online it is perfectly functioning loud and proud in 106 7 and 106 3 of course he's on to an hd1 terry writes me this morning, I had a good example last week about censorship, Meta. And Meta is still censoring posts.

A relative of mine made a post calling President Trump a flawed president. I wrote a post of my own basically saying it was important to vote policy, not feelings. I said I voted for Trump's policies, not so much the man. I did say I never heard one policy from kamala and biden did not follow the policies he campaigned on and in most cases did the opposite i said the man lied my post was immediately taken down a few of my friends had a chance to read it including my sister she sent me a text saying my post was really well done and when she went back to reread it it had been taken off i went into my personal account found the post and shared it with my sister she sent me a text saying i got it but with a warning that you called president trump

a flawed president so a warning wow that's interesting terry and so i actually began the post with quote someone i love dearly made a post calling trump a flawed president the flawed was marked exactly that way that was the excuse but the real reason my post was taken down were the kamala and biden comments now the capper i went through facebook and found a long post comparing trump to hitler with a conclusion that he is another hitler and that's still up all right terry uh thanks for letting me know that okay and we have uh patrick weighing in this morning hey bill about this snowpack that we have right now just a danger just remember 1997 great snowpack followed by heavy warm rain causing huge

flooding problem yep i remembered well the new year's eve flood right that one 734 at kmd 993 kbxg ryan mcmacon will be on the show next looking forward to it if you really want to enjoy your open air spaces talk to to American Industrial Door. They're an authorized dealer for tier screen systems. From porches to vacating, our dog house is on Ryan Way, just off Sage Road. Visit twodogsfab.com. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 106.3 KMED. Okay, I can't help myself.

I'm a slobbering fanboy of Ryan McMakin, but we'll bring him on and hopefully I can wipe the spittle off my mouth and get some common sense talked about this. Ryan McMakin is executive director at the Mises Institute. He's a former economist for the state of Colorado and the author of a number of books, Breaking Away, The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization in Smaller Polities, and Commie Cowboys, the Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. All right. Now, I have to ask you, Ryan, first off, were you an economist for the state of

Colorado in Rocky Mountain High Time, or is it more or less like a bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang period of Colorado. What say you? Welcome to the show. My term there was 2004 to 2014. So a long time ago by kind of political standards, really. Okay, but it's in between. In between John Denver era and Venezuelan gangs, all right? Do you still live in Colorado? Just curious. Yes, I still live here most of the time, even though the Mises Institute is down near Auburn

University. Okay, very good. Hey, I wanted to talk about a couple of things you've been writing about recently, and you've been talking about secession a lot. In Oregon, we have been stirring our minds, and some will say just kidding ourselves, about seceding from the state or changing the state borders. First, we had Jefferson, the state of Jefferson, back in the 1940s. World War II pretty much derailed that. And then recently, there's been a lot of talk of just changing the state boundaries through the Greater Idaho Project and joining Idaho, a considerably freer state than the state of Oregon. And you wrote recently at Mises that now's a great time for California to secede.

In fact, they're working to do this. Could you give us the story? Sure. Well, in this particular case, California is talking about seceding from the United States, which is a much bigger deal than a state rearranging its borders, right? State borders changing has no implications for geopolitics. It should be regarded as a minor issue. However, people act like political borders were hand-drawn by God himself in the midst of prehistory or something. These political borders. They've been changed all the time.

And just look at any map of the political world from 100 years ago, right? Everything was different. So people acting like, oh, it'll never happen. This is such a huge, unspeakable change. Yeah, 50 years is a long, long time in political history. So let's be realistic here. So California is talking about leaving the United

States. And we would be hearing the same thing from Texans or red states if Trump had lost. Because people, when they start to fear that they're just completely out of power, they think, hey, maybe self-determination is something we should have. And I'm in favor of self-determination, even if it's self-determination for people I don't particularly like or agree with. And so in the case of California, they continue to look at issues of asserting some sort of self-determination and separateness from the U.S. government, which, of course, would benefit America, in the case of California, immensely, right? Imagine Congress without any of those 45 Democratic members of Congress. Their senators would be gone.

We would probably see a great lessening of the California effect. This is the way that California regulations dominate the economic system in America because it's such a huge economic market that a lot of private firms basically produce their goods in a way where it can be only sold in california so there's there's a lot of pandering to california in the american political system and if they want to leave fine by me uh yeah that would be the way it is of course i have a lot of friends across the border i guess we would need a passport you know then to go down i-5 if that were the case have political examples of

this historically right when czechoslovakia broke up into two pieces there's always a period where people can choose where they want to live it's not like uh well it's not like california is going to put up a big fence and uh keep people from leaving california if they want and just imagine if california continues to ruin america and amer America gets to the point where it's California-like, where are you going to go then? At least if California, you're going to have to learn a new language. You're going to have to go to a completely different country, maybe move a thousand miles. If California just breaks off, how far do you have to move? What? You've got to move to Vegas? You've got to move to Phoenix?

You can still see your relatives very easily and you don't have to learn a new language. So it's very important to create variety by breaking up these humongous nation states and impose all these restrictions on our life. But people just generally don't think of those terms for whatever reason. Well, you know, Ryan, I've often thought that, you know, what's one thing you always hear when a state talks about seceding, whether it's a red state or a blue state? You always say, well, you know, the Civil War settled that. And I would counter, I would say the Civil War settled nothing. All the Civil War did is that if you tried to leave, we'll kill you, is what the central

state essentially said. Would you agree with that? That's absolutely what it was. It was a might makes right is what the Civil War said. If a part of the United States attempts to assert some sort of self-determination, another part of the United States will invade and burn down that other country, invade it, destroy it. That's all that happened. And then after the fact, the Supreme Court in White v. Texas decided to manufacture a legal reason, even though the Constitution clearly had nothing to say about secession or prohibiting it, which according to the 10th Amendment would say the federal government

has no role in governing secession, the Supreme Court came up with a rationale. In fact, the Supreme Court does that a lot. They just kind of invent legal theories that back up what the powers that be in Washington want the Supreme Court to say. And so lo and behold, the Supreme Court says, oh, yeah, we reread the Constitution and magically discovered a legal argument against secession. So that's all that's at. Yeah.

And let's face it, you know, Lincoln even said, well, we fought the war to keep the Union together. There's no constitutional authority to keep the Union together. But that was ignored, for the for the same and i'm not one of those people said that slavery had no role it's clear you just read the declaration of secession from south carolina mississippi it's clear they cared a lot about slavery yes the fact of the matter is the north didn't care about slavery one way or the other what they really wanted was tax revenue yeah in other words, tariffs, oddly enough, right? Wasn't it tariffs?

That was a big part of it, for sure. I mean, tax revenue, because it fell more heavily on one part of the country than on the other. And it's an age-old thing. But everyone obsesses over the Civil War whenever the topic of secession comes up, and they completely ignore countless other examples of secession,

worldwide peaceful secession. The fact that Iceland seceded from Denmark, the fact that Greenland is talking about it now, the fact that Scotland had a vote on it. They voted it down, but we could point at successful cases where in 1905 Norway seceded from Sweden. In the 60s, Malta seceded from Britain. I mean, I don't know why people act like this is such a big deal. Well, I think it has to do with, well, I think this is the reason why it's difficult to even get a secession or changing the boundaries in Oregon talked about, because here we have a very progressive central state, although most of the state of Oregon is relatively red, okay? It's not unusual for out here on the West Coast. And what is the fun of being a progressive unless you have people who don't like you who you can stamp your boot in their face over and over again?

I think there's a certain amount of that going on. Is there a case to be made for that? Well, of course, it's the same thing as any time there's a case of secession is you don't want those people to move away and do something different. And you don't want to lose the tax revenue associated with it. It's 100% about power when we're looking at the state government coming out against secession. Again, it has nothing to do with geopolitics or the nation or defense or any of that sort of stuff. These people would still be Americans, right? It's such a minor change, but they want their tax revenue. They want to be able to boss around those people. A lot of the time, normally when people want to succeed, it's because they feel they're being exploited. And they want, the people who are against it, want the exploitation

to continue. That's what it comes down to. I mean, if you just wanted to live your own life and mind your own business, you wouldn't care if some other part of the state, hours away, wanted to leave and join some other state. Who cares? I mean, part of northern Colorado talks about joining Wyoming. Really? Right. None of my business. I don't see why I should care. But apparently, we're all supposed to hate the idea that these borders would ever change. Never mind the fact these borders were drawn due to accidents of history in the mid-19th century, usually. And a lot of these borders were drawn around places where nobody lived. There were like, you know, 50 farmers living in some

of these parts that we're now told are absolutely crucial to the state of Oregon or whatever. Are we still going to be saying in the year 2200, oh, we could never change these borders because of people in 1835 drew the line that way. It should be regarded as laughable, and yet people are really concerned about it. I think one of our major challenges right now is that every process for any kind of secession or changing borders, everything else, it's like you have to beg your tyrant to let you go. And I've often wondered if the only way a lot of this will happen these days is if there's maybe some kind of fiscal crisis. And that brings its own set of problems

here, Ryan, in that if the state is impotent to be able to keep you in, then it would be sporty times that you're living in. Would that be fair to look at it? I think a lot of this stuff won't change significantly until there's a major economic disruption of Trump. And I mean something beyond a run-of-the-mill recession. I mean something like the Soviet Union in the 1980s

sort of thing. Because that's what happened in the Soviet Union, right? You want to talk about secession? Boy, the Soviet Union broke off and you got 15 new countries through secession in that case. And why was that able to happen? Because thanks to the general economic decline, the inflation, the poverty that came out of this failing economic system that the Soviets had imposed, people just didn't care about the central government. And that's what's going to have to happen in America. People are just going to have to stop caring about the central government, realize that it doesn't actually benefit them, and then you'll start to see major changes.

Yeah, but needless to say, though, sportier times is what it would be for sure. Ryan McMakin is once again with me. He's the executive editor at the Mises Institute, of weeks ago about no such thing as settled law. You had talked about how the Supreme Court often just ends up changing with the wind. And to think that the Supreme Court is not responsive to public opinion is somewhat ridiculous, really, isn't it? Because it's well known to float back and forth on certain issues. And why don't you bring up some examples, if you could? Because right now, birthright citizenship, which you also write about, is on the bubble at the moment.

Right. I'm always careful to say that if I ever write anything about like the law pertaining to birthright citizenship, is that I don't think that whatever the Supreme are lawyers who got, you know, the judge's job, but that's it. They're just lawyers. And they decided that, yeah, this is what we decide the law says. But the Supreme Court changes its mind frequently on what the law says. Why does it change its mind? Because ideologies change, because public opinion changes. And the Supreme Court doesn't want to be irrelevant. The Supreme Court changes its rulings and changes things it said, because first of all, new people come on there with new ideology. And secondly, because they know if they make a ruling that is so far away from public opinion

that people are just going to ignore the Supreme Court. And so they don't want that to happen because these people have huge egos and they want to be relevant. And they also want to be invited to the shrimp fests, the good shrimp fests in D.C., right? You want to be invited to the right parties. You have to be, right? Yeah, there's no $100,000 speaking fees or whatever they collect on this stuff. I mean, they have easy, easy lives.

So they want to continue having easy, easy lives. And the example I bring up is Coromantz. Coromantz was the Supreme Court case of 1944 that said, hey, yeah, the U.S. government can round up people based solely on their race and no other criteria, solely on their race. And that was strictly a popular opinion reaction to World War II, right? That's all that was. Absolutely, yeah.

It was an internment camp uh and so that why were they able to do that why did they not even like follow what was established constitutional law and that was that you can't do that um that because it was popular because the but the franklin roosevelt administration wanted to lock up all the japanese people and the supreme court was going to find some made-up rationale for it. Of course, they had pages and pages of jurisprudential talk with big words explaining how the Constitution really says total BS. It was all BS they invented to back up what the president wanted. And so that's what you've got on the Supreme Court. And we can look at other cases, too, right? One of the more famous case from 100 years ago is called the lock. That was

a great movie. It said the Supreme Court can't intervene in contractual private contractual relationships it does it all the time though doesn't it well they changed their mind in the 1930s and said oh a lockner which has been in in uh savage law for 30 years hey we changed our mind we reread the constitution and we decided oh we made a mistake 30 years ago that was wrong they do stuff like that all the time so let me then look at birthright citizenship which you write about a lot and it has been in the news a lot recently and could you see them in spite of the fact that i have all the legal scholars that are going oh it is settled law and you know we know what the 14th Amendment said, but popular opinion is not with that 14th Amendment interpretation.

Could you see some changes coming? Yeah, I think this is a great, great thing that he did, the executive order, because it raises the issue and makes people talk about it. Now, I can't even imagine even a favorable Supreme Court, favorable to me, would argue that, yeah, you can change this with just an executive order. I don't I don't think I don't see any way you get away with that because that's pretty clearly contrary to the to any like decent reading of the law. However, could Congress redefine what it exactly means to be subject to the 14th Amendment? And I think, yeah, many scholars over the years have said, yeah, Congress actually determined who exactly falls under the 14th Amendment. And that was a common reading in the 60s, the 1860s, 1870s, and up through the 1920s. And we can see that in a lot of different interpretations. And 1924, especially, that was when there was a debate over, well, are Native Americans subject to the 14th Amendment?

That's right. They exist in the United States. They're born in the United States. Nobody disagreed on that. But since they had an allegiance to a, quote, unquote, foreign sovereign power, that is the tribal government, it was agreed upon by many that they were not subject to the 14th Amendment and therefore did not get automatic birthright citizenship. That's why they had to pass a law in 1924 by Congress saying that Native Americans now are all citizens and are eligible for birthright citizenship. Why pass the law if everybody agreed that everyone born in the United States was automatically subject to that? So look for the executive order naturally is being challenged, being challenged

in the state of Oregon and all the rest of this stuff, because there's the wringing of hands that somehow, you know, a lot of our population might get rounded up, you know, at some point. The roundups are usually happening at the dope grows, but I digress for another day on that particular issue. So look for then the conversation to go to the supreme court but that will probably end up kicking into congress's lap i don't know it could be an interesting time here uh i don't think that the original intent of the 14th amendment was that anybody who just happens to be here is becoming an instant citizen. But I don't know. Is our concept of who is a citizen changing these days, Ryan McMakin? What would you say?

Well, globally, of course, I think a lot of countries are realizing that it's birthright citizenship. That is pure birthright citizenship, simply being born there without establishing any connection to any citizen or anyone even with legal residence. A lot of countries are realizing that's pretty unsustainable because people are just so mobile now. And the welfare states are so huge worldwide as well. And that's why countries are moving away from it. So there are no birth right citizenship countries left in Europe. Ireland got rid of it in 2005. And that was it.

There's no one left in Europe that's doing it. You've got to establish that you're at least related to a legal resident. In some cases, you have to establish you're related to a citizen and australia got rid of it in the 80s new zealand got rid of it in 2006. so the us uh the they're they're uh the people who run the us the people who are in charge are saying no no no this is this is what the law says and uh it says what it says of course, those people don't think the Second Amendment says what it says. It requires nuance. Yeah, yeah, the Second Amendment meant having a big, strong National Guard. You know, this coming from people who had just fought the greatest military power in the world and won right back then.

Sure, they want to just put everything in charge of a strong central government oh well have you know the anti-federalists were right ryan what can i say about we were going to find ourselves they were right 100 all right so um a final question here what are you working on now over at mises anything we need to be watching well i continue coming back to some extent to the citizenship issue, just more generally speaking, and how the idea of national citizenship has helped build the modern, powerful, centralized state, because citizenship in most parts of the world historically, and in the United States, was a decentralized issue, right? The Constitution doesn't define citizenship as it was written in the 1780s. It says that states can determine who's a citizen, and the U.S. can create like a uniform thing.

And so states were in charge of that. And so people used to think in terms of where, what state they were citizens of. And this isn't just the United States, this is a global thing. However, states realize that if you centralize that whole system, if the central government gets to determine who's a citizen and who's not, that greatly builds the power of the central state. And this isn't a reason that this has been going on for centuries that needs to become far more powerful and far more centralized. And that's certainly an issue we continue to face. So if anything, really, we should be thinking more in terms of taking that power away from the central government altogether. And that doesn't really have any implications for the welfare state or for these other issues that help centralize federal power. It would simply mean that states would have some more control over who lives in their states and who gets benefits there and who gets to be a citizen across state lines. I think we would be a lot better off if we started looking at a more decentralized system there as

well. What do you think about the future of the welfare state? Are we looking at the slow-mo collapse of it, or do you believe that the state will end up being superior? Well, we're going to tax people to whatever extent to support people who, well, need support, I guess. Well, I don't think that the central, I don't think the concept of some sort of safety net is going away, because, I mean, that actually dates back really to the 18th century, if not before some sort of statement. I mean, you can point to Queen Elizabeth who had poor relief and that sort of thing. However, in its current form, this huge centralized welfare state that is trillions of dollars and runs trillion dollar deficits every year. I don't see how that's sustainable. And because it's basically impervious to reform, no matter what you do. No one ever talks about reform because it's controlled by such huge entrenched interests and because the central government can simply print money

to make up for the shortfall. So I think that over time, you will see that system collapse, just like Soviet Union, quote unquote, welfare state collapsed because it eventually runs into serious problems of inflation and just unsustainability. However, what you'll have happen is it will break up into more localized pieces. You'll have a continuation of some sort of welfare state. However, when it's smaller, when it's more localized, it's much more subject to reform. And you can see that at state levels all the time, right? States are concerned with things like balancing the budget. They actually do cut welfare programs, right? Because there are lots of local welfare programs too. Those

actually do get cut. Those actually do get reined in. Never happens at a federal level because they just print money for it. And those people are so people in Washington, D.C. are so distant from the voters in real terms that they just simply don't care. They care about these huge interests. And so that can't continue probably beyond my lifetime. So you'll probably start to see significant changes there. All right. Ryan McMakin, once again, he is the executive director at the Mises Institute and a former economist for the state of Colorado. And you also edit Mises Daily, right, that comes out there. How can people find out more about that? I'm the editor for the whole website. So, yeah, I determine what goes up there, sure.

Okay. So it's all you then. So if I don't like something, I get in touch with you too, right? Yes. You can send me an angry letter and, yeah, let me know. I'm sure you will kowtow just kidding but uh all right hey ryan a pleasure finally getting a chance to meet you i'm glad we got together and like i said you're doing great work over at mises m-i-s-e-s dot o-r-g and i'm on the mises daily every day thanks for the call great having you on thank you it's a minute after eight this is kmed kmed hd1 eagle point medford kbxg grants pass your smile is the