[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Spill the Tea, the podcast that just wants you to hear us out. We bring awareness about topics in pop culture, history, literature, music and life, the universe and everything. As far as we're concerned, we research different topics and share with our listeners what we discover. I'm Brigitte.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And I'm Lara. I'm your researcher.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: And today's episode is a continuation of the Declaration of Independence because it goes.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: On and it's not as long as the Constitution, thank heavens. Because, you know, Constitution's a nightmare in and of itself.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: That's going to be a fun one.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: You presume we're going to do that because not Constitutional scholar don't want to be.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: But today we. Last time we talked about. We gave you a modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. And today, however, we're going to talk about the more. Oh, wait, last time we also talked about Hobbes and Leviathan and how it actually set the stage for the reaction to Hobbes and Leviathan, which ultimately ended up being the more direct influence to the writers of the Declaration. Yep. So we're going to talk about the response to Hobbes, and we're also going to talk about the Founding Fathers and some of the other inspirations that they had. So here we go.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Right after Leviathan is coming up, the humanist movement. And that brings us to the philosophers who actually fought back against Hobbes and gave us material that really did influence the Declaration of Independence.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Now, and I know John Locke was. Well, wait, Locke was a huge influence.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: A new Locke. On Hobbes. I didn't know about Hume until you mentioned him.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Hume is not a huge influence directly, but again, he's part of that time period and culture. He's part of the conversation at that time. And because the Declaration of Independence is, believe it or not, folks, a very philosophical document.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: It is. It is highly.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: And because Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, who is one of the other people working in that team of five, were back and forth to England and France all the time talking to these philosophers, interacting with them and bringing it back and sharing back there, back and forth. It has. They all have some measure of impact on how they were thinking about things.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Sure. I remember reading Locke, oh, board probably during the eighth grade when I was first in US History, because my school system, basically my school system was completely messed up. There were five grades in high school. It was eight through 12. And that is a rant for a totally different time and something that just irritates the crap out of me to this day. And I graduated in the 90s, but because it was set up that way, we had American history in the 8th grade and the 11th grade.
So you had basically from theoretically, first native and then colonization. And it basically took you up to Civil War.
It was basically from beginning big air quotes to Civil War and then Civil War onward in junior year of high school. So, yeah, they split it up. And I remember when we were studying the Declaration, I went and decided to go read Locke on my own.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: And weirdly, no matter how frustrating it was to get through it, because again, I was 14.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Well, it's only 87 pages compared to Leviathan.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: That is fair.
That is totally fair. Because Leviathan is Dear God in Heaven long.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: It's like 400 pages.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: And I'm not gonna lie, you had me ignore the weird sound in the background. It's the cat scratching on something.
And you had me reading the one on the section on justice Cure for insomnia. Huh. I. I will admit I went and looked it up on to be Fair.
To be fair. I started trying to read the actual document and then I switched over to Wikipedia because I'm like, I need a modern interpretation because I have no clue what I'm reading.
No clue.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Fair. What's fair?
[00:04:41] Speaker A: And so. So it was kind of weird that I was reading John Locke in like the 8th grade. Might have actually been reading Love because of my English class, because my. I was in the gifted program. The evil, horrible gifted program. But I remember reading Locke. And no matter how frustrating it was to try to read 18 century literature when you're 14, 15 years old, I was finding that I agreed with a lot of what he said.
Mind you, this is when I was 14. I have no idea now how much I agree with.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: But interestingly, Locke was keen on this whole concept that the natural state of man. Because remember, this is the conversation at the time. The natural state of man versus the state of man in government.
Right under. In a civil society, the natural state of man is selfish. He didn't say they were vile. Like.
Like Hobbes did. Okay, he did not say that they were vile, but he did say that men naturally are selfish as can be, are selfish as you can get. He and Hume agreed on that one.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Yes, they did.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Completely. Selfish bastards. And the only way to get away from the selfish bastard aspect is to enter into these social contracts, to enter into this situation where the rights and privileges are well defined and what you give up in rights for the government to function. The government has its rights. It has its responsibilities that it Gives in turn responding for the rights that you've given. So it's very much contract law.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: And I think that was a lot of what I agreed with is okay, if we are this way by our nature.
And I no longer agree with that now that I know a lot more about some kind of psychology, behavioral psychology.
It was there, I knew it was there. That we are actually much more communal minded.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Humans are very herd minded. We don't realize it because we want so desperate, because we are sentient beings. We want desperately to be hyper independent. We are not, no matter how much.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: There's always the statistical outliers.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Right. There's always.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: But the vast majority of people are part of this herd mind mentality. Absolutely.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: And we thrive more on a communal mindset. And I don't mean communism, I mean communal, where we come together as community and we help each other out.
So, yeah, my views have definitely changed from Locke. Yeah, significantly.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Well, and the thing is, Locke isn't against community because his definition of equality includes all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal. No one has any more than anybody else. That does not sound.
That. That really does not sound.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: No, it doesn't.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Like what we ended up with.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Oh, it was the fact that I know what it was that I most agreed with Locke on was his true mindset. And this is in section 95, page 31 of his second treatise on government. He says, men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. Being free, equal and independent was the thing that I truly agreed with.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: The other thing I noticed while I was reading through all of these, Hume, Locke, Hobbs, there's one word that they keep coming back to, one word that we need to come back to today.
Consent.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Consent was a central core concept behind all of this.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yes.
As the person whose personal saying is, not only is consent important, consent is required.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: And that was part of why that ended up in the Declaration of Independence is the government can't be there without the consent of the governed. That was a central tenet. That was huge.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Yes. I made that statement recently. Not only is consent important, consent is required around somebody. And they were like, where did you hear that?
Like my own brain, quite frankly. I made that up because it's so I hear, and this is a big conversation. It's a big conversation. A lot of the marginalized communities that consent is important.
And as I've thought about it, I just took it a step Further, and it's like, it's not just important. It's required for me, it is absolutely a requirement. You must have my consent.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Like I said, even Hobbes was talking about consent. But Hobbes conversation about consent was that consent is not.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Oh, I totally disagree.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: And this is where I say the patriarchy.
Because a parent doesn't require the consent of the child to discipline the child. That's the parent's job. And he very much saw the government and the thought of it. This is why I say he was important to frame things because this is where we see Hume and Locke pushing back and saying, no, you don't get to govern us without our consent. We don't enter into society unless we consent to be part of this group together.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Hobbes was the one that we developed earlier.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah, Hobbes was a natural.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Even as young as 14, 15 years old I was.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Most people don't have to read Hobbes anymore. And that's a good thing.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Well, again, I think that was. That was in. See, that wasn't in my history class. I think it was actually in my English class. And I can't remember if it was eighth grade or freshman year. I had the same teacher. I was in the. What was called Kokomo Enrichment for Youth.
Key was the short term, but it was basically a different program. And I had the same teacher for both years. And I don't remember which year it was because those memory slots have been overwritten multiple times at this point in my life. But I do remember we had to read some of this type of stuff and talk about it.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: That's not a bad thing.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: No, it's not. And it was very enlightening. But yeah, I discovered very quickly that I absolutely did not agree with Hobbes. And it was in reading some of this stuff that really started cementing my mindset. And as quite frankly someone who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. And it actually really started making me look at socialism using communism. I don't agree with communism in a different light because we were in high school in the 80s and the 80s was an extremely conservative time.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Yes, it was. Well, nothing compared to now. But yeah.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Well, you know, things repeat themselves over 20 years and they sometimes get worse. Worse or weirder or just more.
But yeah, it started really changing my mindset. Like you, I was raised in a Christian household. I was raised in a. I mean, I was raised in an evangelical fundamentalist Christian household, as a matter of fact, Protestant, I should say. And it was one where basically the man was the head of the household. He was the final rule. And it was in the process of reading Locke that I started going, maybe not so much.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: And that very much makes sense, because this was part of the conversation that was happening in Enlightenment is the patriarchy is all well and good with its place, but we've moved past it. And unfortunately, the more conservative Christian religions are big into the patriarchy. And so if you start reading humanism and enlightenment materials, you start hearing the message of, but there's more past this. This is not the end.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: All be all right.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: There might be more to encounter, and there might be another way of thinking about this that's just as valid, but is still just as viable a civilized discussion and situation.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Because it's.
It's very much Locke's position that every government that was begun in peace, those peaceful beginnings were laid in the consent of the people.
So governments that are through conquest, things like those are absolutely not the consent of the people.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Right, exactly.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Governments that were imposed, like the colonists had relative to England, that was not with the consent of the people or Roman rule. With Roman rule.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: With the people of conquering. Well, everywhere that's Roman.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah. The rule of conquest, Charlemagne's rule.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: All the empirical. All the empires throughout history are conquest, and conquest is not with the consent of the people. Those are not begun in peace by definition. Precisely theoretically, the colonists started in peace before they even got to a revolutionary standpoint. They started in peace. They had charters, they had legislation in place, and they didn't necessarily have consent of the people.
That said the second.
They had a sort of implied consent. Right, the second that consent, that implied consent got challenged, though, that's when they said, no.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: No.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I mean, not quite the second. It went on for a while.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: But still, that was what pushed it was the implied consent that they'd given had to become actual consent. And they said, no, we do not give up. And then they created another government which.
Thanks, Joel, lot of arguing and a whole lot of rewrites. Got a government that was created by the consented people.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: It was created by a consent of a minority of the people that were.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Actually living there without the consideration or opinion or any of that of quite a few of the other people who lived there. Right there.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Exactly. Because it was all the wealthy white farmers, all the wealthy white landowners, all.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: The wealthy white male.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Well, there is that.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Landowners.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: The women couldn't be landowners either, as far as I understood.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: That is true.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: So that would be redundant at that time.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: At that time, women could not Be landowners.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: So, yeah, you are correct.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: That is.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: It was kind of. That's why I didn't go there. It was kind of redundant and it was. That's okay.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: And it was a crossover from England.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Yes. It wasn't able to there either.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: Even in the other areas of the British Isles, it was still. It was no longer an option. I believe that stopped in Ireland in the 16th century with Henry.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: No idea.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Henry VIII went into Ireland and basically revoked Brahannock Law, which was the legal style that most of Ireland outside of the Dublin area, also known as the Pale, had been following for centuries. And Brahannock laws in Ireland were a lot more lenient for women. They could own land, they could represent themselves in court. They could.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Oh, you mean they weren't Roman laws?
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah, they were not Roman laws. Very much not Roman laws. Women could divorce.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Oh, women could do that in ancient Rome.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: That's fun. That's fun. Yes.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: We're back to the whole.
In the animal kingdom, we're back to the whole Irish woman's ability to divorce and how took her stuff outside the house and said, go. Leave me alone.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Yep, we're dead.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're done. But that didn't. But after Henry VIII dismantled Brionic law and basically took over the entire island, that's when Irish rule started reflecting in this rule. And women lost a lot of rights in Ireland. There's a reason why the. There are many reasons why the Irish do not like the English.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: I can't imagine.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Anyway.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: One of the cool things is digging into the beginning isn't just. I mean, yes, women had no rights, women had no say, blah, blah, blah, we get it. This is unfortunately a reality of most of the world. At any given point in time, easily 50% of the population is ignored or devalued or worse, or not listened to. And for the record, anybody who wants any of the people that wanted to sit there and say, oh, well, it says all men are created equal. So women aren't even part of this conversation. No shit, Sherlock. We're not part of the conversation because the generic was men. At the time, what meant people. Okay, they didn't use the term people because that was crude, crass and not formal enough. The term men was a legal term that meant people. Yeah, it included women too, because the generic men meant women too, because men aren't men. Anyway, Just that arrogant.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: How about that?
[00:18:26] Speaker B: There we go. Just that. The reason I say it is because the other thing that's really interesting is this contract concept, because lock was. But Though men, when they enter into society, give up equality, liberty, and executive power, they have in the state of nature into the hands of the society to be so far disposed of by the legislative as the good of society shall require, yet it being only with an intention, every one the better, to preserve himself, his liberty and property. In other words, they give up all of this to better preserve it. And that's. That's the interesting logic loop there that I found really interesting.
We get rid of this, that we have in the state of nature to better preserve it, because, again, the world's a scary place. We have attack from the outside. We have attack from the inside. We have. I mean, face it, this is coming out of England. What does England have the best history of in anywhere in the world? I think war, I would say.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Pissing off its neighbors.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: War. We're back to the Irish, the French.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: The Irish, the Germanics, the Scots. The Scots.
They always wanted to fight each other. So again, you always have this conflict world. So society fundamentally, for especially the Brits, seems to be.
Seems to very much be about, oh, it must not.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Oh, never forget the well or the.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Cornish or the cornice. But the society. So the English absolutely seems to be very focused on this. We band together as a society for protection. Yeah, that. That is the one key social contract that exists.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yes, we band together for protection. And it's not just protection from a perceived enemy, protection from the elements, protection from nature. There are multiple protections that we require.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: And why we band together, but for a government purpose. It was almost always. It wasn't social welfare, despite the fact that that's what our Declaration of Independence says. It wasn't social welfare. It was very much about safety. Safety in numbers.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Absolutely. We can better protect ourselves against bullies across the seas. We can better protect ourselves from bullies at home. Safety in numbers and that, you know, the whole point of society directed to no other end but peace, safety and public good of the people.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Okay. Yep.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: The irony.
I'm sorry, the irony that these. This is the philosophy that Jefferson was talking with people in England. He was talking to Locke. Okay.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: I think we're the same time period.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: They are the same time frame. He was talking to Locke. He was talking to Hume. He was talking to the revolutionaries in France. He was talking to all of these people directly. So was Franklin. Oh, my God. Franklin was absolutely talking to the French. When he wasn't too busy with the French mistresses, he was talking to the French.
And if you did not. And folks, if you did not know that man, you really need to check out some history of Benjamin Franklin. The man was a player.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Oh, man, was he ever.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: And he's one of our founding fathers, so it now seems absolutely certain that we understand that politicians are man whores. So, you know, yes, I went there.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Jefferson wasn't any better about that.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Jefferson seemed to be more of a man whore at home, though.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: That's according to history. Yes. So very much. Franklin was a man whore overseas, although.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: And at home.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: Didn't Jefferson spend time in France during the Revolution?
[00:22:20] Speaker B: He did, but that said, the only little piece I have for post revolution is he went back with Lafayette and helped Lafayette put together their Declaration of Independence to be released three days before the Bastille got stormed.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Perfect timing.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: He was there for the storming. Apparently he didn't do that or he had just left. No, apparently it was the Declaration of Rights of man and of the Citizen and they published it just three days before the best deal was formed.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Did they even give Louis a parent or read it?
[00:22:56] Speaker B: I don't know that Louis was in any position to read it by that point because as I remember, right, the storm was the storming of the Bastille before or after they took Louis prisoner and chopped off his head?
[00:23:06] Speaker A: I think it was before because it was the storming of the Bastille that.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Started the French Revolution.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: The French Revolution.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: But yeah, I loved how everything came full circle.
That was kind of. When I saw that factoid, I'm like, oh, wow. Everything came full circle. Wow, that's kind of amusing. As Lafayette had been over here fighting for us to help us win our war. And then our people went back with him to help them get set up for their war. And it's like, okay.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: However, we did not provide them the aid we promised for their war.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: No, probably to a large extent because we couldn't. I'm willing to bet we really couldn't. To any extent.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: We didn't have that. We didn't have.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: We didn't have the infrastructure yet.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: We didn't have the infrastructure. We really didn't have the funds. We were still. I think Hamilton at the time was still trying to set up the national treasury.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Right? Because that was something that everybody wanted.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: I'm over here laughing because I can't believe how much of all of this I actually learned from musical Hamilton.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: And see, I. I've yet to. I started watching the musical and it just.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: This is so many. They bring in so many players that I do not reading about, I don't remember reading about in my history Course, Yeah.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: And I have the problem. This is not my time period. I'm very Victorian.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: That's fair.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Get me a few decades later and we'll talk. You know, end of the Civil War era and into the 20th century. That's my era. So yeah, that turn of the turn of the 20th century into the 20th century is my time. So this is not my jam. This is not my period. And I tried watching Hamilton when I got Disney plus I tried watching it and I went, the music is really good and I'm just really not that interested.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Oh, that's fair.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: It's not for everyone.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Not my story.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: I can't say anything. My time period is more mid-1300s back to middle English.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, middle. I did my middle English stint and there's a lot of Middle English I love. So there's, there's a lot of it there that I really enjoyed. But no, it just these guys. So I find it more interesting too. I had more in Hume that grabbed my attention, believe it or not, than in Locke, which is kind of. Which is kind of weird. Oh yeah, because Hume shouldn't. Hume surprised me that that much caught my attention in him. But his whole thing was not just that men are governed by interests and even when they extend their concern beyond themselves, it doesn't go that far, you know, they don't look farther than their nearest friends and acquaintances. Huh. Where have we seen this?
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Precisely.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: This doesn't happen anymore. At all. Really. Look at our information silos that are happening contemporary now.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Where do you get your information from you. Actually people say, well, I went and researched it. Where did you research it? What sources did you use? Did you actually just use resources your friend told you about?
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Exactly. And did you go research both sides.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Of the story and did you research more than just the side of the story you always hear?
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Although I have to admit I know that I live in a certain amount of an echo chamber. I know that that is partially anxiety based. I wandered into the quote unquote other camp. It's so funny that I say that because I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: So it's kind of interesting. I am definitely liberal as opposed to conservative.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: But. And I went wandering into conservative literature and conservative insights and things like that and well, I can kind of compare it to a Lovecraftian Old Gods fear. Yeah.
I think I would go less insane if I were reading. If I were reading Kuzulu to say.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: I don't think you're wrong because I don't identify I definitely identify as very liberal, but I have always been independent. I vote on the issues.
I don't vote on the person.
And this where we've gotten to. I have read some of it and he breaks my brain on some level. And I really comfortable. I am so comfortable with being uncomfortable.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: I'm very comfortable with that. That is my comfortable space actually is being uncomfortable with my. With what I do and don't know. I'm very. I live for that.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: For that discomfort. But I go into those spaces and go, but this isn't even reality anymore.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: No. And I have a really, really, really.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Wide definition of what's real. And this isn't even reality anymore.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And that was part of what I ran into was the fact that it just, you know, I'm reading stuff and going, that's. That's not how that works.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: That doesn't make sense.
That's just wrong. You know, wait a minute. That's. No, that's really not how that works.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: That's really not how that happened.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Exactly. It's not how it works. It's not how that happened. I mean, that is not what that person said. I, you know, it's disturbing how much. And I know I hear this on both sides. So much of brainwashing. And I look at it and I realize that what I see. And I use logic and reason because I question my side as well. Very much.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: And I can see how on the other side of this they think they're doing the same thing. And there is a good chance that neither of us is.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: To be honest, I was raised very firmly with the rules of logic and the rules of logical rhetoric and the rules of logical argumentation. Again, teaser. That will be a future episode because that is something that I have been indoctrinated with. I have in my core of my education.
That is absolutely. You peel away everything else. That's what's there is the understanding of logical fallacies and the understanding of logical argumentation, both mathematical and philosophical.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Because that was the core of my education.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: But if you are going to go and research something thoroughly, you cannot just research it from one side. Exactly. You absolutely. And for the love of God, if you are going to go and read any kind of medical or scientific study, follow the money.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: No shit.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Because the only scientific studies that say Roundup is safe come from the United States and they are funded by Monsado.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: Who is a company that makes Roundup. You look at any European study, they're going to tell you, no, it's not safe. You look at studies on whether or not consuming a lot of dairy is safe. If you look at the studies that are funded by the American Dairy association.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Well, of course it's.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: They're going to give you very different results because you are going to please the person who's paying your bills.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Any medicine. We're not even talking. We're not talking pesticides or anything like that. We're talking medicine. The FDA says it's safe. Double check that. The FDA didn't have all of their testing funded by the company that made the medicine.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Precisely.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: That simple.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Precisely.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: The defunding of all of these agencies to keep us safe has become a major problem. And then the online. Everybody can get at everything, but not everybody has been taught with the same rigor relative to logic and working through scientific methodology when understanding materials is showing itself.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: In a big way.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Unfortunately, yes.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: I hate to say it, but homeschooling is showing itself in a big way. There are homeschoolers out there that are amazing. There are homeschool groups out there that are amazing. I got news for you folks. You're the minority. I have encountered way too many homeschooling people in my career as an educator, as a college educator that thought that they knew everything about everything. And the second you showed them something that was outside their little bubble of what they thought they knew, they were floored and they were incapable of making a logical defense of what.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: And a lot of that is because they were not taught how.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: And that's fair.
But that's part of homeschooling fail, Right?
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Exactly. And I'll tell you, I know some people who homeschool and they're part of those groups that are very interactive and they actually have more structure.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: That they recommend and that they. And that they offer as a resource. Right. Because the struggle of anyone can homeschool a child. Oh, yeah. Is if you don't know how to teach a child, there is a reason why there are education programs to teach you how to teach. There are systems you follow. There are.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: And teaching your kid how to read from the Bible does not teach them how to read phonetically and doesn't make them look. Sorry, folks.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: No, it doesn't.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: I will flat out go on record on that one.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: It doesn't. There are philosophies there.
I can't think of the word. There are educational theories that you need to follow. There are systems that you follow. What a lot of people don't realize about early child education is you're not just giving Your you're not just teaching a child how to read. You're not just teaching child that are ABCs. You're not just teaching them how to add. Exactly. You're teaching them how to learn. And a lot of people don't know how to teach someone how to learn. It's not a failing on their part. It's just something we are not taught. We are not taught how to teach people. Unless you go to college and you become an education major, you don't learn child psychology, educational theory, how to structure learning.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Yet we don't have requirements on homeschoolers.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: And that bothers me a lot. I know a few teachers who.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: That bothers me to no end and always has to tell you right now.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: A lot of this rant actually comes from teachers that I know. Yeah. Because that lack of structure, people don't realize how much structure really helps children.
And when it comes to learning, while yes, an open model concept is significantly better than rote memorization, sitting in straight lines in a classroom, you still have to engage with them and you still have to provide them some kind of structure. Because if you don't, they don't learn how to reason. They don't know. They don't learn how to deal with an opposing viewpoint. They don't learn how to make an argument.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: They don't even learn that there's things that they don't know.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Unfortunately, their parents and in many cases their parents never learned that there are things that they don't know. So I'm willing to go there and put that one on record too.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: I'm gonna be honest with you. I will tell you right now. I was an education major for the first year and a half of college. I also have worked as an instructional designer. So I've gotten a little bit of information on childhood education style educational theory.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: And I know it's different from adult. Some. Some factors are the same, some factors are the same, but not that. But not so many.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: But they are very different. Yes. The one thing that people get wrong about the difference between adult education theory and child education theory is it is the common belief that adult education theory you have to tell the adults, you have to give the adults the why you have to the what's in it for me with them is often how that is abbreviated.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: That in adult educational theory the witham is extremely important. Adults don't know how this is going to basically affect their job because that's usually where they're getting trained. How is this going to affect their job? They are not going to care. Here's the thing. Thing with kids, especially older kids, still. Very true. If you don't tell that kid why they need to know algebra, they're not going to learn it. They are not going to learn, and they are not going to care that they don't know it. They may learn it well enough to pass that test and then they'll forget it and they'll never care again. Says the person who doesn't even understand basic algebra anymore.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: And honestly, my kid's there right now. My youngest is there right now. And I don't have a problem with that because I'm okay with him just passing the test. Because you know how much I use.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Algebra on the regular. I don't know. I use that X over a hundred thing a lot, but it's about the only thing in algebra I remember.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: But I don't use. I don't use parabolas and quadratic equations and stuff on the regular.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Fair. But the point I'm actually making is, even though I've done instructional, even though I have worked in instructional design and I understand how to put a course together.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: I had training for childhood education. Even though I didn't finish the degree or get the license, I started to get training. And I can tell you right now, even with those two pieces of information, I am not qualified to teach a child.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Nope, me neither.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: I am not qualified to homeschool someone. Nope.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Not even close.
For me. Now, I won't say for you, because I'm not inside your head.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: No. But for me, not even me.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: For me, I love my kids. And this is why I don't homeschool them.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: I mean. Exactly.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: I'm not even remotely qualified. I don't have the temperament. First. First and foremost, I don't have a temperament.
I have tons of patience for teaching. I've proven that. But I don't have the patience and temperament to homeschool. 24 7, 365. No, thank you, number one. Number two, I really do not have the complete knowledge that. But that's the difference. I am willing to be aware of the fact that this is knowledge I don't have.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: And this is where I have the problem with a lot of the homeschooling parents, especially in Indiana. They are never aware of the fact that they don't have the knowledge that they need to have.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And a lot of them don't necessarily know what they don't know.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: And when you're dealing with a child's education, that's A big thing. That's a very big thing.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: How many of them are even going to get remotely to where we were? We've been today with. As difficult as it is, we're both extremely well educated women.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: And how difficult has it been for us reading the 18th century?
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Some of mine, I think, is the whole plain language thing.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: I mean, I'm beyond over educated with a master's in English, with the Master of Science, Library Science. You know, I'm beyond over educated to read this. And it's still a challenge for me to read and translate this into a modern mindset. Can you imagine without that?
[00:38:35] Speaker A: I'm incredibly impressed with what you did with the Declaration.
Well, thank you.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: I was proud of myself. I was proud of that, to be honest. But honestly, it's just one of those. And a lot of the people homeschooling might have a bachelor's degree in school, something, but they don't even. They wouldn't necessarily have been encountered any of this literature, much less even thought to look into it.
You know, the one core location where Jefferson got most of his language was the Virginia Declaration of Rights.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Yeah, as in Virginia Colony.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: As in the colony, as in the State of Virginia. Declaration of Rights, huh? Yeah. The Virginia Declaration of Rights. It was written by George Mason and adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention, June 12, 1776. This is from the National Archives.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: Oh, so this was right before the Declaration, before the Declaration of Independence. Makes sense. Jefferson was from Virginia Colony, so that makes sense.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: And it was made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia assembled in full and free condition.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: So who were the people who wrote the Declaration?
[00:39:48] Speaker B: The people that wrote the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson was the primary author. Okay. Benjamin Franklin. John Adams. John Adams. John Adams. Sorry, gotta look that back up. And one of the reps from New York and one from Connecticut.
Sorry. John Adams, Robert Livingston from New York and Roger Sherman from Connecticut.
Two people that I'd never heard of before, to be honest.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: No, I've never heard of them.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: More than people lost to history and yet they were part of the team that wrote one of the most important documents in our history.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Yeah. When you say Declaration.
Let me try that again. When you say Declaration of Independence, the three names you will hear people say. If you say who do you remember being involved in the Declaration of Independence?
[00:40:35] Speaker B: You mean you'll get three. Most people come up with one.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: Thomas Jefferson. Yes. They know Ben Franklin was involved and they know John Hancock was the largest signature.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: But that's the Constitution. He had nothing to do with the Declaration of Independence.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: No, that's on the Declaration. Okay, I know it's on the Declaration because I do have a funny story on that one.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: My mother.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: I forgot everybody signed the Declaration. And Hancock had the first signature. And so he decided, I'll go big and bold.
I'm wondering if he was blaming, but that's me because.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Yes, Queen. Oh my goodness. Funny story. In high school, I had a teacher who required that we have our parents sign our tests. And I was signing my mom's name because she was working third shift. So I was like hardly ever seeing her. People will get at her.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: So. So one day she finally actually signed one of them and I got busted for plagiarism with my mom's actual signature.
And then the next time she had to sign a test, I said, mom, I need your John Hancock on this. And no shit.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: She signed his test Hancock.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Oh no.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Oh no.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: That actually caused a meeting with the teacher again because he did not believe that my mom was the one that did that.
That's how I know that John Hancock saw the bear.
But those are the names that you would commonly remember.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: But ironically, the only John that actually had any part of writing it was John Adams.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Was John Adams. Exactly.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: But yeah. Robert Livingston.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Who?
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. He was the representative from New York. And Roger Sherman from Connecticut. Never heard of either of these two. Kind of glad I went on that last minute search at 1:00 this morning and found this little piece of. Of trivia bits. But I went to the. I went. It was part of the middle of the night last night for the last minute on the, for the last minute of what I was putting together on this. And that was rights on the Virginia Declaration of Rights from the National Archive.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: So what are some of the things from there?
[00:42:43] Speaker B: From there. Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights of which when they enter into state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity. Namely the enjoyment of life, liberty and the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Wow. Almost exactly word for word, right.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: To be honest, Jefferson actually pared it down some and made it a lot less.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Well, it's kind of scary. I mean, it's terrifying to think that he brought it closer to quote, unquote.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Plain language that all power is vested in and consequently derived from the people. The magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them. Wow.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: And the concept of public servant has.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Absolutely been lost has very much been lost. I think part of it was the very simple fact that they get to. They get to go ahead and vote their own pay raises anyway. That government is or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people, nation or community, of all the various modes and forms of government that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable and infeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it in such a manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public will. That's a mouthful. And, and, and guess what I just found. And I remember this in my. In our outline. This.
It is.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: That is a lot of work, Sally.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: It is. I had pieces of this from George Mason and promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Jordan established this Constitution of the United States of America.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It was just changing it so that.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: No man or set of men is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges. Is this sounding familiar?
[00:44:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: Now we're getting into some of the kinds Constitution because again, some of this was taken for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights too. So the emoluments clause in the Constitution comes from section four right here in the Virginia. I didn't get into putting that in the outline because honestly I knew I was going to be able to have the Declaration of Rights for the state of Virginia and that this at the end of the common public wheel was the end of the part that dealt with the Declaration of Independence. It continues on for the Virginia Declaration of Rights into things that were adopted into the Constitution itself. The emoluments clause and the Bill of Rights later on.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: Okay, no, wait. Was that section three or section four?
[00:45:37] Speaker B: That was section three. That was the ends with conducive to public wheel. Section four brings up the emoluments clause.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: I mean, so I found that really interesting that sections 1 through 3 of the Declaration of Rights of Virginia are pretty much the preamble to that declaration independence.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: Oh no. Maybe it was preamble Constitution.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: It might be preamble.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: I don't remember.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: I'm probably mixing them up.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: We're back to the whole. Many times over has that memory slots been rewritten.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: And I'm stuck with. I'm stuck with the jingle in my head. Because Schoolhouse Rock.
Hey, Schoolhouse Rock was freaking awesome. And it means I remember it.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: I remember the Gamble Constitution. Thank you, Schoolhouse Rock.
[00:46:25] Speaker A: I found it absolutely hilarious in college. The beauty of college is the opportunity to connect on a society level with people. People your own age who you did not grow up with.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:39] Speaker A: And the who you did not grow up with is the thing that makes it different. And I have to tell you, the three things that my friends and I bonded over in college were Schoolhouse Rock, Sesame Street.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: And weirdly enough, government cheese. Yep.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: Best damn. Best damn cheddar cheese on the block.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: No pun intended.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: No pun intended.
No. The reason I also know that part of what I found was. The part of what I found was so interesting with Hume was. Hume was an anti lock.
No pun, there for breaks. But anyway, sorry, brain just took a side turn. It does that. But he was actually very snobbishly dismissive of this.
His statement is, it has become the foundation of our fashionable system of politics and is, in a manner, the creed of a party amongst us who pride themselves with reason on the soundness of their philosophy and their liberty of thought. All men say they are born free and equal government and superiority can only be established by consent. That was page 277. Okay, so it's page 277 of my version because again, I had to download it into something where I could read it from. Treatise of Human Nature, section three.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Okay.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: So. But that was. That was a direct quote. But he did have an interesting point. That you could have a small, as he called it, uncultivated society without government. That it was possible, but that it was then impossible to maintain a society of any kind without justice and the observance of the fundamental laws concerning stability of possession. Translation by consent. Oh, there's that consent term again. And performance of promises, my favorite term. But they were obsessed with objects, with possessions, with agreements or promises and consent. That was the obsession of the league of Philosophies of the time.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: I can see that, considering when you consider. When you take into consideration that the only way you could vote or have representation or any of those types of things, especially in the colonies, was if you were a landholder.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: But this is some dude in England.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: To some degree, I think that was even true in England. Where do you think we got some of our original colonial government? From there or from England there? The biggest thing, the biggest, most important thing has almost always been, are you in that time period was, are you a landholder? That was the important thing. Was if you are a landholder, you have more rights. It makes sense that property in the mindset of landholding would make sense to me. We think property and we think stuff. Stuff, yes, the things that we possess, they think property and their.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: They literally mean.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: They literally mean land. Exactly.
[00:49:49] Speaker B: I did find them amusing. I sort of summed him up to say that we have to have government because people can't be nice to each other and because we're all too greedy and short sighted without an external imposition of laws. That was sort of my. That was sort of my. Yeah, okay, my language is biased, that's by very nature. But at the same time that seemed to be the best summation I could give.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: And it is, I'm telling you, it actually is.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: But that he also was very gullible and naive.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Hume. Yes, yes.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: This being impractical with respect to all mankind, it can only take place with respect to a few whom we thus immediately interest in the execution of justice. These are the persons whom we call civil magistrates, kings and their ministers, our governors and rulers, who being indifferent persons to the greatest part of the state, have no interest or but a remote one in any act of injustice. That was where I stopped that sentence in my head while I was reading that and went really dude, really? What rock do you live under?
[00:50:51] Speaker A: Because I'm sorry, the people in power.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: Are most often the ones least interested in justice, interested in lining their pockets and. Or even more what they can get for themselves because they have the power to do it.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Exactly. We're back to that whole absolute power, corrupt.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: Oh my God, that's so gulmable.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: These.
[00:51:10] Speaker B: How is it that as a lowly female, Sorry, I can't say it with straight face. As a lowly female with absolutely no mental capacity to keep up with these learned men, how could I possibly actually understand that they are so fucking naive. It's not funny.
[00:51:36] Speaker A: Hahaha. I'm over here trying really hard to shield my face. You can actually say that with a straight face?
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Because I'm sorry, this isn't even the cynicism of modernity, this is just reality.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Yeah, how could you possibly be that naive?
[00:51:52] Speaker B: All I can think is they're part of the wealthy class, they're part of the. I have enough money that I'm not worried about anything. So I don't see all of the corruption around me, I don't see all.
[00:52:05] Speaker A: Of the corruption around me. And because, and because it's not happening.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: To me in mine, it's not corrupt.
[00:52:11] Speaker A: And it doesn't matter and it doesn't matter. I've been raised, I've been raised in an affluential type of environment, so I don't even know how the unprivileged live.
It's still a problem today.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: It is.
[00:52:29] Speaker A: You look at our, you look at our wealthy ruling class and I use big ass air quotes for that one.
[00:52:35] Speaker B: No shit.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: They don't understand how we live. They don't understand.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: This is why I would pay good money for the reality show that takes Bezos or Musk, takes all their money away from them, gives them a minimum wage job, puts them up in an apartment. I'm willing to give them one month in an apartment and says, go work.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: There have actually been studies, there have been rich people who have tried that and they can't even make it two weeks.
[00:53:05] Speaker B: I know, but I'd say I'd pay good money to see it. Which means they really need to not just do the study, they need to televise it.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Otherwise people aren't going to believe it. I remember reading one thing I hate about the get rich quick philosophies and self help books and things like Jeffrey, hugely popular in the 2000s.
And I remember reading one of them and it was talking about how this guy saying, you could hand me $100 and drop me in a city anywhere in the country, and then it was either an hour or a day. I don't remember which I could make. It's like over $100,000 or something like that.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Okay, that's the.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: I don't remember the exact amount, but. And so I'm like, all right, I want to see what you're. I want to see what your process is. Great. Okay. And it was. So first of all, I'm gonna put this announcement out on my email list and you just lost 90% of the population because. Do you have an email list? I mean, yeah. You have an email list of your friends and family.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: Oh, I don't even have an email list so much as I have this contacts list.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: Exactly. I mean, I have a contacts list in my email service. That's not the same thing as an email list. And you know, I'm reading this and I'm like, well, dude, you just lost me. I don't have an email list. Now what do I do? And the problem with things like that is they create all of these crazy ass ideas. I've been to so many of these seminars, so many of these presentations, and the second you go, I have a question. What do you do if you don't have an email list. You break them, you 100% break them because they have no idea how to do anything truly from scratch.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: Now I remember I read this book on nickel and dimed on not getting by in America.
[00:55:02] Speaker A: Uh huh.
[00:55:03] Speaker B: It was actually really good.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: But I've heard of it.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: Yeah, but I read it and I went, it's garbage.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: I've heard that too.
[00:55:12] Speaker B: Because you know what? She did work minimum wage jobs, but her living place was paid for, she had a vehicle and she had the mobility to just get up and move when she couldn't make rent anymore.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: And she wasn't getting sued for the money back paid. She was pre. She was being a tourist.
[00:55:34] Speaker A: Yes, exactly.
[00:55:35] Speaker B: She was being a tourist of what it's like to work a minimum wage job. She did not actually live it, despite billing the book as I actually lived. No woman, you had the freedom to go, well, I couldn't make bills. So I'm done with the experiment here. I proved my point here, so let's move to the next place. No, you can't do that because you don't have the money to do that.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: Exactly. I've had so many people when they quote unquote renovated my apartment and then raised my rent by over $300 a month.
[00:56:07] Speaker B: Yeah, they didn't do enough to warrant that. But that's beside the point.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: And I was complaining to people because that's a lot of money for your rent to fill up every month. That's $3,600 a year. And I had several people who were like, well, can you just move? Well, first of all, rent gouging, price gouging is a thing in renting right now.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: Especially in Indiana.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: I said it, I meant it. Across the country.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: It's across the country. But Indiana is like leading the way on this, I think.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: And not only is there that, but so no place else is cheaper. And then when I lost a job and was like, well, I've got to figure out how I'm going to pay my rent. People are like, well can you just move in with somebody else? Can you guys realize that I have to pay two months of rent to break my lease?
That's almost $3,000. I don't have $30,000.
[00:57:02] Speaker B: They have wrecked my lease. They have forgotten what it's like to live rental. Yes, in a big way. Because even back in the day my money wasn't that bad for rental. But if I broke lease, I had to forfeit my security deposit, which was a month's rent and I had to pay two more months of rent for breaking the lease. Two cover the time where they would get another renter.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: Even though they had another renter lined up and there would be no downtime. So they were effectively just getting a whole bunch of extra money that they didn't have really. Rights to accept the contract.
[00:57:32] Speaker A: So they had rights. Yeah. I mean, people do not realize how expensive it is to be poor.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: I mean, I was raised. I was raised. How did I put it in the third blog? I was raised. I don't remember how I put it, but it was basically. I've often referred to it as just this side of living out of the box on the street. Poor.
We were literally. How are we going to pay such a rent?
And people don't realize how expensive it can be before. How you cannot afford to buy the healthier food. You have to forego medical care. You have to do things to yourself that actually hurts you further down the line. And you have to do it because you don't have any other choice.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Well, I wonder why America has no B3 epidemic. Maybe because none of the healthy food is actually affordable.
[00:58:30] Speaker A: That's part of it. I'm personally of the opinion that it's also some of the preservatives in our food. But. Whoa. But it becomes a little crunchy granola and impossible chewing on. And I don't go that direction. But at the same time, we're back to medical studies.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: But we're also back to the healthy food is too expensive. Which means all the preservatives are g in the not healthy food.
[00:58:51] Speaker A: Which is what's affordable. Precisely.
[00:58:53] Speaker B: So it's not a big shocker that America compared to the rest of the developed world has an obesity epidemic because cheap food is not good for you.
[00:59:05] Speaker A: No.
[00:59:05] Speaker B: And we're lucky we live someplace where we can seasonally get affordable vegetables.
I feel bad for the people in Chicago, the people in New York, the people in la, where they can. It's literally called a food desert. And they can't.
[00:59:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Because with the concept of farmers market. Farmers markets are expensive.
[00:59:31] Speaker B: They are. They're still cheaper than buying super processed everything. It's a balancing act on that one because you have to. I don't buy the meats at the farmer's market. I don't buy the prepackaged stuff. It's still cheaper for me to go to the farmer's market and get eggplants when. When the farms had a good crop on. Get lettuce, heads of lettuce. Get the fresh vegetables that I buy anyways the actual fresh vegetables. The actual fresh vegetables. Now you're kidding. You know, to buy the bushel full of tomatoes and make my own marinara and freeze it? Yeah, that kind of stuff. But yeah, this is. These were all the rights that we were fighting for. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. And they've gone by the wayside in so many, in so many ways. We've been looking at pride up until this point. Life, living in the pursuit of happiness. Because yeah, that's happening. I mean, I don't know exactly. I'm to the point where these guys had brilliant thoughts.
In some ways they remind me of some of the Bible stories I read as a kid. A philosopher with a brilliant idea that got ruined by human interaction.
[01:00:44] Speaker A: Yeah, human nature gets in the way sometimes. I'm largely of the opinion that communism will not work because it goes against human nature.
[01:00:52] Speaker B: Communism will not work because it very much goes against human nature. I don't disagree with Hume and the rest that we're all about. Man is by nature greedy and selfish. But that's. That's your talking.
That's the cynic talking. And I freely admit it. But at the same time, my interaction with the vast majority of humanity is they're selfish. And the people I've interacted with, my own freaking family, yeah, they're selfish and they are not willing to share and play nice, period. So.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: And yet I meet a lot of people who do. But I think sometimes upbringing has a lot to do with that. Or it's just. Could be philosophy, could be upbringing, could be a lot of different things that affect that. I can agree to some degree that people. I wouldn't say selfish, I would say self serving.
[01:01:45] Speaker B: And the difference there is selfish to.
[01:01:48] Speaker A: Me is more harsh.
[01:01:49] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[01:01:50] Speaker A: More harsh and much more, much more black and white.
[01:01:54] Speaker B: Oh, thank you.
[01:01:55] Speaker A: Self serving. It may benefit you. Is she making noise? Yeah, she's.
[01:02:00] Speaker B: She's nestling into the bed over there and it's rattling some things around.
[01:02:05] Speaker A: Ah, the joy of having cats.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: I just don't. And a major difference between selfish and self serving.
[01:02:10] Speaker A: Self serving. Self serving to me would be more, I am willing to help out others because it makes me feel better, which could be considered selfish. But to me it's almost more self serving. Because with selfish, I think of it as selfish to me is I got mine. Screw you. Okay. Self serving is not like that. I am self serving.
I will absolutely put my own oxygen mask on first. I will make sure that the ability to help others. Cup is full. I will take the time to rest when I need it. It took a long time to get to this point, but I would see that more self serving than selfish there. And I know a lot of that is because I very much have a lot of problems with the I got mine, screw you mindset. Because with the socialist leaning, we all have to survive together.
[01:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:05] Speaker A: It makes more sense to me to work together to help each other out and basically lift everybody up.
[01:03:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all.
[01:03:16] Speaker A: I don't see a selfish person doing that fundamentally. True.
[01:03:20] Speaker B: Which is why I don't think people can do it.
And we're back to exactly where we come to our different point is the cynic and he says, I don't think people can do it. And I think some small select groups within people can.
[01:03:36] Speaker A: Do.
[01:03:36] Speaker B: I think humanity as a whole can.
[01:03:38] Speaker A: No.
[01:03:38] Speaker B: Do I think the grand glorious Federation from Star Trek can ever come through this? No. Hell no.
It's kind of like when I read Sir Thomas More's Utopia. I went, oh, that's funny. That's the best comedy I think I've ever read.
[01:03:55] Speaker A: Her little heart.
[01:03:58] Speaker B: Naive global bastard. You know, because again it's.
Here's the thing, I've always fought back against saying I'm a pessimist. Even though I say your tear. I'm not actually. I don't consider myself a pessimist. I consider myself a realist. And my realistic interaction with people has always been that people are assholes.
[01:04:22] Speaker A: Well, realism, realism to some degree is pessimism.
[01:04:25] Speaker B: Optimistic. I accept the reality of what is there.
[01:04:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Whereas the optimist in me who hangs on usually by the fingernails really wants to believe that people inherently will want to help each other. I genuinely want to believe that. You're sitting here laughing. No, I'm sitting here trying not to.
[01:04:43] Speaker B: Give you the face of, oh, you poor deluded bastard. Okay, I love you too much to want to do that to you. But it's still running through my head. Oh, you poor naive, deluded bastard. Same thing I thought for Thomas Moore.
[01:04:55] Speaker A: Okay, and that's fair. But that is truly, that is true with the eternal optimist in me wanting to think the best of people despite the fact that the world proves to me on a daily basis that I'm wrong. Yeah. So what's your takeaway on all of this?
[01:05:11] Speaker B: My takeaway on all of this is there are a lot of people that really do need to look back. Especially since we had a strong movement, strong push towards originalism in so many aspects of our government and our federal level conversations and our state level conversations that people really do need to not.
[01:05:35] Speaker A: Necessarily do their own research.
[01:05:37] Speaker B: Because that's bullshit too. Because if you don't have the skills, you're not going to do quality research. I'm sorry, that is not me being biased. That is me being just giving you the honest facts on that because I didn't spend extra years learning how to do quality research to do that.
[01:05:52] Speaker A: There's a reason why you're the researcher on this podcast.
[01:05:55] Speaker B: So it's literally not just do your own research, but at least look back at what the founding documents said and look outside of that to the bigger picture of the conversation at large to understand where those founding documents came from and make yourself knowledgeable about how our country was founded. What are the real rules that we're supposed to be living by? Not what does the politician say or what does the talking head say? Because you know what? I think you and I preparing for this have read more than most of the talking heads, to be honest.
[01:06:37] Speaker A: True.
[01:06:38] Speaker B: I would really be shocked. Rachel Maddow probably reads, is probably willing to read and perhaps something like this. There's a few. Stephen Colbert, There's a few. That this is absolutely right up there. That right within their framework that they are that much of an intellectual. You don't have to be an intellectual to read it. You just have to be patient and you have to have a big dictionary hand.
[01:07:05] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I'm kidding.
[01:07:08] Speaker B: That's reality. And you have to be willing to look past a whole lot of misspelling, because it's not misspelling for them, it's just how the language was evolving.
[01:07:16] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, yes. There are 5,000 ways you can spell a word.
Absolutely.
[01:07:24] Speaker B: So phonics is your friend. Actually, when you're going back and reading this stuff, phonics is very much your friend.
[01:07:30] Speaker A: Oh. So my takeaway needs to be. I should probably actually go check out Hooked on Phonics, because phonics was the one thing I did not learn in school. Phonics. Phonics, to read is actually your friend.
[01:07:41] Speaker B: When reading this stuff because that's how they're spelling is phonetically.
[01:07:44] Speaker A: Somehow I made it. Somehow I made it through elementary school without learning phonics. And somehow I made it through the humanities classes. Yeah.
[01:07:52] Speaker B: That's impressive.
[01:07:54] Speaker A: The honors college, these classes without having to read the Bible.
[01:07:58] Speaker B: Congratulations. That's an accomplishment.
[01:08:01] Speaker A: So I'd say that's what we have for today. Am I right?
[01:08:04] Speaker B: I hope so.
[01:08:07] Speaker A: That's what we've got for you today. We hope you enjoyed the episode. We would love to hear what you think, so drop us a
[email protected] we would also love your support, so please visit our Patreon site or buy us a
[email protected] Spill the Tea podcast thank you everyone and have a great week. Four days yeah.
