The Eric Metaxas Show - Hadley Arkes - Part 3

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

Hadley Arkes, author of "Mere Natural Law," concludes his conversation with Eric by talking about his friendship with Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia. ...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Ladies and gentlemen, we ask you now to count down from 10, silently, if you don't mind. And when you get to one, you'll hear one of the greatest voices on this or any other planet.
Starting point is 00:00:36 Three, two, one. Eric Maher, Texas. Welcome back, folks. This is Hour 2. I continue my conversation with James Ward. The book is Zero Victim, Overcoming Injustice with a New Attitude. So when did victimization become popular, you know, on the left, in the black community on the left? Because I know that Dr. King was never preaching.
Starting point is 00:01:11 victimization. This is something that has crept in in the latter decades, and we see that it has not worked. Yeah, no, I think back often that no one really picked up the mantle after Dr. King's death. I see a void in a vacuum in our nation, in the spiritual and the sociopolitical space, in the area of where civil rights could have gone, it should have gone after the the, you know, post Jim Crow era. I like to say that with the zero victim message, Dr. King had a dream, but we have a vision. Dreams happen when you're asleep, but vision happens when you're awakened. And I think that right now this idea that we don't need to be woke, we don't need a cultural awokening, we need a spiritual awakening right now. And I think that really it begins with
Starting point is 00:02:09 pastors like myself standing in the pulpit to speak boldly and to make disciples, true disciples of Christ. Jesus never, you know, pushed his kingdom to be involved. You read, for example, in days of John the Baptist, you list all of the government officials that the word of the Lord came to John back in the wilderness. And so the word of God is always, is always entrusted to the church. Let us hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the church. And so I think the church is the agent of change and transformation. And it should be pastors like myself and others who boldly preached that truth. I think it was absolutely providential that Dr. King was also a pastor. He had a shepherd's heart. And, you know, Sharon and I sense of a calling to stand at that place to help
Starting point is 00:02:56 be America's zero victim pastors and to call our nation back to this disposition of understanding that this is a spiritual issue that's happening in our nation. And there is. There's an awakening that needs to take place around the challenges in our nation. There's three kinds of law that govern every nation. There's spiritual law, moral law, and civil law. Wherever you go, whether it's Judaism or in Islamic nations, you know, you may have the Torah and Judaism. You'll have Sharia law and Islamic nations. There's always some kind of spiritual law, moral law, and civil law.
Starting point is 00:03:33 I think here in America that we've abdicated our responsibility of communicating the primary importance of spiritual and moral law. We're most familiar with civil law or what we call constitutional law. I think we've kind of idolized, made the constitution itself an idol, and we've kicked away the legs of spiritual and moral law, which are the more important kinds of laws. Spiritual law, the law that God gives humanity, those can't change. Moral law is my ability to govern myself based upon spiritual law. Civil law is no good without spiritual and moral law. And I think that we've abdicated again that responsibility is the church to teach these kinds of truths. It's kind of amazing you're saying this and by amazing, I mean it must be the Holy Spirit because I was just talking
Starting point is 00:04:19 yesterday with Hadley Arcus, who's one of the finest legal minds in America. And he is essentially making the same case in a different way. But he talks, he doesn't talk about idolizing But it's sort of the same thing. In other words, you say, listen, the Constitution is just the codification of what's already true. If there was no Constitution, these things would still be true. And so if you focus on the – it's kind of like people who focus on the Bible so much that they forget about God. You think, like, well, wait a minute. These things are true. There is no way around them. And you can miss the forest for the trees on some level. You know, it would be like if somebody says, well the constitution doesn't say anything about this or the bible doesn't say anything about abortion the bible and you're like wait a minute um it does and it doesn't just because it is not there in a verse you can grab out that law exists it is god's law and it's implied but it is interesting how people when you're just operating on the level of what are the uh the civic laws what are the laws you forget that there is a moral law and that we have had time
Starting point is 00:05:37 in this country when what the law of the land said was against the law of God. And we are called to obey the law of God. And obviously, Dr. King writes about that and a letter from the Birmingham jail. This is basic stuff. And people do forget that if we have any good laws or if there's any goodness in the Constitution, and it's very good, it's beyond good. It's an extraordinary document, but it comes from the law of God, from the moral law. Yeah, yeah. The weakness of it is that you cannot legislate morality. It was not intended to make better people.
Starting point is 00:06:16 It was not intended to make people good. You know, I have a good friend who was the police chief of, you know, the town in which one of our church campuses exist. And I would tell them all the time, Chief, if I can do my job, it'll make your job a whole lot easier. You won't have anyone to lock up. The jails will be empty if we can do what we're supposed to do spiritually and morally in society. And I think we're getting away from that, you know.
Starting point is 00:06:41 It's defund the police, do all these kinds of things. We're not building better people, Eric. And until we come back to that, there's not going to be any change. No, listen, I talk about the way you're talking about a lot. I really do. I talk about the Golden Triangle of Freedom. I wrote a book called If You Can Keep It. And it's Benjamin Franklin, in a sense, saying to this woman, after they create the Constitution,
Starting point is 00:07:02 She says, what have you given us, Dr. Franklin, a monarchy or republic? He says, a republic, madam, if you can keep it. In other words, you, we the people, are the ones responsible for keeping the republic. This document, it's just a document if we don't live it out. And then Franklin and all the founders saw that when there was religious revival in the 13 colonies, crime went down. Domestic abuse went down. Alcoholism went down. Self-government and liberty went up.
Starting point is 00:07:31 and you realize this is something that is necessary for freedom, for flourishing, and it cannot come from a document. You know, the laws can tell you what not to do, but as you just said, they cannot force you to love your neighbor. They cannot force you to do good. Only God can do that. And this is a vital, vital moment in America, because I believe, as I think you do that, apart from revival, there is no hope. You have to have revival. Revival is the basis for our going forward and for our getting out of these problems. So it's fascinating to me to think about that.
Starting point is 00:08:12 And do you touch upon that in the book, that issue of spiritual, moral, and... Absolutely. What we don't realize is that godlessness inherently brings the curse on a society that whenever we drive God out, it creates a vacuum. And that vacuum is always backfilled by unrighteousness, sin, wickedness, and immorality. And so the effect of godliness, and we could talk even more, Romans chapter 28, because they did not retain God in their knowledge, God handed them over to a debased mind. That term debased literally means to worthless morality. He handed them over to worthless morality.
Starting point is 00:08:52 That's what we're seeing happening in America. The more we reject God is creating a vacuum. human, he's handing our nation over to worthless morality. That is why we're seeing the explosion of gender dysphoria and transgenderism and our drag queens are teaching our children. What's happening in society? We've rejected God. We didn't retain him in our knowledge, or at least we're moving in that direction. He's handing our nation over to a debased mind over to worthless immorality. That's the problem with America today. And I think Romans 828, I think the Lord is allowing these horrible things to be manifested so that people will wake up, so that people will say it is so nuts,
Starting point is 00:09:33 there's got to be a better way. This is evil. God has to be the answer. And I really think things have gotten that bleak that lots of people that otherwise would just be drifting along or looking for political solutions are realizing, no, no, no. First, we need to get back to God. We're at a time, but it's just been a joy speaking with you. Folks, I'm talking to James, have been talking to James Ward, the author,
Starting point is 00:09:57 of Zero Victim. You can go to Zerovictum.com. And the church is InsightChurch, which you can find at Insightchurch.com. James, God bless you. Thanks, Eric. It's been great. Thanks for having me. Every day, the parallel economy grows bigger and bigger. It's powered by everyday Americans who are sick and tired of all the woke propaganda being jammed into every product they consume. Big mobile companies are no different. For years, they've been dumping millions into leftist causes. And we had to take it because you needed a cell phone, probably thought there was no alternative, but now there is Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative wireless provider, offering dependable nationwide coverage on all three major networks. So you get the best possible
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Starting point is 00:12:10 Go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. That's inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Advisory services are offered through Inspire Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Hey there, folks. I have the joy of having kept in the studio. Hadley Arcus, who is the author of Mere Natural Law, originalism and the anchoring truths of the Constitution.
Starting point is 00:12:46 I want to continue the conversation with him. Hadley, let me remind my audience that you were for 50 years a professor of jurisprudence at Amherst College in Massachusetts. You're currently the head of the James Wilson Institute on Natural rights and the American founders. And we're talking about so many things. I want to just say that I know that you were friends with the late Justice Scalia. I had the privilege of meeting him once. And I have to say this, just because no one will believe me, but I've got to tell the story. I couldn't believe it when I met him. This must be 14 years ago or 15 years ago. It was at some event.
Starting point is 00:13:30 I saw him and this friend of mine, Jamie, said, oh, got to get a picture with Justice. And I was so shy, I thought, oh, I don't want to bother him. But my friend kind of, you know, says, let's do it. So I stand there with Justice Scalia and my friend with my digital camera, it wasn't yet a phone camera, takes a picture. And the moment is over. I look at the camera to see what does the picture look like. And I see that my friend, Jamie Waller, had inadvertently. hit Zoom.
Starting point is 00:14:03 So what we had captured was a wonderful photograph of the chin of Justice Scalia. That was the whole photo. Just the chin. An hour and a half later,
Starting point is 00:14:17 my friend said, Justice Scalia, the photo didn't come out. We'd take another one and he said, nope, that's it. No kidding. No kidding. Because he was that kind of a character, right? So you had the joy of a friendship with him over many years. I remember when my wife Judy died and we had a little memorial mass and I was in the front row.
Starting point is 00:14:35 There was no kneeler and Nino was right behind me and he... You call him Nino, of course. He was a friend's called Nino. He placed the cushion under my knees so I'd have something there. And somebody's, David Fawter, a friend, so he said, see, he was taking care of you as he was trying to take care of us all. Unbelievable. Well... He was just a lovable, adorable man.
Starting point is 00:14:58 The only, you know, Romans 828, since... you now believe that the New Testament is sacred scripture. I can quote Romans 828. All things work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purposes. And even the death, I thought premature of Justice Scalia, led many people in America to say, you know what, whoever we elect for the next president, we have to think about the Supreme Court. And somehow his premature death dramatically underscored that, which led to the election. of Donald Trump, who said that he would put originalists on the Supreme Court.
Starting point is 00:15:38 Of course, no one believed him because Trump will say anything, but son of a gun, he actually did. For me, that's a character issue. When you say you're going to do something and then you actually do it, that is fascinating. And because of that, Roe v. Wade was overturned. He had the wit to see that it mattered to people and that he could really draw in, many pro-lifers, by getting serious on this issue. And I think he was quite serious about getting it done.
Starting point is 00:16:03 So he put in charge with the people who knew what had to be done. But there were so many Christians who didn't vote. And I thought to myself, if that were the only reason that you voted for a thrice-married, Philandering New York real estate developer, I think that's a pretty good reason. I think we've had other presidents that didn't measure up, you know, morally, you know, like Jimmy Carter. So it's kind of a, it's just a fascinating thing, how important these things are, how important the law is. And, you know, you taught jurisprudence for 50 years. And I want to just continue the conversation with you about what you are, in a way, on a somewhat lonely crusade.
Starting point is 00:16:52 Because when you talk about natural law, you are, as we discussed previously, you're, at least slightly at odds with friends of yours who we would think of as proponents of originalism Samuel Alito and others who would quibble you mentioned Scalia
Starting point is 00:17:12 maybe quibble is a nice way of putting it but would argue with you and say that if it's not in the Constitution we cannot go back to what the founder's intent was unless that's expressed in the Constitution you take issue with that
Starting point is 00:17:28 right well Scalia said at one point it's a bedrock principle of the First Amendment we may not make restrictions on speech based on the content of the speech well that's not that bedrock principle is not in my copy of the First Amendment I think Scalia would often try to construe the Constitution and the terms of which he thinks is the most sensible which is say he's going he's going back to natural law I used to rip him and say you know for somebody you're some offer sometimes handsome examples of natural law for someone who professes up and down that it can't be done. Now there was a man, Scalia, a man of courage, so we cannot fault him in that area. So what was his thinking, or what do you suppose was his thinking?
Starting point is 00:18:15 His line was just there's, he said, we can't get a consensus on those moral truths. What does he mean you can't get a consensus? A consensus from whom? He said there's too much disagreement about that. Okay, but that's what Kavanaugh was saying in his opinion that he just wrote on Dobbs. Wasn't he just saying the same thing? Well. Isn't that the idea? You can't get a consensus?
Starting point is 00:18:38 That he assumed that a consensus was absent, and therefore we're going to leave it out. But again, it's based on the notion that we have, look, his friends would say, did you get a consensus on that proposition, that you need a consensus in order to have a truth? Because we didn't get our ballots. That's where somebody says, oh, snap. Okay. Because seriously, what you just said, no, this is very important. You just said that.
Starting point is 00:19:06 His statement about getting a consensus, you're saying that that is not itself right and true. It's reduced to this proposition. The very presence of disagreement indicates the absence of truth. And, of course, I have to register my disagreement with that proposition. It's a self-refuting problem. Look, Scalia would say, look at the historical record. You sought safety in history. But whenever he made these arguments, his liberal colleagues would simply offer a rival,
Starting point is 00:19:40 contentious reading of the historical record. None of this ever shook his confidence that the historical record had truth to discern. And then Neil Gorsuch tells us, originalists may disagree about the judgments coming from a originalism. But apparently the fact that originalists may disagree does not impair the notion that originalism has truth to discern. It was just a non-seqa. You just can't say because of the absence of consensus. It's a non-sector, but the fact that a giant of jurisprudence like Antonin Scalia is capable of that kind of a non-secretor is troubling. Well, he really was a positivist.
Starting point is 00:20:20 What does that mean? You know, he's something really wants to take. One of the first things I heard him say was that years ago when he came in to do a paper, a commentary on a paper I'd written in 1977 before he was on the courts saying that a law that runs counter to the opinions of 40% of the population probably shouldn't be regarded as a law. It was the old idea you can't legislate more raise, you know. Wait a minute. We have processes in place. We elect people who appoint judges who then do X, Y, and Z. It is not the job of the judges to worry about the people who elected the people who appointed the judges.
Starting point is 00:21:07 So why are the judges looking backwards and worried, worrying about that 40%? Because they're worried about the judges interfering too much, inventing new rights, and injecting themselves into the political arena. So the conservative response is, no, we'll pull the judges back, try to avoid any any involvement in propounding original moral arguments or even very striking moral arguments
Starting point is 00:21:32 and leave that to other people and we're just going to make sure the judges don't overstep their bounds. Okay, so you have just made their argument, thank you for doing that, for playing devil's advocate with yourself, because I want to understand how it is that somebody like a Scalia
Starting point is 00:21:48 or a Kavanaugh or whoever would get there. but you nonetheless in the book, mere natural law and elsewhere at the James Wilson Institute, you're making the case that it's the job of these justices and judges to do that very thing. Not to be crazy about it, but that that is their job, that they're supposed to think about the antecedents to the law. They're supposed to think about what is right. and true. So what do you see
Starting point is 00:22:24 as the limits of that? In other words, when does it feel like it's judicially activist on the conservative side? Well, let's think judges engaging themselves on the battlefield to question judges made on the battlefield, as we saw the
Starting point is 00:22:40 Beaumetian case here. It runs against one of the deepest principles of the American regime, going back to the revolution, that the safety of the American people cannot be put in the hands of officers whether in Westminster, Westminster or unelected judges who have no direct responsibility to the lives they're at stake.
Starting point is 00:22:59 That tells us that unelected judges should not be making decisions of this kind, which is why the judges, like Frankfurt and others, just backed away with even with the Korematsu case about... Okay, hang on, we're going to have to... We're going to hit pause. We'll be back with Korematsu. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question,
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Starting point is 00:25:37 originalism and the anchoring truths of the Constitution. So you just mentioned Korematsu. This has to do with judges not second-guessing military decisions. Talk about this a little bit. This is the limits of what a judge can do. This is after they accepted curfews for Japanese. Then they're now willing to stand back while Japanese... Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're talking about World War II.
Starting point is 00:26:01 R02. Japanese. You're talking about FDR. FDR and the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Have an executive order to remove Japanese into the interior, into, into. Which is a shocking moment in American history. It was. So what did the judges say at that point?
Starting point is 00:26:20 Some of them like Robert Jackson and Frank Murphy and Owen Roberts said, no, this is really just racial discrimination. These are people who are born here. These are American citizens who have rights. Right. And the idea that their ethnicity would affect those rights is legally nonsense. Right. But you have the judges, other judges appointed by Roosevelt, Hugo Black, and Felix Frankfurter,
Starting point is 00:26:46 just taking the side of the executive and saying judges can't counter the, judges can't be held responsible for what goes on here. Judges don't have the judgment to sort second guess what is being done. and it's that that gets pretty tricky because we're talking about foundational principles and that's like saying like well when they created the constitution they didn't think about this stuff well that's the constitution but they're not the judges may not be the best people to vindicate they may simply have to rely on on elected officials Congress and executive to to bear these things in mind and to honor the constitution so these are the limits of the judiciary what we're talking about. they are, you know, when we recognize the Soviet Union, there was agreement then to
Starting point is 00:27:32 put into the hands of Stalin's government the assets held by Russian nationals in New York. And Judge Sutherland wrote the opinion could see this would be a taking of property, but the problem is... Wait, wait, wait, I'm totally lost. During World War II... No, this is not... I'm sorry, maybe I'm skipping around too much. We're talking about the judges and the limits on the reach of judges. Yeah. You mentioned Stalin.
Starting point is 00:27:57 Okay, 1933. for the FDR recognized Stalin's regime. And the cost was that they had to transfer to Stalin's government, the assets held by certain Russian nationals in New York. I just want to argue about why would FDR recognize Stalin's regime? Maybe he had no choice. It was a matter that led to the real expansion of the Communist Party in this country. But my point is this. George Sutherland, Justice Southerland, wrote the opinion, knew this is a confiscation of property. If this arose in domestic law, it would have been challenged. But the decision on recognizing a foreign government is bound up with military strategy.
Starting point is 00:28:40 If something goes wrong, judges can't be held responsible for these things. The decision has to be put in the hands of people who do bear the direct responsibility for these things when they go wrong. So it was deemed okay to take property from American citizens of Russian, background? Russian national? Sure. That was the cost of recognizing the Russian regime. But they were not American citizens, these Russian nationals.
Starting point is 00:29:08 Right. That's a little different. Yeah, but when Jimmy Carter settled the Iranian hostage crisis, there were many Americans who were owned property in... He settled the Iranian hostage crisis? I was under the impression that it might have been Ronald Reagan. Well, when this thing was being said, settled. Well, I know we know that Carter was attempting to settle it. Yeah, but as the thing
Starting point is 00:29:34 was in the works. Okay. So that was Carter. As a thing was in the works, you know, it was understood that the, um, uh, their American vendors who were owed money by the Iranian regime, but they just, they lost it as part of the settlement. Once you, the part of the settlement was, we'll, we'll get the hostages out, we'll waive these other things. And, uh, well, that's the look, that's like eminent domain. I get it. Okay. We could put that aside. could put that aside. What should we talk about? I'd like to go back to the beginning because
Starting point is 00:30:03 at one critical point, it is worth mentioning that the founders knew that these pencils that were there, they drew upon, were there before the Constitution. The Constitution was not the source that they were understanding. It was an expression of their understanding. Right. And they didn't put in the Constitution everything they knew, but those pencils were there before the Constitution, and they understood that they'd be there even if there were.
Starting point is 00:30:28 no Constitution. So as John Quincy Adams said, that right to petition the government, it would be there even if it weren't mentioned in the First Amendment. It'd be there even if there were no First Amendment. You'd be there even if there were no Constitution. And John Marshall, you know, later, in the old Dartmouth College case, said, to impose upon somebody a contract they did not wish, maybe as bad as impairing the obligation of a contract they'd willingly made, an argument we hear during Obamacare, compelling people to buy insurance. And justice story in his comment, the famous justice story in his commentaries would say that principle that imposing on people a contract they did not want, that would be true even if it weren't in the Constitution.
Starting point is 00:31:14 And so people were constantly aware that in order to explain the Constitution they had wrought, they had to go back, they had to go back into those principles that were there in order to lay out the ground of their own judgments. Now, who do you think is the ultimate audience for your book, Mere Natural Law? Do you suppose that there are law schools where they will get this and they will raise up lawyers who will become judges, who will understand these things?
Starting point is 00:31:49 Because it seems like the ship has sailed with the current group. Except it was, as Chris Dumuth said in his comment I wrote on the book, the sense is taking hold that something's wrong with a morally agnostic constitution. People get the sense of something is gone awry. So younger people become aware of something.
Starting point is 00:32:08 They want to hear more. We're going to follow this in other sentences. We'll be right back. Are you tired of not getting a good night's sleep? Well, my friend, Mike Lendell has created the perfect solution. He didn't just stop at the pillow. He also created the Giza dream bed sheets
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Starting point is 00:33:13 Don't wait any longer to get the best sleep of your life. Call 800-978-3057 or go to Mypillow.com now and use promo code Eric. Welcome back. We're talking with Hadley, Arcus, A-R-K-E-S. The book is Mere Natural Law. You were saying, just for when to the break, that there are younger people who sense something missing. In other words, that if we proceed as agnostics, as secularists,
Starting point is 00:34:06 we can't really have the laws that we have. We can't govern ourselves. That this thinking seems to be catching hold. Yes. And by the way, you said it's a readable book. I hope it be bred by ordinary people, businessmen, ordinary citizens. And, yeah, I think it may take hold among young lawyers, people in law schools who are told, you'll never hear anything about natural law.
Starting point is 00:34:29 If you want to hear anything about it, maybe this is a readable version. In our, we have a seminar. Anybody, look, let me interrupt, anybody thinking about law school or in law school or practicing law should read this book. That's a fact. I say that not to do any favors to Hadley Arkansas. but to do favors to those to whom I have just been speaking honestly. No, no, I mean it because I'm not a lawyer.
Starting point is 00:34:57 And it is readable and it's actually fascinating. And it's also very, very, very, very important. So please continue. We have this seminar in the summer for really gifted young lawyers coming out of law school. Who does? James Wilson. I'm sorry. He's the week. James, what's the website?
Starting point is 00:35:18 James Wilson Institute. James Wilson Institute.org. Okay. James Wilson Institute.org. I hope you'll visit it. Okay. So we have this, one of our programs is a seminar
Starting point is 00:35:28 we have every summer for some gifted young lawyers coming out of law school on the way to clerkships. And we had a first, this two years ago, we're having a, of a young woman
Starting point is 00:35:39 who had already been clerking at the Supreme Court. She'd clerk for John Roberts. And she's coming to us. And I said, what are you? doing here? And she said, I want to get what I never got at Harvard at the law school. And I'm certainly not getting from Roberts, but I can't talk about that right now.
Starting point is 00:35:59 James Wilson Institute.org. Well, listen, I'm thrilled to hear about this, and I hope that young lawyers and law students will think about this. Because part of the reason we're having this conversation. Part of the reason you wrote this book is because we've come to a place where these things need saying. Right. It's not, you know, we've been drifting for a long time, but these things do need saying right now, and I'm glad that you're saying them. Was there anything that prompted you, specifically that prompted you to write this book? Was it the Dobbs' decision? No, no, no. It was on the works before the Dobbs decision, and it was really You know, my dear friend, Dan Robinson, who wrote this, did 18 books,
Starting point is 00:36:51 a lecture to Oxford, said he wanted at his tombstone. He died without a theory. And he was really drawing upon Thomas Reed about those things, those precepts of common sense that ordinary people had to understand before they start trafficking in theories. You know, before the average man would banter with David knew about causation, he knew his own act of powers to cause his own acts to happen. That's that. Why don't we do something like this? Take it back to those grounds of common sense that people had to do it.
Starting point is 00:37:23 Before we go out into theories of constitutional interpretation and offer that other angle on the natural law. Well, that's a big part of what you say in the first part of your book, the part that I've already read, mere natural law. And it really is very important that idea that once you get to, you get to, theories to these formulations, you begin to at least potentially run into trouble, and you need to understand
Starting point is 00:37:55 what precedes the theories. And we have a class of people, the cultural elites, who seem to traffic exclusively in theories. They are unmoored from reality, from the basics. And that's to me at the heart of many problems in the world
Starting point is 00:38:13 through history, frankly. I mean, I could even say as a pro-Catholic, non-Catholic, that that's kind of what Luther bumped up against in the high medieval church. Sure. Things had gotten so Baroque, before the Baroque period, but that there was more, you know, fidelity to Aristotle than to the scripture, where there was more, things had gotten complicated and needed to be simplified. We needed to go back, Ad Fontes.
Starting point is 00:38:43 Finding home ground. Finding home ground. And that's a healthy thing. And now and again, that becomes more important than at other times. And it seems like we're at that point right now. I hope so. I think people are going to take a look at this again, which is, no, we've drawn to ourselves some federal judges.
Starting point is 00:38:58 One of our projects is a seminar involving bringing together some gifted teachers of philosophy and law with some stars of the federal bench who want to take this seriously again and get hold of it. So we've had Edith Jones, Alice Batchelder, Dermed. Dermedoscanlan, our regulars. And it's really taken hold. More judges are coming over, showing an interest in it. So, again, it's to say, we're not dealing with something.
Starting point is 00:39:26 No, the old line was that Socrates bought philosophy down out of the clouds to bear on questions of right and wrong. We say, we're trying to bring natural law down out of the clouds to show how it's accessible to ordinary. It's not a theory, but it's something that pervades. our judgment every day. You know, I used to raise the question. I used the point. To ask whether a judge could get to his day without using this is rather like asking,
Starting point is 00:39:52 can I order the coffee without using syntax? I mean, it pervades everything they do. And it's just not aware. Its fundamental quality may be shown the fact that we use it and we're hardly even aware that we're using it. Well, that's a pretty good place to end, much as I hate to end.
Starting point is 00:40:12 The book is mere natural law, originalism, and the anchoring truths of the Constitution. Hadley Arcus can be found at the James Wilson Institute.org. James Wilson Institute. org.
Starting point is 00:40:30 And how many students do you take per summer for that program? About 16, 17. Just a handful. Yeah, we may try to do a second round because we're getting seminary. terrific applicants for this. It's just hard to make a...
Starting point is 00:40:44 This is very important stuff. James Wilson Institute.org. If you know anybody thinking about the law, law school, James Wilson Institute.org, and for the love of Pete, get a copy of mere natural law. Hadley, Arcus, thank you so much.
Starting point is 00:41:30 Folks, this is one of the most important things we talk about on this program. We don't talk about it enough. But the money that you have, in pension funds, 401Ks, whatever it is, is effectively being controlled by people who are working against you and your values. A lot of us have money in funds that invest in, oh, Target, Amazon, you name it, all kinds of companies that are working dramatically against everything you believe in. So it's time that we wake up.
Starting point is 00:42:08 We understand the financial power that we have and pull our money out of these kinds of places, which is why I have as my guest, the founder and CEO of Inspire on the program, Robert Netsley. Robert, we've talked about this before, but the power that we have financially is huge. But the reason things have gone to hell in a handbasket is because most of us don't have a clue that we have. this power. We kind of act like it's a separate thing and I go and I vote, you know, every two years or something. But every single day, tons of our money is being used against us because of our investments. So before I let you talk, I want to tell people to go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric, where you can fix this. You can find out what's happening
Starting point is 00:43:04 with your money. Inspireadvisors.com.com. slash Eric. Robert Netsley, when did you wake up to this and say, I want to solve this because this is as big as it gets? It was about 12 years ago when I was working at Wells Fargo investment services. And I just got, you know, kicked in the rear end by discovery that I, here I am president to our local pro-life pregnancy center and I own three stocks of companies manufacturing abortion drugs.
Starting point is 00:43:32 And the Holy Spirit just convicted me on this issue that here I am, you know, fighting to save the lives of these precious unborn. I'm making money every time somebody has an abortion. And then you go down the laundry list of all these other issues, LGBT activism and human trafficking, you know, et cetera, et cetera, launched us into what we're doing now. And, you know, by God's grace, millions upon millions of Christians and other conservatives with similar values are waking up to the fact, uncomfortable fact that in your investment account, you own and are profiting from things that would make your stomach sure.
Starting point is 00:44:03 And not only that, but because of the fund companies that you have your money, placed in, those fund companies get to vote for the issues of these companies promote things like we're seeing in the news with Target and others. That's your money at work, but it's at work against you. But it doesn't have to be that way. So that free report and that there's a way to fix it. It's very easy. Just got to be aware and take some simple steps.
Starting point is 00:44:27 And we're putting some free work and reports out for listeners here, InspiredBysers. com, slash Eric, like you mentioned. So people are informed and aware of what they can do. to fix this because we don't fix it. If you just sit there blindly going along, like, then you can get it better, it's going to all get worse.
Starting point is 00:44:44 And frankly, it's going to be your fault for not doing anything. You know, we've got to do something about it and, you know, let God have the results. But we can't just sit here and do nothing because that's how we got here in the first place.
Starting point is 00:44:57 We've all got to become activists. We've all got to, I think a lot of us just thought, like, well, I'm just going to go along in my life. And, you know, I go to church on Sunday. And, well, folks, there are things you need to do. And if you don't do it, you're responsible for things going to hell in a handbasket. So I want to ask you, please, first of all, this is free. Okay. This is, this is free.
Starting point is 00:45:19 Inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. This is the solution. Every single one of us needs to get our dollars and cents out of these places with a satanic agenda. Inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. When you go there, You will see that this is not going to cost you anything. They're there to help you. And I just wish everyone would do this. I'll say it again, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Robert Nessley, thank you so much. Thank you.

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