Citizens Prerogative Podcast Closed Caption Transcript
S3 E50 5 Point Plan Mutual Aid for Mutual Need

16:57:04 In times like these. Being a citizen is a big job.
16:57:08 Thank you for joining us to celebrate the virtues of self-rule and debate.
16:57:14 The state of our republic. Welcome to the citizens prerogative.
16:57:17 Podcast This is the voice of your nerdy host, Michael Piscatelli, and we are inspired by a co-host whose passion for our rep proceeds.
16:57:25 Him everywhere he goes. Raymond Wong, Jr.
16:57:27 Thank you, thank you, i'm wearing my running shoes for this Marathon.
16:57:32 Oh, it's gonna be a doozy this is episode Number 50.
16:57:39 We are still in season 3, and the title of this episode will probably be something like mutual aid for mutual need.
16:57:52 So this episode is going to run little bit different than most we're going to be going into another mini-series here.
16:58:01 So today we're going to have a whole episode introducing a whole mini-series of episodes that are going to be calls to action around a new strategic plan to save our Republic.
16:58:18 And hopefully the planet, because if we can't do that too then I don't know that the Republic's gonna do all that much for us.
16:58:25 So the other thing. This is gonna cover in this plan it's gonna call on each of us to refocus our attention on the purpose of our nation.
16:58:35 And hopefully ask for each of us to think a little bit creatively about our core documents.
16:58:42 We need to recommit ourselves to this most audacious of experiments in self-rule.
16:58:50 We need to let ourselves be reminded that the purpose of the United States is made clear at the start of the Constitution.
16:59:01 Why don't we go ahead and review sentence number one together?
16:59:10 Now shall we, we, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general aware of welfare, secure the blessings, of
16:59:30 liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
16:59:43 What a loaded sentence if you think about the founders and what they were trying to get at right.
16:59:55 And this was this was subsequent drafts. right?
16:59:59 So. So the the purpose this was to leave behind something responsible legacy, something that we could live and die on literally, and I don't think I that they were very intentional about the wording.
17:00:20 I believe that Thomas Jefferson said that every word that they used was intentional.
17:00:28 I believe it like you said this isn't this wasn't a draft.
17:00:36 The words we are left with here were fought over to the nail and I don't even I would even know how many iterations they may have gone through.
17:00:52 But I just want to come back to a few of the highlights on here because there's so much noise that there's so much energy negatively or positively otherwise, out there kind of buzzing around these things.
17:01:08 But what's really gives us a moment? a pause and allows us to focus clear our minds, and let these words in for a moment, and let ourselves kind of play a mental exercise.
17:01:25 What does it mean to us when we read those words? Let us not think about the world.
17:01:32 We live in the country. we have today history, the future. No, just read it for yourself.
17:01:40 This is the first sentence the first paragraph of our constitution.
17:01:45 Pick out those words and figure out, What does it mean to you to form a more perfect union?
17:01:53 What is it mean to establish justice? Does it mean domestic tranquility?
17:02:01 And then to ensure that common defense, I think, is probably the one thing all of us know quite quite clearly.
17:02:12 But do we, General, whereof welfare is probably for me the hardest thing to say.
17:02:18 But for others very nebulous. But welfare is a pretty specific term, and it doesn't mean public assistance.
17:02:35 Secure the blessings of liberty, not just for ourselves, but posterity.
17:02:42 Those words in those words, Freedoms promise lives, and those words.
17:02:50 This country is where freedoms promise lives more than anywhere else on earth.
17:02:59 Really appreciate that thoughtful reading, and all I can think about is what question we need to ask ourselves as citizens, and I guess to go back to the first one.
17:03:09 What truths do we see that are self-evident, like?
17:03:15 What truths do you find to be self-evident now?
17:03:18 Because we already figured out well. we're still working on All men are created equal because it's all people are created equal.
17:03:27 The bottom line is what truths do you believe are self-evident.
17:03:32 Nobody's having that conversation. nobody wants you to have that conversation and i'll be frank here, you know.
17:03:39 Nobody walked into the room, and said, Hey, let's do a 5 technically 6 part series on this conversation, right?
17:03:48 But it's it's such a large bite and it's so necessary. And and I hope Michael, that we set a tone through this this series that we can refer people back year after year and say, go listen to this
17:03:59 five-part series. If you need a little understanding of where We're headed, What What's our policy?
17:04:05 What are we trying to bring to the front and what truths Do we find self-evident in this roaring twentys?
17:04:12 That's an incredible clarion call to all of us and to you and I on this podcast journey that we've embarked together.
17:04:25 Yeah, definitely, i'm hopeful we'll be able to achieve that as well.
17:04:28 We want to that anchor in time, and a place to come back to, to kind of clear our heads and reorient ourselves to what really matters.
17:04:39 And these are good words. This is a good place to come back to, you know.
17:04:43 If I had to have some kind of Bible or another, this might be one of the first versions.
17:04:48 I can get through multiple times in my life, and it has a lot of meaning and a lot of power, because this is the foundation of the government that we actually live under.
17:05:00 And for now we get to vote our representatives into so Anyway, Now i'm digressing a more perfect union is when you go into a hotel, and there is for diversity's sake all the all the religious texts and a
17:05:16 constitutional text. I love it, or just the Constitution.
17:05:22 Welcome to the United States. I mean yeah so we're not gonna go into this piece of it.
17:05:35 Any further. the The call is out to you. the challenge is out to you.
17:05:41 The call to action, for now is orient yourself the to those words we're gonna have a call to action section separately.
17:05:48 But this is really the driver and when we go through this five-point plan these 5 points to help bring us all together. We're gonna do our best to align back i'll line back to these words: there's a
17:06:05 purpose to them. It's up to us to work together to cast them into a light that makes sense for the lives that we're living today.
17:06:16 That's great. I think what I also feel like is that you said you said it, and you've inspired me to be coalesce around. this.
17:06:24 Is that the common defense is well funded We seem to agree on funding for the common defense.
17:06:30 We're just citizen duke good I think is just asking for funding to be equal across all words isn't that right?
17:06:39 It's not even the first one in there. but my goodness, if you were to put dollars to these things.
17:06:44 That's exactly right it's that one's well cared for.
17:06:50 So that gives you a little preview into where we'll be going into the next set of episodes before before that, though we have to finish this one.
17:07:01 And so continuing on, I hope we hope i'm gonna speak for ray on that one we've instilled in you a little curiosity, a little hunger to go chew on that in the meantime
17:07:12 we're gonna pivot to isolating and discussing some of the reasons why we feel like it's under threat.
17:07:22 You know It's pretty amazing you know a group of people can read the same words and come to very different conclusions.
17:07:27 That is reality. So it's up to each of us to make sure we're drawing our own conclusions in order to test them.
17:07:35 Our country is being tested, our republic is being tested.
17:07:41 The Constitution. The Constitution is being tested It has been, and it will continue to be tested in ways.
17:07:50 We haven't seen the in our lifetimes the constitution was alive.
17:07:55 I don't know if it would have seen the tests I feel beer or mounting against it.
17:08:03 Let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the main threats.
17:08:07 We bulleted coming from the rots of corruption I don't know.
17:08:15 Frotts. is supposed to be plural but there's a fair amount of corruption, and it's starting to smell like. rot.
17:08:21 So let's come at this first of all from the inside in the outside.
17:08:26 We want this Experimental Republic to be successful and some of the threats that are really looking to tear it down from inside include money and politics right?
17:08:38 We've got wealthy purchasing tax policies that benefit them burden the next generation.
17:08:48 The posterity we mentioned with their debt. We also have a rising tide of totalitarianism, unchecked power out there to misinform and confuse.
17:09:04 This is both coming from active sources like media outlets and it's coming from foundations left uncured by freezing out schools from properly teaching.
17:09:18 The next generation are posterity. How to navigate the world that's been built there's an authoritarian regime of oppressors rising.
17:09:30 They're motivated to secure absolute olgarsal power unchecked by the people.
17:09:36 We have to be cautious that small people want to come to power.
17:09:45 It's just one of those things that always happens we just in our country.
17:09:50 Always had this, you know, meritocratic elite group of people who did their best to keep anyone out for the most part that was overtly a little too much corrupt for their taste.
17:10:01 Unfortunately they were setting the bar, and what too corrupt was for too long.
17:10:06 And then eventually they were a fox into the hen house So Honestly, I'm gonna stop there as far as our inside threats go, and it's not intended to be an exhaustive list.
17:10:16 This is just where the rot of corruption seems to be stinking.
17:10:21 The most from a historical perspective. corruption is it's not no one, no one should think it's worse.
17:10:31 Now please understand that we come from an era and we've mentioned it before we come from an era of nobles.
17:10:38 We come from a society of kings, our own country and this whole constitution were built from was us pushing away from the idea of this birthright rule, and such, so, in a sense, corruption has always existed.
17:10:54 We're just seeing it boiled down further and further to just the last vestiges of those that have it, and they they want to maintain that power.
17:11:05 It's it's just all about controlling that old power structure which frankly is as old as the feudalism.
17:11:14 Yeah, yeah, the World's lived a lot longer under authoritarianism than it has anything like democracies which is why we probably really only had Rome in Greece to look back on for examples there weren't a lot of models
17:11:29 to build this thing on. So besides those internal threats, you know, unchecked power, misinformation, swirling, confusing people, allowing demagoguery to just rule the airwaves in so many ways the money
17:11:45 and politics is ridiculous. we've equated money in free speech.
17:11:50 So if you have unlimited money now you have unlimited speech.
17:11:52 I mean it's really that simple and it's really that unfair.
17:11:56 I'm not oversimplifying that but we also have some threats from the outside.
17:12:01 These are the ones that normally galvanize us right.
17:12:04 We usually come together in moments of extreme crisis. But I think those 2 within those 2 factors that are tearing us up our insider are are causing us not able to recognize these outside threats, for what they truly are the first one
17:12:22 being climate change, I mean, I made I think a little bit of a joke about the fact that you know even our republic can't survive in a world that's not habitable So this is one area where we have a
17:12:33 vested interest and being like one of the biggest leaders in the global economic system that's currently come to bear on the planet.
17:12:42 We bear some responsibility to fix it and and create something better to replace it.
17:12:48 So we need to look at climate change as the existential risk to our species that it is, and we need to look at all the risks that it's going to bring to bear upon us It's gonna be it's gonna be bigger than
17:13:01 Biblical proportions. I'm i'm afraid because people survive to write the Bible.
17:13:09 The other aspect of this. so climate change nobody can ignore that at least we're all in the same basket com would unless somebody gets rich and finds another world to live on we're facing right now today some of the
17:13:22 breakdown some of the failures of a Post World War Ii Global Economic system.
17:13:28 You know we we exported authority without worker rights, nations working.
17:13:35 We gave it to nations working in bad faith, so we had no reasonable expectations.
17:13:40 They were going to help improve anybody's conditions and that's coming home to roost.
17:13:45 It's helped to feed the rise of authoritarianism in a lot of places rather than democracy, because authoritarianism is easier for business.
17:13:59 We need to look at some of these things very critically coming from the outside.
17:14:05 And right now we're looking at Russia invading Ukraine and Nato coming back to life with renewed vigor.
17:14:13 And so we will be talking a little bit more about that.
17:14:17 And one of our subsequent episodes but we're not going to get into it now.
17:14:22 Both of these lists are asking us to be wary of authoritarianism, and i'm probably gonna get really good at saying that word.
17:14:32 But it's it's true We've you know some would say the biggest risk of the United States failing as an experiment is us like us, really not successfully seeing it through we can lose it to authoritarianism at any
17:14:47 time, and it doesn't have to be from an invasion from an outside party.
17:14:52 Our system will most likely topple from the inside. So we need to stay vigilant on both fronts.
17:15:00 Accountability, right? The simple thing that probably everyone, especially anyone who lives in does it.
17:15:08 It knows that you you can get fired from your job if you go astray if you, if you don't deliver. if you, if you call out sick too many times, there is accountability for all of us 90%.
17:15:22 Of us, but something happens at a certain level and that's the corruption, right?
17:15:26 It's not hard to spot when you're like Why does that person get so much money, and I can barely pay my bills.
17:15:33 That's corruption. Yeah, Yeah, and it's far from what capital at its capitalism.
17:15:42 Excuse me at its best is capable of right I mean all the systems we're using are rigged right?
17:15:48 They're all tools they all have the capacity to deliver what's promised in the constitution, or what an oligarch wants, and it's that flexible.
17:15:58 Unfortunately, and it's up to each us to be vigilant on that note.
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17:17:36 Us. Page. Thanks for your support. tipping into last steps episode a little bit, you know.
17:17:47 I've had a chance in. the mediverse to talk to people about some of our strategies, and it's been. It's been refreshing right and frankly, people are surprised when I bring up the words that you spoke on
17:18:02 the first half you know it's almost like they forgot they forgot that there were.
17:18:08 There are certain things that we were promised. And when I say to my fellow Americans, when it says, you know to provide welfare, what does that mean to you?
17:18:23 Because this is what it means to me and and just it just sets them back right, because I didn't ask them about a political party affiliation.
17:18:32 I didn't ask them what football team they go for right I did not ask them for those triggers.
17:18:39 I asked them to talk to me about their philosophical truths and some are going to struggle with this conversation, and that's why I think it's so important.
17:18:46 We have it. I was against 5 episode journey but i'm now for it, because it just it just seems so necessary.
17:18:56 I mean that genuinely. Hi! Hi! honey or recording i'm gonna edit this out this part right Now, is that what is it?
17:19:18 Oh, I know what that is. Thanks cutie vitudi hi, honey, i'll see you soon.
17:19:44 Rommel's done should have put a lap on the timer for that. I heard that I heard your little joke there, and still we're gonna do 5 episodes and I appreciate you coming along for the ride
17:20:10 it is a lot to cover and i'm hopeful we can squeeze it into 5 episodes, so for all of you out there.
17:20:17 It's just a little bit of dig at my over ambition.
17:20:25 So with this episode, I think, before we get into the calls to action.
17:20:31 Although this whole episode has probably just been a big tirade or message.
17:20:34 But it want to button it up a little bit here. so everybody understands when we say why we need radical change to bring forth.
17:20:48 A third republic, one that propels our ideals of liberty and justice for all.
17:20:54 Forward towards fruition, helps people use their gifts to advance the nation and save the earth.
17:21:05 Solutions section, who we want to present a platform of actions.
17:21:09 We need to take quickly to save ourselves from oblivion.
17:21:12 Figuratively and hopefully only figureuratively there's no going back to another time.
17:21:20 If there's any chance for tomorrow, then Now, is when we have to act in order to make it.
17:21:31 So the the third Republic is funny, and to me, because are we even on like the sixth version?
17:21:40 Because you know we have the the presidency which didn't exist in the original drafts.
17:21:48 You know, and and then, when you had a President they weren't allowed to campaign, and then they're running me whoever they are running against became the Vice President.
17:21:57 So the entire system at the founding was based on great compromise.
17:22:04 Working with your opponents. Finding that sweet spot with with critical conversation and critical thought.
17:22:13 We've really lost that. So so I agree we need to bring forth this radical change.
17:22:20 But you know iii Wonder the philosophy will be what version of the Republic? Are we really on because you don't know what matrix they're on right and the matrix series?
17:22:28 It's like the third or fourth so do we really know which Republic.
17:22:35 We're on. I think the debate will continue I like it.
17:22:39 Yeah, we should talk about how to slice and dice the versions.
17:22:42 There's a few ways to do it we're just nerdy enough to give it a try.
17:22:52 So with that our calls to action for this episode are pretty simple.
17:22:56 Please, as we said at the beginning, read, reread the Constitution of the United States.
17:23:06 The Us. national archives has everything available online for free and you may even get distracted by some of our other founding documents or other documents that they have lying around for free, which is really exciting because you know it's
17:23:17 all about our country. You can only learn more while you're there nothing bad can happen unless somebody hacks that site.
17:23:26 So that's a different story. Well, and and kudos by the way, because I had no idea the archives busting down a former president's door to collect their documents.
17:23:36 Like, Hey, these are ours. I had no idea that they were a bunch of gangsters at that place, but I love it.
17:23:43 It's pretty amazing 15 boxes some of it He wasn't supposed to have, especially not outside.
17:23:55 We won't go there, I digress so yeah head check out the National Archives.
17:24:00 They're they're national heroes. also we want you to challenge and inform your opinion on such matters.
17:24:07 Not not necessarily about the national archives, but other matters that we've raised here when we, when we just read that first sentence that first paragraph of the Constitution dig in pick out those words, we want to know what they mean to
17:24:20 you please challenge and inform your opinion in that way it's Okay, if you have assumptions, you can challenge them.
17:24:30 You don't have to change your mind but wouldn't you feel better if the opinions you held you knew you felt confident in arguing with, and what if there's something better there for you I mean just go check it
17:24:43 out. The last thing you have to do is just stay tuned.
17:24:48 Stay subscribed. This is since prerogative podcasts through your favorite podcasting app.
17:24:53 We're gonna be covering. each of the 5 points in more detail in the miniseries that unfolds as we delve deeper into our constitution.
17:25:01 But more importantly, what we propose is the vision. for the new version of our Republic, based on an old operating model.
17:25:20 Think that's gonna do it. We have been your host thank you to Mr.
17:25:24 Raymond Wong, Jr. thank you Mr. Catelli.
17:25:30 This has truly been a warm-up and i'm ready for the run.
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