What does freedom really mean in America? Is liberty simply the freedom to live without government interference, or does genuine freedom also require the opportunity to exercise the rights our Constitution guarantees?
These are the questions at the heart of Podcast 198 of Hot Topic, Bold Talk, as Dr. Jackalyn Rainosek and Nigel M. Lakey continue their series, Can We Still Talk? Finding Common Ground in a Divided America.
At a time when political differences often divide families, communities, and our nation, Jackalyn and Nigel demonstrate that two people with different political philosophies can have meaningful conversations grounded in respect, constitutional principles, and a genuine willingness to learn from one another.
Nigel, a Reagan Republican, presents the conservative belief that individual liberty is best protected through limited government, personal responsibility, and freedom from unnecessary government interference.
Jackalyn, a liberal Democrat, presents the perspective that constitutional liberty must include both protection from government overreach and meaningful opportunities for individuals to exercise their rights.
Their conversation reveals an important truth: Americans can share a commitment to freedom and the Constitution while holding different perspectives on how those principles should be protected.
In this episode, they explore the meaning of liberty, the philosophical foundations of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the responsibilities of government, and the importance of protecting individual rights.
They also examine the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and consider a fundamental question: When government acts to prevent discrimination, is it restricting individual freedom or expanding freedom for people who have historically been denied equal opportunities?
Their conversation is thoughtful, respectful, and educational. Neither seeks to change the other’s political convictions. Instead, they listen, ask questions, examine their differences, and discover principles they both value.
And their conversation is just beginning!
In their next podcast, Jackalyn and Nigel will continue with Parts III and IV, examining two important Supreme Court cases:
Wickard v. Filburn (1942), which raises questions about economic freedom, federal regulatory authority, and the constitutional limits of government power.
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), which examines the Affordable Care Act, healthcare access, states’ rights, and the constitutional relationship between federal and state governments.
These cases will bring their philosophical differences into focus as they explore how constitutional principles affect the everyday lives of Americans.
We invite you to listen to Podcast 198 and join us in discovering what becomes possible when we replace political hostility with curiosity, thoughtful questions, and respectful conversations.
You do not have to share our political perspectives to learn from our conversation.
You only need to be willing to listen.
Can We Still Talk? We believe we can. And we invite you to join us.
Episode Summary Points:
- Constitutional Liberties and Core Philosophies: Host Dr. Jackalyn Rainosek and guest Nigel M. Lakey explore the fundamental differences and commonalities between conservative originalist views and liberal perspectives on individual rights and governance.
- Negative vs. Positive Liberties: Nigel advocates for “negative liberties,” where inherent human rights are best protected by a small government without requiring permission, while Jackalyn discusses “positive liberties,” arguing that government intervention and legislation are sometimes necessary to secure and protect basic human rights.
- Role of Federalism: The discussion examines the tension between federal responsibilities and state-level governance, specifically regarding how states manage critical systems like healthcare and education.
- Voting Rights and Citizenship: Both speakers touch upon electoral integrity, discussing voter registration, the verification of citizenship, and the negative impacts of gerrymandering on democratic representation.
- The Constitution as a Framework: Nigel views the Constitution as a flexible, comprehensive foundational document built on original intent, while Jackalyn emphasizes its role as a living document that must adapt to ensure equal dignity and freedom for every human being.
- Political Rhetoric and Accountability: The conversation addresses the degradation of political discourse, the prevalence of unproductive rhetoric, and the potential benefits of implementing term limits for elected officials to restore public service.
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Can We Still Talk? Finding Common Ground In A Divided America With Nigel M. Lakey
Two Political Perspectives, One Constitution: Exploring Freedom, Individual Responsibility, And Equal Protection
Understanding Constitutional Liberties And Small Government
I have the privilege of having Nigel Lakey with me. We are the ones who are really trying to determine ways to converse with different points of view and do so respectfully. Hopefully, you all can learn something from what we do. I want to say that when we began, Nigel agreed to submit some ideas to me about constitutional liberties and competing ideologies that he and I have. It was really a provocative and thought-provoking article that he sent to me. I took a lot of time to try to formulate what I, as a liberal, think about.
What we would like to do is we are going to go through some of our topics and we will continue and feature podcasts that we do together. One of the things I would say, Nigel, is I really appreciate the thoughtfulness, the intellectual curiosity that you presented in your article, and your commitment to constitutional principles. I personally would rather have you introduce what we are going to be talking about, allow me to say some things about what I saw as an introduction, and then we will go to specific topics. I look forward to you introducing and talking about some generalities, and then we will go into the topics themselves.
Once again, thanks for the opportunity. All you all tuning in, let us go back to one of the premises we had for starting this whole process. It is not to be argumentative. It is not to condemn somebody’s point of view. We are really trying to talk about things at a higher level. As I have said, and I will stress it again, we are staying out of the headlines. The rhetoric and the emotions that always seem to flare up do not serve any purpose. We have talked about individual rights and liberties and responsibilities. We introduced some constitutional ideas, probably a couple of episodes ago.
It struck me that that is really a good place to work from. I have said, I am a Reagan, Thatcher, conservative. To me, I am also a constitutional originalist, and that is one of the finest pieces of work that anybody puts pen to paper for. It is a very useful tool. I am an individual who is going to stand up and defend that Constitution really as an original form. I wanted to talk about what that means. We have not really touched on the elements, if you will, or the amendments to the Constitution. We are going to get to that. In time, it is a long document for those of you who have not read it, and also the Federalist Papers. The encouragement is there to do that.
Federalist Papers are interesting points of view. I believe they also help the reader understand the founders’ frames of mind as they were putting this country together. To me, at least for today, when we rang off from our last session, I thought, how can we have a reasoned conversation around liberties and freedoms and obligations and responsibilities? To me, that is one of the central points of conflict between a conservative and a liberal point of view. The element there is one of government oversight. That is, again, a Reagan-Thatcher conservative point of view where the government should be small. The Constitution of the US provides for a relatively small government.
It does not talk about the expanse of government powers. It talks about the rights of the individual that stem from them just being individuals. Those rights are not granted by a government and cannot necessarily be taken away by a government. They do put a lot of emphasis on the individual and the responsibilities of the individual. This concept, if you will, in the Constitution, that all men are created equal, can take us into the 14th Amendment. At a fundamental level, what I am saying here is a small government with free markets, less overall regulation, and keeping in mind the individual responsibility that inevitably springs to life.
A small government with free markets, less overall regulation, and keeping in mind individual responsibility—that’s what keeps this engine of the United States running.
That is what keeps this engine of the United States running. I would advocate that our freedoms and responsibilities and the liberties we enjoy can all come from reading and understanding the Constitution. Look, we have got a Supreme Court that looks at the issues surrounding it through the lens of the Constitution. There is a good judicial system. There is a good government system. We can talk about the outliers, the individuals who insult us on a daily basis. That is not really the intent here. How can we have rights and privileges and freedoms and obligations, etc., in light of the Constitution without increased government oversight, intervention, and legislation associated with that? I wanted to talk about two kinds of liberties.
One is a negative liberty, if you will, and indulge me for a second when I talk about that. I said, “We have got liberties.” We do not need documents to say we are protected. We enjoy these liberties as natural human beings. They are inherent. They existed prior to the establishment of the government. They are best protected when the government is small. We can do the things that we want to do. We do not need the permission of our neighbors, for example. Nor do my neighbors necessarily need permission from me. That is a negative liberty, if you will.
We do not need anybody’s permission to do things. Now, a positive liberty, I think this is one of the distinctions between a conservative and a liberal point of view, a positive liberty, this is not a bad thing, it is the individual’s right to exercise those rights inscribed or described more correctly by the Constitution. Do you need government oversight? Do you need legislation to set up those freedoms so that you can exercise those rights?
That is probably one of the central conflicts that we have got across the entirety of the political spectrum. I will turn it back to you, Jackalyn, here, the starting point, if you will, to kick off for me is this concept of a negative liberty, which is a small government. Do not need permission because the Constitution provides that, and a positive liberty, which is where individuals feel the need to have the protection, the assurance, the guarantee, if you will, somehow from government oversight that they can exercise those freedoms and enjoy those rights.
We enjoy these liberties as natural human beings. They’re inherent, they existed prior to the establishment of the government, and they’re best protected when the government is small.
Thank you. What I want to say to you, you have had the opportunity to read some of the comments I am going to make, Nigel, because I thought it was reasonable. One of the things that I want you to understand is that I think your conservative perspective includes individual freedom, personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, and constitutional protection to preserve liberty. I understand and appreciate those. You and I, as a liberal Democrat, are committed to individual liberty, constitutional government, and personal responsibility. One of the things that I would add is the fundamental dignity of every human being.
Sometimes I think it does take government intervention and legislation to establish those rights because of the history we have. We will get into that because you have a lot of things you can also bring up. What I would say is the difference that you and I have is that freedom means to me everyday life and what conditions people experience with their rights, and what is the responsibility of the government to make certain that those rights that are described in the Constitution are fulfilled in each person’s life.
Sometimes I think that people and institutions and government entities and so forth threaten those rights of individuals. There has to be some intervention. Now, let me just say that two people like you and me can hold very different philosophies. As we examine them, as I looked at the many things you presented to me, there are many common things we have. If there is anything we can teach our listeners is find the commonalities and then learn from the differences.
Defining Freedom In A Constitutional Democracy
As far as I am concerned, the biggest question I have is what constitutes genuine freedom in a constitutional democracy. You and I are going to define that more clearly for people. You and I have an outline of how we can talk about liberty itself. I want to allow you to do that. Where I am going to be most of the time is when you say limited government or small government and everybody in human rights. I am going to say, “No, there is a lot of history. I will probably give a lot of history of times where individuals needed to be protected, or they needed to have some guidance so that we could establish something.”
Now, we are not going to go with the headlines that I see every day about the disappearance of guidelines to respect people and respect their rights and also give them the opportunity to exhibit those rights. That is going to lead to a really good conversation. I do want you to know this. I do not believe in oppressive government. I do not believe in excluding people. I do not want to allow courts, administration, or Congress to have destructive actions they take in the way they utilize their authority. That is where I am going to say I do think there are some things that I have thought about. The Constitution provides protection against government rights.
I know that we have a division of branches in the government that are supposed to work together very effectively, and then they will not have that overreach. That does not happen all the time in our history. The First Amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly, and petition. I accept that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments give us due process, which I am a big supporter of. These are the protections that are fundamentally a part of your philosophy. They are also a part of mine.
The difference is that I think freedom sometimes has a way to have the government and the various articles that we have that direct our democracy to help make certain that the human people that are a part of our system of administration respect each human being and their rights to that. I will give you an example, the constitutional right to vote. I was a supporter of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because I saw it eliminating some of the things that Southern states were doing at that time. It is happening now that we are taking away the opportunity for voting rights for certain groups of people.
We are going to have a discussion here of individual responsibilities, but also governmental authority to do something when the Constitution is misinterpreted or when there is very evident discrimination against groups of people. I will give you another example of history because I was an educator for many years. Children have an extraordinary ability to function and do everything they can. I saw one child coming from a middle-class, fairly wealthy family, who had medical care and had all the kinds of things that a child needs.
The federal government has responsibilities and obligations that are given to them by the people.
I had in the same school a child who came from what we would consider an underprivileged area where he did not always have medical care. He sometimes came to school hungry. Of course, I gave him my lunch normally, because I did not want him to be hungry. I want him to be educated. There is something about accepting the extraordinary intellectual ability of children like that, and they attend underprivileged funded schools and are not provided educational opportunities.
That has happened in America. That is when the government, small, medium, or large, needs to do something about taking care of situations like that. To me, when I ask for more government, I am asking to make certain that these human individuals that run our governments stay in line to not discriminate and take away the rights of human beings. I will stop there. I have got a lot more I can say about liberty. I want to hear more from you.
This brings to mind a lot of issues that are stating the obvious, I think, if I can put it this way. On the one hand, we are saying that your government oversight, government protection, or government influence, whatever my choice of words may not be perfect there, but it assures the success of everybody, if you will. At a fundamental level, I have got an issue with that in that it is this tax, if you will, that is going to be put on people. It is a literal as well as a metaphorical tax. It is the cost without the benefit. Let me be careful with that.
That does take us back to revolutionary-type days, where taxation without representation. This is an issue for me. The federal government has some responsibilities, and I am going to say it is not so much power. They have got responsibilities and obligations that are given to them by the people. There is a framework of the Constitution. The things that the federal government does not have to deal with are things that the states then have to deal with. That extends down to municipal politics. You can talk about the exact words used in the Constitution there.
Federal Responsibilities Versus State Governance
If they are not evidenced and responsible or completely managed by the federal government, then the state’s management. Here we have this conflict, if you will. The states want the power to legislate healthcare. The states want the power to legislate education. Frankly, they are doing a pretty crappy job of it. I do not care which color shirt you wear. We are seeing education and healthcare systems that are being destroyed by corruption and fraud. I am not trying to jump from one end to the other here. There is a rule of law element that really got to be brought to bear here.
To some point, to me, this is you got to get back to some first principles here. Now, everybody has got the right to cast a vote if they are a citizen. By the way, we should also be clear here, my opinion is that non-citizens do not enjoy the protection described within the Constitution. Non-citizens have no right to say that they cannot vote. Now, the counter there, I think, by extension or reduction, is that if you want to vote, you need to prove that you are a citizen. Let me put this out there. That is a federal law that is described in the Constitution. Why would the states not choose to enforce that, if you will? It is a rhetorical question.
I am not asking for an answer. This does extend to funding for health care, funding for education, funding for infrastructure, call it what you will. How do you get the states to take the responsibility to manage the power and the funding that they have? It is inappropriate to cry out and say the federal government has to step in because the states frankly do not seem to be able to be trusted with most of this, with any of this. I do not doubt, and I can say that I agree that in some cases people need help. I am unsure how to do that because I do not know.
I agree with that comment. I do not know how to do it.
My experience has been that wherever it is tried, it does not work well. Now that is in highly social network countries like Canada, the UK, France, etc., as well as in more authoritarian places. Again, I remind people I carry three passports. I do not know how you do this. I do not think you can do it just by throwing money or by saying the government has got to step in and help. On voter rights, this is an interesting thing. People say that we are back to Jim Crow and that it is voter suppression. I do not think that it is.
We have to be really careful with the words that we use. It is not voter suppression by any measure. There is nothing that prevents a person from casting a vote. One of the things that has been raised here is the big challenge is this evidence of citizenship when you register. I cannot see why anybody would not be in support of that. I will be quite blunt here. Instead of having marches in the streets complaining about this, why do not we help people learn how to get ID so they can register, etc.?
This is a place where government participation could be wildly beneficial. Yet we have got both sides of the aisle in both houses and several executive branches in the past that just refuse to take this whole citizens thing up. I cannot understand why they would not. Everywhere else it is practiced. You must evidence your citizenship to be able to vote. If we can park that for a moment, and look just briefly at education and healthcare. These are a mess in this country.
What I want to do is, I know we can get into those. We have got some more on liberties. I do not know if we would want to get into healthcare. I was giving them as examples of how liberties have been suppressed, have been limited. I will be happy to hear what you have to say about healthcare. Go ahead, because so far, I am not disagreeing with some of the things you say. Let me just say this. States have done a very poor job in managing a lot of things. There is a very obvious, disturbing thing between the federal government’s responsibilities and the state responsibilities.
Somehow we allow those two entities in our lives to have tremendous impact and do not call them out on their behavior when they are not supporting the citizens of their state or supporting the citizens of the United States. I do not want to interrupt you. I want you to go wherever you need to about liberties, because I think there is a lot more to say just about the fact that we do have liberties.
We have a Constitution that protects citizens from excessive government power while ensuring that private power, discrimination, and institutional practices do not undermine the legal protection that we have in the United States. Yet it is being undermined. It has been in various administrations. I am not questioning that. I do not know where you want to go with this, but I would like to stick to liberty and see what we do with it.
What is healthcare and other things at the state level aside from it? Get back to constitutional issues. We are trying to frame up a conversation around liberties, freedoms, rights, responsibilities, obligations, etc. I have tried to talk about liberties and freedom as a constitutional guarantee, if you will. They are embedded. They are in the framework. Nobody can take that away from you. One of the things I am worried about, and I want to express some concern around, is government oversight that strips those liberties away from me, potentially giving them to somebody else. Now that is the taxation without representation thing that I talked about briefly. Liberty is a delicate thing.
Give me a favor, though. Go through and give me some examples of taxation without representation that you see that interfere with your life process? That is an important point to make.
Economic Liberty And The Affordable Care Act Debate
Let us look originally at the Affordable Health Care Act, ACA. This was a place where the federal government stepped in and demanded your participation, demanding a significant increase in your taxes paid to support a system from which you derive no benefit. I am not talking about the UK, the English kingdom taxation representation, or the Boston Tea Party. I am talking metaphorically here, where there is a burden placed on me to support something from which I derive no benefit. Now people would say, maybe you are privileged, etc. Do not think that is.
You could put your hand up and say that is the case. The broader issue is that we want everybody to have an equal outcome. I am sorry, human nature is simply just going to prevent that. Guaranteeing an outcome places an unreasonable burden on society. Now, you talk about dispensation to groups or individuals who may be less fortunate. That is a place to have a conversation. That is a place where the state needs to truly take on some responsibility. From a constitutional point of view, individuals are protected. Discrimination cannot occur under the 14th Amendment.
The Constitution is colorblind. Now you can talk about the letter of the law versus the actual practice of it. There is some improvement that has to come. I look at this, and I would say the Constitution can work and has worked in places where people have tried to make it work. There is an effort, again. I do not care what color shirt anybody is wearing. There is an effort at times to undermine the Constitution and take things to court and look for the political partisan. That is extremely disruptive. What that is taking is your attention, my attention away from things where we could actually make an improvement. I am not living in the headlines.
Look at the election rhetoric today. There is nobody I have any respect for. I could say that almost entirely, because all we are doing is just criticizing everybody else for wrongdoing. Nobody is talking about how to truly improve our lot as a country. That is unfortunate. Maybe in some places, there are those conversations. Those are not the conversations that get votes. People want the rhetoric. We talked again about liberties. There is a place where we could spend a little time because liberty does not occur without individual responsibility and the individual taking accountability for themselves.
Liberty doesn’t occur without individual responsibility and the individual taking accountability for themselves.
I do think that we have trained a couple of generations to believe that they do not have any personal responsibility. I can say that everybody is given the same set of opportunities. Some may realize them, some may not. Some may not have the capability to realize those opportunities and to experience the freedom, if you will, that the Constitution imagines. Those freedoms and those liberties are not taken away. Again, we have to be careful here when we start talking about people’s rights being trampled on or their rights being suppressed. I feel that that is rhetoric. It is not representative of the set of facts that we are truly dealing with.
Do we have a place where people’s liberties are being eroded? We do in some cases, because in order to establish this balance that people would like to see, somebody’s liberty is going to be impacted. We have to be very careful about that. I do not know. I do not believe that the Constitution is frail in that regard. The Constitution provides ample structural framework. One place that I think it is not the Constitution’s effort, it is a division of power between the federal government and the states. We have seen this in places where the ICC, Interstate Commerce. It allows transport of goods between states.
Let us get into that later, because you are giving me a lot of subjects that I am going to have to cover. Let me interject here for a minute and say something. I do not, as a liberal, expect equal outcomes. I do not think of it in that way. I do think, and I am going to go into that when we get into healthcare, and we are going to do some other things. There is something that you do not realize. When every person in this country has the ability to have healthcare, and to truly have some way to be healthy in our society, then you benefit from that because we do not have overextended emergency rooms and doctors being exhausted.
They cannot treat you and me since we are part of the privileged group. There are benefits. That is one of the things that I often ask a conservative like yourself, how about not closing off the idea that there are benefits, and there have been benefits for the actions that were taken during Obama’s administration to have some healthcare treatment that could be affordable and could be helpful to each human being who was having great difficulties. We can go into that more because I think there are a lot of issues. One of the things I want you to know is I do not expect equal outcomes. What I want is for us to accept something.
If the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal, hopefully someday I will say all men and women and whatever you choose to name yourself, your gender, are created equal. 4 I do think that you are right that the Constitution has established some things. The problem is we have a visual picture of what humanity is supposed to be, and it has never been done. We look at our history, and we allow even the people who established our Constitution, our Founding Fathers, to have had slaves.
What I know that has happened with the amendments and the Constitution is that it has finally said, “We do not tolerate having a group of people be slaves in America. Now I know slavery exists in the world, so I am not going to get into that one. That is way beyond what our discussion is. I know something. As a woman, I was excluded from elections until the 19th Amendment. There are many African Americans who have been denied their civil rights and later faced very systematic disenfranchisement.
That is the reason that I stand so much on saying that there has to be some government at both the state and federal levels to monitor and have some guidelines about how our Constitution is going to be carried out, how our amendments are to be carried out, or how our laws are going to be carried out. I want to say something that I think will give the best thing about my liberal perspective. I want the Constitution to remain a living document that is committed to equal dignity and freedom of every human being.
Preserving The Constitution As A Living Document
I want the interpretations to have not only the history, but also the current-day experiences of people so that it can be interpreted and be a living document. The current Supreme Court does not support my ideas. It is on two levels that I would say. One, they are so conservative that they tend to structure things. We now have some really serious disenfranchisement of representation by groups of people in America based on their interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1965. The other thing I see is that there is a political element to the current Supreme Court that is disturbing. I can support your idea that I do not think about the courts.
I wish that people would stop fixating on their political party so much and ask what citizens need and how they can be supported, so they have the right to have their particular group of people represented in Congress or in the Senate or whatever. I know they have the right to vote. The thing is, if there is intimidation or if there is a restriction based on gerrymandering, the representation is not going to be equal or equitable. I would rather use not equal. Equitable to me is looking at the situation that a group is in, seeing how everyone has the right to vote, but there is also representation so that there are spokespeople in our government for each of the groups of diversity that we have in America.
See, I do not know how to say this, but I think the constitutional language is constantly interpreted. When both Republican and Democratic leaders in this country could work together and work across the aisle to formulate the guidelines that could be supportive and protective of each of the citizens of the United States, it was excellent. When women got the right to vote, you did not lose your right to vote. You did not lose anything. You just got a bigger group of people who were voting. We have to look at the benefits of what change brings us sometimes. I will stop.
I do not disagree with that, though we need, once again, some cautions appropriate, having somebody denied the right to vote because they are female, that is not appropriate. The Constitution is pretty clear that everybody is created equal. To me, that is simply an answer, an exercise of truly allowing the Constitution to live. I am going to challenge a little bit the Constitution being a living document.
If you were to read the Federalist Papers, you get an understanding of what the intent, what the purpose, more correctly, of the language in the Constitution is. There were plenty of debates amongst the founders. They were not all one way or another. What they did was the best possible way to create a document that is flexible, that can breathe, not so much a living document. My opinion is that the Constitution encompasses practically any eventuality. That is a good thing.
I like that idea.
It is very effective. You look at the amendments that have been put in there, and they are additive. They are not subtractive. That is a good thing. They continue to extend rights and protections to the citizenry. Just briefly on gerrymandering. That is as old as whatever. Nobody should be doing it. We need to get back to, you could only change the boundaries of a district after a census. Suddenly, everyone is at the census.
I do. I will support that.
Now we are counting people who are not citizens in the census. Come on, there is some common sense there. If you have a right to vote, you are a citizen. You should be counted in the census. Now, I cannot defend gerrymandering. I do not care who is doing it. It is unfortunate if somebody interprets something for their own benefit. Here we are.
Amen.
If you get back to, once again, the intent of what the census was and draw those political boundaries at that point, we can go back there. Neither party has the stomach for that. Briefly, once again, let us look at the rhetoric today. We are not trying to solve the problems of the country. We are doing what politicians do, which is that they live to get elected, and then they live to get reelected. They are no longer servants of the people. There is an element that is not in the Constitution that should be in its term limits. There is an element there that says you cannot serve in Congress.
Individuals have agency. As soon as you tell people that they no longer have to have agency, we have a very dangerous situation.
You cannot serve in the Senate until you reach a certain age. You cannot serve as the president until you reach a certain age. There is no upper limit on them. Maybe there should be limits on board seats. Typically, public companies rotate out when you are 72. There are parts of the Constitution that maybe can be interpreted in a way that serves all of our purposes better. Why do we find her? This is a rhetorical question. How do we find ourselves in the position we are in, which is, well, our elected representatives are not serving the people now?
I do not know how we fix this. It is one of the things that you and I set out to do, which was to educate people and get back to what the real issue is. The real issue here is, I mean, I do not know what, and you can describe a hundred of them or two of them, or whatever. I do not think people are voting on real issues. They are voting on emotive issues that do not solve anything. In fact, they just make this quagmire even worse. The way we are going, whether it is in debt or dollar stability, whatever, there is a bit of a rule on empires. How long they last. What stage of what turning are we in as an empire in the US?
There is a good book I am reading called The Fourth Turning. It is an interesting read. It was published in ‘92. It is not current. I can tell you what, there is a whole lot of what is in there that is pretty revelatory as to where we are today. It is not spiritual or anything like that. It talks about the cycle of things. Where are we as a country, as a society? In our constitutional conversation, if we truly have representatives who are interested in solving problems, then I think the Constitution is an elegant way to engage on that. If we just accept it, the Constitution is colorblind.
Let us make it colorblind. What we cannot do is take away the essence of the individual. That is one of the fundamental parts of the Constitution. Individuals have agency. As soon as you tell people that they no longer have to have agency, I think we have a very dangerous situation. Can we get to the point of saying an individual has agency? You must embrace that. Must you express it? You must take the responsibility for your own agency. We have spoken about not getting on the educational system because that is not where this comment is going. It is about getting it.
We will get to it later.
It is about having people educated and wanting to learn and wanting to know. The system itself is an entirely different issue. Yes. The essence of just saying, if you are going to vote, then you should understand what the issues are. What you and I are doing is trying to work at the issue level, which is that there is a fabric we have here as a society. Are we in danger of wearing a hole in it somewhere, whatever?
There are a lot of metaphors you can put in there. If people are not having conversations at the level we are, which again was our intent, then I do not know. We talked earlier, at least I said I can remember. This is a generational thing. This is not one or two or four election cycles. This is two or three generations of humanity that got to work through this. I am not talking about some social utopia here. Again, I think that the Constitution works just fine if we use it correctly.
Again, I will say this right and then turn it back to you, I think that every level of government has just failed. I watched civic government here in the San Antonio area, and I am appalled. I watch the state government because I am just down the street from Austin. That weirdness laughs down here from time to time. I am similarly appalled. I watch the federal government. I am just, I am shocked. I am shocked that the press deals with it.
Navigating Political Rhetoric And Voter Information
Let me describe something to you that I have come to realize. I do not watch television about politics. I only read, and I read probably twenty different references every morning. I scan through all of them because I am going to decide what I am going to do in my show when I do not have the opportunity to have you and Richard on. I look at all that, but I look at what the political figures are saying about what they are going to do. I have made a decision. There is a person.
I am a Democrat. I am going to vote Democrat. There is a person that I think is corrupt that I know and know about. I have talked with the Republican who is considering it. He is running for the position. I am not going to say anything about his political position, but I had a wonderful conversation with him, and I think I asked him a bunch of questions that I always ask politicians, and I believe he has given me evidence of what he would do in our particular city that I am in.
I am going to vote for him. The other side of it is what I read. I do not listen to any of the hate stuff that goes on with all the ads. I am not going to do that. I am certainly not going to support a quarter of a billion dollars that Musk is paying to try to win an election again. I am not going to read any of that. I am not going to do any of that. I read various resources every day. I go and win against politicians. I know who I am going to vote for. I do not vote for people who are corrupt, who are inappropriate, and who are so connected to a president that they cannot separate themselves from it.
I will vote for someone that I know has education, healthcare, children, and all that as a part of their policies and things that they want to implement. What I am saying to you is I have found something. I do not listen to the public news. I read the Epic Times every day that you gave me. I have gone to some of your conservative groups and listened to their points of view and found some commonality with them.
I also read the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Times, and the Washington Post. I read The Conversations, which is a nonpartisan group. Mother Jones is one of my favorites because it has been an independent newspaper for years. It has investigated more things than I can even name. What I am saying to you is, I know the strategy. If you attacked me, then I am going to attack you because I have got to eliminate. If you are going to attack me and say things, then I am going to use what I know about you to attack you. I am not going to read that stuff.
I am not even going to listen to it. I know some of the politicians that I will support in this election. They are doing that as a counter to what was received. I will be very certain that I am educated about every person. I am very thankful for the League of Women Voters because they do a superb job of trying to present all individuals running in this state. They give everyone an opportunity to present who they are. We need to realize that if you are in a rural area and you are not clear about what is going on, you can contact the League of Women Voters and say, “Where can I get information?”
Now, it so happens that in the city where I live now, we have a way to establish information about the people. It gives us a chance to look at all of them. What I believe is, Nigel, is I think your commitment to the Constitution, the rule of law, and your desire to see us limit how long people are in Congress. Now, I am not going to tell them my age. I do not want to be limited because I am having a great time. Most people would say I need to be retiring, and I am not going to retire. Sometimes people like you and me have great wisdom.
I am not sure what I would do with the limit of age and so forth. We need to do it with the courts. We need to do it with Congress. As far as I am concerned, we need to do it with every legislature and court in the states. We need to say, “Here is what is required of you to be able to hold this position.” What I think is that in some of my other shows, I am giving people a lot of questions to ask their representatives to see exactly how they are going to answer them.
I know something, you and I are going to talk about limited government and responsible government and some other things in our next episode. I have got questions for us to answer. It is going to be important for our listeners to hear those questions because when we talk about limited government and responsible government, I have got some questions for them to think about as we begin to answer them ourselves. What is the government authorized to do? How does the government exercise that authority? What constitutional protection restrains its actions if there are inappropriate actions? How do citizens hold the government accountable? I am going to hold them accountable.
Look, it is unfortunate we should be doing this six months ago. It is almost worthwhile spending a lot of time on government structure, government agencies, as well as individual agency, government agency, and this concept of government agencies. Multilateral, multisyllabic, and the almost unchecked power that they have had, again, irrespective of the administration. When I look at what I am trying to vote for, I am, and here is because we are running out of time here, so let me try and get some thoughts together. I am seeing, and I am not pointing a finger at anybody, I am not seeing a very high level of intellect on most of these candidates.
Addressing Government Agencies And Term Limits
There are some that are young, and they are smart. They are well-educated both socially as well as formally. The idealism that they have is commendable. They will be corrupted by the system very quickly because they will recognize that if they are going to caucus somewhere. They are going to have to have a set of ideals, ideologies, etc. The thing that I worry about is that nobody can get into the system and not end up corrupt. I do not care whether it is financially, morally, or ethically corrupt. I would say at a fundamental level, every politician descends to that point.
It is one of the reasons why I am a very strong advocate of term limits. I do not know what they are. To me, 2 or 3 terms in whatever capacity term limits are imposed on the president as two. They are not consecutive. They can be sequenced however. That is, I am happy. Let us leave that. It is inappropriate that any level of politics, civil, state, county, you name it, that we do not have a limit. That means that people get into the system and they are there because it is a job, not to serve the people. That is one thing that maybe we could all work on education, that there is value. As soon as you get a couple of politicians that agree with that, maybe the tide begins to turn. Just do not see that happening.
Once again, that is a generational thing that has to be dealt with by the government and its agencies. This is a really interesting place. The Constitution never spoke about this construct of a pile of government agencies, whether it is the FAA, ICC, whatever. These things, they are just running unchecked. Now, politicians use them to do their bidding. Most of the stuff that we see whether, I do not care, pick an agency, they set policy, and they are not allowed to do that.
The Constitution prevents them from doing that, yet they seem to be able to do it because, once again, there is no limit to those individuals as bureaucrats in those agencies. They just stick there for a long time. It is their job. They make whatever interpretation. I guess, in closing here, how do we break these chains? The things that you and I talk about that frustrate us, I would like to see a healthier nation. That there is some effort there. Are they going to be successful? I do not know.
You got some individuals in politics and some other things, but the premise of making America healthy again, and I am not using that as a catchphrase, is a good idea. How do we do that? Some of these things that we are talking about. Frankly, it is just how they are done. It is disturbing because ideologies tend to get in the way. You and I are sitting here, and I just have yet to find a place where we completely cross swords on ideals or ideologies or morals or ethics.
We do have differences because, let us say, my limit, where I am going to say we need government, is when I see any abuse, any corruption, any actions by individuals, by institutions, by agencies, by the government itself. I am going to stand up and say something about it. You are going to say, hopefully, I think that the government can function if we simply appreciate that we have a democracy that gives us that opportunity to do it. Our efforts here have done one thing for me. I am thinking more every day of my life, and I have got tons of questions.
By the way, these questions can continue for the rest of time. I will say to you, for the last three months, I have been giving questions to ask politicians in my other podcasts. I have made it very clear. Do not just accept the rhetoric. Go find out what they are going to do for you and find out how they are going to support you if, somehow, you are being discriminated against, and what the actions are. Now, I will finish in this way.
There comes a day, and it may be in this period of our lives, that there are politicians who have to say I am no longer going to be directed by my party when I know, with my value structure that I have as a human being, that I cannot do something that my party wants me to do. I am going to stand up. Hopefully, I am not going to be threatened for what I do. Hopefully, we will live in an America where it is free. We are free to say what we need to say and refuse to participate in things and just say, “I am not participating in that.”
That is a reasonable thing. I am not that confident that it is going to be any time practically in my lifetime. It is one of the things that unsettles me most about certainly this coming election, is the ideologies. I hear so much of it that is just counter to my beliefs as a conservative lowercase c, and as somebody who has respect for the Constitution. A political system is imperfect. No government will ever be perfect, and we should not ever think that it will be. We have got such a chance, such an opportunity with the greatest nation on the face of the earth, but we can easily screw this up with very little.
We have already screwed it up. We are in the screwed-up stage, I think, really honestly, Nigel. I know you have to go and I have to go. One of the things I would say to our audiences though, we are going to cover limited government next time and responsible government. We are going to talk about it. We are going to talk about economic liberty and public welfare because we have these topics. We know what we can say to each other, and we know where we can talk about our differences of opinion and see if we can show people that I can learn.
I am going to tell you the last few days I have learned more than I have ever thought about because you sent me a short paper and it became a very long one. I believe in conversation, and I think that is what we are doing. I want to say thank you so much. I do want to thank all of our audiences. I want to say that we look forward to seeing you again next month. Of course, I do this every week, and I also have Richard Wilson with me on legal aspects. Nigel and I look forward to preparing something else next month for you. Thank you so much, Nigel.
Important Links
References:
- Foundational American Documents
- Continental Congress. (1776, July 4). The Declaration of Independence. National Archives.
- United States. (1787). Constitution of the United States. National Archives.
- United States. (1791). Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments to the Constitution. National Archives.
- United States. (1868). Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. National Archives.
- Civil Rights and Equal Protection
- Constitutional Liberty and the Role of Government
- Historical Development of Equal Rights
About Nigel M. Lakey
Originally from Western Canada, and one of three sons of immigrant parents, Nigel has been in Houston since 2000 when as part of a company reorganization, he relocated from Calgary. While he resisted for the first year, he eventually let Texas wash over him and embraced the thing that is Texas- he now sees it as his home.
A Mechanical Engineer by education but a marketer and innovator by vocation, Nigel has spent the majority of his 45 year professional career in the oilfield service and technology space, with a brief foray into private equity before returning to what he knows and understands best.
His career is marked with experience in innovative and disruptive business and technology solutions, and he’s spent considerable time in the C-suite of public and private companies. Well-travelled to some 70 countries Nigel has worked in interesting places with interesting people and has deep respect for culture and history. He can speak a few languages as a result and maintains close friendships with many people he’s met over the years.
While he is retired out of the corporate world since 2022, Nigel is unable to resist the siren call of industry and is co-founder of an energy services startup that is developing AI and ML solutions for the oilfield. He also maintains a consulting and advisory business. Nigel remains active in business and industry and at this time he is the Chair of the Communications and Editorial Committee for the Private Directors Association.
An avid SCUBA diver since 1985, Nigel is an Advanced Open Water instructor, as well as an Adaptive SCUBA instructor, bringing SCUBA to disabled and mobility-challenged veterans and others faced with ability challenges.
Nigel is regarded as an authentic and visionary leader, and a well-spoken and concise communicator, influencer, and thought partner. He has built and developed organizations, catalyzed and led transformational change, and excels in environments where dynamic thought is needed to address strategic and operational challenges.
[…] common concerns provide opportunities for meaningful discussions. That’s the reason Nigel Lakey, a regular Republican, had our episode, Can We Still Talk? Finding Common Ground in a Divided […]