0077 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude Named Ben and Sir Josh

Sir Gene: 0:15

This is Sir Gene with Sir Gene speaks and is joining me always today is a dude named Ben named Ben. See, I got your name right again, Ben.

Sir Ben: 0:23

Damn, that's a streak.

Sir Gene: 0:25

All right. There's no way I'm gonna do a three for three. So next week, I I'm sure I'll screw it up again.

Sir Ben: 0:30

I don't know gene, I believe in you

Sir Gene: 0:32

well, that's just makes one of you but we do have a special guest today.

Sir Ben: 0:36

Yes, we do.

Sir Gene: 0:37

yes. And why don't you go ahead and introduce him

Sir Ben: 0:40

so buddy of mine, Josh here is joining us. I've known Josh for many years. He's he's a like mind and,

Sir Gene: 0:46

sir. Josh to you,

Sir Ben: 0:48

yes, sir. Joshua. And he he he's currently studying history and going through and you know, he is a pretty smart dude. So I think we'll enjoy you having the conversation.

Sir Gene: 0:57

is that sum up Josh?

Sir Josh: 0:59

That about sums it

Sir Gene: 1:00

You're a pretty smart dude. That's the extent of it. Okay.

Sir Josh: 1:03

I'm a pretty smart dude. Yeah. I'll take it. I'll take it. But that's sir, Joshua, the historian keeper of the historical record to you, gentlemen. Thank you very much.

Sir Gene: 1:12

There you go. Perfect. Well, Josh, you've been a, a big supporter of not just this podcast, but also on the relenting, which is another podcast I do. And now it seems like Darren mentioned that you'd been sort of donating to To his other podcast as well. So boy, you are quite the donator to the podcasts of the no sort of related podcast.

Sir Josh: 1:38

Oh precisely. You guys say it very succinctly when you talk about value for value. So there's a lot of value in these podcasts because there's conversations that's going on, that you don't hear other places. And Darren does a really great job with all of his shows. And as I've always said, unrelenting is my new drinking buddy. So yeah, that's, that's my, that's my catch phrase right now.

Sir Ben: 2:00

Yeah. Darren does a good job of pirating music.

Sir Gene: 2:03

Oh boy. Yes. That's a fun topic. And I try and mention that as often as I can.

Sir Josh: 2:09

Yeahing music. That's so funny.

Sir Gene: 2:10

that way naturally, of course. But you know, he's got a different perspective.

Sir Josh: 2:14

Hell yeah.

Sir Ben: 2:15

of unrelenting, gene, come on, man. You and BIM rose, you just threw me

Sir Gene: 2:21

thought we did a pretty good show

Sir Ben: 2:22

Yeah. Well, let me clarify something, sir. BI rose, as I've said multiple times, when I talk about race on the show or something like that, I'm talking from a classical definition. And if you haven't heard me say it, I'll say it now, the right level of analysis is always the individual group context doesn't work. And I think the 20th century proved that to us. But you know, Hey, I could be wrong.

Sir Gene: 2:45

yeah.

Sir Josh: 2:46

Yeah. And, and Ben is often wrong in a lot of things.

Sir Gene: 2:50

Ooh. Well, see, now this is a good reason to have you on, I guess you can tell us some of those, some of those reasons

Sir Josh: 2:57

no, I wouldn't want to do that. Not on the show. It, it, it's not good show content.

Sir Gene: 3:02

that's the whole point man is.

Sir Ben: 3:04

Oh, good Lord. Trust me, Josh. And I have some stories

Sir Josh: 3:09

Oh yeah.

Sir Gene: 3:10

Yeah. How far back do you guys know each other?

Sir Josh: 3:13

at least 2010,

Sir Ben: 3:15

No longer than that.

Sir Josh: 3:17

20 10, 20 11 ish. I was still in school when we met. So it was before I left a and M, which was 2011.

Sir Ben: 3:25

Yeah. It was before 2010, but yeah. Anyway, lots of drinks since then. Lots of sleeping, so,

Sir Josh: 3:31

of drinks in sleeping and I think we've changed. Well, I definitely got married and had kids in that time. Wow. Geez. It's been a long time. Oh, crazy.

Sir Ben: 3:42

we actually both got married and had kids in that timeframe,

Sir Josh: 3:45

Yeah, we both did. Yeah. You got married too. Oh yeah. Yeah. You got married. Yeah. This you've been with Lindsay forever, so, yeah, so, yeah, so yeah. It's good

Sir Gene: 3:55

All right. I'm sure everyone really cares a lot about that. So, there was, there were a couple of things that you guys were talking now for people who don't know, we do have kinda a back channel that we communicate on,

Sir Ben: 4:07

Mm.

Sir Gene: 4:07

Somewhat related to the podcast and somewhat just. You know, to drunk calling, which is how it started. And in that back channel, I usually will share stuff. Some of which ends up also on no gender social, some of which doesn't and the other guys will as well. And there was something that you had shared recently that I haven't seen. Ben. So what

Sir Ben: 4:28

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 4:28

that up?

Sir Ben: 4:29

which one?

Sir Gene: 4:31

Any of the ones you shared recently?

Sir Ben: 4:33

okay. Throw me under the bus. I'm not sure which one you're talking

Sir Gene: 4:36

scrolling and I'm trying to find the, the exact article that I'm referring to, but I'm, I'm not signing it. So go

Sir Ben: 4:41

latest one that I think is absolutely abhorrent is a Texas mother is suing academy, which is a sporting good store. Because her daughter committed suicide after they sold her a gun. So, you know, it, it it's a, to me, that's absolutely asinine and it's akin to, you know, suing a car dealership after someone goes out and kill someone in a drunk driving accident. It's just absolutely Aine. I, if a court doesn't throw it out on standing alone, then it's just horrible.

Sir Gene: 5:11

how is, how is the store more responsible than the parent? I think the store should counter soon.

Sir Ben: 5:16

Well, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, as long as she's over 18 and passed her background check, this woman has no standing.

Sir Josh: 5:24

Yeah,

Sir Gene: 5:25

Yeah. I mean, well, you don't, I think the standing here comes from the, the loss potential, like, you know, the loss of grandkids kind of thing,

Sir Ben: 5:36

Well, that's still not standing because the academy had nothing to do with the act. Right. So if I go buy a shovel, whack you over the head of it, with it and kill you, can someone Sue home Depot for selling me the

Sir Gene: 5:47

yeah. That happens all the time.

Sir Ben: 5:48

No. Anyway

Sir Gene: 5:50

no, you're absolutely wrong. Can they Sue home Depot? Absolutely. 100%. They

Sir Ben: 5:54

will it be successful though?

Sir Gene: 5:56

That's a different question. That's not the question you asked.

Sir Ben: 5:58

I mean, people are Uber litigious all the time. I, I, I get

Sir Gene: 6:02

one of the beauties of this of our system is that anybody can Sue anybody

Sir Ben: 6:06

Yeah. Well, tort reform is required at some point.

Sir Gene: 6:11

but that is one of the core functions of government is allowing people to Sue each other.

Sir Ben: 6:16

Yeah, absolutely. And moderating that discussion between. But anyway, I just find this entire concept that this woman is gonna Sue academy for her daughter's death. After, you know, they sold her a weapon that was used in her suicide is Justine.

Sir Gene: 6:32

now, there is a, a potential chance here that she will succeed. If there's some question about the legality of the sale of the weapon,

Sir Ben: 6:41

and that that's a different story. So if academy failed to abide by, you know, the firearms act and didn't do the background check or didn't do their due diligence then absolutely.

Sir Gene: 6:53

She's suing for mostly for negligence.

Sir Ben: 6:55

yeah, one, one issue that would be interesting. And this is purely me playing devil's advocate from a legal standpoint is if the background check was delayed and she hit that three day waiting period, and there was no answer. And then, you know, you get in that must release and then it's up to the seller's discretion. So that, that would be an interesting one.

Sir Gene: 7:15

Well, it sounds like what did you read the article by the way? Cuz it doesn't sound like you had

Sir Ben: 7:19

I did, but that was a hypothetical gene.

Sir Gene: 7:22

okay. Because in the article it talks about one of the issues that she brings up is the fact that this gun was sold outside of store opening hours.

Sir Ben: 7:31

Okay.

Sir Gene: 7:33

So then the question is, was this a legitimate sale by the store or was this a individual who worked at the store wanting to do a favor to a friend?

Sir Ben: 7:46

And we don't have those details. So what it sounded like to

Sir Gene: 7:50

get that data.

Sir Ben: 7:51

right. What it sounded like to me from, I don't, I don't know if you did any more digging and looked at Academy's response, but essentially their answer was, the store was closing down. This was, you know, they, this was a transaction in progress that started before the closing hours. So they were just completing. That is what it sounds like to me.

Sir Gene: 8:12

Yeah. And I think that this is gonna pivot on whether or not the, the girl who committed suicide knew the, the oh, the seller or

Sir Ben: 8:21

individual. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 8:23

Because,

Sir Ben: 8:24

But

Sir Gene: 8:25

I think the store's gonna be in the clear, the question is whether or not

Sir Ben: 8:28

that individual. Yeah.

Sir Josh: 8:29

Yeah, the individual self that, that's what I'm getting a lot of the, the, the articles I'm reading it. It's literally cut and paste articles. That's all it is. Ooh. Daily mail. Yeah. That's just cut and paste, which

Sir Gene: 8:43

Well, they've always been cut and paste. I mean, that's the funny thing is before the internet, it was just harder because you'd have to get, you know, examples of different newspapers in different cities at the same publication time to see just how similar they are. Now. It's super easy to do that while it's been that way for a long time. But certainly I think AP and Reuters were, they made businesses out of this idea of writing generic articles that others can use

Sir Josh: 9:11

No,

Sir Gene: 9:12

for a subscription fee.

Sir Ben: 9:13

yeah. So another interesting thing on the gun front, I don't know if y'all been tracking this bill, this new gun control bill that's being introduced in the house.

Sir Josh: 9:21

Not.

Sir Ben: 9:23

So, you know, it, it, it's still in the early stages. I don't know how many signers on have happened yet, but looking at the generic proposals that they're talking about, because I haven't gotten to the committee meetings. I haven't looked at the actual text in full, so forgive me for that. I have been out for the last week. So, but essentially the key points would be basically banning any modern firearm. So anything with a pistol grip and an extendable stock a a magazine and a pistol grip, right? Anything with a detachable mag and a pistol grip, regardless of count it, if it has a detachable mag at all also even gets into weight classifications on pistols. So if it's over, I think it's like 50 ounces. That's considered an assault weapon for some reason. So, there's a lot of really weird items in here. And the most insidious part about this entire thing is it's not retroactive at all. So current gun owners will, you know, oh, this doesn't affect you. It just affects future sales. Well, the problem with that is how do I prove that I own something pre ban, right? And that ends up with a defacto registry of some sort, because I have to have some way of proving this and you know, it, this is a slippery slope in one of those things that I. Sadly, a lot of gun owners will just say, well, this doesn't affect me. So who cares when they really should be like, yeah, fuck, no, you're not doing this

Sir Josh: 10:44

No. Yeah. It's I agree with you. It'll end up with a de facto registry. It's it's about proof and government's only gonna care about what you can prove, especially if what you can prove in a court.

Sir Gene: 10:56

Yeah,

Sir Josh: 10:57

Well,

Sir Gene: 10:58

that's interesting. I mean, they've, they've they have got the numbers, so they it's surprising. It's taken them two years to push this issue.

Sir Ben: 11:07

well, but they don't really have the numbers. You know, the Senate is really not at, yeah. There are a lot of rhinos I get

Sir Gene: 11:15

of them, except for three there's, three non rhinos in Senate. Everybody else is rhino

Sir Ben: 11:19

who are your three non rhinos

Sir Gene: 11:22

ran Paul and then two other people

Sir Ben: 11:25

okay. Who and I don't know that I fully agree around around ran Paul because ran Paul is not his dad.

Sir Gene: 11:33

He's on his dad, but he's unfortunately the best we got right

Sir Ben: 11:36

Yeah. So I've known the Paul's for a long time. My grandfather was one of the guys that went to Ron and got him to run for Congress back in the day. So my, my grandfather was mayor of crystal beach, Texas, and Pauls lived over in Surfside, not too far away, so yeah.

Sir Gene: 11:54

Yeah, just being a doctor

Sir Ben: 11:57

Yep. And then got thrown into being Dr. No.

Sir Gene: 12:01

exactly.

Sir Josh: 12:02

doctor. No. Nice.

Sir Gene: 12:04

Well, I, I don't know, man. I think I am surprised that there hasn't been gun restrictions coming out of the current Democrat house Senate and president right now. And it's been almost two years in. So if they do pass something, I'm sure it'll be bad, but I'm also fully expected it to be the case. As soon as the last election was over.

Sir Ben: 12:27

Well, and here's, here's the question. Everyone needs to be asking themselves and I hate to say it, but what is that red line? What is that line that thou shall not cross. Right. And you know, I, I just,

Sir Gene: 12:41

I don't get guns, have nothing to do with it. I think for most people it's food.

Sir Ben: 12:45

which is sad. I, I mean, because if you wait till food is the issue at hand, then you've allowed yourself to be stripped down to that point. You're done. You know, it's, it's one of those things. It's like, if you're getting arrested, you have a choice to make. If you put, if you allow yourself to be put in that vehicle, then that's it, you, you are out of control. So, you know, you have to decide and when to act, not that I'm suggesting that anyone should resist arrest, but you know, just say.

Sir Josh: 13:11

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 13:12

Yeah, well, cuz we know what happens. If you resist, they burn the billing down and kill your kids.

Sir Ben: 13:18

Potentially

Sir Josh: 13:18

potentially yes. And that it's yeah. That's and that's a very

Sir Gene: 13:22

happened.

Sir Josh: 13:24

Yeah, it has happened before

Sir Gene: 13:25

So is the red line losing your kids

Sir Ben: 13:28

well, you, you know, it's interesting. So, there's a really good story from,

Sir Gene: 13:34

or your wife getting shot?

Sir Ben: 13:36

yeah, so there's a really good story from Gulag archipelago. About the stoicism of,

Sir Gene: 13:42

Jordan Peterson,

Sir Ben: 13:43

I read the ULA, our KGO long before Jordan Peterson was famous. Thank you. I also like, I, I read a lot of Russian authors, actually. Jean, thank you.

Sir Gene: 13:53

Yeah, you sound like one of those Putin lover types

Sir Ben: 13:56

no, just Russian literature is actually fairly good.

Sir Gene: 13:59

don't you know, Russian literature has been banned along with ballet and music.

Sir Ben: 14:03

Yeah. Well, they can ban ballet all they want. That's that's fine by me

Sir Gene: 14:08

You're willing

Sir Ben: 14:08

that's a useless cultural vest that can go away.

Sir Gene: 14:12

walking

Sir Ben: 14:13

that I, I know that ballet promotes the body type you're most interested in,

Sir Gene: 14:17

I do like that body type, I will say for sure.

Sir Ben: 14:21

I don't think Josh has any idea. The Pico Delos that we're dancing around.

Sir Josh: 14:26

little bit picks, eh, little bit, a little bit, but you were about to go into your,

Sir Gene: 14:29

yes. Go ahead.

Sir Josh: 14:31

so

Sir Gene: 14:31

log away.

Sir Josh: 14:32

waiting patiently for

Sir Ben: 14:33

Oh, sorry. So there's this one story where this guy's going to be executed and he knows he's going to be executed. And they allow him to see his wife, but they warn him that if they, he tells her that he's going to be executed, that she'll be executed right there along with him. So they allow him and her to stay at the prison camp and walk around for, you know, a, a period of time. I don't remember how long. And he just took in his wife and didn't tell her a word and stoically bared that to the end.

Sir Gene: 15:05

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 15:06

you know, it, it, it relates in that yes, sometimes you have to choose between your family and, you know, trying to fight for your rights. But, you know, the point he was at his life was forfeit. No matter what. So my entire point in this is giving up our rights to where we get. There is not a good thing. You know, you can vote yourself into communism, but you can't vote yourself out. And the fact of the matter is if we allow our rights to be taken, if you ever feel like you need to hide your guns, it's probably too late.

Sir Gene: 15:40

Yeah, no, that's, that's definitely the case. However, let's play that out. So let's say it's coming to that point where you're starting to feel like you have to hide your guns. Like nothing will happen if you don't right now, but there's legislation coming up. So does that mean you start using your guns at that point before there is any legislation, does that mean you start using your guns at the enforcement of the legislation that is in your opinion, unconstitutional without acting for the, without waiting for the Supreme court to weigh in on this? What, at which point

Sir Ben: 16:17

think we are at a

Sir Gene: 16:18

you bury your

Sir Ben: 16:19

wait on the Supreme court in any way, shape or form. I think it is time to form you know, at, at that point, I think it's time to form secession and secessionist groups. I think it's time for state legislatures to act immediately to try and nullify in any state legislatures that are unwilling to do. So then, you know, they are no longer representative of the American people, as far as I'm concerned.

Sir Gene: 16:41

Okay. So you're looking at it from a state level, which would imply that you think your state has over 50% of people who agree with you.

Sir Ben: 16:49

I don't care if they do or not. It's about human

Sir Gene: 16:52

you gonna do a succession if your state does not have

Sir Ben: 16:55

Oh, I think it'll tear some states apart,

Sir Gene: 16:58

Yeah. Like

Sir Ben: 16:59

you know, like Missouri I, I think, I think Missouri is. So if you look at the civil war, I think the example of Missouri is what is going to happen in most states where the state was absolutely torn us under

Sir Josh: 17:13

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 17:14

yeah.

Sir Josh: 17:15

it, it was, was also a hotbed of communists back in the day.

Sir Gene: 17:19

Missouri.

Sir Josh: 17:20

Missouri. Yeah. That's where a lot of, yeah. That's where a lot of the people from the failed revolutions in Europe from 18 48, 49 a lot of them settled in Missouri because it was frontier land. Yeah. And that's how the Republican party was able to have a foothold in that area is because the Republicans initially in the mid fifties, they, they were able to kind of excite the socialist revolutionary mindset of, of majority of those groups. And that's how the Republican party was able to have representation across the country was because these old socialists that were everywhere,

Sir Gene: 17:55

Okay. You're losing me. How's the Republican party using socialists?

Sir Josh: 17:58

That they were

Sir Ben: 17:59

way McCarthy did as a backstop, as a, as a whipping

Sir Josh: 18:02

Mm-hmm as a whipping boy. Yeah. The, the, the, these guys that, that immigrated to the United States in the 1850s, and later on the other 19th century, a lot of them came from these, these failed revolutions these socialist revolutions in Europe. And and they were and they were specifically targeted, or I should say advertised to by the Republican party as they were looking for new supporters to stor, to, to be a part of a new political movement inside the United States. Because at that time, the Republican party was very new and it was also very controversial

Sir Gene: 18:38

you're talking about 1850.

Sir Josh: 18:39

yeah, 1850. Mid 19th

Sir Gene: 18:42

people aren't. Okay. I don't know if you said 18. I heard fifties.

Sir Josh: 18:46

Oh, I, I may have

Sir Ben: 18:47

we were talking about the

Sir Gene: 18:48

I thought I

Sir Josh: 18:50

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. pre-Civil war. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 18:53

Free civil war, communist.

Sir Josh: 18:56

pre-Civil war coms. That it, it would be more correct, historically, correct. To just call them socialists versus communists. I don't, I, I, I don't see a whole lot of evidence of the term communist being used and a lot of literature in the 1850s and sixties, outside of the communist manifesto written by Carl Marx. I don't see the word communist used in that context. It's mainly, it's mainly the socialist the, that that's used

Sir Ben: 19:23

well, and you,

Sir Josh: 19:24

to describe these groups.

Sir Ben: 19:25

and you have to remember that during this time period that Josh is talking about, communism is brand new. I mean, the communist manifesto was only written eight, what? 1848.

Sir Gene: 19:33

48. Yeah.

Sir Josh: 19:34

Yeah. 48, 47, 49.

Sir Ben: 19:37

And, you know, what, what he's talking about it also is after the failed French revolution, after, you know, we start walking down the path in Europe of a lot of turmoil, you know, people think of world war I and two as redefining Europe, but there was a lot of things that happened in the 18 hundreds that redefined Europe and you know, we've hell we can even go back to Scotland and the Jacobin revolutions same sorts of things over and over again.

Sir Gene: 20:05

interesting. Okay. So, so the, the Republicans were appealing to them for a voter base, but did these communists then not want slavery? Is the idea.

Sir Josh: 20:17

The, the, the people that I know that were a part of that, well, it's called them. The socialist is called them the people, if you will slavery itself or in the abolition movement, would've been their, their single issue to grab a hold of. So the abolitionist mindset, the anti-slavery mindset was what was used to, to promote the idea of the Republican or the republicanism political ideology to these to these groups of people. And that was what was able to excite their base. We have to fight, we have to give you a fight. And the people that you're going to fight are these Democrats in the south that are all pro-slavery. And that was part of the divide of the people in the 1850s, moving into the 1860s. And that was part of the political excitement, such that you could get people on one side or the other to get them to hate each other so that they could vote in one or two political parties at that time. But what failed is that when 1860 presidential election came along. The Democrats they lost their their, their, their ability to win the white house because they divided their vote among several candidates. And that's how Lincoln won and that pissed off a lot of people.

Sir Ben: 21:32

And that's a, that's a thing that people don't realize is pre Premo, pre pre modernity. You know, in the 18 hundreds, there was multiple parties. In fact, there wasn't just one, Lincoln was not the only Republican candidate. There were multiple Republicans running and it, it, we were far closer to what, you know, a European style election would look like. You know, all that said it, it changed fairly drastically. So the, before we get too off in the civil war, because I know a lot of people are like, Jesus Christ, guys, enough civil war history. But you know, one of the things, the reason why we're even bringing this up is because Missouri was so torn Missouri and Virginia are perfect examples. You know, the formation of West Virginia happened because of Y you know, this riff you know, you even had groups like Kelly's Irish brigade. Most of the time when we think of the civil war, we think of the Irish fighting for the north. But the fact of the matter is it was split. It was drastically split. So, you know, the, the, the entire point here is to say that if some, if we get to the conflict point, which I think there are two issues in modern in modernity that is pushing us that way, that I think it's the gun control issue, because I know that's a personal red line for me. And I think it's you know, the row V Wade issue for the other side is really pushing that. So we have two. What, what both sides consider moral imperatives that divide us. And I think those division lines are not going to be north and south. I think it's, I, I, I think that it's likely to be rural versus urban, and I think it's likely to be not contained in state versus state combat. It's going to be inter state intrastate combat as it were, whether that is law fair, political or outright warfare.

Sir Gene: 23:18

Yeah, it it's kind of touches. I don't know if you guys listened to the last episode of under relenting mores was the cohost, but we talked a little bit about this idea that people aren't physically grouped together by their beliefs right now. And I don't know that people necessarily were other than first generations of people that moved whether moving west or whether moving from Europe to the us there's some commonality of beliefs in people that say, well, screw you, I'm gonna take my stuff and go somewhere else.

Sir Ben: 23:54

Well,

Sir Gene: 23:54

But once you get to the second, third, fourth generation a lot of those original sort of beliefs are they're they're if not gone, they're certainly minimized

Sir Ben: 24:04

Well, but the, I, I actually think that most of those beliefs continued on and the reason why is because it, it is very hard to be isolated. So one of the things that the internet has done for us is really amplify our sense of belonging. You know, if you, I mean, anyone who's spent any time on the internet knows you can find another freak, that's into whatever out there. Right. And because you can form a community online, you artificially think, oh, there's a lot of us. Well, globally, maybe, but when you compare that to the population, maybe not. So before the internet, and before being able to reach outside your community, you were really defined by geographical region and who you interacted with. And the fact of the matter is it takes a very rare person to stand outside the crowd and say, no, you're all wrong. Most people conform in some way, form or fashion. So there's that.

Sir Josh: 25:00

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 25:01

Yeah, no, they do. And I think people tend to want to believe the government in general for better or worse. I think that's just reality of the situation. People have a, a default stance, which is the government will take care of things. So unless we find some impro proprieties, we're gonna assume things are going well.

Sir Ben: 25:25

Well, and that's just downright problematic and not, not following

Sir Gene: 25:30

of my general stance is like, no. Okay. Every government is just completely overwhelmed with corruption historically. So if there's a government, I'm gonna assume corruption and lies and then prove me wrong. it's but, but the point I was getting to, I guess, is Bemrose thought is like right now, people are not physically grouped together. He likes living in the Northwest. He likes living outside of Seattle. He has very little in common with most people that live around him. You know, being starting with the fact that he's no agenda listener, right. And then, and a supporter of no agenda that obviously places him in a very small minority of people living up there, but he likes the physical aspects of living there.

Sir Ben: 26:13

well, and who could blame him. It's a beautiful area.

Sir Gene: 26:15

It is beautiful, but having grown up in the north, I I've would much rather live here, even if the politics here and, and frankly, they are look at Austin I'm in California for all practical case. I would still rather live in Austin than Washington. I, I prefer the south man.

Sir Ben: 26:32

Well, but the, the Olympic area and right there outside of Seattle is different than a lot of the rest of the north. You don't get, you know, Seattle doesn't get the snow and cold weather

Sir Gene: 26:42

they don't get the

Sir Ben: 26:43

just on the other side of Rainier does

Sir Gene: 26:46

That is true. No. And then, I mean, my dad lives there, so it, there is definitely, I I've been to that area. Plenty of times. There are plenty of pretty things to see there. I'd still rather live down south

Sir Ben: 26:58

well, if anyone's looking for a vacation if you go out on the Olympic peninsula, you've got to go to Laus it's the furthest west point on the continental us. And it's got some great hikes and gorgeous beaches.

Sir Gene: 27:12

I got some photos from there.

Sir Josh: 27:14

Wow,

Sir Gene: 27:14

there a number of years

Sir Josh: 27:15

push. I'll have to put that on my

Sir Gene: 27:17

And if you want to go in even further west, then you just go cross into Canada first into Vancouver island

Sir Ben: 27:24

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 27:25

and then keep going north.

Sir Ben: 27:27

Boy, I've got some memories from Vancouver.

Sir Gene: 27:30

There, there are some absolutely gorgeous areas out there completely, you know, you could stand and you don't hear anything human related. Once you shut down your car's engine

Sir Ben: 27:40

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 27:40

for miles and miles and miles around you, you can breathe in nature. It is very nice there. The fishing's great. The whale watching is awesome. That was the closest I've ever been to non captive whales on a a Zodiac boat. We're probably about 30 feet away from a pot of whales that was just having fun and catching fish.

Sir Ben: 28:02

cool.

Sir Gene: 28:03

it's a very cool place. Hard, definitely would recommend for vacation. Would I wanna live there? Nah, I'd rather live than south.

Sir Ben: 28:11

they both have their advantages, so,

Sir Josh: 28:14

agreed. I

Sir Gene: 28:15

I mean, you could make lumber up there. I guess that's an advantage. You could cut down all the beauty and turn it into pulp and that's a big advantage. And that's how that, that whole area was paid for in terms of development,

Sir Ben: 28:28

oh yeah. The pot latch corporation is still huge up there.

Sir Gene: 28:31

which one?

Sir Ben: 28:32

Pot latch

Sir Gene: 28:34

What do they do?

Sir Ben: 28:35

is. Th they're a logging company. So one of the things that people don't realize is when the railroads were built and they were given sections of land going across the west because of the land that they owned and the amount of sections of land that they owned, they ended up spinning off logging corporations.

Sir Gene: 28:54

Oh, sure. That makes sense.

Sir Ben: 28:55

Yep.

Sir Gene: 28:56

Yeah. It's and you know, I mean, this is one of the things that if anyone's ever been to highly wooded places it makes you realize just how dense the world would be. In terms of, you know, plants, if we weren't raising crops,

Sir Ben: 29:15

that, that's actually not true.

Sir Gene: 29:17

why

Sir Ben: 29:17

Well, because fire mitigation, so, you know, the idea of an old growth forest and the underbrush being as thick as it is literally only exists because of human intervention and remediation that, or what you end up having is a fire sweep through burn it all down

Sir Gene: 29:35

yeah, no,

Sir Ben: 29:36

grows back up. And that cycle repeats itself over and over again.

Sir Gene: 29:40

Mm-hmm but what does that have to do with the density of the wood?

Sir Ben: 29:44

Be because the forest wouldn't be as dense because once it gets to the density that you see right now, if you go to the national parks in the Northwest and you go into the old growth period sides of things, and you have trees falling down, you can barely walk through it because it's so thick to your point. That only exists because we have remediated the fires in the west, as much as we have if they were allowed to just burn out of control, those places would burn down and then they would grow back up and it would be different. It would not be as thick and as dense. And once it got to that thick, dense point again, you would have another fire come through,

Sir Gene: 30:17

Well, yeah, sure. But I mean, it would get to a level of density. The only thing is that, I guess what you're saying is it's more dense because the fires are controlled and not allowed to spread. Yeah. Not fair enough. The greatest density I've ever seen was in Costa Rica in the jungles, in the tropical jungles down there where some plants literally grow one inch per day. I mean, it's just an insanely fast growth rate and you've got a got a lot of moisture there continuously, which would probably prevent what you're describing. The rainforest there, the like everything is wet to the touch all the time. But I guess where I was going with that is there are areas that I've been to both in the Northwest and in Costa Rica where there was something that was human built, like a. So be near stand or, or a food stand or something. And literally in a matter of a few years it's barely, there's barely anything there because the overgrowth just completely takes over. So if you look at some sci-fi movies where the the earth has gone through some kind of catastrophe, I think that's one of the things that, in my opinion, they get wrong is they don't have sufficient enough overgrowth in all those places to really be anywhere near what would actually happen. I think that the, the return of the environment back to the surrounding areas in the state, that those areas are minus agriculture minus cities and buildings would happen way faster and in with much higher density than than most movies portray.

Sir Ben: 32:04

Have you ever read Lucifer's hammer?

Sir Gene: 32:07

I don't think so. No,

Sir Ben: 32:08

So it's a Larry Nivan Jerry porn combo, which is always fantastic by the way. And it's it's about a

Sir Gene: 32:16

that to me before, cuz it sounds familiar, but I had not read it. Yeah, you

Sir Josh: 32:19

It was on, it was literally on last, the last last show

Sir Ben: 32:22

So there

Sir Gene: 32:23

So it's, it's 180 books behind the last

Sir Ben: 32:25

see this, this is where, you know, me being out for a week and letting the sun bake my brain a little bit, probably hurt, hurt, hurts the show, but yeah, it, they do a good job on, you know, realistically portraying things there, I think. Yeah. You know, interestingly enough, going back to where we're at politically, you and BIM rose were talking about something on the pendulum swing of collectivism versus individuality. Do you really think we're at the peak of collectivism and do you think we're gonna start swinging back the other way?

Sir Gene: 32:56

So I, there are two there's. Let me answer that in two ways. One is according to the book, pendulum TW next year is the, the peak and, and it's a 40 slash 80 year cycle that he'll in the book. Roy traces back,

Sir Ben: 33:12

So he agrees with John.

Sir Gene: 33:14

this is predates John significantly. I sent John an autograph copy of Roy's book like a decade ago because he kept talking about wanting to write something and then I said, well, you know, you should probably read what SORAY been written. But I think that there's some truth to the calculations that they did and a high likelihood personally do I think if we're in a peak, so forgetting about Roy's book and, and just looking at kind of events, I think we're probably. We're close. We are close. The quickening has started. So at this point

Sir Ben: 33:51

What was the author's name?

Sir Gene: 33:53

Roy

Sir Josh: 33:54

Roy Williams and Michael are drew

Sir Gene: 33:56

Yeah. Mike drew. That's right. Yep. And I know both those guys,

Sir Josh: 34:00

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 34:00

uh, in fact, I'm gonna have lunch with Roy next month. So I think we're pretty close. I, I would, I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be next year is gonna be the, the, the peak of socialism and well, really the, we is the way it's described in the book. It's the, it's the swinging between the I and the

Sir Ben: 34:21

Hmm.

Sir Josh: 34:22

Yeah,

Sir Gene: 34:23

we're. We're certainly close to the peak of that in this country. You're not gonna really know that you're at the peak until you're already on the way back. You, you need something to be able to point to. That is as communal, as we got and people are pushing back against it and wanting to see more individualism and that swing back towards the other extreme is going to take 40 years. So it's a 80 year round trip or a 40 year edge two H kind of a swing of the pendulum.

Sir Josh: 35:03

that's interesting. This, the, what you're describing is exactly what I read in the fourth turning and the fourth, turning by Straus and how talks about cycles of history. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 35:14

I think their, their first book definitely predated all the rest of these pred, what John was talking about, predates what Roy wrote. Cause I remember reading their first book in high school or in college. It was early on when that came out and that was they first coined the, the term gen X and the previous generations, which were, and, and by the way, gen X is really a bit of an insult because what it suggested is we don't know what the hell this generation's gonna end up. We'll just call it generation X as in the, the variable X cuz the previous names for generation were like the great generation.

Sir Ben: 35:51

well, but there was also always the alphabetical Def definition. Right. So, you know,

Sir Gene: 35:57

well what was generation D like, I don't know. What, what was that? I mean, what do you mean

Sir Ben: 36:02

have to go back and look,

Sir Gene: 36:04

Was there one, was there really one? I don't

Sir Ben: 36:06

Yeah. Yeah. So the, I mean, just like my kids are generation alpha at this point, because we've already

Sir Gene: 36:12

but I that's. My point is I think that literally started with X. I don't think there's an a through Y I think it's literally started with X is the first letter generation, every previous generat. Had an actual name

Sir Ben: 36:26

The, and you know, gen Xs and millennials you know, millennials, gen Y has a name gen Xers. Never really got one. But yeah, I think it goes back.

Sir Gene: 36:37

believe so. So if you find it, let me know because from what I re, and this is like my memory going back to, I never reread the book. So that was back in the nineties or early, maybe eighties might have been in the eighties still, whenever it came out. I remember I read it cuz a friend of mine bought it when was brand new and he says, oh, you gotta read this, this, this tells a story that is really depressing. And I was like, really, okay, I gotta read this. And I don't recall there ever being previous generations with letters before X and that's why I, I thought X wasn't wasn't in a, B, C, D in a, you know, letter style. It was literally X as in the variable, but somebody who's read that book more recently, let us know. So with that in mind. Yeah, those guys definitely were doing good. Good. I think research and good statistics to try and come up with that with,

Sir Josh: 37:29

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 37:30

So you've got the silent generation, the going back. So currently you have the alpha generation Z millennials, which is gen Y gen Xers, boomers silent. Then you have the greatest, the lost generation missionary generation, progressive generation Gilden, and trans dental generation going all the way back to, you know, this is the 20th century. So going back further anyway but there does

Sir Gene: 37:56

my point. I don't remember any other letters. There was, they were all had names. None of'em had letters except for gen X.

Sir Ben: 38:04

well

Sir Gene: 38:04

so this idea of naming it by letters, I think started with X.

Sir Ben: 38:07

yeah. And now you have gen Z also known as zoomers which is funny because I think that originated on no agenda.

Sir Gene: 38:15

Zoomers yeah.

Sir Josh: 38:16

that was that. That was pretty funny.

Sir Ben: 38:19

But this is actually on a totally different website. So that's, that's interesting. And then current generation gen alpha is 2011 and to presents, so

Sir Gene: 38:28

Yeah. And I was wondering what they were gonna do when they get to the end. Is it gonna be double Z or, you know, so they just wrapped around and went back to

Sir Ben: 38:35

well, well they went to Greek versus Roman

Sir Gene: 38:38

oh, the beta are gonna love that

Sir Ben: 38:40

Right.

Sir Josh: 38:41

Wow.

Sir Gene: 38:42

generation beta.

Sir Ben: 38:44

alpha, so hard if anyone gets the alpha Huxley reference, you know,

Sir Gene: 38:49

Exactly.

Sir Ben: 38:50

a Jam's better than a damn

Sir Gene: 38:53

Oh man. So

Sir Ben: 38:55

how fucked up is it that there's actually a medication called Soma.

Sir Gene: 38:58

I know. Right. Totally. But then again.

Sir Ben: 39:01

genius went with. That one

Sir Gene: 39:03

Yeah. But clearly they knew about it. I mean, Hey, it's, it's a well known word. People aren't gonna know how to pronounce it, call it that, but it's also, isn't it also a Greek word doesn't just mean sleep.

Sir Ben: 39:15

probably Soma. So Lance, maybe I'd have to go look. My Greek is not great. Never has been,

Sir Josh: 39:22

English spelling is S O M a right?

Sir Gene: 39:24

Actually it means body in Greek Soma just means body.

Sir Ben: 39:27

Got you. Well, there you

Sir Gene: 39:29

go. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 39:30

I'll be John on the reservation please. And thank you.

Sir Gene: 39:32

Yeah, the reservation, that's a, that's a, that's probably a word that's gonna start coming up more frequently.

Sir Ben: 39:37

I I fully, I fully think so. You know, it is gonna be interesting to see what ends up happening. You know, some of the information that's coming out and some of these studies need to be reproduced you know, for everyone who's out there and listening, you know, science has a great problem right now in study of, you know, replication of studies being a real problem. So everyone who jumps on the bandwagon of a new study that comes out, you know, you gotta wait to see if that study can be replicated before you say anything, but it appears that some of the RNA shots are altering DNA in human liver cells at the very least is what at least

Sir Gene: 40:12

Tons of evidence of that. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 40:14

yeah, it it's gonna be interesting.

Sir Gene: 40:17

yeah, just sticking random things into your body. Not a good idea of people,

Sir Josh: 40:22

No, it

Sir Gene: 40:23

even if they're, even if they're sold by medical companies. In fact, that may be a reason not to put'em into your body even more. So,

Sir Ben: 40:30

especially when they're indemnified and you cannot Sue them. That's the, that's the biggest thing.

Sir Gene: 40:34

So wait a minute. So you're saying you can Sue a store for selling a gun, but you can't sell a medical company that kills your relative. Huh?

Sir Josh: 40:46

that is precisely correct, sir. Yeah. Must be, must be nice. Huh?

Sir Gene: 40:50

Maybe you can Sue the government that forced you to take the injection. Is that a thing? I don't know.

Sir Ben: 40:54

No, no. Sadly they're indemnified as well.

Sir Gene: 40:57

they're indemnified. How is the government in identified from anything you should be able to Sue the government for everything you should be able to Sue the government for giving a license to the store to sell guns.

Sir Ben: 41:07

First of all, there shouldn't be a license to sell guns, but you know, that's neither here nor there

Sir Josh: 41:11

mm-hmm I'm with I'm. I have to agree with Ben on that. We need to get rid of the licensing.

Sir Ben: 41:16

in all aspects. I mean, you shouldn't have to have a license to cut hair for Christ's sake.

Sir Gene: 41:20

I mean, how would they then enforce that? The people selling guns know how to fill out the forms for the ATF, unless you've been licensed by going through training to do that.

Sir Ben: 41:31

Josh, I'm gonna let you take that one.

Sir Josh: 41:34

So you, you start by not filling out the form at all and you just don't have the form to fill out and then they don't need the training to fill out the form

Sir Gene: 41:44

But Josh doesn't that just mean criminals will just be buying guns from legitimate gun stores,

Sir Josh: 41:49

Oh, well, they're buying guns from legitimate gun stores. Now they're just using other people to do it. Straw purchasing it's it happens all, all over the

Sir Gene: 41:57

but isn't that illegal? Josh?

Sir Josh: 41:58

Well, well, yeah, it's illegal and they break the law and people don't care about the law and they're gonna break it anyway. And so,

Sir Gene: 42:05

you saying criminals are gonna break the law?

Sir Josh: 42:07

yeah, they I'm, I'm saying they're gonna break the laws.

Sir Gene: 42:10

I don't know. I've never heard this concept before.

Sir Josh: 42:13

I've never heard it before, but they're gonna do it searching. They're gonna do it before. And it's just it's they're gonna, they're gonna do it regardless. I mean, firearms.

Sir Gene: 42:22

just are gonna do anything at all possible to get their hands on guns, I don't see any other options just to remove guns from them being able to even get'em.

Sir Josh: 42:31

Well, precisely searching.

Sir Gene: 42:33

if the government owned all the guns, then the criminals wouldn't have any right.

Sir Josh: 42:36

Well that, that, that is the logical end game. Yes. But however, we know that government is the epitome and the ultimate source of corruption. So all you're going to do is to give a single source of corrupted individuals access and a monopoly on violence. Why would, which

Sir Ben: 42:52

I I'll disagree in one aspect. I think there's at least one dead Japanese prime minister, who would say that, you

Sir Gene: 42:58

I was waiting to bring that up. you beat me to itIt. In countries like the UK and Japan, where there are no privately owned weapons guns, at least how somehow they still manage to have gun

Sir Ben: 43:10

well, here here's here. Here's the thing. If it doesn't matter, it take, take every firearm I have away from me. The, the fact of

Sir Gene: 43:20

can I get dibs on the, your new one there? That sounds pretty good.

Sir Josh: 43:23

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 43:24

the fact of the matter is if I am committed to commit violence and just like the assassin of Shinzo Ave he was willing to trade his life for that. It's almost impossible to stop, you know? And his life is for it.

Sir Gene: 43:38

something very profound there without realizing it, which is you asked about the red line. I think there's the red line right there. When do you get to a point where you're willing to trade your life for another man's not in the good way?

Sir Ben: 43:52

And, and I completely agree, but

Sir Gene: 43:54

That's the line. When we get to the point where people are willing to die personally, to achieve their goal, then you know, you've crossed the red line.

Sir Ben: 44:05

well,

Sir Gene: 44:06

about using guns. It's about willing to die.

Sir Josh: 44:09

Willing to die.

Sir Ben: 44:10

I think that red line is gonna be very variable and sadly, I think there will be several martyrs before there's any organization.

Sir Gene: 44:18

Oh yeah. I think that'll be a thousand Martys before that happens.

Sir Josh: 44:21

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 44:22

Yeah. And the term martyr will be varied based off of your political orientation.

Sir Gene: 44:29

Well, you mean like George Floyd?

Sir Ben: 44:31

Yes, exactly.

Sir Gene: 44:32

Yes.

Sir Josh: 44:32

Yeah. E every, every movement in history has always had its martyrs. If you look at how Christianity came about how Islam, I mean, just from a religious aspect, they all have their, their martyrs and they have their respected place. And the history of the worship of those religions, political in the political realm, you all, we have our Martys and our great people that we read and respect as, as we move through time. And I, I honestly would have to agree mostly with both of you that when as this as this pendulum, if you will, as this fourth turning is coming into into fruition, we're at the end of that 80 years from the last great cataclysmic event that occurred in the world, which we could just point at world war II and then the subsequent cold war we're at the end of that. And I think that there is that pendulum where we're going to snap back and go another way. And the change that we're going to see over the next 20 years, I think is going to be painful. But however, I feel that it's going to be, it's going to be better. I think once we're done with it, I think things will improve because people get at least a clue as to what's actually

Sir Gene: 45:43

It's a long improvement road though. And keep in mind that this, you know, we, we keep thinking that this swing of the pendulum back, that we're gonna hit a, a point of maximum God, it, I can't spell it of maximization is you know, innocently thinking that this is just a matter of social things. That that point could very well coincide with a hot war between Cino Russia versus the west and all these ideas about abortion fly out the window. When we have physical conflict with troops on the ground, and lots of people losing their lives to weapons if half the population of the us is killed off or more, I don't, I'm not sure there'll be a whole lot of push towards legalizing abortion. In fact, we may have anything that harms the child results in the mother's death. If that happens in utero,

Sir Ben: 46:38

Yeah, I,

Sir Gene: 46:38

cuz children will be much more valuable at that point.

Sir Ben: 46:41

so I, I think that China is about to collapse economically.

Sir Gene: 46:47

Keep saying that

Sir Ben: 46:47

well, I, I sent you all an article and the article was about you know, Chinese citizens stopping paying mortgages on unfinished apartment buildings,

Sir Gene: 46:56

Yeah

Sir Josh: 46:57

yeah, I read that.

Sir Ben: 46:59

well, well, except the vast majority of China's retirement funds. And the way wealth is accumulated in China is through property acquisition. And there. Hundreds of ghost cities in China that are these unfinished apartment buildings where people have bought for this expansion. And the fact that the matter is there, there's no elevators, there's no way to utilize these. There's no windows. There's nothing. It is just the super structure of the building built. And people are invested in these buildings and it's a Ponzi scheme that is collapsing. And as soon as the majority of the Chinese people stop paying those mortgages, you're going to see a huge collapse in the Chinese real estate market. We've already seen a huge collapse with what was that

Sir Gene: 47:45

buying real estate all over the world. They own a, a majority of the real estate in Africa. They weren't a significant amount of real estate in the us right now. In

Sir Ben: 47:52

Sure. The oligarchy and the government, but the average Chinese citizen. And here, here's what you have to understand just like in the us and every other country, the wealthy have a lot of control and a lot of power because of the disparity in income. But if you look at the wealth of the 90% of Americans that far dwarfs everything that the 10 top 10% have, right? So the economic power of that middle class is you can't underestimate that is the driver in almost any economy.

Sir Gene: 48:26

Yeah, the top 20% of America owns 51% of the wealth. So no,

Sir Josh: 48:31

Hm.

Sir Ben: 48:32

I, where do you get that statistic?

Sir Gene: 48:35

I, I can send you a link it's right in Wikipedia.

Sir Josh: 48:38

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 48:39

okay. Wikipedia.

Sir Josh: 48:40

Wikipedia strikes

Sir Ben: 48:42

mean, you and I are in that top 20% though.

Sir Gene: 48:45

Yes, absolutely.

Sir Ben: 48:47

So I, again, I

Sir Gene: 48:49

for last year when I didn't work the whole damn year.

Sir Ben: 48:51

okay, so, and I said top 10% versus bottom 90%. So

Sir Gene: 48:56

Yeah. Top. No, I thought you said top 1%.

Sir Ben: 48:59

No, anyway, top 10% versus bottom 90, which is, you know, there's a lot of us in the upper middle income brackets, you know? Anyway

Sir Gene: 49:09

sure.

Sir Ben: 49:10

I mean,

Sir Gene: 49:10

fine. My here's here's. What I would say is as far as China, China didn't have wealth in its citizenship until very recently, they only had wealth in the state and they can come back to that very easily. China is a controlled economy. It is a state run by you can give'em whatever nasty evil names you want, but essentially it's a aristocracy. They're not actually elected. And so consequently, while the Chinese population can U lose their savings, that does not result in a collapse of China. That simply results in a lot of people living on the street when they get aged out.

Sir Ben: 49:54

Well, so China, the Chinese government has maintained what they've the control they've maintained. And, and I, I really think the reason why the company's government and China hasn't been overthrown and collapsed is because they have moved to allowing a middle class to grow. So as soon as that middle class collapses and their life savings that is in this real estate collapses, I, I think that is rife for political upheaval and turmoil. I think you could see a civil war in China because people are not, they, they you're right. They're gonna be forced back into poverty. Well, China is just out of being an agrarian state and you're gonna force a generation that is lived in wealth that their ancestors have never known back to that that

Sir Gene: 50:40

happening in the us Zs will never see the wealth that gen X has experienced.

Sir Ben: 50:45

Are are millennials at least the elder millennials. Yeah, I, I understand that. And you have KLA Schwab and everybody and you, you will own nothing and you'll be happy about it. And I think a lot of people will, unfortunately, I see that tendency in the younger generation, but it, as long as they are kept fat happy and get the experiences they want, that's very different than, you know, my life savings that I've worked for has, is all gone. And now I have nothing and I'm living on the street and I have to go work on the farm again, that's, that's, that's a drastically

Sir Gene: 51:15

you could work in the military police and enforce the fact that those people don't overthrow a country and that's a legitimate job in China. So I, I just don't see it, man. I don't see the fall of China happening anytime soon. I think the fall of us is a lot more likely than the fall of China. Right.

Sir Ben: 51:31

I, that I do not disagree with you. I think that there is a high likelihood that the us is going. And I, I think that if we do go the civil war route, that the idea of a Chinese hegemony taking place worldwide is increased. And that may be a way out of it for China is to go to war and do that distraction and put this economy to a military standing so that these people who are about to be displaced by this coming real estate collapse, have something else to.

Sir Gene: 52:01

And I think that China has an opportunity to do what they're doing right now with the whole Ukraine situation to take advantage of other conflicts, to take advantage of them by providing both goods and buying goods from countries that are experiencing turmoil through conflict. And right now it's, it's, you know, definitely happening with Russia. China is effectively saying everything that you wanna sell. All the raw materials from aluminum to oil to natural gas, we will buy we'll find buyers.

Sir Ben: 52:43

Well, it's not just Russia. Josh, what do you think about the Biden administration? Selling the strategic petroleum reserve to China.

Sir Josh: 52:51

The selling strategic oil to me is just as nine. I don't

Sir Gene: 52:56

How is that not treason in the first place?

Sir Josh: 52:58

well, I can't even give you an answer because it just doesn't make any sense to me why you would take strategic oil reserves and sell them to anyone. That's not, you know, I don't know some kind of us based company, it just doesn't make any sense. It's there for a particular reason to provide oil when in, in necessary event.

Sir Gene: 53:18

and there's too much oil and the prices are down to 20 bucks a barrel and you literally can't like, you need to get rid of the oil or the economy will stall from the lack of sale of oil. Then you can sell it. You don't sell it when the price is going up and the, the demand is increasing,

Sir Josh: 53:36

no. Yeah. It, it, it doesn't make any sense. The Biden administration making that move on strategic reserves is, is complete. Just it's it's hog wash. It's dumb. It's ridiculous.

Sir Gene: 53:47

you guys heard the official explanation, right?

Sir Josh: 53:50

the official explanation. No, I

Sir Gene: 53:52

it was done in order to affect the global price of oil being pushed down so that Russia doesn't make as much money selling its oil because it would have to compete with us selling its oil on the market.

Sir Ben: 54:06

Yeah, well, when it literally goes to a Chinese owned entity that the Bidens have financial ties to yeah. And you know, the strategic petroleum reserve was established for war and natural disaster and that that's, what's supposed to be used for. So to your point, gene, I, I, I, I really think that the only way for us to survive as a nation long term is that there has to be a hell of a reckoning and items like this have to be forefront and there needs to be. There needs to be quite a few politicians and deep Staters gone through and tried for treason.

Sir Gene: 54:45

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 54:46

Um, I don't know. And I don't know how we get there because I don't think there's enough of the population that's awake to support that.

Sir Gene: 54:53

there's not enough population that's awake. And there's also the issue of government simply doing what it does in most other countries that we pretend it doesn't in the us, which is the government is effectively a self-sustaining body. It wants to maintain power and control and will use the tools placed that, that it's placed in charge of by the populace, like the military, the national guard and various types of policing groups that have been established. Like the FBI it'll utilize those in order to stay in power. And I don't care what party that is. I mean, this is just, it happens to be Democrats right now. We could just as easily be the rhinos that are the other party. There's only two parties right now, rhinos and, and socialists. And and, and so anything that makes it seem like there's a movement to take government back, whether it's the tea party, whether it's Ross per or whatever it is, is going to get a, a response back from the government, including both parties that are comprising the government, but it's really a mono party to fight that. So I don't know, dude. I mean, I don't think anything's gonna change until there's blood spilled.

Sir Josh: 56:14

I'd have to agree with you Jean until, until there's something that, that, that, that happens where you take some of these people that are currently in those places of power and control. Like you said, whether it's national guard elements or whether it's the FBI or some other law enforcement or intelligence gathering agency, until there is a more shift towards those particular outfits that are looking out for the, the betterment of the people and the betterment of the nation, and not just the survivability of a particular government structure. I don't think that we're going to see anything different. And I don't think that anything is going to change until that happens. And that particular element may be part of that. That so called pendulum swing back. The other direction that we might be staring at right on the horizon.

Sir Ben: 57:01

Yeah, it's a scary thought though, that governmental structure's not surviving. You know, there've been more than one call for convention of states and the constitutional convention. And that to me is the scariest idea of amending the constitution ever, because once you call a constitutional convention, it's all up in the air, anything can be changed. We saw that, you know, when the original constitution was written, because that was supposed to amend the articles of Confederation and they just threw it all out and came up with the current shit show. Which I know a lot of people are not gonna

Sir Gene: 57:33

And you're referring to the constitution of the United. Is a current shit, Joe.

Sir Ben: 57:37

I I'm referring to the current, the current bastardization of the Federalist system that we live under. Yes. That I think the constitution inevitably devolves towards, I think the constitution, when it was written was a noble document. I think it established a decent government, but it did not have the controls in individual statehood. The states were diminished by the constitution. The powers of the state were diminished by the constitution and embodied in the federal government. And as a result, the federal government has sprawled into what we have today and that that's problematic.

Sir Gene: 58:10

I have a question for you. Cuz you're more of the history guy.

Sir Josh: 58:13

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 58:13

Why did the states want to form a union instead of having individual countries that happen to be neighbors and are friendly with each other?

Sir Josh: 58:23

Are you referring to the original colonies at the, at the, around the time of the revolution? So the original 13 colonies the, the whole idea of, of coming together and forming a government really spraying out of the 1770s when the British were putting forth a lot of pressure on the colonies to basically repay war debt from the seven years war. A lot of the pushback from the colonies when they were rebelling against the stamp back, for example a lot of those petitions were successful and a lot of those acts were actually repealed by parliament and something

Sir Gene: 59:00

Yeah, no, I, I, I get all that. This is all pre-revolution. I mean, post Revolut, post declaration of independence.

Sir Josh: 59:07

so AF after declaration of independence, if you wanted to go forward and say after the treaty was signed and the war with Britain was completely over the, we were underneath the articles of Confederation and the purpose of the articles of Confederation was ex was exclusively for national defense. And, and also to control the borders. That was the prime. That

Sir Gene: 59:28

how's that, how's that different from just what we see with NATO, which are independent countries that are part of the, the organization of mutual aid in case of war. Why, why do you think that the the states the smallest states that were the colonies felt like they should all be part of the same country versus simply having a, a mutual cooperation packed for defense? Like, why don't we have the state of Virginia, the state of New York, but I mean, we do sorry, the, the country of Virginia, the country of New York and all those countries are part of NATO effectively to aid each other.

Sir Ben: 1:00:12

so, we, we are supposed to be capital S states,

Sir Josh: 1:00:15

capital.

Sir Ben: 1:00:16

And you know, the, the other thing I'd say in Josh, you can speak to this, but I think you have to go back to the continental Congress, right. And why that was formed and the states coming together to fight great Britain and that inevitably having a sense of comradery and one group you didn't have Virginia fighting the UK and winning you didn't have New York fighting the UK and winning. You had the colonies together in the continental Congress beating back the, you know, great.

Sir Josh: 1:00:46

It, it was, it was a, it was an effort among the several colonies to, to defeat great Britain and to achieve independence. And those were some of the emotions, as well as the actions that were used to further the discussion when the continental Congress met again in eight, in 1787, when they were supposed to re amend the articles and make it stronger, more functional. But instead we ended up with the us constitution because at that moment there were two primary competing theories. One was the state sovereignty model, which would've been more or less amending the articles of Confederation and maintaining the sovereignty of the states versus the the, the Federalist model, the Federalist idea, which of course you understand what federalism is. That is the, the embodiment of, of a federal constitution and many persons, including John Adams and Richard Henry Lee as well as others were very influential in their writing to be able to put together the framework that would become the constitution and just something admin.

Sir Ben: 1:01:54

Well, I was just gonna say, fuck John Adams and fuck Hamilton.

Sir Josh: 1:01:57

Well, yeah. John Adams, John Adams and Hamilton were, were very much important people that were that were, that were providing their idea that were providing their

Sir Ben: 1:02:08

were the status of the day.

Sir Josh: 1:02:09

They, they were,

Sir Ben: 1:02:11

state

Sir Josh: 1:02:12

they did, they did. And they would be called Federalists. In that time span, they, they, they supported the idea of a strong federal national government.

Sir Ben: 1:02:20

and you know, that, that goes to a larger point every most. Well, anyone who has any education at least has read the Federalist papers. Right. But how many people have read the

Sir Gene: 1:02:31

Man. That's a hell of an assumption.

Sir Ben: 1:02:33

I, okay. Well, I, most, most people who I know that are, you know, constitutionalists are fairly well educated around the constitution, have read the Federalist papers and buy into those arguments, but did they ever look at the anti-federalists argument? Did they look at the Virginia ratification debates? Did they look at what Patrick Henry had to say about the us cons.

Sir Josh: 1:02:54

probably not.

Sir Gene: 1:02:55

Yeah. I, I think that's and the further away from that time period, we get the fewer people will have read that history is written by the victors in every case. And even if the there are footnotes about the debates that led to decisions being made, those footnotes shrink on a yearly basis. Okay, now we've got dead air. So,

Sir Josh: 1:03:19

Sorry about that. There were kids crying.

Sir Ben: 1:03:20

that that's that's yeah, the footnote shrink, but that's why, you know, we really need to remind people and people need to critically think. So one of the things I will harp on forever in a day is that people don't need to read a textbook. They need to read original source material. They need to see what people had to say. They need to read journals, they need to read publications

Sir Gene: 1:03:45

And I found that was one of the differences if I think back from high school to college, because in high school, I remember reading. I mean, there was some source material stuff, obviously. But reading a lot of textbooks, meaning a book of, of a collection of information for students in college for you know, technical classes. That was the case. But on the side of the liberal arts all of a sudden now there were 30 different books that we either had to buy or get copies of chapter four through eight or whatever that were source material that needed to get read. And I, I thought that at the time, of course, this is crazy. Why doesn't somebody just summarize this shit and put it into one book. Which, you know, cliffs knows, did a great job of, but I think that is to your point, that is the difference in something that, to really understand the topic you can't rely on. Somebody's interpretation of that topic. You have to read the source material yourself, maybe interpretation as well, but you can't just rely on that.

Sir Josh: 1:04:50

That's precisely correct. That when I, when I start a new unit or a new topic conversation or discussion research in any of my classes the professors do a really good job to point us in the direction of original source materials. And so whenever I'm looking at something I'm typically right next to at least a PDF copy of a journal or an original copy of a newspaper clipping, things like that, where you can actually read what put people wrote in, in the time that they wrote it and it provides an unbelievable amount of context. And I, I wanna apologize if you hear any of the kids in the background.

Sir Gene: 1:05:29

yeah,

Sir Josh: 1:05:30

Eh, it happens, it happens, but,

Sir Gene: 1:05:33

kids. Yeah.

Sir Josh: 1:05:35

yeah, it

Sir Ben: 1:05:36

Jean you think if I play something on my end, y'all will hear it.

Sir Gene: 1:05:40

I don't know, but you can try.

Sir Ben: 1:05:42

All right. Let me see if I can find y'all keep talking while I find the clip. I.

Sir Josh: 1:05:46

Roger that. All right. But

Sir Gene: 1:05:48

So I got a question for you guys then in and see what you, you think. So, one of the, one of the thoughts, certainly in the back of my mind, as we're having some of these conversations is how close are we bordering to treason as viewed by the current administration? Like, yes, there's free speech, but there's also a point where the government decides that your free speech is actually talking about overthrowing the country and therefore they have the ability to come in and shut it down.

Sir Josh: 1:06:28

I would need more. Yeah, I would need more instruction on the legality of treason to answer it better than how I will

Sir Gene: 1:06:36

to overthrow the us government.

Sir Josh: 1:06:38

okay. I would me personally, I don't see a conversation that we have as conspiring to overthrow

Sir Gene: 1:06:45

Yeah. But we're, we're edging right on it. I mean, we're talking about armed resistance, which to some people, even that phrase right there would be considered treasonous.

Sir Josh: 1:06:54

mm-hmm and, and I think that the persons that are making that argument will not have enough evidence to, to realistically prove it in court. Now that's me being

Sir Gene: 1:07:05

You're assuming something goes to court.

Sir Josh: 1:07:07

Yeah. Assuming something goes to court. Yeah. Well, of course not. It's armed resistance. I mean, there are no courts. Right. But yeah, I think I, I think that there is

Sir Gene: 1:07:15

well, and I, I guess my question is, is this something also in the back of your mind because

Sir Josh: 1:07:19

yes,

Sir Gene: 1:07:20

we are, you know, unlike my other more fun podcast where I talk about the stupidity of sending money to Ukraine and Darren talks about you know, firing music. This show actually is a little, little more serious and closer to the idea that has the government overstepped to the bounds and when, when the citizens realize it and actually do something about it, but doing something about it that inevitably is the case. And I don't, I don't think anyone would dispute this is resistance and not like sitting in the street silently and setting yourself on fire resistance.

Sir Josh: 1:07:57

Yeah. I, I would have to I'd I'd have to say that. Yes. I think we are more or less there edging along this line, because we are discussing topics that directly are related to how a government, if a government is to fail and how it fails, what are, what are we going to do about it? Because if, if the government happens to fail and that fail can mean one of many things, whether there is an actual insurrection where it is replaced by some other go. Whether that be external or internal or whether there is an overall collapse. There's still the questions that need to be answered to the people. What are the people in the several states going to do to continue to maintain their survival? What are they to do about it? And if that, that's also a part of this conversation, you know, we talk about, okay, how are we gonna grow food? How are we going to have a shelter? How are we going to stay you know, healthy in the summer months, how are we gonna stay healthy in the winter months? Those are part of these conversations. And if someone wants to tell me that that conversation is treasonous, then I would make the counter accusation that that person who's making the accusation is the real trader. And that's the person that really belongs on the end of the news.

Sir Ben: 1:09:18

well, I mean, what it comes down to is are you treasonous to the current government? Are you treasonous to the ideal? The, the fact of the matter is that the you know, unfortunately grant was right when he said the right of revolution is in every soul, but you have to pay for the consequences. So, and I, by no means I'm a grant fan. So I dropped in the chat guys. I can't find there's a couple good re reenactments of this that I was looking for on YouTube to play, but I dropped into the chat and gene, if you can add it to the show notes, the Virginia ratifying convention,

Sir Gene: 1:09:52

so, oh, you were looking for a reenactment of it.

Sir Ben: 1:09:56

yeah, just to be able to hear it. So I don't have to read it, but 1788. So this is Patrick Henry's comments to the ratification convention on whether or not Virginia should ratify the constitution or not. And he, he's got some pretty key points

Sir Gene: 1:10:11

link to what you were gonna be playing and then see if I can do it.

Sir Ben: 1:10:15

Well, I, I couldn't find what I was wanting to play, so I just dropped the, the text in anyway. It, it will be worth people going and reading, but he essentially

Sir Gene: 1:10:24

Is that the, give me Liberty, give me death speech or what, what are you looking for?

Sir Ben: 1:10:28

know that that this is the Virginia ratification and of the constitution. So this is post-war right. This is,

Sir Josh: 1:10:36

mm-hmm yeah, this is June, 1788 now.

Sir Ben: 1:10:39

Yep. Anyway he, he talks about the consolidation of these states and you know, why are we leaving a compact between free and independent states and going to a centralized government? You know, why do we want empire? Why should we follow the Folies of Europe? And so on? I mean, he flat out predicted the trajectory of what would happen to the United States. Very well. He, he see in fact post post constitution post Washington presidency when they had the this SED edition act that came up, he said, quote, I smell the rat.

Sir Gene: 1:11:12

Mr. President, no man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism as well as, as the abilities of the very worthy gentleman who have just addressed the house, but often different men see the same subject in different lights. Is it therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen. If entertaining, as I do opinions of a character, very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve.

Sir Ben: 1:11:43

don't know how long this recording is, but

Sir Gene: 1:11:45

This is no time for ceremony. It's 10 minutes, all earthly Kings. Is there a particular segment you want it,

Sir Ben: 1:11:53

yeah, but I,

Sir Gene: 1:11:54

natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are AP to shut our eyes against a painful truth and to listen to the sounds of danger till they prof transform us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men engaged in a great and to provide for it and

Sir Ben: 1:12:15

Jean, I, I think we're gonna have to hunt and Peck too much in

Sir Gene: 1:12:17

Yeah. It's well, if you would've pointed me towards some thing here I could have done, but anyway, bottom line is you wanted to have people share this. I'll have a clip in there as well.

Sir Ben: 1:12:28

I, I just wanted to point out that the anti-federalists were alive and well, and, you know, Patrick Henry was not alone. I mean, the Virginia ratification they only ratified the constitution by 80 something to 70 something. So it was a Virginia barely ratified the constitution.

Sir Gene: 1:12:47

Fleets

Sir Ben: 1:12:48

and that's the way quite a few state legislatures went.

Sir Gene: 1:12:50

Wait, you mean it wasn't unanimous all the way around.

Sir Ben: 1:12:53

by no means. In fact Josh, what were, what were the states that didn't ratify the constitution until way later on?

Sir Josh: 1:12:59

That was Rhode Island Rhode Island

Sir Gene: 1:13:02

It's barely a state,

Sir Josh: 1:13:03

yeah, Rhode Island didn't Maine. And if I recall correctly, I think it was South Carolina. There were, yeah, there were, yeah, there were several states that, that did not ratify. Initially. It took some time for them to do it. Rhode Island was the single holdout. Because once they got nine of 13, then it was done and it took some more time to get 10, 11 and 12 on board. And I think that was the three I just told you. And the road road Rhode Island, I think was the very last one. They called them rogue island.

Sir Ben: 1:13:35

Which, you know, Hey, how treasonous was that? So this is the same generation. This is the same group of people that said governments are instituted among men, right? Saying that the, the, that the that the power of the government comes from the governed. And yet we're going to throw out the articles of Confederation, and we're gonna put a clause into this constitution that says, as soon as we have nine of the 13 colonies, it is the law of the land for all of the colonies. Even those that did not ratify it. How treasonous is that? How is that the consent of the governed

Sir Gene: 1:14:09

and this is the problem. This is why I said, you know, what, why did these independent states choose to be governed by single entity?

Sir Ben: 1:14:20

and the point I'm making? And I think Josh is making, is they all, not all of them did.

Sir Gene: 1:14:25

Well, how did we end up with a president? How, how do we have Washington becoming the first president?

Sir Ben: 1:14:32

He was the first president under the constitution.

Sir Josh: 1:14:35

yes,

Sir Gene: 1:14:36

Right. So, so that was post ratification then.

Sir Josh: 1:14:40

that was post

Sir Gene: 1:14:41

So what was his term? I guess I, you know, I don't remember this shit. What, what was the term of Washington's what years?

Sir Josh: 1:14:48

17 89 to 1797.

Sir Gene: 1:14:51

Okay. So that was the real, that, that was the root of the problem then is we really didn't have, you know, we celebrate the, the 1776, but really it was 1789 that ought to be celebrated by this country. 1776 can be celebrated by individuals

Sir Ben: 1:15:09

Well, yeah, I mean, essentially so,

Sir Gene: 1:15:11

cause we were free in 1776 and we were slaves again in 1789.

Sir Ben: 1:15:16

well, I mean, we weren't free. We were still fighting the British in 1776. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it was a small minority of

Sir Gene: 1:15:25

free man. Get

Sir Ben: 1:15:26

actually engaged in conflict.

Sir Gene: 1:15:28

Yeah. And I, I think this may be, is the problem with the human nature is that we can't live without hierarchy. want to

Sir Ben: 1:15:41

no, no animal

Sir Gene: 1:15:42

we're part of a hierarchy.

Sir Ben: 1:15:43

no animal

Sir Gene: 1:15:44

Well, I don't know. Lobsters are pretty good about that. I hear

Sir Ben: 1:15:47

Nope. They have a, they have a hi, they have a dominant hierarchy. You know, you can be the top lobster. But you know, it's interesting because yes, we have hierarchy. Yes, we have societal control, but I mean, have you looked at Andy knows estimates of the number of Antifa actual Antifa? So he estimates around 800 people are actively in actual cells of Ava out of 350 million, 325 million, whatever it is, 300 plus million people in the

Sir Gene: 1:16:18

they picked the last president. They chose that election.

Sir Ben: 1:16:21

Well, and, and what does that tell you? Is that a, a, a small vocal group of people, a small group of people can change the governmental system. The American revolution. We have the idea of the three percenters.

Sir Gene: 1:16:32

can't do it without violence.

Sir Ben: 1:16:34

I, I totally agree. And we had the three percenters during the American revolution. The 3% of the population was actively engaged in conflict at any one time against the British.

Sir Gene: 1:16:43

yep. No, that's, that's totally true, but I just, I don't know. It seems to me like once you've gained that level of freedom from the British that within a matter of what just 14 years deciding to lose it or 13 years to, to lose that freedom by becoming a single country seemed like the wrong decision.

Sir Ben: 1:17:07

it was just like, it was the wrong decision for Texas to join the union. What I would say though, is that the status at the time, the Federalists had a lot of propaganda. You also had several rebellions that had occurred.

Sir Gene: 1:17:20

I thought Russian was propaganda in 1918.

Sir Ben: 1:17:24

no, there, there was a lot of propaganda. I mean the Federalist papers are propaganda and you now the anti-federalists are propaganda in the other direction. It's what you want to believe. And the logic of it you know, the, the term propaganda is not a bad thing. It, it, it can be a bad thing, but it's not, you know, propaganda is putting out your position in the most strong Steelman argument you can make for your own position. But the Federalists and anti-federalists really went back and forth during the article's Federation. The biggest thing, the reason why the citizenry ended up calling for the, what ended up being the constitutional convention was some of the rebellions that took place. And Josh, you can fill us in on the details there.

Sir Josh: 1:18:05

always, always, I can always fill in details, but the last three guys, it was New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island. I had to go look that up. North Carolina and Rhode Island and north, North Carolina, Rhode Island is 89 and 90 respectively as far as when they ratified the constitution. So they, they ratified after George Washington was sworn in as the first president. That's funny. It's been a minute. I'm not, I'm not very good with dates. I'm not very good with dates.

Sir Gene: 1:18:34

That's great for historian

Sir Josh: 1:18:36

Well, the specific date, like the specific date, like I have to reference like on my notes or what have you, it's it, it, cuz names and dates are, are how we teach kids history this day. Like, okay, what happened on this day? That's why July 4th, 1776 people remember that because we just hammer that date in there. But if you ask somebody about, you know, June June, whatever the hell it is, 17th, 1788, what happened then people go, I don't know. Well, in June 88, they, they RA they, they finished the, the constitution, all that other shit. So it's just, it is one of those things. What is this YouTube that you sent me?

Sir Gene: 1:19:14

You mean put in the notes that, that is that speech.

Sir Josh: 1:19:18

Oh, okay. I gotcha.

Sir Gene: 1:19:19

Yeah. And I did look up propaganda while you're doing that. So it actually is quite old. It, of course not surprisingly derives from the Catholic church in the 17th century. And it is just an abbreviation of which is to propagate in Latin.

Sir Josh: 1:19:37

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:19:38

Yeah. I mean, the, the term propaganda just means to take systematically your doctrine and put information out there, reflecting your views and advocating for that doctrine. Now, when we think of propaganda post 20th century, we think of globals.

Sir Gene: 1:19:55

I know

Sir Ben: 1:19:56

I'm sorry.

Sir Gene: 1:19:57

we think of the Spanish inquisition,

Sir Ben: 1:20:00

Well, there was definitely that, but regardless this country allowed itself to be swayed into a position that would ultimately devolve into what we have today, you know, and the fact of the matter is the central government of the United States has already done egregious things. For instance there is nowhere in the constitution that allows for federal policing powers. The policing powers were always supposed to be relegated to the states. So the ATF, the FBI, and so on should not exist. And their very existence is a tyrannical force in this country.

Sir Gene: 1:20:33

but if we had the the FBI in the 16 hundreds, they could round up the slaves in the north and bring'em back to the south.

Sir Ben: 1:20:42

Depending on the executive, right? Because no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because what we already see today and what Biden is doing and what other presidents have done. And quite frankly, even down to J or Hoover was selective law enforcement based off of what they wanted to do.

Sir Gene: 1:21:00

All law enforcement is selective. I don't think there's been an instance of it not being the case, which is why I always have advocated for computer controlled law enforcement.

Sir Ben: 1:21:09

when, is why I advocate for no law enforcement at all.

Sir Gene: 1:21:13

Same, same idea. Different solution.

Sir Ben: 1:21:15

You know, grand jury have a Constable have a sheriff. You know, there should not be prosecutors. We've already talked about all this in, in the past, but regardless, I, I, I don't think so Abraham, you know, let's say Abraham Lincoln comes to power. You, you think if the FBI existed when he became president, he would've said, okay, we're going to use the FBI to return the slaves and therefore heal the divide between the nation. Maybe he, he, he, well, why not? He, he said that if he could save the union without freeing a single slave, he would. So, you know, people, people. Overestimate Lincoln's emancipation

Sir Gene: 1:21:57

He, he cared about the union.

Sir Ben: 1:22:00

he, he, he, he really didn't care about the union. He cared about. He didn't wanna be that guy quite frankly, is what it came down to. He did not wanna be the president that oversaw the disillusion of the union. As it stood at that time, he didn't care about emancipation. He was not a pro emancipation candidate by any stretch of the UN idea. He, he was one that wanted to sh after the civil war, he had plans to ship the slaves back to Africa. That was his idea.

Sir Gene: 1:22:31

mm-hmm,

Sir Josh: 1:22:31

He was president of

Sir Gene: 1:22:33

kinda like Monroe.

Sir Josh: 1:22:34

league. So

Sir Gene: 1:22:36

So, Ben, you also kind of didn't answer my question about treason edition.

Sir Ben: 1:22:41

When did you ask that question?

Sir Gene: 1:22:43

I don't know you were looking up a video, I guess.

Sir Ben: 1:22:45

okay. I may not have heard it.

Sir Josh: 1:22:47

Yeah, I think you were.

Sir Gene: 1:22:50

so my question is this is that the, the conversations in this podcast are bordering. They're edging up to what could be considered treason.

Sir Ben: 1:23:00

No, the not treason sedition. Sure.

Sir Gene: 1:23:03

Why not treason?

Sir Ben: 1:23:05

treason actually requires an act.

Sir Gene: 1:23:07

In of treason, the, the discussion of what to do after something happens in Texas.

Sir Ben: 1:23:15

No again, I would go to the, the quote, do not confuse dissent with this loyalty, right? That there is the ability

Sir Gene: 1:23:23

quote, but that's, that's really up to the, the reigning government decide whose treasonous or

Sir Ben: 1:23:30

And if a, if a government wants to take our speech as treason, our sedition, then they have proven themselves as despotic as they could be and gives me all the more reason to fight them. so go right ahead.

Sir Gene: 1:23:44

sure. So I guess my point is that it's something that's always in the back of my mind is the conversations can say things like if then, but they can't say things like you should

Sir Ben: 1:23:58

Yeah. Well, you know, I, I, I think that the whole call to violence thing and where that line is drawn is rather fuzzy to begin with. But one thing I've told basically everyone I've ever been in a relationship going way back by dating me or in the case of my wife, marrying me the odds of you dying in a police, shoot out, go way up.

Sir Gene: 1:24:21

Yeah. And that sounds all romantic and everything, but realistically speaking I think the fact that we have to think about this is rather. That we can't just simply say, well, all conversation, regardless of topic, we can have a conversation about robbing a bank on a podcast and it should be protected as free speech because we're not actually robbing the bank. And just because we would be good at robbing the bank, because we would talk about exactly how to bypass and exploit all the security of that is required to Rob a bank doesn't in itself mean that we did anything illegal, but I think when it comes to politics, that line gets a lot fuzzier and there could be cases made that, I mean, look at Trump right now. What exactly did Trump say that propagated, the overthrow of the government that allegedly happened two years ago in February

Sir Ben: 1:25:14

Oh, I, I, I completely agree with you, Gina.

Sir Gene: 1:25:17

and yet he's in front of Congress?

Sir Ben: 1:25:18

Well, here, here's what it comes down to. Are you going to allow the threat of. Governmental force make you self censor, because if you do, if you go down that road of, oh, I, I can't say this because I will get kicked off of YouTube, which we're not on there, but you know, the, the Tim pool answer, or if you allow yourself to not speak publicly or speak in private about these topics and really push the envelope, if you were that afraid

Sir Gene: 1:25:49

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:25:50

that tells you everything you need to know about the society in which you live

Sir Gene: 1:25:54

Oh, yeah. It, it tells you that. But nonetheless, I think it's a, it's an interesting thing to have to deal with because again you know, whether you're afraid or not, is somebody relevant. It's really the actions of the government that are important,

Sir Ben: 1:26:08

well here, here's what it comes down to. I really like at the very least, and some people th there are going to be those like us who release myself that speaks fairly freely and yeah, I'm putting my neck out there and I'm saying some things that could get me canceled pretty quickly. Oh, well,

Sir Gene: 1:26:26

but you also couldn't speak about some of this stuff. When you worked at a different company.

Sir Ben: 1:26:30

I mean, it, it all depends on your threshold and where you're, where you're coming from. I also see. Things accelerating in a very bad way. And what am I gonna do? Sit and say that I did nothing. I didn't speak out. I didn't say at least speak my piece into the ether, whether someone heard it or not. I can at least do that, but you know, what I would encourage everyone to do is even if you don't feel that you can speak up and you're afraid of that censorship or that the repercussions of saying your mind, at least do not yield your strength to something you disagree with. So don't, don't buy the party line. Don't use you know, the compelled speech of the state. Don't don't agree to it. At least don't acquiesce stand apart in at least that.

Sir Josh: 1:27:18

Wow. Well said, Ben well said, I'd have to agree. Allowing the state to utilize the threat of violence to just censor you and make you go along with the program. I consider it to be morally and ethically wrong. I don't think that anyone should ever be forced by government to acquiesce into a specific ideology or be forced to suppress their speech. Regardless of the topic. Jean, you mentioned about talking about a bank robbery, you know, we should be allowed to have that conversation without any type of threat of reprisal, especially from some form of, of government institution.

Sir Gene: 1:27:54

Except that with red flag laws, talking about a bank robbery may get us to lose the ability to purchase firearm.

Sir Josh: 1:28:01

Precisely. And, and that, and that goes down the road in the conversation about red flag laws and how necessary are they? How law, how lawful are they? How are they to enforce these laws and red flag laws? I mean, to me is nothing more than another example of a slippery slope of of an

Sir Gene: 1:28:20

It's free crime. It's it's just, it's free crime law.

Sir Josh: 1:28:22

yeah. Pre-crime yeah. Pre-crime.

Sir Ben: 1:28:24

it goes back to, you know, the seventies. And you know, we, we had mental institutions in this country that were overly saturated and in a, in very, very poor conditions. And in the eighties, we had a backlash against that. And you know, now to commit someone, involuntarily is fairly difficult as it should be that said you know, involuntary commitment of someone, man, the burden to do that is too low still today for me. So based off of the, based off of the witness of a family member saying that you are a danger to yourself or others is enough to get you thrown into a mental, to a mental institution, forcibly drugged for at least three days in most states. Where's the due process in. Now we're talking about red flag laws that are going to take away guns and do similar things under similar circumstances. Why are we okay with that

Sir Gene: 1:29:32

well, I think the red flags are actually red, red frog, red flag laws are actually,

Sir Ben: 1:29:38

you lick a red toad before the podcast?

Sir Gene: 1:29:41

you know, I wish I did. Red toads are awesome. I just saw a picture one that was super cute. The other day, a red toed. No, I think that the, the red flag gun laws are quite a bit worse because this is a permanent removal of your ability for self defense based on allegations and not actual court case.

Sir Ben: 1:30:02

Well, the most of the red flag law legislations are, they are removed for a period of time and then potentially returned unless there's further court action.

Sir Gene: 1:30:11

Have you ever seen the government actually return anything?

Sir Ben: 1:30:13

I, I understand, but I'm just telling you the way the laws are actually written, but there are some that are being drafted that would require the P the person whose guns have been taken to go to the court and petition for their return. So that is a shift of our legal system back to an Napoleonic system of guilty until proven innocent, which is just anathema to the, the ethos of this country.

Sir Josh: 1:30:40

The whole concept of innocent until proven guilty was part of the foundational bedrock of our judicial process. And that was one of the key things that even men like John Adams, that we may dislike his his element on having a a strong national government, but he still believed in the principle of innocent before innocent until proven guilty. And those were, that was what he took to the courtroom when he defended the soldiers who were being tried for the, the killing of of Boston colonials in in 75 that Boston massacre, I'm sorry, 1770. And the Boston massacre is is one of those flashpoints in colonial history. That was highly propaganda. And they used a lot of of publications at that time to excite people or, or we could say using fear based entertainment to get people on board with either, Hey, join this resistance and fight the British, or do something else with your life, like support the British or do nothing, or what have you.

Sir Ben: 1:31:43

Well, and, you know, I, I will say this as much as I don't like Adam's status nature, I will say that that was a turning point. Where had John Adams not stood up and not forced that trial to take place. And those soldiers just been executed. I think you would've seen the American revolution go the way of the French revolution. I really do. I think that was an early enough period in time where it wasn't just a mob execution, it was stopped. There was an orderly trial and a defense was given of the individual soldiers, not necessarily the.

Sir Josh: 1:32:22

Well said, and that's very true. The, the very element that the the, the trial by jury and everything that was given, because there was a plot with the governor whose name escapes me at the moment. But the current civilian authority in Massachusetts at that time did have conversations with general Thomas G, who was in charge of the British colonials O of the British soldiers at that time. And they were going to pull those soldiers out of that jail and send them back to England. Should the trial go age, go south, go, not the way they would like it to go, which meant let's have a, a trial go forward and let's have all of the evidence, heard the testimony heard and go forward with how we're going to punish these men if at if at all. And so that, that was very much there on in the, in the cards for general gauge to utilize, to prevent his ma his soldiers from being executed by either some form of mob rule or by some, you know, kangaroo court. But I think overall, what, what happened, there was much better than what could have happened if it just descended into complete chaos.

Sir Gene: 1:33:37

So let, let this kind of reminds me of another topic that we haven't talked about, which I'm curious to hear your opinions. Which is prisoners of war. I've always liked the, the concept of of you don't engage in warfare unless that leaves no other options. And once you've crossed that line, the rule is there are no rules. I think that it, it functions better as a preventative measure and it it prevents hesitation. It prevents people from trying to second guess orders and opinions. And part of that is the idea that Prince's nurse are an encumbrance. And so as an army, either advances or retreats, you're effectively shooting to kill and not shooting to create a condition of surrender.

Sir Ben: 1:34:41

Name me a war in history where there has not been prisoners of war.

Sir Gene: 1:34:46

Oh, there's always been prisoners of war I'm well, it's typically only small groups that engage in this type of mentality. And if you're sending a, a. Navy seals to go accomplish a task. They're not gonna be taking prisoners or war with them.

Sir Ben: 1:35:00

Well, and, you know, even during the American revolution you had flags raised for no quarter, right? There are times in military

Sir Gene: 1:35:07

But is that a good thing, I guess is the question

Sir Ben: 1:35:10

no, I, I think having as one of my ancestors was a prisoner of the British during the American revolution, I'm kind of glad personally that, you know, they did take prisoners to some extent.

Sir Gene: 1:35:22

yeah, well, both my grandfathers died in world war II to Germans. And German did take prisoners of, although it's arguable as to whether or not that was a, a pro or a con because it was a, a slower death

Sir Ben: 1:35:39

Well, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:35:40

death.

Sir Ben: 1:35:41

interesting fast forwarding to world war II, more Germans died post world war II in allied prison camps than during conflict.

Sir Gene: 1:35:49

yeah.

Sir Josh: 1:35:50

Interesting fact, but on the, on the concept of prisoners of war I, I very much like the idea that if you have two nations who are in some form of military con military conflict with one another, that there would be the preservation of the humanity side of the conflict. Whereas you have a particular unit who is engaged who's engaged and they are defeated routed, or what have you. And there are men left behind and they're taken prisoner and that there isn't human side of that, where they are given at least some form of care and and looking after until such time as they can be returned.

Sir Gene: 1:36:34

the benefit

Sir Josh: 1:36:35

so the benefit that I see is, is the humanity side to maintain an element of humanity. War is completely and totally destructive. You blow up houses, you blow up buildings, you bridges, it's, you'd kill large numbers of people. When you take a moment to dedicate resources to the preservation of at least something, there's at least something else that you can look at about that conflict. And you can say there is a time when men who were engaged in military conflict, recognized and preserved their humanity versus descending into complete and total inhumanity and just murdering everything. So I look at it as a way to at least check that there is some form of humanity left and that it is not completely beaten out of us. And we are completely overrun with just demons, if you will, if you

Sir Gene: 1:37:29

yeah, it doesn't sound like an advantage to me.

Sir Josh: 1:37:31

Well, if you're talking about an advantage, I'm looking at it from like a, a personal spiritual advantage. If you're looking at it from a military advantage, there's none. It's a drain on resources.

Sir Gene: 1:37:41

Yeah,

Sir Josh: 1:37:42

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:37:42

and resources. And I, I think the benefit of not taking prisoners of war is that it, I elicits a bigger pushback on the enemy to get out of the conflict. Because if, if your government is telling you go fight these guys, the whoever the bad guys are. And by the way you've seen plenty of examples on the news or on in newspapers or whatever that they don't take prisoners of war. So if you go there and you happen to not be victorious, the, the failure of victory is death. It's gonna create a lot more internal strife within the country that you're fighting because the population doesn't want to die. They want to go along with what, you know, whatever the fight is for. Presumably the people in the country are supporting the government, but they'll support.'em less. If they know that the, this is not gonna be a question of of, well, we're gonna fight, we're gonna give it our best. And if we get captured, then we'll have to wait until there's a prisoner exchange. Because my, my stance on, on armed conflict is that it, it cannot begin until that red line that we talked about at the beginning of episode, which is why I'm bringing this up now, which is not your belief in the right of some idea, but your willingness to die for it you've crossed that line and you're willing to die for something I'm willing to take everybody, even if their hands are up in the air

Sir Ben: 1:39:20

Yeah. Well, let, let me put it to you this way. I think one of the biggest mistakes Santa Anna made from a military conflict standpoint was when he raised the flag of no quarter at the Alamo. And the reason why is because he then gave the defenders of the Alamo zero choice in the matter.

Sir Gene: 1:39:38

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:39:39

They had to fight to the last man. They had to do everything they could to hold him and stop him because their lives were already forfeit. At that point, there was no escape for them at that point. So when he raised that flag, he made the choice for them. And that's the danger by, by allowing an enemy to surrender a, you can save the lives of your own men and B you give them a choice to give up a otherwise hopeless position. So I'm not saying that the defenders of the Alamo wouldn't have potentially said, screw you. We're never gonna surrender, but by raising the red flag, he took that choice away from them. So that's something to keep in mind there too.

Sir Josh: 1:40:21

Mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 1:40:22

that's fine, but I don't think he made a wrong move in that. I mean, they, he did, he prevailed.

Sir Ben: 1:40:28

He lost a shit ton of men at the Alamo and his, the delay, the delay at the Alamo was key to the actual full army of Texas being able to move and eventually defeat him.

Sir Gene: 1:40:42

well, that's a strategic, I mean, he, he could have sent the majority

Sir Ben: 1:40:46

It, it was a tactical win, but a huge strategic loss.

Sir Gene: 1:40:50

right. But I don't, I don't think that that's tied to the fact that he didn't wanna take quarters, you know, he didn't wanna take prisons. I think that was more tied to the idea that instead of surrounding the Alamo and, and keeping the supplies to the Alamo, a away from being able to be brought in and then continuing on with his troops instead, they were going to. Fully capture the Alamo before moving on fully capturing an objective is a different thing than what I'm describing. I'm talking about prisoners, not

Sir Ben: 1:41:19

So, so, so yeah, there's a problem with that though. So Santa Anna's supply lines were already pretty stretched out. And not only that Santa Anna didn't have the troops to besiege the Alamo and move a, if he had broken his forces up in that way, he would've been defeated far earlier.

Sir Gene: 1:41:36

How hard would it have been to simply poison the stream? That's coming through the Alamo. There's ways to kill everybody without having to, you know, have a big gun fight.

Sir Ben: 1:41:45

yeah, I mean, if you wanna go the Roman route of poisoning, the, well, sure.

Sir Gene: 1:41:50

think that's a brilliant idea. Don't get into a war unless you're willing to die

Sir Ben: 1:41:55

I, I

Sir Gene: 1:41:55

and don't accept anything but death from your enemy. I believe in the Conan mono

Sir Ben: 1:42:01

Okay, so, so salt and then you lose the, no one can have it. So that, that is where Gene's Russian upbringing becomes a problem.

Sir Gene: 1:42:11

total war, baby, total

Sir Josh: 1:42:12

Total war total war,

Sir Ben: 1:42:14

can't have it, no one can,

Sir Josh: 1:42:16

Okay, so that's the next podcast. Total war gene.

Sir Gene: 1:42:20

total war.

Sir Josh: 1:42:21

total war with gene. That's the next podcast. There it is. There it is.

Sir Gene: 1:42:24

that's all. I need more podcasts to do.

Sir Ben: 1:42:26

by the way, I was thinking of, you know, Jean, Jean, and I have floated, you know, Hey, do we spin this off as just a standalone podcast instead of keeping it as surgeon speaks. And so on, I came up with a with a, a an idea for the title,

Sir Gene: 1:42:38

Okay.

Sir Ben: 1:42:39

Boris and Bullwinkle.

Sir Gene: 1:42:41

Boris okay. So I mean,

Sir Ben: 1:42:45

I thought about moose and squirrel, but

Sir Gene: 1:42:47

yeah. Muslim squirrel Muslim squirrel is pretty funny.

Sir Josh: 1:42:50

That's funny.

Sir Gene: 1:42:51

You know, I did go as Boris on the Halloween ones.

Sir Ben: 1:42:54

who was Natasha?

Sir Gene: 1:42:56

This chick I was seeing who was taller than me.

Sir Ben: 1:42:58

Hmm. But that's not too hard.

Sir Gene: 1:43:01

here's the chick. Well, and in fact Adam can remember that he was at that Halloween too.

Sir Josh: 1:43:06

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:43:06

But it's the, the problem is of course that, you know, I have a beard, not a mustache, so clearly I don't look like Boris.

Sir Ben: 1:43:13

I, it was just, you know, it came to my mind yesterday evening.

Sir Gene: 1:43:17

Yeah. Well,

Sir Ben: 1:43:18

So Hey, if, if anyone has suggestions, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:43:22

Yeah. We'll take suggestions. If somebody has a suggestion

Sir Ben: 1:43:25

do that name, ben.com

Sir Gene: 1:43:27

there you go. Yeah. You send them to you. That's good. Cause I don't check my email that often. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean this, I, I know it kind of made me seem like a left field where I'm asking about the prisoner war thing. But to me, this was something that I've. Often wondered about and I, I know that you know, like there are certain situations where becoming IM prisoners actually worse than getting killed. Like if you happen to be a, a Jew in an army fighting the Germans during world war II, you're probably better off fighting until you're dead than being captured and then shipped off to concentration camp

Sir Ben: 1:44:03

are the Chinese that got sent to Japanese unit

Sir Gene: 1:44:06

Yep. Same thing there. Same thing there, like you're better. And in those concentration, I, I think that the motivation becomes the same for the defensive force is what you described in the Alamo, which is I don't want to get, you know, maybe it's not an issue of becoming a prison war. I don't wanna be a prisoner war. I'm gonna fight till I'm dead in whatever it takes. And if I'm severely wounded, I'm gonna hold on to a grenade with my hand, till my hand loses the ability to hold the pin down and then explode myself and anything around me, including the bad guys. If they happen to show up

Sir Ben: 1:44:38

Yeah. Well, I, I mean, this goes to the reasons why you should ethically, you should treat prisoners prisoners of war ethically because I, if you do what some what the Germans and the Japanese did during world war II and you conduct medical experiments, and this becomes known which it generally wasn't, but if it had become known to the Chinese or Russian or allied soldiers that, Hey, if you, if you're captured by the Germans, they're gonna go do horrible, horrible things to you. I mean the Germans actually treated allied prisoners fairly well with some minor exceptions. The Japanese treated pretty much all the Chinese prisoners horribly for a very long

Sir Gene: 1:45:17

and all prisoners in general, that's why we talk about is that Japanese only sell themselves as being the exception.

Sir Ben: 1:45:23

and, and what I would say there is, this is why the, the war in the Pacific in many ways was a lot more brutal. You know, now the Western front for, you know, the, the Russians and the Western front in Europe was very different, but the Pacific war for the Americans was far more brutal. Now people are gonna talk about D-Day and everything else. And that, that that's Fastly the exception. You know, but when you look at Ji, when you look at guile canal and everything else, I mean, it was bad.

Sir Gene: 1:45:52

Reminds me of battlefield 42. That was such a great game.

Sir Josh: 1:45:55

Well, battlefield 42 was a good game. But yeah. To, to piggyback the pow thing, I put two examples over there, guys, for you, one's camp Douglas, the other is Andersonville. And so that's just a look at some of the pow camps that we saw during the civil war. Douglas was in Chicago and Andersonville was near Macon, Georgia. But yeah, P O w camps. The benefit from my point of view was that humanity aspect. You're trying to preserve things you're trying to say, but from the other side, tos your point, the, the, the military benefit to it. It's not your expending resources to, to keep those soldiers alive. And so it's kind of, how do you find a balance balance there, but there's also the, the preventative measure, which I would argue that you may not be able to get that message to everybody where, Hey, if you go fight this war against these people, no quarter is gonna be given. There is gonna be no prisoner taken, you're going to be killed, and this is how you're going to be killed. I see that as a way to kind of prevent a people from going on or getting on board with the, go with, you know, your government saying, Hey, go fight these guys because we have to take them out. And you're like looking at this saying, Uhuh, I ain't going to, I ain't going to war Jack. Look at

Sir Gene: 1:47:05

Well, exactly. That's, that's my point. That's what you wanna create in the opposite. Army is the idea that you, you, you wanna resist your government and not fight us because the, as soon as you're coming here, you're only alive until you're dead. And that death is the only en ending here. There is no leaving.

Sir Ben: 1:47:23

and this is why conscription is imoral. You want to only fight just wars. Don't have conscription. If your citizenry isn't behind it enough to volunteer, then you probably shouldn't be fighting that war.

Sir Gene: 1:47:36

no, I, I totally agree. And I'll give you two other examples of why I think prisoners are bad is both Angus con and and what's his name? I forget his first name. Zish the the guy who became Dracula. They were prisoners of war in their youth, both of them, which I think fermented a certain equality in their, in their later years. that was very brutal. And I, I, I think that the, the, the harm place by not killing either individual initially, and just by having them as prisoners of wars resulted in a lot more deaths later in, later in the years,

Sir Josh: 1:48:15

yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:48:15

Yeah, well, you okay? What about Hitler in world war? I,

Sir Gene: 1:48:20

was he, is he a prisoner? I don't even know.

Sir Ben: 1:48:22

no, but he fell victim to a mustard, gas attack and several other things. And

Sir Gene: 1:48:26

if you would've been killed during that attack and that just you know, succumb to muster gas and had poor health as a result things of health things would've been differently.

Sir Ben: 1:48:36

No, there

Sir Gene: 1:48:36

But if you kill enough people, there's nobody left to take their

Sir Ben: 1:48:40

Yes, literally no one left.

Sir Gene: 1:48:42

I've always been a big fan of Masada. You know, the Jewish settlements surrounded by the Romans that was. Placated making the correct proper step in, not letting the Romans have victory.

Sir Josh: 1:48:55

yeah,

Sir Ben: 1:48:56

Well, so what do y'all think of Biden's presence over in the middle east right now and his quick tour over in Jerusalem.

Sir Gene: 1:49:05

how much cock he sucked out there. Oh, wow. You did ask. I'm just answering your question.

Sir Josh: 1:49:10

and he's definitely, probably outsourcing that. I don't think he could literally get on his knees and do any of that. He's probably got

Sir Ben: 1:49:18

do you think KA is his vice president?

Sir Josh: 1:49:21

yeah. Yeah. Hey, Hey, we need to refer to her by our correct name and that's knee pads. Okay. All right. yeah, there's my one to just douche comment for the, for the show. You're welcome. There we go. Yeah, there you go. And, and also, and also time go, that's an ISO worth,

Sir Gene: 1:49:39

the fist bump, I think is so backfired because all the liberal media hear is like, oh my God, how can he be doing this? Because they consider the fist bump to be the proper green. It's also backfired in Saudi Arabia where they they're saying, look at the disrespect that came out of him. Not even be willing to shake hands.

Sir Ben: 1:50:02

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:50:02

I mean, it's, it's just like, it's basically made him both be perceived poorly by the ultra left and by the by the Saudi Arabian as well.

Sir Josh: 1:50:14

Wow.

Sir Ben: 1:50:15

I mean, the Saudi Arabian were not gonna show him any respect to begin with. I mean,

Sir Gene: 1:50:20

But it is not about them showing him respect about him showing them respect and which he didn't do by not shaking hands.

Sir Ben: 1:50:26

if he had groveled, do you really think the the kingdom would have responded positively towards him in any way, shape or form?

Sir Gene: 1:50:34

likely, that's why I think it was a mistake for him to even go

Sir Ben: 1:50:37

Oh, I Oh, absolutely. I mean, they were gonna hold him in contempt, no matter what.

Sir Gene: 1:50:41

but since going there, like the last thing you wanna do is, is to further encourage people from, you know, seeing you as disrespecting them. So it was just a bad move. And I, I think it was somebody obviously told them that this is the COVID friendly thing to do, even though no one gives a shit about COVID anymore. And not shaking hands with the leader of a country is showing disrespect. I don't care what else you do instead of that, but by not the whole idea of shaking hands and you know, chime in here if you know, the, the real history, but from what I recall, it came about from demonstrating the lack of a weapon in the hand.

Sir Josh: 1:51:24

that's precisely correct. It, it demonstrated that you were unarmed and that you were lending the arm that was usually reserved for wielding a sword to someone to demonstrate that president Andrew Jackson is the one who popularized it here in the United States. Because up to that point in us history, the handshake was still not commonly used and in, in us politics, but Andrew Jackson made it popularized here in the United States, but you're absolutely right. For lack of a weapon, that was the whole point.

Sir Gene: 1:51:54

yep.

Sir Ben: 1:51:54

know, when you bring up Andrew Jackson, there's only one song that comes to mind.

Sir Josh: 1:51:59

Really? Are you gonna play it for Ben?

Sir Ben: 1:52:02

no, but it starts off in 1814.

Sir Gene: 1:52:05

Who who's the guy that wrote that,

Sir Ben: 1:52:07

Oh shit.

Sir Josh: 1:52:08

wrote what? The star span banner angle, banner

Sir Gene: 1:52:10

Johnny Horton.

Sir Ben: 1:52:11

Yeah.

Sir Josh: 1:52:12

Johnny Horton.

Sir Ben: 1:52:13

Yeah. And 1814, we took a little trip.

Sir Josh: 1:52:17

Oh yeah. That one.

Sir Gene: 1:52:18

Yep. That's a

Sir Ben: 1:52:19

there you go.

Sir Gene: 1:52:21

and if we haven't been banned yet, we will be now

Sir Ben: 1:52:23

nah, this shouldn't

Sir Gene: 1:52:26

in 1814, we took a little trip along with Colonel Jackson down to ma Mississippi. We took the little bacon in, we took the little beans and we caught the bloody British and a town in new Orleans. We fired icons and the British kept coming there wasn't as, as many as there was a while ago, we fired once more and they began to run it on down to Mississippi, to the Gulf of Mexico.

Sir Ben: 1:52:47

Fun fact.

Sir Gene: 1:52:49

as big of a clip as we can play without completely getting

Sir Ben: 1:52:51

So, so fun fact, the battle of new Orleans actually took place after the se succession of hostilities of the war. 18. 12.

Sir Josh: 1:52:59

Very fun fact about that work. A lot of people don't

Sir Gene: 1:53:02

that cuz people didn't realize that it

Sir Ben: 1:53:04

Yeah. News hadn't reached them yet.

Sir Gene: 1:53:07

yeah. Well, there's always stories of islands in the Pacific with you know, Japanese still thinking the war was going on several years later after it had,

Sir Ben: 1:53:17

Decades.

Sir Gene: 1:53:18

or, well,

Sir Josh: 1:53:19

Yeah. So yeah, that guy that came out of the trees in the seventies or something that was,

Sir Gene: 1:53:24

he lived in the trees.

Sir Josh: 1:53:26

yeah, well, apparently that's what he was doing. I don't know. I mean, I'd have to go find that story again and read it. It's it?

Sir Ben: 1:53:33

Yeah, just Google. When the last Japanese soldier surrendered.

Sir Josh: 1:53:36

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:53:37

Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, and speaking of music, so I, I sent to you guys on her back channel there, the the song from a video game that, I mean, all the songs in that video game are awesome, frankly, but one in particular that is just sounding more and more freaking prophetic as time goes on. And the, the video game is shit, I'm blanking out. It's bar cry five, which takes place in either Montana or Idaho. I can't remember one of those place, Montana. There you go. And it's it, you know, it's essentially the story of a, some sort of a offshoot Christian ish cultish kind of a thing. And

Sir Ben: 1:54:25

cult, a cult at.

Sir Gene: 1:54:26

Debatable, but yeah. So I highly recommend this game to anyone that hasn't played. It, it's actually a great game. Very nice artwork, good storyline, everything like clicks in place, twist ending, which is always fun and games. Lots of animals to hunt, hunting and fishing is part of the game. As well as the use of some awesome music throughout the game, both on the radio that you're driving around. In fact, God damn, I'm probably gonna jump in that game after this. Now I'm starting to reminisce. It came out quite a few years back. It's probably five years ago, but it was definitely cutting edge when it came out. And of course in the storyline, you're playing a policeman deputy policeman. I think that goes to get the leader of the cult and things don't go too well after that. And I'll just leave it at that. But the music is just, I, I don't know how to describe it. They such did such a good job of creating a likable anti-hero

Sir Josh: 1:55:25

Hm.

Sir Gene: 1:55:26

I think

Sir Ben: 1:55:27

You know, it's interesting cuz when you look at the folk music of any time period, it tells you a lot about the mindset and the mentality, especially around war, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:55:38

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:55:40

Excuse me. Water went down the wrong pipe, what the troops were thinking at the time, right? What they were singing about, what the songs that come out after the war. Vietnam is a fantastic example of the music of the era, especially that relates to the war.

Sir Gene: 1:55:56

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:55:57

you know, really how the soldiers.

Sir Gene: 1:55:59

Yeah, and I, and I think popular music does that, but this is what's so cool. Is that in far cry five, they were able to hire such professionals or maybe it's just one guy. I don't know that we're able to create a whole series of music multiple albums worth of the type of music that fits the character of the cult in the game. And it, it, I like, I that's the thing it's like, this is supposed to be music that is pro culture, whatever, or kind of from the perspective of that cult. But man, it sounds pretty fricking mainstream to me. I'm just gonna play a little tiny clip of it since this is the episode we're doing music on.

Sir Josh: 1:56:42

absolutely.

Sir Gene: 1:56:44

Let me see here. If I can find it, put it in half. The sinister CRE the rich will get what want the poor, what our, he told all his friends they'll block the sun with their lives. As darkness says, Lord, the won't be our end. When the world falls into the flame, we rise again. Now I don't, you know, I'm not a religious guy, but that is just beautiful.

Sir Ben: 1:57:31

Yeah, well, and all she has to do is say instead of the great collapse, the great reset and you're there

Sir Josh: 1:57:36

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:57:37

now. So my favorite one from that particular video game gene, since you're playing it is is, is this one first of all, can y'all hear that?

Sir Gene: 1:57:45

no, no.

Sir Ben: 1:57:47

All right. I'll send you the link.

Sir Gene: 1:57:49

Okay. Yeah. You're like the rifle by my side one,

Sir Ben: 1:57:52

Yeah. Yeah. That's the one, keep your rifle by your side.

Sir Josh: 1:57:56

That, that's the good one. That's

Sir Gene: 1:57:57

Yeah, they're all good. There's so many good ones.

Sir Josh: 1:58:00

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:58:00

Yeah. Well, you know, the, it, I have an entire playlist that's you know,

Sir Gene: 1:58:05

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:58:06

That's that that's my

Sir Gene: 1:58:08

versions. They have like a choir version, interpretation version you know, original

Sir Ben: 1:58:12

produced for the video game.

Sir Gene: 1:58:14

Yeah. The video game I bought the full CD set, six discs, six CDs, six hours of music that were all done for the video game. They'll look, it'll look everywhere we go. But when the center, the speed. They'll come louder. They'll come fast. We shoot first and weekend. Last, keep your by your side. Sing in. Oh Lord. This made for us sing in oh Lord life. Just so we'll take a stand cause we must protect har keep your rifle by your all right. There we

Sir Ben: 1:59:00

So I guess this, this, this show is gonna be the shot across the bow to the rock and rolls pre room.

Sir Gene: 1:59:06

for, for private music, I am

Sir Ben: 1:59:08

The folk

Sir Gene: 1:59:08

the thing. I've actually done the research and I've actually even shared it with Darren on what it takes to be fully licensed.

Sir Ben: 1:59:15

Oh, it's incredibly expensive.

Sir Gene: 1:59:17

it's not that expensive. If I wanted to play the full versions of these tunes, it would be somewhere around$1,800 per episode.

Sir Ben: 1:59:26

yeah. Yeah. Well that's fairly expensive, but it

Sir Gene: 1:59:29

I mean, only if we have a small audience, but if we have the audience of no agenda, it's still the same price.

Sir Ben: 1:59:36

Yes, I understand that. But it doesn't scale at the smaller end of the spectrum,

Sir Gene: 1:59:41

No, it doesn't scale down. No, no, like that. We couldn't afford to do it, but I'm just saying that like a nice size podcast or YouTube channel could totally do it. Totally legit.

Sir Ben: 1:59:51

Okay.

Sir Gene: 1:59:52

And that's that's for stuff like this. If you, if you wanted to play the radio type 40, that license is way cheaper. I don't know why, but that's just how it works.

Sir Ben: 2:00:02

Well, the, the problem is, is whether or not it's decided to be a broadcast or whether or not it's a, you know, venue

Sir Gene: 2:00:09

they finally have created a category called podcast.

Sir Ben: 2:00:12

Really. So when I was doing my podcast way back in the day when I was at a and M

Sir Gene: 2:00:17

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 2:00:18

2005 ish you know, pod safe music was a huge thing.

Sir Gene: 2:00:25

yeah, yeah. And it, I mean, right now, like you can get libraries of that, of non of essentially legal copyright content very cheaply, anywhere between 20 bucks and 50 bucks a month gets you a million album license,

Sir Ben: 2:00:44

Hmm.

Sir Gene: 2:00:45

for, but it's all like, none of it is gonna be music that is popular music that you've heard. It's all music that is created specifically for the for the use in videos and podcasts and stuff. And there's some decent music there. I mean, it's not to say that there's like shitty music there. There's a lot of music that is good there, but, but it is not the music you necessarily want. Like there have been specific tunes, specific songs. I don't wanna call'em songs cause there's no singing on'em, it's just tunes I've wanted for different podcasts I've had. And I've only been able to get two of them. And I only got them by writing the performers directly and getting permission that way. But generally you can't really do that. So

Sir Ben: 2:01:34

Well, and a lot of performers don't own their own content.

Sir Gene: 2:01:38

yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of'em was from mobi and then another two, and I can't remember the guy's name, but it was the one that I used on my interview show that I did for a while. About five years ago new media interviews, that's what it was called. And that one turned out to be a guy in Australia that was playing he was playing violin. And I can't remember whose tune. Oh, it wasn't violin. It was guitar. Sorry. It was it was guitar sort of in the style of Jenga rein. So both of those guys, I was able to actually get permission from directly, but every other time that I've sent in and tried to request a permission to play a particular piece of music, I either would get nothing back or just a referral to BMG or, you know, or some other copywriting place. And those, those places have historically not had licenses that are designed for things like YouTube videos and podcasts. So th this is a very new phenomenon of now being able to be fully licensed and legal, but also as I talked about on on relenting yesterday, I, I really think that copyright is way the hell too long. If it exists at all, and I think there is some arguments for it, the period should be very, very short, less than five years. In my opinion,

Sir Ben: 2:02:58

Well, it certainly should not exceed the life of the author. You know, what Disney has done to copyright law is absolutely abhorrent. The fact that

Sir Gene: 2:03:06

Disney has been raping America for a hundred years.

Sir Ben: 2:03:09

oh, yeah. And they are paying for it at this point, if you haven't looked at the stock price. I mean, I, so

Sir Gene: 2:03:14

They need to be bankrupt. They need to go out of business.

Sir Ben: 2:03:17

literally, I have been a shareholder in Disney since the nineties, when my uncle was teaching me when my uncle was teaching me about the stock market. One of the first stocks I bought as a kid was Disney. It's actually done really well for me because it's split multiple times. The acquisition of ESPN. There's a lot

Sir Gene: 2:03:34

of the problem.

Sir Ben: 2:03:35

Well, as an adult and now seeing where they've gone with what they did with buzz light year, with what they've done with Baymax and, you know, they, they finally jumped the shark for me. Disney has sexualized our children for a long time, but when they're going opposite of at least traditional values, then you you've lost me. And I have actually you know, dive, this is not financial advice, but I have divested all of my holdings in Disney and I've redirected, IRA funds and everything else away from anything that would touch any Disney property. And you know, that may hurt me financially, but at least I'm putting my money where my mouth.

Sir Gene: 2:04:13

Yeah. So I'm assuming you've instead moved that money around to companies that are in line with your values, like, Glock or SIG

Sir Ben: 2:04:22

Well so that's actually fairly hard to do, especially when you're talking like 401k funds and RA mutual funds, finding those that will support that. Now you can do individual stock rates and things like that, which I, you know, do as well, my money market accounts totally different than that. So there's limits on what you can do, especially inside, you know, company funded, 401ks, but self-directed IRAs. You can usually do a lot if you're willing to do the work and you know, your self-directed accounts. So that's what we try and do

Sir Gene: 2:04:51

Yep.

Sir Josh: 2:04:52

direct self-directed IRAs. Definitely not. There's no, no, no legal nor financial advice at all

Sir Gene: 2:04:59

Nope. Well, and I, I have an automated

Sir Ben: 2:05:03

blurb at the

Sir Gene: 2:05:04

blur at the, that says all that. Yeah, exactly.

Sir Josh: 2:05:07

Yep.

Sir Gene: 2:05:08

All right guys. Well, we've been going on for a while here. I think it's probably a long enough episode. I've certainly got plenty of topics to cover. Appreciate you being on as well, Josh and providing more of a historical perspective, which quite often you provide to us on the back channel anyway. But it's, it's nice hearing your voice and I certainly would encourage you to go down the path that sounds like you've been wanting to, and starting up your own historical based podcast. I think that'd be awesome.

Sir Josh: 2:05:35

I,

Sir Ben: 2:05:36

let us know when you get it going. We'll we'll plug

Sir Josh: 2:05:38

definitely. It's definitely something that I'm

Sir Gene: 2:05:40

hell, we'll just have you on after you get that first episode going, we'll just have you on and you could, you know, kinda give a little bit of a example to folks and, and help you build your audience.

Sir Josh: 2:05:50

Thanks, man. It's been fun. This is my first podcast being on

Sir Gene: 2:05:53

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 2:05:53

not that we have the huge audience yet, but you know, we're working on it.

Sir Gene: 2:05:58

It's always a relative thing, right? It's an audience. The guy with an audience of one is, can give advice to the guy with an audience of zero.

Sir Ben: 2:06:04

In the king, in the kingdom of the blind that one-eyed man is king.

Sir Gene: 2:06:08

Exactly. Well, and I appreciate everybody for listening. Hopefully you guys got something out of this. We've had some good, fun, controversial topics, which we always seem to stumble onto it during these podcasts. And one of these days we'll keep your abreast of a, a splitting off or name change coming up because I will always keep Surine speaks just cuz I'm sure I'll have things to say, but now we've certainly been going along enough with Ben to be able to start off something separate and unique from Seine speaks as well. And if somebody has ideas for names, let Ben know. What's that address again? Ben

Sir Ben: 2:06:45

Dude at name bend.com.

Sir Gene: 2:06:48

dude, to name ben.com.

Sir Ben: 2:06:50

Yep. like either moose and squirrel or you know, hell I'm calling myself bowl Eagle, man. How, how you know it can be fun.

Sir Gene: 2:06:58

So you want me to be at squirrel?

Sir Ben: 2:07:00

No, no, no, no, no, no. You, you, you you're Boris. You're Boris bore and boy.

Sir Gene: 2:07:04

Well, I don't know why you're assuming my species.

Sir Josh: 2:07:09

Assuming the species.

Sir Gene: 2:07:10

Don't be speciesist please. Don't don't defend people that may have other species that they categorize themselves as we're not talking about

Sir Ben: 2:07:21

so I, I, I do have one last question

Sir Gene: 2:07:24

oh, okay. Go ahead.

Sir Ben: 2:07:25

before we wrap up, since you brought this up. So how long do you think it is before someone is charged with beastiality, but then says, well, it's not because I identify as X, Y, Z animal

Sir Gene: 2:07:39

I'd be shocked if it hasn't already happened. really wouldn't. And I, I think that when you get down to the reality community, which is I'm, it's a thing. I, I think that there's probably a good chunk of people there in that group that do identify themselves as not being fully human. Now it might be WW, it might be something else that's kind of like, you know, not a real animal, but my suspicion is that, and I think I have met a few folks that have engaged in that particular ction but my suspicion would be that that the, the ones that don't see anything different or wrong with a human fucking, an animal excuse my French are probably a minority. I think the ones that, that. Really into it kind of, they really like those species

Sir Ben: 2:08:36

Yeah. So I was going for a last second joke. Now Jean's going

Sir Gene: 2:08:40

oh, well, what's the punchline. God, I thought you wanted to have a serious discussion about, I mean,

Sir Ben: 2:08:44

no, it's all good, man. I'm just saying I, I can totally see people using that excuse and yeah. anyway, regardless hopefully

Sir Gene: 2:08:52

thought you were going for like a joke about New Zealand or something and how the, the sheep and the farmers

Sir Ben: 2:08:57

New Zealand, ISIS, you know,

Sir Gene: 2:09:00

Yeah, well, anywhere there's lots of sheep. I don't know what the deal is with sheep. But since

Sir Ben: 2:09:04

at the right height.

Sir Gene: 2:09:06

are they though, are they really

Sir Ben: 2:09:08

well for normal height individuals, gene,

Sir Gene: 2:09:12

I thought they were kind of small actually, but If anybody has seen the Woody Allen movie, everything you wanted to know about sex, one of the scenes in that movie is gene Wilder playing a shrink to whom a patient comes to talk about his love of his sheep. And it quickly becomes, you know, obvious that his love isn't just you know, a love it is physical love and. Gene Wilder eventually tells the guy, well, you gotta bring your sheep in so I can talk to her as well. And he thinks it's hu, it's really funny. And then in that scene, you see that gene Wilder like sees the sheep kind of flirting with him and starts flirting back and eventually ends up stealing this guy's girlfriend, the sheep, and going off into you know,

Sir Ben: 2:10:10

oh

Sir Gene: 2:10:11

together. It is a funny movie. I mean, it's probably, in fact, I'm sure it came out before either one of you guys were born.

Sir Ben: 2:10:17

Yeah,

Sir Gene: 2:10:18

but

Sir Ben: 2:10:19

never been a big Woody Allen fan. He, you know, just two, well, and maybe movies like this and his own pre elections bias me against him. But yeah,

Sir Gene: 2:10:31

I, I think it's hilarious. I think Woody Allen is absolutely brilliant. I've read a

Sir Ben: 2:10:35

I'm more of a Mel Brooks kind of guy,

Sir Gene: 2:10:38

slapstick.

Sir Ben: 2:10:39

You know, space balls to me is hilarious.

Sir Gene: 2:10:43

yeah, it's very slapstick. Yeah. Well this Mo then you would enjoy this movie cuz everything you always wanted to know sex about sex is much more of a Millbrook style movie than it is a Woody Allen people walking around New York and talking about relationships movie, which is what he was known for mostly in the nineties.

Sir Ben: 2:11:03

But you know, Mel Brooks is an all slapstick,

Sir Gene: 2:11:07

Well, okay. What's he done? That's less, less sleep. I

Sir Ben: 2:11:10

the producers

Sir Gene: 2:11:12

That's fairly slap sticky Hitler on ice.

Sir Ben: 2:11:15

Hitler.

Sir Gene: 2:11:15

mean, that sounds pretty slap sticky to me.

Sir Ben: 2:11:18

I would say it's an absurdist thing, but sure.

Sir Gene: 2:11:20

oh, sure, sure. I think all of Mel Brook's movies that I can think of, and I think I've seen all of'em have gross exaggerations of characters for comedic element, whether it's Frankenstein, whether it's high anxiety whether

Sir Ben: 2:11:37

blazing

Sir Gene: 2:11:38

space balls, for sure.

Sir Ben: 2:11:39

blazing saddles, a movie that could not be made today.

Sir Josh: 2:11:43

Oh, no,

Sir Gene: 2:11:44

it's a movie that couldn't have even been made when it was made, frankly that, that movie was, I think it snuck through on a very low budget. I really don't think that if it, if it was a big budget movie, it would not have been made.

Sir Ben: 2:11:56

Hmm.

Sir Gene: 2:11:57

And, and Cleveland little was absolutely perfect in that. And I, I didn't think that gene Waller was nearly as good in that one. I didn't really think his character fit the actor very.

Sir Josh: 2:12:07

Well, maybe, maybe that was the intent was to make sure that Jane Wilder wasn't that good. So as you say to kind of, you know, kind of skirt

Sir Gene: 2:12:16

I, I think, I think it was supposed to be Harrison Ford originally. And it was recast fairly late in the process. Yeah. Cuz they wanted some kind of a,

Sir Ben: 2:12:25

in that movie.

Sir Gene: 2:12:26

some kind of a drunk gruff guy who was, you know, known for his gun

Sir Ben: 2:12:33

be, you know, perfect for that movie. Got.

Sir Gene: 2:12:36

Yeah. I mean, it's basically a guy that's in his thirties, late thirties, early forties. Who's now completely drunk, but used to be like the hot shot gun Slinger,

Sir Ben: 2:12:47

Yeah, well, I mean, that's a spinoff of Dorado, right?

Sir Gene: 2:12:51

Well everything in that movie is another Western movie made fun of

Sir Ben: 2:12:56

Yes, indeed. But the drunk sheriff being elder auto and you yeah. gentlemen.

Sir Gene: 2:13:03

everybody in the past was drunk. I mean that's maybe a topic for another episode.

Sir Ben: 2:13:08

yes. So this is actually a good topic for this episode. As with me coming off a vacation and actually not drinking very much on my vacation.

Sir Gene: 2:13:16

Oh

Sir Ben: 2:13:17

So, you know, previously

Sir Gene: 2:13:21

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 2:13:22

the amount of alcohol consumption that was deemed socially appropriate, even, you know, into the fifties, really the sixties and seventies is where it started coming out of it, but is drastically different than today. And I want to know why the fuck did we change that? I think we would be a much happier society if we

Sir Gene: 2:13:40

well, the temperance movement rose out of that, out of the fact that I can't remember the exact numbers, but I wanna say the consumption pre temperance. So the turn of the 20th century from 19th, 20th, the average consumptions of American was something like 16 gallons of alcohol per year. or maybe a month. It might have been a month, but it was some ridiculous number that has to include drinking. It's probably a month 16 gallons a month. Does that sound right? It was, yeah, people were drinking alcohol, like it was diet soda, like with every meal and anytime you're hanging out with somebody, it was alcohol time. And then when you needed to pick me up instead of coffee at the office, it was alcohol time. It was an insane amount. I mean, I don't, but I don't understand how livers survived.

Sir Ben: 2:14:29

Well, what's interesting is globally the amount of alcohol consumption has continued to rise. It's just really Americans that have, you know, gone down and really it's a class thing now. You know, I don't know really any professionals you know, work working in, you know, pretty large companies with very few exceptions. Most of the professionals I dealt with, you know, happy hours are always a thing. And they, I mean, people drink every day for a large percentage of the population. And then you go the other side of the equation you go to you know, my wife's family and her background. She just doesn't understand that in any way, shape or form. And I, it's a, it's a hell of a divide. And I think part of it is stress responsibilities and the effects of alcohol. You know, if alcohol works for you as a drug, it's a hell of a drug, but you know, people like Eugene doesn't necessarily work for. So, you know, there, it's an

Sir Gene: 2:15:30

oh, alcohol definitely works for me. I'm just this, this year. I'm not drinking at all,

Sir Ben: 2:15:34

Okay.

Sir Gene: 2:15:35

I've I've told you, but you thought was weird, but yeah, I, you know, I've drunk

Sir Ben: 2:15:40

2018 the statistics were 26.2 gallons on average 26.2 gallons a year for the for an adult

Sir Gene: 2:15:48

In 2016.

Sir Ben: 2:15:49

in 2018

Sir Gene: 2:15:51

Oh, 2018. Yeah. Yeah. So then that was probably per month back in the like, you know, 1900, because I remember that the numbers seemed difficult to imagine because it, it would be multiple bottles, like, you know, maybe a bottle a day or something. It was just crazy numbers.

Sir Ben: 2:16:11

mm.

Sir Gene: 2:16:12

the, I don't know. I mean, I went to bartender school. I, I worked as a buncher bartender for a while. I was I still have probably way more alcohol than most people in their homes. I probably have, I don't know, 80 to a hundred bottles of wine and probably about 30 or 40 bottles of different liquors. But I just like last year I drank very little and I thought, oh, this is I'm actually feeling kind of better. And this year I decided I'm just gonna not drink it all the whole year. So we'll see what next year is

Sir Ben: 2:16:45

so this is interesting. According to AP and this story was published in January 14th, 2020 American alcohol consumption is more than pre pre the temperance movement for the first time. Yes.

Sir Gene: 2:17:00

Oh my God.

Sir Ben: 2:17:01

And this is, this is interesting because it's that, that number of, you know, 20 whatever gallons, that's a divided across the entire population, but you have to realize that a lot of the population doesn't drink or drinks away less. So you've got some pretty heavy hitters out there that are pushing those pre you know, 19, 19 numbers.

Sir Gene: 2:17:19

That's interesting. So if we're above that now, shit. That's well maybe we'll have a new movement coming out as a result of

Sir Ben: 2:17:27

God, I hope not.

Sir Gene: 2:17:29

And banning alcohol by having a convention of the states to rewrite the constitution. That's how you do it. Right.

Sir Josh: 2:17:35

That that's how you do it. That's how they would do it. Absolutely. Convention. The states they're gonna make alcohol illegal.

Sir Gene: 2:17:40

but that makes no sense because we have all these other substances that the government is deemed illegal as controlled substances without having any kind of constitution convention. Why couldn't they just simply add alcohol to the list of controlled substances?

Sir Ben: 2:17:57

Well, so you know, the constitutionality of our current drug laws has never really been challenged in the Supreme court to my knowledge,

Sir Gene: 2:18:05

Mm-hmm

Sir Josh: 2:18:06

no it hasn't.

Sir Gene: 2:18:07

I don't think it has

Sir Josh: 2:18:08

Yeah, they, they copy and pasted the, the UN controlled substances. And they just put it in.

Sir Ben: 2:18:14

well, and, you know, that's kind of the problem with anyway, we, we, we need to save this discussion for another episode, but there is no doubt that the you know, in fact you have legal precedent saying that, you know, banning the manufacturer of alcohol in the us. So banning the manufacturer of any substance like that required a constitutional amendment before. So why doesn't it.

Sir Gene: 2:18:35

yeah, well, LA, and with that, we're gonna wrap it up. So we'll continue on the next episode with this thought. Thanks for listen, guys.