Speaker 1: You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Make sure
Speaker 1: you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Buck Brief.
Speaker 1: Everybody on this episode our friend Oron McIntyre, host of
Speaker 1: the Orton McIntyre Show at the Blaze and now author
Speaker 1: of his latest book, The Total State. It is total
Speaker 1: and it is a state. He's gonna talk to us
Speaker 1: about it. What's going on?
Speaker 2: Oron? Hey man, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So total State? Walk me through this one feels like
Speaker 1: these days we talk about liberty and constitutional rights and
Speaker 1: the system in charge treats that all like it's a suggestion,
Speaker 1: if not a joke. What is the total State?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly, man, I like you, I probably you know.
Speaker 2: I grew up listening to talk radio as kind of
Speaker 2: a standard issue talk radio Republican, and then twenty twenty
Speaker 2: happened and we all got locked in our houses. We
Speaker 2: couldn't go to church, we couldn't go to work, you
Speaker 2: couldn't go outside. And then everything happened with BLM, the riots,
Speaker 2: the election, and I just looked around and I was like,
Speaker 2: what happened all that liberty? Right? I was told the
Speaker 2: Constitution was going to stand in the way of all
Speaker 2: this stuff. We were going to have this separation of
Speaker 2: powers and everything that was going to stop the government.
Speaker 2: When tyranny came and nothing happened, and I was kind
Speaker 2: of blown away, And so the Total State the book
Speaker 2: is really my attempt to kind of document that crisis
Speaker 2: and my faith of like the Constitution, the American system,
Speaker 2: and what went on, like I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people had during that time. And so I walked through
Speaker 2: this journey of how liberal democracies around the world kind
Speaker 2: of randomly became tyrannys in the year twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that Fukuyama End of History essay, which
Speaker 1: I think started out as or it was an essay
Speaker 1: in Foreign Affairs. Is also a longer version of it
Speaker 1: that's sold the thinking book form, or maybe that maybe
Speaker 1: the essays just sold as was bo camera, but it's
Speaker 1: Fugiyama End of History. It's like democracy is basically one world.
Speaker 1: What if we're at the end of liberty, meaning what
Speaker 1: if we're at a place where, you know, America is
Speaker 1: the only country that I can think of where there's
Speaker 1: any real sense of get off my law and government,
Speaker 1: leave me alone. I'm going to keep my guns. And
Speaker 1: there are some lines you shall not cross. I think
Speaker 1: the I think some of those lines were crossed your
Speaker 1: point in twenty twenty and beyond during COVID pandemic. But
Speaker 1: we're the outlier. So if we're not really free, is
Speaker 1: anybody really free? As in, does everybody just want a
Speaker 1: total state now? And they don't know it yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the things that happened in America were egregious, but
Speaker 2: you're right that here we got off better than most places.
Speaker 2: It was even more insane in places like Canada and Australia.
Speaker 2: And Fukiyama's thesis in the end of history was that
Speaker 2: liberal democracy and capitalism had kind of solved the government question, right,
Speaker 2: the USSR had collapsed. All meaningful opposition to the ideas
Speaker 2: of America and the wider West was over, and so
Speaker 2: the only question was how much better would we get
Speaker 2: at democracy? How much better would we get at capitalism?
Speaker 2: History was over and now was just about perfecting the
Speaker 2: institutions that had proven to be the best. But what
Speaker 2: we saw, like you said in twenty twenty, was that
Speaker 2: actually that battle isn't over. In that many people who
Speaker 2: thought they lived under this system of freedom and rights
Speaker 2: actually found themselves snapping right into line when the jack
Speaker 2: boots came. And so, as you said, the question really
Speaker 2: becomes what is in charge if it isn't this liberal
Speaker 2: democracy that we believe in. And the answer I come
Speaker 2: to in the total state is that actually we've all
Speaker 2: been conquered by system called managerialism, and that managerialism manifested
Speaker 2: itself differently in say, communist Russia than it did in
Speaker 2: the United States, but it slowly come to dominate all
Speaker 2: of the governments in the modern world.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about managerialism. That's an interesting concept.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, sorry, yeah. James Burnham is a guy
Speaker 2: who many people might be familiar with. He's actually one
Speaker 2: of the people, along with William F. Buckley, who started
Speaker 2: the National Review, but many people forget that his most
Speaker 2: influential book was about the Managerial Revolution. His thesis was
Speaker 2: that while we looked at these different governments communism, fascism,
Speaker 2: liberal democracy, actually all of the governments in the modern
Speaker 2: world at the time he was writing, which was the
Speaker 2: nineteen forties, kind of fell under the same system, which
Speaker 2: was this idea of managerialism where the power of the
Speaker 2: democracy the people actually needed to be managed and needed
Speaker 2: to be channeled through experts, Experts who were good at
Speaker 2: mass consumption, mass production, transportation, communication, armed forces. Everything had
Speaker 2: to be funneled through these large managerial bureaucracies, and so
Speaker 2: we did have different flavors of managerialism. It came to
Speaker 2: dominate all of these different countries because if you wanted
Speaker 2: to become modern, if you wanted to be able to
Speaker 2: mass produce things, distribute things, scale up your society, and
Speaker 2: go ahead and create larger institutions, you needed to deploy
Speaker 2: the expertise of managers. And these managers created reliable systems
Speaker 2: that we depended on to deliver the food and the
Speaker 2: entertainment and everything else that we now think of is
Speaker 2: kind of ubiquitous in our society. And those forms have
Speaker 2: particular things that they produce, particular behaviors that they favor.
Speaker 2: And that's why even though you would think that communist
Speaker 2: China and I don't know, the government of the United
Speaker 2: States should have different goals. They say they have different
Speaker 2: ideological structures, but we're seeing that they're getting closer and
Speaker 2: closer together at every step. And the reason why is
Speaker 2: that they're both embracing this idea of managerialism.
Speaker 1: What freedoms do we really have still in this country?
Speaker 1: I mean, we we've run the experiment. We ran kind
Speaker 1: of the stress test with COVID where you don't actually
Speaker 1: have the freedom to worship right because you know, somebody
Speaker 1: could sneeze on you and then everyone dies because COVID h.
Speaker 1: So you didn't have the freedom to go to church
Speaker 1: in agog, mosque, wherever, you know, temple, whatever religion you are,
Speaker 1: You don't have the freedom of religion. Clearly don't have
Speaker 1: freedom of speech because we have the government colluding with
Speaker 1: big tech to shut people down these days. You know,
Speaker 1: whether they say it's hate speech or it's disinformation or
Speaker 1: just wrong think, they will use government and private sector
Speaker 1: mechanisms to shut you down and do those in conjunction
Speaker 1: and act like somehow that's not just using agency of
Speaker 1: the private sector for government means. And I mean I
Speaker 1: go down the list, right, I mean, the right to
Speaker 1: bear arms kind of sort of depends where you are,
Speaker 1: do you know what I'm saying? Like it feels these
Speaker 1: days that we talk about the Land of the Free,
Speaker 1: the home of the brave. Yeah, we got a lot
Speaker 1: of brave people still, But are we free. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I increasingly feel like we tell ourselves that we're free.
Speaker 1: And you can say that to yourself even if you,
Speaker 1: let's say, own your house outright, but you got to
Speaker 1: rent it from the government every year in pay taxes.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying? Like, what exactly can
Speaker 1: you do where you are actually free?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Not much anymore? Right, The state has grown again
Speaker 2: to this massive size and this level of intrusion that
Speaker 2: it feels like it controls every aspect. And you're right
Speaker 2: to point out the collusion between the public and the
Speaker 2: private sector. One of the things we tend to pride
Speaker 2: ourselves about in the United States is this idea of
Speaker 2: the division between the state and the private sector. And
Speaker 2: we know that the Bill of Rights and constitutional limitations
Speaker 2: primarily pertain to the government itself. That's where all of
Speaker 2: these careful restrictions that the founders built in are supposed
Speaker 2: to be applied. However, what the government has figured out
Speaker 2: is really that it can go ahead and collude with
Speaker 2: the private sector. And the private sector is happy to
Speaker 2: do this because it gives them additional power and influence.
Speaker 2: It tends to give them monopolies and the different areas
Speaker 2: that they run things. And so they go ahead and
Speaker 2: weave this pattern together of these different managerial bureaucracies and apparatuses.
Speaker 2: And this is why we see a revolving door between corporations,
Speaker 2: government entities, non government entities all working together. The same
Speaker 2: personnel tend to shift from one to the other. They're
Speaker 2: all connected, and the reason is that they're all working
Speaker 2: in a similar direction. I don't think there's one large
Speaker 2: over arching conspiracy between these people where they kind of
Speaker 2: hand down their orders from some kind of Buildeberg cheat sheet. However,
Speaker 2: I do think they all share the same value set,
Speaker 2: which is kind of the progressive morality that they got
Speaker 2: from the institutions that they all tended when they we
Speaker 2: were young, which was college. And this serves as kind
Speaker 2: of the church of the progressive total state, which gives
Speaker 2: them all kind of the marching orders, the moral basis
Speaker 2: on which they're going to make their depinion their decisions.
Speaker 2: And then when they start working, they kind of just
Speaker 2: naturally network and work together or as the same goal. Though,
Speaker 2: as we can see from things like the Twitter fires files,
Speaker 2: that collusion is getting more and more explicit in its nature.
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Speaker 1: in Do people think that they want a much bigger
Speaker 1: state than they realize? Or rather, do people want a
Speaker 1: much bigger state than they think? That's why I meant
Speaker 1: to ask that question, as in, we're thirty four trillion
Speaker 1: dollars in debt. Everything, Oh my gosh, the debt's so bad,
Speaker 1: and Republicans will say, oh, the debts and it is right.
Speaker 1: I mean, just as a function of numbers, you look
Speaker 1: at what interest payments look like. It's effectively intergenerational theft
Speaker 1: that's going on. But put that aside for a second.
Speaker 1: Anytime you talk to Republican about this, you say yeah,
Speaker 1: they say it's terrible. I say, oh, I agree, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: They go, well, maybe we should do something about it.
Speaker 1: And then we say, let's cut something. And if you
Speaker 1: want to cut anything, that would be meaningful to the
Speaker 1: trillion dollars extra we're spending each year now give or take,
Speaker 1: to add to the thirty four trillion dollars we're already
Speaker 1: in debt. You know what happens, people scream and freak
Speaker 1: out at you on the right. So do we just
Speaker 1: do we all want a bigger government than we're willing
Speaker 1: to admit. Is that where things are now I start
Speaker 1: to get a little a little cynical about this.
Speaker 2: Well, I think what it is is really the incentive
Speaker 2: structure of democracy. In democracy, let's be really clear, vote
Speaker 2: buying is the most effective strategy. Nobody wants to vote
Speaker 2: for rosterity mode. Nobody wants to vote for fiscal responsibility.
Speaker 2: We all like it in theory. But as long as
Speaker 2: we can go ahead and hand that buck down to
Speaker 2: the next generation, like you said, we can go ahead
Speaker 2: and pass it down and do this intergenerational theft, then
Speaker 2: we don't really notice. The truth is that if people
Speaker 2: have the option to go ahead and choose whether to
Speaker 2: get the money now and worry about the consequences later,
Speaker 2: they're almost always going to do that, especially in a
Speaker 2: democracy where we kind of get to collectively hand that
Speaker 2: responsibility over. Maybe you wouldn't do that individually, maybe you
Speaker 2: wouldn't go ahead and get a payday loan as an individual,
Speaker 2: but as a massive people, yeah, we do that over
Speaker 2: and over again. And Alexis to Tokville warned us about
Speaker 2: this when he observed the beginnings of democracy in America
Speaker 2: He said that as soon as the people can go
Speaker 2: ahead and figure out that the convote themselves money, you're
Speaker 2: in a lot of problems because that will always be
Speaker 2: the way that people choose to go. Especially as we
Speaker 2: go ahead and remove that connection to the consequences, Fewer
Speaker 2: and fewer people in the United States effectively pay access,
Speaker 2: so they don't really feel that burden. It's spread across
Speaker 2: a smaller and smaller handful of property owners, and that
Speaker 2: has its own problems. It means that the individual is
Speaker 2: less invested in the country that they're supposed to be
Speaker 2: paying for.
Speaker 1: It just feels like the situation doesn't improve at all. Right,
Speaker 1: it continues to get like the state. We're always on
Speaker 1: defense against the encroachments of the state. So I assume
Speaker 1: in the book, which I have a copy of, and
Speaker 1: I will read, uh, you get in to some of
Speaker 1: the how do we at least start to you know,
Speaker 1: I always tell everybody if you're looking at a conservative
Speaker 1: political book, the last chapter is usually you know, how
Speaker 1: do we turn this around? Everybody get more involved, like
Speaker 1: get involved in your school board. Right, okay, fine, how
Speaker 1: do we start to turn the trajectory in the other direction?
Speaker 1: It's going to take out. There's a long term project.
Speaker 1: We've been getting our butts kicked on the right in
Speaker 1: terms of the encroachment of the state for a long time,
Speaker 1: in part because the left is doing it and we
Speaker 1: do it too. We just think we do it for
Speaker 1: better reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a maybe a less hopeful last chapter
Speaker 2: on this one. I do think there are steps that
Speaker 2: we can take, but I think we are going through
Speaker 2: a process. I think that the things that are happening
Speaker 2: to us are actually part of a larger movement that's
Speaker 2: happening to all societies, which is the scaling up and massification.
Speaker 2: I don't think countries were meant to grow into these giant,
Speaker 2: world spanning empires. I don't think everything can be connected
Speaker 2: this way. I don't think that we can go ahead
Speaker 2: and spread out our responsibilities as individuals into a million
Speaker 2: different organizations and expect them to continue to function. The
Speaker 2: truth is that we embrace the total state because it
Speaker 2: took responsibility off of our shoulders. We no longer have
Speaker 2: to care for our parents, We no longer have to
Speaker 2: educate our children. We no longer have to take care
Speaker 2: of the person next to us. We don't have to
Speaker 2: care about our community because eventually we can go ahead
Speaker 2: and hand that power over to the state. And as
Speaker 2: much as we might whine about that as conservatives, really,
Speaker 2: in truth, most of us are not willing to take
Speaker 2: on that individual responsibility. John Adams told us who the
Speaker 2: Constitution was there to govern. It was there to govern
Speaker 2: a moral and religious people, and it was inadequate to
Speaker 2: govern any other. Well, now we're the other, and the
Speaker 2: Constitution is not governing us well because we are not
Speaker 2: virtuous enough to take on the responsibilities of the Constitution.
Speaker 1: So we're screwed. Basically. Good to know. I'm not the
Speaker 1: only one who thinks us. I mean, people keep asking
Speaker 1: me like, what's the and I always say, you know,
Speaker 1: in the long run, we're all dead. Got to enjoy
Speaker 1: your life as much as you can and do the
Speaker 1: best stuff you can. But if you're worried about the
Speaker 1: trajectory of the country, history is comforting. It's for me
Speaker 1: at least, like being somebody who enjoys reading history. It's
Speaker 1: comforting because you get to learn about what's happened before,
Speaker 1: and everyone's been through everything in some way or another,
Speaker 1: and people have been through much worse than any of us.
Speaker 1: But also everybody who's come before us has died, and
Speaker 1: nobody even really remembers or cares all that much at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, and then you start to
Speaker 1: feel a little nihilistic about things. So I feel like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna worry about the American Empire and its future,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll do the best we can. But quite honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how this thing is
Speaker 1: going to turn out at this point. You know, most
Speaker 1: great empires fall. Look a look at the show. Do
Speaker 1: you ever watch The Crown?
Speaker 2: I have not seen that one.
Speaker 1: Now, Oh, okay, it's funny because people love the show.
Speaker 1: It's really just a very well shot, like visually pleasing,
Speaker 1: long slow death of Great Britain. Like that's what sure
Speaker 1: from from the end of World War two to basically
Speaker 1: close to modern day or you know, maybe it stops.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I haven't finished it yet, but twenty
Speaker 1: years ago or something, think and you're just watching Great
Speaker 1: Britain become a second rate power that is becoming obsolete
Speaker 1: and like there's nothing anyone. It's kind of like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: here we are. It's getting just getting less wealthy and
Speaker 1: less influential every year. I feel like, Eh, it happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The one thing to remember is that every civilization
Speaker 2: does have its moments. It rises, it gains in greatness,
Speaker 2: and then eventually it does decline. Now, hopefully we're not
Speaker 2: in that situation. The Roman Republic did in but the
Speaker 2: Roman Empire rose to greatness and continued for a very
Speaker 2: long time. I don't want to say that's where we're at.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly you know, how our history will unfold,
Speaker 2: what the morphology of our civilization will be. But I
Speaker 2: think we do need to recognize that we are in
Speaker 2: a turning point. We do have kind of an epochal
Speaker 2: change that is happening in society, and one thing we
Speaker 2: can do is to go ahead and assume personal responsibility
Speaker 2: in our own lives and our own communities that can
Speaker 2: at least sheltered to some extent from whatever comes next. See.
Speaker 1: I have a theory about this as well, about the
Speaker 1: personal part of that. I want to come back to
Speaker 1: it and throw it your way. Total State is the book,
Speaker 1: or as you can tell a super smart guy, so
Speaker 1: get your copy of it. But you know, I keep
Speaker 1: hearing about people that are like, oh, well, why should
Speaker 1: I have gold and silver. I have gold and silver
Speaker 1: at home. Gold and silver talking about history before over history,
Speaker 1: you see, it maintains value. It's store of value. And
Speaker 1: when things get really tough financially, when big changes come economically,
Speaker 1: precious metals do very well. Here's why you can have
Speaker 1: precious metal, to have tangible currency on hand. It's just
Speaker 1: part of a bug out plant or to whether the storm,
Speaker 1: so to speak of a real financial calamity, Portfolio diversification,
Speaker 1: hedge against inflation, store of value, gold increases over time.
Speaker 1: There's all these different reasons why you can have gold
Speaker 1: and silver on hand. I'm not saying, you know, pile
Speaker 1: everything you have into these things, that's crazy. It's have
Speaker 1: an appropriate amount on hand for your portfolio. Global events
Speaker 1: just show you how quickly instability can spiral out of control.
Speaker 1: But there are countries out there, countries, nation states that
Speaker 1: are hoarding gold and silver and buying more and more
Speaker 1: of it. So nobody can predict the future with any
Speaker 1: real accuracy, but you can take steps now to prepare
Speaker 1: for any uncertainty. The Oxford Gold Group, that's who I
Speaker 1: trust for my gold and silver. That's how you should
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Speaker 1: up to ten thousand dollars in free precious metals the
Speaker 1: numbers eight three three nine nine five gold eight three
Speaker 1: three nine nine to five g O l D eight
Speaker 1: three three nine nine to five gold or in. So,
Speaker 1: you know, people become all obsessed on the left with
Speaker 1: climate change. I mean, I've been given the right a
Speaker 1: hard time here, but at least the right lives in reality, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we all have our weaknesses, like
Speaker 1: I eat too much chocolate, Like people don't ever want
Speaker 1: to change medicare, Like I understand right like this, but
Speaker 1: that that's those are real things. The left will get
Speaker 1: all upset about climate change and they'll say I can't
Speaker 1: have kids because or I shouldn't have children because you know,
Speaker 1: climate change footprint and all this sort of stuff. But
Speaker 1: to me, people like that, people like to wallow in. Oh,
Speaker 1: massive events are going against me. Everything is falling apart,
Speaker 1: so therefore it doesn't matter that I'm personally a mess
Speaker 1: and like, don't take care of my people and don't
Speaker 1: take care of myself. And I feel like that's one
Speaker 1: of the root fallacies we have in America. These days.
Speaker 1: That's my thought for you. What do you make of it?
Speaker 2: No, that's absolutely right. Like I said, much of the
Speaker 2: power that we've given up to the government, A bunch
Speaker 2: of the reason that the government has been able to
Speaker 2: expand the way it has is that we have slowly
Speaker 2: given up on our ability to take care of our own,
Speaker 2: take care of our community, do the things that we're
Speaker 2: essential to our own liberty. And while I don't think
Speaker 2: we're going to suddenly retain all of that liberty or
Speaker 2: regain all that liberty simply because we go ahead and
Speaker 2: you know, take care of the guy next to us,
Speaker 2: or attend our church more, or you know, run for
Speaker 2: school board or anything. I do. I think that there
Speaker 2: are key steps that we can take when things come apart.
Speaker 2: We've noticed that it does matter who's in charge of localities.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about the COVID experience. Right, A lot
Speaker 2: of people put their eyes on Ron DeSantis and Florida.
Speaker 2: Many people move to my home state because they recognize
Speaker 2: that who was in charge mattered, And the fact that
Speaker 2: Florida was able to go ahead and take serious action
Speaker 2: on its own to protect its people during that time
Speaker 2: made a real difference in the way that they live
Speaker 2: their lives. It doesn't solve every problem. We're still subject
Speaker 2: to a lot of serious issues that have a more
Speaker 2: national character, like mass immigration. But the quality of life
Speaker 2: in Florida is notably different, and there's a reason people
Speaker 2: make the choice to move here. And so if we
Speaker 2: go ahead and take action, especially think about something like
Speaker 2: a local sheriff has a big control over whether or not, say,
Speaker 2: violations of the Second Amendment get enforced. Inside is jurisdiction
Speaker 2: that can have a real impact on your life, your community,
Speaker 2: the well being of your family. And so while general
Speaker 2: fate of the United States may be in question, you
Speaker 2: can still take very serious and important action to take
Speaker 2: care of those around you. And I don't think anyone
Speaker 2: should despair or shirk that duty just because you know
Speaker 2: the federal government of the United States is incompetent.
Speaker 1: There we go. That's about as hopeful as we're going
Speaker 1: to get here. So orin thank you so much the
Speaker 1: total state, great work. Appreciate you being here. Checkout ooron
Speaker 1: show on the Blaze at well as well. Thank you,
Speaker 1: my friend, thanks for having me