The Seventeenth Amendment: The Case That It Was Never Valid | Bill Norton

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Jenny Beth Martin Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and we have another episode in this series we are doing on founding principles with constitutional scholar and author Bill Norton. Now, remember, he has done training for us on the first principles, and you can go see that training by going to teapartypatriots.org forward slash 1776. Bill, thank you so much for joining me again today. Thank you. That's great.

[00:00:44] So, we're now in the third conversation, and you did four lessons. The third lesson is going behind the Constitution, and you've got a book called Behind the Constitution. Yeah, it's in rough draft form now, but it'll be available certainly by the end of the year, or by September. Very good. Just in time for Constitution Day? Exactly. That's good. Okay, give a brief summary of what you did in this lesson.

[00:01:14] So, basically, the way that we've always taught the Constitution, at least the way that you've learned it in school, if you really learned it that much in school, is separation of powers, checks and balances. And that's kind of the way they present it, which isn't incorrect, but it gives you very little context. Why? Why did they build the House and the Senate the way they built it? Why did they create the executive the way they did, judiciary, all that?

[00:01:43] And so, just the separation of powers and checks and balances doesn't really teach you about the fundamental principles that the Constitution is structured after. The other thing is they'll often say that it's three separate and equal branches, which is absolutely incorrect. They are not equal, though they are separate. They were never intended to be equal, not because the founders didn't want to, you know, wanted to make them unequal.

[00:02:13] It's because just the natural course of things is that they would be unequal. So, by far, the legislative branch is going to be the most powerful branch because it's the lawmaking and the taxing authority. And so that really, you know, that affects everything in your life. And so that's by far the most powerful.

[00:02:32] That's why the founders separated it into two additional segments, the House and the Senate, was to give some additional internal checks and balances within that branch. And then the second branch, the executive branch, is a distant second place. It's not nearly as powerful as the legislative.

[00:02:55] And then the courts were considered to be a way, way, way distant third, like very, very little power because their actions really completely relied on the first two branches. And even the second branch relies on the first one as well. And so that's kind of... They're more reactionary than proactive. Yes. Exactly. The courts can't just do something.

[00:03:20] Like, if you want the courts to say something about anything, you have to bring a case before the court. Whereas the legislative branch, they can just say, I've got an idea. Let's take some action. The courts can't do that. However, because they were this distant third, the founders really didn't put very many checks in place for the courts. And Jefferson said that's a mistake.

[00:03:44] He said the courts will end up acting like gravity, just holding down on that constitution. And gradually, they're going to pull our rights down with it. And he said there needs to be more checks on the courts. And he's been vindicated with that. He's very correct. So that's the way that the constitution has been presented. Separation of powers, checks and balances. But what I do is I take it from a different approach.

[00:04:11] I take it from the approach of how the founders built it, why they built it the way they built it, and what was their frame of mind when they constructed the constitution. So John Adams did a tremendous amount of research on various governments throughout the world, and then wrote the book that we've already talked about in our previous episodes called In Defense of the Constitutions of the United States of America.

[00:04:37] And in his research, he saw all these different forms of government. And then he also referred back to Polybius, who was a Greek philosopher who was carried off into Rome and became a Roman philosopher. And Polybius was the first one that started seeing, okay, Rome is divided into these different forms of government, democracy and monarchy and all that. And that's good. It's good to divide these things.

[00:05:04] And then hundreds of years later, Montesquieu, the French philosopher, picked up on it and kind of went into more detail about it. And then John Adams picks it up. And John Adams thought, you know, we really should have a mixed form of government. And we should have various aspects of democracy, monarchy, oligarchy. We should combine all these together and try to keep the good things and kick out the bad things.

[00:05:35] So, for example, the executive, the president, he's the monarch. He or she, the Constitution doesn't care whether it's a man or a woman, but they are the monarch. That's monarchy. And the executive is made up when he asks people, how many people are in the executive branch? People say, oh, thousands. Or people who think they're, they're following the Constitution, they'll say two. But it's really only one. It's just the president.

[00:06:04] The Constitution says that the executive branch shall be vested in a president of the United States. The vice president isn't part of the executive branch. The vice president is actually part of the legislative branch because he's the president of the Senate. And so what we did is we gave authority to the monarch, but only the things that monarchs are good at. They're good at executing the law, not this kind of execution, but executing the law.

[00:06:32] I mean, they're good at that kind, too, but that's, but we don't let them have that power. Thank goodness. Because kings were really good at that. But we take that power from them. We take the power to legislate away from them. We take the power to adjudicate away from them because kings are terrible at that. They make too many favors to friends and family and all that. But let's let them just execute the law, especially in times of emergency. And so so that's that's the monarchy and the checks and balances are to try to prevent the monarchy from from becoming a tyrant.

[00:07:03] And and then vice versa, the president has some checks against the legislative branch to keep the legislative branch from being this collective tyrant. And so when you look at the Constitution in terms of a mixed form of government, it now starts making sense because now you understand why the House and Senate is designed the way it's designed. You actually even start understanding things like the Electoral College, but the Electoral College seems like this crazy, weird unicorn creature to people. But it's not.

[00:07:32] It makes a lot of sense when you start seeing that we're trying to have multiple forms of government represented when we're electing our monarch. We want both democracy and oligarchy participating in that. So that's why we have the vote the way that we have it. And when it comes to the Electoral College, they had to go.

[00:07:55] And I guess when it comes to the way senators versus congressmen, the number of senators versus congressmen, they had to go through that compromise. In order to get it passed, because the small states and population would not have agreed had had they only had representative government represented. I'm sorry, representative government that was equal to their population. That's right.

[00:08:24] They would. Why would they have? They would have been giving up power. Yeah. So they found a way to even balance the power between the two branches and between large population states and small population states. That's correct. And it ended up creating this. So James Madison, when it came to that proportional representation compromise, he initially fought against it because he initially thought that the Senate should be proportional as well. Well, he was from Virginia. That's right. That's right. And he was from a big state. That's right. Yeah.

[00:08:54] The largest state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At the time. And so, so Madison, but, but once the compromise happened and he even fought against it, but once it happened and it was clear that he couldn't fight against it anymore, he started thinking about it more closely and realized it was brilliant. And the reason why he realized it was brilliant was because again, it was, it was bringing in representation from different forms of government.

[00:09:23] So you have, um, the house of representatives is a democracy house and the Senate is an oligarchy. And so now you have this balance between democracy and oligarchy. Um, and the same thing, having the States involved in federalism and all those great things. So that's really what the lesson does is it, it helps you understand the constitution. Like you've never understood it before because you understand how and why it was constructed the way it was constructed.

[00:09:52] Um, when it comes to this lesson, you really touched a lot on the three branches of government, which means you touched a lot on the first three articles of the constitution. Correct. There were more articles than that. There are. And with the lesson, we didn't have time to dive into all that.

[00:10:14] And, and, and some of the other articles do touch on, um, on these forms of government and you can see, you know, aspects of different forms, but, but you really plainly see it with article one, two, and three. And so that's why we spent all the time on that. Um, and, and that also shows you the logic of the founders. They're very methodic and very logical. So when a group of people get together, the first thing you do, if you're going to figure out how to live together is you make rules. So that's why article one is the legislative branch.

[00:10:43] And then you have to execute those rules. So article two is the executive branch. And then you have to adjudicate the disagreements and the challenges. You have to have a referee. That's right. And so then they, so then the, the article three, the judicial branch, um, and then they kind of fix, take care of the rest. Like, so now we need to figure out, okay, relationship between the states. So we have article four, which is for the states. Article five is the fix it article. So if we need to repair it and we get into that. So that's where we talked about amending.

[00:11:13] And then, um, article six is supremacy and article seven ratification. Okay.

[00:11:20] When we talk about, um, article four and the states, one thing that I always think of when I'm thinking of, um, the, the, the balance of power and, in the checks and balances is that the checks and balances went across the three branches, but it also went up and down the government because the states are supposed to check the federal government. Right. Correct.

[00:11:49] And there's a check from that as well. And then there's even a check further down from the people because people are electing the president through the electoral college and they are electing their, um, congressmen and their senators. So there's a check and balance on, on the, the branches from the elections and also on the states from the, all of that from the, the, the voters.

[00:12:15] And I, when you start thinking about it that way, it really, it's just amazing that they came up with all of these skills to, to balance power so that it is very difficult to accumulate power in a single place anywhere in America.

[00:12:36] That's right. And what was brilliant about it is again, they did it based on like forms of government. They didn't do it based on demographic of people. So, so like the goal was to get as many different types of representation as possible, but, but they didn't do it based on race or based on religion or based on any of those things because, because that's just not a good way to go about it because you start pitting each other against it.

[00:13:00] Like, like, like some of this meandering, uh, uh, district argument that we're having right now with redistricting and, and the, uh, gerrymandering, um, uh, and you know, whether or not districts were specifically for minority votes or Democrats or Republicans were having this argument. We, we shouldn't be dividing these lines based on those demographics because all we're doing is pitting ourselves against each other.

[00:13:26] Instead, the founders had looked at it in terms of forms of government. So, so they're looking at the people as a whole. And so let's let the people as a whole vote for the house of representatives. That's a, that's our democracy, but then let's let, uh, the States vote. So even though the people of the States are electing their legislature and then that legislature picks their senators, for example,

[00:13:58] um, that puts the people that puts the democracy one step further away from the Senate than it does from the house. So they're not looking at, uh, okay, I need to make sure that James Madison of Virginia is represented. No, he's looking at it as all the people of Virginia need to be represented as a whole, but then the conglomerate of Virginia needs to be represented as a whole, even though it's the same people, but they're being represented from different points of view, if that makes sense.

[00:14:28] And that's really where the brilliance was. And then, so the vertical separation that you're talking about is federalism. And that's the key, um, to our system. And we've really done a lot to, to damage federalism. Um, federalism is different than a national government. A national government is from the top down. Federalist government is from the bottom up. And we've really become much more of a nationalist, a national government.

[00:14:52] Um, some of the things that we did to hurt federalism is 17th amendment, changing the method of electing senators, 16th amendment, which made it so that the federal government can reach directly into your pocket and take money. Before they couldn't, they had to go to your state first. They couldn't just reach directly in your pocket.

[00:15:13] Um, the electoral college is a federalist system that still exists, but culturally doesn't necessarily exist. Um, technically it does because that's still how the president's elected, but we all as a people get together and go vote for president and think we're voting for president. And we're really not, we're voting for our electors. And then people get upset when the president loses the popular vote, but gains the, the elector vote. And you're like, well, that, how can that be?

[00:15:43] My voice was not really heard. Well, your voice wasn't necessarily intended to be heard in that way because that's part of federalism. So really there's only two aspects left that we have in federalism is the electoral college, but only technically not culturally. And then really the only other one is, is, uh, an article five convention. If we ever decided to do that, which means the states getting together to amend the constitution.

[00:16:09] That's all that's left with federalism as far as structurally in the constitution. Um, okay. Let's, let's break these down for. Yeah, I just, I just pushed and put a lot of stuff on you through a whole bunch of stuff. That's right. Sitting right here in my lap, but we're going to take it one by one. Um, okay. The, let's go back to the electoral college for a minute because there's a huge push, especially on the left right now.

[00:16:36] But I think sometimes people in the right fall prey to this as well, to get rid of the electoral college and have the national popular vote. And the national popular vote is even, um, worse than just the states. Um, it's, it is horrible because a state gives up their right to, if a candidate wins in a state, you no longer, that doesn't matter anymore.

[00:17:06] You're saying whoever wins nationally, they automatically get all of your state's electoral votes. And it's just, it's not good. And it's not good because it's going to make it where if, if they are successful in doing this, candidates will only go to big cities to campaign. That will be the only place that they go.

[00:17:29] And so you've got a handful of big cities, maybe 10, maybe 15, 20 really big cities in the country. Some states have no big cities at all. They'll be completely, completely ignored. Yeah. And then, um, and then even inside of the states, like inside of Illinois or inside of Georgia or inside of California, California is a massive state.

[00:17:54] Texas is a massive state, but they'll focus on Dallas and Houston, LA and San Francisco. They, they, they won't focus on all the rest of the state. And so those cities have a lot of people, but geographically, they make a much smaller percent, percentage of the country. And so this whole other rest of the country where people live will just be completely ignored.

[00:18:21] And then it, it is, you have to go back and understand the compromise it took for our country to even exist to get to this point where they said, okay, the house will be representative. The Senate will have two for every single representative in terms of population. The Senate will have two, an equal number for every single state. And that was a huge compromise.

[00:18:48] And if they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have a constitution at all. And in the use of the same numbers to determine the electoral college, which again, if they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have had a country. But if you're a little tiny state, I, I just was in Alaska and I'm going to Maine and I've been to South Dakota. Um, those states would just be ignored because they're so small in terms of population, but they're still part of the country and they still need to be heard.

[00:19:17] Well, and what's ironic about that is that the whole argument is it should be based on popular votes so that our voices are being, are heard. So our voices count. Well, your voice is not going to count. You might be able to vote in those small states, but, but your voice won't be heard, uh, on the campaign trail and all that. The other interesting thing that you just, that I just thought of as you were talking about, uh, the house by population and the Senate to per, the founders again, figured out every

[00:19:47] area that they could do some checks and balances. So even selecting the two senators initially in Congress with under the articles of confederation, each state had one vote, no matter how many delegates they sent. So if you sent 10 delegates, you still only had one vote. And so you had to vote amongst yourself in order to cast your one vote. Well, in the Senate, um, they, they wanted the states represented as a whole. So that's why you have these two senators.

[00:20:14] But the reason why they sent two senators is because they wanted that there's still to be some check and balance there because each of those senates have their own vote. They don't have to agree and they don't have to be, uh, uh, have a unified voice for their state. Um, and so a state theoretically, and it happens quite often, could be neutralized in the sense that there's one center could vote yes, one center can vote no.

[00:20:39] But what that does is that again, it's another check and balance, making it so that the pure oligarchy of the state Senate, um, ends up being checked by a little bit of a democracy with, with the both senators having their own voice. You see? So even these real subtle checks and balances are just brilliant and beautiful. Um, it's, it is so, it is so amazing.

[00:21:04] It, as I was going off about, um, these smaller in population states, certainly not smaller geographically because Alaska is the largest state. Um, I was thinking about how Iowa is the first in the nation for their caucuses. Now the Democrat party may be moving away from, from that because Iowa has leaned so, so, uh, conservative in, in recent years.

[00:21:34] I, I don't know if it's a good thing for them to, to move away from that. Like maybe they should be appealing more to people in Iowa, but that's, that's up to them. And some people are like, well, why is that? How does that work? It's Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina. You know, they're all so small and they're really not important states. Having been on the campaign trail since this movement started and going to Iowa and going

[00:22:02] to the straw poll and to the state fair and being in New Hampshire when they have their first in the nation primary and being in South Carolina. I realize just how important those smaller states are in this process. And because they are, they are so used to candidates coming. They're not fazed by the candidates. They're not starstruck by the candidates.

[00:22:29] Like maybe if Donald Trump is going to their state right now, it would be a different story because he's president and he's such a force of nature. Sure. But as candidates are coming through in their campaigning, they're just sort of like, oh, let me check this one out. And they'll ask some questions. They see them at a diner. You know, we've seen video of it where they just come up and they ask the candidate something and they get answers because they're so used to doing that.

[00:22:57] But you learn, we throughout the whole entire country learn a lot about the candidates because of those real life interactions with those normal people from around the country. And so I'm actually very much in favor of the way that process works. And I don't live in either in any of those states, but I don't feel slighted because that's where they're going first.

[00:23:25] And oftentimes by the time they get to Super Tuesday and Georgia's usually was Super Tuesday, you're not voting for as many candidates. Those states have already weeded out some of the people. They help you make a decision. Yeah, but they help make a decision. And I guess my point in all of this is just these processes and the smaller places sometimes are very, very important. And it's a lot less. It's just it's important.

[00:23:54] It's it's so important. It's important that we are able to see people of all walks of life, regardless of the size of state, regardless of of, you know, what kind of economy that state has or or what their culture is like or what their main, you know, workforce looks like. It's so good to get the voice of all of them. And we wouldn't get that if we change the Electoral College. No, we wouldn't get that nearly as much as we as we get it today.

[00:24:22] I think that one of the things that we have to pay attention to as conservatives and as people who love the Constitution and cherish a Constitution, we have to make sure that we are are educating people on the importance of the Electoral College. This is a boring topic. Like most people don't want to sit around and talk about it the way you and I like to. But it's very important because.

[00:24:49] If the people are trying to essentially neutralize it and get rid of it, are successful. We're going to have unintended consequences they can't even fathom. Now, speaking of unintended consequences, that brings us to the 17th Amendment. Now, how was the Senate supposed to be originally versus what happened with the 17th Amendment? So the 17th Amendment changed the method of electing senators. So this happened in 1913.

[00:25:20] And originally, the founders had written in the document that senators were to be appointed by state legislatures. And what's interesting is the Great Compromise, one of the three Great Compromises, was this proportional representation in the House and then equal representation in the Senate. And while there were many, many votes in the Constitutional Convention to try to get to that compromise, when the vote came out as to how senators should be elected and the idea was presented

[00:25:49] that they should be appointed by their state legislatures, they took a single vote on that and that process won and it was unanimous. So when we talk about the debate, it was all about proportional. It was not about method of electing. When it came to method of electing, 100% of the founders agreed to this concept. And so they were originally appointed by state legislatures.

[00:26:17] And there was a movement to try to change it almost from the beginning to where they'd be elected by popular vote. And it finally happened. So in the late 1800s, during the beginning of the progressive movement, the progressives really started pushing for that. Because progressives believe in more of a centralized government. They believe in an elite class. So in essence, progressives believe in an aristocracy or in an oligarchy.

[00:26:47] And so they want to see our form change to more of an oligarchy. And if you look to history, the way that most oligarchies get into power is they are the final evolution from a democracy. So democracies always lead to oligarchies. And so it stands to reason then that if somebody wants to convert our system to an oligarchy,

[00:27:18] convert it to a democracy because it's easy to sell. And then it'll end up devolving into an oligarchy. And so that's precisely what the progressives did. They really were pushing hard for the 17th Amendment. And they really weren't gaining much traction for quite a while until all of a sudden, in the early 1900s, there was a senator from Illinois by the name of Palmer.

[00:27:42] And the news came out that he had purchased his Senate seat by paying each state legislator $2,500. And so that was appalling to people. They're like, oh, the corruption is terrible. We can't have that kind of corruption. So people in other states... If only they knew what kind of corruption we were actually going to have later. But okay. Well, especially even back then. We had corruption back then so bad. So bad.

[00:28:11] And we've actually gotten, you know, the corruption has... The corruption has either gotten less today than what it has been in the past at times, or they're better at hiding it, one of the two. But there's times in our past when the corruption has been just terribly rampant. And so anyway, so they thought, oh, so people in other states are like, we can't let Illinois sit in the Senate and have a vote in the Senate when it's such a corrupt senator.

[00:28:38] And so that finally created enough momentum that they were able to pass the 17th Amendment to change it so that the people of the state now elect their senators. Now, the irony behind all of that is, first of all, the founders, they weren't fine with corruption, but they knew that corruption was going to happen. James Madison said, if men were angels, then we'd have no need for government, right?

[00:29:07] And if angels were our governors, then we wouldn't have to worry about what kind of legislation they're passing. But that's not the case. Right. Men are not angels, so we need government. And we don't have angels in government. And so we do need to be concerned about what they're passing. So we put these checks and balances in place. And so they knew corruption was going to happen. That's the reason why you have checks and balances is so that you try to get corruption to butt heads against corruption. You know, it's the bucket full of crabs.

[00:29:36] You want the crab grabbing the other crab so none of the crabs can actually get out of the bucket. That's what we want. That's the point. And so the senators were supposed to represent the states. That gave a check on the federal government so that the federal government wouldn't grow out of control because the states would stop that.

[00:29:59] And so in having this senator pay for his seat, it actually gave him more allegiance to these state legislators because they had something over on him at that point for sure. And so he's going to be even more dedicated to serving the state legislature, which is what the founders really wanted. So corruption, not corruption, it didn't really matter.

[00:30:26] The point is that senator needs to represent their state. And so that's the main goal. So what we ended up doing is in making it a popular vote, we ended up turning the Senate, which is supposed to be more of an oligarchy, we turned it into too much of a democracy.

[00:30:46] And we've had some really bad unintended consequences since then and perhaps some consequences that were intended, again, moving us more toward a democracy so that we'd move more toward an oligarchy. The problem is now is that the Senate doesn't represent the states.

[00:31:05] The prediction that goes all the way back, if you go all the way back to Polybius, a couple thousand years, Polybius predicted that if you have a pure, too strong of a democracy, then eventually that democracy will grow way too large because it'll spend way too much money. John Adams said that democracies commit suicide because they overexpand and grow too big.

[00:31:33] And if we look now at what's happened since 1913, we have expanded and grown way too big. We have done exactly what happens to democracies. And so it's predictable, which is really frustrating because it's like we should have seen it coming. We did see it coming. The founders did see it coming. The founders did see it coming. For sure. That's right. Cause some problems. And, and it would be nice to reverse it. Well, okay.

[00:32:02] How name a couple, why, why, what are those problems and the unintended consequences? I understand what you're saying. It now we have two branches that are more like democracies, but then what does that mean? Well, so the first problem is on two branches being democracies that leans us too far toward democracy. And we don't have as much of a check from an oligarchy.

[00:32:27] But the other problem is, is that because the house was not, I mean, because the Senate was not designed to be a democracy, it's very poorly designed for a democracy. The house is designed ideally for the democracy because you have to go back and answer to the people. And it's a smaller number of people that you represent. And you have to do that every two years. And the entire house gets changed every two years. So it really follows, the house really follows the emotions of the public a lot more.

[00:32:56] Well, the Senate is every six years. Well, we forget what happens. A senator can make terrible decisions for four years and then go out and campaign. Well, make good decisions for two years and go out and campaign on those two years. It's only 18 months or 12 months. Yeah. My own senator, John McCain, used to be a senator in Arizona years ago. He was really good at that.

[00:33:24] He would, he'd vote excellent for 18 months, 18 to 24 months right before his election. And he'd get reelected and then he'd be terrible for four years. And we'd all get upset at him and we'd all think, why are we reelecting this guy? And he's terrible. He doesn't represent us and yada, yada, yada. And then election time would come around and we'd forget all that. Right. Right. And so it's just, it's designed very poorly to be a democracy.

[00:33:50] And so if you really look at the senators today and you look at the way they vote and how they work, they really primarily represent themselves. They don't really represent anybody else. And more than anybody, if you're to look at like what government they represent the most, it's not their states. They represent the federal government the most. And so that's a huge unintended consequence or a bad thing that's happened is, is that the Senate is very, very willing to expand the federal government,

[00:34:20] to expand federal oversight and power and all that. Well, when they represent so many people, and granted there's some states that are smaller, but you've got to say a senator in the state of Texas, California, massive states. They can upset a constituency. They can upset hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people. And it won't even, they don't even have to worry about it.

[00:34:47] They don't have to really even think about those calls coming in or the complaints coming in, because they are representing so many people. That's right. And it makes it very hard for any person to hold the senator accountable. Correct. And that's the other thing that it's designed poorly for a democracy, is because they represent so many people. And it makes it very unfair in the Senate when you're looking at it based on population,

[00:35:15] because now it means that senators from small states have a lot fewer people that they're answering to versus the one in the larger states. So the larger states are kind of getting the raw end of the deal there, because they're representing so many. Whereas in the House, the larger states have more representatives, so they're not getting the raw end of the deal. So it's just, yeah, it's designed very poorly to be a democracy.

[00:35:44] So what we end up with, the thing that's really ironic about it is we actually end up with more corruption, not less, because in order to buy the Senate, you used to have to go and buy all of the state legislatures. So as a lobbyist, if you wanted to convince the Senate, you had to go convince the thousands of state representatives that existed out there,

[00:36:10] because they were the ones that were voting for the senators. And they held that vote, you know, with quite a bit of jealousy. And so it was difficult for a lobbyist to sway the Senate. But at this point, lobbyists don't need to do that. All they need to do is go sway the Senate themselves, give them a lot of money so that they have enough money to campaign in their own states to win re-election.

[00:36:34] And then in some of the more battleground states, then those lobbyists could go just focus in on a couple of those battleground states. But a lot fewer elections, too, because you only have 100 senators. Yes. And you're only talking about 33 of them that are changing at any given time in the election cycle. And so that's it. You've got 33 races that you have to pay attention to every two years.

[00:36:59] And so it's a lot easier for a lobbyist and big money and stuff to control the Senate. Well, and we look at the primary in Texas. It just happened recently. And there was so much money in that primary. And that money is exactly what you're talking about. So much money can go into a Senate campaign. It was, what, 30-some-odd million that the one campaign spent.

[00:37:26] And then there was another, what, 20 or 30 million from other PACs and stuff that spent on that one single candidate. And then the other candidate, I think, spent a whole lot less than that. I don't remember. Yeah, I think the total spend was around 100 million. So it was like 30 million to 60, 70 million, something like that, I think. I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head. But the incumbent, Cornyn, had an enormous amount of money backing him.

[00:37:53] And under normal circumstances, it is very hard to defeat a senator because of all of that money. That's right. It happens occasionally. And I'm so glad it happened twice this year because they need to understand, they need to pay more attention. Whether they will pay more attention or not is yet to be seen.

[00:38:20] But, you know, one can always hope. How did the 17th Amendment pass exactly? So I've got a problem with this. And let me tell you why. This gets us into Article 5. Okay. So because it's an amendment, it had to go through Article 5 process, the amending process, in order to happen.

[00:38:47] So just very quickly, the amending process is that two-thirds of the House and Senate can propose an amendment. And then they send it to the states and three-quarters of the states have to ratify it. Now, that can be ratified in two different ways. One, ratified by state legislatures. Or it could be ratified by conventions of the states. And we usually do the state legislature method.

[00:39:13] The person, the ones that decide which method to use is actually Congress decides whether to use the legislatures or whether to use the convention method. And really the only time that we've used the convention method was to repeal prohibition. And the reason why they use the convention method is because no politician wanted to be on record either way, voting for or against repealing prohibition.

[00:39:38] Because they didn't want to repeal it because they knew that the moms and the big organizations that were, you know, making it a big moral issue were going to beat them up. But they also, you know, there's big money in alcohol and there's, you know, and people want their drink. Well, and everyone was still drinking anyway. Exactly. It was decriminalizing something that was already happening. And so, so politicians wanted it gone, but they didn't want to be on record as to eliminating it.

[00:40:08] And so, so that was kind of the compromise that the, the, the, the, the Congress had was, okay, we'll send it to the states, but we'll, we'll, we'll say that we do it in convention. And so then we can handle it. So they kind of protected even the state legislatures. That's right. That makes sense. Okay. So, so that's the one method. The one method of, of amending is it comes from Congress, goes to the states, but there's two different ways that the states can, can ratify it.

[00:40:33] The second method is two thirds of the states can call a convention and they can propose an amendment, which then needs to go for three quarters of the states to ratify again, either in legislatures or conventions. Um, so there's those two methods. It either originates from Congress or it originates from the states. We have never used the state convention method. All 27 times has been started in Congress.

[00:41:01] And anytime there's a significant movement that looks like there's going to be a convention of the states, um, Congress takes action. So, and they're like, yeah, we don't want that. So we'll go ahead and push the amendment out ourselves. Um, which is, they still have control. Yeah. Which is pretty common. Governments do that quite a bit. Um, so. But even that then is a check and balance because that pressure, that groundswell of pressure forces Congress to take action. Precisely. Exactly. Which is great.

[00:41:31] Um, and, and in fact, even if a convention happened, I know there's a lot of people that fear it. Um, I fear it. I think that, yeah, I could, we could end up with a really bad amendment. Um, although all 27 of our amendments aren't good and we've ended up with a really bad amendment already. And this idea of a runaway convention, well, we already have a runaway convention in, in, in the house and the Senate. You know, they ignore the constitution and all these other fears of a runaway convention already happens.

[00:41:58] So all my fears are fears with both methods. So, so if that happens, it happens. But even with that, then you've got another check and balance in there with the three quarter of the seats having to ratify it. In either way, whether it's pushing down from Congress or coming up through the convention process, the safety valve is the states. Precisely. In three quarters of the states, that is not a small number. It's very difficult.

[00:42:25] In fact, that's why most amendments, when they pass, um, they're kind of, they're capstones. They're finishing something that's already inevitable. Like, like, uh, like women's suffrage, um, women already had the right to vote in 35 or 36 states or something like that. It was, it was already gaining ground and it was, it was going to happen in all the states anyway.

[00:42:48] Um, so many times these amendments, um, are just kind of, uh, you know, they're just symbolic of, okay, the nation as a whole has finally agreed to this. So let's put it in the document. Um, but the other thing that it does though, if we did have a convention is, um, the exact same thing that you just mentioned about how the Congress wants to stay in control.

[00:43:14] So if there's a movement, um, and that in and of itself is a check and balance. Well, if we actually had a convention that would again be, um, flexing our federalist arm and showing the federal government, Hey, you can't just get away with anything. And so that would help keep the federal government in check. Even if we produced a bad amendment, like Jefferson even said, he said, the action, the activity of the people has a positive effect.

[00:43:40] He said, even if the period people are wrong, even in their errors, if they are participating, then it has a positive effect. And he's writing this, um, to a friend who is, uh, in Congress. And at the time Jefferson, uh, Oh, he was secretary of state. And so he said, he said, even in their errors, it has a positive effect. He says, without that action from the public, you and I and judges, the president will become wolves.

[00:44:09] So he's even saying he'll, he will become a wolf if the people aren't attentive, uh, to their civic duty and be involved. So I think that that would have the same effect. And since he says, even in their errors. So even if we put out a bad amendment, it would still have a positive effect because it would still tell the federal government, Hey, we're going to take action. If, if you don't. Um, so that's, that's fifth, fifth, uh, article five.

[00:44:38] So the reason why article five is important for the 17th amendment is because of course it had to go through that process. So it went through the process that most do, uh, the Congress passed it and then sent it out to the states and three quarters of the states ratified it. But the reason why I have a problem with that is because I think that amendment had to be ratified differently than all other amendments. And here's why you don't mind. I know I'm going to pull up my constitution here.

[00:45:08] And we're going to jump into article five. So there are actually two prohibitions. Yes. In, uh, in article five, two things that it says you can't amend. Okay. So if you go down. Oh, about, I don't know, two thirds of the way through where it says provided that no amendment. Yes. Which shall be made prior to the year. Okay.

[00:45:42] So that's talking about that compromise on the importation of slaves. Okay. Um, and so it's saying you can't change that date. No matter what this is happening. No matter what. We cannot amend it. We are not allowing. So to the South, we're not going to do it sooner. And to the North, we're not going to do it later. And it's going to happen in 20 years. And we talked about that in our second conversation.

[00:46:03] So people can, can click through and, and go to the Jenny Best show and also to tprettypatriots.org forward slash 1776 to find that. Yeah. And it's that, that second conversation. And we went into detail about that. Um, so that right there in article five, not only is it written in the constitution, this 1808 day happens, but right here in article five, it's saying you cannot amend this. Yes.

[00:46:30] And then it goes into the next thing that you can't amend. And no state without its consent shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. So no state can lose their equal representation in the Senate. Now, many scholars say, well, they still didn't because there were a couple of states that, that did not vote for the 17th amendment. And so some scholars will say, well, they still have two senators. So they didn't lose their representation in the Senate.

[00:46:58] And my argument is it says no state. So when, when the constitution talks about the people of the state, it says the people of the several states. It's very, very clear. And when it talks about the state, just the state, not the people of the state, it's talking about the state as a whole, the state government, primarily the state legislature.

[00:47:19] So my interpretation of this is that no state legislature or state government without its consent shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. So to me, the way I read this is that for the 17th amendment to have passed, it would have needed 100% ratification, not three quarters. And is there any other documentation from the founding era contemporaneous with it that would back you up on your interpretation?

[00:47:48] The constitution's pretty good. Yeah, I understand. Not necessarily. Okay. Because they didn't necessarily predict that it would happen. Okay. Other than, other than predicted enough to put it in the document. I'm sure there's something out there, but I have not come across anything that's like James Madison or somebody saying, yeah, this is why we put this in here. Other than them kind of restating what's already here.

[00:48:14] I wish that there were somebody that agreed with my position on this. Now, there are some, you know, contemporaries that agree with it. There are some politicians that have pointed this out and some constitutional lawyers and scholars and things. But I definitely am in a minority on this opinion because most people do say, well, they still have two senators, so they still have representation. And I say that that's just not how I read it.

[00:48:42] And so in my interpretation is that it would, that amendment would have required 100% ratification. So I don't think, which makes sense. Like if you have a state, if you have a sovereign governing body that has a voice in the contract that has, you know, the ability to have their voice represented,

[00:49:04] to have that stripped from them without their consent, to me seems like that's unethical, wrong, and unconstitutional. So I think that somebody with more money than I have and with the right to argue in front of the Supreme Court should actually bring this to the Supreme Court. And it would have to be one of those states. One of the states that did not vote for it. They could go and they could say... Do you know which states it is?

[00:49:31] So Utah and Vermont, I know for sure, I know there's a couple others, but for sure Utah and Vermont are two states that did not vote for the 17th Amendment. I can't imagine Vermont arguing this in front of the Supreme Court. So maybe we get Mike Lee on it. Yeah. But they would say what? I interrupted you. They would have to go to the court and say, you know, we lost our representation in the Senate without our consent.

[00:49:57] And so they would basically sue to get that representation back. Okay. I don't know that that's going to happen. Probably not. I actually think that's not going to happen. Probably not. But it's a good theory and a good argument. It's good to listen to it. Let's say there was a movement to try to repeal the 17th Amendment.

[00:50:24] People would say, well, we're losing our right to vote for our senators. The argument you just made for the states, people would say that you were doing that to them. So how would you counter that? And what kind of argument would you make to people using the language of liberty? Great question. So first of all, let's talk about a movement for it. So I've been – there's been a few other voices really about the 17th Amendment.

[00:50:50] But the 17th Amendment was actually the issue that caught my interest very first when I was starting to learn about the Constitution. So 35 years ago when I cracked open my first Constitution textbook, the 17th Amendment is – so I've been on this issue for a long time. But not many other people are on it. But my frustration is it's like this is a major change in the system of – in the structure of our document.

[00:51:16] And I believe that we would repair our country to a large degree if we reversed it. In fact, as your test, Benson. The Senate is 100 percent dysfunctional right now. It is absolutely completely dysfunctional. If it were not dysfunctional, John Cornyn probably would not have lost his reelection. Yeah. Cassidy, I think, still would have. I don't think John Cornyn would have.

[00:51:44] But his election was not just about him. It was also a message to the entire Senate that we're sick of your inability to do anything. For sure. So it's just – it's not sand to slow everything down a little bit and make it take a little bit longer or the tempest and the teacup or whatever the – And that was the purpose of the Senate.

[00:52:12] It explained that part because that's not what it is anymore. It is just a brick wall where things go to die. That's right. The purpose of the Senate – when Jefferson came back from France and asked why is the Senate structured the way it's structured, Washington told him, he said, why do you pour your tea in a saucer? And he said, to cool it. He said, that's the purpose of the Senate, is to cool it. You know, the House is temperamental and passionate and all that just like the people are. Reactionary. That's right.

[00:52:40] And the Senate was designed to be a little bit more stable. Which is why it's six years and not two. That's right. And also why you go through multiple steps for election and all that. You know, the people elect their state legislature, state legislature appoints. And it's supposed to be just this cooling effect. But yeah, to a large degree, it's just a brick wall at this point. So making it more of a democracy didn't solve anything for us.

[00:53:09] But Edgar Taft Benson, he was the secretary of agriculture under Eisenhower. And he was a great constitutional scholar. And his opinion, he was one that pushed the 17th Amendment issue. And he had said at one time that if we've reversed the 17th Amendment, that it would put our country back on the correct course. He didn't say it would correct us, but it would get us on the course of correction within six months.

[00:53:40] That's how rapid he thought. And I've always thought it would be so quick. No, tell me why he said it. And then, I mean, you can tell me about your thinking too. But six months, that's fast. And the reason why is because of who is now being represented. Because the states will now, the states can now have a veto power over federal legislation. Instead of the states just begging for the scraps, you know, federal scraps, the states can now say, no, we're going to keep our money here.

[00:54:10] We're not going to let you spend too much money. We're not going to let you come into our states and overregulate our people. Well, and a state that maybe isn't experiencing the fraud, although they may all be experiencing it. But let's say, let's go with the theory that they're not all experiencing it the way Minnesota and California are. They can say, you're not taking our money unless you've cleaned that up. We're not doing this. We're not paying for that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:54:40] So the reason why I kind of went off on all that is because to create a movement to actually reverse the 17th Amendment would be difficult. But I think it should be done because if we really care about our Constitution and really care about the structure of government and all that, it's a much easier fix than sitting there passing all these little bills here or there or, you know, doing all these little things that we're doing or electing the better person or whatever. We could solve so many of those problems.

[00:55:10] So the message that I would have if we were to have a campaign is a message along the lines of bring our senators home. And so this is answering your question on what would you say to people about losing their vote. So the message would be bring our senators home because right now they are not in touch with the people of their states. And so let's bring them homes and get them back in touch with us again.

[00:55:37] And so what I would explain and what's tough about this is it takes a few minutes to explain to people. And if you have – if it takes that long, a lot of people aren't even going to pay attention. Not in the Instagram TikTok room. But if we could figure out how to present this quickly and maybe in the day of AI we can have AI help us figure out how to explain this quickly.

[00:55:56] But the point that you would lose your vote for your senator, when I would teach seminars, even when I would be teaching a seminar like even among some Tea Party groups who are very active, very engaged and involved, I'd ask the question, how many of you have the personal cell phone number of your United States senator? And very rarely, almost never, would I ever see a hand be raised.

[00:56:22] But then I would ask them, how many of you have the personal cell phone number of your state representative? And I'd always have a pretty good handful of people. And the point was is that you have direct connection with your state. They go to – your kids go to the same schools and you go to the same church. They live right down the road. You might bump into them at the grocery store or a restaurant or somewhere. You know who they are. Now my state representative at the time was a man by the name of Andy Biggs.

[00:56:52] Andy Biggs. At the time, Andy's really good. He's running for governor of Arizona right now. So anybody in Arizona watching this, Andy Biggs. Not that we're endorsing. As a personal friend, I guess. But I can tell you he is a warrior for liberty on Capitol Hill. He is. And I think he'd be a warrior for the people of Arizona. He is.

[00:57:14] And one of my favorite stories about Andy – I'm going to go off on a little tangent here – is he – when he was elected to the Senate president in Arizona, it just happened by chance. The Senate president had to resign. The new one that came in had to resign pretty quickly as well. There was just this scandal stuff happening. And so there was like nobody next in line, right?

[00:57:37] And so they're sitting in their caucus meeting and somebody just kind of jokingly, one of Andy's friends said, let's nominate Andy. But then people stopped and thought, yeah, let's nominate Andy. And so then Andy said, well, let's take a recess. He kind of, you know, pulled around a little bit and realized maybe he has the votes for this.

[00:58:02] And so they came back together and Andy was elected president of the Senate totally by merit, okay? Now, Andy and I were scheduled to – actually, it was at a Tea Party Patriots event. We were scheduled to debate Article 5 together because we're kind of on opposite sides on that issue.

[00:58:26] And so we traveled to the airport together and while we're driving to the airport and while we're in D.C. together, he's making phone calls to different Senate members. And he's asking them about, you know, what committee they want to serve on or what, you know, would they be willing to do this? Do they want to be this committee chairman? Now, all this is happening after the election.

[00:58:53] Now, that's key because if you know how legislatures work, usually these kind of conversations happen before the election because they're cutting deals. Right. I'll give you this chairmanship for your vote. Well, Andy was organizing the Senate after the election. He wasn't cutting deals. He was not – he wasn't having to sell his – you know, buy people's votes.

[00:59:21] And so he was great for Arizona because he was able to be a real advocate for liberty. He owed nobody anything. And that's a good position to be in when you're promoting liberty. Right. And so here he is, the Senate president, and doesn't owe anybody anything. And so he was really able to take some great action. And so, yeah. So in Capitol Hill, as a congressman, he's been great as well. He's just – he's so good. So back to my story.

[00:59:51] He – so he was my state representative at the time, and at the time, Senator McCain was my senator. And if Senator McCain had – was voting wrong about something, if I called Andy up and said, Andy, can you call Senator McCain and tell him, you know, you need to vote differently on this? Well, Senator McCain would not take his call. Right. He wouldn't take my call for sure. But he wasn't even going to take Andy's call.

[01:00:18] But if we reversed it, reversed the 17th Amendment and made it so that the senators were appointed by the state legislatures, if I called Andy up and said, hey, Andy, you need to call Senator McCain and rein him in. And if he called Senator McCain, McCain would answer his call in a heartbeat. Of course, because that's the person who he owes his job to and who he has to go to for reelection. And so you see how close that would actually put me to my senator?

[01:00:49] I could not influence Senator McCain in any way under the current system. But under the original system, I would have much more influence over him. And funny story, when I was actually explaining this in a seminar at one time, my phone rang and I looked down and it was Andy Biggs calling me. So I'm like, there's proof in the pudding there. Yeah, because you get to know your state senator and your state reps.

[01:01:19] It's much easier to do. Now, you have to be a little bit active. Like you've got to go take the initiative to get involved or to show up at one of their town hall meetings or volunteer on their campaign. But you have the ability to get to know them. That's right. And you're in the – they normally live in the community. I know there are full-time state legislators, legislatures. So those may not live in the community quite the same way.

[01:01:49] But they're not going off to a far distant land. They're just going to their state capital. That's right. And it's – you're much closer to them. It's just much easier. And they're a lot more interested in listening to you because, you know, I don't know what it is in other states. But in the state of Arizona, our average state legislature represents, I think, like about 35,000 of us. Yeah. Versus the 7.5 million that my legislature – that my senator represents.

[01:02:16] So I'm one voice out of 7.5 million. That's why they're not going to be that interested in taking my call. But when I'm one voice out of 35,000, that's a lot closer and they're going to be a lot more interested in taking my call. Right. And then I don't know how many people are in the legislature in Arizona, but it's a few hundred people who comprise both chambers of the legislature. The senator can be in touch with that many people. That's right.

[01:02:46] It's difficult for the senator to be in touch with 7.5 million people. Let's just be real. It's one human being. So you're a small drop in a big ocean or a big pond of noise that they hear. But they also – they can't consume that – they can't drink in that whole entire body of water either.

[01:03:07] But if it's a smaller one, they could rotate through and talk to every single legislature – legislator once a quarter at least personally. And that's why you actually – you might lose your ability to go into the voting booth and check off the box for your senator. But you would not lose your influence. You would actually gain influence over your senator.

[01:03:34] And you mentioned something with how the House is a democracy. The House is a representative democracy still. It's not a true democracy. Correct. We're voting for them to represent us. And then they don't come back to us with every single vote asking our opinion. I mean, they care, but we are voting for them to go make the decisions. That's right.

[01:04:00] And when it comes to the Senate, it's the same thing. We'd be voting for the legislative body to vote for the Senate if it was repealed. That's right. I just think the Senate is so, so broken right now. And if Democrats get control, I would imagine that an activist on the Democrat side would be as frustrated as I am with the Democrat Party. They would just be like, it is so broken.

[01:04:27] It may not be broken if they get rid of the filibuster. Like, then they may move things and the brick wall may crumble away. But if they get rid of the filibuster, then we are even that much closer to having two houses. Two houses of democracy. Yes, two houses of democracy rather than the way that you were describing when we're supposed to have a house that is more of an oligarchy and a house that's more of a democracy.

[01:04:59] I understand the short-term benefits of getting rid of the filibuster. And I think that there are long-term consequences to it. And I also struggle with that because the Constitution says that the Senate makes decisions by majority vote, except for a handful of exceptions. And they're not making a decision by majority vote right now. They're making a decision by a supermajority vote. And that's a problem, too.

[01:05:26] So it's just it's all dysfunctional. And I understand the argument for getting rid of the filibuster. And then I just think there are going to be so many consequences to that. The filibuster is a great example of how it's like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't, when it comes to trying to fix the problem. Whereas if we just fix the problem, which, again, is the 17th Amendment, then we wouldn't have to worry about it as much because the filibuster definitely has pros and cons.

[01:05:53] The biggest con I see, though, is it's based on minority rule at this point. And so supermajorities are good, but the founders made it made it really clear that they're good only for special circumstances like amending the Constitution or something like that. You don't ever want to have a supermajority with everyday business because then it becomes ruled by minority because the minority totally controls the vote.

[01:06:20] I mean, it's ridiculous that we need 60 percent vote because now 40 percent controls it all. Yes. And that is not what was intended when the Constitution was written. And so I can argue both sides of getting rid of the filibuster, which anyone listening right now can tell. But the argument many people will say in favor of keeping the filibuster is, well, the Senate is supposed to be the Tempest and the teapot and to cool the tempers.

[01:06:50] And OK, but the filibuster is not supposed is not the tool to do that. That's right. The filibuster isn't in the Constitution. It's it's the way the Senate was structured that was supposed to do it. And I think they're twisting a little bit of I and I understand why they're saying it right now, because they're like, well, this is the only thing that allows the Senate to cool to cool off tempers. And there is. There is an absolute value in doing that.

[01:07:19] And you know how we know all we have to do is go to very recent history and look at what happened when everything changed on a dime, oftentimes unconstitutionally, when it came to covid lockdowns. And all around the country, they were just abandoning, abandoning liberty and going towards tyranny. And it happened so quickly. And there wasn't there was no one there was no cooling off period. There was no period to slow things down at all. It just was bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

[01:07:49] And we got a taste of what tyranny would be like and why rapid change is so dangerous and why the founders were so smart to make the system. Slow to change. It annoys me sometimes. I'm like, please just go faster past the Save America Act already. And I also understand that part of it is working by design because we are supposed to have a little bit slower process for change.

[01:08:17] But what's causing that slowness, like you just pointed out. The the way that the founders designed it to be slow isn't what's causing it to be slow. That's right. And so because of that, what's slowing it down is actually bad. What's slowing it down is partisanship. And that was never it was wasn't designed to be slowed down by partisanship. It was crazy right now when it comes to the Save America Act specifically.

[01:08:41] It isn't slowing down over partisanship. It is slowing down over Democrat senators, which is different than because this is not an issue where the majority of Democrats hated and the majority of Republicans like it. This is an issue when it comes to only American citizens voting in our elections and voter I.D.

[01:09:03] The majority of all Americans, regardless of the political party and including in both political parties, the super majority want it. It's a it's a super, super majority. Yes. What polls at 80 some odd percent, 80 percent plus. I mean, even if you just go with the parties, Republicans are like 90 some odd percent and Democrats are still 70s. So it's it isn't partisan.

[01:09:29] It is it is a handful of senators holding on cleaving to power, which makes me think they just they want a corrupt election system. And they're OK if noncitizens vote and they're OK if the wrong people are casting or people are casting ballots for someone they really are not. Yeah, because I don't there's no other argument in favor of what they're doing at this point. I it it seems like that's the only the only reason.

[01:09:56] Right. The it is the logical conclusion on their actions because they're not doing what their constituency wants. Which is, yeah, when I said partisanship, I should have said extreme partisanship. Yeah. Because because it's not partisan, like you said, among the people, but among those in power, partisanship for the sake of keeping power, gaining power in the future. That's that seems to be the reason why it's stopping.

[01:10:21] And it's not like we're saying get rid of every voting machine, which is a position many people in the election integrity movement want. We are asking for that. I guarantee you if we poll on that, that is not that may hit 50 percent, but it may not even hit 50 percent because most people don't even understand the issues with the vote.

[01:10:45] You have to really delve in to understand the issues with the voting machines to understand why it might be a problem. So that we're not asking for an extreme position. We're not asking for a position that. That even just a bare minimum of a majority want. And it's just it's so frustrating. But because they're.

[01:11:10] The current Senate leadership cannot figure out how to wield power and the Democrats are able to wield power, massive power, even in the minority. It is it is a real problem. It's why Cornyn lost. I think Cassidy lost because he voted to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment. Yeah. And I think he should have lost. But Cornyn was a message.

[01:11:39] Cornyn was by far a message going, we are sick of this. And there are people who want to get rid of Senator Thune as the leader of the Senate. It's not like getting rid of a speaker. If it were, I'd be leading the charge right now to get rid of Senator Thune. But they just they don't they're paralyzed. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm just ranting about how bad it is.

[01:12:00] But it's because they passed this amendment and the consequences of it are so where we are today versus where we were 100 plus years ago when they passed it. I think if the people who are pushing for it 100 plus years ago knew how bad it would be today, I wonder if they would have actually done it. Yeah. A lot of states I don't think would have. I mean, I think there was a movement to do it on purpose. But but again, that's always a small percentage.

[01:12:30] Like the people really behind the scenes that are pushing something tend to be a small percentage. But the majority of the states and majority of the people, I think if they would have looked at them for sure, like 13th, I mean, 16th Amendment with income tax, you know, that was only it only affected 2 percent of the people at the time when it was passed. And now it affects a whole lot more than 2 percent. Yeah. And so I think, you know, the 16th Amendment is another one that if people could see what was going to happen in the future, then they'd be like, yeah, we're not going to do that.

[01:12:59] Yeah. Well, I could go off on that, too. So we better make sure that I don't. OK, when I think we we have talked about the kind of difference it would make if they they rolled that back and we talked about Article. Article five and we talked about the 16th Amendment. So when you dumped all that stuff in my lap, I covered all of those. What about the supremacy clause and Article six?

[01:13:26] So, you know, often people in the federal government or even outside the federal government, they just they want to always say that the supremacy, you know, supreme law of the land. The Supreme Court made a ruling supreme law of the land. Congress passes a law, supreme law of the land. And and so the question is, is it really is that really a good argument? And anything that comes out of the federal government is supreme and we just have to accept it as supreme.

[01:13:53] And and but the founders really defined what that meant. And again, we go to the Constitution and and look directly. At what that really meant in Article six.

[01:14:09] In that second paragraph, it says this Constitution and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land. So that seems like, OK, that's it. That's the supreme law of the land.

[01:14:31] But in all those words building up to the supreme law of the land, there's a lot of stuff to be unpacked there to see exactly what they're talking about. So we'll go back this Constitution. So so that's it. It just the Constitution doesn't it doesn't qualify it at all. It's just this is the supreme law of the land. OK, so that's the one item that's the supreme law and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof.

[01:14:59] So in pursuance thereof means within the Constitution. So any laws that are not constitutional are not the supreme law of the land. So any laws that don't go through this document. Right. Are not the supreme law of the land. And so in Article one, Section one, Clause one, the very first sentence of the Constitution says that all legislative authority shall be vested in the Congress of the United States. All legislative authority.

[01:15:25] Well, there's many, many more laws that came come out of Washington now that don't go through Congress. Right. Than those that do. And there's various ways that this happens, whether it's through executive order or whether it's through. Rules and regulations. Yeah. And they actually push it. They put it in the federal registry. And and the Supreme Court has basically said initially the Supreme Court is like, yeah, you can't just do that.

[01:15:50] But then the Supreme Court said, well, if we give it some time, like if you put it in the federal registry and the and the legislator branch doesn't object to it in like 30 or 60 days, then we can say it's a law. It's like, no, that's not what the Constitution says. That's not the process of making a law here. It's not let's put a law in and then and then see if Congress notices it. Make it where no no member of Congress has to vote for it. So you can't hold anyone accountable. That's right.

[01:16:20] So that check and balance with the people goes away. Exactly. The people with the states, the Senate, House. It just. Yeah, exactly. It. So so that means it has to be in pursuance thereof. So it has to be. Laws that are made through the Constitution. So that so that's the one clarification there. So the Constitution is supreme law laws that are constitutional as a supreme law. And then it says all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States.

[01:16:50] So, again, it's qualifying that treaties. So how's a treaty made? Right. The president will go and negotiate a treaty. And then you have to bring it to the Senate and the Senate has to ratify it. OK. So if the Senate does not ratify it, then it is not made under the authority of the United States. And so therefore, a treaty that is not ratified is not supreme law of the land.

[01:17:16] So there's a number of treaties, even the Yalta Agreement after World War II. Much of that was never ratified and only enough of it was ratified so that people could say it's been ratified. But there's portions of the Yalta Agreement that have still never been ratified by the Senate. And that's going way back.

[01:17:39] And so there's quite a few treaties or agreements that we've entered into with countries that the Senate has never ratified, but yet we treat it as law. And the Supreme Court will even rule on it as if it's law or as if it's the supreme law of the land. And so you see there's these qualifications that it has to go through. The laws have to be constitutional and treaties have to be done with the proper authority in order for things to be the supreme law of the land.

[01:18:05] Now the question is, what do we do if it's not done that way? And this leads us into the theory and idea. And we can talk about this another time more detailed when we get into like juries and things like that. But this idea of nullification. So what do we do? Can we just nullify these laws? Can we just act like they don't exist? And the answer is yes.

[01:18:31] So there's a lot of scholars out there and a lot of lawyers and judges and politicians that would be appalled at me saying that nullification exists. But the funny thing is that it exists. We use it all the time. So, for example, George Bush passed the Real ID Act.

[01:18:50] And only just barely has that act actually been able to be put into effect because the federal government finally started cracking down on states like Arizona who refused to participate for many, many years. And finally, they said, all right, if you don't want to participate, that's fine. But your people can't get on airplanes. And so I finally had to get a Real ID license if I want to travel. Right. I mean, I could have done it with a passport and stuff. But that still is a real it still does the same thing. Yeah. But here we are decades later. Right.

[01:19:20] Because the states, in essence, nullified that law by just ignoring it. The best example that we have today is marijuana. Marijuana is just as illegal federally as it was 10 years ago today. But all these states have passed marijuana laws, recreational and medical both ways. In fact, Arizona was the very first state to pass medical marijuana back in the 90s. But our legislature reversed it.

[01:19:51] And so that's a great example of nullification. And so as a result, the federal government doesn't even really enforce marijuana at this point because the states have effectively nullified it. So nullification happens, happens all the time. And states are trained to nullify immigration law as well. Yeah. Well, exactly. They're just not enforcing it. Sanctuary cities, sanctuary states are absolutely using the practice of nullification.

[01:20:19] And that's good to point out all these different issues because you'll notice something interesting is that there are Republican states and conservatives that are nullifying laws. And there are Democrat and liberal states that are nullifying laws. And so this is not a partisan tool. This is a tool that both parties and people use. And sometimes we use it inadvertently. It's not like we go out and campaign. Let's nullify marijuana.

[01:20:48] No, it's just by default we're nullifying it because we're passing different things in our states. So there are ways to solve the problem if we do have laws that come out of Washington that aren't within the Constitution or we shouldn't consider them supreme. Some of those laws are just simply nullified. It's not the best way to do it. It's not a very clean way to do it. But it is a way to do it. Yeah. Definitely, I think, not the best way.

[01:21:18] But it also just shows there's a check and balance up and down, up and down from the federal to the state level. That's right. And it still shows that, hey, we still recognize that we have the right to self-govern and we have the right to establish, alter, and abolish. And we're going to ultimately, if we disagree with you enough, we are going to govern ourselves and we're just going to ignore you. Right. You know. Right. And that's a good check and balance.

[01:21:43] It's good for the government to remember that from time to time that you can't just do anything. Eventually, people are just going to, they might not revolt, but they also might just ignore you. Well, and that happened really during COVID and a lot of places, like the whole mask thing. And a lot of places, including right here in this county, they were like, yeah, we're not wearing those. Yeah. I certainly did it in my own home. I nullified all that stuff. Yeah.

[01:22:09] And I had to wear it when it was on airplanes. But you know what, Bill? As soon as the Supreme Court said that was not constitutional, I called Delta. I fly Delta. I'm from Atlanta. I fly Delta. I called Delta immediately. I called their hotline and I'm like, the Supreme Court just ruled that masks are not required anymore. What are you doing about it? And they were like, I don't know. I didn't hear this. And I said, do you need to pass it on right away? Because this needs to be taken care of.

[01:22:39] And within like 48 or 72 hours, they were gone. And there were beautiful signs saying that they were all gone. That's right. And man, those masks were off. Yeah. American did the same thing. And you could tell the pilots when they would announce that, that they were pretty thrilled about it. Most of them were because they had a little spiel that they that American had them read that basically said, still be respectful of those who want to wear masks. Which is great. Yeah. And good. So anyway, it's funny. Yeah.

[01:23:07] But on the Delta flights, when that stuff was going on, they'd say federal law. And I'm like, there was no law passed. There was no law passed. Did you not go to civics? Probably they didn't. So it was a federal mandate, but it wasn't a federal law, which is part of the reason I think why they couldn't do it. And I hope we never, ever try that again in our society.

[01:23:32] What happens when the Supreme Court issues a terrible ruling? So that's a challenge. It's tough because the Supreme Court a long, long, long time ago usurped an authority that the Constitution never gave them. And that is what we call judicial review.

[01:23:51] And they actually took that authority upon themselves during a case when James Madison was the Secretary of State, Mulberry versus Madison. And in that case, basically the court says, you know, the Constitution doesn't really say who the final decider is. So we're going to take that role and we're going to use that in this decision that we're making right now. And so they not only usurped it, but then immediately applied that usurpation.

[01:24:22] And so the problem with that is that, first of all, they were, again, supposed to be the distant branch as far as equal with very little authority. And so we didn't have very many checks on them. And so as a result, they've taken on this really powerful position that's hard for us to correct. And that position is that they're the final say. And that they what they says is it's just the end.

[01:24:52] And there's there's an argument to be said for that. I mean, like, so who does have the final voice if nobody does? Jefferson, who was the who was the president at the time when they had this ruling and he really disagreed with with Chief Justice Marshall on this thing. Might be why he came back later and said there need to be more more constraints on the courts. Exactly. And he's like, impeachment is not enough. He said impeachment just it's a hard to do politically.

[01:25:22] And so it's just not going to happen. And he actually thought that we should have term limits, not term limits, but we should have a specific term for federal court or federal judges. And they can they can renew that term, but they have to. They have to come back and get permission to renew. So basically, we're going to just and some states actually have that system. Arizona has that system.

[01:25:50] It's we call it a merit system where the court judges don't get elected, but they have to come back to the people to to retain their office. So anyway, so so they usurp this authority. And Jefferson, when he was asked, well, who should have the final say? He said all parties, all parties to the contract have the final say. And part of the way he felt like that can happen is through things like nullification and stuff like that.

[01:26:19] But it's like, why does one branch get the final say when when they may not be right? And another branch might actually have the right answer for a particular issue. So it's really difficult. If the Supreme Court comes down with with a bad ruling, it's really hard for us to do anything about it simply because we've all accepted this. The fact that the Supreme Court has the final say.

[01:26:47] So the one way that we can actually handle that is with some cases. Congress, there is a check on the court that is not used very often. When it is used, it's usually used quietly because they typically don't want to really let the people know that this power exists too much.

[01:27:12] But if we go to Article 3 and Section 2, Article 3, Section 2, and I'm going to breeze through this super fast because it's a little tedious. But the judicial power shall extend to all cases in the law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States.

[01:27:40] So this is basically going to talk about what their original jurisdiction is, meaning this is the jurisdiction that they have no matter what. So laws of the United States and treaties made or shall be made under their authority in all cases affecting ambassadors, ministers, councils, all cases of admiralty maritime jurisdiction,

[01:28:02] to controversies in which more than one state will be a party, between citizens of different states, so on and so forth. And then it goes on, the next paragraph, in all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which the state shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction.

[01:28:23] So out of all those things, the only ones that they have original jurisdiction is ambassadors, public ministers, and those in which a state shall be a party. So all those things go directly to the Supreme Court, for sure, right? And which is interesting because there's so many cases that states are involved in that they bring to federal courts when they shouldn't. Those cases go directly to the Supreme Court. Anytime a state's involved, it goes right to the Supreme Court. It shouldn't go to the federal courts first.

[01:28:53] But anyway, in all other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make. So Congress can actually put forth exceptions and regulations as to how the courts handle certain issues and cases.

[01:29:21] So Congress can limit the jurisdiction of the courts. So, for example, remember a handful of years ago when there was a movement with the same-sex marriage stuff, right? And whether federal courts – this is, I think, before the Supreme Court ruled on it and stuff. And we didn't need a constitutional amendment for that issue. In fact, there was reasons why I didn't believe that we should have one.

[01:29:48] But all we needed is for Congress to simply tell the courts, that's not your jurisdiction. You can't rule on marriages. That's something that's left to the states. Congress can actually dictate that. And so that's how – so if a bad ruling comes down, it's hard for us to fix or do something different with that ruling, that particular ruling.

[01:30:12] But if the courts are continually making bad rulings on a particular subject, then Congress, with just a simple majority, doesn't require all of the supermajorities that an amendment requires. Just with a simple majority, Congress can restrict the jurisdiction of the courts. Congress. Okay. Which is a power – I think the one failure that the founders had, the most major failure,

[01:30:39] is I think that they thought that Congress would be a lot more jealous of their power than they have proved to be. They're not jealous of it. They are willing to give it up and seed it. They don't want to take the tough votes. That's right. Because taking the tough votes might make them – make the people back home upset. Exactly. So if they're able to not make a decision about same-sex marriage and let the court bear the brunt of it and the court faces no consequences with the people, then they're fine with that. That's right.

[01:31:09] If they're willing to cede power over to the executive branch – but not really the executive branch because the president doesn't want to make the decisions either – but just unelected experts with the regulatory power, they're fine with that too. Let the experts go do it. They're hitting – nobody even knows who they are. That's right.

[01:31:28] And it – I don't know if it is a fault of the founders, but it's certainly a fault at this point of the elected officials who we have today. Yeah. They shouldn't be ceding their power. That's right. And they have no right to because, again, Article 1, Section 1, Clause 1, the very, very first sentence of the Constitution, all legislative authorities shall be vested in Congress of the United States.

[01:31:51] There is nowhere in the Constitution that gives Congress the right to delegate their legislative authority. That is something that rests squarely with them. But they're happy to abdicate their power. That's right. I think one of the things that President Trump has done is gone back in and said, I'm the president, these are the duties assigned to me in the Constitution, and I am going to execute these duties.

[01:32:19] And his cabinet has – there have been interviews where they pull out the Constitution and they read the duties of the executive branch. It's good to see a president who's like, the buck stops here again in this country, and not one who just wants to – I don't know – not do that. I don't know. I could come up with – That's what's designed. You know, the executive branch is designed as the monarchy. And so the buck does stop there.

[01:32:48] It's a single individual. Yes. Everybody in the executive branch answers to that single individual. And so that is exactly what needs to happen. And one of the problems is that we have added so many different bureaucratic layers. In fact, one of the great things that have happened recently is for the president to reclaim authority over these other executive departments. Because these executive departments, they didn't answer to him or her. So they answered to nobody.

[01:33:18] Yeah. And they think that they're invincible and that they can just stay there forever and that they can't be fired. Because they couldn't. Yeah. It's just crazy. They were right. Yeah. So that's why it's good that we started correcting it. And one department that nobody ever hears of and they don't even know exists is there's the office of the presidency. The office of the presidency is not the president.

[01:33:42] It's actually a bureaucratic office that executes and pushes out regulation and does all these different things independent of the president. And it was created by Congress. And so that's, again, it's an example of Congress actually placing in the executive branch a department that's independent of the president that is doing Congress's job but behind the scenes that nobody ever knows about.

[01:34:09] And so that's another area that I hope that as we're shaking things up, I hope that the president sees that office and realizes we should think about getting rid of that because it's basically, it's kind of a stealth presidency that exists. That's quite alarming, Phil. It is very alarming. And it was established, again, as part of the progressive movement, it was established in the early 1900s.

[01:34:39] It was actually put in place by this guy by the name of Charles Miriam, who was a political scientist. And he advised a number of presidents. And he created some different governmental structures that created these, a lot of unelected offices and positions. And so anyway, we've done some cool research on him.

[01:35:05] In fact, my daughter was one of the ones, you remember my daughter Lane, she was one of the ones that helped discover Charles Miriam. Oh, wow. As she was doing some stuff, even just in high school, she was reading through this document that established regional governments, which is kind of these other kind of stealth type governments. And this isn't, I'm not saying stealth because it's like conspiratorial. These are government bodies that exist and that we know they exist.

[01:35:34] But anyway, she's reading through this document and she's like, this sounds an awful lot like Charles Miriam. And sure enough, he was one of the authors of this. Wow. So anyways. Very interesting. One thing, you point, you say that the executive branch is the monarchy and designed to be like a monarchy. But the left is going, no kings, no kings.

[01:35:58] And it's designed to function so that there is an executive, but he is still accountable and electable. And he's not a king. Correct. And so, and that's a good thing to clarify because of this no kings movement, because for me to say it's designed to be a monarchy is a good opportunity. Yeah, we need to clear that up there. Exactly.

[01:36:21] So that's the whole point is that we bring in these forms of government, but we strip the powers from them that that type of government is very bad at. So a monarch is bad at writing laws. They're bad at adjudicating laws. They show too much favoritism. They have too much personal bias involved in all that. But where a monarchy is good is in fast decision making, good for executing the laws.

[01:36:51] It's good to have a single person to kind of blame on laws being executed. You need a commander in chief when it comes to the military. That's right. You can't fight wars by committee. No. That's been proven to just be major failures. So there's just a lot of activities that need to be done by a single individual, and it works the best that way.

[01:37:12] And so that's really what we're doing is we're only taking the good stuff, and then we have these checks and balances in order to try to eliminate the bad stuff. And so that's exactly it is no kings. We want no kings. And we don't have a king. That's correct. We don't have a king, but we don't want them.

[01:37:32] And that's why we have these checks and balances because really what I would talk about in saying I don't want a king is I don't want an executive that also embodies the legislative and judicial, that is supreme, that believes that he's appointed by God in order to become a king, you know, divine right of kings.

[01:37:53] And I don't want a king that governs on a whim, writes laws on a whim, judges people on a whim, throws people in jail on a whim, all those things that are bad. And the ironic thing about a lot of the folks that are pushing the no kings movement is that is the form of government that they seem to want, is government on a whim and on emotions.

[01:38:21] Antifa, for example, I mean, they come across like they're anarchists, and they come across like they don't want fascism, but all their actions are fascist. Yes. And they are more along the lines of a king. And even if they are showing anarchy, what we've discovered, which is very, very fascinating, is in anarchy, people believe that the power to govern originates in the individual.

[01:38:50] And we say the power to govern originates in nature or God, and then we're granted the gift of self-governance. But in anarchy, they believe it just originates with me, starts with me, so I can do whatever I want whenever I want. So it's an individual person. Whereas in democracy, they believe that the power to govern is in the people collectively.

[01:39:15] Well, what's interesting is that in an oligarchy, they also believe that it's in the people collective, but just a small group of people. And in monarchy, they believe that it originates with people, but just a single individual. So what's fascinating is the mindset of anarchy and monarchy is very similar because they believe that the power originates in individuals. So anarchy almost always devolves into monarchy.

[01:39:40] Democracy, where they're collectively minded, almost always devolves into oligarchy, which is collectively minded. So it's a fascinating thing. So what's fascinating about that is the group that's out there saying no kings, the way they behave, their actions, the form of governments that they are trying to push will always devolve into a king. Well, I continue to say that the Democrat Party is a party of projection. The things they say are actually the things they are. That's right.

[01:40:11] I'm sure they don't like hearing that, but it's just very bad. Absolutely. Even down to things like even tolerance. I mean, they claim to be very tolerant, but they are the least tolerant when it comes to especially political positions. I mean, the whole cancel culture is about not being tolerant. Yes. Right. And so, yeah, so I find it.

[01:40:34] So just to clarify again, when we're talking about the executive branch as a monarchy, it is a well-defined monarchy that is stripped of all of its power and authority except for just these small little things. And so we're going right down to the really root definition of monarchy, which simply means rule by one. And so the things that need rule by one, like commander in chief, that's what we've done is we've made it so it's rule by one as a commander in chief.

[01:41:05] But the areas that rule by one is terrible, not happening. It's rule by many or it's rule by majority or rule by few or whatever. Well, I think we covered most of the Constitution, at least some parts you did not cover in the training. Yeah. Is there anything that I missed when we're talking about the Constitution? I think we covered it pretty good. All right. Got into all the fun stuff. All right.

[01:41:29] Of course, we can get into boring stuff about, you know, all the little, you know, that's what I love about conversations and the way we approach the Constitution with mixed form of government and all these other things. This is so much more interesting than just like, here's the checks and balances. And here's Article 1 and Article 4. Yeah. That's right. So we're not talking about the nuts and bolts. We're talking about, you know, the passion behind it, the principles behind it, the real juicy, fun stuff. Right. Yeah. Okay.

[01:41:57] And people may be going, but you didn't talk about the Bill of Rights, which is what we'll do in our next conversation. That's right. Which is going to be a lot of fun, too, because the Bill of Rights. Yeah. Excellent stuff. All right, Bill. Thank you so much for joining me. You're welcome. And to get his training, make sure you go to TeaPartyPatriots.org forward slash 1776. If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution.

[01:42:27] You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit TeaPartyPatriots.org.