[Music] [Music] [Music] see [Music] hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining me this afternoon I am aurin McIntyre JD Vance was announced obviously as Donald Trump's vice presidential pick many people didn't expect this Vance wasn't on some people's radar he doesn't secure some kind of obvious Advantage for a lot of people he doesn't bring you necessarily the swing states that some people were hoping for or he's not somebody from a minority group that could Shore up Trump's chances to win over a certain percentage of people who don't often vote for the Republican Party he does in some ways show you that being a senator from Ohio and the fact that he kind of Shores up some of that Rust Belt he does identify with a certain percentage of Americans that are part of the Republican base but he doesn't add to the ticket in the way that some vice presidents are meant to do and you really have two styles of vice presidential picks you have vice presidential picks who are chosen because they fill in some hole that the candidate is lacking you saw this from Mike Pence When Donald Trump ran the first time however Mike Pence turned out to be less Popular by the end of Donald Trump's Administration with the Evangelical Christians that he was supposed to shore up for Donald Trump and Donald Trump ended up being far more popular however that's one strategy the the the vice president brings a state he brings a demographic he he Smooths over some kind of strategic error that the candidate would have some hole in that uh in that candidate's appeal the other version of this of course is kind of the Dick Cheney uh style pick of Vice President someone who is going to bring some level of uh practical knowledge or political cunning now I think that JD Vance doesn't fit neither one of these he does have a certain level of political cunning practical knowledge uh but I think more importantly JD Vance represents a direction that Trump uh Trump's ideology might be moving towards Trump really doesn't have necessary necessarily an ideology that's one of his advantages is that as a non ideological actor he often is able to choose outside the box things that wouldn't be popular otherwise uh with a highly ideological say neoconservative establishment inside the Republican Party he can say things about trade he can say thing things about Foreign Wars he can say say things about immigration because he's not ideological but eventually the general American first principles that he's talking about do coales around a movement a direction that you're going these These are the sets of things that at least for now uh benefit Americans or would seem to benefit Americans long term it's they're going to put America First and Vance seems to fit into a lot of that Vance has uh economic protectionist policies he's somebody who resists Foreign Wars at least when it comes to Ukraine a little little less on Israel I wish he was more uniform on All Foreign Wars as much as possible uh but that that is something that he generally opposes he opposes obviously open borders so in many ways uh he mirrors a lot of Trump's concern and things that you know Trump wants to see that will better the lives of Americans but the final thing that JD Vance did was talk about the nation as a people and this is something that uniformly seemed to scare a lot of commentators now don't get me wrong there were commentators who had problems with him on the left and the right for many reasons uh you had uh the Vox talking about how JD Vance was a naked authoritarian you can see the post from the Atlantic here up on the screen excuse me about how JD Vance is very dangerous because he thinks of the nation as a real people instead of an idea uh you had guys on the uh right like the National Review crowd uh Dan mclocklin Eric Ericson uh kind of very funnily he he commented oh no JD Vance you know he shows that the rean knites lost and the banites won well awesome you you don't have to sell me on the guy but yeah that would be it would be great if the banites had won something however my friend Jeremy Carl was quick to point out that you know Buchanan himself was a reaganite he worked in the Reagan Administration and simply tried to hold true a lot of uh principles that had otherwise been discarded or mutated over time by the Republican Party who was creating this zombie Reagan uh rather than anything close to the actual organic Coalition of Ronald Reagan which included the Moral Majority the religious right and many others uh you know I think Reagan is far from the deity that many Republicans hold him up to be but he's Al obviously a president who I think ultimately did a lot of good you know being presiding over the fall of the Soviet Union whether you're entirely responsible for that or not is enough to go ahead and put you up there pretty high on the list of solid presidents uh but Buchanan is you know is is obviously somebody who came out of that Revolution and the fact that Erikson said oh well now it's the Buchanan strain of this that is dominant fantastic right good good news couldn't be happy to hear this Charles KO another one of these guys from the National Review had a lot of problems with JD Vance said he was just unelectable again didn't understand the purpose of Vance uh on that ticket Vance represents the possible future of the project puts somebody behind Trump that is theoretically at least scarier than Trump for the left and as we can we're going to see from many of these articles that we're going to talk about today that what they're really scared about again is Vance's assertion that America is not just an economic zone it's not just a collect collection of ideas it's not just a propositional nation it's a real Nation it's a real people this is something that was very scary to both the left and the right Ben Shapiro also would I wouldn't say was scared but at the very least was hesitant concerned confused about uh the way that Vance posed the idea of America as a real Nation so what I want to do today is dive into a couple Clips understand a little bit what each of these people uh were talking about why they opposed Vance's idea of America as an actual nation and not just a collection of ideas not just a proposition uh but uh I ALS and I also want to go ahead and explain the problems with the concept of the propositional nation but before we do all that guys let's go ahead and hear from today's sponsor hey guys I'm sure you know that your metabolism is your body's engine it's how your body turns the food you eat into fuel that keeps you going because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does optimal metabolic Health translates to a bunch of benefits including easier weight management improved energy levels better Fitness results and better sleep Lumen is the world's first handheld met IC coach it's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath I found it super easy to use when you 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Luther King Jr he could have picked Jesus he could have picked Gandhi he could have picked anybody it didn't matter they would have gone after him they would have tried to destroy whoever Donald Trump had put in the vice presidential slot but it's interesting that there was a consistent theme about JD van there's a lot of things they didn't like they talked about you know his his attitude his demeanor where you know maybe he's not really a hillbilly maybe he didn't really grow up poor all this stuff right they they tried to uh denigrate his life story everything about him but one thing that consistently came up across both left and right like I showed you in that Atlantic article at the beginning was the idea that there was something dangerous about America as a nation there is something dangerous about the idea that America is a people United together with a shared identity a shared past and a shared future uh specifically in the Atlantic article they talked about how he gets rid of pluralism how he may vaguely uh gesture towards pluralism But ultimately he really wants to go ahead and create this very Sinister situation where there are certain people that belong in America and certain people who don't that kind of thing right and again this was echoed through a lot of different commentators this was a very common criticism of Vance and uh he his kind of assault on the propositional nation seem to rile some feathers across both aisles so I want to begin here with a clip from Alice Wagner of MSNBC we're GNA see that uh Vance and his identifying America as a place where people belong is a problem for her of course along with the fact that he's both white and male uh the worst things that could ever exist in all seven or six generations of his family are are buried and his hope is that his wife and he are eventually laid to rest there and their kids follow them and I sort of understand the idea of sharing the the burial plot but it also is reveals someone who believes that the history that the family should inherit and indeed the history that should be determinative in the in the story of the Vance Family is the the history of the Eastern Kentucky vces so her first problem is the idea that JD Vance and his family have a history they exist somewhere specific they're not deracinated people they're not people who suddenly arrived but they have roots in the United States and have been here for a long time and so therefore if the vances are going to be buried anywhere once he and his his wife eventually pass hopefully many many years down the road and his children and everyone else's family they will be buried in a common place now uh down south this isn't Universal to all people in the United States I guess but in you know this is a very common thing for a lot of people who are connected to tradition and history where your people are buried matters the graveyard where your people are buried signifies something about your identity where you're from where you grew up how the land has shaped you how your history has shaped you how your heritage has shaped you these are all things that matter to people who have been from a particular place and they understand this with a certain degree of ownership this is not new to the United States it's not specific to like western western white culture I guess this goes back to many different uh Traditions Indo European civilizations including ancient Greeks and Romans before they had kind of the pantheon we're familiar with had a level of ancestor worship that was specifically tied to where their parents were buried where their families were buried it was believed that you had property rights not because you had the right to sell that property not for any kind of economic gain but property rights were mainly recognized as opposed to other uh other Traditions like certain Germanic tribes which would often Shuffle the land that someone controlled same thing often with say uh Russian peasantry uh but in in these cultures it was tied specifically to the family and the property because that's where your family was buried and that's where you live that's where if you wanted to honor or or worship if you wanted to give offerings to dead family members you had to be on the land where they were buried where the graveyard was mattered so this is an ancient idea this is this is deeply uh buried inside humanity and so it's very normal for JD Vance to want his family to be buried in the same place to carry on that tradition to be identified not just with some random set of ideas but saying this is a plot of land where my people have always been where even if we move other places we travel we you know the different things about our lives change there's a calling back to this area because we are not just some random deracinated people and not the vances from San Diego which is where his wife is from and where her Indian parents are from but in America doesn't always have to be the white male lineage that trumps the that defines the family history that that branch of the tree supersedes all else and and I and I just think the construction of of this notion reveals a lot about someone who fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity yeah see if if you have any idea of Heritage if you're familiar with the history of your family if your family's been here more than a generation or two and you're tied specifically to the land where your family was from rather than I don't know traveling to a distant country and burying your CH yourself or your children there when you die or whatever if you're tied to this nation if you're a person in a nation then you you know obviously evil white supremacy right that this kind of unveils the deep bias inside JD van he's a very terrible person for understanding that there is a continuity of culture and a continuity of Heritage that matters and it may it it does a lot to Define who he is as a person who his children will be what his Nation will be but of course this is a huge problem right there you should never favor that you should never understand that you should never make any connection to that and doing so is very nefarious now like I said this bounced all over the SP Spectrum there were people on the left there were plenty of people on the left who had this criticism but there's also some people on the right who had a problem with this I want to go ahead and bring up uh Ben Shapiro here who is another person who like I said he's not hostile to JD Vance in this but he just seems befuddled they're actually the the guys in the National Review were actually more aggressively anti- JD Vance I I wouldn't say that um I wouldn't say that shapir is actively anti- ad Vance in what he's talked about uh but he doesn't seem to agree with him on certain points including economic protectionism uh the level the reasons for border security it was a very strange Nuance position he's like well you should only make economic Arguments for border security uh which which I guess will lead us into this clip because if you only think the arguments or if you think all the best Arguments for border security are economic uh then yes maybe you would miss what Vance is trying to say here but let me go ahead and bring up B Shapiro's clip getting a lot of attention all right so he's going to talk about uh Vance's speech here so we'll play a little bit at a time uh because he's gonna play the speech so you want to hear the speech uh and then his reaction to it I'll say that the speech that Vance is gonna give here the the E clips he's going to play from the speech at the Republican National Committee are very similar to the uh to the speech that I heard from Vance when I was speaking at natcon for uh so that there's a couple reasons for that probably these are these are familiar themes for Vance but also I'm not sure that Vance was the pick before Trump got shot I'll never know for sure uh but or I probably won't unless they come out and just say it directly but my hunch is that that was not necessarily the case uh that he was one of the finalists uh for many of the reasons I had uh stated but once Trump got shot uh he recognized the importance of having a successor uh you couldn't just slot Marco Rubio or Tim Scott or somebody like that in there you needed somebody who was not just going to pick up a certain demographic or a certain State you needed an ideological successor uh you needed somebody who scared the left so they knew that if for some reason or you know somehow they managed to get another guy to take a shot at Trump there would still be somebody behind him uh that was maybe worse for the left uh you know you you need to get an insurance policy basically and JD Vance is that insurance policy on multiple levels I know plenty people are skeptical about JD Vance I I think he's a good pick but this is not my apology tour for Vance I'm not here to to praise him I want to get into the propositional nation part so we will talk about JD Vance's speech but the focus here is not necessarily going to be on him as a candidate or his actual loyalty to Trump or some some kind of the the magga movement any of these things uh though I can also talk about that but I think the main thing that I want to PO uh focus on here is why the propositional nation seems to be a problem for many people both left and right uh but before we dive into that guys let me go ahead and play uh our uh advertisement from joback hey guys let me tell you about today's sponsor job stacking more paychecks less hustle working from home that's what job stacking is all about if you're a remote or hybrid worker looking to maximize your earning potential the consider joining the job stacking mentorship program the program is designed by Ralph halza the creator of job stacking to help you successfully Implement a strategy that would allow you to collect multiple paychecks from different 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so like I said Ben's gonna play a little bit of this speech and it's very similar to the one that I heard at natcon not just because this is a theme for Vance but also because I think he was just selected very close to this and may not have had other remarks ready to go but let's go ahead and hear uh what what Ben thinks about JD Vance's speech and speech it's getting a lot of attention is his point and it was also made by the World War II veteran who spoke yesterday that America is not just an idea it's a Homeland which of course is absolutely true here is here is Senator Vance last night America is not just an idea it is a group of people with a shared history and a common future it is in short a nation now it is part of that tradition of course that we welcome newcomers but when we allow newcomers into our American family we allow them on our terms people will not fight for abstractions but they will fight for their home and if this movement of ours is going to succeed and if this country is going to thrive our leaders have to remember that America is a nation and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first okay now again I agree with everything he's saying I'm just not sure what he's arguing against because obviously America is a nation I'll go ahead and just let Ben know what he's arguing against here he's arguing against something that we hear over and over again which is the idea that America is fundamentally a set of ideas or principles that America is essentially a dream to take the words from another famous hero of the left and modern right less so the left now I guess but the point being is it's very common for the United States to be betray to be portrayed as this place where people can come and join as long as they goad adhere to an idea it's the ideas that matter hence the propositional nation we have a set of propositions that we believe in as a nation and if you agree to those then you are American you can become American now this idea of a propositional nation has a number of implications many of which uh bear them elves out in negative ways have a negative impact on the way that America understands itself understands its role in the world uh these are huge issues that can develop when you do not understand yourself as a nation as a people and instead as a collection of ideologies a a set number of academic exercises that Define who you are if you just go ahead and recite those things then suddenly you are in American America is much more than that and we'll go into that in a second but just going to go ahead and Define forbid what JD Vance is actually talking about here France is also a nation Poland is also a nation and when he says that America is a land yes so is literally every other land that's true and America happens to be the best land I mean it's absolutely incredible it's the best land and it's the best Nation but why why and the answer is the idea that's connected to those things he says that so Ben says something here that is really untrue and gets to the heart of the problem and I think also creates confusion for him when he's trying to understand what Vance is trying to say he says that you know yes America is a land but you know France is a is a land it's a country there's all these other countries there's plenty of land around and that's that's just you know how the world works and so there's plenty of land and the only thing that makes the United States the best land it's the reason because he asserts this is the best land but it's the IDE IDE in that land that matter it's the ideas that matter no wrong okay so there's something that we need to break down first uh and the first thing we need to break down is a connection that a lot of people make that is uh par very modern okay the nation state as we understand it the West valan order as we understand it is relatively new it's it's only a few hundred years old uh which in you know the the range of history is not that long and because we are so used to the nation's State we understand these as the same thing this gets particularly difficult sometimes unfortunately for Americans because we call the regions of our country States because they used to be States they used to be their own governmental entities so we we have a a weird relationship with the word State normally State means the government and a nation means the people and the nation and the state are not the same thing through most of history for instance uh you used to have city states and in a lot of ways city states saw themselves as Nations the peoples were confined only to really those who lived in or around a particular City your level of social organization that was possible was often only the size of a city and so in that case the nation the people were the city and the city and the state were the same thing the government and the city were the same thing the government and the people were the same thing however as human organization expanded we started to get Empires and Empires meant that you had one state often one set of government that is ruling many different peop or nations and so the definition usually of an Empire are nations multiple Nations ruled by one government one state now not to get into the we don't want to get into the weeds of like yes in a lot of Empires obviously you had multiple subgovernments often peoples were governed by their traditional Kings who then just kick things up to the Empire all this is true I let's not get bogged down in that though I'm just trying to give us a general understanding of the problem with the idea of the nation state as we understand it right now and so often you know a king for instance an emperor would would govern multiple peoples that would be brought under the rule of a particular government uh you often had uh peoples who sometimes saw themselves as individual and sometimes as one nation for instance uh you know helenic Society Greek society originally they only saw themselves as individual nation states the Athenian and uh and the lacad demoni the Spartan they didn't see themselves as the same people in some ways they were very different peoples unless they were United against the Persians in which case they understood that the helenic culture was different they were a nation in that way they were a people in that way and so they bound together to defend themselves against the the Persians so this is not always a super solid concept it's not some hard border uh the the the idea of the nation the people can often shift and change a little bit it tends to have a lot of things determine it uh of course uh the heritage is a big one but also language religion in fact uh Samuel Huntington focuses very much on religion as the key binding agent for civilizational blocks uh which I think is is a a reasonable point the the thing being is that the identity of Nations can shift somewhat it's not hard built on just one thing it's not simply a relation a familiar relation it's not simply uh language it's not simply religion it's not simply folk ways but all of these things tend to Define what a nation is and the idea that a nation and a state that a nation and a government are the same thing is not necessarily true throughout most of History it's relatively new in fact one of the big things that happened over you know after World War I and the disillusionment of or uh the the dismantling of so many of these uh kingdoms was to create a lot of nation states uh which seemed like a good idea at the time every people gets its own State and then every people has its own self-determination the nation and the state become the same thing you're a group of people you'll have a Common Language common Heritage common culture uh common religion you see the world the same way and now you have self-determination because you're also a state so that is the nation state right but what has happened is that now we have focused and we've created the state as the defining feature of what the actual people are and that is Ironically in many ways uh somewhat fascist uh the you know not I know uh not not to be too particular about the term but it subordinates the identity to the state rather than the organic identity of the people and this is something that I don't think is super healthy um this particularly becomes a problem when you try to identify the state with an ideology with a uh proposition because now this the what identifies you with a state or without a state is the propositions the ideas of that state but that's not what happens for the vast majority of other countries a Frenchman is not a Frenchman because of his ideas right uh someone from Japan is not J Japanese because of his principles someone from you know I don't know Saudi Arabia is not Saudi Arabian because simply because of their religion there are plenty of people who have their religion there's something more to this right and and so it's not just the ideas it's not even just the religion there's there's something Beyond these things that matters when you're trying to identify a people but the problem is when you just say well all these other nations are just like the United States well no they're not because you would identify those people as people from those Nations but when you get to the United States all of a sudden the United States is special because it has ideas a lot of Nations have ideas so let's delve a little deeper into Ben's confusion here but we we'll go deeper into the propositional nation America is not just an idea and of course that's true I think the thing that he's arguing against and and here I agree with him I think the thing he's arguing against is this sort of abstract idea that Joe Biden uses all the time where he says it's not who we are and what he means by that is it's not who the left is okay the attempt to universalize American values in the sense that they can either be exported to Iraq or imported from Guatemala that's silly and it's now I agree with Ben here entirely he's right that is silly the idea that these ideas are Universal that they can be exported to a foreign nation and build that Nation like there's little Thomas Jefferson's and uh you know George Washington's running around Afghanistan or Iraq or that we could just take any idea from another nation and bring it in with the people and then suddenly that becomes an American idea he's right that is ridiculous but the thing that Ben is saying reveals something deeper even though he doesn't recognize it the thing Ben is saying says something important these ideas aren't Universal for a reason because they don't apply to everyone if the ideas were Universal if it was just the ideas that made America the best then you could just take the ideas somewhere else and make that country the best so if Afghanistan or France or uh you know Ethiopia went ahead and adopted America's ideas because they're the best ideas and that's what makes America the very best land then those would become the very best land but he just says here that that's ridiculous and he's right it's ridiculous but that does not Jive with the other things that he said he also points out that you can't just bring in ideas from other nations and then they suddenly become American and that's true but un but the reason he talks about Guatemala is he also knows that there's a lot of Guatemalans coming into the United States those ideas are tied to people and what Ben is really explaining here is this very classically liberal idea that peoples are blank slates that there's nothing particular about any group of people that they don't carry with them any folkways Traditions any kind of Heritage ancestry any kind of religion or any of these things they don't carry those things with them they're just blank slates and so you know that the ideas are the only thing that matter but they're not that's that can't be true for the very reason that benir just said he said it's ridiculous for to believe that if we have the very best eyes in America and we take those very best ideas in put them into Iraq or we put them into Liberia or something that all of a sudden it creates a perfect Nation just like the United States if that was true then Liberia would have been great right because they copied so many of the ideas from the United States you my buddy um Ernst uh vanel from South Africa often points to the fact that South African Constitution has been called a masterpiece it has the very best ideas it makes all these amazing promises about what the country is going to be and South Africa is still a mess because the ideas are not enough it is not the ideas by themselves sealed away somewhere in the constitution of South Africa or the United States that makes the country what it is it was the people of the United States who went ahead and enshrined their way of being their life their understanding of who they were as a people into the constit tion those ideas look great because the people made them great because the lifestyle of those people that folkway that moral Vision that understanding of who they were mattered and that is what formed the country the country is not an idea the country is not a proposition it's not the very best ideas and bapir after saying the country is the very best ideas turns around and says actually it turns out it's not because you can't just export those ideas that would be silly which of course is correct but again it just does not jive with his original explanation of what the problem he has with Vance's speeches is wrong and I think that's what he is saying right there but when he says that people don't fight for ideas obviously that's not true that that's that's certainly not true I mean I'm sorry the Cold War was a war of ideas it turns out it was not just a war of territories so this one's a little more hit Miss I'll give them a little bit of this one people do uh die for ideas uh people abs abolutely dive for ideas now I don't think that in general most people who went to war were either the Soviet Union or for the United States uh in any given conflict did so for the ideology like yes they said oh we're brothers we're comrades you know we're fighting for the Glorious Revolution of the Soviet Union uh you know the Americans we're fighting for Liberal democracy we're fighting for freedom but you notice they both managed to despite these very different ideologies in theory fight the same enemy which was the Axis powers which was mainly uh obviously uh Germany and Italy and Japan uh despite the fact that they had radically different ideas and ideologies they still managed to fight and the Soviet Union lost way more people they lost way more people so were their ideas better did they care more about their ideas were they more dedicated to their ideas I I don't really think think so but the point is that there's something Beyond those ideas that those people fought for otherwise they wouldn't have found a common enemy if their ideas are so radically opposed to each other that they later on created the Cold War which to be fair was more ideological Ben is right about that I'll get into that a second but the idea that that's what they primarily fought for I think is just incorrect I think both sides fought for their homand and whether you feel that their homelands were in danger or not whatever that's not the debate here the point being is they both believed both of those Nations and the people who sacrificed on their behalf believed that their Nation mattered that their people mattered and that the safety and freedom and future of the people that they had at home mattered and so some of them were directly defending their homelands and some of them were defending areas that they felt connected to because so many of say people in the United States felt the connection to Europe felt a special relationship because so many of them had come from Europe but either way they were most certainly not just dying for an idea now the Cold War was more ideological but again I think this is more of an aberration and the again to to appeal to Samuel Huntington and his Clash of civilizations uh Theory one of the things he points out in that book is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union we started to see a return to real politics again the politics of who are we that that was a bigger question that was what everyone was trying to figure out and reminder Samuel Hunan is a very mainstream down the-middle guy it's not some radical right guy some radical historian historian on the right some some way off political you know reactionary thinker he's somebody who held a chair at you know one of America's Premier universities so this is a guy who's well respected um and but his point was the Soviet Union the United States they're kind of locking down the entire world around these two ideas of uh kind of capitalism versus communism that was a very particular moment in history that only lasted a few decades and then we started going back to what history has been through most of the centuries which is more a question of who are we what do we believe as a religion what do we share as a culture the what what is a civilization or goals these are the things that people really return to and so once again it's more about the people and the Nation than it is the ideology so it's it's not correct to say no one dies for an idea but I think it is correct to say that people rarely die just for an idea uh and that means that America simply as an idea is insufficient to go ahead and motivate people to go ahead and fight for the country and in case you were wondering if that's true check out the military recruitment right now particularly among Heritage Americans people of European descent tend to now enter the military at a much lower level after everything that has been happening especially them being demonized so America as an idea is no longer sufficient to motivate them they no longer feel part of the country it is not of their people anymore and so therefore they are not as motivated to defend it the ideology itself the ideas the propositional nation is not sufficient to go ahead and motivate those enlistment numbers so I think there's plenty of evidence to point out that uh while while Ben makes a some somewhat of a good point there on the uh you know not just the idea uh ideas are not sufficient to explain the behavior of people here there's something much deeper in the nation otherwise it' be like most European Wars which are Wars of territory turns out that people fight uh America fought a lot of Wars of territory sorry but that's just ridiculous America fought a lot of Wars of territory um sorry but if you think like the Spanish American war is a war of IDE ology if you think the American the Mexican American War these are Wars of ideology I don't know what to tell you uh you know yeah there's some ideological window dressing on a lot of these but America fought plenty of Wars of territory the idea that the only war that America has ever fought is the Cold War the one like somewhat ideological war which never even actually broke out into a hot war between the major combatants that that's a quite quite a bit of uh history that we are forgetting here ideas all the time the idea is connected to the home that's what America that's what makes America a so this is a very strange thing to say uh um the idea is connected to the home and that's what makes America a nation again why wouldn't that be true of any of those other nations and if the idea is connected to this home could it not be connected to another home and if not why why can't I take these very best ideas and connect them to another country make that country the United States why can't I just take this over to Bangladesh and turn that into the United States what is stopping me what is the what is the factor that I can't just export because I can export the ideas but it's not just the ideas the ideas are connected to a people the people live those ideas ideas came from those people it is part of their tradition it is part of their religion it is born of their language it is part of their Heritage these are lived experiences tied to a specific way of being now JD Vance goes out of his way correctly in my estimation to say that part of America has always been the ability of some people to join the United States to join us as a people and I know this is going to make some people angry but historically this is of course true a lot of societies are very closed but there are usually some level at which people could join societies they could become part of a people a foreigner might be a foreigner when they first enter into community and it would often take a multi-generational project to go ahead and have his family join if they wanted to that's the big difference right is today we act like you can just walk into the country raise your hand recite you know a couple facts about the United States and boom you're American you've touched the magic of soil you've said the magic words everything is done but no being part of a Nation being part of a people again is many things Heritage is one of them but it's also language it's also religion it's also folk ways custom all these things are what makes the people who they are and so if over several Generations an immigrant is uh dedicated to becoming part of a new people that can eventually happen they often have to intermarry they have to join the religion they have to know the language but most importantly they have to live the life of the people who are in that uh region that area that uh Nation for their entire lives and often their children and their children's children Al also have to be kind of on the outside until they eventually integrate that's what real integration looks like real integration is a multi-generational project and especially in the United States where unfortunately we went very far down the road of this poisonous Multicultural ideology if we're ever going to come back together as a people we will need to have some level of understanding of assimilation and integration that will have to happen however that assimilation has to be to something and it's not just an idea it's not just a set of ideas it is more than that it is religion it is custom it is language and it is so much more and the only way you can do that is Again by having a majority culture a majority identity for people to go ahead and assimilate to if you don't have anything to assimilate to if if America is simply a list of things that I learned in civics class that I read out loud then you can never have assimilation and the founding culture of the United States is undeniably both Anglo and Protestant now that does not mean that everyone in the United States was Anglo or Protestant and it doesn't mean that many people who joined later were not able to go ahead and become American despite not being Anglo or Protestant but they had to go ahead and conform to this Baseline understanding of an Anglo Protestant United States that is who the American people were and that is how even if you were say a Catholic coming in you still had to understand this was going to be a anglo-protestant country and it was going to go ahead and Lead You In a particular Direction it was going to live in a certain way now everyone again in the country is not entirely Anglo or Protestant I'm a Protestant and I'm a little Anglo but I'm also German and Irish and Native American these things you know it's not everybody right most Americans are not just those things but that was still the core of the American identity and if you want to go ahead and assimilate to the United States you have to assimilate to that way of life and slowly over time time the different parts of you that aren't you know uh conforming to that culture do because you get used to living in this way that's why the pro propositional nation is not sufficient it does not actually allow even immigrants to assimilate because there is nothing for them to actually join you've destroyed the culture telling people that all that matters is the ideology the ideology is the only thing that defines us I think that's why Ben is confused here because I think he believes in the propositional nation and so he's like well it's what the left says that you know we're that's not who we are and that we can bring all these other things in but he never thinks about kind of the implications of what that means but let's play a little more here uh for and I think that's what he's trying to say I hope that's what he's trying to say because otherwise I'm not sure what the exact kind of what is he arguing against that that's that's really the question that I'm asking here and and I know there are a lot of people online who are taking like significant pleasure in this particular line but it's obviously self-evident America is not just an idea it's actually not self-evident and in fact many people in the conservative movement have been very clear that they don't think it's self-evident that they do think that America is simply a set of ideas that anyone can come in and join it any time and it doesn't matter as long as you go ahead and choose to be part of the nation you choose the proposition than the ideology then you can be an American but here's the problem with the proposition nation and and if you would like to I'll give you the quick argument tip I don't usually do this but here in in in 30 seconds dismantle anybody who believes in the propositional nation when they tell you okay I believe in the prop propositional Nation America is an idea America is a set of principles uh not not a nation in the European sense or anything like that but uh it's an ideology whatever when they say that when they say it's a propositional nation it's a it's a set of principles and anyone who goes ahead and uh agrees with those principles can join the first thing you ask them is all right well what if those people don't agree with those principles what if there's someone here what if Alexandria kazio Cortez says I don't believe in the principles anymore can I Deport her immediately what about all the blue-haired libs who don't agree with Ben on the principles of the United States can we Deport all of them any any anybody who comes into the country and uh you know brings another country's flag can I immediately Deport them like if anybody changes a little bit of their ideology to no longer hold to the proposition of this nation do we just expel them and the answer will uniformally be no because one of our principles is that you have free speech and you have freedom of conscience and you can choose your ideology you can choose your belief system so you have a contradiction inside the part of the propositional nation you can't have a propositional nation and say well the nation is just a set of ideas but also say but one of those ideas is anybody can go ahead and you know crap on those ideas discard these ideas at any time but they still get to hang out and be here because what you're saying is Well basically Everyone's an American all the time the entire world is just uh they're they're just potential Americans who just haven't crossed the border yet because they don't need to hold the ideology of the United States and if they manage to hold it for 10 seconds and raise their hand and then immediately go back to living their lives with the beliefs and the principles and everything else of the foreign Nation well it doesn't matter because they're already American and they're still here and this is a real problem because that is actually happening in the United States we have country we have areas in this country where the flag is being switched basically to the Somali flag because of the number of people being imported into that area who still hold the identity of the countries they came from and when you are only a propositional nation when you're a nation is just an idea or just a a land with the best ideas then you have no idea what's happening to you when you are being replaced when the federal government as JD Vance pointed out in his speech later in that speech uh brings in to a town of 60,000 people 20,000 somalis so 60,000 people live in the city and they drop 20,000 somalis into that City I don't care if every one of those people loves the American dream which they don't to be clear that that's not who got dropped there but even one every every one of them holy holds to every idea of the propositional nation that entire Community is fundamentally transformed because even if those people do hold to those ideas they have not lived them they have not lived the experience they have not become part of the community it is not their folkways it is not their Traditions it is not their culture it is not their language it may not be their religion it is not their shared moral Vision it certainly is not their shared history and Heritage these are all things that actually make a nation what it is and instead you're just like well maybe they maybe they've got the you know they they read the Constitution one time they're great good to go and 10 minutes later if they say oh well I don't agree in the proposition they get still get to stay here forever the propositional nation is a farce no one actually believes in it if you ask anybody what made uh what makes a people a people outside the United States they will not tell you its ideas and if they tell you its ideas inside the United States and you ask them well what happens if someone stops believing in the ideas they immediately tell you oh well our principal say they have to be able to stay here and disagree with us so nothing about this is correct and again if we had a nation that was defined by our ideas and adherence to those ideas that ironically would be the most fasc Nation available because it would subordinate identity and Community to the ideology of the state which is basically like the definition of this totalitarian central government that we don't want so the idea that everyone needs to adhere to this ideology this uh proposition to maintain their citizenship to maintain their membership in the community is itself a terrifying and very anti-American way to understand us uh as a country as a nation Let's uh play the rest here just in case lots of things are just an idea right quantum physics is just an idea it's not a nation it's not a home and obviously that's true obviously that's true but the point of the American idea is even stated by JD Vance there which is you can join if America were only a nation or if it were only a home how would you join it again that makes no sense throughout history plenty of people have joined Nations plenty of people have joined homelands yes homelands were for specific people and it was difficult and often an outsider was not welcome right away but there are plenty of examples throughout history across many different cultures and Nations where people join so the idea that well you can only join if it's an ideology you can only join if it's an idea well that's not true that is simply not the case a a basic familiarity with any point at history will tell you that's not how it worked so ass asserting that well we have to be an ideological country if anyone's ever going to be able to join that's just not the case and also I would like to make it very clear the ability of people to join the United States is not what makes it a good country or a moral country now I think it is possible for people to join I think it is possible for people to assimilate but a very small amount of people if at any at all over Generations it should not be some instantaneous thing and it it is not incumbent on the United States to be a place where everybody can join sorry no that's not who that's not how any other Nation works that's not how any other Nation exists and I'm sorry but this aspect is not what makes America Great America is not made great by everybody's ability to join it ideology ideologically and if that was the case then you would simply be able to export that ideology to a foreign country and it would be a great of the United States it simply does not hold there's too many factors involved it is not just an idea obviously he thinks you can join it which means that the idea is very much in contention if what he means is like Baseline patriotism wave the flag this land matters it matters where I'm born and where I die obviously agree obviously agree I assume that's what he means by that again I think he means a lot more than that hopefully that that clarifying for people uh the problems with the propositional nation I think the points that Ben was missing here again I I just thought this was interesting because across seever across the Spectrum there are several different uh ways that JD Vance was opposed but we saw this through line left and right about the problem of him approaching the nation as a real Nation as a real people and not just a economic zone or a ideological Community uh and I think that the confusion from Ben here really underlies uh and again he's not openly hostile to Vance that's not that's that's not the issue it's not like a leftist who's screaming at Vance the whole time about his racism and sexism or whatever but the inability to kind of grasp uh Vance's point or at least I know he's Ben's a pretty smart guy I've got a feeling he knows what Vance was hinting at but the fact that he's not addressing really what Vance was saying there that's why I wanted to drill down into this because I think it's important to go ahead and talk about what does make a nation because as we try to figure this out as we try to heal hopefully after the defeat of Joe Biden and Camala Harris uh then I I think it's critical to be able to identify what binds us together and what will allow us to heal uh if that's going to be able to happen all right let's go ahead and move over to the questions of the people real quick here uh creeper weirdo says but if we're people then we can't be an economic right Zone uh and just freedoms all over the place we can't have that yeah I should have brought up also rights uh good good point there creeper weirdo that it's not just the economic zone it's also the rights Zone once you CR pass into America you get all these rights and that's what makes you an American again th those things are not that's not how it works you don't suddenly obtain the rights by by passing on to the magic dirt uh the rights were something that the American people demanded due to a long history uh that was attached to a a particular way that they live their lives and a tradition uh should should have gone into more uh explanation there uh tiny stupid says the ancestors of all four of my grandparents settle in the W uh in Western Virginia and North Carolina before the American Revolution I look forward to nothing less than total hbur Billy victory yeah most most of my family is from Tennessee and South Carolina so I hear you uh let's see hereo says how could JD Vance care about a place and his family's place in it what a weirdo am I right yeah that that really does seem to be the consensus of people who were bringing uh charges against him uh pers persp he's always trying to test me here persp I can usually say this just fine picous heretic there we go uh people change what ideas they believe all the time the only thing that uh really doesn't change is where people live and where they tend to fight for again this is so much so true right there there's been large ideological shifts I mean just think about the shift between uh zarus Russia and Soviet Russia right that is literally the biggest Revolution you could imagine the most radical change from kind of this peasant farmer uh Society attached to this longstanding uh Zar uh that structure that feudal structure into this kind of radical attempt at uh egalitarian modernization and centralization uh but they were still Russians that you know that I mean obviously Soviet Union exist extend beyond Russia but you understand what I'm saying like this the continue to be the same peoples even though they radically change their ideology and this is my problem again with the the ideology trying to Define what a nation is it simply does not make sense it's an it's an abstraction that is only really foed upon the United States over and over again uh life of Brien says is the GOP full of Vance does Shapiro Go full Crystal um you know like I said I feel like uh I feel like chapiro was not openly hostile Advance here uh Shapiro is a pretty traditional neoconservative uh you know he he has adjusted some of those opinions I think with the times but you know he tends to have those beliefs uh but he has shown a willingness to kind of adapt and move the direction that the party or the you know the right is going to some degree so he has all the objections you would think of Vance but I don't think he's gonna go full never Trumper Crystal Style uh the there there's a lot of these guys who kind of tend to get nervous they tend to bolt act like they're going to bolt uh but they always kind of come back to home base and I feel that's kind of where Shapiro is on that um Joshua BB says Ah benier the hero of the battle of he knows what inspires men to war our intellectuals uh are coward or eight cowards our Warriors need a place at the table uh yeah I mean obviously you know Ben is probably not a guy uh of of U who's been involved in a lot of physical conflict but to be fair I've never served in the military so I'm not here to to rag on anybody for that uh I would say that ultimately you are right though even though I am somebody who comes from uh obviously a little more of the intellectual bent I do think that more often we need a A Warrior's understanding of certain scenarios I think we do need uh more lions at the table uh it should not just be uh NE it should not be foxes all the time Life of Brian says Shapiro embodies the neocon Paradox pump patriotism cynically to push Us's Foreign Wars it was doomed now the woke push anti-patriotism to uh en listes to destroy the nation including the United States yeah again I I think Shapiro is far more comfortable than with foreign adventurism than I am uh certainly one of the things that he opposes Vance on at least to some degree uh and uh it is very clear that the United States military has shifted ideologically uh to uh promoting all kinds of things that attack the core of the American identity I we saw recently the dod uh presentation where they were saying that pro-life groups are a problem why is the American Military talking about domestic American politics and who might be an Enemy of the State uh there's only reason only one reason for them to do that uh and it's not good at all let's see Elijah timman says the uh Mexican-American war took place before World War II Ben reveals that he considers the origin of America to be World War II Cold War kind of like progressives too yeah I I honestly I think that is a fair point uh there really is the post-war consensus uh that so many on the right have bought into so many uh especially those with the neocon uh bent have have kind of bought into is the idea that history really began for the United States like we had the Revolution and then it kind of just jumped to World War II and that's where all of our identity and all of our principles were really founded let's see Ronald McNugget says America should look at the US government as subject Nations looked at the USSR as a House of regime over them rather than identifying with and supporting it there's uh a level of Truth to that though I will say this I think that there are still factions inside the US government or I should say in inside the The Wider American political complex that do still care about the country and are still fighting for uh American uh well-being in a way that the Soviet Union probably did not have um I would I think you're right that is in in general people are too invest in the idea that the American government is actually serving uh the well-being of the American people in many ways it is not uh but I would say uh for instance the the left would not be going to the links it's going to to basically like wipe out all of the choices that Americans had uh both for the Democratic and Republican candidates uh if there wasn't still some truth to the American system some some animating principle behind the government elections uh they otherwise they would just you know they would just drop Joe Biden down a shoot and you know put put Donald Trump in prison that be the end of it uh let's see here uh creeper weirdo says if the propositional nation meant I get to deport Destiny then I'd agree it doesn't uh though so we'll need an actual Nation sorry uh an excellent point an excellent Point uh the heretic join joins us uh I just joined a gym so now I'm suddenly in shape yeah right this same as I've crossed into the nation and said the words and so now I'm suddenly an American uh the joining the gym uh just like stating American principles is perhaps a good first step in your goal um but it is it is not sufficient you'll put in a lot of time a lot of work uh if you want to make that happen uh Joshua BB says it's not that Ben doesn't understand it's that feelings don't care about the facts yeah honestly I I kind of have to agree with that here again I I think he's he's a pretty intelligent guy I don't think it completely escapes Ben what uh what JD Vance is getting at here I think he would just rather it not be the case uh which you know and he doesn't really want to explain why because that that would be a far more messy uh delve into I guess history and why he feels that way but I don't want to speak in his place maybe he just genuinely didn't understand it if he didn't then hopefully then this this episode will clarify that for him and to be able to go ahead and make his decision from there uh Phil says uh we know why Benny is willing to trade away America for a few extra dollars but Eric Ericson is the actual Trader here always willing to cut his own flesh and people uh off at the knees to benefit third worlds and Libs you know I I really don't know a whole lot about Eric Ericson other than he's constantly just kind of howting Old National Review neocon talking points uh so I can't really speak a lot to Eric Ericson's past and everything he's believed in I just know that whenever I encounter Eric Ericson he's saying something that is very much the classic like you know we can just export democracy and maybe open borders are good for the country and maybe we should you know fight every war we see out there talking points that are old that are dead that are no longer part I think of of the right thankfully uh points that have lost all of their real power on the right uh which is is a fantastic development something I didn't know if I'd ever see in my lifetime and I'm very happy to see as a positive movement in our Direction all right guys I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up thank you so much for watching if you'd like to go ahead and make sure that you get all of the shows in your YouTube notifications you need to go ahead and join uh or rather you need to go ahead and subscribe to the channel you need to click the Bell you turn on the notifications because just because you subscribe doesn't mean YouTube thinks you actually want to watch the things you subscribe to if you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts instead you can go ahead and subscribe to the or McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform and when you do leave a rating or review it really helps with the algorithm magic and of course if you'd like to pick up my book the total State you can do so on Amazon Barnes & Noble books a million or your favorite local bookstore thank you so much for watching guys and as always I will talk to you next time