Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:19 [GUEST] - Ronald Dodson :The Shutdown Isn't About Money / It's About Power

Episode Date: October 25, 2025

Start with the trenches, not the slogans. We open with Daryl’s new MartyrMade series that tells World War II from the German perspective, beginning in World War I to show how ordinary men were swept by trauma, propaganda, and deprivation into choices that later hardened into catastrophe. The aim is clarity, not absolution—humanize even the “enemy,” and you gain the tools to see your own era more honestly.From that lens, we shift to power now. Guest Ronald Dodson explains why a government shutdown can reveal a rare opportunity to cut through the administrative state. OMB’s role in classifying “non‑essential” positions and triggering reduction‑in‑force plans isn’t bean counting; it’s a constitutional lever. We explore Article II authority, what it should mean for presidential control of the executive branch, and how to draw a hard line against Bush‑era claims of boundless commander‑in‑chief power. Elections only matter if executives can direct and dismiss, and if Congress stops outsourcing lawmaking to regulators.Foreign policy exposes the costs of an unaccountable machine. The Cold War built a global apparatus that never stood down: covert wars that try to conscript the Pentagon, a CIA culture that glorifies operating beyond rules, and procurement fantasies like the F‑35 that attempt to be everything and end up fragile. We weigh a bold corrective—moving CIA operations into DIA under military accountability—and trace how empires force universal solutions while rivals need only local answers. That asymmetry drains treasure and invites strategic overreach.Can we return to an old republic? No—but we can recover representative control. That means narrowing delegations, demanding real budgets instead of endless CRs, restoring presidential direction over agencies, and designing reforms that face forward rather than worship nostalgia. Along the way, expect sharp debate, concrete mechanics, and a throughline: stories that humanize the past can help us govern the present.If this episode challenged your assumptions or gave you a new frame to think with, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/provoked-with-darryl-cooper-and-scott-horton/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Thank you. We're going to be. We're going to be. We're going to be. We're going to be able to be. And I'm not going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

I'm going to be. Oh! Oh! We're going to be. We're going to be able to be. what is up everybody and my buddy scott this is darrell cooper creator of the marty made podcast you know me the reason i'm jumping on to uh to start this thing off is that scott has been carrying me on his back for the last month and a half two months or so as i've been

finishing my new history episode. And so I figured I should at least pretend to pull my weight here at the beginning. How you doing, buddy? Ah, that was my fault. I should pay better attention. How are you doing, man? Doing all right. Like, you know, I was, I did a, I did an episode with Dave the other day. And, uh, yeah, one of the things I told him was, um, when I, when I, when it's been a while since I put out a history episode and I start to get to that last final stage, the real difficult part of what to cut and how to finish it

and worrying about how it's going to go over. I can fall into this pit of self-doubt where I'm just eventually just think I'm never going to finish it and all my subscribers are going to leave. My wife's going to divorce me and I'm going to kill myself. That's just what's going to happen.

That's the reality I have to accept. And so it's not just finishing an episode. It's like that way, like my future suicide is like lifted off my shoulders and so I feel great. Definitely. That's great to hear, man. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about as you approach the completion of the academy. That's right. Yeah. I'm also the type to take on these gigantic projects that take forever and then hope it works out at the end. I'm not sure that's really the best way to go about life,

but I've been doing that recently. So let's talk about your great achievement here. It is still just chapter one, but it is already huge and fantastic. People can find the introduction, but this is chapter one of your new podcast, The Martyr Made podcast, Enemy, the Germans War. And we will be, you will be telling this story of the Second World War from the German point of view, as you've said, and as that title sure implies. And yet this episode, as you talk about in a little bit more. detail with Dave Smith in that interview is really about World War I and not just Hitler,

but a lot of other, you know, his contemporaries and their experience in there. I think it's probably pretty beneficial that we did have that very popular movie that came out, all quiet on the Western Front recently, that showed, you know, a little bit of a taste of people have something in their mind's eye about what that might have looked like, not only fighting the First World War, but from the East looking west, you know what I mean, which is not usually the taste that we get there. So it's very interesting, and I know it's already a huge hit.

Your Martyr-made podcast is, I think, probably again, but it definitely is number one right now in history podcasts on Apple. And I already listened to all four hours of the thing, of course, and it's absolutely fantastic. Again, you take people right down there into the trenches with the people, you know, in the heart of the ugliest part of the thing, as is your talent.

And that's why it's just funny to me. And I know the stress is real. But I can only chuckle when I hear you talk about doubting. Like, geez, I hope people like this. Man, there's a reason you're everybody's favorite at this. Like, it's really great. And I've had a couple of people tell me, oh, you tell Darrell that I said that that thing is better than Dan Carlin and this

and that, you know. So you've earned your spot here. And it's only chapter one. and lord have mercy you're telling the story the second world war from the germans point of view and you know what we'll only do a small bit on this never mind haters and propagandists and liars and aggressive misunderstanders but people of good faith might wonder why you would do such a thing that like geez i don't know essentially you're going to make me more sympathetic for the other side of the war that our country fought and won against the forces of evil and

I'm like, you must have some reason for wanting to do this other than just rehabilitating Hitler here, Daryl. So please, would you tell us a little bit about why you've decided to take on this topic for your great show? Yeah, and actually, it has a lot to do with where I chose to start the story there with in the trenches of World War I. You know, you mentioned All Quiet on the Western Front a second ago. And as much as I'm an Ernst Younger's Storm of Steel, Stan, you know, that book is important for the reason that you said. It, you know, people who read it come away with the understanding that in a war like that, whatever, if you're somebody who thinks the Versailles Treaty is 100% right and the Germans are totally responsible for that war, whatever you think, it shows you even if that's true, the guy in the trench, man, that's just a kid. like you. You know, it's just a guy. And in a lot of ways, victimized by the grand events that are playing out during his lifetime, you know. And we kind of, we're comfortable with that in World War I.

You know, we didn't have the kind of civilian mass killing that we saw in World War II, and it doesn't have the same place in our civic religion. And so we're a little comfortable with that. But obviously with World War II, we're not, we haven't been nearly as comfortable with humanizing the Germans. And one of the things I told Dave in that episode and that, you know, I'm really going to try to reach for in this, uh, in this series is if you, if you, uh, I'm not trying to dissuade anybody from their view of the behavior of the German leadership or even the German people in that, you know, at that time. My thinking is if I can get you though to humanize even them, to see even them as, you know, people who are affected and sort of shaped by

just the historical events that are so much larger than themselves and being pushed, you know, in ways that are often just destructive, not only do the rest of the world, but to themselves. If you can see even them as human beings, then all the, you know, the people you see in the news, the people you see, like, coming up just in your daily life, that should be child's play. You know, you should be able to understand them as human beings a whole lot easier. So, you know, I started with the First World War, you know me, like, I got that Putin syndrome where, you know, I wanted to start with Frederick the Great, and I probably wouldn't have gotten to the First World War until, like, episode 12 or something. But, you know,

the First World War is, it was the, it's the place to start. because you have to understand what these guys went through and not only what the men in the trenches went through but what their families were going through back home and not just the loss with the mass death that took place but the deprivation the overwhelming saturation with state propaganda war propaganda on all sides all these kind of things that these people were subjected to because you know those guys in the trenches were the colonels and generals in the second world war Their sons were the soldiers in the Vermacht, you know, invading the Soviet Union. And so what are these, what were the historical events that shaped these people?

And, you know, you have to talk about these things not as a way of liberating them from their historical responsibility from anything that they did or that they were a part of, but to just try to understand how human beings who didn't start out evil or anything. They're just people like anybody else. how they could end up in situations where things that we look back on now as just unimaginable evil seemed not only, well, it will seem necessary, seemed like something that they had to do or that was, you know, not just excusable, but something that they felt like they had to do, that this was a matter of necessity. And, you know, Daryl, let me stop you here just to say, because we got to change the subject here quick. We got a great guess and everything. There's so much here to talk about. But I would just say on that point that the lessons of World War II as, yeah, I kind of learn them both ways.

Right. Like on one hand, we got to learn how to never let something like this ever happen again. And you see where like Godwin's laws, people just apply Nazism, even where it doesn't apply all over the place. Every argument turns into Hitler, that kind of thing. At the same time, when it comes to the myth of the war, the enemies are such cartoonish supervillains, as Smithers would say, on The Simpsons, right? That it becomes it becomes

essentially impossible to then make the proper comparisons when we need to. These are the same mistakes that we saw being made before. This is where we're supposed to be calling halt. And then the Hitler comparison is now so far beyond the pale that you can't apply it when it needs to apply. You know, it's very all contradictory and messed up. That's why I think it's just so important that you're doing this

to make it where I don't think at the end the lessons are going to be different. They're just going to be much more real instead of cartoonish and mythological the way they have been. You know what I mean?

I think we're, I doubt the understanding over all of the war is going to change that much, you know? But we'll say, the understanding of it, not so much, but the conclusions that we draw from it,

I think are going to be. And you never know, like, you know, sometimes as I go through and develop these series, I don't always know where it's going to end up. That's been the case with the other long series that I've done. But I think in this one in particular,

the lessons that we took from World War II are that, well, sometimes you just have to bomb an entire city full of civilians. I mean, it's just something you've got to do every once in a while. And, you know, because there is this cartoonish view of the enemy as something that is so far beyond the pale, you know, they were fighting the demons as they rise up of a pit from the depths of the earth, it maybe, you know, that idea, that conclusion kind of

makes sense in that context. But when you draw back and recognize that you're fighting human beings who, you know, are subject to a lot of the same pressures that you are and are in the war for probably a lot of the same reasons that you think you are, that it really reframes that question of, you know, whether, whether occasionally we just have to bomb a city full of civilians or have to do any of these other things, you know? So we'll see where it goes. But that's where I'm at right now and where I think it's going. That's great.

And look, I mean, I know there's a reason why the reaction has been so great already. Again, if you're tuning in, you missed it. I already said it. It's the number one podcast in the history section on Apple Podcasts right now. It's episode one of Enemy, the Germans War, the Martyrmaid podcast. Subscribe. mortemate.com. That's the substack where you'll get everything first and foremost in all the bonus material

and everything like that. And so, look, let's just talk about the Academy next week. It'll be a thing next week right now. It's just people want to look at Scott Hortonacademy.com. You can, but let's go ahead and bring on our great guest. It's Ronald Dodson, and this is your guy here. He is CEO and portfolio manager of Dallas North Capital Partners, a private fund management firm,

and he works on politics, economics, and religion, and can be found on Substack, the American Mind, and the American Reformer, and I believe is also associated with the Claremont Institute. Is that right? And welcome to the show. How are you? Just as a writer. I'm not a fellow. But it's great to be here. And can I just say real quick, you didn't bring me on to talk about World War II. But if the purpose of World War II was to save Europe from being taken over by a madman, an evil madman, it failed miserably. Exactly. Truman took over the entire western half of the place.

but uh oh you meant so in Asia sorry but also but also in Asia we left that thing open for Mao so uh I think a rethink um a rethink is in order at some level at least and I'm so thankful Daryl is doing what he's doing uh just great work if you can make it through that uh the scene and in his latest episode without pausing uh with the mustard gas rolling in uh just absolutely gripping stuff yeah man all right so uh listen let's uh point the um audience toward uh your great new article here uh which i read with fascination today it's in the american mind that's american mind dot org cutting back the administrative state although now i'm turning over to darrell and i don't know if that was your first question is based on on this

article or not you guys talk about whatever you want and uh i'll turn it over to you boss Yeah. So it is. My first question is, does start here. And I've, just real quick, I've known Ron for a while now. And he's one of those guys. And I've met several people like this now, but he's one of them for sure who, when they first meet me, you know, because they're fans of the podcast. Like I was actually in Dallas doing something totally different. He happened to be in the office where I was where I was working. And he introduced himself. And he was sort of like, wow, it's martyr made. And, you know, you. he's so smart and this is great. It took very, very little time at all before I realized, like, this guy's way smarter than I am. So I'm really excited to have you on. Very kind of you. Wait, let me get this thing out of my face here. There we go. So this article is really great because I like the way you frame it as an opportunity that doesn't come around every so often to do something like really historical. When the government,

government shutdown kind of was still in its, you know, threatening phases, like it was, you know, is it or isn't it going to happen? I remember thinking at the time that the administration's attitude really seemed to be kind of like, oh, no, no, no, don't do that, don't do that, but if you do, that's cool too. And after reading your article has shed a lot of light on probably why that's the case, is that some people in the administration, like Russ Vaught at the OMB, have an understanding of the opportunity that it represents. So just go ahead and talk about that a little bit. Well, let's keep it 30,000 feet because it is an arcane subject if you get in the weeds.

But the basic idea is back to constitutionalism 101, the chief executive should have executive authority over his branch. And the reason for that is that that's the only way you can have three. co-equal branches and it incentivizes the judiciary to do its job, which is basically as a tiebreaker between the legislative and the executive. But the idea is should the executive, the chief executive, have plenary power to hire and fire to employ his executive branch? And then if he does so in a way that is unjust, the legislative branch has a the powers and the remedy of impeachment. And what has happened since FDR is that we have a

permanent administrative state that is unaccountable to anyone. The great book, The Managerialist Revolution, really was prophetic in speaking of this. And then Sam Francis wrote about this before his death, but the idea with the shutdown is that you have an opportunity through, so OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, is basically the nation's checkbook. Treasury is where the money is and raises funds, but it's the OMB that really sets how those funds are dispersed in order to enforce and enact the laws that Congress passes and so on and so forth. But when the government is shut down, what Russ vote in leading up really at the beginning

of the year, this was looming, this possibility. So they sent out to all the agencies for all the agencies to make a list basically of non-essential employees. And I'm simplifying. This is a very complicated process. But to determine that, which is, number one, non-essential, and number two, isn't fulfilling the purposes or the goals that the president has for the executive branch. And when the shutdown begins, that triggers these reductions in force, or they call it the RIF plan.

and so that's where we are right now and there was the issue is right now what's holding some of it up is you have a restraining order from a California judge this is this is something that's probably not this specific case but there's another case that's probably going to be taken up by the Supreme Court to decide whether or not district judges have universal jurisdiction I think constitutionally they do not. Most on the right believe that they do not that a district judge has jurisdiction just over his or her district.

But the way it's been handled is if a California district judge can enjoin the entire country, basically. So right now there's 4,000 of this reduction in force. That's a small, just a tiny amount that is on the table to be reduced. The federal workforce and the executive branch is immense, aside from the military. And so the plans are if this goes, and really you have a six-week trigger on some of these,

then you can make massive reductions. And the time to reduce this Leviathan is now. And Russ is, he's a good guy, or at least I like him. And I think he has a great plan. It's very much a startup feel over at O&B and really through a lot of the administration, the appointments the White House has made. So when I've been briefed and briefed O&B on particular things, I had breakfast over at the White House about six weeks ago

and got to visit with all these guys. An incredible energy, a real startup feel and some very smart, gooder guys. And I think they understand that the time is now if this executive, again, not to overuse the word, but Leviathan can be attacked. Now's the time. Yeah. So that's great. I'd like to step back, you know, even one step further. So maybe we're at 40,000 feet and sort of talk about why this is as important as it is. Because it does sound like an arcane technical subject that, you know, that people who are in the system wonks are like working on. But why really matters, even beyond, you know, a lot of people watching this will be, they'll be familiar

with critiques of the regulatory regime and the effect that has on our economy to all those kind of things. But stepping back even further than that, you know, I learned my first lessons about politics when I was watching Saturday morning cartoons and Schoolhouse Rock came on, you know, and you learn that the government is people that are elected by the people, presidents, and, you know, Congress members, senators, and, of course, Supreme Court is appointed, and that that was the government. Reality, of course, today is that that's a minuscule part of the government, really, and that most of the government runs on autopilot. But, you know, today, my wife actually, she kind of remembered today as I was talking to her about this episode, as I was planning it out, that the government still shut down. And she's like, oh, yeah, the world hasn't fallen apart yet, so I kind of forgot about it.

if you think like the effect of that is, you know, minimal at least at face value, man, these days it seems like you could get rid of Congress, you could get rid of most of the elected politicians, and nothing would change whatsoever because the agencies are running the entire state from top to bottom. And, you know, our system was designed in a way that was meant to include a diversity of views, you know, as many views as there are voters who can form effective coalitions and have them represented. And when you're electing politicians, obviously, like, you know, Kong, they have their ways of sort of filtering people out and backbenching people and all that. You're always going to have that attempt. But with the administrative state,

you really have like a corporate culture that really encourages homogenization the way a corporate culture would through hiring practices, through human resources and promotion processes, all these kind of things that really, aside from the fact that they're often drawing from a social class that has a narrow range of views often, you know, you have a much more homogenous government in general, let's say it that way, right? So you have just by definition, aside from the fact that these people aren't voted into office, you just have people who, the people in general, don't feel represented because they're not. Most people aren't. It's a very narrow kind of self-aware class that understands itself as a distinct class. And, you know, this is something that, you know,

whether we, I know we got a lot of Hapa fans out there and others, like whether we like it or not, for better or for worse, voting is the way that our system attempts to achieve representation of the people, you know, of all of us. That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the, the means that we use to try to do that. And to have 99% of government activity and the decisions that are being made on a regular basis that impact all of our lives, being made by people who are not subject to any kind of political accountability, who can't be voted in and out and who in fact have a whole range, and this is, you know, maybe this is why this government shutdown presents such a unique opportunity, that over the time have built up.

a legal regime that makes it very, very difficult in normal times to scale back their power, you know, to the point where the president, who again, you read the plain text of the Constitution, there's not a whole lot of room for doubting that he has the power. He has essentially total power over how the executive agencies run, how they're manned, how they're staffed, just those, they work for him. They exist to execute his will, you know. And, you know, I've heard people say, and maybe this is a slight stretch, that we haven't had a real president since 1963, except for a brief period under Nixon when he gave it a shot and found out what happened. That's right. No, that's exactly right, Daryl.

Yeah, and that over that period of time, people have learned the people in the government, not only the people in the administrative state, but people, you know, their allies in Congress and, and. many of the courts have come to take for granted that that's just how the system works, that political interference in the decisions of these unelected bureaucrats is somehow a violation. You know, it's somehow so that, you know, when they say our democracy, they're talking about these office buildings in Arlington and D.C. So, yeah, I think, I mean, it's good to hear that there are people in the administration who really understand how important this is and how really central it is to everything else, you know. Well, look, the system that we have is intentional about what it does. And there's a sense in which, ironically, it is conservative. The civil service, the administrative state, this massive bureaucracy, acts as a handbrake on everything. The problem is, is that it skew, well, one of the many problems, it skews almost,

completely left. And so it's this auroboros that continually feeds on itself that grows and grows and without accountability. But I want to go back to what you mentioned, you mentioned Hapa in passing. It's interesting because if you read Hapa and, you know, everybody takes a little something different from him and, you know, you get into political theory and everything. But the interesting thing about Hoppa is he wanted he wanted freedom true freedom but realized that you need some type of at least in appearance illiberal shell to protect that freedom and uh that makes when i read it it made me uncomfortable it still makes me uncomfortable to kind of say it but but there's a sense in which the chief executive acts as that protector because otherwise

it's just too big he's the one person whom we all vote for everyone else is accountable to a different interest group a different this that or the other thing and it's he is the one person who is supposed to represent all of us even when we don't like it and if he doesn't have the authority to do so and let's be completely honest In Trump's wildest dreams, he has 1% of the power that is vested in Article 2. And I'll just read it. Article 2's vesting clause, I wrote, is the epitome of short and sweet. It just empowers the president.

He has his executive branch. It basically just says that. You know, Hamilton wrote in Federalist 70, if you're concerned about what did they think they were trying to empower the president to do? Hamilton takes an entire federalist paper to say that, look, he's, he has this complete authority so that, uh, so that the legislative branch and the judiciary are balanced. It's this three-legged stool. And it's, it's, it's really honestly based upon a social trinitarianism. It's the idea, you know, not to get into the,

weeds of that, but this perichoresis that, you know, the Trinity has this covenantal relationship within itself. Oh, no, you know, God says, no, listen to Jesus. Jesus says, oh, I'm going to sin the spirit, you know, and so on and so forth. Then there's a sense in which that's how the federal government is supposed to work, but it can't work that way if the president doesn't have the power to execute the laws through his, basically his office. his branch. And so what do we see? So does the legislative branch really even legislate anymore? When was the last budget that was passed? So you have these continuing resolutions where all this other stuff gets tacked on and it's obscene. It's absolutely liberty sucking. And I think it's

it is a result of what's happened. Now, this is a very unique opportunity for O&B, the president, to do these, to take action. I kind of think that some kind of change is coming anyway. We're kind of, we're due. Lincoln came along at a certain time, and, you know, I'm a proud southerner. I have mixed emotions about Lincoln, but someone was going to do some pretty drastic things to fill up the rest of the continent.

About the time FDR came along, and I sure have reservations about FDR, but the world was coming to a place to where something major was going to happen. And you're kind of at that, you're at that spot again. So I just wanted to be a guy doing these changes that doesn't hate me. Do I love everything about the,

president, you know, do I agree with every single last thing? Do I think he's the most virtuous person? You know, probably not. But I know he doesn't hate me in my way of life. He's not out to get me. So, so I, I would love to see, uh, uh, the, the reins taken while there's a chance to do some real, some real work here. Now, I've, I've talked for too long. Uh, all right. Yeah. old Harton can't sit still for this long yeah a few things here so uh i seen Donald Trump come and he gave a speech to the libertarian party there's actually kind of famous picture of me sitting like this while he's talking while everybody else is cheering um but uh he said some good things whoever wrote that speech for him had him make some really good

points about some of the actual war that he fought against the bureaucracy in his first term that i think largely went unsung and this was you know he knew he's talking to the libertary party and this was his i am a libertarian what the hell are you talking about each and so he went through all the taxes and all the regulations that he cut and there was really a lot there and i remember even thinking of myself wow i mean this really is a substantive difference you know what i mean like hell jimmy carter was already deregulating the airlines before ronel ragan ever came or whatever but this there is a real difference between this and obamaism and and and bidenism you know what i mean when he the way he was describing it so there's that's some good and i i i absolutely

here um you know loud and clear on my same wavelength when you're talking about the president absolutely has a right to take control over the bureaucracy and i think what you're saying is and force them to obey the law and meaning be restricted by it and certainly he has a power to fire whoever he wants exactly no way in the world i could argue with that um but at the same time though The last time I heard anyone talking about the power of the unitary executive was when it was John U. and the W. Bush era lawyers arguing that it was perfectly legal for George W. Bush to kidnap and torture people to death. And even John U said when asked by a guy at the Cato Institute, does George Bush have the power

to torture a child to crush a child's testicles in order to get his father to talk and John U. said, yes, of course he does. He's the commander in chief above the Constitution, above Jesus Christ, above all laws, all treaties, all anything, because he is the unitary executive. And the only part of the Constitution that means anything is that he's the commander and chief and therefore no law can bind his power at all. And that's the kind of unitary executive who has no intention of using that power to wage war against the bureaucracy and set the American people free, he's using the power of the bureaucracy

to double and triple the world empire at all of our expense. And so I don't want to just hear Donald Trump doesn't hate me, because I don't think if it's okay that I live in Williamson County, he actually probably does hate everybody in Travis County, which is actually what I'm from. And so, you know, whether he likes me or hate me is not,

it hates me or is not the point. And in fact, Judge Napolitano told me a couple of weeks ago that he said to Don, Trump. Have you read the Constitution? And Donald Trump said, I don't read books. And Judge Napolitano said, but, sir, or Donald, they're friends. It's not a book. It's just 20 pages. It's a pamphlet man. It describes the whole thing. And he said, I got people to tell me about stuff like that. This has no interest at all in the theory behind what you're talking about. Right. would be him using his awesome power of that chair to restrain the awesome power of the rest of

his own branch when these this is not necessarily his motive it doesn't occur to me you know what I mean or it does occur to me that he's all about you know I think I think the you know the thinking is at least the way I would understand it is that we have means of holding people accountable when they go beyond boundaries that we all agree are boundaries, you know? And the one that we have for the president of the United States is impeachment, where our elected representatives come together and hold him responsible for that. And so in, you know, in the sense of like, is it like Nixon's old phrase defrust, you know, if the president does it, it's not illegal. Yes, sort of in the sense that like if the president does something and the Supreme Court says you can't do that,

and the legislature says, oh, we're not impeaching him, then he can do it. It's just that's how it works. You've got two out of three. And, you know, the other way around. They're all supposed to respect the Constitution in the first place. So the others don't have to stop them from not respecting it. That's true. But there's always going to be different ways of understanding that. You're always going to have people, you know, pressing boundaries in ways that they think are either necessary or beneficial for the things and interest that they're that they're responsible for. And I just think, you know, like to me, me the whole the whole thing comes down to are are the people who are making decision these decisions are they subject to political control or not and you know the constitution lays out the means by which that can happen the thing is like when you when 99% of government activity is being run by an unelected bureaucracy you know responsibility is so diffused this is why congress loves it you would think you know you would just think if you were to go back and read a lot of American history, this is how it would have been. You had like the Senate, the House,

they were very jealous of their powers. They were like, oh, hell no, you were not, you know, this is ours and you're not, and they would come together across party lines, if necessary, to defend their prerogatives like that. But nowadays, you know, the Congress people, they love the fact that they don't have to take responsibility for anything, that it's all being run by the regulatory agencies and all that kind of thing. You know, they love all that. And so restoring that level of political control over the government. I mean, it really does come down to you. You have to clip the balls of the administrative state. I mean, that is like the biggest barrier to doing it. You're going to have good presidents and bad presidents. You're going to have guys with an authoritarian streak or a libertarian streak, ones who, you know, disregard the constitution and are strict constant. You know, you're going to have any range of people. They're going to come and go and they're going to change over time in cycles with the public mood and all that.

But the important thing is that we have means as a citizenry to hold these people accountable and to make sure that our views are represented. And obviously we have individual rights as citizens and those are all important. But it's also the health of the system depends on it. The fact that people no longer feel represented by their government and they shouldn't because they're not, it puts the entire project that we're all, you know, sort of working together to hopefully, you know, maintain a peaceful and prosperous life together in jeopardy.

And again, so like I think that just, you know, what happens, maybe this is, you know, very liberal of me, kind of very, you know, enlightenment liberal of me, but there's something to the idea that how things are done is more important than like what is done. You know, you're going to have good things happen, bad things, good ideas, bad ideas. but are we arriving at these decisions in a way that represents the people and allows them to hold the people making those decisions accountable? And so, you know, to me, that's the bottom

line. Scott, I just want to tell you that I agree completely with, I've actually interacted with John U. And I haven't gotten up the courage to ask him about this because we're going to have pretty big disagreement, obviously. But don't get me defending what. w did oh yeah and i didn't mean to put you in that position not just getting you up to no no i i completely agree my point is that there's there's no incentive as long as we allow the the legislative branch to offload its responsibilities to the to the executive where the chief executive has no influence over it it's just this thing that's going out here in the ether that you know it's your House of Representatives that's most accountable in theory. I mean, what's the re-election rate? It's

above 90%. But in theory, the House of Representatives every two years is accountable to the people until they are forced to legislate and not allowed to do this avoidance game that they're doing, like Daryl mentioned, I think you're just going to see, you know, then the chief executive is going to go off and do his, you know, he's incentivized to go have these black, you know, black sites and all these other things. And none of it's accountable. So, oh, that's the game we're going to play. Okay, well, you go do whatever you're going to do.

I'm going to go do whatever I'm going to do. And that's where we are. And it's awful. It's, you know, my wife is a successful, artist and she was finally making her business, you know, doing her website and registering with the state and all this stuff. And she came to me and she says, you know, I have two funds in a family office I manage and so on and so forth. She goes, I need to spend 75% of my time just dealing with, she couldn't believe the money laundering regulation she was subject to just because

she wanted to take you know credit cards over you know online to buy her art and she was like money laundering what oh man what do i have to do with this and you guys know me i just want to rant about the cia all day but you know when i was a cab driver i met doctors multiple times you told me that like i remember one guy said to me virtually this he says look me and my partners we're doctors You think we can't run a small LLC partnership together and run a business and take care of our patients? Man, we got to have 25 employees to take care of the paperwork to do this job. Because just because FDR, right? Because ever since this administrative state and look at the COVID lockdowns, like, okay, the CIA wasn't on the germ and all that in a way.

But ultimately, what we're talking about, the public health bureaucracy in the service of, these mega corporations, of course, inflicting absolute totalitarianism on these states and these people is just completely crazy. But so you do have, I want to bring up this article and y'all, and I'm going to butt out again and let Darrell lead here. But I did want to bring up this great article that you sent. Doesn't have a title on it yet. And by the way, let me reintroduce you. Everybody like and share and subscribe and help our algorithm. It's Ronald Dodson. And he writes for Claremont and for the American mind and responsible statecraft and some other things. buddy of Daryl's here. And you wrote this great piece about the West Coast Straussians as opposed to

the East Coast Straussians and their take on neo-conservatism and world empire and regime change and therefore obviously this massive national security administrative state. Speaking of ignoring the Constitution and sloughing off their responsibilities, how about Congress passing these authorizations to use military force instead of declarations of war and allow. the presidents to decide when to take us to war. That's a huge part of all of this. So go ahead and explain, I guess, if you want, like, kind of what you're getting at with this piece here and where it ties in, you think? Well, it hadn't been published yet. I don't want to completely jump the gun on my buddies over there at the American mind. But, and there's

a lot there. The idea is that I like, I came to Strauss because because he talked about Plato, and I think Plato's agree or disagree, I think Plato was a Gentile prophet, who was part of that whole Greek preparation of the Mediterranean to receive the gospel. I'm a devout Christian. And so Strauss, this interesting Jewish man, wrote incredible commentaries on Plato and Machiavelli and so on and so forth. and more than anything, just a brilliant reader.

But a lot of people on the right don't like Strauss because he gets blamed for the whole neoconservative movement, which is one of the purposes I wrote that article that should be coming out this coming week is that I think that's unfair. That's not true. That really Strauss like Plato, like Aristotle, really preach this restraint and realist approach

to foreign policy. see and how you deal with your neighbors, which I think is much more along the lines of why do we want to be in all these wars? We don't. It's not good for our people. And really, we should be restrained to only take action in situations that can be directly beneficial to the citizens of the United States, as opposed to, and that's the restraint and to do so in a way that is realistic as to goals and the incentive structures that your opponents or adversaries have. And I think that's really what Strauss, that's really what Plato, contra the Spartans, that's really what they were getting at. So that's the thrust of my

article. And I think there's lots of good ways to inform foreign policy now, which is, but become very, it's very ugly in reality the way American foreign policy is done. I don't, I don't want to step on any toes that are beyond the scope of our talk here, but, but there's times where it seems like we're doing the bidding of foreign actors. There's, you know, the, what we've done in the Middle East over the last generation has brought, it seemed to me, seems like nothing but pain, suffering, and death and people hating us. And so I would, I would love to see a restrained foreign policy that deals with the other countries on this earth in a realistic manner. So that's kind of what I'm getting at in that piece. It's really relevant as we move

inexorably toward, you know, more of a multipolar world. And like one of the real questions that is open as far as I'm able to tell right now is whether or not the current the current regime is going to go out kicking and screaming or if it's going to if it's going to learn something from the past and accept the way things are moving you know I think you know I've I usually think of the stuff you were just talking about is something that's really like a how do I put it so you know during the Cold War we developed a system that was designed to fight a global war against the Soviet Union, a global propaganda war, a global military war sometimes. And there was like a genuine competition for the loyalty and

control, loyalty of and control over smaller, weaker countries all over the world. And that really became the whole basis of our foreign policy during, during, I mean, really for, you know, most of the 20th century. And it was during that period of time that our whole focus, the whole focus of a state was on competing with the Soviet Union in this global war that most of this administrative bureaucracy that we were just talking about was kind of built out. You know, you go back to the beginning of the Cold War and the government was a minuscule percentage of what it is now. And so most of the government grew up under conditions of global war and to fight a global war. And so you know, we have these

sort of holdovers like you know, we had a system in place. Speaking of like what Trump is trying to do with renegotiating some of our trade deals and just the absolute, you know, chimp out, not just from some of our allies and trade partners, but from people

within the government who are reacting as if he's blaspheming holy writ or something because he wants to adjust tariff rates or something. You know, it's this in the Cold War, we had this thing where you know, we're going to give you, we're going to open our markets to you. You can close yours off to us. That's fine. We're going to help build you up economically, all these things by giving you these advantages. And you're

going to let us put a military base in your country. Or you're just going to take our side over the Soviet Union side. And that's the deal. And that we even did that with our European allies, you know, developed countries, gave them huge advantages just to kind of help them develop and keep them on side. And then Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell. And by the time we got to that point, all of the people who had been benefiting from those policies for so long just sort of took it for granted at that point. Like, this is just how the world works. How dare the United States want to renegotiate these things now that the global war that all of those policies were intended to fight is over? And, you know, you also have this, you know, you have this problem

of how, you know, people are very familiar with the idea that bureaucracy is self-perpetuating. And You know, one of the problems with starting a government program is that once it does whatever it was put in place to accomplish, say like the civil rights regime, for example, you know, you get to the point where nobody's keeping people away from the ballot box anymore, nobody is allowed or really even like considering, like, shutting people out of their business or something due to the color of their skin. That kind of stuff is more or less dealt with on a social and cultural level. But that gigantic bureaucracy with hundreds of thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of employees, NGOs, billions of dollars is going to find something else to do. And that gigantic state that we built up under those conditions of global war immediately went looking for something to do once the Soviet Union came down. Well, that's the effective constitution. The civil rights regime is the, it's not the formal constitution, but as Yarvan sometimes talks about, it's the informal, it's the informal place where all the power has leaked to. And that's the problem in trying to go back to a constitutionalist order. How do you get through all the informal power that has built up? The administrative state is a huge part of that. Anyway, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, Daryl. no that was uh i i need as scott knows very well i need to be interrupted sometimes i got the same

disorder it's okay well i i just want to say that that in all this you know on the right there's there's this tension between kind of a spinglarian uh cycle theory and great man theory you know, the more the Italian, that's kind of the Italian way of thinking about the movements of history versus the German way. And I think we're kind of at a crossroads with that. Are we at a point where no matter who is sitting in the, you know, in the Oval Office that some great regime change is coming or the antibodies

that FDR put in the system so strong that nothing can happen that the regime is going to be perpetual. Well, we all know that nothing's perpetual. Or is it a great man, you know, is there this great man of history

that is, and have y'all thought on those terms at all? I mean, sometimes, sometimes I tend to be very and and you know from the libertarian side reading misis and and all these things i tend to be very engineering oriented that it's all about the system but but what do you all think about about that tension well i don't know i mean i really i'm by default i'm a ron paulian on all this stuff so he always said well you know eventually they'll just lose confidence in the dollar

the people of the world and the people of the country at that point our troops will have to hitchhike home from wherever and we'll have to refresh, you know, lot some dollars off our dollar bill, some zeros off our dollar bills and, and like a bunch of Argentinians and deal with the crisis then. We won't have a world empire then. It'll just be gone. Right. But that's the hard way, you know,

I mean, what we're supposed to do is just listen to Dr. Paul and bring the world empire home, as Darrell said, Cold War is over. These are legacy systems. I'm always reminded of this quote from Harry Truman, from common wheel magazine in 19 i said truman i meant his um his counterpart william f buckley

uh wrote in common wheel magazine in 1952 he said we must accept a totalitarian bureaucracy on our shores for the duration of the emergency even with truman at the reins of it all and so that's the same tyrannical totalitarian bureaucracy that we still have that we never there never was a come up and it's after the Cold War and as y'all are described in trouble bringing up luckily foreign and domestic one of the books I published at the institute is by Keith Knight it's called domestic imperialism and it's about how you know of course that's what we have here own that's what Washington DC is here home it's an empire just as it's trying to be everywhere else overseas fact you might not an emperor that that maybe that's why it's trying to create a world empire

is it was strong enough to be able to create a real empire over the 50 states here and then you couldn't stop it there right it's the new deal spread through the world you know but when you have an emperor there's that you at least know where the knives should be pointed if it goes really if it goes really south and without an emperor we have an empire and it's every bit as as choking but where do you turn the knives who what is this ghost CIA first I guess well but right absolutely I'm glad you mentioned that because if Trump today wanted to fire the entire middle management, and there's some very good people in the CIA at the bottom level, you know, I know a few who are analysts who are trying to do good

work, just provide information. Well, I'll stop there. If he tried to fire the entire middle management of CIA and let's go with FBI as well, and really reform or, or just, you know, just destroy and replace, he couldn't. It's impossible. And yet he is supposed to somehow shape the way, how powerful is the CIA? And you and I both know from the time of the OSS, it's always been a leftist organization. It was always, it was fighting the, it was fighting the Soviets by trying to be just a lesser form of communism. And so it's a, golly, now I'm going to get in trouble. People are going to start hacking my, anyway, thanks for pulling me off sides, Scott.

But I agree with you. There's one way you could deal with the CIA. And it is, I think, the only way. And what I would do if I was Trump, hmm? If I was Trump, this is what I do. I would get all my four-star generals and admirals from the Pentagon, or at least the ones that I really trusted and that I, had put in place, you know, to be my guys. And I would tell them, here's the plan. We're going to

reduce the CIA to a bunch of nerd sitting at their desks, reading foreign newspapers, and reporting to the president on what they say and all that. All of its operational capabilities, all that is being rolled into the defense intelligence agency. And you got a lot of generals who were going to say, wow, we like that idea. And the Pentagon is the one organization the CIA wants no part of. They, you know, they could, they're the only institution probably in this entire country, again, including the president that can stand up to the CIA. So you need their backing. Yeah, and DIA is so much more efficient. So I might or might not have done some work with one of the branches through DIA.

And it was unbelievable, you know, I. Well, there's also just a different culture of accountability in the Pentagon than there is. I mean, you know, the culture of impunity that's developed in the CIA. it's not even something that just sort of is a side effect of where they're it's like part of their self identity you know when I talk to a lot of these guys where it's like they they take a sort of pride and you know like in the idea you see this to a certain extent with some special forces but like definitely in the CIA that we're the guys that they call when the normal rules don't apply right are the people they call when things that would normally be evil or illegal or

whatever it is it's like Mike Pompeo said right we lie cheat and steal for a living. What could be better? I mean, there's a certain pride that's taken in that. And once you have a culture within an institution that sinks down to that level, I mean, I think it's for a long time, you really, really have to go hard on it and cut it out. And I think there's only one way to do that. And that's with the back, the full backing of the Pentagon. I like it. It's organized crime to a large degree. You've spoken on the, or maybe it was you and I having a phone call talking about that, but it has more in common with a large crime family really or an crime organization than anything else. And again, I say that if you're

a CIA analyst who likes what we're talking about, I'm not talking about you. But as a whole, it's a mess. And I completely agree, Daryl. I mean, and again, to come back to the idea of accountability. I mean, I know for a fact that there are a lot of people, bigwigs at the Pentagon, who, just to take like the Syrian war, for example, we're very, very, very unhappy about how that whole thing went down, where the CIA essentially started a dirty war clandestinely, and then when the Russians and the Iranians got involved and they realized that their plan wasn't going to work, you start seeing all these articles popping up anonymously sourced in the Washington Post in New York Times saying, you know, we really need to get the DOD.

involved. The military needs to intervene. And after all the years of going through Iraq and Afghanistan and people blaming just for obvious reasons, they're the ones on TV, you know, wearing the uniforms, blaming the DOD for everything that went wrong in those wars, they were like, hell no, hell no. We're not doing this again and we're not getting dragged into this thing. And, you know, you really saw that play out of the course of the Syrian conflict where, you know, famously, you had these incidents of proxies of the DOD fighting, of the CIA, you know, talk to guys who were part of the training organizations in Jordan, where we were bringing, the CIA was sending all these jihadists that they were recruiting all

over the world to get trained. And you had a bunch of Green Berets and other special forces guys who were, they were like on the brink of freaking mutiny because they're like shot in the back and killed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, they're like, you're sending us straight up jihadists. These are the people that, you know, I joined the military in 2000. And like, I joined it to fight these people. And you're sending them to me and telling me to train them how to kill people. And so we're at the, we're at the heart of the contradiction of the whole topic here, though, too, right? Is it because the Pentagon, the CIA, of course, is its own monster.

But the Pentagon is the world empire. And so, like, if we were demolishing the East Wing right now so that we could put the Department of War there, because that's where it fits is in that little ballroom, where it belongs. And we turn the Pentagon into a library like FDR promised it. would be after we don't need it to fit the war department in there anymore because of how small the war department is now, then, you know, that's the conversation we really need to be having and it gets right back to the heart of the imperial presidency. I was joking, I was trying to bring up something serious on the Pierce Morgan show the other

day, I was surrounded by screaming lunatics, that foreign affairs, which is, of course, the Journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the heartbeat of the American Empire since 1921 right the state department before it was the state department um they go where this imperial presidency come from oh my god how come donald trump has all this power all of a sudden and it's of course because they were Woodrow wilsonites this whole time and they built the world empire and the imperial presidency from him and this is where so much of his power flows and this is i think the real problem with unitary executive this and that if if it's the unitary executive from donald trump's Libertarian Party speech, cracking down on the executive branch agents, especially those who

wronged him, like the Russiagate hoaxers, put them in prison, man, I don't care what happens to them, go hard as hell on them. But it's the same guy who just ordered an aircraft carrier to head to Venezuela. And we're major assets to Latin America right now, and nobody can stop him because we're still under FDR's declaration of war on the world from 1941. Scott, did you, Scott, did you see that the, so the Ford gets tasked, that, that task force gets tasked over to Venezuela. Did you see that it, it, that the Ford is unable to host the, naval version of the F-35 because of the software, uh, integration issue? Oh, awesome. I thought

you're going to say because it'll burn a hole right through the deck when it goes into hover mode, because they never figured out how to, oh, you're saying they haven't figured out how to make the plain talk to the tower yet. Oops. You know, they're working on that, though. Another trillion dollars. I'm a, uh, I had a little training in the viper. I'm an F-16 guy, uh, very much a viper chauvinist.

But, uh, I, you know, there's some cool tech in the F-35, but as a whole, what a mess. What a mess. Yeah, we just ran a piece from, uh, it was that responsible statecraft about, they made this little announcement. The block four program. We're actually just dropped. We're just going to not do that. Well, what do they mean by that?

They mean we're, the plane will never actually be operational and do the things that we said. And we're stopping trying now. It's not even going to complete it and we're giving up. It's a seed platform with no legs. It's really what it is. It's a seed. It's a networked seed platform that if you're sitting, you know, 50 miles offshore,

you can do it's just the calculus everything about it now you know we could talk about the problems with procurement maybe that's another topic for another day but it's a real mess it's a real mess and we're spending a ton of money and i'll tell you i saw the pictures that came out of of the latest generation of of chinese weaponry and it is not everybody poo-poo's it online they're wrong this is very impressive stuff and uh i got no problem with the Chinese. Hey, let's protect our own borders, do our own thing. Let the Chinese have their sphere of influence. But if Americans are resting on American Wonderwaffe, they need to rethink their life. I'm very concerned. That gets sort of to the real heart also. One of the problems with having a world empire at all is all of your

rivals, potential enemies. All they have to do is figure out how to beat you. You have to figure out how to beat everybody all the time anywhere in the world. And that is really expensive and it's really hard to do. And you end up with these things like the F-35, which is a platform that's supposed to do everything all the time for everybody. And the Chinese and the Russians and everybody else, they have the liberty to look at our capabilities and limitations and target those things in their local areas that they actually care about very specifically. And that's cheaper and it's a heck of a lot easier to do. And over time, it just, you know, the, you know, the big hulking empire that has to be everything

to everybody eventually just runs out of steam. You know, the weight gets too much. All the little hornets sting it to death. All right. Hey, listen, guys, we've got thousands of people watching us right now on YouTube, on Twitter, on rumble and um so that's very good thank you everybody for tuning in we're here every friday at uh eight o'clock eastern time uh i'm scott and he's darrell over there our guest again is ronald dodson uh who is a hedge fund manager or private fund management firm

and uh but also he writes for the clermont institute for responsible state craft our good friends over there and also for uh this site is called the american mind oh this is the The Claremont Institute here I see now. I can't see close up anymore now that I'm 49. But so everybody please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends and your cousin and everybody about it, share it on your social media stuff. We're a relatively new show and we're growing. And the more growing we do, the more growing we get to do because the algorithm likes things

that are already growing and things like that. You guys know how it is. So leave a comment, give a thumbs up. And I wonder if you guys. guys want to take a couple of questions before we wrap here see if we could take some super chats you want to let's do it all right if you guys have any questions for our guest try not to make them all for darrell about world war two because uh that's a different show actually do that take the pressure off me but uh no look i'm sort of kind of the whole purpose of this show is just me shooting the shit

with my friend darrell but no actually it's also has this giant important purpose of a Frank Meyer fusionist program of libertarianism and conservatism and populism to get everybody as good on everything as possible. And, you know, I decided a long time ago I got more narrow interest than just talking about libertarianism in general. And I don't really have a goal of converting all of America to libertarianism. I just want to get good right wingers and good left wingers to agree with me as much as possible on the things that we can.

If you like your identity, you can keep it. I'm not trying to move either of you guys left. I just want you to agree with me on as many things as possible. And same for this audience. I want Daryl to explain to my people why he sees it his way and then I get to explain why I see it my way to his

and so forth. And then we just hopefully make the whole American right better for our own little part and America better too, you know, as the long-term hopeful result of that. So that's what we're doing here. So I'm very interested to have wise conservatives like yourself saying very reasonable things about what America's approach to the world should be. So I'm very grateful that you've joined us here, Ronald, and that

Darrell brought you here to talk with us and our guys. So I guess I need to go on page through here. Some super chats. Why don't you say something, Darrell? Yeah, yeah. We got one up right now. Chris put up for us from Apocalypse. Wow. He asked a about the CIA's leftist origins, which is a huge topic, but I'll maybe start it off. You know, the thing to understand about the first half of the 20th century, and really this bleeds back into the last part of the 19th century, too, you know, pretty much everybody who was anybody, everybody cool, everybody who'd gone to university, all the people, you know, who were power brokers of any kind.

They were all very consumed with the idea that, you know, our scientific advancements are just our ideas of how we should run a society. All these things have become so much more advanced. And we still have all these messy, ridiculous ideas about, you know, these, you know, you got to remember, this is like the age of like ultra-corrupt political machines in New York City. All these kind of things is how like the state and local government, and the federal government was run very, very sort of in a way that everybody recognizes corrupt and messy.

And everybody kind of shared the idea, everybody who, you know, was part of the cool kids click, kind of shared the idea that that's old hat. And what we need to do now is put systems and institutions in place that eliminate all of the messy politics because these are questions that we can sit down around a table with a bunch of experts and figure out, you know. We can actually just figure out how much, how many potatoes are needed in Iowa, you know, during this part of the year or whatever. The apogee of that, of course, was the state communism we found in the Soviet Union. And when the Soviet Union came along, you know, people think about just sort of, you know, major names like Alger Hiss and stuff as like Soviet sympathizers.

everybody who was of his social class was a Soviet sympathizer back then it's one of the reasons to his dying day alger hiss never felt like a traitor or anything he just felt like i'm kind of a go-between you know we have our people over there that sort of similar to the way that nowadays you know we have a ruling class that identifies much more with the ruling classes in other countries than they do with people of different classes in their own country it's very much like that back then and so when the CIA came along we say it's like has leftist origins it doesn't mean they were dying their hair blue and you know waving rainbow flags and stuff like that had a different meaning back then and it was really like you know progressive origins in a lot of ways was the you know maybe a better

way to put it you know people had the idea in the 1930s that the soviet union yeah it was super messy i mean it's russia obviously they're a little backwards and so you know but eventually they're going to stop killing millions of people and enslaving millions of people and come our way a little bit on that. But then we're going to learn lessons from them about being able to demonstrate that class of experts actually can sit around and manage the economy and figure out all these questions that we are trying to solve, you know, in democratic countries and all these just messy, ugly ways that lead to very often to outcomes we don't like. And if you're a really super smart person with a high IQ who went to school and

like is an expert in something, that's a very tempting idea. And so a lot of the people who joined the CIA. You got to remember, like, back then, like, these were all guys who weren't just from, you know, Harvard and Yale and Princeton. They were the guys from the most elite clubs at Harvard and Yale and Princeton. You know, they were representatives of that class. And that was just, that was the, that was the, that was the Velton Shong of that class at that time. Damn liberals. That's what you're talking about. Center left commies. They suck. I hate them. Well, they've so. Wait, let me, let me do this real quick, because forgotten i need to uh important business scott horton coffee it's um it's it's capitalism

that's what we're doing here um what you do is uh you grind this up and you mix it with your hot water drink it in the morning and it'll help you wake up or late at night if you need to get home from the bar um you get it from moondos artisan coffees get it they hate Starbucks like we all do so it's moondos artisan coffees and this is the number one selling coffee at moondos artisan coffees right now it's scott horton brand coffee it's ethiopian and samatran mix and i drink it every morning and in the afternoon so that I don't fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Moondos artisan coffees.com and then also buy my books at Amazon and subscribe.martermade.com for Daryl's hugely important podcast, which has just been

updated with his new World War II episode. And now, sir, please go ahead. Well, I was just going to add to what Daryl said, the training of the OSS was done by MI6, which was in the throes of this liberal anti-colonialist movement in the UK. When the UK was, it was becoming, the writing was on the wall that the glory days were over. And this anti-colonialist, anyway, that's what informed the OSS. And when it moved to the CIA, the anti-colonial movement, in while in theory that's great for freedom it's we we we we ran through a furniture store and broke everything and didn't buy it basically and and so in the CIA's activities in Africa

were absolutely awful and they were leftist they were just less left in theory than than the Russians but they actually worked to the Russians and the CIA actually worked together on a couple of things that goes underreported. So I just wanted to add that to old Daryl. Yeah, they back communist like in Somalia and they felt like it. You know, they secretly backed both sides of the war in Angola for a time at least. Anyway, listen, Super Chats. If anybody wants to chat, we have one more question for you guys here, which I think is a good one.

Paraphrasing Lysander Spooner in a sense here, he's saying for Daryl and Ron, since our modern state grew this large from the old republic, why should we think? that a return to that would be enough. And I guess, you know, barring, strangling any Roosevelt's in their cribs. Yeah, it is a great question. In a lot of ways, it's the question. And, you know, to me, the answer is there are lessons to be learned from our history, you know, how things used to be, the old republic. And there are a lot of things that we can take from that and into the future. but you can't look backwards and expect some kind of return to, you know, to things, to very things that led to the problems we're discussing in the episode.

You have to look forward and understand that if you get too attached to old forms that have been cast off, you know, it's just going to hobble you. Like, we have to understand things are going to change because the world's changed. You know, you look at when Theodore Roosevelt, a lot of conservatives, a lot of libertarians look at Theodore Roosevelt today, and, you know, they see a lot of his regulatory, anti-monopolis stances, all these kind of things and think of him as kind of a, you know, like a growing, you know, a guy who grew the state and expanded its power over the economy and everything, all that kind of stuff is true. And I won't defend all of the things that Theodore Roosevelt, you know, did.

I disagree with plenty of them. But the thing you have to understand about the time that he was living in is there were changes happening that were so radical that something was going to have to happen. You know, in the period of over the course of literally one generation, you went from, you know, big business, meaning like you had a regional shoe factory that served northern Massachusetts and part of the neighboring states or something, to now you have these consolidated interests that have the revenues and people working for them that rival states, rival the federal government, you know. And so this is the world that somebody like Theodore Roosevelt was trying to figure out a way to deal with. And we have different changes taking place now,

but we're in a similar period of time in the sense of, you know, things technologically and socially globalization and everything else have, things have changed to a point where we have to move forward. We can't look back. You know, there are two types of revolutions. A healthy revolution is one where, you know, social mores and just underlying changes in the society have moved to a point where they're wildly out of step with a lot of the institutions that currently exist and those institutions need to be brought up to date or they're going to lose their legitimacy. You know, an unhealthy revolution is one that does quite the opposite, where you have like a vanguard in the Soviet Union who gets way out ahead of everybody else and

thinks we have the answers and we're going to drag everybody along whether they like it or not. And so we're in that stage where things have changed to a point where our institutions just don't provide answers anymore. And definitely the answer is not going to be found by going back to these old ways that are totally unsuited to the modern era. And again, that doesn't mean we don't have lessons to learn. The founders were world historical. minds, you know, that we should always have as our sort of the basis of our political thought. But I think even most of them, if you brought them up today and showed them the world today, they wouldn't tell you to go back to 1789. Daryl and I have a good friend in Indiana who wrote a

terrific piece called Against Nostalgia. And the theme is just nostalgia will kill you. Just look at Star Wars for proof of that. And so Daryl's exactly right. You learn from history and then you, there's no way to get away from virtue and wisdom. We can have the perfect system, but without good men, and it's men who change the world. That doesn't mean there aren't great women out there who do good things, but it's men generally. without good men doing great things with a virtuous heart, it just doesn't matter.

And I know there's a lot of young guys who watch this, who are fans of Daryl and fans of Scots, just realize maybe that's you. When you're hearing this, what are you doing to improve your character and to learn how to be disciplined so that, you know, there's a lot of really, really neat Gen Z folks. and they're going to need leadership.

So what are you doing to be part of that? Yeah, right on. Okay. Well, with that, let's thank Ronald for your time. I really appreciate you. We're going to spare you the Israel question here. Me and Dary are going to tackle that after letting you go here. Ronald Dodson, he's an investor and a writer for responsible statecraft.

And for the American Mind, the publication of the Claremont is to check out his new piece cutting back the administrative state. And he's got a new one about how Strauss was not a Wolfowitzian after all coming out there soon. So thank you very much for coming on the show, Ron. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, guys. Great show. Great show you have.

Thanks, brother. All right. So let's do another, let's do another super chat here. A guy was asking whether we think that Trump's going to let Netanyahu take the West Bank. I don't know if you saw the Time magazine interview where he said he absolutely will. not let that happen. But then again, we still got three years to go here, and he's Mr. Flippa Floppa. So what do you think? Well, you know, let's just start with the Israeli side of it before talking about Trump.

It's, you know, Israel seems to be in this place where, or actually, so the first thing people need to understand is that Gaza is a side, circus side show to. the Israeli right compared to the West Bank. The West Bank is what they consider a core part of traditional historical Israel. And it has been a promise they've been making to their voters and followers for many decades that they're going to get it back. At Gaza, you know, there was a period of time where at the height of its kingdom, you know, Israel controlled most of Gaza and everything back in the day. But most people, even a lot of people on the Israeli right are not, are not that concerned with it, certainly not compared to what they called Judea and Samaria, the West Bank.

And if that is so central to their... To Joe Briggs, sorry to interrupt, but I think that's my old friend from a long time ago. Hey, man, sorry, go ahead. You know, if that is something that's so central to the people in power and pulling the strings in Israel, you know, you do wonder if they're looking, they're reading the tea leaves and seeing the way world opinion is changing, seeing the way opinion in the United States is changing, and recognizing that, yeah, Trump might be saying this, there might be opposition at the State Department and wherever else, and we may have all these repercussions that we have to deal with, but we have

to get this. That is part of our project here. The Zionist project is pointless if we don't eventually unite these territories, and it's only going to get harder next year and harder next year after that and harder and harder and harder. And so maybe the time to do it is just right now where everybody's already pissed off at us and, you know, how much more angry can they get? And so let's just, let's just do it. And then 10 years from now, you know, and everybody, everybody will get over it. Just like, you know, they got over the Armenian genocide. Everybody's just friends with Germany now. Nobody cares. You know, they'll get over this too. How? We don't know how, but we'll figure it out. And you wonder if that's the case. And, you know, the one

thing that maybe we have going for us as far as Trump is that, you know, for him, uh, politics is so personal. You know, the, the fact that he is gone public and made these statements, um, puts them in a position where if they move forward on something like that, uh, he's going to take it personally, you would think. And whether or not he cares about the Palestinians, whether he not, whether or not he cares about the stability of the Middle East or any of those other things. I would be banking. I am banking on his own just sense of personal affront, you know. I know. Hope so. This thing. Yeah, exactly. That's all we got going for us is like Trump's ego is he's stuck himself so far out on the line here. All right. So word to the idiot communist subhuman

scum in the chat room. He calls us morons and puts apostrophe S because he's so inbred and retarded that he thinks you need an apostrophe to make a word a plural. Anyway, that's ridiculous. Hey, Chris, man, let's play the promo for the Scott Horton Academy and get the hell out of here. You want to? Got that, man. Scott Hortonacademy.com. For generations, the United States has had a one-party system, the war party.

Democrats and Republicans pretend to fight, but when push comes to shove, they both fund the war machine, and they both make the same false claims to justify it all. Meanwhile, real people around the world have paid the ultimate price, including millions of deaths, tens of millions driven from their homes, and starvation and deprivation on a nearly unbelievable scale. And yet in mainstream American political life, you heard barely a peep of protest about any of this. Nobody on Sunday morning talk shows seriously descended from the war party.

We had fake debates, and that was it. But now that has finally started to change. The war party is doing damage control, as polls show younger people not buying their propaganda. And alternative news sources are broadcasting the truth, finally, to the American public. Well, I say it's time to go on a serious offensive. You don't kick the warmongers when they're down. When are you going to kick them? I'm Scott Horton.

You may have seen me discussing the Middle East on the Candace Owens podcast, or debating Wesley Clark over the rush of Ukraine war on Pierce Morgan. We're stomping the crap out of that tired old neocon Bill Crystal in a public debate at the Soho Forum. For over 25 years, I've been telling the truth about the war machine and slashing through the propaganda. Right now, the warmongers are trying to shut people up. And no wonder, because the Internet is proving their lies and clichés to be as thin as tissue paper and as bankrupt as the U.S. Treasury. Now, look, I love it when y'all cheer me on. But I'll tell you what I love even more. If you guys learn this stuff alongside me, so the anti-war cause becomes just definite.

I understand that nobody wants to start something they can't finish. So maybe sometimes you're sitting there hearing war propaganda from your acquaintances at work or whatever, and you know it's wrong, but you feel like you don't have the overwhelming firepower to get in and win the point for peace. Well, we're doing something about that. Today, I'm announcing the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. Instead of just listening to my show, or catching me on a podcast, podcast here and there, you'll get taken step by step through everything you need to know to defend the cause of peace and civilization.

I know, I talk fast. Tom Woods calls this, Scott Horton slowed down. It's yours truly, as you've never seen or heard me before, blasting that fire hose of knowledge straight into your brain, at a pace and with the level of detail you need to learn it, absorb it, and use it in your own conversations and debates. Or maybe you're the kind of person who just hates lies. Well, this is for you, too. The war party has the money. All you and I have is the truth.

So let's make the most of it. I'll see you inside. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite! All right, and huge thanks to Dan Smots, the brilliant genius from dissident media. We put that great video together for you. I was going to say, man, And however much you paid, whoever did that video, you need to send him a tip.

That was awesome. I know. And that great. He's the very best. And he's for hire, everyone. Dan Smots is his name with a Z at the end there, um, uh, from dissident media. And that's it. So, um, subscribe.

Dot martyrmaid.com. That is how you hear Daryl's great, uh, podcast. Episode one is now out, Enemy, the Germans war. And so go and sign up for that. And next week sometime, I'm not exactly sure. We'll be launching this. Scott Horton Academy. So go to Scott Horton Academy.com right now and put your email in there and you'll be the first to know. And that's it. Thank you, Daryl. See you Friday. Next Friday.

You know what? I don't know. You know what? No. No. You know,