National Security And The American Promise: Speaking Our Truth, Listening To Each Other, And Finding Common Ground With Nigel M. Lakey

Hot Topic Bold Talk | National Security

 

What true strength protects a nation when modern challenges extend far beyond traditional military defense? Preserving national security requires safeguarding a sovereign people’s capacity to govern themselves while maintaining economic vitality and constitutional order. Host Jackalyn Rainosek sits down with guest Nigel M. Lakey to re-evaluate the true pillars of a resilient society, from infrastructure protection and economic stability to civic education and international alliances. Together, they discuss why civil discourse, informed citizenship, and principled self-governance form the primary bedrock of long-term stability. In this episode, explore how intellectual property, manufacturing capabilities, and shared values shape the future of national defense.

Episode Summary Points:

  • Defining National Security: Preserving national security requires protecting a sovereign people’s capacity to govern themselves, safeguarding economic vitality, and upholding constitutional order alongside traditional military defense
  • Mitigating Modern Existential Threats: Cybersecurity threats against critical national infrastructure, such as water treatment plants and power generation facilities, present major risks that require robust protection.
  • Strengthening Civic Literacy: Public education and critical thinking skills are essential bedrocks of democracy, as a society must be educated about its core principles to govern itself effectively.
  • Deterrence and Global Alliances: Maintaining national stability relies on broad deterrence strategies beyond military power, as well as active participation in global alliances rather than isolationism.
  • Protecting Economic Vitality: A strong economy driven by technological innovation, secure supply chains, and protected intellectual property creates the necessary value and resources to defend a nation.
  • Fostering Ethical Leadership: Business and corporate leaders must move away from short-term exploitation toward principled leadership, mentorship, and social responsibility.
  • Reforming Border Security and Immigration: National security requires maintaining sovereignty and the rule of law through controlled borders, while supporting human-centered pathways to citizenship and economic integration.
  • Restoring Civil Discourse: Overcoming political polarization through respectful, meaningful civil discourse is vital for building consensus and long-term societal resilience.

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National Security And The American Promise: Speaking Our Truth, Listening To Each Other, And Finding Common Ground With Nigel M. Lakey

What Are We Protecting? Strength, Sovereignty, Economic Security, And The Rule Of Law

Defining National Security Across The Political Spectrum

I am very pleased to have Nigel Lakey with me because we’re going to try to present to you some discussion about national security. We come from some different perspectives, but we have a lot of things that we can find common ground. This is Hot Topic, Bold Talk and I’m going to start this national security discussion off because Nigel has one of the best definitions for national security I’ve seen, so give it forth, Nigel, please.

Here we are again. Let’s start with a definition. My perspective is out of conservatism, if you will. I often refer to my anchor in that being back in the Reagan and Thatcher days. That’s not to put a label on anything, but it’s more to talk about the roots of conservatism from my perspective without manufactured outrage. We get courtesy of the press and all the hyperbole. When we talked about doing this, I thought the first thing we need to do is be able to define it.

I would say people have got a perspective that I may not share, and you may not share. Frankly, it’s a little bit narrow but you can’t make national security about everything because then you lose all the context of it. I thought I’m going to try and do this in a paragraph that’s pretty straightforward. I quote, this is my fundamental level of what is national security. It’s a reservation of a sovereign people’s capacity to govern themselves. The ability of its empowered state to defend its citizens, enforce its laws, protect its economic vitality against forum or domestic coercion.

That touches on a lot of things, because there’s hardly a military element to that. We’re talking more of, how we protect the fabric of our society. The thing that we need to get our heads around is when you start expanding that, what does economic vitality mean to you or me? What does defend its citizens, etc? There’s a set of points that we can work through that start to address some of those.

As always, our intention here is to stay away from the headlines and not drop the games and things and think more about how intelligent people can help frame up a conversation and walk away enlightened. Not so much again to change anybody’s mind. If we can have a conversation about these things instead of yelling at each other, we’ll probably walk away happier and we’ll hold on to some friendships too.

 

Hot Topic Bold Talk | National Security

 

That’s one of the things. I start from the basis that you have been a dear friend of mine and someone I value. I appreciate your ideas. I want to hear them because it expands my own knowledge base of whatever topic we’re talking about. Now, I’m more liberal than you are. Let me say what my definition would be of national security. The truth is that if you heard the two of them together, if you examine them, they basically say some of the same things.

Mine is national security should protect our ability to govern ourselves. You’ve already mentioned it, protect our constitutional system. One of the things that’s important to you, as I believe in the Constitution in the United States and the rule of law. That’s very important to me. It’s a part of national security. It’s to defend our citizens. Your definition has that. It’s also to preserve the economic foundation of our country so that we can maintain ourselves as a free society to be prosperous in whatever way.

I don’t see any major differences between us. I value what you say. I could take your definition and go and talk to my friends and say, “This is an excellent definition. Why don’t we start here?” I wouldn’t have any problem with it. One of the questions that is challenging, and I’m going to ask you to answer first because I think it’s hard to answer but I know you’ll have a good answer. What threatens the American people’s capacity to be self-government?

Identifying Existential Threats: Cyber Infrastructure & Political Interference

There’s a long list there. Now, there’s existential threats that are out there that we can identify, target and respond to. That’s going to be things like cybersecurity. How do we protect our national infrastructure? I’m going to mention water treatment plants, power generation. It could be a domestic threat but certainly, we’ve seen these materialized in real time. There are actors overseas who want to hack into our infrastructure and I’m going to say damage our way of life, our economy, etc.

There’s the obvious existential threats that we see. I’m also going to say political interference. We live in this connected world where, frankly, an online existence. I’m not sure who we’re dealing with at times and we need to be very careful. Not so much be guarded about what we say but we have to be cautious about who we say it to. Also, be careful to be wary of the source and understand. There’s less of an existential threat, but also one that we’ve identified. We’ve talked all about the disinformation campaigns and the interference, etc.

 

Cybersecurity is a primary threat today—protecting our national infrastructure like water treatment plants and power generation from foreign or domestic actors who want to damage our way of life.

 

I think those are genuine threats. You’ve got a threat on the global stage of people losing confidence in the US dollar as a reserve currency. We’ve been greatly from that because the bulk of international commerce is settled in US dollars. We have a banking system that’s secure that helps to make that trade in US dollars or something that people can believe in. When we start to expand on the definition of protecting our economic vitality, our intellectual property, our ability to do things, whether it’s to pull out of the headlines, be the masters of AI or whatever, there’s a lot underlying that it’s the hardware and the software associated with that intellectual property.

Our ability to sustain a manufacturing base and I don’t want to see so much be self-sufficient, but if the country becomes overly dependent on outsourcing and we see that happen. Our manufacturing base has been integrated over the number of years. If we lose that ability, we start to look like a lot of other countries and at one point we’re powerhouses in industry. Our national security means this big thing but it’s much more than it was back in the Cold War days.

Again, when I make my reference to the Reagan-Thatcher, that’s cold war. It’s way more than military dominance. It’s way more than spy versus spy. I don’t know if you spend a lot of time on what is, what are the threats. I don’t know if we’ve seen much different. I’ll turn it over to you, but my closing comment would be, we probably have as much inside in the wire threats as we have external threats.

Everything from the corruption of our systems, the willful ignorance associated with misinformation, that’s one of the reasons why you and I are having these conversations. It’s to look behind those. See if you can find the people caught in the lies and the mission information, and then start to uncover what we believe.

You’re right on. I can certainly support some of the things you’ve said. What I would start with is that the threat to American society’s ability to self-govern is, we have a number of resources on the internet. As you said, I have no idea who wrote them. I can tell maybe by what they’ve written, which side they’re on in this very diverse and divisive society we live in.

One of the things that concerns me because I was an educator for many years, and I still am an educator. There are a lot of people that are not being educated in what self-government needs and what we have to do is citizens of the United States. We used to have Civic courses. I don’t know about you, but I took them. I had to know about the Constitution. I had to know about the amendments. We talked about the rule of law and all the things that are required in elections and how we do elections and things to make them safe.

We didn’t have some of the divides in this we have now. Education, for me, is a major part of what I consider to be important to national security. If our citizens are not educated and they don’t have multiple resources they’re looking at, then they’re going to buy into one of what I considered to be the distorted presentations that are then going to affect how they vote. They’re going to affect how they think about America.

You gave me an article about how we’ve gotten to the place and nobody in the government of the United States. People question because they have so many resources coming out and they have no idea. To me, nationals security is affected by everything you described but it’s also by the fact that we cannot have a democracy without being educated about what we stand for. Some people would see a liberal who’s a constitutionalist who believes in the Constitution of the United States would think, “What is she talking about?”

It’s important to me. The founding fathers provided some data. I’ll admit, I don’t always support at all what the Supreme Court is doing. I’ve spent years reading, Supreme Court cases, and things like that. To answer that question, I would say for me, if I put in more words. We cannot govern ourselves if we’re not educated about all the aspects of what national security covers. That’s the reason you and I are trying to talk about it. I’d love to hear some comments further about what I’ve said.

Why Civic Literacy & Public Education Are Vital For Democracy

At a broad level, we agree on the fundamentals of national security, but we are going to get into some of the subtleties. I’ll take your point out and we’ve said it before in our education system in the Western world. This is not a US problem solely, but our education system in the Western world is disappointing at best. It’s a little bit frightening and it’s even worse. I don’t know what we’re relying on anymore. The family systems have broken down. We’re not talking with our parents and our grandparents, etc. This is what it feels to me.

 

Our education system in the Western world is disappointing at best. We are not teaching people critical thinking skills. You cannot have a society that’s illiterate, and you can’t have a society without laws.

 

I do know for fact that we’re not teaching people critical thinking skills. You see this all the time. You eliminate SAT to college and you have a whole generation of people who are fundamentally uninformed. Not just misinformed, but not informed and incapable of doing things like simple sums. I don’t know how that came about. As an effort to just level everything or get down to some low common denominator. I do think if we are unable to read, write and convert and have a conversation around what the constitution means.

What is the rule of law? Can we start to define some of those things? I suspect if we have those conversations, you and I would find places where we don’t agree but we’d have to say that you cannot have a society that’s illiterate. You can’t have a society with outlaws or some kind. We can talk about some interpretations of those. I don’t know how society can endure being ignorant or being dumb.

That’s not a you issue. That’s being uninformed and incapable. We do have these information sources. It frustrates me immensely because you can’t trust almost anything. You go back to trust and verify. If you don’t know how to look or where to look, if you don’t know how to have a conversation, then you’re prone to all the outrage.

The reality is, there are a lot of people that don’t even care anymore. They’re going to ask their friend who they’re supposed to vote for and they probably haven’t even looked at what the person stands for. We have millionaires spending lots of money, putting out lies about various groups to impact people in certain communities. We have lots of things going on internally, then we worry about what Russia has done in some of the propaganda that’s put out.

If I am uninterested in knowing about politics because I’m so turned off by it. I’m not even going to take the time to read or do all the things that you and I do. I have multiple lists of resources I read every day. I scan them because I’m looking for them for my show and for discussions with you or Richard or whatever they’re about. That’s what concerns me. Now, I do think that one of the things I read in the Reagan-Thatcher principles was, “Peace through strength.”

What I have seen in some of the democratic presidents I looked at like Johnson, Obama, and Biden. I’m not taking a position, but it’s so interesting to me how they can easily fit into Reagan’s concepts. They may have expanded on it but they believe in that. One of the things I truly believe is, in the situation we have lost the ability to do diplomacy or to negotiate and bring peace rather than having to do it through military force and enforcing people to do something.

To me, Reagan-Thatcher’s principle of peace through strength is extremely important. It’s something that any of us could agree on. There have been efforts in the past to de-emphasize military action. It doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t do it if we were at war or threatened severely like 9/11. We’re going to take action as a country and support that, but there’s a real. Strength in being able to think from a peaceful perspective in order to gain strength in the world or in our country as a home. I’ll stop there. Your turn.

Peace Through Strength: Modern Deterrence Beyond Military Power

Peace through strengths is the concept of deterrence. It covers more than the military spectrum. You could say, we have strength in our banking system, in our communications, IP, etc., as we talked. That gives us strength and ability. There ought to be a most powerful nation on the face of the Earth, and why not us? Why not the United States? I have no shame in saying that. I will say that I don’t support wars just for the sake of wars. I also look at the search rate or the situation and some of the circumstances we’ve been in.

I wonder what we could have done in the early years to prevent us getting to this point? Maybe that’s something default. I do think over the last 40 some years, we see many more politicians than we see leaders. It’s this race, it feels to me, to be the most controversial to connect with the most uninformed or poorly informed or irrational people. I get your point about some people don’t care. We’re washed out, but then who votes and who gets elected? What policies do they bring?

Some of our processes are just broken there. Can we get back to more fundamentals or maybe that’s through an educated population. I don’t know. I got to look a little more at the psychology and the anthropology of some of this. The peace through strength to terms is a good idea. I believe that we shouldn’t be weak. I also believe that our allies should be strong and if we find that our allies are not strong, then maybe we have to go on our own. That’s one of the things that we’re seeing manifested here with the almost erosion of Western society.

I carry two other passports, because as I’ve said, I watch Canada and the UK. There used to be extremely powerful partners of the US. They no longer are. Whatever the reasons are like globalism, etc. The US has got to stand on its own. I feel that over the last while it’s just been weakened. There’s phrases and all that and we start to see extremists on both sides of it. Those in favor of it and those who don’t like it. That’s a problem. That’s erosive to our piece. That’s bad for our quality of life. It’s not helping us very much. Peace through strength, I do believe it’s got to start encompassing a lot of things and education among them.

I wonder if there’s a baseline of the interpretation of the constitution. The Navy for lines a little more guidance. I don’t know. There’s the Federalist papers that give them a more expanded view of the founders and where some of these constitutional terms came from. It might be useful but I do wish people will better understand how our society came to be and that would be helpful.

Let me say something. I’m sad that in my bedroom, I have a wonderful book that is written by an outstanding lawyer. She takes you through every aspect of the constitution of the United States, and provides various different approaches to what’s being said in the constitution and is reasonable and avoids partisanship. I’m enjoying the book because I am literally going back. She has the whole constitution in the book and then various statements and interpretations in looking at it.

What I’ll do, Nigel, is I’m going to put that as a reference because I always give references for my episodes. That’s one of my games, and I certainly want you to give me some for the Reagan-Thatcher because it’s important to include in there. Here’s the thing that I know that ‘s important to me. Our strength is with our allies. I’m going to say that I view England and Europe in a maybe a slightly different way from you.

They are powerful allies and we had them for many years. They are stronger now than ever. I don’t think we, as the United States, have to be independent of those alliances. One of my things that I see that’s extremely important is building alliances all over the world. Through those alliances, we bring a strength that fortifies us against some of the countries that we would consider to be less accepting of a democracy.

I believe that you and I are trying to tell people they can build an alliance with some that has a different point of view. We can do that by building alliances, then we build better educated people. We build better communities because we can work out our issues and set aside maybe our political parties and sit down and say, “What do we need?” That’s what I think you and I are trying to do. It’s to say, “Let’s try to do something like that.”

I am a big believer in not being isolated. I do not support the US having to withdraw and go inside of itself. Canada is one of our greatest allies we’ve had in the past. There are European countries that have been very powerful and have supported us. They are getting stronger every day because they’re making decisions that they think is best for them.

It’s causing a questioning of things that are happening in the United States. I think that’s helpful. One of the biggest concerns I have of national security is that we are not united in our own country. That’s what you and I are trying to do, is say there are a lot of us that are not at the extremes. Why don’t we come together and discuss these issues and decide what is best? What can we do? That’s what I would add to what you’ve already said.

Global Alliances Vs. Isolationism In Maintaining National Stability

I agree with you. You’ve got this device in this. It’s pervasive. You can’t read a newspaper. You can’t go online. You can’t do the things that we just accept as a normal course of business without being inundated with shock. There’s so many things that frustrated us jointly. An educated populace or the shock journalism. I don’t care where it comes from. We see it everywhere. My comment on allies, I need to tighten that up a little bit. I don’t know that a nation can survive on its own in isolation without allies and widely dispersed allies.

There’s no evidence in history that says, “A nation can be isolated, completely internalized and thrive.” You can pick current examples like North Korea, Cuba, or whatever, and failed states throughout the animals of history where they’ve tried that. An interesting thing if you look back at the Roman Empire. If you look back at Macedon. He woke up one day and decided to ride across the desert and conquer half the free world, Alexander the Great.

 

There’s no evidence in history that says a nation can be isolated, completely internalized, and thrive. As a successful nation, you have to go out and find people who share a common interest.

 

Now, those are more military campaigns but they’re equally cultural. They were reaching out and finding sources of supply. I’m not holding them up as shining lights of democratic rule by any measure, but there are allies. You have to, as a successful nation, go out and find people who share a common interest. My comment on allies is that our common interests have been separated. Now, often those are political.

Sometimes, they’re the winds of society, but they are almost invariably the consequences of lowercase P politics. This party, that party, who’s ever in. We don’t agree. We’ve got what we believe to be this man-made for our voters. I don’t know that those are good except for the politicians. I’ll say this, it’s not related but one of the first things I do is get term limits everywhere.

I will support that.

That’s where the corruption and the divisiveness starts to come from. We need allies. As a country, we have our projection of force, our projection of power and influence. It comes from our ability to have these other places that can represent our interests. My closing comment on this would be, I don’t know that they represent our interests or our best interest at times. That’s a theoretical question that’s not necessarily proven. That lack certainly gives rise to aspects of the device in this and the extremism we’re seeing from one end of the spectrum to the other.

One of the things that I’ve always believed is no business in the world can function unless they’re a high performing, a well-educated and an environment of work that respects each human being and makes an effort to find out what their talents are and to utilize those talents. To me, in the large businesses I’ve worked in such as oil and gas, and you name it. I’ve always spent my time talking about everyone having a voice. Everyone getting the same training so that we can all be that. I don’t care whether it’s administrative associate, or whether it’s a VP of the organization.

When we all are educated and we all understand how we can communicate and how we’re valuable, then we have a different environment. We don’t have as much fighting. We have more of a respectful world to be in. It’s not respectful now. One of the other things I didn’t say and I’m going to put up there anyway because we agree that we would bring out topics. One of my biggest problems is I believe in public education. I believe in it. It needs to be financially supported.

I live in a community where they stand up for public education. The truth of it is, some major organizations in the community where I live, did not support vouchers. It’s because they didn’t want to take away the money from public education. They wanted to continue to improve it. I do believe in one thing. As an American, I believe every human being in this country has the right to an education and to be able to look at and someday dream for what they want. I do believe education is a proton of national security. That’s the reason I’m going there, but I do believe that when people know and understand what’s going on, then they can make better decisions.

There’s a lot of evidence about the corruption that’s going on, about the lack of the actions by the house and the Senate. People are being educated. I do believe that the book that this lawyer did was the way to say, “Let me tell you what are the three branches of the government. Let me tell you how they are supposed to function, and what is valuable about having those three branches of the government.”

The way that I would talk about this point and end it, I have to look at and I’m going to name mine and then I’m going to ask you to do the same. I have to look at what constitutes strength in our society. Now, I’m going to start. I believe its military strength, economic strength, but we have a problem with our economy. People are struggling at this point. It’s technological leadership. It is scientifically based healthcare and health systems.

These things, education, and other things help us be resilient and have a resilient interest structure. Have a secure energy process that fuels all the things we do. When I think about energy, I’m not just talking about all and gas. I’m talking about the energy we have as human beings contribute to our society.

I do believe in strong alliances. I appreciate your expansion because I support what you’re saying. I do believe in healthy democratic institutions. For a long time, even though people disagreed with each other, we did have public confidence that the three branches of the government would function and sustain our republican. I’ll stop there and talk to you about what you think are the strengths that we can build on because there are a lot of things that are not working well.

Rebuilding Social Conscience And Human-Centered Work Environments

There are a lot of things that aren’t working well. We’re aligned on those elements of national securities you spoke of. I’m going to stress that we defiled the educational system, and that’s been going on for a long time. We have an educational system that does not equip people to have a conversation. It does not equip people to work in our environment to contribute economically. You could spend a lot of time talking about who, what, where and when.

The fact is, this is not something that’s been immediate. This has been ongoing. If we want to treat people equally and ethically, society has to step up. People have got to take responsibility. They have to develop that self-awareness. We’re not doing a good job at all of building a society. I don’t think the answer to that is socialism. It’s not trying to beat equality of outcomes. That won’t happen. It can’t happen. I don’t think nature permits that, but can we do a better job in commerce? Can we do a better job in industry? My answer to that is yes.

 

If we want to treat people equally and ethically, society has got to step up and take responsibility to develop self-awareness. We’re just not doing a good job of building a society if we don’t.

 

I’m not saying you got to outlaw billionaires or tax them because they create a lot of wealth and a lot of opportunity. The answer to some of those questions when we are talking about technology, and I’m not talking about Facebook. I’m talking about humility to create and you’ll dominate space. Find better ways to power and fuel our economy. You spend a lot of time in oil and gas. I support it and to suddenly say we don’t need it. That will take us into the dark ages. Can we be dependent on a single source of power fuel? No.

We don’t have the technology, the education, the people who invent, and the cash to support these things. We’re not going to be successful there. Is it an issue of who contributes, who drives this? I grew up in a place where that’s what we have, public schools. It came out of your property taxes, etc. We had or I’ve benefited from what I would say is a very classical education. We talked about social science as we talked about history.

We went to gym classes and that’s the thing. I feel that I benefited from that. When I look at my nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephews, they’re missing that development. They’re certainly not coming out of their equipped to have a difficult conversation. Expectations are out of line with reality. Can we do something in the educational system to bring that back? That feels like it’s a generational issue. Not something that’s going to happen as a consequence of any election next.

Maybe it’s in society, a few people got to have these conversations and make folks aware that what we have is not acceptable. I don’t care whose side you’re on, but we can’t do this. We can’t do this to ourselves. We can’t do this to our country and to this fantastic social experiment that is the United States. I didn’t grow up in the US. I didn’t take those constitution classes in elementary school, but I did think about those classes on social studies and politics, etc.

We read the Constitution. We read of the Magna Carta and handwritten those things that empowered a population or that established a dynasty, a legacy, or whatever, for good or bad. If we don’t understand those things, where they came from, I don’t have a lot of confidence for being successful. Maybe one of the things is to say, we agree on national security, we’ve got to get some people aligned on what education needs. If we don’t have that in national security, we’ll become something different. It’ll become most of the Bible, which I don’t believe to be correct.

I noticed something. I have developed a new program that I’m doing. I’ve done it in three organizations. It addresses the ways to look at your own behavior. There are ten groups of behaviors that I’ve identified that truly destroy people from being successful. When I taught them in these three organizations, every one of the CEOs said, “We are never going to be this same.” People are coming to me and saying, “I never had any idea that I gave so many excuses and justifications.” It’s part of the 24 blocking techniques I talked about.

People would come up to me and say, “Thank you so much for telling me about how I am resisting change.” I don’t think we have talked enough about how people resist change. We get to political positions that are extreme because we’re so afraid that maybe Nigel’s right and I’m wrong. How in the world did we get to a place where you’re right and I’m wrong? That’s what we’re trying to do here, is to talk about things so that we can see prospective.

They’ll probably say that we can continue down this road. They agree so much. It’s because if I take the things that matter to me and being an American citizen, I have out in my yard, “Stand up for our democracy. Vote in 2026.” I didn’t tell anybody how to vote. I just said, “Stand up for our democracy. Go vote in 2026.” There are millions of people that sat out in the last election. That’s not what I consider to be a citizen of the United States.

Now, I want to go on because we’re on our third point, Nigel. You said a stagnant economy cannot fund a superior military or endure global supply shock. That’s what’s happening to us. What I want you to do is describe what all you mean by that. I have some of my own thoughts, but I want to hear yours.

Economic Vitality: Protecting Supply Chains And Technological Innovation

This is more of a classic definition of economy. If we have deflation, if our purchasing power is eroded, if we have significant inflation, stagflation, all of these things are significantly disruptive. Our government can’t invest. Our military can’t properly spend. Industry can’t spend. Any one of those things starts to lead to stagnation in the economy. We need investments. We need talent. The country needs, I’m going to say, income revenue, if you will, but innovation investment and these sorts of things. I would say if we have the innovation, the investment, and an economy that’s growing at a reasonable pace. It’s not on fire. That’s a place where people want to invest because it presents the opportunity.

If we don’t get the investment, if we have an economy that is burdened by regulation, if we have an economy that’s burdened by a lack of resources or any number of things, then I believe it slows down. It has become industrialized. People simply stop having confidence in its currency and now we’ve got a stagnant or a slowing or a significantly eroding economy. If we can’t support ourselves, find a way through, if we suddenly lose access to rare earth minerals, then our expansion, the growth, our attractiveness is a place to invest. It also diminishes.

In the supply chain shock, we got to have a strong economy. We’ve got to have innovation and other resources. You have to have the ability to go someplace else to get what we need. We also have to have that fundamental ability that says, “People want to invest because it’s a good place to put money to work because I generate a return. There’s a societal benefit to it as well.” I would say business has to be in business, not only just to generate wealth for individuals. I’d like to see society benefit from it as well.

 

A strong economy creates value, wealth, and opportunity to defend a nation.

 

Pick a business that does something that makes our lives better. I don’t think we’re doing much, being for some of that, but there’s some cases where businesses destroyed our quality of life and tech. I use that term tech offer. What we see is tech. I’m not sure that that’s particularly good for all of us. It’s impacted our education. It’s impacted our ability to communicate. It’s become a replacement for social interaction in many cases.

Give us a strong economy, and that goes a long way to being able to defend our society. There’s a military issue there as well as somebody showing up with economic warfare. We can preserve our intellectual property, the things that make us good, and make us strong. We can also lead the world in good social development. We’ve lost track in some cases as to why we exist. That’s from a business perspective. Not as a country or society. Give me a strong economy. It creates value, wealth, and opportunity.

If we don’t have any of those, it’s very difficult to defend the nation and the constitution and have people who self-govern. The fundamental element of the Constitution is we like people to do the things that we cannot. As individuals, as citizens, we try to govern ourselves but, in some cases, we’ve abandoned that. We’ve almost willingly handed it off to somebody else. Get that back and our social conscience. We need to reawaken that.

That’s what I work on every day. The reason I developed this program is because what I saw was a true lack of understanding of how somebody could manage themselves and how they could self-govern themselves. That’s the reason I created this program. I can tell you something. Once you go through it, you’re going to self-govern. Everybody else is going to encourage you to self-govern because they’re going to be self-governing themselves and they don’t want a lot of the stuff that I talked about that’s unhealthy to do in your interactions.

They don’t want it in their life anymore. They see how it creates tremendous stress and they don’t want it anymore. They want to have people that are honest, straightforward, respectfully communicate, and have a commitment to the organization they are part of and enjoy coming to work. I know there are tons of people sitting out there that read this episode that dread going to work at all. It’s because of the environment. I’ve had conversations with CEOs, owners of businesses and everything, there is no appreciation of the human elements in their organization.

They have a replacement process going on for people all over the world. If this person didn’t do their job, they just take them out and put somebody else in. That world, I cannot support. I want us to be able to show people that this is how you block your change. When you cut somebody down with sarcasm and you think it’s funny. Do you think you gain power by that, but then you cover off a complete inner action with another human being?

That’s the reason I’m having trouble with discussions with some people that have a different political view from mine because it’s labeling sarcasm and cutting down rather than looking at resources. Looking at what the possibilities are about the subject we’re even talking about. That’s the reason that I do the work I do as an organizational development consultant. I want to make a change and I’ve done it in three and I want to do it more often. Honestly, Nigel, I meet too many people, whatever level they’re at, they do not know what they’re doing, that’s not helpful, so they are not self-governing.

Leadership Integrity: Shifting Corporate Culture From Exploitation To Mentorship

We’re in a time and place where we got pop psychology, self-help books, and self-proclaimed experts. There’s a bit of a dependence on that for some people. You read the cell phone book like seven steps to whatever. I’m not sure that’s helpful. That’s one perspective in one set of circumstances, but I take your point. Business has become unpleasant. Frankly, that’s a thing that’s kept me entirely from getting any interest back into the corporate world.

Not to name names or cast dispersions, but I’ve been in places where the management style is not healthy. I’ve been in a couple of companies where there’s been a lot of friction, what seems to be tension and a real lack of organization. Frankly, it’s people who are self-governing better and it takes a particular individual to fit in there. I have been showing up in that place and fought it but realized after a while that this is a healthy place to be. It’s people believing in a mission but different personalities.

 

People believing in a mission makes an organization healthy. Somewhere, somebody’s got to tell business leaders to be more interested in being leaders and benefiting society, not just being robber barons.

 

If you got a place where you replace people who aren’t performing, I don’t like that. My mission has always been trying to build within an enterprise. If I got a group of people, I’d have to let them go but I can’t just do it callously. I like to take them aside. I like to coach them and mentor them. In the last episode, I’ve got some good friendships that have resulted from mentoring people. They’ve respected it and it’s made them better and more successful.

Having this cutthroat, replaceable business culture is not useful for us. I don’t know if this goes back to shareholders or what, but somewhere somebody’s got to tell me that it’s a board level issue. In many cases, shareholder representation. Not so much advocacy or activism, but the board’s got to be self-aware. Somewhere, we’ve got to get business leaders more interested in being leaders and benefiting society and the people. Not just being robber barriers. That’s another thing we don’t disagree on.

People are going to find that when they sit in and they try to be reasonable and responsible, they’re going to be stunned at how much they have in common. I just know something. I want to work in organizations that are willing to hear what I had to say and to see what the changes can be. I spend my life doing that. I am a coach and I also do organizational development training and all that, which you know.

I do it with my sponsees that I have in various programs that I support that are young people that need some help. I talked to them and taught them things just like I would in any of the organizations because I want them to be different. One of my favorite sayings that people appreciate is I say, “It has nothing to do with your parents and how you grew up. It was painful what you’ve been telling me. It’s unacceptable what you experienced. You didn’t learn how to write a book about how to live life.”

Now, what we’re going to do in this recovery program or whatever else I’m helping with younger people. I just say, “You’re going to learn how to write your book differently. You’re going to live differently.” Their eyes light up. I have one now and she’s so excited that she has somebody that wants to help her write a book about how to live in a constructive way that leads to some of the things she wants to do.

You made an interesting point there. Which is, you’ve got your past but you can’t blame that. You can’t live in it and hold your future hostage as a consequence of your past. This is one of the problems with the government. They’ve learned that it’s acceptable and in fact, it’s almost imperative that you find somebody to blame. We do see this in politics. We’ve got government handouts, etc. Again, we should not try to turn this into a political debate because it’s not our intent.

If we don’t have the self-awareness, if we can’t accept our circumstances, if you can’t do something about them, if you’re not willing to, it’s one of our problems in society as we keep bailing out. How do we get that self-awareness of some of the self-sufficiently back? I am going to say this. As a voter, we’ve got an obligation to be a little more active at the local level and present some thoughts and ideas to our politicians and participate in primaries or make your voice heard.

When I look at the candidates and primaries these days, I’m shocked because I’ve seen this extremism and absolutism become more and more obvious. Why do we do that? It’s because we think that we’re special and we’ve got a particular identity and that person is going to support us. The frailty there I believe is we see the politicians get the votes, but then they’re unable to act. Guess what? We’ve got guide rails that are established by a constitution and a rule law. We have methods that we can stop some of this because we have a constitution to protect us from charity.

My sadness is, I see such pain in the people oftentimes that I work with. There are loads of people out there in the world that have painful stories about how they grew up, what they learned and what they’re doing now that’s not successful. They all walk into any organization you and I work in. We have to have some way to create the environment we’re working in so that we develop those people. We’re not telling them what they have to do. We’re giving them ideas and that.

That’s what I do in the program, Driving Culture Change and Building Authentic Relationships. That’s what I do. I teach them a lot of stuff and it’s their decision whether they’re going to use any of it. There was a young man. He was out of high school and he was in his first job. He came up to me and he said, “No wonder my friends are so pissed off of me. I’m doing more than half of those blocking techniques you listed.” I said, “Maybe you can change them.” He said, “I’m taking the list and we’re going to talk about it in my group.” I thought, “That’s what I want to see.”

I want people to want to know what is the best way in the world to build a relationship and learn how to do things differently that are not helpful to me. Let me find out what I can do to be successful and that’s what we’re talking about as well. We’re not talking about that now. We’re talking about all the drama and all the other stuff.

Now, I’m going to get us into a subject where we may have some difference of opinion. I want to go to the one where we talk about borders and agree we need sovereignty. I’d like to talk about sovereignty and what you and I see is maybe different points of view or we have common things. We haven’t had this discussion as I recall.

Border Security And Sovereignty: Reforming Immigration Policy

This is a good one. First off, I’m an immigrant. Since 2000, I started off with L-1 visas. I got permanent resident status and then moved to citizenship as fast as I could do any of those steps. I’m a legal immigrant. I followed the system, followed the processes, paid the fees when necessary and was ready to prove my worth through this citizenship test where somebody may have asked me about the Constitution or something.

I believe I’ve added value to this country. It’s kind enough to accept me. They let me in. They’re quite respectful to me at the border. As for my other passport, they’re not quite so welcoming for some reason. My wife is a legal immigrant, too. She moved here the same time I did. She worked in the energy industry. It’s very much the same background history. I’ve got plenty of associates who are legal immigrants from any number of other places.

The point is, we’re adding value. We have been of benefit as a society. We’ve helped economic prosperity. We’ve helped enterprises. Companies will either grow. We’ve benefited this country on the global stage, I think. We’ve done the things that I believe contribute to what we discussed as national security. For me, by taking that jump to citizenship means I’m keenly interested in all of those issues around national security.

It’s not just a convenience that I live here with the expectation of going back someplace. I do think there is a distinction between open borders in a functional economic policy. We can talk about people who are undocumented and what do you do with them. That’s going to be long and probably some heavy lifting conversation. No country survives without welcoming immigrants. Countries grow. Companies benefit as a consequence of being able to move people around, whether it’s temporary or on a permanent basis.

I don’t think you can say, “Let’s stop all immigration,” but I do think you need to know for the sake of national security who’s in your country and why they are. Our liberty is not to be lost through surveillance and oversight. Our liberty and our freedoms exist often because we choose to follow the guidelines and societal rules. People that don’t, should have no right to be here. I’m going to say this. Immigration is good. What we need and what we don’t have, it seems and haven’t for a long time, is a working immigration policy.

 

Immigration is good, but uncontrolled immigration is a problem. No country survives without welcoming immigrants, but you need to know for the sake of National Security who’s in your country and why they are.

 

Opening the borders is not an answer and closing the border airtight is not an answer. As a country, we’ve got the immigration laws. There’s nothing wrong with them, but we need to use them. We need to follow them. We need to enforce them. That’s part of the rule of law. Any administration that chooses to ignore Federal law, there’s a problem. Again, I don’t care what color shirt they’re wearing. Immigration is a problem for us. If we don’t allow immigration, then we’re going to end up as a fundamentally ignorant nation.

The very things we’re trying to protect on national security are going to become more difficult to protect. We want the exchange of ideas, but I will say and I can’t remember. It may have been Roosevelt. It says, “If you come to America, be American.” That means, you take on a burden when you come here, which is, there’s a way of life. There’s a society. There’s a bit of a structure we have. If you show up and you want to be deconstructive, then you’re going to have a problem from people like me.

As an immigrant, I probably put more value in my passport than people were born here. I find this strange. I’m more interested in society, the Constitution and the political process. A lot of people were born and raised here. You said early, I’ve just chosen to be ignorant. I like this place. I want to see it survive. I want to be part of its growth and survival. Immigration is good. If uncontrolled, that’s a problem.

Let me say that I don’t want uncontrolled immigration. I don’t want that. There are some things that I find very disturbing because I have spent my life growing up in Texas. I have known many people from a different race than mine. What I’ve seen them do is they may have had to swim over the river in order to get over here because they didn’t have the connections with an oil company or do something else, so they could come in.

When they came, they were so grateful to be here. They’ve been here for 20 or 30 years and they paid their taxes. They go to church. They raise their kids. They make certain the schools of their kids go to and know that they’re supportive of them. They are the best thing that is happening. They provide the services that a lot of people do not want to do. There are other things. I watched the disrespect for science itself. I lived eight blocks in Houston from the medical center for 34 years.

I have seen some of the most phenomenal things because I have worked with people that have serious illnesses. I have seen what MD Anderson did. I’ve seen what Methodist did with hearts. I’ve seen all the things, but most of those doctors come from other countries. They bring a richness, like you were talking about, in a commitment that you have. Now, there’s one thing that I’ve got to find the show idea because I have it.

There was a young man from South America that worked with either the Washington Post or the New York Times and talked about what Biden and Kamala Harris were doing in South America to help the economic changes in the various countries so that they could discourage illegal immigration and encourage more immigration that came forth with some guy with guidelines and that we’ve followed through with it.

This young man said something and he was right. He said, “The cause Kamala Harris, the Democratic party and Biden have not emphasized with what they did in South America in the last 9 to 10 months and how it has helped to manage some of the immigration problem. They will lose because they have not told the story.” That’s what happened.

Economic Integration Vs. The Rule Of Law In Immigration

There’s communication, but at a basic level, we still have this surge of undocumented people who are, frankly, not going to add a lot of value to our society. They’re not going to contribute economically and I’m talking about the last few years and I agree. There’s been efforts now for many administrations to try and improve the quality of life, the state of the economy, and everything from trying to overturn desperate rulers, technology transfers, etc. Getting educational standards level up so that the doctors, the lawyers and engineers from the second and third world can come here and add value.

I welcome that skill that’s coming in that diversity, that culture, and the richness, if you will. The value that they had because it’s going to make everybody’s life better. There’s no question about that. I will say the fact that our senses are driven by a lot of people who aren’t here legally. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. At a very fundamental level, I have no sympathy for people who are here and wish to do us ill. That they should be found and they should be sent home.

That goes to our national security. We want to know who’s voting, why and how. This is probably some friction that we’re going to find there, but if we have a functional immigration policy, we’re not just seen as a refuge for anybody. It benefits us and it strengthens us. If we don’t have the culture and the other way of solving problems that immigrants tend to bring, that sounds like an overly simplification. They’ve got an upbringing. Their educational system has been different. They’re educated to the same standards, but I’m going to say they understand problems in a different way.

Now, that benefits us. We don’t want to sterilize the educational system. We want our universities and colleges to have a little more diversity. It’s not reasonable to say we’d like to see more of our politicians have a different point of view as well. To me, we will benefit from a good immigration policy. I will say again, if we have people here who want to subvert the US, don’t want to live by the rule of law, and can’t fully follow the Constitution, then I don’t want them here. They pose an existential threat to us and our society.

I don’t want people here that have a reason to be here to simply gain some financial base at the expense of other human beings. I’m talking about human trafficking, drugs, alcohol and all those things that have been a part of our country. Where I would say, I don’t think we’re different. I think that I have a perspective that if a person comes here, whether they’re undocumented or not, let’s try if they are willing to contribute to our society. If they are willing to pay their taxes, help their communities and live their life in a productive way, then let’s find a way to document them and support them in supporting our communities. That’s what I want.

I want some kind of immigration policy that includes the possibility of literally educating, encouraging and not threatening to send them home. Rather inviting them since they are already contributing. There are ways that could be done. I know something. We’re going to have to talk more in the next one we do about national security because we’ve got a lot of other topics to talk about. I want to have secure borders, but I’ll tell you one thing. I do not lack.

I lived in Del Rio. I do not like the idea that the Guadalupe has horrific buried things, like fencing and all that, that could harm someone, kill them and so forth. I do not think that is the humanity that I want to live in. I don’t want to be a wall. I want us to find a way to establish relationships that can be so positive that we can come to some agreement, and have people come in. I don’t want just White people coming in here because they might vote for somebody.

I want a diversity that comes in and I would like to find a way to also support those individuals because there are a lot of them that are living every day. They couldn’t possibly do it with this Administration, but there’s got to come a day where we say, “Here’s what’s available to help you to become a citizen of the United States. Here’s what we can do,” because there are many resources that we have that we ignore because we don’t realize how important it is to us.

Human-Centered Border Solutions And Pathways To Citizenship

I don’t disagree with that, but the reality of our world, our existence and the fact that there’s an abundance of people who are not going to follow a law or policy that obligates us to put in physical barriers. I don’t know if there’s a first principle process but I will say they have to know who’s coming into the country. There can’t be anybody who’s undocumented. You can’t just show up and walk into the country. There’s no other place where you can do that.

I don’t think that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the US having a policy that almost every other country on the face of the Earth has, which is that our borders are not open. We’ll take immigrants but we have to have immigrants that are going to benefit us as a society. We can’t have people who are here and have no record, no understanding of who is here. That’s brought us to child trafficking, the drug problem and a handful of things. They’re destructive to our society. You can’t just lock up the border, but you can’t do the opposite.

I support and I know what you’re saying. The fine line between you and me is I want to help the undocumented people that I know. I want them to have the flexibility and freedom and not the fear of walking around every day. I would like for them to have programs and educational processes because I see them living the principles that I live. They live the valued structure that I live around family and around many of the things that I see that respect, understanding, love and caring for each other.

I’m not going to eliminate undocumented people because I know the ones that represent the values that I have. I want to find a way where we resolve that issue and then we also define how we’re going to bring people in. Nigel, I’m going to find the one that this young man did because you would appreciate it. I’m going to find that episode because I did it. I literally use this young person’s video because it came out of New York, but he is from South America and he was able to come to this country.

Here’s what I would like. We have many more things we can talk about national security. You’ve got the list. You see where we are on it. I’m asking you, can we continue this discussion and keep going? I think national security is something people have lost the sense that we have national security. They’re walking around with all this drama, lies, and insanity. They don’t understand that we are a nationally secure nation. We just need to improve how we contribute to that. Now, it’s your turn.

There’s a lot more conversation to have. We’ve tried to define it. I don’t think we’ve got the right context around some of the definition parts but, to me, it’s an absolute fundamental. It’s maybe the biggest single thing that we’re facing. When we base our conversation around the description that we’ve offered, self-governance, the protection of the economy, etc., without that then almost everything else like education, health care, ceases to have any relevance.

 

National Security is an absolute fundamental—it’s the biggest single thing we’re facing. Without self-governance and protection of our economy, almost everything else ceases to have relevance.

 

Think about the central issue of national security. Help people. Get an idea of what it means because it’s far different than it was 45 years ago or 10 years ago. I’m sure in 20 years, it will be different further. If we don’t get it current, get the right context, then it’s hard to have conversation around it. If we agree on our definition, and you and I do, let’s think about the issues around it. When we think about self-governance, what does it mean? When we think about educational power, what does it mean?

That’s where you get to some of the core issues that do become political in their basis, but not so much a political argument. We started off with, how do you have a conversation? That turned into self-awareness, that turned into doing your research. If you got the capacity, you do some research and if that comes from an educational system, etc., then probably we could be a little more effective again in directing our politicians to fight for something that’s important to us.

Maybe that’s where we’re trying to get to. I don’t know if it’s a restoration of the more mid-‘60s through ‘70s because, at that point, there was far less difference from one party to another. There’s a greater cohesion around what was important to us because we had the Cold War and we had Cuba. We had all these crises that served to unite. Instead now, we’re manufacturing a crisis for some reason. It lasts for the new cycle by Thursday afternoon and it’s already gone. Let’s keep talking about national security.

I want to give our readers a chance to know something. There’s a lot of stuff with national security. There’s cybersecurity, energy and renewables. What are we going to do to support our country? There’s climate change. I could name a multiplicity of things and we have those prepared. We haven’t discussed them, but we have some ideas and it would be beneficial. What I’m going to say is, this stands alone as what we’ve talked about, but it’s like part one. We have some more parts to cover. What things would you like to say to the readers about what we’ve talked about or anything you want to say? I’m going to do the same.

Bridging Political Divides: Restoring Meaningful Civil Discourse

Very briefly. We’ve begun to define some issues. What we’re seeing is the difference of interpretation of some things and that’s good because it allows a conversation. What we’ve done as well, though, is it’s more leveling. It’s finding out there’s not a lot of difference when it comes to things that are important to this. We’re talking about our own health and wellbeing. We’re talking about the health and wellbeing of our neighbors. We’re talking about the health and wellbeing of the cities we live in our communities. We don’t want to see them fail, and having some animus towards a different person or personality or whatever, and wishing for failure. That’s not useful.

If you agree that those aren’t the conversations we’re having, but if we look again at national security and we begin to break down some of these things. We’ll find places where we should save more or less government intervention. Who should be making this decision or that decision? I would suggest those are good conversations to have because that’s when you get down the fundamental operative differences. That steers us clear of the outrage.

Thank you. That’s the reason that I wanted to do this with you because I want to have conversations like this. Somebody else could have had a major argument about the slight difference you and I have about immigration and what we’d like to see. There can be a blow-up. That’s pointless. My thing is, I want us to find the undocumented people that are in our country that are contributing to our nation.

I want to find a way to allow them to be citizens of the United States. I want to have an effective immigration policy. You may have, as you described some of your views of it. If we work together, maybe we can get what we need for an immigration policy. I am very appreciative of our friendship. I always learn something. When I read the initial program that you sent me, I started learning immediately.

I was sitting at lunch with Liz and I said, “It’s phenomenal what I learned by doing this program with my friend Nigel.” I have done a lot of reading. and a lot of thought in the last two days about national security. Thank you. I want to say to the readers, I appreciate you tuning in. We’re going to continue this because we believe people can have a discussion and build meaningful relationships. Thank you.

 

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