 So our guest tonight probably needs very little introduction to all of you judge Andrew Napolitano You all know him as a Fox News legal superstar Very prolific author writes a syndicated column weekly also has written about nine books is a former judge a former attorney and perhaps most importantly for our purposes tonight is on the cusp of publishing a lengthy treatise on natural law Heavily footnoted and cited from what I'm told and from what I'm told it contains a lot of references to Murray Rothbard in his work Which is one thing that sets the judge apart in that he is In addition to being a legal scholar also very much an historian and a Rothbardian so a warm round of applause for him, please Thank You Jeff. Thank you for the warm welcome So when Pat Barnett said how do you want to title? What do you want to call? The hour that you will spend with all the students on Monday night I Suggested the title of a very famous book that a lot of us who believe that our rights come from our humanity has read called taking rights seriously and If we do take rights Seriously, I'm gonna start this lecture with what I will say at the end if we take rights seriously We know that they are not privileges We know that they are not permission slips We know that they are claims They're claims against everyone and everything including the government So the concept of the natural law Explores, where do these rights come from? Forgive my back, but this is natural law theory nlt with an underline and This is its opposite positivism P in a circle So natural law theory argues that our rights come from our humanity positivism the definition of which with respect to law is a Law that is written down and ratified has no moral bearing to it whatsoever Whatever the law giver says the law is if the law giver followed its own rules in promulgating the law that under positivism that is the law So beginning with natural law, we have the three amigos. It's very easy to remember all their names start with a Aristotle Augustine Aquinas So Aristotle argued that we can tell right from wrong by our Experiences and we can tell right and wrong from our senses. We know that fire burns We know that ice is too cold. We can tell good and evil when we look at it Augustine argued we can tell right and wrong from revelation Because Jesus came into the world and revealed himself as God and was willing to suffer and die on the cross We can tell what is right and wrong by following his words Augustine the pagan Excuse me God of mercy on me Aristotle the pagan Augustine the Catholic Aquinas Says you're both wrong the essence of the understanding the natural law is reason it is not experience It is not revelation. It is reason We have the ability to reason what is right and what is wrong and in order to reason We need to be able to exercise certain freedoms like thought speech publication travel privacy Those are natural rights Which couldn't exist if we didn't have the natural law So Aquinas notwithstanding saint Thomas Aquinas Notwithstanding his position in the hierarchy of the saints as the angelic doctor Amongst those born of mortal parents. He's second only to the Blessed Virgin Mary Nevertheless, rejects the argument of revelation and makes the argument of reason. It's very important To understand the concept of the natural law to understand reason it is the key and most significant word So I was teaching a course on the basic course on the Constitution It's a hundred and seventy-five Supreme Court opinions that every lawyer Theoretically knows and needs to know to pass the bar exam if you're taking my class here We're going to address about 25 or 30 of them just those that pertain to congressional regulation of the economy The commerce clause the contracts clause the taxing power and the spending power but after giving this course Student came up to me and said I enjoyed the course. I liked it But I'm afraid to take your course on legal theory, which is an advanced course I said why he said well, I went to a Catholic High school at a Catholic college and I'm sick and tired of Catholicism being shoved down my throat You don't have to be Catholic you don't have to be Jewish because much of the of this is Judeo-Christianity In order to accept the natural law because of this because of reason rejecting revelation Arguing that any human being Acknowledging the existence of God the Father or not Can reason his or her way to discern? What is right and what is wrong? What is good and what is evil? this conversation I have with the student who got an A in the basic course and Eventually took the advanced course and got an A plus profoundly moved me and I have labored mightily To do my best to explain natural law theory from a secular Perspective even though its principle Progenitor in all of history is a Roman Catholic saint This is no revelation on my part Mary Rothbard himself wrote in Explaining the origins of natural law theory as I have he wasn't as snarky as I am by calling them the three amigos And he certainly didn't confuse Augustine for Aristotle as I just did but he did emphasize the significance of Reason so I'm going to put an R next to Aquinas I'm going to put an R V for revelation next to Augustine. I'm going to put a K e for knowledge and experience against Next to Aristotle now you understand the origins of the natural law Aristotle knowledge and experience Augustine revelation Aquinas reason It's opposite of course is positivism not always the opposite because a law that is written down and ratified Can also be a law consistent with natural law theory natural law theory Basically prohibits you from using force or fraud to interfere with somebody else's rights What does that sound like? That sounds like this That is not me. That is not Napolitano That is the non-aggression principle, which is Mary Rothbard So if we're going to draw a line the non-aggression principle is on the same side as natural law theory below Aquinas we have many European scholars who refined the natural law and they used one of Aquinas's What the heck is that that's an onion Aquinas himself said the natural law is like an onion You just keep peeling it and you find more things on the inside that you couldn't see from the outside So as the onion was peeled By Suarez and de las casas and grossius Suarez Spelled phonetically de las casas grossius euro t i us by by Blackstone They began to discover more and more natural rights The origin of natural rights our ability to reason When John Locke Who's down here? Because he's after these European thinkers who are following Aquinas on reason Decides to articulate that the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect Individual rights. He was forced to articulate. What is the origin of individual rights and his argument is the same as NLT our humanity so Locke articulates That you're right to think as you wish to say what you think to publish what you say You're right to develop your personality as you as you see fit When Bill O'Reilly was at Fox I used to say to him you should be grateful that that's a natural light right look at what you did with your personality nevertheless Your right to self-defense does not the right to shoot deer It's the right to shoot someone who's about to kill you or shoot at a tire and it was taken over the government Your right to keep the government off your property your right to be left alone all of these rights come from our humanity So How do we know this? Dear friend of mine whose name is Jay Initial J. Who's your shoes ski was a philosopher at the University of Texas Has written a fascinating book called listen to this title What we can't not know What we can't not know think of it. There are some things that we can't not know We must know that they exist like I'm alive I'm not a figment of my imagination. I can doubt that I exist This is dickheart But in order to doubt I have to think and in order to think I have to exist so I know I'm alive. I hope I Hope for a better life. I hope for more Freedom I See right and wrong. I know wrong when I see it I know right when I see it if I put a cup of coffee here a hot cup of coffee and leave it alone It's going to cool off. It will always cool off if it's let alone. How do I know that? The leaves fall the sun rises in the east that sets in the west These are simple basic examples of things that we all know from where comes the knowledge Our ability to reason Our friend in the middle would say we got these this knowledge from revelation, and I'm obviously not Critical of revelation. It's an important part of salvation But we're talking about a secular understanding of the natural law our friend for knowledge and experience would say yes We know from knowledge and experience From our ability to perceive with our senses that there are certain things that we can't not know if You accept the argument that all humans can reason if you accept the argument that there are things that we can't not know Then you accept the argument that our rights come from our humanity if our rights come from our humanity They do not come from the government. They are not susceptible to Diminution by the government. They can't be taken away by legislation or by executive command That could only be taken away If we waive our rights by violating someone else's natural rights Somewhere in here. I mentioned his name before I'll write it down to Dutch Dutch names as an art gross us argues on The basis of reason there must be a hierarchy of human rights so Jean Valjean steals a pie because his children are starving and Javier chases him to the ends of the earth To arrest him for stealing the pie This is limit a rob under natural law theory Because the right to live is a higher right than the right to own a pie The right to take the pie if absolutely necessary to preserve human life is a higher right than the right to retain the pie so gross us argues from this there must be a category of rights Some higher and some lower. It doesn't mean that they're not all natural rights It just means that at times one might be sacrificed for another Since the right to live is the highest and greatest right that there is In the 20th century our dear friend Murray Rothbard makes this very easy for us to understand By articulating the non-aggression principle Which is that all aggression which he defines as and there are many many theories about what is aggression What is not and there are many Supreme Court opinions on what is aggression and what is not But we'll accept Murray's theory because it's easy to get a handle on for our purposes aggression is force or fraud So all force or fraud Against the person or the property of the individual is illicit emphasis all Force or fraud that means not only from my neighbor that means from the government as well Murray used to like to tell this story or at home one night You're not watching television if you're going to the University of Chicago you're reading at home one night There's a knock on the door You open the door there's a guy there with a gun the guy says give me your money. I Want to give it away in your name the heck is this all about I better call the police. He is the police He's a tax collector There to take your money and give it away in your name. Does that violate the non-aggression principle? Of course it does. It's using both force and fraud to deprive you of something That is absolutely and naturally yours which is Your possessions and when I say on air at Fox that taxation is theft I mean aside from some of the things I've said about the one in the Oval Office Nothing has caused me more grief than this Even my fellow libertarian at Fox that he's not there anymore wonderful human being that many of you know does a lot of lectures like this for young people John Stossel would say would you please stop saying? Taxation is theft. I said why it is theft you agree with that doing you go Yeah, but I can't say it are my people want to know why do you say it and I don't say it When when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence DC for declaration He used iconic language That we endow our rights from our creator and that our rights are inalienable Well, that's back to this That they are inalienable and they come from the creator Again, you don't have to believe that they come from a creator You can believe that because human beings are the highest corporeal rational beings on the planet and that we couldn't Rationalize and use our bodies in a rational way without the freedom to do so That our rights come from within us But by using the word inalienable he actually wrote unalienable which doesn't exist anymore the modern word is inalienable He's wetting the country at its birth to the idea that our rights come from our humanity This is very important because it is the essence of natural law theory If our rights come from our humanity then the government can't take them away If our rights come from our humanity then taxation is theft if our rights come from our humanity Then every benefit of every doubt to use the modern technology the default Position is in favor of human freedom and not in favor of the government I was trying cases Criminal cases in the spear quarter in New Jersey and hack and sack New Jersey seems like a hundred years ago, and I would say to prosecutors. Well, why is this the law? Well, it's the law because the legislature wrote it Positivism written down and ratified. That's all that's necessary for positivism written down and ratified It could say the tax rate is 80% if it's written down and ratified under positivism. It's the law There's no moral tie to law in positivism the the attraction of positivism is That the government that the people get the government that they deserve and they can vote any Government in or any government out and and vote in any type of legislation that they want But because it is not tied to any moral belief like our rights come from our humanity I mean Hitler was popularly elected. That's the most egregious example of all of this But there's no there's no backstop on the government when everything is positivism Lasak called Yackowski great post-philosopher and another great book if you really want to get into this cult is God happy I won't tell you the answer Argued that the natural law should be a beast use the word beast on the throat of The legislature to restrain him from writing any law and regulating any behavior and taxing any event and transferring any wealth So Murray wasn't born yet, of course, but we we promulgated the declaration of independence We won the revolution. We wrote a constitution and then We wrote The Bill of Rights So everybody knows this phrase Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech Question, which is the most important word in that phrase? I'll repeat the phrase for you. It's a trick question Cut ten words Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech Madison argued for hours over one word in that sense the the freedom of speech Demonstrated Indisputably the belief of the framers that it pre-existed the government well if the freedom of speech Pre-existed the government it didn't come from the government if Madison were here We would say where did it come from and he would say well look at what my neighbor wrote when he wrote the Declaration of Independence It's one of those inalienable rights that he talked about so little Jimmy as they called him He was all of four foot eight I would love someday maybe in heaven. I'm not gonna bodies in heaven I don't know the resurrection of the dead of the body To stand next to little Jimmy Because I would look like Shaquille O'Neal standing next to him So little Jimmy You protected all these expressive rights think as you wish Develop your personalities you see fit O'Reilly Say what you think publish what you say assemble or not assemble worship We're not worship petition the government or not petition it the right to keep him bare arms the right to self-defense The right to keep the government out of your property in wartime no matter how badly they need the property the quintessential American right the right to be left alone. I'm going down the bill of rights Okay, little Jimmy. What did you do about natural rights the ninth amendment? You cannot understand natural law and its place in American history without understanding the ninth amendment Which Madison argued over and love Madison even though he had this bad phase in his Life when he was a big government federalist and he pulled a lot of shenanigans to get the Constitution adopted but then he got in the government and realized how awful it was and how the government had to be shrunk But the ninth amendment basically says all those rights that we listed in number one through eight That's not all the rights. There are There are many other rights that human beings have that the government shall not disparage About as strong a language as you can see in anything in the Constitution It is the ninth amendment that is the manifestation of natural rights as the basis for the Protection for all the rights in the previous eight another trick question if Congress proposed a ratificate a repeal of the first amendment Congress proposes by two-thirds votes of each house the president has nothing to do with the amendment process The states ratify the repeal. There is no first amendment. Do we still have the freedom of speech? Answer under positivism we do not Because the law has written down has removed it under natural law theory Because it comes from our humanity. Of course. We have the freedom of speech. It's integral to our existence Irrespective of what positivism says When nlt and positivism meet that's good law That is such a tiny Fraction of a fraction of a percentage of the laws that exist How many federal criminal laws are there? 4,400 Federal criminal laws there isn't a human being in the world who has read and Understands all of them, but the very very few that are consistent with natural law theory Are the areas in which positivism does the right thing? Question if the legislature of the state of Alabama repealed laws against murder and Anton shot me dead Can he be prosecuted for murder? Under positivism no because there is no law against murder in this crazy theory that I've just proposed In the state of Alabama under natural law theory, of course He can because he has violated the greatest right. I have which is the right to stay alive the Criticism of natural law theory is that it is the opposite of positivism one of the two requirements of positivism Written down and ratified the natural law is not written down anywhere Why because we can't not know it because we know it from our hearts. You can read Aquinas until you're booing the face This is the secular side of Aquinas. This is the reason side of Aquinas This is his taking everything that existed up to the time that he wrote and codifying it and it's still not enough because the natural law is an onion Because we keep peeling it and finding more things in there Before we leave I'm going to give you a modern-day example of the use of natural law which Aquinas as a Roman Catholic Monk and saint would be repelled by but which is absolutely Consistent with the natural law because as life becomes more complex and people live closer to each other And they have more interaction with each other. There's more of a need to ascertain what our what are our rights? so oh I had an Experience with Justice Scalia once a great experience of my life was to be a good friend of his the last 10 years of his life a real real character I was Interrogating him before 2500 people at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This is not a Fox Production of there would have been all kinds of bells and whistles this this was a Brooklyn law school production I was a professor on the faculty there at the time and we invited him to come We got so many people that wanted to come we moved it from the law school to the Brooklyn Academy of music and he Looked at me and said You're a freak for the natural law I'm not obliged to follow the natural law. I'm only obliged to follow the Constitution What about the ninth amendment the rights not? Articulated but retained by the people Shall not be disparaged. Well, how do I know what those rights are took my iPhone out? I said this is an iPhone. That's I know you're gonna go to privacy, right? Yeah, I'm gonna go to privacy Well, that's the fourth amendment. Yes, we all know that your honor That's the fourth amendment the fourth or I'm a protects person's houses papers and effects and nothing more Nino Inside this iPhone is a computer chip isn't that an effect Didn't Madison mentioned that type of thing Positivism written down right to be left alone natural right joining each other at the ninth amendment And he looked at me and said Or better not answer that one Because it might wake its make its way to the court it has not made its way to the court yet. I Took a lot of heat for opposing the confirmation of justice Brett Gavin a Kavanaugh Because in his opinion The government does not need a search warrant to get into your iPhone In his opinion, there is no right to privacy. It's not a natural right. He claims he does accept certain natural rights And I believe him when he says that But he doesn't believe that the right to privacy What a justice brand has called the right to be left alone? Is is among them so the the ninth amendment Very Rothbard loved the ninth amendment Those of us who believe that our rights derive from our humanity Love the ninth amendment and we love Madison For having written it so it's the war of 1812 Nobody really knows how it started either the British came back here to take us back or we invaded Canada And they came back here to get us the heck out of Canada but there's there's fighting going on all over the country and In upper Marlboro, Maryland in 1812 shortly before the war is over, but nobody knew it was going to end at that point a platoon of British soldiers marches into upper Marlboro and kidnaps five militia five males Takes their guns from them and announces unless the town surrenders are going to be hanged at dawn the mayor of the town Orchestrates the kidnapping of five drunken British soldiers in the middle of the night and announces that they're going to be hanged He then unarmed and unaccompanied walks into the headquarters of the captain of the Platoon and says I'll make you a deal your five for our five Captain shakes hands the militia guys are freed the British soldiers are freed two months later The war is over. There's a tumultuous celebration. The mayor John Hodges is the grand marshal at the celebration Everybody's there government officials are there farmers are there workers are there bankers are there and He gives a tremendous speech with a tumultuous Reception by the gathering now I hope what happened to him doesn't happen to me when I finished this talk tonight or in my lectures this week Because he steps down from the podium and two strangers approach him and one of them hands him a piece of paper and it's an indictment And the other puts his hands in shackles The mayor was indicted for treason We're providing aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime by returning the enemy's soldiers So two weeks later. There's a trial the mayor's tried The judge was the guy who introduced the mayor at the parade The jurors were all at the parade the prosecutor was at the parade the fence council was at the parade The prosecutor stands up and says, you know, we this indictment came from Washington We all think the mayor is a great guy, but let's face it. He did do What the indictment says he did he did provide aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime, which is the definition of treason by the way the other definition of treason is waging war on them The them are the states of the United States Something Abraham Lincoln did the them is not the federal government another story for another time Tom DeLorenzo who's in this room is the world's foremost authority on on all of this Defense council stands up and says the mayor is a hero. He saved human life. How can you possibly convict him? The judge says I never said this to a jury Because they were all males gentlemen We've reserved a room in the tavern across the street After you finish the meal the tavern keeper is prepared and after you finish his best barrel of ale a barrel of ale You will deliberate the mayor's fate Four person raises and I said we don't have to deliberate. We'll take the ale, but we don't have to deliberate What's the verdict the verdict is? Not guilty This is the first example and the first published opinion of jury nullification in American history a bunch of farmers in upper Marlboro, Maryland saying to the federal government Stay the hell away. This is positivism run amok That's the good side. Here's the bad side of this story the Justice Department has a rule that every prosecution for treason there have only been seven Successful treason prosecutions in all of American history. There have been many prosecutions only seven convictions Every prosecution for treason has to be personally signed off on off by the president of the United States What left-wing Pingo big-government creep was the president of the United States in 1812 Little Jimmy who wrote the Constitution Who insisted on the word thought in the First Amendment and whose pride and joy was the ninth? so the world Obviously looks different on the outside of power looking in Then it does on the inside of power Looking out and that is it might not be a good example for this because he does He moves around a lot. I mean he starts out as a radical He then becomes a federalist, which is the big government crowd the Alexander Hamilton and and John Adams and George Washington crowd He then becomes an anti-federalist and is back with his buddy Jefferson But in the war of 1812, I don't know what the heck he was thinking when he authorized the prosecution of of John Hodges Lou Rockwell has argued and argued magnificently that almost everybody in the government suffers from libido domanandi Not that kind of libido the lust to dominate People like Ron Paul are rare rare exceptions in the government who have a lust to liberate Rather than a lust to dominate. It is a character flaw They want to go back to our friend Augustine not not Aristotle Augustine He would say it's because of original sin that we all have this lust to dominate I don't know where the hell it came from or why we have it But the the do-gooders and busy bodies of the world get themselves elected to government so they can tell the rest of us how to live one of my colleagues was interrogating the governor of New Jersey and Said to him, where do you get the authority to nullify the Bill of Rights? You have made it illegal to travel and illegal to assemble and Illegal to engage in commercial intercourse. These rights are protected by the Constitution Murphy said to the Bill of Rights That's above my pay grade So what what once were liberties guaranteed Are now liberties mocked the very very dangerous situation for us to be in when a governor Can assume to himself in case of Michigan herself powers given to the legislature Cuomo says well the legislature enacted emergency legislation right before the pandemic started because we're smart in New York and we saw it coming and They told me that I could regulate private behavior and I've done so with my executive orders Well the Constitution This is a G and that's a C has the guarantee clause The guarantee clause guarantees that the state shall have Republican lowercase R form of government What does that mean that means only a popularly elected representative body can enact laws And it means that there's the separation of powers meaning the entity that Enacts the law can't be the same entity that enforces the law This is constitutional law 101 that the governors have violated and very very few courts have had the intestinal fortitude personal intestinal fortitude or Fidelity to the Constitution to invalidate No matter how well Intentioned these governors may be no matter how sound is their medical advice and there's medical advice all over the place you can get an expert to say almost anything you want in fact when you go to an expert to say You know I need you to come in the witness stand and we'll say this and he'll say here's what it's going to cost you or Exactly. What is it you want me to say? because For the governor to write a law and then enforce it is no law at all and one principle of LT is an unjust law is No law at all and commands no Allegiance whatsoever. We all know when a law is unjust it demeans the human being It violates the natural order. It claims that good is evil or evil is good That's where we're all existing through now in these dark days Where governors on their own in the name of public health have crushed our liberties well if our liberties are natural if they come from our humanity if They're inalienable as Jefferson called them if a right is not a permission slip if a right is a human claim against every other person and thing Then a governor can't take them away and a legislature can't take them away We can only they can only leave us if we have given them away if I rob a bank I have violated the natural rights of the depositors of that bank and have forfeited my own freedom That is the only way that I can lose my natural rights not because the governor says it's for the common good if the common good Could Trump natural rights Trump lowercase t and I want to get involved with him in this conversation By the way, call me the other day, but I'll tell that story later. I had to do with Italian food You think you'd have other things in his mind, but nevertheless if the common good Could Trump natural rights, then they wouldn't be rights They would just be a permission slip Susceptible to this which is whatever the government wants as long as it is written down and as long as it is ratified What will the government write down and ratify? Whatever it wants Whatever it thinks will keep it in power Whether it needs the support of a popular majority or whether it just needs the support of a radical minority I Sometimes think the only reason we have liberty in this country is because we have radical minorities willing to agitate for personal freedom willing to make great sacrifices in Order that liberty might prevail Because without that check on the government, they will reject Inalienable rights they will reject Those that are not mentioned above are retained by the people and shall not be disparaged by the government They will reject that we can know right and wrong from reason and we need the freedom in order to ascertain Reason in order to exercise reason in order to get to find out What is right and what is wrong? I don't know where all of this is going to lead us But I fear for dark days to come Now I've been doing these lectures and saying this Stuff on television for a long time. Sometimes you get in trouble when your bosses don't like it What are you gonna do? That's why we have contracts Well, although although these these the governors cannot believe they could abrogate contract They can abrogate the sanctity of a voluntary agreement And Jefferson argued that the that the only enforceable contract is one that is bilaterally voluntary So taxes are theft Unless you're crazy enough to want to enter into an agreement with the government whereby you will give them what they want The government will always take what it can The government will always steal what it can get its hands on The government doesn't care about this because this if properly exercised leads to truth. I I want to save a little time for some Q and a I think some of you have Texted your questions to some goo goo in the skies Who's going to read the questions and then I'll be happy to respond to them. I expect that When the end of my days come that I will die in my bed Surrounded by people that love me Faithful to first principles But not all of you will have that luxury Some of you may die Surrounded by people who hate you faithful to first principles in a government prison and Some of you may die faithful to first principles in a government town square To the sound of the government's Trumpets blaring when the time comes to make these awful decisions You will know what to do because freedom lies in the human heart and While it lies there no army no threat no positivism nonsense can take it away But it must do more than Just lie there. All right time for questions And For those who are taking my course you're gonna get a little you're gonna get eight more dosages of this Place feel free to send your questions to the Mises Institute account on either Instagram or Twitter through direct message But if anyone wants to start off you can tell me your question. I'll repeat it for the mic If you need freedom to reason, how do you get to? freedom in the first place You threw it through a three reason in the first place well because We are born With the with natural rights. We're born with with the freedom Government doesn't grant freedom government is this is a Mises definition This is one of the greatest of his of his one-liners government is essentially the negation of freedom Government is nothing but the negation of freedom only government can negate freedom Now you can fail to protect it yourself It's a great argument. Can you sell yourself into slavery if you do so voluntarily? Ruthbard would say no Walter Block would say yes, but this is another dispute that I'm not gonna get involved in this is an hypothetical argument But without the government you have freedom I have a question The natural law as you describe it as you describe it codifies moral insights We are supposed to share yet How can it help us at a time like this when even basic moral insights appear not to be shared among a highly Fractionist and divided people, you know I have a one of my best friends is on the New Jersey Supreme Court and he agrees with almost everything We say he's a lefty, but he agrees in believes in natural rights And I said to him when is the last time someone made a natural law argument These were my former these weren't my bosses when I was a trial judge in New Jersey This is the highest court in the state When is the last time somebody made a natural law argument in Supreme Court of New Jersey looked at me goes? That's easy never people don't make these arguments Which is why I teach it here so that you can understand it And maybe I can tease you into wanting to really get into it by taking advanced courses on it and Using your ability as a professor yourself to to teach it to others But if people reject the lesson of the Declaration of Independence our rights are inalienable and Reject the lesson of the Ninth Amendment There are rights that we never gave away that the government can't disparage then there is that then then there's little hope for natural rights If Phil Murphy the governor of New Jersey Can say openly and on national television the bill of rights is above my pay grade So when you become governor of New Jersey, you take two oaths One is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the state of New Jersey and a second oath To preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, which includes the bill of rights It's not called a bill of safety. It's called the bill of rights Did you have any reaction when Democratic governors started making states rights arguments when Donald Trump was talking about how he has total Authority to open up state governments. I was hoping that California would secede from the union Well the foremost authority in the country on secession is here Professor Tom Woods who's written a masterpiece on it and even though we joke about it Tom and I believe in the history it supports his argument if California wants to go let them go I promise to tell you about this a little bit more about about the onion so When I had that funny one liner, but Scalia said you're a freak for the natural rights natural law It had to do with a the following case A guy is sitting in his apartment in Colorado All of a sudden a bullet comes through the floor and lodges in his ceiling Now the police Come to his apartment not the guy downstairs the shot the gun they come to his apartment. Are you okay? Yeah, I'm okay Can we come in? Yeah, you can come in can we look around and find the bullet? Yeah I think you can find it, but it's right there. Well one of the cops sees the bullet another cop is going like this Hmm Lenovo kind of expensive my right down the serial number. Ah, the Lenovo was stolen So this poor bastard who almost got his leg blown off by a bullet coming through the floor Two weeks later finds himself in jail for possessing a stolen computer in his apartment Convicted all the way up through the Colorado system the case comes to the Supreme Court Four liberals and Scalia vote to overturn the conviction Scalia writing the Constitution sometimes protects the criminality of a few in order to preserve the Privacy of us all which is what brought on my argument. Where does privacy come from privacy is a Fundamental liberty he said So this is a point. I want to make to you When the government says fundamental, that's the same thing as natural When the government says it's a substantive right, that's the same thing as natural Justice Scalia Why are you saying substantive? Why are you saying fundamental? Why don't you want to say? natural every It sounds too Catholic, but it means the same thing so the right of a human being To choose a mate is a fundamental liberty Justice Kennedy a Substantive liberty Justice Kennedy and a majority of the court Therefore it's a natural right This is really peeling the onion. This is taking us a long way from these two guys who are Catholic saints to this is the same origin of Your right to speak freely is your right to choose a mate and That right exists in your humanity the government didn't give it to you What should our tactic be for combating those that think reason is a product of white supremacy? Lord Read Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail. It's one of the greatest defenses of natural rights that I've been so good It's hard to believe you wrote it in the jail. Maybe refined it after you got out But it's one of the we studied us in the advanced constitutional theory courses, even though he wasn't a lawyer It's one of the most brilliant Defenses of natural rights. I have ever seen do you see is the distinction between a right to life and public health? In an environment like the coronavirus Well, the only legitimate purpose of government is to preserve our rights To protect our natural rights Government can't deliver the mail It can't fill potholes. It can't stop robocalls. Who the hell would entrust it with our health? Ah People that are afraid Fear is a great motivator Why were people afraid to come out of their houses for two months in New York City? Not because of Andrew Cuomo the police couldn't possibly just a 10 million people in New York is 38,000 police Do the math because the government had scared the daylights out of them because we have a government of Fear and when people are fearful they will sacrifice Liberty to obtain safety and what happens when they do that they end up with neither Uh, what is your argument against the social contract theory? My argument is not against the social contract theory but my argument is that for the The the the lynchpin of democratic government is the consent of the governed that means the consent of everybody and if some idea You know anybody that's consented to the Constitution. I don't have been asking this question since I was your age What are you about 15? 18 all right, all right. I'm sorry. Yeah, youthful face. It's a good thing to have. I don't have it. I never had one The social contract theory makes sense if everybody consents But nobody is consented to the government. Oh, we walk on the government sidewalks. We vote in the government elections Okay, did the Jews and Berlin in 1933? Consent to the government because they voted against that monster or walked in his sidewalks Of course not that's not consent. That's fear Who are the people asking these questions? I don't like these anonymous questions or Are they students in my class? Did Tom Woods write some of these questions This kind of touches on that When so so that taxationist stuff because unless you make a contract with the government Well, do you give up that right when you when you fill out a w4 form? Or any sort of the government taxation forms? No, because when you fill out those forms You're doing so under compulsion if you don't fill out the form They'll eventually find you and take your property and maybe even take your body Since you opposed taxation should that mean that we did not pay politicians well, I mean in my world Which would be Lou Rockwell's world Ron Paul's world Walter Bloch's world the government would be a miniscule Fraction of what it is now and you would pay the government for services, which is almost almost what we had in the era 1776 to 1789 and that's what Jefferson argued you want to service from the government you pay for it You don't want to service from the government. You don't owe us anything Since we know that the courts are politicized Do you have any any suggestions for tactics on getting the right to buy into eliminating qualified immunity? Well qualified immunity isn't is an absolute monstrosity, but the qualified immunity has its origins in legislation So when the Supreme Court has given wild and weird Interpretations of qualified immunity that's on the basis of legislation qualified immunity Is what police have they qualify for it by being a cop on a legitimate? Police-oriented mission mission that admission mission That gives them immunity from the consequences of it So when the cop in Minneapolis choked that poor fellow to death for eight and a half minutes He knew that he could not be personally sued for it because he had qualified immunity. I mean Those of us Who have been involved with law enforcement on the libertarian side of an arguing against qualifying immunity? for generations It's a it's a monstrosity because it unleashes the police. There's a lot of problems with the police. They're over militarized They mimic what the feds do And now they have the same immunity that the feds have What advice would you give to the mayor of Portland or some of these cities that have had Riots going on in recent months Well, the government's only legitimate duty is to protect natural rights Which in the case of Portland or Oregon would mean to protect property So if the police followed the natural law They would be disobeying a Supreme Court case because the Supreme Court has said the police have no obligation To protect property or preserve life. Well, what are we paying them for if they have no obligation to protect property or or preserve life? In the real world my neighbors and I would have our own insurance company and the insurance company would hire people to protect us and those People would work for us and they wouldn't impair our property. They would protect it But this is not the real world. This is the welfare Warfare administrative state where the Constitution is in tatters and barely means What it says so those mayors basically told the police stay out of those neighborhoods because The people that have taken over those neighborhoods the ones that are breaking windows the ones that threw it send a block Through a liquor store to grab a bottle of bourbon that guy's gonna vote for me That's the problem with allowing people to usurp Natural rights the right to own the property and you've also re usurp their right in Portland For example to defend their property because you can't own a gun can't sit there with a with a rifle in your hands Stand in front of your house in St. Louis, Missouri with a weapon in your hand while a mob goes by and they raid your house Not making it up. That's what happened last week. I Think last question if our natural rights come from reason in our humanity Should we sure why would we trust government to defend those rights? Well, you would trust a government a small limited government to which you consented because of the impracticality of defending your rights yourself But if you didn't consent You'd have every right to protect your natural rights on your own because of the second amendment which according to Justice Scalia in Heller and Justice Alito in McDonald allows you to use the same level of sophistication to protect yourself That the government has Can you put a tank in your garage? I don't know the answer to that But I do know that you can use the same level of sophistication to preserve your life and the life of your loved ones and your property As the government's agents will use to attack it. God love you if you're in my class I'll see you tomorrow if you're not say hello