Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: I saw this viral video while I was on vacation.
Speaker 1: Let's play the clip.
Speaker 2: Do you know what happens after your funeral? In a
Speaker 2: few short hours, the crying will die down and your
Speaker 2: family will be busy making arrangements for food or drink.
Speaker 2: Some of your relatives will start discussing current events over coffee,
Speaker 2: and some people will call your family to tell them
Speaker 2: that they can't make it in person because of an emergency.
Speaker 2: Your employer will begin to search for your replacement. In
Speaker 2: a few days, your children will go back to work
Speaker 2: because their bereavement leave has run out. In a month,
Speaker 2: your spouse will be watching a comedy on TV and
Speaker 2: start to laugh. You'll be forgotten at an astonishing pace.
Speaker 2: If people will forget you so easily, then who are
Speaker 2: you living your life for? You spend your whole life
Speaker 2: worrying about what people will think about you. They don't,
Speaker 2: so live your life for you. Remember, life is too
Speaker 2: short to be lived for others approval. Embrace your true
Speaker 2: self and make your own happiness a priority.
Speaker 1: My family says, I talk about my own death too much,
Speaker 1: But let's talk about it some more in the video.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be sad that our family and friends
Speaker 1: are moving on, that they'll laugh even on the day
Speaker 1: that they're burying you. I think this is the wrong mindset.
Speaker 1: You should want your family and friends to move on
Speaker 1: when you're gone. You should want them to laugh at
Speaker 1: something funny and hopefully remember that you would have laughed
Speaker 1: at that too. There's this crazy idea that we're the
Speaker 1: center of the universe and that everyone's life has to
Speaker 1: stop when we die. I've had Twitter friends die, people
Speaker 1: that I knew primarily on the app, but who I
Speaker 1: liked a lot. When people find out someone died they
Speaker 1: knew online, they're sad. They may post remembrances and stories,
Speaker 1: but minutes later they'll be retweeting the latest news and tape.
Speaker 1: I love my online friends. They mean something to me,
Speaker 1: but this is precisely why you have to live your
Speaker 1: life offline. Your Twitter friends will be sad, but very
Speaker 1: quickly move on. Your family and friends in real life
Speaker 1: should move on too, but they'll carry your memory with
Speaker 1: them in a way that your online friends really just can't.
Speaker 1: But even still, you don't want your real life family
Speaker 1: and friends to stop living the idea that if I die,
Speaker 1: I want my family to grieve me NonStop in forever.
Speaker 1: I absolutely do not. And the message in that video
Speaker 1: that if people aren't tearing at their clothes and wailing
Speaker 1: all the time because of your absence means that you
Speaker 1: should have lived only for yourself and not for anyone else.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. If we do this thing right, we'll be
Speaker 1: living our lives for ourselves and for other people. When
Speaker 1: I go, I want my kids to not only they
Speaker 1: move on, I want them to thrive. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: remember our times together. Miss me, sure, because it would
Speaker 1: just be weird if they didn't and I didn't raise sociopath.
Speaker 1: But then go out there and live this big, wonderful
Speaker 1: life that we get to have. Hopefully my kids will
Speaker 1: have their own families, and they'll live both for their
Speaker 1: children and for themselves and for their spouse and for
Speaker 1: all the people that they love around them. The fact
Speaker 1: that people's lives won't stop when you die is a
Speaker 1: good thing, and you should use that information to live
Speaker 1: a more fulfilling life, not just you know, stick two
Speaker 1: middle fingers in the air and say nothing matters. It's
Speaker 1: an opportunity to really live a full, healthy life that
Speaker 1: you only get so much time here, and yes, not
Speaker 1: everyone's going to carry you around with them when you go.
Speaker 1: Coming up next and interview with Randy Barnett. Join us
Speaker 1: after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show
Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Randy Barnett, Professor of
Speaker 1: Constitutional Law at Georgetown Los Center, where he directs the
Speaker 1: Georgetown Center for the Constitution. His new book is called
Speaker 1: A Life for Liberty The Making of an American Originalist.
Speaker 1: Get it now wherever you buy your books. So nice
Speaker 1: to have you on, Randy.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me, Carol. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 3: this a lot me too.
Speaker 1: So is Life of Liberty and Autobiography.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is. I started off the idea of writing
Speaker 3: it for my grandchildren because I've done so many things
Speaker 3: in my life that by the time they're old enough
Speaker 3: to understand them, I might not be around to tell
Speaker 3: them about it. So I set out to write this
Speaker 3: story for them, and that the book is dedicated to them.
Speaker 3: But in the course of writing it, I learned a
Speaker 3: lot of life lessons, or I took life lessons from
Speaker 3: the book that I think would appeal to a larger
Speaker 3: audience than just my grandchildren, most particularly younger people who
Speaker 3: are looking to make a career for themselves in advancing
Speaker 3: ideas that they care about. In my case, it was
Speaker 3: justice and liberty and how one can go about doing that,
Speaker 3: even if one starts with a background that really is
Speaker 3: not all that clued into how you go about doing
Speaker 3: these things. I tell the story about what I did right,
Speaker 3: but I also tell a lot of stories about what
Speaker 3: I did wrong in the course of getting to where
Speaker 3: I am today.
Speaker 1: So what was the beginning for you? How did you
Speaker 1: get on this path?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, really it starts with my father, who
Speaker 3: was an ultimate contrarian. He was a conservative Jew and
Speaker 3: who was from the South Side of Chicago, a kind
Speaker 3: of a street fighting guy who was in a gang
Speaker 3: at some point during his youth, and he was a
Speaker 3: tough guy.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 3: My nickname for him when I was little was most Man,
Speaker 3: because that's what he was. But he was also a
Speaker 3: very principal conservative. I found out late in life that
Speaker 3: he'd read Iron Ran earlier on the Fountainhead. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that until a long time after that, and I
Speaker 3: got my political principles from him. I also got my
Speaker 3: the sort of the role model that said, you stand
Speaker 3: up for your principles and you don't back down when challenged.
Speaker 3: And because he did e or back down, I love that.
Speaker 1: He sounds amazing. That's exactly my kind of person. Rand
Speaker 1: Paul referred to you as pioneering contrarianism in the blurb
Speaker 1: for your book. What did he mean by that? I
Speaker 1: mean he's pretty contrarian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's one contrary into another. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: that's that's why one of the reasons he likes me,
Speaker 3: I think. And I was a senior advisor to his
Speaker 3: presidential campaign, so I got to know him a lot
Speaker 3: better during that campaign than I did before. My dad
Speaker 3: was a contrarian. To give you some idea, you know
Speaker 3: that in those days, there were Chevy families. That was
Speaker 3: the most popular car. There were Ford families, the next
Speaker 3: most popular car. Naturally, we were a Chrysler family because
Speaker 3: my dad was an automobile mechanic and he thought Kaisler
Speaker 3: had the best power trained in the business, although he
Speaker 3: admitted their bodies tended to rust out in the wintertime.
Speaker 3: There was McDonald's families because that's the most popular hamburger.
Speaker 3: There were Burger King families, not us. We were Prince
Speaker 3: Castle family, and I had no idea. There was an
Speaker 3: obscure chain in northwest Indiana that I don't know what
Speaker 3: happened to it, but he thought those were the best burgers,
Speaker 3: so he would go what he thought was best by
Speaker 3: his own lights. And that's kind of where I go.
Speaker 3: And that took me to being a Jewish kid in
Speaker 3: a Polish Catholic town of Caliuit City, where of the
Speaker 3: four hundred kids in my high school graduating class, there
Speaker 3: were four Jews. So I was kind of the Jewish outcast,
Speaker 3: or not outcast. I was very successful actually socially, but
Speaker 3: I felt like an outcast sometimes I was the Jewish
Speaker 3: kid in the Catholic town. But then I was the
Speaker 3: conservative kid amongst the Jews in northwest Indiana. In my synagogue,
Speaker 3: which was across the state line, I was literally from
Speaker 3: the wrong side of the state line as far as
Speaker 3: they were concerned. But I was this conservative kid with
Speaker 3: all these liberal Jews, and so I had to stand
Speaker 3: up for myself there as well. So I never really
Speaker 3: fit one hundred percent into any social group. And Murray Rothbard,
Speaker 3: this famous libertarian, once told me that he thought that
Speaker 3: was one of the causes of people becoming intellectuals because
Speaker 3: they never fit completely within their group. They could kind
Speaker 3: of see the group in an objective way as an
Speaker 3: outsider that people within the group could never see. And
Speaker 3: maybe that was part of the reason I became an intellectual, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you have to defend your opinions, I think
Speaker 1: that that goes a long way towards making you an
Speaker 1: intellectual and really having to get into why you believe
Speaker 1: what you believe. I think a lot of people think
Speaker 1: contrarians just kind of disagree for the sake of it.
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of the time, it's, like
Speaker 1: you said, you end up being the only one and
Speaker 1: it's you against the mob. It's you against the crowd,
Speaker 1: and you need to kind of represent what you believe
Speaker 1: and do it well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, near the end of his life, I told my
Speaker 3: dad that I thought he was a contrarian. He took
Speaker 3: it kind of as an insult because it was sort
Speaker 3: of like, he's just a contrary guy. But he wasn't
Speaker 3: really a contrary guy. I'm not a contrary guy. I'm
Speaker 3: kind of a hat a glass half full guy, kind
Speaker 3: of a happy warrior guy. It's just that I'm prepared
Speaker 3: to look elsewhere for answers than what the mainstream is
Speaker 3: offering at any given time. And when I am in
Speaker 3: the mainstream and it happens every once in a while,
Speaker 3: it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, Like, what's wrong?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like, well, you know, I'm going with
Speaker 3: the flow here, but I wonder if I should.
Speaker 1: Be right the question of like I usually find all
Speaker 1: these people to be wrong, Am I wrong this time
Speaker 1: for being on the same side of them?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I get that.
Speaker 1: So a question that I ask all of my guests,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to hear your answer, is what do
Speaker 1: you think is our largest cultural problem?
Speaker 3: Well, I think we are in a culture war, and
Speaker 3: I think our largest cultural problem is the rewriting of
Speaker 3: American history to make America and the West, but in
Speaker 3: the United States in particular, the bad guys in the history,
Speaker 3: in the story of the world, when in fact we
Speaker 3: are the good guys. Now, being the good guy doesn't
Speaker 3: mean you are perfect. Some of the best heroes in
Speaker 3: film played by John Wayne have flaws, and we have
Speaker 3: our flaws. But every people has their flaws, every society
Speaker 3: has their flaws, and our flaws are better than others,
Speaker 3: and our virtues are way better. And so I think
Speaker 3: the biggest problem we face is a concerted effort to
Speaker 3: undercut the American culture and not teach it and not
Speaker 3: transmit it to the future generations of young people. And
Speaker 3: we can only hope that social media and alternate sources
Speaker 3: of information will do an end run around in some
Speaker 3: respects the establishment's desire to brainwash Americans into thinking America
Speaker 3: is the bad guy and not the good guy.
Speaker 1: So you do think it's solvable. You think you're an optimist,
Speaker 1: You think that we could turn this around.
Speaker 3: I think optimism is a little too strong. I don't
Speaker 3: really know, but I'm hopeful, and I certainly don't think
Speaker 3: the battle is lost. In fact, one way to look
Speaker 3: at this is the battle for liberty is never one
Speaker 3: because there are always going to be significant opponents of liberty.
Speaker 3: The battle for liberty can only be lost. You can
Speaker 3: lose it, completely lose it. But as long as you
Speaker 3: haven't completely lost it, you're doing okay. You know you're
Speaker 3: in the game, and you can never completely win it.
Speaker 3: So it's always going to be a struggle to preserve
Speaker 3: liberty no matter what the situation is.
Speaker 1: Where do you see the threats to liberty in America
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: Well, right now, I see it from essentially left wing
Speaker 3: or wokeism that has infected one of the two major
Speaker 3: political parties. When when you grow up, when I grew up,
Speaker 3: there were liberals and they were conservatives. Now I have
Speaker 3: to say, as I talk about in my book, at
Speaker 3: the age of twelve years old, I debated on being
Speaker 3: half of Barry Goldwater in front of my entire ye junior,
Speaker 3: high school and grade school student body. So even at
Speaker 3: twelve years old, my twelve year in my twelve year
Speaker 3: old heart, I thought he was right, but I was
Speaker 3: debating against liberals. In fact, one of my mentors that
Speaker 3: I talk about in the book, my band director Mike Landis,
Speaker 3: who had a big influence on me after my dad.
Speaker 3: He was my next mentor. He was on the left
Speaker 3: or he was a liberal. So instead of my dad
Speaker 3: arguing with me from the right, I had Mike Landis
Speaker 3: arguing with me from liberals. But he was a liberal,
Speaker 3: he was not a leftist. And what's happened is leftism,
Speaker 3: cultural Marxism, whatever you want to call it, is displacing
Speaker 3: liberalism as sort of the animating political force of the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party, and that is a big problem in a
Speaker 3: two party system, and so that that is really one
Speaker 3: of our biggest threats, if not the underlying cultural problem
Speaker 3: that I believe is a real challenge.
Speaker 1: So I completely agree. I just think that I get
Speaker 1: asked a lot, well, how are they challenging, like, how
Speaker 1: are they actually challenging liberty? They're not making laws to
Speaker 1: limit liberty, are they? And I get that argument a lot,
Speaker 1: But are are they passing laws to limit liberty? Do
Speaker 1: you see that happening?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, right now, what we're seeing is with
Speaker 3: respect to Jewish people, we're seeing street violence being committed
Speaker 3: against Jewish people, including you know, but primarily in cities
Speaker 3: that are controlled by democratic politicians. And I'm Jewish, as
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, and believe in fighting back. It's one
Speaker 3: of the reasons why my dad instilled in me a
Speaker 3: belief in the importance of the right to keep and
Speaker 3: bear arms, that Jews should never go passively or quietly
Speaker 3: into the night. Again, that that was one of the
Speaker 3: lessons of the Holocaust, was that we should be armed.
Speaker 3: And I and he taught me how to use weapons
Speaker 3: at a young age, and I you know, I'm armed today.
Speaker 3: I have a CCW permit. I had originally one in
Speaker 3: now my permits in Florida because I don't live in
Speaker 3: DC anymore. So I do think that we have a
Speaker 3: real threat to Jewish existence here in this country. But
Speaker 3: it's coming, I think, from an organized group of Islamo
Speaker 3: fascist actors that are being organized and subsidized by foreign governments.
Speaker 3: We have a and here is where the domination of
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party gets in the way. What we have
Speaker 3: is a Democrat administration and a Department of Justice that
Speaker 3: will not do the job it was devised to do,
Speaker 3: which is to protect the people from terrorism. The DOJ
Speaker 3: was founded during the Grant administration to protect the American people,
Speaker 3: to protect free blacks and Republicans in the South from
Speaker 3: organized terrorist violence. That's why we have a Department of
Speaker 3: There was an Attorney General, but we didn't have a
Speaker 3: Department of Justice until we had this problem. And right
Speaker 3: now the Department of Justice is not doing the job
Speaker 3: it needs to be doing to ferret out the sources
Speaker 3: of this obviously organized campaign against the sactity of Jews,
Speaker 3: which is not actually about Jewish people. It's really about
Speaker 3: America and the American way of life. This is part
Speaker 3: of jihadi cause. To underline the West, it's happening in Europe,
Speaker 3: it's happening here. We are not immune. As the point
Speaker 3: and where the Democratic Party is falling down is in
Speaker 3: not standing up because they have been so undermined from
Speaker 3: within by their left wing contingent that they are not
Speaker 3: able to stand up to what is a genuine threat
Speaker 3: to them as well as to us.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right
Speaker 1: back on the Carol Marcowitz Show. So does the constitution
Speaker 1: provide a way to fight back?
Speaker 3: Yes, it does, and it's called elections. And when the
Speaker 3: left has essentially taken over or undermined almost all of
Speaker 3: our major institutions, there is one avenue left and that
Speaker 3: is political power. We just saw that in the New
Speaker 3: York congressional race. One of the members of the Hamas
Speaker 3: party was defeated by a Democrat. So Democrats won. Hamas
Speaker 3: lost in that race because that Jews got organized and
Speaker 3: voted in en mass to get that of a result,
Speaker 3: having previously voted for the incumbent in the last election
Speaker 3: over a Jewish person who was holding that seat to
Speaker 3: begin with. So we're seeing democracy use that. We see it.
Speaker 3: Federalism is one of the most important ways we have
Speaker 3: that the Constitution has given us to fight back. I
Speaker 3: am now a citizen or resident of the state of Florida,
Speaker 3: although I am sitting here right now in the Central Virginia,
Speaker 3: but I'm a resident of the state of Florida, and
Speaker 3: I moved there from DC because I like the form
Speaker 3: of government they had there better than the form of
Speaker 3: government we had in the d C. And that's because
Speaker 3: of federalism. And so we have enclaves within this country
Speaker 3: that from which we can provide a base in which
Speaker 3: we can fight back against this And if we didn't
Speaker 3: have a federalist system, there wouldn't be those enclaves. So
Speaker 3: that's a very important thing that the Constitution has preserved,
Speaker 3: notwithstanding all the checks and balances that have been overridden
Speaker 3: by Supreme Court rulings over the years.
Speaker 1: So I tend to ask my guests, what would you
Speaker 1: be doing if you weren't doing this? But I kind
Speaker 1: of can't see you doing anything but defending liberty. Would
Speaker 1: you have a plan?
Speaker 3: Be Well, in twenty sixteen, when I thought that Hillary
Speaker 3: was going to win and Trump was going to lose,
Speaker 3: and therefore I thought the Scalia seat was going to
Speaker 3: be filled by the Democrat, by Hillary, and it probably
Speaker 3: wasn't going to be Merrick Arland, it would be somebody else.
Speaker 3: I thought it was really going to be game over
Speaker 3: for the Constitution in this country, and it wasn't going
Speaker 3: to be in my interest anymore, given how old I
Speaker 3: am to continue to fight for the original meaning of
Speaker 3: the Constitution, which is something that I've been fighting for
Speaker 3: for the last thirty years, as evident as I discussed
Speaker 3: in my book. So what my plan was to go
Speaker 3: back to teaching contract law, which is what I taught
Speaker 3: before I taught constitutional law, and then retire and enjoy
Speaker 3: the remaining years of my life. So I think maybe
Speaker 3: I would have sort of given up the fight at
Speaker 3: least for the Constitution. But then lo and behold, Trump won,
Speaker 3: and we knew, yeah, we did lose the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: and we got a lot of great judges appointed to
Speaker 3: the Court of Appeals, and so it was a huge victory.
Speaker 3: And that victory was made possible not only by Trump winning,
Speaker 3: but by the fact that for twenty or thirty years,
Speaker 3: the originalism movement within JIC within legal conservatism has triumphed,
Speaker 3: has has developed. I've been part of the parcel of
Speaker 3: developing the theory of originalism, and that coupled with the
Speaker 3: mandate that Trump used to get himself the nomination, which
Speaker 3: is by pledging to appoint originalist judges and then having
Speaker 3: a White House counsel don again fulfill that promise. That's
Speaker 3: how we got to winning. And so I didn't I
Speaker 3: didn't have to go to my plan.
Speaker 1: B Yeah, that's great. I mean it's funny that I
Speaker 1: don't feel like there's enough credit given to the fact
Speaker 1: that there was a plan and that plan was implemented.
Speaker 1: Did It wasn't just like kind of loose ideals in
Speaker 1: the air. It was like, this is how it's going
Speaker 1: to go, This is how, you know, how how we're
Speaker 1: going to get our ideas through. And Trump was such
Speaker 1: a huge player in that. It could have if it
Speaker 1: wasn't Donald Trump. You know, do you think a different
Speaker 1: Republican would have gone along with it? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I was a campaign advisor to Rand Paul and
Speaker 3: he was one of the first candidates to take off
Speaker 3: after Trump, although he worked with Trump very well when
Speaker 3: Trump was president, and I would have preferred rand As
Speaker 3: as my candidate, and I think he would have done
Speaker 3: all the right things, especially with respect to the Constitution,
Speaker 3: which he cares very very much about. And I talk
Speaker 3: a lot about rand in my role in his campaign
Speaker 3: in the book, as well as him inviting me in
Speaker 3: to interview Justice Kavanaugh and interview Justice Barrett while he
Speaker 3: was they were doing their rounds of Senate interviews. He helped.
Speaker 3: He invited me in to participate in their interviews. I
Speaker 3: talk about that in the book as well. So I
Speaker 3: do think other Republicans would have done okay, and I
Speaker 3: actually think they would. They would have been pretty They
Speaker 3: would have had a good chance of defeating the most
Speaker 3: one of the most unpopular Democratic nominees in our history.
Speaker 3: But there's no telling whether they would have broken through
Speaker 3: in Pennsylvania the way Trump did. It's hard to know.
Speaker 3: We may have come out ahead. But I can really
Speaker 3: understand in hindsight why the voters Republican voters picked Trump,
Speaker 3: which is they thought they were tired of being lied to.
Speaker 3: They were tired of people telling them a conservatives singing
Speaker 3: conservative song and then after election not doing anything about it.
Speaker 3: And they thought Trump was independent enough and maybe even
Speaker 3: crazy enough to do what he promised. And it turns
Speaker 3: out that in some respects he did do what he promised.
Speaker 1: Right, Can you see yourself working in politics some more
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 3: No, I think that was kind of a one off deal.
Speaker 3: Although I was interested in helping Governor Desanis in his
Speaker 3: campaign had he gotten the nomination, I would have done
Speaker 3: everything I could to help him out. He didn't invite
Speaker 3: me into his campaign the way Ran did, But I
Speaker 3: really he was the guy I thought combined both substance
Speaker 3: and courage and guts and tactics. But you know, it
Speaker 3: wasn't his year, and we have to make the best
Speaker 3: of the situation, and I don't think the I think
Speaker 3: the choice that we now face is pretty clear cut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, But you know, we get to have
Speaker 1: him as our governor, both of us being Floridians. I
Speaker 1: think that's you know, there is a big plus for us,
Speaker 1: a big upside to that because without him, those Republican
Speaker 1: legislators are going to go back to being regular Republicans again. Right,
Speaker 1: we can't really tell what's going to happen after him.
Speaker 1: I hope he's laying down the foundation enough to keep
Speaker 1: his style going after he's out.
Speaker 3: But you know, I do believe in the so called
Speaker 3: great Man theory of history. That is, it matters who
Speaker 3: the individuals are, and I think he's a special guy,
Speaker 3: and the existence of leadership makes a big difference. I mean,
Speaker 3: it would be nice. I think if we had a
Speaker 3: president of the United States. Currently, our system sort of
Speaker 3: presupposes we have a president, but the current guy who
Speaker 3: holds the office is obviously not in a position to
Speaker 3: call all the shots. We don't really know who is
Speaker 3: and so even bad leadership is better than no leadership
Speaker 3: at all. And that's kind of what the situation is
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: Right Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3: I think I've exceeded any reasonable expectations I had for myself,
Speaker 3: which was actually not this high. I mean, I'm yes.
Speaker 3: The answer is I have done a lot more than
Speaker 3: I ever dreamed I would. I never had a bucket list,
Speaker 3: but if I have had at I have a retroactive
Speaker 3: bucket list. After I do something, I think, oh wow,
Speaker 3: that should be on a bucket list. Like I've been
Speaker 3: a criminal prosecutor. I've been a criminal prosecutor of argued
Speaker 3: juries in criminal cases in Chicago. I've argued in the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court of the United States. I've played a prosecutor
Speaker 3: in a science fiction movie called An Alienable which you
Speaker 3: can watch on YouTube that's available for free streaming. And
Speaker 3: I've had an impact in my writings on the direction
Speaker 3: of constitutional law in this country. If you told me
Speaker 3: when I was a law student in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 3: and I was getting turned off of constitutional law by
Speaker 3: reading all these Supreme Court cases that forty years later
Speaker 3: we would have a Supreme Court now who are committed
Speaker 3: to the original meeting of the Constitution, even though they
Speaker 3: disagree with each other about a lot. I would have
Speaker 3: told you you were on something, and I would know
Speaker 3: what you were smoking. We've made more progress between that
Speaker 3: day and this day than I ever could have imagined.
Speaker 3: But nevertheless, the situation in other respects, you know, is
Speaker 3: not going so well.
Speaker 1: It's funny because you say you're not an optimist, but
Speaker 1: this has been a very optimistic conversation. I feel good,
Speaker 1: you know after talking to you.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a glass half full guy, which as a
Speaker 3: opposed to half empty guy. That doesn't make you an
Speaker 3: optimist about the future, but it does make you focus
Speaker 3: on the blessings of the present, such as they are.
Speaker 3: And I think we have a lot to be grateful for.
Speaker 3: And we have a country that's worth fighting for, and
Speaker 3: we have the means at our disposal to fight and elections,
Speaker 3: as I say, is one of the very most important
Speaker 3: ways in which we can start to push back. We
Speaker 3: can continue to push back against the world culture that
Speaker 3: is undermining American ideals. There is a lot of pushback
Speaker 3: now to wokism that previous was just infecting academia where
Speaker 3: I live. It's gone out, it's metastasized, it's in the culture.
Speaker 3: It's got the Walt disneyfication of the entire culture. But
Speaker 3: there's a tremendous amount of pushback now and that's very hopeful.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot, and I'm going to be
Speaker 1: hopeful after this conversation. So I love talking to you, Randy.
Speaker 1: You're such an interesting person. You're one of my favorite
Speaker 1: people to follow on Twitter. And here with your best
Speaker 1: tip for my listeners on how they could be happy warriors,
Speaker 1: how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3: Live your life as though you're going to write a memoir,
Speaker 3: because what will that be. That'll mean everything you do
Speaker 3: are going to be things that you're going to one
Speaker 3: day be proud to have done. So live your life.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is what I learned from writing a memoir.
Speaker 3: I have to admit my memoir talks a lot about
Speaker 3: the mistakes I made along the way. Live your life
Speaker 3: so that you can write a memoir about all the
Speaker 3: right choices that you made, and I think that would
Speaker 3: be a good guide to making choices for your future. Also,
Speaker 3: develop mentors. I was helped along. I didn't do everything
Speaker 3: by myself. I had key mentors along the way. And
Speaker 3: then thank your mentors while you still can't before they
Speaker 3: pass from the scene.
Speaker 1: I like that advice a lot. He is Randy Barnett.
Speaker 1: His book is A Life for Liberty, The Making of
Speaker 1: an American Originalist. Thank you so much for being.
Speaker 3: On, Randy, Thanks for having me, Carol.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 1: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.